A note on this post: I've made references to my eating disorder on this blog before but never really explained it. I was reading Shapely Prose today (it was in my head, yet again. God damn I love that blog), namely this post about calories. I was going to explain how I often find myself looking at the calorie content of foods and why that bothered me. And I started trying to explain why I should be loving food now and enjoying it - possibly even more so than most people - and to do so I added some parenthesis to explain. The following is what was in those parenthesis, I've never written about it before and aside from the occasional comment about my "problem with food" I don't really talk about it. My family treat it mostly as a rather awkward joke, now that I'm safely out of the other side and very few of even my closest friends understand much more than "[I] used to be fussy". Take it as you will.
I've had long and torturous struggles with food all my life, it started when I was three years old and continued right into adulthood. I got slightly better at sixteen, around the time I started eating meat but the problem wasn't cured. I just had a slightly wider array of set meals to cycle through. Then, in May of last year, I started eating. Really eating. Not just forcing food down my throat because I had to, or gorging myself on junk because sweets were the only thing that really tasted good but really, truly eating.
I used to have a food phobia, to the extent where if I didn't know, and like, every single ingredient within a dish I would not touch it. That wasn't as simple as it sounds either. The following is a small sample of the foods I did not like
Avocados, any kind of fish, bananas, mushrooms, tomatoes, kiwi fruit, beans, pears, broccoli, lentils, chick peas, sweetcorn, aubergines, courgettes, milk, eggs, brown bread, seafood, cheese that wasn't cheddar, seafood of all varieties, coconut, cherries, coffee, spinach, honey, marrow, melon, squash, leeks, cabbage, yoghurt... That's just the tip of the iceberg and oh yeah, and I was a vegetarian. The presence of any of these items even NEAR something I was meant to be eating rendered it completely untouchable.
But it was more than just that:
I wouldn't eat anything with a texture that wasn't as it should be. Cereal is meant to be crunchy therefore any sogginess whatsoever made it inedible, if I was persuaded to try yoghurt even one lump would make me retch, likewise custard. I couldn't eat icecream if it was even slightly melted and anything with "powdery" texture made me gag - I once didn't eat chips (my staple foodstuff) for two whole months because one had a slightly weird taste.
Even foods I liked weren't safe. A slight bruise on a strawberry would make me feel queasy, once a slice of apple browned it was no good to me (I once sat for nine hours - literally nine, it got dark and everything - at a picnic table while on holiday in France because I refused to eat the last bite of my cheese and apple baguette because the apple in it had browned. Good one Dad, if I wasn't going to eat it then I sure as hell wasn't going to eat it after it had been sitting in front of me for nine fucking hours). Slight charring on anything? Not a chance. It had to be just right, if a meal I loved wasn't served exactly how I was used to it I couldn't eat it. I cannot stress enough here how I'm not talking about wouldn't, I'm talking about actually, physically couldn't.
As you may have guessed forcing me to eat anything I didn't want to lead to me throwing up.
I latched on to any food I liked and would eat it two or three times per day, sometimes for several months, sometimes for a week, until I inexplicably "went off it". There was no rhyme or reason to me "going off" food I just did and nothing, upon nothing could change my mind. My mother, my ever loving long suffering Mother indulged me in this. We ate separate meals anyway (she lived off steamed fish and vegetables for most of my childhood - apparently problems with food run in the family) and it was much easier for her to cook me one of the four (or very occasionally five) meals that I would eat than to battle it out with me. I could happily go without food and an excuse to not eat supper would have actually been welcomed. For several months she baked an uber gooey chocolate fudge cake every single week - complete with fondant icing - because it was the only thing she could get me to eat for breakfast. I was fifteen.
And I got a little better in uni, I could pick bits I didn't like out of my food - or more accurately: pick out the few bits that I did. I developed a few staple dishes for restaurants so that I could always be sure to find something I could order. I hid it well, I managed it.
Food still sucked.
And then a year ago something snapped. It wasn't a gradual change but a sudden switch. I woke up hungover and dazed in the most inappropriate person's home that I possibly could have done. I was at the end of a massive spiral of bad behaviour and self sabotage. I dragged myself into the kitchen and numbly stared at the mug of coffee in front of me, coffee which I did not drink. As he placed the plate of food he'd made in front of me I was faced with my worst nightmare, scrambled eggs, burnt sausages, bacon with the fat left on, brown bread - toasted and charred at the edges and a heap of fried mushrooms glistening with oil. In that moment I had a single thought running through my mind and that thought was "fuck it".
From that day, from that moment I ate everything. I took bites out of things without even looking at them first (while I was digging into a Mediterranean salad in Pizza Express one day last summer my Mother cautiously asked what was on my fork. "I don't know" I replied taking a bite. "It's tasty though." This response brought her to tears), I learnt to cook (which, incidentally I rock at in the most amazing way), I thoroughly enjoy my food.
Which is why I went from a skinny size 8 (US size 4) in college to buying my first pair of size 14 (US 10) jeans last week. And I struggle with it sometimes, longtime readers may remember that at the beginning of this year I went on "a bit of a diet and exercise kick" (read: torture regime), and yeah I lost about 15lbs...by working out for over two hours per day and eating less than 1200 calories. I get obsessive about it - Last November I dropped down to about 800 calories a day. My period stopped, I spent a good two months convinced that I was pregnant and no amount of pregnancy tests could convince me otherwise. My body is not meant to do that. The women in my family are soft, we have curves and round faces and really truly terrible arms. We have boobs and hips and look sodding awful in T shirts. I've started to accept this and, while finding someone who seems to think I'm gorgeous no matter how much I weigh or what I look like in skinny jeans does help, I'm still working on it.
Which is why I get upset with myself when I look at the calorie information on the side of the cheesecake I pick up in the shop, it's why I get pissed with my idiocy when the deciding factor between the duck wrap and the fajita chicken is because the duck has fewer grams of fat (no mayo you see), it's why I hate myself for feeling proud when I wasn't hungry all day. Because my problems with food never, ever, EVER stemmed from my wanting to be thin. Because I had issues and I got over them and now that I can finally enjoy the pleasure I spent almost two decades denying myself I find myself faltering. It's why I read Shapely Prose, and why my copy of The Beauty Myth is dog eared and underlined. I'm still trying to come to terms with all the baggage surrounding the issue but I think, I hope, I'm almost there.
Still, at times like today when I chose the duck wrap, when I considered skipping Naan bread because "I [didn't] really need it", when I feel guilty for having more than one slice of cheesecake because I felt like it I realise just how far I have to go.
