What do you agree to?

If you are human and you inhabit a body, then you must eat.

Being hungry can go beyond the physical.  Have you been hungry for love? Connection? Excitement?


If you are human and you have a pulse, you are living. What then, do you agree to for this one wild and precious life?


Food, body and exercise dominate the media today, complicating something that used to be simple. What was once an instinctual process, now appears to have rules, rewards and consequences.

Marc David, founder of the Psychology of Eating cuts through the melodrama surrounding food and body image in his book Nourishing Wisdom. From this book he introduces the concept of an ‘Eaters Agreement’ where he gets to the core of who we are – body, mind, heart and soul.

Selected excerpts have been reproduced below...

Eaters Agreements

I hereby agree, from this day forward, to fully participate in life on earth. I agree to inhabit the appropriate vehicle for such participation – a body. As a requisite for the sustaining of that body, and of the life that dwells therein, I agree to be an eater. This agreement fully binds me for the duration of my stay on earth. As an eater, I agree to hunger. I agree to have a body that needs food. I agree to eat food.

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Because the essence of my participation in life is one of learning and exploration, I agree to experience uncertainty as an eater. I recognize there are a great variety of foods to choose from, and I may not know which to eat. I may have a choice of different nutritional approaches, and not know which to follow. I may have an assortment of habits, and not know how to manage them. I recognize that my relationship with food is a learning process, and I will inevitably make mistakes. Therefore, as an eater, I agree to accept my humanness and learn as I go along.

I recognize that at its deepest level, eating is an affirmation of life. Each time I eat I agree somewhere inside to continue life on Earth. I acknowledge that this choice to eat is a fundamental act of love and nourishment, a true celebration of my existence. As a human being on Earth, I agree to be an eater. I choose life again and again and again . . .