Making food a friend (or at least less than an enemy)

Something weird has been happening… through the publicity process, through all the interview questions I’ve been answering and short-form pieces I’ve been writing and conversations I’ve been having with strangers who have read my book, I’ve come to understand myself a little better, and maybe cut myself some slack.  It’s been a long time since I’ve had a body meltdown – for the past six+ months my nerves have been too overloaded with book stuff and work to even consider making room for self-image – and I’ve even begun to realize that a lot of the things I talk about aiming for in the book are already beginning to happen, some in more pronounced ways than others.  Most notable: I think I’m starting to have a normal relationship with food.

Now, of course, the first thing we have to do is define our terms, right?  By a ‘normal’ relationship with food, I mean that I’m not obsessed with it, and it doesn’t control me.  The GB has done its job in a lot of ways, making me feel queasy at the mere sight (not to mention the smell) of fried foods or milkshakes, but I still indulge in more flavorful fats like cheeses and meat, and I still enjoy baking and eating sweets – I just try to make sure I have enough to share with the whole office so I can get it out of the house quickly!  I eat a lot of veggies, because I enjoy them, and I also eat a lot of protein, because it’s delicious and also because I’m pretty badly anemic and tired most of the time and I’m told protein helps with that.

I don’t eat everything I want all the time, but nothing is really forbidden.  That is to say, I try not to eat certain things – especially processed foods and packaged sweets (it’s hard to justify buying cookies when I make such good ones myself with fresh ingredients) – but it’s not the end of the world if I have some Walker’s shortbread on a train, or eat a piece of Sainsbury’s cake that one of my coworkers has brought in as a teatime treat.

I think I finally have a healthy relationship with food, and I can’t begin to express how happy this realization has made me.  For decades I was tormented by food, obsessed with what I should and shouldn’t (and later, could and couldn’t) eat, and that’s by and large in the past now.  Of course I go through phases where I worry about my sugar consumption (often rightly so, from a health standpoint) or try to cut down on the red meat (usually made much easier by replacing beef mince with turkey in everything I make), but who doesn’t examine her eating habits every now and again and try to do better?

Seems pretty normal to me.