Ever since I could learn to feed myself, I always thought food was a reward and not a necessity. This is the product of unhealthy body image expectations my mother pushed towards me when I was in grade school. It was to a point where there was a time where my mom used food as a punishment if I acted out, where she would lock the pantry door so that I couldn’t eat or she would send me upstairs without food. It was a product of growing up with magazines that never featured plus size women and a lack of body positivity in all media. I was exposed to the very idea that being fat was a determining factor for the person that I am and in turn, I developed a very toxic relationship with food.
Ironically, I really love to cook. It has been a passion of mine ever since I tried to make a dessert out of chocolate coins and canned mandarin oranges when I was 6 years old. However, although I loved to cook, I still had such a shitty relationship with food, along with a crappy “diet” that was incredibly hurtful to my overall mental and physical health. It wasn’t until I was 21 and up until now, at 24, that I gradually decided that food wasn’t – and shouldn’t – be a way to punish myself for being fat. And the word ‘fat’ doesn’t determine anything about the type of person I am or the love I am allowed to have.
I knew that detoxifying my relationship with food would be really fricking hard. I knew that I had to stop thinking that carbs were bad for me and that I had to restrict myself to one meal a day. This was the ultimate cause of yo-yo dieting, because although I learned that those things would somehow get me down to a size 6, I would still be doing it in the most unhealthy way and also perpetuate constant toxicity in my relationship with food. For starters, I took a nutrition class that actually was a big help in learning about food and how I can be healthy, but still not restrict myself from eating whatever the hell I want. That’s another thing – I eat whatever the hell I want. I don’t mean that I eat McDonald’s every day, because I actually wasn’t doing that either, I was telling myself that because I wasn’t a size 4, I wasn’t allowed to eat. And that in itself is one of the most harmful and painful things to tell yourself in a world that already measures you based on your size.
