Good Food Saved My Life (but continues to control it)
TW: body dysmorphia and disordered eating
“To enjoy food as a young woman, to opt out everyday from the guilt expected of me, is a radical act, of love.”
- Tiny Moons, Nina Mingya Powles
I was an early bloomer in terms of puberty. A small year group of only six in Year 6, of which five were girls. I was the first to get my period, the summer before I started secondary school, and no amount of preparation can make you ready for that moment.
For me, growing into a young woman was fraught with abusive relationships with clueless boys my age, a generous amount of teasing because I had gorky teeth and a “bum chin”, and my complete inability to talk to anyone not in my immediate friendship group.
But as far as food and my body were concerned, I didn’t feel like I had to navigate that labyrinth until I was in my late teens.
The first time I tried university, I hated it. It lasted until December of the first term. But what was supposed to happen then? No one shows you the way. No one tells you how you’re supposed to function as an adult, even though you’re barely more than a child. University promised to delay any adult or big life decisions for a good three years, maybe more if I went on to do a Masters, but now I had to figure it out. And fast.
What I didn’t realise, at the time, was that this sense of urgency and complete lack of control over my life, was also accompanied by something called body dysmorphia and disordered eating.
Having never given much thought about what I put into my body, I just ate because I was hungry, or because I wanted to, this “new me” felt incredibly pressured to fit into an adult world.
Reykjavik, 2019. If you look hard enough, you can find your favourite foods in the most far-flung of places. And we didn’t have to look very far to find ramen in Iceland. Odd, for sure. But ramen is my ultimate comfort food, and lord knows I needed some comforting that January.
It was so insidiously done that I can’t say that it was any particular moment, or “size 0” narrative, or any famous person that I aspired to look like. I just knew, as clear as a spider knows how to weave its web, that I needed to shrink in order to survive.
I went from a size 14 to a size 8 in the space of a year, maybe less. I ate a lot of cereal. Breakfast, dinner, and sometimes tea. Loading 2 litre water bottles into a backpack, I would run until I saw spots before my eyes and my lungs ached as they desperately sucked in air. Anything I ate had to be accounted for, and then atoned for by hitting my feet against tarmac.
Skipping meals became commonplace, all so I could appear “normal” when I went out to eat later that day, ordering whatever I wanted and eating it like I was ravenous (which I was), all the while tallying up in my head how many miles I would have to run in the morning. I even ran on Christmas Day. So I could eat without feeling guilty.
Punishment and reward. Food had to be earned, and if it wasn’t earned then I would have to make amends later.
Something did eventually change within me. I had joined the Army. Hated it. And left. (A pattern that seems to repeat itself). But what the Army taught me was that food wasn’t a reward. It was fuel.
Hyper-activity, over-exercising was done. Instead, I went the other way; I ate everything and anything I could to feel good. Because after suffering a second failure in trying to find my path, I needed comfort and I was still developing the skill to communicate and work through that in a more healthy way.
Tokyo, 2018. I was bigger than I had been for a good couple of years. I had flirted with exercise programmes, but my emotional wellbeing was not great and that won over everything else. Looking at this now, I don’t freak out like I would have done then. All I see is a 30 year old woman, having the time of her life in a place she had been dreaming about visiting since she was a young teen. Something happened to me in Tokyo. A change had begun, and like the turning of the seasons, nothing anyone could have done would have stopped it. I was about to evolve, like a Pokemon.
Any kind of emotional upheaval can be a catalyst of change; and finding myself 30, single, and completely out of control once again, I wanted to reclaim myself. But exercise scared me; I knew how addictive that could be for me. And I didn’t want to restrict my diet.
This is where I now find myself. Carefully balancing my physical and emotional needs. Sometimes the emotional wins, and I will eat my feelings. This isn’t new behaviour for me, but I can now recognise it for what it is, and I don’t punish myself, physically, for comforting myself with carbs when my mental health is suffering.
Food has started to become a true delight to me again, something I haven’t experienced since I was in secondary school. I’m not afraid to take up space in the world anymore. I won’t shrink myself down by denying my body and my brain the food that excites me.
London, 2019. If you’re not getting chips outside the Tower of London, what are you even doing there? Me and my dad love chips. And this is the kind of ritual we always participate in, wherever we go. “Chips?” He’ll ask. And I’ll nod. “Chips.”
It’s a lifelong journey, and some days I’m killing it. Other days I can feel myself slipping down the slope, and I let it happen, watching my descent into the murky waters of binge-eating, knowing I will have to pull myself back out in a day or so, as well as do damage control on my psyche.
Being a woman is hard. No one can ever refute it. But what upsets me the most is that even food, the thing we literally cannot live without, has been hijacked by the patriarchy and used as a weapon of mass oppression. How can we continue on like this?
‘Tiny Moons’ by Nina Mingya Powles makes me want to cry. I find such joy and acts of kindness towards a woman’s body on every page; she describes food that makes me salivate and my stomach rumble, and while she doesn’t shy away from a cultural commentary, it feels like a safe space. Our experiences with food and culture are very much world’s apart, and yet it still feels like this book understands me, and my demons.
Slowly, tenderly, it’s like I’m being coaxed to let go of my own food guilt, and just be. And that is a beautiful feeling.
Written by Sarah
If you want more information about disordered eating, body dysmorphia, or other eating disorders, then here’s some useful links. If you feel like you need help, get in touch with your GP, 111, a trained and reputable service ASAP.
Beat Eating Disorders UK - https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/support-services/helplines
‘Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai’ by Nina Mingya Powles is our BookClubbers pick for February. Learn more here.
