my relationship with food
food to me
someone told me to write about my relationship with food, so here i am.
i didn’t even really realize how i had a story about my relationship with food until i started writing.
food to me is a necessity, it is daily fuel but food to me is also to be shared and to be experienced.
i am the girl that always has food packed,
i am the girl that will have “emergency” snacks,
i am the girl who will bring oatmeal on a three hour hike,
i am the girl that can survive off of peanut butter,
i am the girl that will find satisfaction from smelling and looking at food,
i am the girl that will get obviously hangry if i get too hungry,
i am also the girl who has the healthiest relationship with food she’s ever had,
i haven’t always been this girl.
in order to tell you what my relationship with food is today, i have to take you back.
growing up
i was one of the pickiest eaters ever,
i would never try anything new,
i would only eat certain things,
i didn’t mind eating the same thing over and over again.
i was a competitive athlete but knew nothing about proper nutrition.
my food intake consisted of processed food, fast food, fish sticks, chicken nuggets, cereal, milk, peanut butter, bread, candy, pop, chips, ice cream.
i think the only whole food i ate was maybe broccoli and the only seafood i would eat was halibut and it most often needed to be deep fried,
luckily i didn’t mind most meats except lamb.
my definition of cooking was pouring cereal and milk into a bowl, or turning on the oven and baking something fried and frozen.
then i had to live on my own
it wasn’t until i was 21 when i moved out on my own did i discover what grocery shopping and cooking really meant.
this was when i started being more careful and watching what i was eating. i also realized that i couldn’t afford to eat out every single meal.
at the age of 21 was also when my occasional debilitating stomach pains started happening every single day.
i started to notice a pattern, that the debilitating stomach pains that felt like someone was taking a knife to my lower intestines started when i allowed myself to get to the point of feeling hungry.
so the solution at the time was to eat before ever feeling hungry which meant eating every 2 hours, which meant i had to make sure i always had food prepared or have access to food. i could also eat endlessly, i would out eat males three times my size.
this was also a point in my life where my body started changing, i couldn’t get away with eating whatever i wanted anymore so my mind started focusing on how my body looked and felt. i started to be more active.
the moment things changed even more
i was at a walk in clinic to get medicine for the reoccurring UTI i was getting and of course the test for that was a urine test. that was the day, the doctor also told me that he found an evaluated level of glucose in my urine.
this was just the beginning of it all, i was told i was pre-diabetic.
i was confused, it seemed like the moment i decided to eat better, start exercising again everything got worse.
maybe i would have been better off eating processed crap. maybe that’s all my body knew.
not only was eating every two hours not sustainable, i was still getting my debilitating stomach pains more often than not.
when i finished university and moved back home i decided to go see a naturopath who did a food allergy test, the results - i was allergic to all my favourite foods; because the shorter list is the food i could eat, i was limited to rice, lean protein and vegetables. i carried on this diet for six months and started to re-introduce foods and narrowed down that dairy and gluten were the things that triggered my debilitating stomach pains. the pains happened less often but they were never ever fully gone.
the messed up part although i was on the cleanest diet i had ever been on my blood sugar levels remained the same or even got worse and i saw little to no change in my body composition.
when i fully just gave up
i ended up moving to toronto for just under two years and i tried to remain a clean diet but at this point, food to me wasn’t just a necessity it was to be shared and to be experienced. so i ate, i ate for pleasure, i ate to cope, i ate my feelings, food was everything. i came back from toronto at the heaviest i ever been, i had gained probably 15-20 lbs weighing in probably just under 130 lbs.
when i thought things couldn’t get worse
i moved home and i had two goals; pay off my student loan debt and get a 6 pac. the positive of those two goals worked really well together, i could use the excuse of not wanting to spend money eating out because i was trying to save money to pay down my debt. i worked out twice a day, i weighed all my food, i cut out everything with sugar, even fruit. i achieved my goal weight of 110 lbs, i got a 4 pac and became debt free. my blood sugar got worse. what? and my body decided to stop digesting food.
i will refrain from being too graphic but my body’s ability to breakdown food was non-existent. my life consisted of doctors, specialist, tests and more tests. during a MRI scan to check out my pancreas the doctors found a benign tumour in my liver.
so the conclusion, you can eat clean, you can lose the weight, exercise twice a day but that doesn’t guarantee that you will be healthy and free of any medical conditions.
at this point, i am a 110 lbs pre diabetic who cannot digest any food, whose blood sugar got worse on a clean diet, who is more active than the average person, who was still occasionally suffering from debilitating stomach pains. and no one could tell me why.
so, the thing about my relationship with food
it’s been everything,
it’s been my fuel
it’s been a necessity
it’s been my escape
it’s been my saviour
it’s been my happiness
it’s been my sadness
it’s been my pain
it’s been stressful
it’s been my comfort
it’s been my vice
it’s been unhealthy
it is healthy.
how did i find my way to where my relationship with food today is…
healthiest it’s ever been?
where i don’t need to eat out of necessity
where i can fast 16 + hours without food
where i still plan and pack food just in case
where i can enjoy and share food for experience
where i will try new foods
where i don’t restrict or limit myself to any kinds of food
where i can eat what i want within reason and balance
where i am still pre diabetic but my blood sugar levels aren’t getting better or worse
where i don’t feel guilty or beat myself up for indulging
where i eat based on intuition and desire
where i eat when and if i want
where i don’t think about food all the time
where i can live like a ‘normal’ human,
still maintain my ideal weight,
and barely suffer from the debilitating stomach pains.
———
i discovered that no matter how clean i ate, no matter how many times i worked out a day, if i didn’t fix my relationship in my mind about my body and food, i would never have a healthy relationship with food or my body.
i worked on my mental health, i finally admitted to myself that i felt an unreasonably amount of stress and pressure.
i let go of the unreasonably amount of negative self talk, i stopped focusing all day, every day on how i did not feel like i was living in my own body.
i started learning about mindset, perspectives, self awareness and self development.
and the biggest lesson of all is that…
“ the secret is to fix your relationship with your mind about your body and it will shift your relationship with food.”
i wrote this one for you kass, i hope you enjoyed it.
