First I had anorexia, then high cholesterol. It’s hard to maintain a healthy relationship to food in a society obsessed with weight loss
W
hen I was a teenager suffering from anorexia, I thought it was a life sentence. I genuinely believed slogans like “every woman has an eating disorder” and couldn’t imagine a future where calories didn’t make me sweat. With this in mind, you must understand that I’m boasting when I write this next sentence: in November 2024, I was diagnosed with “very high” cholesterol.
After years of restriction, I spent my 20s unable to understand why every meal shouldn’t be the maximum amount of delicious. This means that last year, I was regularly melting a packet of white chocolate buttons on my morning porridge before heading out for a white chocolate matcha with cream, followed by a cheese and egg sandwich in a brioche bun, a slice of cake, fried chicken and chips, to say nothing of the bread and butter before dinner and dessert. In short, I was smashing through my recommended daily allowance of saturated fat and loving every second of it. “Treats”, to my mind, are not something that have to be earned.
I went up a couple of dress sizes and while it would be a lie to say I did so “happily”, I didn’t really care too much about it – certainly not enough to change my eating habits or move my legs.
