Ha ha that’s not a hard and fast rule tho. BUT I did buy these off brand peak frean like cookies and they are very disappointing. The cookie crumbles too much instead of the satisfying snap of a Peak Frean. The raspberry jelly centre is too weird. 0/10 would not buy again. I also had a disappointing dry weird Jamaican patty today.

I wonder if it would make sense to talk about my relationship to food in this blog post?

I’ve got a weird relationship to food, in that I am PRETTY sure I have an eating disorder, or if not that then at least some kind of disordered eating. It’s somewhat related to my ADHD. Like I’ve just spent years where I have days that I forget to eat until later in the day. I’ve been trying to get better about it. I’m trying to eat breakfast, but there are still too many days where I start off the day with coffee and don’t get around to real food for a few hours. I will also have energy level problems, probably related to my bipolar disorder (and prob a couple other reasons like not eating right away!) and it makes it hard for me to buy and prepare food. I made accommodations for that by ordering out a lot, but it chews through my cash really fast, and I actually like my own cooking better than take out most of the time.

The thing is I LIKE food and eating and don’t really have issues with what I eat. I used to be heavy on the chips and things, but I’ve grown over the years to appreciate more proteins and things, like snacks of cheese and yogurt and stuff. I can have gluten fine, not really any allergies. I’m prediabetic so I have to watch my sugar intake, but I’ve been drinking diet drinks and stopped taking sugar in my coffee, and that seems to have helped make my blood sugar pretty normal. I don’t really have a lot of candy anymore. I still have pastries sometimes. Anyway, all of this is to say that the things I eat are fairly average and my grocery shopping has finally evolved to involve a decent spread of the food pyramid. I don’t know if the Canada Food Guide really knows what it’s talking about, but I’ve become a boring adult who likes meat and veggies and grains and things. I’m not counting calories, not deliberately not eating. I just got in a bad habit of not eating until later in the day.

I have to say though, I’m starting to get a bit better since I got on ADHD meds. I remember that food exists and I should probably use it to keep myself alive. I’m eating more often in the mornings (but not every morning yet). There aren’t any more days where I realize I have forgotten about dinner completely. Sometimes I eat dinner late at night, which I could still work on, but mostly I’ve been pretty good.

I’m a chubby chub, for those of you who don’t know what I look like, and I’ve been shrinking since I got on ADHD meds, but I still have a soft round tummy. It means a lot of people discount me when I try to talk about my disordered eating patterns. Because fatties don’t have eating disorders! That’s a thing for skinny people! And if you are a fatty with an eating disorder, it must be that you binge! But no! I’ve been my chubbiest when I’ve been really starving, it really doesn’t reflect what kind of calorie content I’m consuming. People are really ignorant about stuff like that. And even worse I have heard some doctors encourage fat people to exacerbate their eating disorders “to get healthier.”

Anyway. I can say my relationship to food is better. I’ve gone from having an abstract realization that I need to feed myself sooner in the day to more often being able to do that. Of course still lunches have been late, and I need to work on that. I snack but my snacks are less often chips and more often fruit or raisin toast or whatever. It’s also really important for my prediabetic body to have a more consistent blood sugar level. I’m not quite there yet, the part where I need to monitor it. But I still know I feel shitty and dizzy if it’s been too long since I ate.

Eating disorders/disordered eating are a really weird thing to talk about. Half the time when I mention them I just wait for the shitty comments to start. I’m trying not to take it personally, I know a huge percentage of the population has varied relationships with food that aren’t really positive/”healthy.” God can I just say I hate the word healthy when it comes to food and eating??? It’s really a shamey dichotomy where you either are or aren’t healthy. And people use it especially against fat people. And it has some class connotations. Like “poor people aren’t healthy” (which has a lot to do with not having the finances to purchase more expensive foods like vegetables and meats, and food deserts) but seems really like, putting a value judgement on them/us. And the fat shaming of people often uses the ideas of “health” as like “Well if they were healthy they would be allowed to have dignity and respect but they don’t obviously because they’re FAT so they don’t get any!” UGH so gross! So Health is a really shitty word in my opinion. If it didn’t have all this negative baggage I wouldn’t feel so bad about it.

What could I use instead of healthy to describe a good relationship with food and my body? Maybe positive? Or something about loving?

I like using the word loving to describe community and personal aspirations. I’m trying to divorce it from only being for romantic relationships and allow it to describe my care for my friends and community and the world and myself. And I think it is a bit more active of a relationship between my soul and all of those things than just having a “good” relationship. A loving relationship.

Anyway, I need to keep fostering a loving relationship between myself and my body and food. I’m not really outcome oriented about getting my eating to a better place. Like I don’t want to lose/gain weight (although if I do that is fine). I just want to feel like I have energy and didn’t forget to eat.