I have a weird relationship with food. A sort of love, hate, need, but don’t want, crave and yet at times, regret relationship with food.

It started when I was about 13. One day, I just stopped eating. The thought of it disgusted me. I saw the oil and fat in everything that was put in front of me and I wanted none of it inside my body.

The change in mind-set felt swift and sudden, though as an adult looking back, I understand that there was nothing sudden about it. Instead, it was years of social conditioning; fad diets in trashy magazines and ‘nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’ exaltation that brought me to that point.

It was a mind-set that developed over time and one that stayed with me for years. I went from eating like a normal, carefree teenager to not eating at all. I lost my appetite completely. This went on for weeks: barely touching my meals and scraping my food from side to side on a plate before inevitably throwing it away. 

I did this until one morning, before taking me to my beloved Saturday dance classes, my mother made sure to do some of her best cooking, packed what was supposed to be my lunch – that she knew I would throw away – got into the car beside me and told me that if I wanted to go to class that day, I had to eat some before we left. I was fuming, but her plan worked.

Though hunger had long abandoned me, on that day it returned with vim. I inhaled that food. My stomach rejoiced at the nourishment. I was invigorated by the explosion of flavour on my tongue. I loved every bite. But at the same time, I low-key resented myself for caving in. Thus, the cycle was born.

It was a point of contention for me. See, I loved food, but it quickly became the enemy: the roadblock that stood in the way of me being smaller.

Over the years this strained relationship became a reoccurring issue, though at first, I didn’t see it as one. Perhaps because I never suffered from a diagnosable eating disorder. I wasn’t anorexic or bulimic, though admittedly as a teenager the potential was there. But for the most part, I gently towed the line, never quite ‘normal’ with how I ate and yet, never the extreme.

Disordered eating, as some of my younger tendencies could be described, is one’s preoccupation with food, weight and body image that negatively impacts one’s quality of life. It sits on a spectrum between normal eating and an eating disorder and can include symptoms or behaviours of traditional eating disorders, though at a lesser frequency or level of severity. It can look like compulsive eating habits, irregular or inflexible eating patterns, dieting and the use of exercise, food restriction, fasting or purging to ‘make up for all the bad foods’ that one consumes. It’s subtle, both in its beginning and for many, in its entirety.

I was at my worst when I was in boarding school. I would do obsessive things like write a weight goal on my wrist in permeant marker to remind myself not to eat at meal times. I stopped taking part in my favourite sports for fear of feeling like the fat one on the team, but then would force myself to wake up early every morning and do ab exercises while I was half asleep to stop my stomach from getting bigger. I was neurotic; my weight and how I was going to lose it was all I thought about. But I was not alone in this.

Recognised behaviours of disordered eating are something that I’ve noticed in my peripheral throughout my life from girls, boys, men and women alike, which only ever normalised the behaviour. It’s also something that many of us spend our lives thinking is a healthy way to exist, when in fact, it is not.

I spent years with my focus on food, trying to break the cycle: eating and enjoying, hating myself and then starving. I spent years trying and failing, because for me, the root cause of the issue was never my relationship with food. Instead the disordered eating was a symptom of the rotting relationship that I had with my body.

It was never about being healthier. Being skinny, mainstream media had told me, was the aim. But the thing is, I was never meant to be small. I was never meant to be thin or petite. My genes are just not built that way. Instead, my body was made to curve, my thighs thick and hips the love handles you can’t help but squeeze. Even when I am healthy in mind and body, when I am working out regularly and eating normally, I was not made to be how I thought I wanted my body to be.

Before I could tackle my relationship with food, I had to understand that. I had to begin with accepting my body for what it is and in time, learn to love it despite all the things that it is not.

It has taken me a long time, but I’d like to think that I have finally arrived. I’m at peace with my frame and the way the weight sits on my hips. I work out because I enjoy it and not because ‘all my progress will be lost’ if I skip a day or week. I eat what I want, when I want and I enjoy it without guilt too. Though I admit, old habits die hard.

Admittedly, I sometimes still find myself triggered and slipping back into the ways of old in a bid to shrink and morph my body. Though these days the obsession is not with being skinny, but being defined and hyper fit – which, for the record, is still not a wholly healthy mind-set. But that’s a conversation for another day.

My most recent battle has arisen with the summer’s sun. It’s ‘bikini body’ season and so, I’ve felt myself begin to pick at the areas of my body, that though they were loved a month ago, now feel imperfect. I admit, it’s a constant job having to reassure and remind myself that I am good just as I am, but it’s true.

And in case you are anything like me and need to hear it too, so are you. You are good as you are. Allow your body to exist how it wants to naturally and learn to love it for that.

Health, I believe, first begins with the mind and before we go about trying to alter our bodies –  it’s important we understand that.

And on that note *Sips Tea*

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