Show notes:

Book: Eating in the Light of the Moon: How Women Can Transform Their Relationship with Food Through Myths, Metaphors, and Storytelling by Dr. Anita Johnston

Dr. Anita Johnston's website

Light of the Moon Café (Courses, Interactive Programs, Free resources and consultations)

Dr. Anita Johnston's eating disorder treatment center

Eating disorder hotline  and emergency support at NEDA

Book: 8 Keys to Recovery from an Eating Disorder by Carolyn Costin and Gwen Schubert Grabb

Book: Veganism and Eating Disorder Recovery by Jenn Friedman

Our episode with mental health counselor Jenn Friedman on the intersection between veganism and eating disorders

Our episode on perfectionism with clinical psychologist Verena Kacinskis

It’s time for another book club episode in which we do a deep dive into a book that made such an impact I had to give it center stage on our blog and podcast. Today I’ll be sharing my love for Eating in the Light of the Moon: How Women Can Transform Their Relationship with Food Through Myths, Metaphors, and Storytelling by Dr. Anita Johnston. This is one of those classic works that I think is a must read for anyone who is on this journey to improving their relationship with food, with body image, with finding a peaceful place with food, if you’ve ever struggled with an eating disorder or are in recovery from one. It’s also a must read for parents, especially of young girls, to get an understanding of what it feels like to have struggles with food and body and why some of these issues pop up and occur, to understand the role control has in our messy relationships with food and body image.

Whenever we cover the topic of food, as we do in this podcast discussing veganism and eating more-plant based, we always need to give space, talk about and share resources on what can happen when our relationship with food starts suffering. You can listen to our interview with mental health counselor and author of the book Veganism and Eating Disorder Recovery Jenn Friedman, for an in-depth look into the intersection between the two and some of the misconceptions around it, but whenever we’re eliminating foods, especially in this social media day and age in which information on food and health is reaching us from a myriad of places, we need to talk about disordered eating and eating disorders.

Eating disorders are one of the mental disorders with the highest mortality rates, at least at the time I’m recording this. Anorexia nervosa having the highest mortality rate of them all at a whopping 11.5%-14% which is extremely high, higher in fact than what you see in schizophrenia and depression. Even if you don’t have a diagnosis of an eating disorder, you might be struggling with disordered eating, or you simply feel that something has gone a bit off in your relationship with food, whether that is due to restriction, or bingeing, or the binge-restrict cycle or compensatory behaviors that often describes some of these disorders. Regardless of what it may be, you deserve to have a peaceful relationship with food and body, and that’s precisely what Anita Johnston tries to do in this book.

Some books on ED recovery are for health professionals, some include the latest research, facts and figures, signs and symptoms, treatment protocols. This is one for you, for me, for us, the eaters, for parents and caregivers, and perhaps even for therapists who want to use the gems found in this book within a session.

It took me a while to get around to this book until I finally did a few years ago because I kept hearing people in the eating disorder field refer to it as a book where the topic of disordered eating is covered through folk tales and fairy tales. I remember thinking, nope, I want my books on psychological issues to come from capital P psychology books on the matter, the kind that have lists of symptoms and the latest research papers. Never mind that Eating in the Light of the Moon, despite its metaphorical name was written by a doctor and eating disorder specialist with many a letter behind her name, or that every single therapist, treatment center and specialist I knew or listened to recommended it, I kept shying away from it until finally, after yet another mention in another article, I caved.

With my initial prejudices against this book, with its mention of the feminine and masculine, its folk tales about rivers and logs, I thought it was going to be very abstract and not a practical way of learning about these issues. Just a few pages in, I realized that part of the problem we sometimes have with food, and our relationship with food, is that we are too stuck in that very practical, reasonable, rational side of our brains. In the nitpicking and the  rumination of facts and numbers, when in fact there is this whole other side that goes unexplored. Precisely the part that needs to be strengthened and heightened in order for things to get back into balance.

I immediately realized that within my own previous judgements that kept me away from this book for years, and what I found inside, was precisely a lesson in and of itself. It is often, the qualities of striving, perfectionism, being rational, of trying to achieve more, (don’t get me wrong, all great things when in balance), that are so heightened in people who struggle with eating, and it’s the flexibility, adventure seeking, the vulnerability, the feeling your feelings, the living life as it comes without the perfect plan, that get set to the side. As soon as I started reading I realized how often when people, especially women struggle with eating and body image, these two sides are out of balance. The incredibly rational, something that has been more associated with traditionally masculine traits, and the flow and emotional state, often referred to as feminine traits, but aspects of both present in all of us, become lopsided, favoring a rigid and regimented stance.

In my resistance was part of the problem, and that's maybe the best way to introduce this book, not that there aren’t other fantastic more traditional books on the psychology of eating disorders and recovery that can complement this and help you learn so much, Carolyn Costin’s 8 Keys to Recovery From an Eating Disorder comes quickly to mind, but just a few pages in and I got it to my core. These stories, that are part of every culture around the world, that have been passed down from generation to generation to paint a picture in the wobbly air above that bonfire with enough distance so that anyone can see themselves in them, are worth their weight in gold.

I went from judgement to avoidance to reluctance to goosebumps, to finally understanding why almost every therapist I know who works in the eating disorder field recommends this book.

The beauty of these stories, that start the chapters of this book before Anita herself uses her experience working in clinical practice to explain the dynamics behind our relationship with food and body are such perfect illustrations of what makes us human that  I'm pretty sure you could use the exact same tales to talk about our relationship to work, with parenting, with school if you’re in school, with our personal and romantic relationships. One of the remarkable things that Anita has done with this book has been taking these very simple stories and getting you to grasp onto something that is easy to remember, that you can focus on when the struggle with food feels like it has a life of its own. This is often what happens when we have struggles with food and with disordered eating. Habits that are harmful to ourselves and that we keep engaging in keep us stuck in a loop that is screaming at such a high volume to us that it makes it incredibly difficult to step away and see the bigger picture. These segments, these little gemstones hidden within the story are like flashlights we suddenly see in the dark, giving a glimmer of hope for a way out of this loop.

Rather than citing statistics and risk factors, list of symptoms or charts straight out of the DSM, goes into the realm of emotions, of childhood and trauma, into the small intricacies of growing up as young girls.

The book begins with a very interesting preface where you are hearing Anita describe what she began to see when she started working with girls and women with eating disorders, retrieving the backbone and the common thread between these girls. The commonalities in childhood. what they saw when they were children, the way they interpreted the world. How It is often young girls that have had a very keen eye of sensing injustices that happened in the household, or that could clearly sense the things that weren't being said, girls that kept feeling that they were the odd ones out because they observed certain dynamics in the family that were not observed by others.

Just so you don’t postpone the reading of this book as much as I did, I want to share a couple of the metaphors and stories that I think are going to open your eyes to the incredible lessons inside this book and that were some of the ones that stuck with me.

The metaphor of the log in the raging river

So many of the things that I learned as coping tools throughout my childhood have so many similarities to this metaphor, which is the first one in the book. For me, so many of these things that I learned to live with as a young girl, anxiety, trying to run whole scenarios through my head and ruminating, trying to see where problems could arise and trying to anticipate danger, trying to be extremely responsible. For so many of us with childhoods that had any glimpse of the rug being pulled out from under you, any sense of unsafely or fear, of feeling so out of control that the desire to control anything you can control begins to take root, for many young girls, this happens in the realms of food and body. We’ve talked before about perfectionism in the podcast, very much linked to control, thanks to my dear friend and clinical psychologist Verena Kacinskis. She discussed perfectionism as a coping tool, and how coping tools and defense mechanisms that develop in us are actually there to help us. But there comes a point where the helping hand becomes a hindrance, and this is where this story of the log comes in.

I’ll read an excerpt in Anita Johnston’s words:

“Imagine yourself standing in the rain on the bank of a raging river. Suddenly, the water swollen bank gives way. You fall in, and you find yourself being tossed around in the rapids. Your efforts to keep afloat are futile, and you are drowning. By chance, along comes a huge log, and you grab it and hold on tight. The log keeps your head above water, and saves your life. Clinging to the log, you are swept downstream, and eventually come to a place where the water is calm. There, in the distance, you see the river bank, and attempt to swim to shore. You are unable to do so, however, because you are still clinging to the huge log with one arm as you stroke with the other. How ironic. The very thing that saved your life is now getting in the way of your getting where you want to go. There are people on shore who see you struggle and yell, “let go of the log!”. “Let go of the log.” But you are unable to do so because you have no confidence in your ability to make it to shore.“  - Anita Johnston in Eating in the Light of the Moon”

What is that log? That log can be so many things to so many people. It can certainly be addictions, it can be an eating disorder, unhealthy habits habits we've had when it comes to our relationship to work, unhealthy patterns with exercise that started as self care and then became excessive.  It can be so many things about our habits where the construction of this defense mechanism, this coping mechanism and sense of control over something, really helped us to stay afloat. It was the thing that helped us survive a difficult moment where the issue and the problem was elsewhere, but we couldn't go in there to resolve it quite yet. We didn't have the resources to tackle it and so we found this log.

There comes a point in which our life is now ready to continue on, to find a path that is healthier for us, to let go of some of these mechanisms that aren't serving us anymore. But if we haven't found something helpful to dig deep and heal, and substitute the log, letting go of the log early is sometimes first of all impossible, and many times could actually be harmful for us. This is why, of course, you cannot get the support you need in eating disorder from a book or a course, or an instagram account or a podcast, all of these sources of inspiration for healing and all of this work has to go hand in hand with therapy and with getting professional support. I think this book is a wonderful way to realize how much help there is out there for people who have gone through struggles with food. Anita goes on through the pages explaining why it is that we grab onto the log, when it is that it's an appropriate time to start letting go of the log, and why we need a set of new skills to be able to cross the shore without fear that we’ll drown halfway there. Since reading this story, if my mind goes to a place where I recognize an old pattern of an unhealthy means of control, I say, “ah, that's a little bit of that log peeking out within my peripheral vision. It's there reminding me, “hey, I was useful once upon a time. You need me?”. Whenever I think of this book, I immediately picture that log. What a relief to know that the log, isn’t our fault, that it was once the only thing we found to hold onto, that we can free ourselves from blame and start to substitute it. We can do the work and develop the skills so that swimming isn’t as scary or hard, and so we can finally let go of the log.

One more quote from the book on this matter that is such a simple sentence, but made quite an impact. She finishes this chapter on the log by saying:

“to recover from disordered eating requires the development of whatever skills are necessary to replace the function of the log.” - Anita Johnston in Eating in the Light of the Moon”

The skills are going to vary so much depending on what your struggle with food is. If your struggle with food develops because you have a problem confronting other people, and being assertive with your needs, then it's the assertiveness you have to work on and those are the skills you build so that food doesn't have to gloss over that aspect of your life that hasn't found resolution. Whether it's speaking out, whether it's resolving conflicts, dealing with uncertainty. There are also so many differences between struggles with binge eating versus someone who struggles with bulimia, or anorexia, or any other ED or simply disordered eating. Regardless of what this looks like for you, there are skills and resources to help you find peace with food and your body again.

The red herring

Another one of the tales that fill this book centers around the idea of the red herring, describing something that is designed to divert our attention to something else, and how often with struggles with eating we’re putting a lot of our attention into something that feels a little bit more manageable. As much as these habits and symptoms of a disordered relationship with food, as harmful and as painful and awful as they are, we have developed them in a way in which very slowly, through time, it actually felt more manageable than other situations in our lives that needed attention.

Through this and other tales within the book she includes a lot of stories from patients she has treated through the years, and how they've connected the dots, and how they've managed to find recovery. She includes their personal background, because this isn't something that just happened out of the blue, so much of our upbringing combines with these defenses we learn through our lives. The book is filled with nuance, and you have a little story or folk tale to guide the way and act as the backbone in a chapter in which she’s talking about control, or addiction, or domination, or fear. You’re holding them as a central line as you explore all of these cases of people who have struggled with food and are on or beyond the path of recovery. I can almost guarantee that if you’ve ever struggled with food and body image issues, you’ll feel so heard, so seen.

Hunger and the nurturing mother

Anita also talks a lot about hunger in the book, relating it often to the fact that as women, where we’ve received many messages through the years of being the good girls, being the quiet girls, not expressing our needs, not expressing our wishes, not expressing what we are hungry for, not only in terms of food, but in terms of our lives. It's an interesting place to start to look, to see where the real hunger is. So many aspects of binge eating, and on the opposite side of the spectrum, this idea that we have to limit and control this hunger that we feel by restricting our food or eliminating through exercise or purging or whatever it is that we have been engaging in, are standing in for something else that is shouting out at us to be heard. There is so much information in that hunger, and Anita guides us into how we can develop a sense of a nurturing inner mother figure, this sort of archetype within us, where we can feel fed and nourished. Not only with food, but with our wishes, desires, needs, with expressing what it is that we want, and how it is important when going through eating disorder recovery to start developing the skill of self nurturance. It was such a beautiful way of talking about hunger that I have never read in another book in quite this way. Aside form the hunger for nourishment that we all have, do we have a hunger for calm, for safety, for acceptance, for belonging, for love, for attention, for physical touch?

Singing your own song

There's this beautiful story about this songbird, which I’ll leave as a teaser so you go get the book, but Anita talks about how so many people who struggle with disordered eating have the commonality of seeing things others didn't see, of not speaking up about their differences, the injustices perceived, the incongruence of the family dynamics, especially during childhood. They have grown learning how to adapt and readapt, and with such discomfort often come the unhealthy habits with food. The book tells a story of how important it is to develop the ability to still, in spite of all of this, sing our own true song. It is in this song that we can learn how to take care of ourselves, to develop that nurturing mother within us and to search inwards for what we really need at any given moment. It is quite common, according to what Anita has seen in her patients, for people with disordered eating to always be tuning into the songs others are singing. It’s so common to be tuning into the needs of others, to be overly focused on what is being asked of them or what is being expected of them, or the image that our parents, caregivers, the people that raised us want to see.

One of the possible solutions for this and all the suffering it can cary is in getting to know ourselves better, practicing singing our figurative one true song, as Anita says, and look after ourselves with what we truly need. Anita poses 3 questions, just as general examples for how we can begin to figure out what that true song is.

Eating in the light of the moon

I haven’t even scratched the surface of the many stories and metaphors and the pages after pages of support, skills and resources and stories of resilience that follow, but I’ll leave you with the tiniest glimpse into one more, the story from which the book gets its title, the moon as a symbol of the feminine. I know, this sounds like you’re about to walk into an Ayahuasca ceremony with an Açai bowl in your hand and you all know that that’s not me, but I want you to bear with me because it is actually the central concept behind this entire book. I found it so helpful, and I’ve kept going back to this idea.

It’s an old tale that talks about a time in which during the dark days of the new moon, all of the ugliest and most dangerous scary creatures would lurk about, turning the scenery into a frightening wet marshland, since the locals didn't have the brightness of the moon to guide the way. Lots of bad things would happen during the dark days, but in the story, the moon decides to hide herself in a cloak and travel the pathways of the marsh to see if it is indeed as bad as people say it is.

During her travels in the darkness, the marsh tangles her in vines so she cannot escape. Evil creatures put this very large boulder over her, so they can keep doing their evil deeds under the cover of a moonless night. Meanwhile the moon is now prisoner in this marsh, and every night becomes more frightening and dangerous than the last.

An old wise woman in town explains to the rest of the town folk that they must find the moon in the marshes, that this is the only thing that will return everyone to safety. The townsfolk on this mission walk the dangerous marshes, and when they see a sliver of light behind a boulder, they release the moon, and it rises and shines in the night sky, making nighttime safe again.

The moon in the story represents the feminine. The story tells us how we've been taught to value the masculine traits above all else, the competitiveness, and the striving and our rational and practical selves, aspects all of us have inside of us regardless of gender. We tend to see the feminine aspects of ourselves as weaker, silly, a waste of time, unproductive, again, regardless of your gender. The feminine aspect is the emotional side within all of us, the flexible side, the part of us that can flow, it is intuition and empathy and nurturing. In eating, especially for women, and especially for women who have struggled with disordered eating, reconnecting with the feminine is where we can begin to find peace.

It is often in the masculine traits of perfectionism, power, always striving, comparison, meeting demands, pushing ourselves past our limits, where people with disordered eating are living most of the time. This was mind blowing for me. I had never heard of it described in this way and in every example, I could find myself because precisely due to my upbringing, I have spent a lot of time courting the masculine traits even when the feminine ones are calling out to me and are also present within me.

This feels gendered but what the book allows us to see is that we all have feminine and masculine within us, sometimes in balance, sometimes off balance. This is why when it has come to my struggles with control and perfectionism, and in turn with eating, the voice that was predominant way back in the day was an angry, demanding voice that would tell me to keep on pushing. When we're in this place, which is where eating disorders flourish, we ignore the feminine aspect of intuition that tells us in a very soft voice, that our needs are different today, that we need to slow down today, that something isn’t feeling right, emphasis on feeling.

We can now allow a feminine, softer, kinder voice to enter the picture as well, when we've had that high berating voice, the feminine voice tells us, it's okay. It's going to be okay. It’s self compassion in action, a light that points within rather than on what is produced outward.

The masculine voice is amazing, it’s a striving voice, a get stuff done voice, but it’s often too loud and predominant within eating disorder sufferers and so we can let a new voice in. A voice that tells us “Tomorrow's going to be another day. Rest up. Do what you need to do to take care of yourself today.” It's the voice that tells us if we didn't do something perfectly that it’s just one day out of many days. So both of these aspects of ourselves are important.

The story of the moon tells us how to let the moon shine as much as the sun that brightens our days, because in the feminine traits lies a very nurturing mother that will respect our limits, that will find true peace outside of perfectionism. When we're in the thralls of disordered eating, we're usually valuing these feminine traits as weaker, placing all our value on the masculine ones that are keeping us stuck in a loop of harmful habits and patterns we repeat almost as a ritual. Healing can start to happen when we manage to integrate the two. A bit of striving, and a bit of self compassion, a bit of logical thinking with some intuition. We have a bit of goal oriented behavior with tuning into our feelings and emotions and listening to them. We have a bit of linear thinking with a bit of ambiguity and playfulness. We have a bit of forward movement with a bit of stillness, and on and on we go.

A quote I loved from the book on this subject:

“The feminine says I am lonely. The masculine side sits down and writes a letter to a friend. The feminine produces a dream. The masculine translates and organizes it. The feminine feels upset when a friend does something that hurt her feelings. The masculine puts those feelings into words and explains why that behavior was hurtful. The feminine says, I am hungry. The masculine responds by getting and preparing the food or by asking, is this physical or emotional hunger?” - Anita Johnston in Eating in the Light of the Moon”

When these two sides to us are in an imbalance, it can sound like this:

“When your inner feminine says, I'm lonely, the masculine insists that you have no reason to feel that way. When you have a thought provoking dream, your masculine laughs at it or dismisses it as only a dream. When you are upset with a friend's behavior, you tell yourself that you are just too sensitive. When you feel hungry, you criticize yourself for eating too much.” - Anita Johnston in Eating in the Light of the Moon”

I ask you now, which one of these seems like more forward motion but with compassion and attunement. How often do we bulldoze ourselves like our own version of the childhood bully. 

The book finishes with 3 real life stories of 3 women who have suffered from eating disorders, and how all of the concepts in the book and in Anita's way of treating eating disorders come together and transform into healing for these women. They are fantastic stories. They will give you so much hope. I can't recommend this book enough. I have it highlighted and marked, used up and torn, like all my favorite books are, and I know that I will be coming back to it again and again.

I will be linking to the book and all of doctor Anita Johnston's work above. She has amazing articles online and lots of great content, including her wonderful eating disorder clinic in Hawaii and her practice. She has a book club for the book, courses and more.