I love food!!
I love food!! I will not deny it, I will not hide it, I will not apologise for it, I love food and I am proud to share that with you.
What I have just said may not seem like a big deal but I really find it is these days, especially for women. If someone asks you what you did at the weekend they look at you as if you’re crazy if you answer “I ate a big fat burger with loads of cheese and some crispy fries.” Trust me try it! But sometimes the main thing I remember from my day is the food I ate and yes sometimes it is a big fat burger.
My relationship with food wasn’t always like this, I had pretty big issues with food when I was in my early 20’s and I have been on every diet going. I know you have to take responsibility for our own thoughts and actions but I truly believe that my bad relationship with food was influenced by the world around me and the media.
I feel that women have it drilled into them that they should be thin and the only acceptable thing to eat at lunch is a lettuce leaf. Take Nigella Lawson for example, I absolutely love her, and I think she is a great role model. Nigella always has something sneaky out of the fridge at night on her episodes and she unapologetically enjoys ‘bad food’ which is awesome to see a woman do on TV. However, next time you watch one of her episodes where she cooks a meal for her girl friends and a meal for a mixed gender dinner party just look at the contrast. The meal for the mixed gender group is usually just something delicious looking, the meal for her girl friends is often something very light or a salad and there is usually less of it. So, even the queen of telling us it is all ok to eat your body weight in chocolate subliminally tells us that actually she can do that but us mere mortals should stick to the salad.
Also, I mentioned above the words ‘bad food’ (Anything that doesn’t fit into a super low calorie or low fat diet), this term killed me for years, I would allow myself to eat ‘bad food’ sometimes and then would spend the following hours feeling guilty as hell. We do all have to be conscious of what we’re putting into our bodies but labelling things can lead to unhealthy habits of a different sort, unhealthy habits of the mind. For example the UK added that wonderful traffic light system to food items, green means eat me as much as you like, orange means eat me sometimes, red means if you eat me you are an unhealthy idiot who makes the wrong food choices and you should be ashamed!!! These red beacons on food in the UK used to send my mind into overdrive.
In Sweden they take a different approach to the insane traffic light thing, they put a green keyhole on healthy foods. And here when I say ‘healthy foods’ I mean food that is good for you not just super low calories or fat i.e. wholemeal bread or brown rice. To my mind this is a much better way of looking at it as no foods are labelled as bad they just point out certain things that are good for you.
What I have learnt over the years is that boring crap that everyone used to say is actually true, eat everything in moderation. That is how my relationship with food has improved, I can give my love to all foods but there is only so much love to go around so I share it sparingly. This means if I have had a bad day at work and want to order a pizza then I order a pizza, but the next day I might cook a meal with fish and brown rice. If I want wine I have wine but not everyday and I don’t drink a full bottle every time I open one.
When people used to tell me to stop dieting and just eat everything in moderation I used to want to kick them. All I thought was “Yeh that might work for you but you don’t have an issue with your weight.” It didn’t actually occur to me that they may not have an issue with their weight because they were eating everything in moderation. Doh!
The other epiphany I had was…..can you guess?........ yep you guessed it, I do not have to be super skinny!!! What a game changer that was! When I got married I was obsessed with the fact I had to wear a really tiny dress (the story of this dress will appear in another post, look out for it it’s pretty comical) and that made me diet HARD! I then put on a load of the weight after the wedding because I started eating more than spiralised courgette and now in total I have put on 1.5 stones since I got married. My husband and I love food (not sure if I mentioned that I love food) so it’s been pretty easy to gain weight and the other day I did suggest to my husband that maybe I should do a tiny diet and lose maybe ½ stone. He said he’d support me in anything I want to do but actually admitted that he prefers me as I am now, that night we celebrated with a pizza (yes another pizza).
In short my journey with food has been long, it has been complicated but it has taught me what I already knew. Eat healthy meals, again talking a bit of fish now and then and maybe some brown pasta and not super low calorie and low fat stuff, but also eat some of the foods you really enjoy and don’t give them labels or traffic lights. Food is just food, it’s people that make it more complicated than that. So this weekend think of a food item that you really enjoy eating and eat it, don’t feel bad about it, don’t over think it just eat it and enjoy it.
If any of this has resonated with you at all then join me in shouting out I love food!! Over the weeks there’ll be recipes, a bit of ranting, and just a general celebration of all the ways we can enjoy this miraculous stuff that we need to survive.