Imagine that within us we carry two containers on our journey through life. One is gourd shaped for carrying food and water, and the other is heart-shaped for carrying all the things we need for making our life meaningful and fulfilling. The gourd is what we fill when we need physical nourishment, and the heart is what we fill when we need emotional nourishment. It is to be filled with attention, affection, appreciation, and other foods for the heart and soul.
*If we are listening to the promptings of our minds, and not the messages our bodies give us, we can easily deny what we are truly hungry for.

*Without the ability to recognize the difference between two kinds of hunger, you will desperately cling and be unwilling to let go of disordered eating patterns.

*Our minds can play all kinds of tricks on us, but our bodies never lie!

In order to be free from disordered eating, you must develop the ability to see through the illusion that only food can give you sustenance. Until you are able to distinguish physical hunger from symbolic hunger, you will remain vulnerable to deception.

*People with disordered eating fail to distinguish physical from symbolic hunger.

*There are two kinds of hungers: those that come from the stomach and those that come from the heart. The hunger of the stomach must be fed with food, but the hunger of the heart must be satisfied with love and emotional nourishment.

Once someone learns to recognize the difference between physical stomach-hunger and emotional heart-hunger, her needs for food and her longing for emotional sustenance and how to respond to them, they no longer have to worry about becoming fat.

*We all have a built in gift from mother nature that tells when to eat and when to stop eating - just like animals in the wild. They are all just the right size!

*The path to recovery inevitably leads us back into attunement with our bodies. We must learn to listen.

*How do I know when I am thirsty? How do I know when I am hungry?



from EDCA