Beginning from Childhood

As children you were probably told to eat everything on your plate whether you like it or not. “There are starving kids in Africa!” We are told to eat what someone serves us out of respect for their long hours of making a meal for us. Well, what if this is one of those foods that upsets our stomach, or we just plain don’t like it? This “forcing” creates confusion for many children and also into adulthood. We don’t know what we like or don’t like. We don’t know what is good for our body or not.

Maybe you were taught that if your stomach was upset, you must be hungry, so put something in it to ease the discomfort. This again lead to not really understanding what your body needed, because when you were presented food, you HAD to eat it otherwise negative effects happened – like you had to eat it cold for breakfast the next morning, or you didn’t get dessert and missed out when everyone else enjoyed something sweet.

What is the pattern or narrative that you were told as a child? How are you carrying that through into your adulthood?