" T H E  W A Y  Y O U  C U T
Y O U R  M E A T  R E F L E C T S
T H E  W A Y  Y O U  L I V E ."
Confucius

" F O O D  I S  O U R
C O M M O N  G R O U N D,
A  U N I V E R S A L
E X P E R I E N C E ."
James Beard

" T H E  B I G G E S T  S E L L E R S
I N  B O O K S T O R E S
A R E  C O O K B O O K S  A N D
D I E T  B O O K S.
T H E  C O O K B O O K S  T E L L
Y O U  H O W  T O  P R E P A R E
F O O D  A N D  T H E
D I E T  B O O K S  T E L L  Y O U
H O W  N O T  T O
E A T  I T ."
Andy Rooney

" M Y  M O M M A  A L W A Y S
S A I D  L I F E  I S  L I K E
A  B O X  O F  C H O C O L A T E S.
Y O U  N E V E R  K N O W  Q U I T E
W H A T  Y O U' R E
G O N N A  G E T ."
Forest Gump

Food is so important to us. We cannot live without nourishment. Food also punctuates the days and events of our lives. There is cake with candles, turkey with all the trimmings and, where I grew up, coffee and sweets were always set out whenever anyone dropped by for a visit. And, if you were the visitor, you were expected to partake of what was offered.

Everyone has a personal relationship with food. Food preferences and habits vary among us and within each of us, often in response to the up and downs of daily living. Our eating is often our emotional barometer and a reflection of how well we are able to organize our life in general. It is what we often do to comfort ourselves and to cope.

Mary and I work together leading courses on personal development. Part of our work is in a residential center for people with eating disorders. Like us, they have a personal relationship with food. Like us, they use food as a way to comfort and to cope. Eating disorders are not about food. Like us, eating is a mirror of their life in general.

The categories of eating disorders are clearly defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders IV. Where we work, however, these people are viewed as coping with life, and often with traumatic life events, as best they can but in a way that is life threatening. Coping is the common theme whether they restrict, binge and purge or overeat. They are often wounded spirits inhabiting bodies of many shapes and sizes.

Differences in eating behaviours are clear during meals. In order to protect individual identity, examples that follow have been altered or are typical of many people with eating disorders.

As I glance around the table, I see a plate with a scattering of shredded lettuce, nibbled slowly, to fill time, not a stomach, waiting for the merciful end of the meal. And then I notice the intricate mandala created by an arrangement of paper-thin slices of apple over the surface of another plate. The design is being slowly dismantled, one slice at a time, as each one disappears reluctantly into a pencil-thin body that is not nearly thin enough.

The two people sitting across from me are absorbed in their third helpings of pasta and meat sauce. One person appears to be of average size. The other is very large. The large person will digest her meal. The other one will leave soon, hoping not to be noticed, and hurry quickly to her bathroom to abort those calories before they grow too large in her body. A raw spot on the back of her hand, scraped against the sharp edges of her teeth as she frantically shoves it down her throat, will appear and be kept hidden later.

It is not about the food. Personal relationships with food begin to shift with increased awareness of healthier ways of coping with the challenges of life. I well remember the day when one person remarked, "I have come a long way. Last night, I realized that a container of cookies in the kitchen was just a container of cookies."