Food Glorious Food

For as long as I can remember every January I have made changes to my lifestyle and started strict regimes namely relating to my weight. I have ‘yo-yo’ dieted all of my adult life and had success from huge weight loss to moderate ones. This year I really thought about my lifestyle and perhaps how damaging these extreme changes may have had on my body. A few weeks ago I stumbled across a new instagram page called @unfattening and I instantly loved it. Joshua is an NHS surgeon who has been on his own weightless journey and now accepts that his journey to a slimmer him was perhaps not the healthiest it could have been.

A couple of days ago Joshua posted a picture that said ‘food has no moral value’ WOW I was hit in the face, right between the eyes. He went on to say that food is not good or bad, it is merely food and that it also should not be used as a reward or as a punishment, it is there to sustain our bodies and keep us alive. I read this post and looked at this picture for a VERY long time. ‘food has no moral value’ ‘food has no moral value’ the more I read it the more emotional I became, and I actually began to cry. Slowly I started to think a bit more about me and my own journey ‘what is my relationship with food?’ ‘how do I view it?’ what moral value does it have in my life?’ ‘how does it control me?’ ‘am I addicted to food?’ All these thoughts and questions came flooding out in my mind and I began to think back over the times I have both celebrated my successes with food, fed my negative emotions with it and punished myself through extreme choices. I realised I had in fact all my life given food a moral value, found excuses and reasons to eat cos I had done well, or reasons I thought gave me permission to legitimately starve myself. All of this has led to a completely unhealthy, stupid relationship with food. All have damaged my body and quite frankly this thinking needs to change.

📸 : Unsplash

I would imagine those of you who have been reading my blog for a while, since it started will feel slightly confused by this as, only a matter of months ago I posted about the eating plan I was on and the extreme lifestyle changes I had made. Don’t get me wrong I am still trying where possible to make healthy choices and move my body regularly, BUT, this year is the year I want to think more and more about how I look at food, my relationship with it and how that fuels my unhealthy habits. I honestly feel like I can go from loving and consuming all the chocolate to hating it and anything that is considered ‘bad.' I am seeing that this is not wise as in fact ‘food has no moral value!’

This journey has been a seedling for a long while, another Instagram account that I have been following is the amazing @fatpositivefertility also known as Nicola. Nicola is trying to change the journey of fertility walked by fat women and is such a source of help and comfort to me. She is constant reminder that fat women can have children and should not be discriminated against due to their size. Nicola regularly posts campaigns and insights to help fat women navigate the world of IVF and seeks to challenge the way us bigger girls are seen. Assumptions are made about me and my body everyday, assumptions that I must be lazy and assumptions that body cannot carry a child. These assumptions are not true, what is true is that I have an unhealthy moralistic relationship with food.

That’s what I plan to address this year, that’s what my focus is and hey if some pounds fall off along the way then so be it. But for now, I am taking time to think about my ever so unhealthy relationship with something that is there to sustain me and certainly cannot have ANY moral value in my life.

What is your relationship with food like? Where does it fit in your life, head over to my instagram page and let me know!

Big Love

Ruth x

#newbegginings #helpandsupport #fatpositivity #food #relationshipwithfood #Lifestyle #IVF #pregnancy