Fervent Foodie

When I was a freshman in college, I often carried a rice crispy treat in my coat pocket. I had a little black pea coat that I bought for next to nothing with my American Eagle employee discount. It wasn’t even the slightest bit warm, but it had perfect treat-sized pockets, and unless I forgot, I had a rice crispy treat on me. It makes me laugh, looking back, that I would choose such junk as a daily snack, but it’s also a reminder of simpler days when the words “healthy” and “calories” didn’t exist in my headspace. Days when I had a piece of pie practically every day because the dorm buffet always had pie and how do you say no to pie. Instead of health, my focus was on hunger and doing whatever I could to avoid THAT feeling.

I remember being hungry a lot as a kid. Dang. I wrote and deleted that sentence four times, worried about my mom or dad reading it. But that’s the truth. I remember being hungry a lot as a kid. My family didn’t have a lot of money, and we had four kids who really liked to eat. Most of the stories I’ve kept in my brain are the funny ones. Like the time I smuggled a slice of bologna out of the kitchen by swiftly sliding it down my sweatpants. Sure it had blue fuzz on it when I devoured it from the safety of my bedroom, but I didn’t care. There’s also the countless times my sister and I walked next door to beg the neighbor for potato chips. (To be fair, the neighbor drove a Lay’s truck, so you know that had extra chips laying around.) Have you ever turned expired powdered milk and plain noodles into lunch? I have.

I remember laying on my bed, stomach growling, as I anxiously listened for sounds that dinner might be coming soon. When it was finally time, I’d plow through my plate in hopes that finishing first would secure my chance at claiming any leftovers. I remember hiding halloween candy all over my bedroom. Under my pillows, in old shoe boxes under the bed. I hid it so no one else would eat it. Then I’d ration it out, three pieces per day at first, then two pieces once the supply started to dwindle. I was very sad when it was gone. I remember visiting friends’ houses and binging on the seemingly endless Little Debbies and boxes of Kraft Mac and cheese. And whole dill pickles. I once ate eleven full-sized dills in a night, stopping only when I started burping up pickle chunks.

Looking back, I can see that I had very little self control around food. If there was food, I would eat until it was gone. And if there was A LOT of food around, I’d eat to the point of sickness. I guess because most days there wasn’t a ton of food around the overeating thing wasn’t really a problem. I was normal sized. My self-esteem wasn’t great, but I thought I was pretty ok. Further complicating my relationship with food, I had always been self conscious of my body shape. Well, really just my stomach. It stuck out further than my friend’s stomaches did, and my boyish (read: entirely uncurvy) shape did nothing to conceal it. I was ok with it for the most part, except when my high school friend routinely laughed and pointed at my pot belly. (Her words.)

Then my twenties happened. By then I had a real job and I bought all the groceries I wanted. Have you ever eaten an entire box of Honey Nut Cheerios in one sitting? I have. I went up a pant size and made peace with mom jeans. I loved food and I ate a lot of it. I remember a boyfriend asking me if I was “going to lose that” before our upcoming beach vacation. By that he meant my stomach. I know that’s what he meant because he poked it as he said it. Later, I remember getting dressed for a night out and getting very upset about how I looked in my clothes. One of my closest friends was with me and she said “if you just quit sticking your stomach out like that you’d look fine”. The thing is I wasn’t pushing my stomach out, I was just standing. It was just me.

I’m not sure when my self confidence starting hinging so heavily on my body weight, but it was certainly around this time. Sure, maybe I hadn’t loved my body before this point, but something changed, and I started focusing solely on the things that were wrong with it. Food became the culprit. Enter calorie counting. My newly-curated definition of “health” centered 100 percent on calories. As long as the calories fit into my daily goal, it didn’t matter what sort of junk I was eating. Glorious mathematics. I remember sitting at my desk at work, struggling to concentrate because I was in the process of starving myself thin. I’d tell myself “this is what skinny feels like”.

Since then, I’ve yo-yoed between excessive restriction and excessive binging, with plenty of time in between. But that restriction urge? It’s normally triggered at the tail end of winter, when I’ve packed on the annual 5-7 pounds and suddenly I’m back in that routine of staring at my stomach in the mirror every morning wondering why I’m so out of control. Wondering why I can’t just STOP eating so many snacks and why to all that is holy if peanut butter is supposed to be so friggin healthy does it have so many calories.

Over the years, my definition of “healthy” has (mostly) shifted away from calories to whole foods. I eat a disturbing amount of vegetables. I also eat a disturbing amount of peanut butter. You know how everyone is talking about how to be an intuitive eater these days? Right now, I’m basically the opposite of that. I’m like middle school Mary eating her eighth cookie at a birthday party, and I’m just trying to exercise some compassion and not judge myself for that. Relationships are complicated. That includes food.