Journey Through Food: A Short Memoir

I'm standing on my tippy toes on a plastic foot stool wearing my favourite pink checkered apron. I am just tall enough to reach the kitchen bench. I watch in curiosity as my mum prepares the dough for her famous chocolate chip cookies. Eagerly waiting for her to finish the 'tricky' bits, so we can get to the part where I am allowed to stir the mixture. As she places the biscuits in the oven and begins her ritual of cleaning up my characteristic mess post-cooking, she hands me the wooden spoon before rinsing it. My taste buds tingle with excitement as I am granted permission to ‘lick the spoon’. My favourite childhood part of cooking. I sit on the bench and flick through her infamous ‘Women’s Weekly’ recipe book, waiting for the ding of the oven to sound, and another taste-test to be granted. I am encapsulated in the warm and comforting aroma that can only come from your own mothers homemade cooking. A ritual between my mother and I that would become characteristic of my early years in the kitchen. 

This is my first memory with food. A moment I can vividly recall filled with a deep feeling of joy and love. A time where food was a source of creativity. Playfulness. Connection. I didn’t know it at the time, but at this very moment, I was writing the first few pages of what I would later come to know as my journey through food. 

Fast forward to 16 years old. I am sitting in biology class at college. It’s the last class of the day. I feel faint and I am struggling to concentrate on my teacher who is explaining an already difficult topic. I allow myself to eat the four strawberries I had allocated as my recess snack that day. The snack I had decided I could probably go without. They make me feel slightly better. But not by much. I arrive home after school tired and irritable. I'm starving. But I have already eaten everything on my self-made meal plan for the day. I tell myself to hold out until dinner. But I can’t. So I eat an entire packet of salt and vinegar chips. Then half a packet of Tim-Tams, before picking at last night's leftovers until I have eaten the equivalent of almost an entire serving. Now I feel sick. 

Following this, an entire evening is spent in deep self-loathing. Poking and prodding my stomach in front of the mirror, wondering why it doesn’t look like the girls I see in magazines. Berating myself for losing control with food yet again. Telling myself that tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow I will just eat less. As I lay in bed that night, I heard three distinct thoughts running through my head: I can’t keep this up. I don’t want to feel like this anymore. I don’t know how to stop feeling like this.

The love I once felt towards food had been replaced with an unrelenting desire to be skinny. What once ignited a spark of joy in me has now become the biggest source of fear and anxiety in my life. Food controls me. There is not one piece of food that passes my lips that is not scrutinised for the way it might manipulate the physical appearance of my already changing teenage body. It wasn’t until years later that I became aware that here, in this moment, I was in the thick of a very disordered relationship with food. Grappling with the reality of what conformity to society’s unrealistic beauty standards sadly involves for many young women craving to be desired. To be accepted. To be worthy. Hands down, this was the most difficult chapter of my journey through food. 

I am 18 years old. I am laying on my bed, scrolling through Instagram. Amidst an array of wanderlust pictures, bikini selfies and couples posts - I stumble across a nutritionist named Jessica Sepel. She is writing about her experience with overcoming a disordered relationship with food. My ears prick up. I spend the next few hours hiding away in my room, devouring her content. Finding solace in the single fact that I was not alone with the way I was feeling towards food. Moreover, it was possible to recover from it. I walk back downstairs and join in the family lounge room chatter, just like any other ordinary Sunday. Although this time I am feeling something I have not felt in a while: Hope.

It is only in retrospect I can see that this insignificant Sunday afternoon would become a turning point in my journey with food. Marking the day when I realised there was another way. That it was possible to unlearn all of the behaviours I had adopted to maintain the unsustainable and unhealthy image of false perfection that I had created for myself. Six years, two degrees and a whole lot of life lessons later - I sit here writing this as a qualified dietitian who, through education, learnt to heal my relationship with food. 

But this is only just the beginning. The first few chapters of my lifelong love story with food. With so many blank pages yet to be filled with exciting, creative, passionate, inspiring, loving moments with food. It hasn’t been an easy journey. But I wouldn’t change it for anything. Because it shaped me into the person I am today. A person who I just so happen to like.

I write this because I have a message I want to share, and it's a simple one. Food is to be enjoyed, not feared. Hiding away in my room all of those years ago, I learnt firsthand the power of storytelling. In a weird and wonderful way, you can find purpose in your pain. If you are brave enough to be vulnerable and own your truth, you might have the power to free someone else. Heck, you might even free yourself.