Eating in the Light of the Moon

This old Korean folktale is about a woman whose husband had returned from the war. He had been gone a long time and she was so happy that he had returned alive and well. But he wasn’t the same as she had remembered him. He no longer laughed freely and was often sullen and withdrawn. At times he would refuse to eat or would fly into terrible rages that frightened her. It seemed that there was nothing she could do to get him to laugh and love life the way he used to.

In desperation, the woman sought help from an old healer who lived on the outskirts of her village. The healer assured the woman that she could provide her with a potion that would restore her husband’s good humor and vitality, but the woman would have to obtain the essential ingredient: a whisker from a living tiger. The woman was overwhelmed by the impossibility of such a task, but the healer insisted that without this ingredient, the potion would be worthless.

The woman returned home and thought long and hard about this task. She remembered hearing about a tiger’s cave high up on the mountain nearest her village. One night, while her husband was sleeping, she climbed the mountain, and sure enough, as she had been told, there was the tiger’s cave. She returned home before daylight with a plan in mind

The next night, she climbed the mountain again, this time with a bowl of rice and a piece of meat, which she placed as near to the entrance to the cave as she dared to go. Hiding behind a bush, she watched as the tiger came out of the cave, sniffed cautiously at the bowl, and proceeded to eat. The following night she returned with another bowl of rice and meat and stood far away in the distance and watched as the tiger ate the entire contents of the bowl.

Night after night she returned with a bowl of rice and meat, each time moving closer and closer to where she placed the bowl and speaking to the tiger in a gentle, encouraging tone until one night she was close enough to the tiger that she could actually touch it. At that moment she swiftly pulled out a pair of scissors from her pocket and snipped off one of the tigers whiskers, and with the whisker clutched tightly in her fist, she ran as fast as her legs could carry her down the mountain to the hut at the edge of the village where the healer lived. Panting, nearly out of breath, holding the whisker in her fist triumphantly in the air, she gasped, “I have it! I have the tiger’s whisker. Now you can make the potion that will make my husband lively and loving again.”

The healer took the whisker, inspected it for a moment, and then promptly threw it into the fire where it crackled, sizzled, and then was no more. “What have you done?” cried the woman. “Don’t you know what I have been through to get that whisker?” The woman began to sob as she recounted how she had searched for the tigers den, climbed the mountain night after night, brought food for the tiger, inched her way closer and closer to the tiger each night as he ate, spoke gentle, coaxing words even though her legs trembled with fear until she was finally able to get close enough to snip off the coveted whisker. And now,” she concluded, ”it is all for nothing.”

For many women, a life free from obsessions with food, fat, and dieting can sometimes seem as rare and unobtainable as a tiger’s whisker. Even if they knew where to find a living tiger, the thought of actually plucking one of its whiskers is nearly impossible for them to imagine. Even though they can fantasize about how life would be without their obsessions, actually living such a life seems unfathomable. Not believing they are capable of having the freedom to eat what they want without getting fat, they settle for potions that are really worthless—diets, pills, and exercise routines that bring weight loss but not freedom from the obsessions that haunt them.

The essential ingredient for true freedom is consciousness, an acute awareness, moment to moment, of who we really are and what we truly desire. It is not enough to know, in general, how we feel about our lives, our relationships, or our careers. We must be aware of our feelings and desires as they arise. And we must be willing to do what it takes to honor and acknowledge them in that moment. Journal keeping is one of the best techniques I have found for developing and maintaining this consciousness. It is a way of following and tracking our innermost thoughts and feelings while they are still being formulated, before they are ready to be shared with the world. It provides a haven from the judgments and reactions from others when we are feeling unsure of ourselves. And it can illuminate quite clearly the relationship between our thoughts and feelings and our eating behavior.

A journal that reveals the threads that connect our eating behaviors to what is going on in our lives and in our thoughts and feelings can help dispel the myth that we binge “for no particular reason,” that some mysterious force comes from out of the blue and urges us to eat. When we can find those places where we have linked binge eating with frustration or ice cream with loneliness, we can find the hidden reasons for our disordered eating and can discover the areas in our lives that need to be brought into balance, that are lacking in nourishment.

The journal I recommend should contain the following information:

1. The date

2. The time you ate or drank anything

3. What you ate

4. What you were doing just before you ate

5. What you were thinking just before you ate

6. What you were feeling just before you ate

7. If you were physically hungry

8. And if you purged or got rid of the food in some way

It is important to make entries as soon as possible after eating because if too much time has passed, it can be difficult to remember not only what you had eaten but also what you had been thinking and feeling prior to eating. For this reason, many women find it helpful to use a small notebook they can carry with them.

This journal does not have to be elaborate, but it does need to be as consistent as possible. Like the woman in the story who discovered that by being consistent and persistent she could get closer to the tiger, a woman wanting freedom from food obsessions must be consistent and persistent in her attempts to draw out the real issues behind her disordered eating.

It is not unusual for a woman to discover upon starting her journal keeping that she has been harboring many negative self-judgments about her eating behavior. She may say to herself, “Oh, I can’t believe I ate so much! What a pig! How disgusting!” Often the guilt and shame she feels regarding her eating behavior can interfere with her ability to be thorough or consistent with her journal entries. If so, she may find it helpful to approach this task with the attitude of a detective, a journalist, or a scientist and recognize that at this point in time, she is simply gathering data, she is collecting information to be deciphered at a later date. Even if she is binge eating every day, it’s okay. Writing about these binge episodes will provide her with a multitude of clues that can help her solve the mystery of her disordered eating.

Because journal keeping is an attempt to bring the unconscious into consciousness, resistance to keeping a journal can be fierce. We tend to keep certain behavior patterns out of our awareness if they are frightening, painful, or confusing to look at. Resistance is not “bad” and we are not “lazy” or “stubborn” for not writing in our journals. When we encounter our own resistances we stumble across yet another opportunity to discover what underlies our disordered eating. But rather than scolding or berating ourselves, we need to ask with curiosity, not judgment. “I wonder why I don’t want to write down what I’m eating and feeling?” “What could be getting in the way of my paying attention to what I’m doing with food?” “Are there certain feelings I’m trying not to feel?” “What am I most afraid of?” Like the woman in the story, we must speak in gentle, encouraging tones to calm our fears as we get closer and closer to our truth. And then we must sit still and listen. If we ask these questions with a gentle curiosity, the wise woman within us will reply.

Many women discover that they have a hard time getting in touch with how they are feeling. They notice their journal entries are primarily about food. If they are persistent, however, in writing down something to acknowledge their emotional state, such as “I’m not sure what I feel” or simply “Feeling confused,” they will eventually develop greater awareness of their feelings. The more they ask themselves, “How am I feeling?,” the easier it will be for them to identify their feelings with clarity and precision. As the woman in the story discovered, it was only by climbing the mountain over and over that she could achieve her goal. It is only by asking over and over “What was I feeling just before I ate?” that this level of awareness can be achieved.

After several weeks of keeping a journal, patterns will emerge. To find those patterns, look to see if there are specific times of the day when you restrict your eating. Are there times you are more likely to binge? Do you go for long periods of time without eating and then find yourself overeating? Notice if there are activities or feelings that trigger your desire to eat when you are not hungry, or situations when you don’t allow yourself to eat even though you are hungry.

One woman may discover, for example, that she frequently overeats at 4:00 P.M. With close observation, she realizes that this is the time she comes home to an empty house. Not wanting to feel her loneliness, she heads straight for the refrigerator, without even questioning whether or not she is hungry. Another woman may notice that it is on those days when she is most busy and rushed that her evening meal proceeds into a binge as she turns to food to calm herself down. Some women recognize that fatigue leads to nonstop nibbling as they try to refuel, while for others connections between binge-purge episodes and fights with boyfriends or parents become obvious. Most women discover how often they eat for emotional reasons: because they are lonely, angry, bored, or nervous.

Many women develop a much better understanding of their metabolism as they review their journal entries. One woman may discover that if she goes longer than four hours without eating, she overeats. Another may realize that if she tries to eliminate carbohydrates from her diet, she sets herself up for a “carbohydrate binge” later on. Yet another woman may discover that she needs six small meals instead of three square meals a day.

Your journal keeping will help you to develop the very skills and attributes you need to overcome what may seem to be an insurmountable problem. Just as the woman in the story had to learn how to be unwavering in her commitment to healing her husband, to trust in her ability to find the tiger, to combine courage with gentle and patient encouragement so she could coax the tiger closer and get what she needed, a woman who is dedicated to healing her eating disorder must remain committed even when she is overwhelmed, persistent in her search for hidden feelings, patient with her own resistance as she gets closer to her truth, and gentle with herself as she coaxes out even the most terrifying emotions. The process of keeping a journal wherein you persistently stalk your thoughts and feelings without judgment day in and day out is what it takes to get the special ingredient, the whisker, the inner truth that can provide the healing you desperately want.

While the discovery of the specific relationships between feelings and eating patterns may ultimately provide an elixir for your disordered eating, the process of finding that special ingredient and of learning how to communicate with yourself, to pay attention to what you think and how you feel, to examine your eating behavior with curiosity instead of hostility, and to look to your body for guidance, is one that needs to be honored. Because, as the wise old healer from the story knew, it is being patient and persistent in observing yourself that you will gain trust and confidence in your inner wisdom that will serve you the rest of your life, long after you have solved your problem with disordered eating.