Spirit Earth Blog

  I’m writing this post from Fairburn Farm on Vancouver Island, a working farm and guest retreat where Neil and I have brought Lucien for a week-long summer holiday. The farm is a bucolic, heavenly spot just a ferry ride from our house in Vancouver. The views of forest and mountain and sky from the windows of the cottage we’re staying in are spectacular, but the real reason we’re here, for our third summer in a row, is the food. The guest operation is run by chef Mara Jernigan, sometimes called the Alice Waters of Vancouver Island. Meals here are a true farm-to-table experience. Breakfast is a two course affair starting with to-die-for homemade granola and berry compote, followed by omelets (with eggs and herbs from the farm, and cheese by local artisans) or frittatas or light-as-air pancakes. Dinner stretches out for hours, with each plate a celebration of local, fresh ingredients: sockeye salmon cakes with lentils and greens and green goddess dressing; rich risotto or homemade pasta or fresh from the brick oven pizza; strawberry tarts and (if it’s hot) refreshing sorbets. For lunch (which Mara doesn’t serve) we stop at a bakery in town where they mill their own grain, and bring the bread to the cheese shop next door for sandwiches that we take on a walk into a nearby park.   It’s an idyllic week, and I’m so glad I’m at a place in my life where I can enjoy it. It’s taken me a long time to get comfortable with food indulgences like this. As mentioned previously, I struggled with food issues, and my body image, for years.   When I got serious about yoga in my late twenties, I lost the weight I’d accumulated over the course of my unhappy childhood, and finally learned to eat and like healthy foods. My diet came to consist of brown rice, tofu, vegetables, black beans, and fruit–great stuff. But I soon came to be overly attached to healthy eating. If I was traveling and what I normally ate wasn’t available, I freaked out. If I gave in to temptation and ate a chocolate chip cookie, or a scoop of ice cream, or a slice or two of pizza–even if these were made lovingly with high-quality ingredients–I felt that I’d slipped, and worried that I’d backslide and return to a regularly scheduled program of unhealthy eating and ten to forty extra pounds.   This made travel-and even eating out at new places-hard. It was no fun when I showed up at Thanksgiving dinner or a Passover Seder or even a dinner party petrified of three quarters of the menu.  Or when I’d have a panic attack about “getting fat” on an otherwise romantic (and of course bread filled) trip to Paris with my husband.   As a new mom, I resolved to approach food differently. I didn’t want the scale, or my fears, to rule my life anymore–or our family vacations.  As I practiced more yoga, and studied yoga philosophy, I came to realize that my food fears weren’t in keeping with yoga after all.  The Yoga Sutras say moderation is key, as is non-attachment (in this case to the precise number on the scale.) Becoming nearly phobic about fattening food was embodying neither principle. Through a process of self-study, and the help of a good therapist, I changed. Now I eat healthy most of the time–and enjoy to the utmost the occasional treat.   What indulgences make your life a pleasure? What do you still struggle with when it comes to food and body image? And, how do you model a healthy relationship with food for your child/children? Jessica Berger Gross is the author of enLIGHTened: How I Lost 40 Pounds with a Yoga Mat, Fresh Pineapples, and a Beagle Pointer (Skyhorse), she lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband and two-year-old son.

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Food Loving Yogi