I hearby grant you permission to eat for comfort.

Really. I’m not kidding.

I used to think that being conscious and healed – having a healthy, relaxed, “normal” relationship with food – would mean that we would never, ever eat for pure comfort again; that we would only eat for physical hunger.

I’ve come to see that this narrow definition of healing can lead to all sorts of guilt, shame, and feelings of failure when we eat to comfort ourselves. Then they compound. We continue to eat to soothe this 2nd layer of feeling, which creates more guilt and shame, and more overeating, and around we go again….

Softening the ideas or rules we hold for ourselves – all the “shoulds” that live in our heads – is at the root of centering, one of the 6 practices of growing human(kind)ness, my compassion based approach to heal food stuff. Softening these rules or “shoulds” lowers stress and anxiety – two of the biggest triggers to overeat. It also fosters self trust.

So the first thing we do to heal this idea that “comfort food is bad” is to lower our anxiety around it. That means recognizing where this need originates.

I’ve talked with hundreds – probably thousands – of women who’ve struggled with overeating, bingeing, and food obsession. They share feeling both undernurtured and overaroused/overanxious. While there are lots of possible explanations about why this is so, the end result is that they attach to food because they want nurturing and safety. In a word, comfort.

The desire for comfort, safety and security is a normal one; a valid need. In a recent experiment by Myron Hofer at Columbia University, he found that when they separated baby rats from their mothers – a situation that causes great distress in any baby animal – the rats showed many signs of stress like lowered activity levels, heart rates and growth hormone levels. Feeding the rat – imitating the mother’s care – alleviated some of this stress in the baby rats. In this case, it returned their heart rates to normal.

What this experiment taught me is how interconnected our feelings of being safe, held, “mothered,” and loved are with food. Perhaps our intention to care for ourselves with food is based on this search for mothering, for being held, for comfort?

If this is the case, and it does help, how can we create room for healthy comfort eating in our lives? (Although it helps to remember that in this study, the baby rats’ distress was not fully alleviated until they were reunited with mama. This also points to another truth that I’ve learned firsthand this year – that in order to heal food suffering, we have to do it in the context of other people. In fact, I would argue that we can’t heal alone – that we need belonging, love and care from others to heal and create general well being.)

Many of us use sugar to comfort ourselves, which can lead to health problems, and for sugar sensitive people, overeating, out of control bingeing and addiction.  Fortunately, you can honor this need for “sweetening” in a healthy manner. I’ve come to see that it’s normal sometimes to eat for comfort. In fact, I think you should plan on it.

Planning on it may mean having a list of healthy comfort foods that feel good to both your physical body and emotional body; that nourish body and soul. One food that meets this criteria for me is soup. Granted, that may not sound good in the heat of summer! Here’s another idea – when we’re needing comfort, tenderness, grounding, holding and nurturing, my friend Marcia, a nutritionist who specializes in Chinese medicine, recommends eating “earth foods.” Earth foods include:

• Winter squashes, like pumpkin or acorn squash
• Yams and sweet potatoes
• Sweet apples (not tart)
• Carob
• Millet
• Farmer’s cheese
• Cooked carrots
• Chickpeas (make hummus!)
• Milk

When I was going through a difficult transition with a move last year, I ate lots of earth foods to feel grounded during a time of such turmoil. There was something in me that needed to feel nurtured by the earth. As I felt more at home, my need for earth foods gradually diminished.

One of my favorite comfort foods is creamy millet with sauteed vegetables. This meal feels like a warm hug. I make it when I need to feel mothered.

Planning on it also means that it’s an option when you need it – not something to fight against or say is “wrong,” which is how many of us look at comfort eating, especially those of us who’ve historically overdone it.

A dear friend achieves this by keeping healthy comfort foods in her house at all times. That way, there’s always something there when she needs this feeling of being “held.” For her, this means having frozen blueberries in her freezer. Just having them available helps her feel calm, like she has what she needs. The irony is she doesn’t always have to act on it – just knowing they’re there helps her.

Giving ourselves what we need is a way of trusting ourselves, of honoring the still small voice within – and honoring this voice even over the voices of experts or others who say we “should” eat a certain way to eat “healthy.” Giving ourselves what we need means accepting our deep needs for security, comfort, love and belonging and not thinking that they somehow make us fragile, weak or “needy” – or needier than other people.

We give ourselves what we need, first and foremost, by feeding ourselves, several times a day. It’s a practical, literal act of love; honoring our particular needs so we can thrive.

There is something incredibly reassuring about feeding my body, heart, mind and spirit when it hurts – of not making my need for comfort wrong. I can comfort myself with love, compassion, deep listening, connection with other human beings, crying, writing out my hurts, and more. And I can comfort myself with healthy food. It’s an option – and not one I have to hide, minimize, or shame.

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