49. I don't have a healthy relationship with food.
My story, not a general one.
*This post includes topics such as body image, issues with food and diets, negative thoughts regarding eating unhealthy foods*
I’ve never really considered myself to have a problem with food, but recently I’ve been sitting with my thoughts in a different way and what I’ve always classed as normal for me, probably isn’t so normal.
First of all, I know that the word normal is pointless and nothing is “normal” because everyone is different, so changing said word for something like: standard-healthy, I don’t think I’m there.
“For 8 years I’ve never really had a good experience with food.”
I’ve had digestive trouble since the age of around 16 and I’m now 24, so that’s 8 years of issues regarding food. These issues have been classed as IBS, sensitivity to gluten, lactose intolerant, sensitivity to fructose, candida overgrowth, anxiety… you name it, I now think that it’s more to do with anxiety and mental stuff rather than intolerances and allergies, but that’s not important in this post — what I want to focus on is that for 8 years I’ve never really had a good experience with food. It’s always been chronic pain, intense bloating 6/7 days a week, skin issues, migraines, nausea… all because I was eating food I “shouldn’t” have been eating.
Fast forward to today, I know that I have no sensitivities, no allergies, no IBS so technically there aren’t any foods that I shouldn’t be eating, but I still have problems most times I eat because the voice inside my head is trying to protect me, but she’s actually making it worse.
The Emily that’s in my mind, trying to be protective, reminds me that I’m not going to buy any junk food or sweets when I go to the supermarket because I don’t want to put that stuff inside of my body (I genuinely don’t) but there are some days when I’m like “yeah, I’m on my period so I want chocolate and sweets” so I buy some, because there’s none at home, and instead of eating a few sweets or a couple of ounces of chocolate, I eat the whole bag of everything in one sitting. Why? Because my philosophy used to be “It’s gonna give me stomach pain anyway so I may as well eat it all now and get it over with” and of course, who doesn’t feel a little bad after eating a WHOLE bag of chili Doritos?
This is something I still do because I’ve thought for 8 years that it was going to make me sick so why feel sick every time I eat some sweets and not just eat them all today and only feel sick today. I would then binge. These sweets no longer make me feel bad, but I’ve not been able to update that information into my brain yet, the binge reflex still jumps in to save me.
“Emily you’re a pig 🐖, why would you eat all of it like that?”
The next part of “yeah, I’m on my period so I want chocolate and sweets” is feeling bad and then telling myself: “Emily you’re a pig, why would you eat all of it like that?” and start to feel guilty and sometimes, feel like I want to get it all out of me ASAP. As a way of fixing this situation I then eat healthy and “clean” for some time and convince myself that I’m ok and I end up going through this whole process again whenever I get my next period or my brain can come up with another excuse to why it’s acceptable to eat this “bad food” now.
In the past, when doctors would give me lists of food I can and cannot eat, I’d feel at my best because someone was giving me simple rules to follow, this would make me feel like I was treating my body well and that I was healing and taking care of myself. Apart from giving my stomach a rest from foods that were probably a little bit harder to digest, I was mainly feeding myself with placebo — I was telling myself, without noticing, that I’m loving myself because I’m eating well and taking care of myself. Along with that, I wasn’t having to think about what to eat. All of these factors put together were what was making me feel good. Now that I have no strict diet prescribed by a “professional” I find myself constantly battling against negative thoughts when having to make decisions regarding food. I feel like I’ve never been taught to listen to my body or to know what feels right and what doesn’t.
My head gets filled with invasive thoughts like: what should I allow myself to eat, what shouldn’t I eat, when do I feel full, when don’t feel hungry, when do I feel hungry, when am I craving something, what am I craving, am I eating out of boredom… Having to make all of these decisions various times a day is overwhelming and I don’t tend to handle it very well. My brain is constantly in a vicious cycle of hating itself and speaking to the body it’s connected to with disdain. It’s been an extremely long journey of feeling like shit, thinking I’m ill and speaking to my body with hatred.
I’ve only just become aware of this situation and I guess that this realisation in itself a big step. My next one is to rebuild the relationship with my body in a more loving and attentive way.
I’ve also now learned that from a young age certain foods were “prizes”. If you clean your room we can get ice-cream, if we go out on a weekend to somewhere special you’re allowed sweets, if you get good grades we’ll go for a burger… This is something I’ve been doing unconsciously to this day. I’ve been using certain foods as a reward for myself when in reality I don’t need to. There are many other ways of giving yourself a reward that are probably much more satisfying and productive than food.
If you feel like you want a brownie, make yourself one or go and buy one. You don’t need to be super productive that day or accomplish things on your to do list to feel like you’re worthy of eating a sweet treat. Of course, eating a brownie every day isn’t good for your health and it’s probably something you should eat with moderation, but it’s not a prize. The idea of thinking you need to do “something” to be able to eat something yummy is what causes this negative mentality towards food (at least in my case).
Another thing that can be extremely harmful is seeing other people on Instagram eating avocado toast, lemon water, salad and sugar-free cakes every time they post a photo. As I said in my previous POMELO: we’re seeing what that person wants us to see. They may not even eat the super healthy avocado toast and only use it to take a photo, it may not even be their breakfast, but we don’t know that so we compare our diets to other people’s. There are hundreds of different diets and there are hundreds of lists of foods you should and shouldn’t eat, but no two bodies are the same and as long as we try to follow someone else’s rules, we’re never going to learn to listen to our own bodies and give them what they need. I’m the first person to try to be as healthy and skinny and fit as X (someone on the internet) and as a result, I’m also the first person to be feeling like I’m fighting against myself day after day.
One thing is finding inspiration in someone’s outfit or home decor and another thing is finding inspiration in someone else’s diet. We’re taking about the fuel and nutrition you’re giving your body (or machine) to keep you alive and healthy every day.
This topic has many different points of view, a tonne of things to take into consideration and I’m no nutritionist nor doctor. All I know is that I’ve noticed a repetitive pattern in the way I speak to myself about food which is damaging and can be fixed by being aware of it, changing my perspective and learning to love myself and my body. By no means do I want to tell you what to do regarding your diet because it’s such a personal and specific topic, but the message I would like you to receive from this POMELO is that: a lot of us have an ongoing battle with food and body image and we’re all worthy of loving ourselves.
OUTRO
I wanted to include some polls related the subject because I feel that probably many of us have similar issues but we class them as “normal” and we don’t give them a second thought, or we think that we’re the only ones and obsess over the idea.