Food can become a massive factor contributing to anxiety, shame, and mental and physical health. Like a million others, food has seduced, taunted, and abused me throughout the years, promising comfort, only to leave me feeling shameful and full of regret, and it's finally time to talk about it. I have used food as a coping mechanism, as a comforter, but also as a way to hurt myself, to restrict, to binge, to judge, to hate. Some may describe it as a love-hate relationship. But why? Why does something so essential to survival leave us feeling this way?
When researching the topic, I came across an article by addiction councillor, Steve Rose, who writes on willpower and food addiction. He explains that while willpower “can get someone over a craving momentarily, it quickly depletes, leaving a person more vulnerable to temptation if there are no other psychological coping strategies in place.” This really resonated with me as I began to focus on healing my relationship with food. Years of diet plans, Weight Watchers, Slimming world, calorie counting, starting from a young age, were never actually going to stick but instead reinforce negative diet cultural messages. For example, the term “sins”, which Slimming World uses to describe “unhealthy” food that will disrupt your weight loss journey, is inherently harmful because it reinforces the idea of “good” food and “bad” food, moralising it and imposing strict rules around something intended on keeping us alive. Instead of promoting balance and healing, it reproduces guilt. Realising this is when I began to understand that my relationship with food was never going to change until I truly accepted my body, in any shape it may be in. Even when I was at my thinnest, I tortured myself: “You look the same”, “you still look fat”. “You may be thinner, but you are still ugly.” We tell ourselves that if we lose a stone, we will be happier, more attractive, but the problem isn’t what it says on the scales, the problem is the mind. Diet culture has taught us counterproductive messages about eating that has fuelled shame and disturbed our relationships with food and with ourselves.
The term “sins”, which Slimming World uses to describe “unhealthy” food is inherently harmful because it reinforces the idea of “good” food and “bad” food, imposing strict rules around something keeping us alive
A big part of healing your relationship with food comes from accepting your body and learning that you deserve to be healthy, that you deserve to eat. This means taking the morality out of food, letting go of any attempt to impose strict rules about your eating habits and accepting that things are constantly changing. Your mindset will change. Your relationship with food will change. But most importantly, your body will change, whether you eat that cookie or not, our bodies are constantly fluctuating, and that’s okay.
Healing will never be a linear process, trust me. My relationship with food has undergone so many ups and downs. There are mornings when I relapse, mornings when I wake up and the first thing I think is: God I hate my body. My weight has fluctuated over the last few years, and it is so difficult to look back at pictures of me in first year when I was skinnier without torturing myself: If only I had kept it up. It’s so hard to not get caught up in the “if only” instead of the positives. I would say a way that has helped me as I have begun to heal is thinking back to that time and seeing my growth instead of simply my body. For example, when I was in first year, I struggled to spend time cooking in the communal kitchen because I feared being judged, so I basically lived off pasta salads for a month. My body may look different, but I am healthier- not just mentally but also physically. I am a more well-rounded person, who now loves to cook.
My body may look different, but I am healthier- not just mentally but also physically
Acknowledging that you have an unhealthy relationship with food is the first step on your healing journey. This is so hard to do so be kind to yourself and remember that you are beautiful, that your body deserves to be nourished and that all food is good. Listen to yourself. You don’t need to battle societal expectations that convince you that you need to be skinny or muscular to be perfect because you already are.
