This series is all about raw, honest and (hopefully) inspiring discussions about bodies, image and confidence. I want to be a part of that, already discussing how I overcame my fear of taking up space and my journey with body confidence. So here is me, spilling my guts and getting real with you guys again. This time, I’m chatting about my relationship with food.
(This could be triggering for people with issues relating to food/disordered eating, so please use discretion when reading)
The way I have always dealt with my emotions, apart from a huge amount of tears, has been with food. If i’m upset, I treat myself to food. If I’m happy, I celebrate with food. My life has always revolved around food.
And usually, there has always been a guilt that has floated around in the background. Whenever I had burgers or pizza, anything that is deemed ‘unhealthy’ or bad’, I got this overwhelming sense of guilt. I always feel disgusting. Days later, I will still obsess over that one meal I ate…
When this guilt consumes me, I go on a slight binge session. Now, I’m not saying I have a binge eating disorder, but I have the tendency to binge eat a lot. I am completely conscious of what I am doing. I think that I am so repulsive and that I should just carry on eating ‘bad’ food. By binge eating, I don’t just mean two biscuits, I mean eating everything in sight. I physically can’t stop myself, even though my brain knows I’m only doing this because I feel guilty.
When this happens, I don’t eat because I am hungry. I don’t eat to give my body sustenance or make it happy. I do it to punish my body. That it isn’t healthy. I am eating so much because I think my body deserves it. It’s like I don’t deserve to be healthy or happy because I ate some chocolate?
Thankfully, partly because of the body positive community and the fact I’m in a relationship (where we usually eat a lot of carbonara), I’ve stopped feeling as much guilt around food. Obviously, I still do because diet culture is literally everywhere and it’s hard to escape. But I am training myself to stop thinking of food as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. It’s just food! My body tells me what it wants to eat. One day that might be salad and veg, but the next day it will probably be garlic bread. Either way, who cares. Why is there so much pressure on food? As long as everything that I eat is fairly balanced then why should I care because I like to eat pizza?
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[…] year, I addressed my relationship with food (fancy a read? you can find that here). I’ve tried to let go of the guilt that comes with food in a diet-culture-obsessed-world. No […]