Relearning the Love Language of Food

To make, to share, to enjoy, and to love food — again

“There is no love sincerer than the love of food.”― George Bernard Shaw

I have been in a love/hate relationship with food all my life, ever since I started dieting at the age of ten. Before that, I had loved eating. Maybe a little too much.

Maybe my love for food was the reason I got fat. Maybe that’s why I looked at chocolate chip cookies with such a longing that irritated the adults around me. Maybe that’s why my mum suggested me to have a secret word to use when she thought I have already eaten enough at lunch. She didn’t want to humiliate me, so she used an innocent word to signal me to stop eating. She meant well, I’m sure of that. But she hurt me inadvertently so much that I can still get a bitter feeling in my mouth when I think of that.

I learnt to love the taste of the food I hated. I learnt to be enthusiastic about lettuce and cucumber, plain chicken and low-calorie bread. I learnt to like grapefruit and cabbage just because they are “negative calorie” foods. And when there was finally no joy to eating, I stopped enjoying it altogether.

I love food and I love eating. But I hate how my body reacts to it, I hate how I put on weight just…