It's been over a year since my last post on this blog, and there's been an awful lot that has happened. The general idea of this blog was always to muse on my more psychological musings on food and our relationship to it, and there is a lot I can reflect on now. Overall, I can say that I find myself feeling most comfortable and at ease with where food is in my life at the moment, but simultaneously most frustrated too.

The huge turning point for me has been my introduction and continually exploration of mindfullness. This started with going to a mindfulness based counsellor back in January, after yet another Christmas period feeling ashamed, depressed and ultimately suicidal. Looking back on it now I can see much more clearly just how unwell I really was, and that taking the step to find a therapeutic way forward was absolutely critical. The basis for my healing was not being afraid to feel what I was already feeling, but allowing the sensations of being alive to be there, and ultimately welcoming them. This connection to the nuts and bolts experiences of life has been immeasurably transformative for me.

A few months along the therapy road I also started meditating, something which I had dabbled in briefly before. This time however, the work going on with my therapist allowed me to have much greater awareness of what I could 'get' from meditation, giving it a realistic chance fo yielding positive benefits for my general mental state. In a strange way, you have to be slightly self-indulgent to keep meditating, as at first (for me at least) it didn't seem sensible to just sit in a chair for 10-20 minutes a day doing 'nothing'. My analytical mind was telling me that action was the way to achieve things and experience happiness. The more I embraced the meditative process the more I could realise that feelings of happiness and contentment are ever available, and really come from within, as much as that sounds like a cliche.

Right up until 3 months ago, I was still struggling with behavioural cycles to do with body image, control and overeating. By meditating and practicing mindfulness, these cycles became less and less relevant, and it's possible for me to say that I barely recognise my day to day approach to food from how things used to be. I honestly couldn't tell you exactly why or how this has happened. I definitely still have moments or even days where I overeat, but it just doesn't feel the same anymore. I am able to keep a much more balanced and nonjudgemental perspective on my eating, both when it's 'healthy' and 'unhealthy'. When I am eating well it's no longer to obtain some idealised appearence to impress others, and when I binge or overeat it's not as powerfully wrapped up in thoughts of catastrophe and failure.

Perhaps the single clearest difference that meditating every morning has done is allowing me both mentally and physically to take a deep breath (well many many deep breaths) before I start my day and feel more centred. All the well known terms that float around meditation ("centred" for one) do actually describe the reality quite well at times. Even when I am not doing much at all, mornings are often a very rushed time for my mind, trying to write a play by play plan for daily success. The sensation of just going into the body through meditation helps to reveal that its possible to feel 'success' before you have done anything, and that being alive on it's own is such a fantastic gift that really anything that happens after that is a bonus. This foundational level of comfort is actually always there, and the negative feelings and thoughts associated with depression and anxiety are layers on top of the basis, but ones that definitely don't need to be there, however real they can seem. The more familiar and connected you feel to the basic, easy experience of your breath, the less convincing all the negative thoughts are able to be.