Deconstructing my relationship with food.

Some thoughts about licking the spoon.

Disclaimer: In ninth grade English class, I got a failing grade on an essay. My teacher told me “you know you don’t have to be a good writer to write a good essay” and it stuck to my bones. It bothered her that my writing was so conversational, and it turns out that is the thing I like most about how I write. Here, I try to explore my relationship with food, which is a subject that has been taunting me for a while. (If food and I were on Facebook in 2010, the “it’s complicated” box would be checked) There’s a lot to say, and I’m still learning how to find the words. Please be warned that there are mentions of disordered eating here. I’m not a medical professional, I don’t offer any prescriptive advice; I’m just a gal who’s lived some life and learned from it.

My boss licks the spoon. (When someone plays two roles in my life, like boss and friend, I never really know how to refer to that person in stories. After all my time alone, I still hesitate to even use the word friend. Do I even have friends? Do people really like me? This isn’t about that, or maybe everything is about that.) Anyway, last week, my friend/boss made an Instagram reel for the bakery. In it, she makes our take on the viral Dubai trend with a danish. After the pastry is proofed and egg washed, it is filled with pistachio cream using a spoon, and then our filling is piped into the center above it. In the video, Anna smiles at the camera and licks the spoon dripping with pistachio butter, with exuberant joy.

In a month of making that danish, I have never once licked the spoon. I’ve thought about it, but instead, I rush it to the sink and pour water on it as quickly as possible. I deliberately go out of my way to bypass the caloric temptation of pistachio butter. I do the same thing with any delicious scraps. I don’t save them, don’t even consider tasting them, I throw them in the garbage, squishing them down with empty milk cartons and egg shells. (Of course the banana bread is delicious, but look at me - do I look like I need to be eating banana bread?)

When people learn that I’m a pastry chef, there’s a common reaction that happens. How can you be around pastries all day? I could never! I would be so fat! The truth is, I really don’t eat that many pastries. After a day of smelling sugar, all I crave is red meat and vegetables. Pork shoulder is pretty great too. Sandwiches, too - I’m getting carried away again. The truth is, even when I crave dessert, I hesitate to partake in it, because that’s just not what fat girls do. (In a body like mine, eating dessert feels like gluttony, hedonism, sin.) I don’t like admitting that this is how I talk to myself, it’s not how I want to talk to myself. I am working on changing this internal monologue.

The thing is, as a fat girl, I have felt encouraged by the world around me to hold on to my disordered eating until I hit my goal weight. Skipping meals and replacing them with coffee? That’s just intermittent fasting! Cutting out a whole food group? No problem, it’s low carb! Feeling faint and dizzy during your intense workout? That means it’s working! (I’ve enjoyed like three smoothies in the last ten years, because someone once told me that girls like me shouldn’t drink our calories, and fruit has too much sugar anyway.) There are a lot of things that girls like me shouldn’t do, apparently.

If I’m being honest, like really honest - the kind I want to avoid, but instead I’m leaning into it lately; then I kind of hoped that healing my relationship with food would come with weight loss. The women in the intuitive eating videos that YouTube shorts like to show me are sandwiched between weight loss advertisements. The women in the intuitive eating videos are thin. They are thin in a way that I have never maintained while also maintaining a healthy relationship with food. They are thin in a way I’ve never been - except for when I weighed every morsel of food that went into my body and exercised myself into one injury after another. And even then, I wasn’t thin. I’ve never been small.

I am slowly making peace with my body. I am learning to nourish myself, take care of myself in the gym, develop good habits without getting obsessive, and still - I’m so wildly jealous. (I’ve been so good - don’t I deserve thinness?) I have been consistent at the gym for six months, which has been incredibly beneficial for my mental health. Physically? I still look like the before picture in the weight loss commercials. Writing this entire paragraph has made me feel yucky. This whole post makes me cringe.

I started healing my relationship with food after I ran a half marathon dressed in a wonder woman costume. I did not get to that race by taking care of myself. I was not good to myself, mentally or physically. And when I looked at the photos, I didn’t feel a sense of pride or accomplishment, I felt disappointed with myself and my weight. It was a turning point for me. I’ve been working on a healthy relationship with food since then.

I’m not going back to obsessively weighing myself multiple times a day. I’m not going back to panic attacks during date night because the restaurant doesn’t have the calories listed on the menu. I’m not going back to running on an injured knee for months, causing chronic pain that still flares up sometimes. I’m not going back to feeling like I have to earn my food through exercise. My relationship with myself is more important to me than being thin. I repeat the phrase like a mantra, write it in my journal. My relationship with myself is more important to me than being thin. Sometimes, I believe it. Last week, I was eating cheetos in dark emerald lingerie, after getting my hair done, feeling like a Renaissance Queen of sorts, and I felt really good. I felt good in my body and outside of it. That’s a rare moment, but I know it’s possible. Today, I licked the spoon covered in pistachio butter. I hesitated, wondering if I should, and then I did it anyway.