The Foodie and the Beast: my relationship with food

I eat intuitively, with balance, proportion and discipline at the centre of my diet, but what if I don't have as healthy a relationship with food as I thought?

Let's start at the beginning: when I was younger, circa 2011, I wasn't slim. It wasn't quite an Augustus Gloop situation, but it was noticeable - and pointed out by my peers. Year 7 is hard enough, but walking past a Greggs Bakery every morning - with this exciting new concept of lunch money, in the winter - made it harder. I grew up with packed lunches at primary school; reliably a sandwich, a Frube, a Cheesetring or Babybell, and some piece of fruit. We didn't have a 'sweets cupboard', fizzy drinks or even packets of crisps at home. My mum fed us a delicious, balanced diet - and it was fine! It was a treat, for sure, when we had Mr Kipling cakes in the house or if I found Walkers crisps in my lunchbox, but I wouldn't change it for the world; it just was what it was. McDonalds was a once-a-year dealio, if that, when we were on a long journey, and the joy I felt to have this rare treat is still palpable. Take-aways weren't on the cards not only because we always lived in somewhat remote villages, but because we couldn't afford it. It's these habits that my mother built for my sister and me that, I think, means we are able to have such a well-balanced diet today, and why we find it quite easy to avoid the habits that a lot of people struggle with.

Mum encouraged me to cook from a young age. I think making her a cup of tea for the first time was the dive-board from which I realised I had the potential to find my way about a kitchen. From her inspiring birthday cakes to her encouragement to flip the pancakes myself on Pancake Day, my mum's parenting philosophy, whether she meant it to or not, truly embodied the saying 'if you give a hungry man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime', and I am so grateful. I suppose it was when I went to university and I had the freedom to do my own food shop that I realised the healthy habits I was in. You pester your parents your whole childhood while accompanying them in Sainsbury's, thinking to yourself that you must be entitled to call Childline with the amount of neglect you felt at being forced to eat porridge for breakfast instead of Krave or Cookie Crunch cereal. When it came to uni, I found myself in Asda thinking what great value a kilo of porridge oats is in comparison to a box of sugary cereal, and how satisfying it was to have a trolley full of colourful fruits and veg from your shopping list, in comparison to your peers', whose trolleys were full of beige, chocolate, and more beige.

I thought it was the lockdown of 2020, which started at the end of my first year of university, that really got me into my cooking but, thinking back, I was cooking all sorts in my first year already. I remember making jerk-seasoned chicken with avocado salad, a Jamie Oliver cod recipe that was coated in peanut butter and served with lime and coriander rice, veggie pasta bakes packed with greens, and other pasta dishes with homemade meatballs and homemade pea pesto, to name a few. While, it seems, the rest of my peers are making beans on toast and getting take-aways, I was having the most fun creating and experimenting, as the only person who had to suffer it if it went wrong was me! During lockdown, I went home and filled my days with yoga in the sun, walking the dog and binge-watching every Jamie Oliver season I could get my hands on from 4oD. Mum and I would take turns cooking dinner, and I continued to create and find such a satisfaction in cooking something colourful and full of flavour.

My final year of uni was great; no more covid (pretty much) and I had all the time in the world to go to the gym, and so I ate a lot more. My portion sizes were huge, and although I still didn't really snack on biscuits or anything, I felt much less guilty than I would have otherwise because of how much I was going to the gym.

But this is where that word 'guilty' started happening.

Friends of mine would 'bulk' and 'cut' and, although I enjoyed talking about the gym with them, it started to make me hyper-aware of what I was eating. "But it's all perfectly healthy!!!!", one of my internal voices would say. "So should we not be eating butter now we're in the run-up to summer?? But I won't be happy with a dry bagel!!", said another. It was this pasta-weighing, calorie-counting concept that I'd never come across before, and I realised very quickly that it wasn't the path for me, but that didn't stop this new Beast from breathing down my neck while I made every meal. I began taking half a handful of pasta out of the pan and stopped buttering my bagels (this was done with regret and was short-lived. Fuck that). And sure, if one's goal was to lose weight, counting calories and being aware of your portion sizes is probably necessary, but why was I, who had no issue with weight, perfectly active and had this great understanding of a balanced diet, suddenly overthinking it this much? HOW much olive oil are you putting in that pan? Surely you're not eating BOTH those fillets of salmon in one meal? Dear, oh dear. No, you can't have pasta for dinner; you had carbs at lunch.

Fast-forward to moving to London in September 2022; the Beast has followed me. I personally still identify as a foodie and love to try new things when I'm out and when I'm at home. I love cooking for other people. There's just always this obsessive voice in the back of my head counting if I've had my 5-a-day and telling me "you had porridge for breakfast and pasta for lunch, you can't have noodles for dinner you fat fuck!! Too many carbs!!". The issue here is that 1. that is absolute shit, and 2. the Beast fails to remember that my porridge was accompanied by a banana and blueberries, making it the perfect start to one's day; being a form of slow-release energy and the fruits being packed with vitamins and anti-oxidants. My lunch of pasta was accompanied by a salad, probably consisting of green leaves, tomatoes and a boiled egg; a necessary concoction to support the fact that, working in retail, I'm on my feet for 8 hours a day without fail. My dinner, usually noodle-based these days as a stir-fry is quick, easy and delicious, would also contain two or three vegetables such as peppers, long-stem broccoli and spring onions, and a form of protein, either another egg or chicken, which makes it a wholesome, balanced meal. I fry the lot up in a mix of soy sauce, peanut butter and crushed garlic, which I love, but it's only because I don't buy sauces from the supermarket because somewhere in my head the Beast is screaming PRESERVATIVES!! ADDED SUGAR!! This is my struggle; I know it's all good, I know it's all healthy and balanced, and even if I did eat more of it all or bought jars of Blue Dragon sauce for my stir-fries, there is literally nothing wrong with any of this. There's this constant conflict inside me that's telling me I'm eating too much and not working out enough, but at the same time I am also able to tell myself that I'm eating perfectly healthily and balanced, and going to the gym three times a week is, in fact, enough. Where has this obsession come from and why does it insist on lurking despite being able to speak to it rationally?

Dating a personal trainer has had its moments, for sure. With a philosophy of 'nothing should be restricted', he's wonderfully insightful and supportive to be around. But the Beast rears its ugly head time and time again, through no fault of his. Look how much he works out. You should be working out more often. You used to be so lean in lockdown. Look at you now. You mean look at my perfectly healthy body? The one that was lean in lockdown because there was all the time in the world to do HIITs in the garden? The one that just tries to get from one day to the next while I can barely afford to buy food at the end of the month but insists on having a gym membership to make sure we're working out? Yeah. Look at that belly. It's never enough.

I certainly wouldn't go so far as to call it an eating disorder but I definitely need to practice some CBT when it comes to this train of thought. The obsession over whether or not I've eaten too many carbs in a day is ludicrous - I'm not giving myself enough credit! How many jobs are there where you have to stay standing for 7.5 hours straight? (Shoutout to my girls in retail) What would my younger self think of the thoughts I had about myself now? How can I speak to myself in such a cruel way? This body does so much for me and will continue to serve me so loyally for the rest of my life. It's exhausting having to justify and rationalise every meal, craving a biscuit or two with my cup of tea in the evening and then scolding myself for dreaming of such a treat.

Going forward, I'm about to move to a new flat where there'll be a gym in my building, meaning I'll have more reason to go more frequently. I wonder if I'll be able to change the narrative that I've found myself in and go to the gym more frequently for ME, and eat what I want when I want, or if it'll be the Beast that continues to drive my actions and loom over me while I shop in Aldi like a black cloud. It all seemed to go downhill very quickly, and it continues to be turbulent, but positivity and balance will prevail.

TBC...

Follow my fitness page @worksfordaisy_ for workouts and meal inspiration, and to follow along with my journey.

P.S. Thank you for allowing me to use this blog as an outlet for my inner thoughts. It is extremely therapeutic.