Last year I was sitting at a Sunday brunch with two family members at one of my favorite places to brunch in NYC. We had only just ordered our food, when one of my family members drew my attention to a woman sitting at the table next to ours.
There she was, reading what seemed to be a juicy book, with a delicious meal in front of her and a Mimosa in her hand. And then the comment came from said family member "Wow, what a sad life she must lead!"
Huh?
I whipped my head around to look at my family member, as I was completely confused by the comment! I asked her, "Wait, why do you think she leads a sad life?",
to which the response came:
"I mean just LOOK at her! She's probably a lonely woman who has NO life and NO ONE to eat with. That's why she has to sit there and read what's probably some trashy romance novel that she has to bring with her so that she feels better about the fact that NO ONE wants to eat with her. And look at her hair! Looks messy! She's not even wearing make up! I bet you she spends her life imagining some prince from her novel is going to whisk her away to a better place, but it's not going to happen!"
I must admit, I was completely floored by this response!
So again I asked " Wait, I still don't understand, why does the fact that she's eating alone mean any of that?" Said person then said to me, "Listen, it's WEIRD to eat alone okay? Only weird people do that!".
I still didn't understand her reasoning, so I asked one last time "why does eating alone mean you're lonely or weird?". Then my other family member at the table chimed in and said "I mean, really, if you had people who loved you in your life, you wouldn't be eating alone. It IS weird, Lisa."
This made no sense to me whatsoever. But I looked at my family members' eyes and I saw the anger, confusion & fear that lingered in them and I suddenly understood what was going on.
The reason I had been so confused by what my family members were saying (and by how disproportionately angry they seemed about this harmless woman enjoying her Sunday morning) was that I was not seeing what they were seeing at all. When I looked over at her table, I saw a woman with a gleam in her eye. A woman who was eating her food slowly and with pleasure. In between bites, she'd put her fork down and read a little bit of her book and smile. Then she'd take a sip of her Mimosa and look out the window at the passersby outside.
To me, this woman looked like she was having a fabulous time! She looked grounded, relaxed and like she loved being in her skin. I observed the absolute pleasure she took in every morsel of her eating experience. How she really tasted her food, how she seemed to be so fully present in every moment. In fact, when I looked at her my first thought was "this woman is awesome! Look how brave she is to be eating here alone in public and look how in touch with pleasure she is! I wanna be like her! I want to go to Sunday brunch and eat by myself and not give a damn!".
And then I looked back at my family members' fear-filled eyes and it clicked...
Though I didn't have the same opinion as my family member who made the famous comments, we did have something in common--we were both scared to eat alone in public. For my family member her utter fear of being perceived as some sort of "lonely loser who has to eat by herself" projected itself as over-the-top anger towards the innocent woman sitting by us. For me, my fear of eating alone in public translated itself into awe--"wow, she's brave! I want to be like her!".
After we left brunch that morning, the woman was still there, having the time of her life with her special Sunday ritual, but I thought about the exchange with my family member for a long time. And I thought about that fabulous woman eating by herself at the restaurant.
In the months that followed, I felt compelled to do the same, but something in me always made me stop. A myriad of excuses would come up-- "what if some weird guy comes and tries to hit on me while I'm trying to enjoy my food?" or "what if everyone starts pointing at me and talking about me like my family member was talking about that woman at the table?". And then as synchronicity would have it, I started hearing the same fears about eating alone from the many women I speak to about their relationship with food.
In my private work with clients, one of the things we try out is something I like to call Goddess Centered Eating. In Goddess Centered Eating, you prepare a gorgeous, satisfying & healthy meal for yourself. You light a candle, set the table beautifully, create a Goddess Space at the table for your meal.
Then you eat mindfully, slowly, making sure to enjoy every bite. It's all about staying connected to your body while you're eating and observing what emotions come up for you while you practice this exercise.
Over the years I've gotten feedback from clients who tried it saying it was an AHA moment for them. That it made them feel like they were nourishing themselves with food in ways they hadn't thought they could. I always get reports that practicing this exercise has helped women who never know when they're full, to find their "full" point again.
But whenever I ask a woman to try this exercise for the first time, I almost always get the same response: "I felt resistant to it b/c eating like that just made me feel like I was a lonely woman who had no one to eat with her". Or "taking time to eat by myself reminded me of how lonely I feel, and so I didn't want to continue".
It's the same fear that my family member had, the same fear I had of eating alone in a restaurant, being repeated by my clients and the women I spoke to when helping them heal their relationship with their bodies and their food. I realized, we all have that inner mean girl inside of us that tells us we're pathetic for eating alone, whether it be at home or in a restaurant.
So we scarf down our meals devoid of pleasure in front of a TV screen to avoid feeling "like a loser". Or we eat while standing up at our kitchen counters (I've been guilty of that one too!), or we eat while running to the next appointment.
But what if you could flip that inner mean girl statement on its head? What if eating alone & surrendering yourself to the pleasure of your meal was actually an act of radical self-love? What if the "she eats alone b/c she's lonely" thought that so many of us have is just a story, nothing more. Not reality. Not fact, but a lie our inner mean girl keeps us believing? (In a weird way, I think our inner mean girl is trying to protect us from getting hurt when she talks to us like that. Poor thing, she's just misguided)
Because for me, the more I took the time to practice Goddess Centered Eating at home, the more comfortable I became with my body, the more relaxed I began to feel around food, and the more I began to allow for pleasure in my life without having to depend on other people to give me that pleasure. Knowing that I had the ability to nourish myself in every aspect of my life, including meal time, made me feel strong, powerful and connected--NOT lonely and loser-like. That's why we call it "Goddess Centered Eating" ladies ;-) It's all about nourishing your inner Goddess, knowing that you, and only you have the power to do that. How amazing is that?
That's when you become that woman with that gleam in her eye whose secrets everyone wants to know ;-)
I have thought a lot about you since that moment at that restaurant with my family members and I knew that it was my duty to you to go out and conquer my fear of eating alone in restaurants. So I've been eating alone in restaurants for the last month.
The first time, I was terrified--sweating bullets in fact. I almost got takeout and walked away! But then as I sat there, I got excited. Here I was, at my favorite place, eating my favorite meal and enjoying every last bite of it. I noticed how relaxed I felt, how I noticed so many more details about the people around me. It was a romantic date with ME.
When the inner mean girl came in to say "eat fast because people are probably thinking you're some loser who can't find anyone to eat with her", I called the inner mean girl on her bluff and kept right on enjoying myself.
Afterwards, I felt like a freakin' Warrior Goddess.
Not only did I get full much quicker than I would have if I had been distracted by the TV screen, but I felt absolutely drunk on love for myself and my own awesomeness and I felt proud! To know that I could take care of myself even while eating alone in public, was a magical moment. And I plan on continuing to do so.
So take yourself on a date this week (whether at home or out in public) and see how you feel afterwards. Be that pioneering woman at the restaurant with the cojones to revel in herself and her pleasure without giving a damn! And write me and tell me how it went!
With mad love for you, my fellow sister-Goddess,
Lisa
PS: Like the concepts we talked about in today's post and want to go further with them? Keep on the lookout for an email from me next week--I'm hosting a free call about tapping in to your inner Goddess and using her to detox every area of your life. You're definitely gonna want to be on this call--we're gonna be blowing all sorts of roofs off houses with this one!
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