A Different Kind of Journey: Improving My Relationship with Food
If you knew me at any previous stage of my life, my love for and appreciation of food — particularly in such a public forum — might surprise you.
In the past I’ve been labeled as health-conscious (sometimes even a role model) for resisting the temptation of donuts in the office, or a slice of cake on someone’s birthday. My peers in high school watched me sit in the lunchroom with them and eat nothing, knocking out homework or reading instead, for four years.
But I wasn’t a health nut, or an example that anyone should have been following. The truth is that for most of my life, I was sincerely terrified to eat in front of other people. This stemmed from an anxiety I still struggle with: because I’ve always been thick/curvy/insert preferred adjective here, I assumed that anyone who saw me eating — eating something indulgent, or sweet, or just anything beyond a rabbit’s portion — would know that I didn’t deserve that food. I didn’t need it. How could I, with so much extra body that was surely storing calories I should be utilizing instead?
I have vivid memories of delicious looking foods I’ve passed up, of the culinary efforts of friends and family that I declined. And now it feels like such a complete waste.
Part of my journey to better mental and physical health has been reckoning with the incredibly fucked up relationship I’ve had with food for most of my life. I grew up in a strictly meat-and-potatoes, Midwestern home. I don’t know if I intentionally ate a green vegetable even once prior to my arrival at college. I went on my first diet at age 10, and the resounding message then and during the many diet attempts that followed was that I ought to be depriving myself as much as possible. I couldn’t eat the way other people did, because my body stored my food in a way that didn’t look good. Once I folded an at times extreme exercise regimen into the mix, I made myself sick to the point of fainting on several occasions, because I thought I could outsmart my biology by simply eating fewer calories than the treadmill announced I had burned.
The ironic thing is that I’m pretty sure, and you might have guessed, that these early drastic measures likely permanently impacted my body’s ability to process food and metabolize normally. To this day I eat cleaner than many people I know, strive to balance my meals and get as many greens as possible, and exercise 4–5 days a week; yet I don’t think my body will ever meet the socially accepted standard of “fitness” it feels like I’ve been reaching for my entire life.
Why am I taking you through all this? More to the point, why am I taking you through this on our travel/food blog, where we routinely brag about how much delicious food we’ve indulged in all over the world?
It’s because I couldn’t have done any of this even as recently as five years ago. I didn’t decide in one day to radically accept my body, and I certainly didn’t accomplish any level of acceptance overnight. I still struggle with all of these issues (see me making sure to tell you above that I haven’t abandoned trying to eat healthfully and exercise for evidence of this), but I have made progress. And I didn’t do it alone.
My husband started cooking for me on our third date, and he hasn’t stopped since. He worked at a grocery store at the time, so he was always bringing me snacks and food, like it was the price of admission to my apartment. He made the effort to learn my favorite flavors and dishes, and then kept me supplied with them. I couldn’t remember the last time someone in my life seemed so determined to make sure I was well fed with the foods I wanted. More importantly, there didn’t seem to be any doubt in his mind that I should be allowed to have them.
When we started traveling together, something we agreed on is that food is a critical part of the experience, one of the most illuminating features of a local culture. We didn’t want to miss out on anything, and we were willing to walk many miles a day to make up for the weight of every bread, cheese, sweet, and fried treat we could find.
I realized quickly how many layers of the eating experience I’d been missing out on. I tried new foods with abandon, and on returning home would realize versions of them had been available in my local grocery store all along, I’d just never been adventurous enough to investigate. I learned more about cooking, and how to make my own food just as appealing as a meal in a restaurant, rather than a passable portion of “fuel” to meet my basic needs. I learned about how other cultures approach food and eating, and how they can bring people together. That was the kicker, I think — for so long food had been something that primarily made me feel lonely, isolated from a joy that only other people got a chance to experience.
The pinnacle for me of feeling like I was truly pulling away from my negative associations with food and beginning to heal was the trip we took to Italy in 2019. We visited Rome, Florence, Venice, and Milan, and you better believe we chomped on pasta, pizza, gelato and more, Pac-Man style, up and down the country for those two weeks. During the course of the trip we sampled over 50 flavors of gelato, probably a dozen pastas, and a wide assortment of pastries, breads, and any other carb we could get our hands on. There was no question in my mind that this was the correct way to approach a country known internationally for its cuisine, particularly when that cuisine encompassed nearly all of my most cherished comfort foods.
And do you know what? I don’t think I thought even once about how I looked — or how my body looked — eating any of that food. I just enjoyed it.
So, am I perfect now? Have I transcended the meaningless clusterfuck that is our society’s obsession with thinness and dieting? Am I now an ethereal being who doesn’t worry at all about what my earthly body looks like to others? Of course not. But I do think I’ve managed to turn down the noise enough to focus on and attend to what makes me feel healthy, and what makes me feel happy. I’d forgotten, for a very long time, that that’s not something anyone else gets to decide for me.
