Greedily and Gratefully: My Relationship with Food

   This is something I have wanted to write for a while, perhaps as a bit of a release for me, perhaps because I'm desperate to make more people aware of how quickly and subtly your perceptions of food and eating can create a really dangerous problem. This post took me a really long time to write and edit, it's longer than I originally thought it would be, and I'm still not completely happy that it accurately says what I want it to - but I just want to get it out there now so here it is.

   I was always naturally thin as a child and teen; exercised every night at dance classes and ate whatever I fancied from the newsagents around the corner on my breaks. People had told me about the pressure placed on your body and weight during professional dance training, but it had always felt very far away to me, I thought of myself as strong enough to let it wash over me. Naively I did not know it is not a test of strength; succumbing to the immense expectations of body image does not make you weak.

   Looking back now I can see that my attitude to food became skewed when I was around 16/17. Auditions for dance college were looming and I had a hectic daily schedule that would often lead to waking up late and missing breakfast. Then for lunch, it would be cheaper and less hassle to buy 2 chocolate bars from the vending machines, than to wait in the lunch queue for a chicken baguette. I ate erratically and irregularly, sometimes binging on snack food, always eating a huge dinner late at night when I got home from dance, starving from a day of eating sugar and skipping meals, and ready to feel guilty about it afterwards. I read a book called '6 Weeks to OMG: Get Skinnier than All Your Friends' which was absolutely harmful in its instructions, encouraging skipping breakfast, exercising before eating anything in the morning, daily cold baths, and a ridiculous amount of carb measuring and rules.

   Moving to dance college I started off well, eating relatively healthily for the first few weeks. My new routine of dancing during the day and having free evenings for the first time in years meant I had proper mealtimes. When I look back now it shocks me how quickly I became focused on minute aspects of my diet, and how as a community of impressionable young girls we became obsessed with our diets as a group. I had been very dismissive of the stories I had heard about people leaving dance training because of the pressure on the way you look. I thought I would be unaffected, but nothing can prepare you for how slyly and sneakily your mind distorts itself when you spend 7 hours a day looking at yourself in a leotard in the mirror. Every flaw and every ounce of fat was glaringly obvious to me in a way I carried heavily with me, even at the end of a day of analysing the lines and contours of my body in the silvery sheet of mistruths. It was different to how I had imagined it to be, it was subtler, objectively I did know I was toned, healthy and probably at my physical peak. But the whispers were overwhelming, the obsession with diet inescapable, the food eaten was thought of only in numerical figures. I followed every ridiculous rule I had heard: no carbs, snack only on veg, no eating after 6pm etc. I would eat a meal of protein and veg as soon as I got home and then sit agitatedly as my dad made dinner for himself later on. I was obviously hungry but I just believed I was being greedy and weak. If I did crack and eat something, anything, later on, I would immediately be planning how I could offset it with exercise. Remembering my attitude and behaviour towards food at this time in my life makes me want to give myself a big hug. I have such a lot of respect and pride for those I know (including a lot of people who are still in the dance world) who manage to find body positivity in the face of societal pressures on image.

   My obsession with food and diet continued after I decided to stop pursuing a dance career. For a good few months I shifted the attitude from one unhealthy perspective to another, by attempting a plant based and 'clean' eating diet. I insisted it was from a nutritional perspective, but my motives were physically oriented and guilt fuelled. Hours were still spent researching food and diets, sourcing superfoods and grains over the internet, planning meals that didn't excite me. My wake up call came from the unlikeliest place: a fashion magazine. Ruby Tandoh (of GBBO fame) penned an article on her life in food and I dived in, greedily eating up descriptions of her memories that had been underlined by and therefore become forever inseparable from the foods she ate in them. Hungry and still denying myself the pleasure of eating a meal without analysing and shaming the act, I read with starved and starry eyes, until she spoke of how her relationship with food had soured in her late teens. Suffering from an eating disorder, she channelled her own problems with food into making extravagant and delicious dishes for others. Reading Ruby's experience with food and dieting was like opening the front door in January after spending 2 stuffy days under a blanket marathoning Harry Potter. My own ignorant and tunnel visioned idea of how eating disorders began, how they were defined, and who had them shocked and shamed me. Her confessions were shocking to me because I knew her from Bake Off and so had assumed from her proximity to food that she wouldn't have these kinds of problems. I had pigeon holed the experiences of skewed diets, food guilt and unhealthy obsessions with the body as something that only certain people suffered from so much so that I hadn't recognised my own problems as they developed. 

   Recovery began slowly and carefully, I read a lot and changed small habits to correct my attitude, not my diet. The first time I tried making a conscious effort to repeat body positive phrases whilst guiltily eating a spaghetti carbonara was such hard work. "Food is not dirty. Food is not bad. Your body needs this. Enjoy it". Often I would get through the actual eating of the meal but then struggle with post-food thoughts and calorie calculations. Working on this continued to be very difficult for a few months, until one night I got in late, ate a buritto and realised long after I'd finished that I had not pictured how it would look when added to my body, I had not immediately dropped into a plank to try and offset it. It was a wonderfully triumphant feeling, marred only by the sadness that this was the first time in over a year that I had just eaten food and eaten it for what it is - delicious fuel.

   Moving away to university again I was back to being in complete control of my diet, which I was nervous of. I allowed myself more freedom than most students in the budgeting because I didn't want to give myself any restrictions in terms of food, after all, the enjoyment of it had only been present again for such a short time. I had a long mirror in my room, and another big moment for me came with the realisation that after a few weeks there and probably hundreds of times walking past it in various states of undress, I had not once stopped to analyse or criticise myself and my body in front of that mirror. Of course, I'm still aware of my body and its imperfections. I know I'm heavier, less toned and have a higher percentage of body fat than I did 2 years ago, but I don't hate my body any more. It does its primary job very well indeed, and there is now a list of things that come before staring negatively at myself in the mirror, which is how I always wanted it to be. 

   I do not eat healthily now, or compassionately. I have wanted to transition to being vegetarian for a while now but I am tentative. I have wanted to become healthier and fitter for the inside of my body, not the outside, but I am tentative. I am on a beach looking out at a vast ocean and I would like to enjoy the sun whilst floating in the middle, but what if the waves pick me up, and the currents carry me back to the island I was miserable on. Balance is what I am struggling to find. I spent so long denying myself food (a basic human requirement!), that I feel I have missed out and so have overcorrected in my recovery. I allow myself so much freedom in my eating habits, which I encourage, but my freedom has become less free, I eat more than I want to. I eat greedily and unconcernedly which I think is good, but I also eat excessively and selfishly. I want to distance myself from the need to have chips if I see them purely because I am angry that I denied myself the pleasure of chips for so long, but I also want to rid myself of the fear that I will find hatred at the bottom of a fruit bowl. 

   So this is my next challenge, to continue finding happiness in the freedom of food and acceptance of my body, whilst also finding reason and sensibility in the amount of fluorescent yellow Papa John's special garlic dip I put into my body. Food guilt should not be an emotion you know well, food is not 'dirty' or 'clean', you should not spend more time denying yourself food than you do enjoying it. Labelling food as 'bad' encourages a confusion of nutritional value with moral value. No food can make you a good or bad person, food is morally neutral, food is food. If there is anything I have learnt, it is that negative attitudes towards food and bodies can manifest itself subtly and scarily in anyone's mind. Just as depression can claim people with even the happiest of lives, dangerous eating behaviours are not limited to those who reject food outright. We live in a society that breeds unhealthy thoughts. Be kind to yourself.

Eat freely, greedily, gratefully, and happily.

Ps. This is Ruby's article that helped me realise the universality of negative eating behaviours. Also follow her on Twitter for body positive, food celebratory tweets, as well as 1D obsessed hilarity.

Michelle has taught me a lot about eating normally and I have directly quoted some of her words about foods nutritional value being confused with moral value.

I have tried to approach this subject carefully and thoughtfully, but if there are any points you think I have made roughly or wrongly, please let me know so I can edit my words to accurately reflect my thoughts.

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