day 10
Does anyone actually have a healthy relationship with food? I wouldn’t say I’m in a toxic relationship with food, that’s too strong. Probably more like, food is my mistress and I’m being infrequently ghosted, but bread crumbed along enough with a series of memes/ late night phone calls/ semi interesting articles to maintain my interest. And even though I KNOW, it’s not good for my soul, I keep going back for more.
Today I big time ate and not in a wholesome, just casually made myself some fresh pasta! And a little salad with some red wine vinegar aged in the garden. No, like, dutty big time ate. I bought a tube of salt and vinegar pringles, this weird little bag of vanilla wafers that they only ever seem to sell at corner shops and pretty much inhaled it all in one foul swoop in bed... What I really wanted was chocolate. Nothing makes me feel better than that. And every other biscuit that doesn’t have chocolate, is just a shit biscuit. Let’s be honest here guys. But it was SO hard to find something that wasn’t dipped in chocolate, chipped with chocolate or double choc dip chipped. Next time you go to the shops, look at the non choco selection, it’s pitiful.
I wouldn’t say I’m in a toxic relationship with food… more that food is my mistress and I’m being infrequently ghosted.
Secret eating is a bad habit and even though I know this on an intellectual level, it still ends up happening. When I was #deeplyunemployed for a while, I remember getting rejected from a job and then almost as if it was a direct chain reaction, driving straight to Gail’s. In a craze, I bought a mini burger, brownie, pastries, a cookie and god knows what else. Drove to a backroad by the park and ate all of it. I remember feeling slightly embarrassed when the owners of the house I was parked outside came out, so I attempted to do some fake texty texting, but by the time the next passerbys came, I didn’t really care so continued chowing down on whatever sweet/ savoury thing I’d reached in the mania of the moment. The Gail’s bag burnt a big whole in the car floor, until I remembered to take it out. It’s not strictly true that I’d forgotten to remove it…. more that I was worried if they saw the bag they’d be able to sense the kind of eating that had been done, just from the colouring of the gail’s logo, the way I was holding it slightly away from my body, disassociating from the act already.
Is is actually possible to have a healthy relationship with food? I wonder. It’s always a source of pleasure or pain to me. I anticipate meals every day, wonder what I’ll cook, research recipes, think about what to buy. And torture myself for over induldging, eating an epic takeout and somehow inhaling multiples persons worth. It’s this endless, glorious, awful cycle. I sometimes wish I could be ambivalent about food, view it as “fuel”, rather than the life blood of every relationship, powering every great conversation, date or day.
But… I’m just wondering here. How do I stay loving food as much as I do, without also hating it a little bit too?
I once did a months free trial at a yoga studio before my parents came over from Australia for Christmas, so I could get the gold star of validation, my mum’s approval, the head tilt, the small noise to say that I “looked good”.Translated, this means slim, slim compared to all the other times she’s seen me in my life, and I’ve put on weight. The month in the bikram yoga studio had paid off, but my free trial ran out once they’d arrived... Within a week, she’d noticed and warned me to “be careful” with what I was eating because she’d noticed I wasn’t exercising. Oh, the irony.
This is not a blame game at all. I understand that women of my mother’s generation had it drilled into them that the worst thing you could be as a woman, was fat. It comes from a place of protectiveness, of love. Especially in Australia, which is even more body obsessed than the rest of the world. But I’m just wondering here... how do I stay loving food as much as I do, without also hating it a little bit too?