Returning to the Joy of Food

“What do you want for dinner tonight?” my partner asked me.

“I’m feeling like mushrooms and risotto!” I said, opening the fridge to see what ingredients we might have to make this happen.

This innocuous exchange might not be a big deal for some people. But it used to be for me.

I’ve always been a good eater. A hearty appetite with no allergies paired with a try-anything-once attitude, I was easygoing at the table. (It was even rumored that I’d eaten a snail from the garden as a baby.) But when my parents divorced, my eating patterns diverged. At Mom’s, I ate black beans and brown rice. At Dad’s, I ate spaghetti and Frosted Flakes. When he passed away, I felt I could only connect with him through the foods I had eaten at his house. I grieved with frozen dinners and ice cream and pretzels. But with my mom, where soda was banned and second helpings were discouraged, I was building rules and patterns in my head.

As I got older, food became less about life-giving energy and pleasure and more about punishment. My classmates teased and bullied me about my body. Lunchtime in the cafeteria was no longer about eating enough to have energy for the playground monkey bars or handball courts. I monitored myself, and started looking at what my peers ate. Was I eating too much? The wrong foods? Communal eating on those benches felt less like an everyday necessity and more like an exercise in control.

Soon, restrictive eating patterns emerged. I became obsessed with food: how many calories were in a medium-sized apple, which trendy diet to start, and so much restriction.

If someone asked me what I wanted to eat for any meal, my mind would starburst out into panic. Depending on the diet I was on, that could mean I wasn’t eating carbs, or had to check in to see how many calories I’d already consumed, or which fruits were allowed at that time of day. If I hadn’t worked out, that meant less access to food.

How I looked was what I thought mattered. I came of age in the era of supermodels like Cindy Crawford and Claudia Schiffer—before airbrushing was called out, before there were words in everyday conversations like diet culture and fat phobia. The solution, I thought, lay in the next magic diet, the last few pounds. The problem was, it was never-ending. Diets ruled my life. They made me cranky; they overtook my brain with obsession; they took the joy out of family meals.

There were many times I canceled plans at the last minute because I was too anxious about eating in public. I needed to know exactly what oils the restaurant cooked their food in, and if their menu wasn’t available online, I didn’t want to risk temptation. I couldn’t trust myself to order what I was supposed to, or to eyeball the portion size I needed in order to stay on track. And a place that served complimentary freshly baked bread with sea salt butter pats? Forget it.

At my worst, I limited myself to a handful of safe foods. My world was small. I prepared my meals ahead of time, carefully measuring out precisely how much my plan allowed, and packed it wherever I went, adhering to my strict mealtimes.

One Christmas, my family was busy making their signature dishes in the kitchen. I was in the living room, eating out of my Tupperware, alone and, for a moment, satisfied I’d stayed on my diet. By the time their meal was ready, my dish was already washed and I sat to watch them enjoy the holiday meal we gathered for once a year. I allowed myself a cup of herbal tea, concentrating on this rather than the oohs and ahhs of how delicious every bite of theirs was.

“Aren’t you hungry?”

“Don’t you want a bite?”

“Just a little taste won’t do you any harm!”

For me, a taste, a lick, a bite meant pendulating to the other side, being completely out of control. There was no middle ground.

Soon, people started telling me how great I looked. It was motivating, but confusing to hear. Did that mean I’d signed away my life to measuring out a teaspoon of this and a half-cup of that forever, my brain invaded by these useless thoughts? What about traveling to new countries? Or trying new foods during date night?

Then I got hungry… really hungry. My body craved more nutrients, more calories, and I didn’t know how to balance it. I went from fear around food to no rules at all, eating past painful fullness, and hating myself for blowing my allotted calories, for throwing away all of my hard work. And it kept going like this—a cycle I didn’t know how to pull myself out of: the starvation, the hunger, the overeating, the binges, the guilt and shame.

It wasn’t until my life got unmanageable that I found a weight-neutral doctor who officially diagnosed me with an eating disorder and I started to understand the intricacies of the mental health issue.

Eventually, I began my recovery journey and started healing my relationship with food, and with my body. While my insurance didn’t cover treatment, I created my own makeshift program via the wealth of knowledge online, in libraries and in sliding-scale therapy. From there I read more about diet culture, body positivity and fat bias through people like Aubrey Gordon and Sonya Renee Taylor.

I shifted from rigid thinking to expansive enjoyment, slowly reallowing all foods in, and started trusting myself more. I learned about intuitive eating, about why my body craved certain foods, and coping skills to help when I was stressed.

When I got quiet enough, I started paying attention to others again, including my mother and her gardening. The harvest of months-long sowing reminded me that we’re here to enjoy the abundant possibilities of creativity and enjoyment in the kitchen.

By returning to food and remembering the goal was nourishment, I became more grounded. By watching my mother tend her garden, and eventually harvest homegrown produce, I had a newfound appreciation of food. The very act of patience, love and care that goes into nurturing a living thing became overwhelmingly beautiful.

And I finally believed I deserved that. One bite at a time, I return to myself.