Ever since Eve was forbidden to have the apple, woman have had a problem being told they couldn’t eat something.

There is something about being told we can’t have what we desire that just makes us desire it more.

I believe that being denied something can lead to obsessing about it, especially when it is something that we crave.

I believe women are extremely ravenous creatures. We crave affection, we crave love, we crave sex, and yes we crave food.

When we get what we crave this is called satisfaction. When we don’t get what we crave we become frustrated, irritated, and well quite frankly it’s probably the reason we make a lot of men sleep on the couch at night.

The word Tantalize (torment or tease with the sight or promise of something unobtainable.)

comes from the Ancient Greeks. Tantalus was a character in Greek mythology who was famous for his eternal punishment in Tartarus the deepest part of the underworld Hades. He was condemned to a life of “temptation without satisfaction” to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches, with the fruit ever eluding his grasp, and the water always receding before he could take a drink.

Ya he pissed off the wrong gods.

I think they were probably a bunch of women who knew exactly what they were doing in the form of torture. I truly believe this was the way diets were evolved. Put food all around somebody and then tell them they can’t have it. If you have ever met a female who told you she was in a bad mood because she was on a diet…this is why.

That is what we all do to ourselves by going on any kind of food plan that restricts us, and lets face it, just about every diet out there today does.

We suddenly get told we can’t have carbs and all we can think about are life sized croissants wrapped in a giant pizza crust.

Tell a person they can’t eat red meat, and they might not admit it to your face but I can probably bet they have almost pulled over to the side of the road and almost taken a bite out of some poor cow.

When you start getting told you can’t have something, it honestly makes you obsess about it more.

I should know this as for the whole first year I was developing anorexia I cut just about every single food item out off my list.

After about the first few weeks I started to not be able to think of anything but food. I would read magazines and cookbooks, and I became obsessed with watching and hearing about what other people ate.

All of my deprivation always lead to me to losing my mind and would spin me into full blown binges, where god forbid whoever stood in my way of the refrigerator.

Since the birth of all you can eat cabbage soup, diets have been about deprivation.

It’s telling your stomach that you are temporarily distracting it for awhile, when all you are doing is making your mind feel like it is being deprived.

Lets say we take out the word “can’t”.  Lets say that we kick it back old school to like when we were kids and go with our intuitive hunger??

To put it in simpler terms, ate what you wanted in moderation. Ate when you were hungry and stopped when you were full? Ate a variety of foods and stopped putting labels on them as “good or bad”.

Stopped fooling yourself into thinking that you were doing your body a favor by cutting back on certain food groups or nutrients.

Now I know a ton of people who are Vegetarian or Vegan because of a lifestyle choice.

I also know a ton of people who have to be on certain restrictions in their diets due to Gluten problems or food allergies.

I by no means am saying to abandon all of that.

What I am saying is ask yourself ”are you cutting out certain foods because of your eating disorder or because you believe it will help you in an effort to lose weight?

If that is why you are doing it, then I am here to say that is your old unhealthy thinking and eventually it’s going to cause you to go cukoo for cocoa puffs.

I myself know that there were certain “fear foods” I had in my head when I came to Rader that had nothing to do with a lifestyle or ethical or medical condition. They were foods I had craved for years but never let myself  have.

My nutritionist there challenged me to let go of those myths that those foods were bad.

I learned to slowly incorporate them back into my diet, and to this day can still eat them.

The practice I got doing it there along with not depriving myself  have been to my success.

I encourage you to challenge yourself to let go of deprivation. If you are in treatment for an eating disorder I challenge you to learn to let go of your stubborn thoughts about food. As long as you are practicing healthy eating habits, you never have to feel “temptation without satisfaction” again.

So Take the word “Forbid” out of your Vocabulary…this isn’t the Garden of Eden anymore.

Now how do you like them apples?!!

SHAKIRA—SHE WOLF