Eating in the Light of the Moon: How Women Can Let Go of Compulsive Eating Through Metaphor and Storytelling

"Once we are able to stop seeing food as our enemy, we find we can use it to learn more about our emotional state. We begin to see that our favorite binge foods speak to us and for us. When we learn to listen carefully and decipher what our food choices have to say, the information can be quite revealing. Certain qualities in foods can be associated with certain feelings or with the suppression of certain feelings. For example, women who crave warm foods such as soups and stews are often longing for emotional warmth in their lives. Those who crave sweets may either be missing sweetness in their lives or trying to make themselves 'sweeter.' A craving for spicy foods may indicate a need for intellectual or emotional stimulation, a desire to spice up one's life. Crunchy, salty foods are often associated with frustration or the need to express anger. For many women, chocolate carries images of love or forbidden sexuality.

"Playing with the symbolic meaning of food can help reveal troubling feelings that for one reason or another have been kept out of our awareness. If a woman finds herself craving a particular food and determines that she is not physically hungry, she can be certain that it is her heart basket that needs to be filled. Knowing that this food is holding an emotional charge for her, she may ask herself, 'What is the feeling I'm not wanting to feel? What might be bothering me? What feels out of balance in my life? If this line of inner searching leads nowhere, she can then turn to the food she craves to give her some clues."