Have really been enjoying Christina Chaey's Gentle Foods newsletter lately. Loved these passages in particular from a recent post that really resonated with me:
What if you’re at a birthday party and there’s cake but no handful of nuts to eat with it? Are cheat days a thing? What about when you’re driving in a car and all you have available is gas station food and fast food? What if you go to an event and there’s a welcome cocktail but no food yet? What if, what if.
... all the questions I was asking were a variation on a single master question: But what if it’s not okay?
One of the most insidious things about diet culture is how well it convinces you that you must be doing something wrong, otherwise you wouldn’t be like (waves hands around) this.
And one of the most insidious things about using food to control your anxiety is that it seems like it makes so much sense: Control what you put in your body, and by extension control what your body will do and how it will perform with those “right inputs,” and by extension prevent anything bad like disease or death from happening to you. The end.
... It’s ironic coming from a food professional, but the times when I’m not thinking about food are generally the times I know I’m in my healthiest place overall. I’m slowly learning to recognize that when this particular kind of food anxiety sets in, it might be a sign there are some underlying feelings I haven’t processed yet.