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My New Year Cooking Resolution Is About Making Peace with Food
How negative body image can hinder you from cooking, not just from eating
I took on a challenge for this year, to learn to cook 12 different, special dish throughout the year — one new dish each month. It might not sound like a huge accomplishment for some as there are so many options, so many recipes, so many culinary specialities available at arm’s length. But for me, it’s an enormous step towards healing my problematic relationship with food.
When I was around 12 or 13 years old, heading home from school in an early afternoon, I sat down on the bus and took out the sandwich my mum packed for me for the day. I didn’t have time to eat it during that day and the lunch at school wasn’t good — as usual. I took a bite, pensively looking out the window when a couple of older boys started to make fun of me, at first just laughing among themselves, then addressing insults to me. “Come on fatty, you surely can devour the whole thing at once.” “Why does someone so chubby even want to eat!” “Go on a diet, you pig.”
I was a tall, normal bodied kid — definitely not a thin one, but not fat either — I can tell from the photographs from that time. I had friends and classmates who were thinner and prettier but I never really thought I was fat or a pig.
