Ah, food. So many of us have a rather complicated relationship with that stuff we put in our mouths, yes? I know I do.
When people see how lean I am they are surprised to learn that I have "food issues". Usually, when we think about a person who has issues with food we think of the person who either eats way too much and becomes very overweight or the person who eats too little, becoming far too skinny as they starve themselves of the nutrition they need (or in a common third scenario where a person binges - eats too much - and then purges - throws it all back up, deliberately).
What these behaviours have in common with each other is that the person is usually hurting a lot emotionally and they're using this behaviour to cope. In addition, there's (almost) always a story that they're running in their mind about food and their body and themselves. The coping behaviours are linked (either obviously or subtly) to the beliefs they hold.
Now, what does this have to do with me and my relationship with food if I don't consider myself someone who eats to excess to stuff down awful-feeling emotions or starve myself (or binge and purge)?
A lot, actually. I'm in a smaller group of people who were told a rather difficult story. The story I was told (that may or may not have been true but was the only conclusion my dear, loving, desperate-to-sort-her-kid-out mother could come to was) that when I ate particular foods I behaved like a "bad girl" and when I didn't eat those foods I was an "angel".
The details get fuzzy, but around age 2 Mum says she worked out that "something was wrong with me". At age 4, (I think) I was given a diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). By age 8, I was on Ritalin (prescription drugs). Somewhere between those two ages, I was put on a very restrictive, low-salicylate diet.
When I stuck to my diet, apparently, I was really well behaved. When I didn't, I was... well, the opposite apparently.
In my mother's defence, I think what she was mostly trying to do was help improve my confidence to help me improve my social interactions.
I was constantly getting picked on by other kids at pre-school and school. I think I ended up fighting a lot with my siblings (initiated by them but me struggling to stand up for myself - I think). And I was forever getting distracted by the sheer amount of sensory information my nervous system was receiving when I was surrounded by other children or big groups of any kind. (I have since learned that I am, indeed, a highly sensitive person. There is nothing wrong with that; I'm not broken, I don't need fixing, I'm not a victim, I'm just highly attuned to what's happening around me and even deep within other people).
In theory, the diet was supposed to help me to function better, cope better, thrive even. (As were the drugs, but far out, that's another story for another day!) To this day I really do not know whether my behaviour improved when I was on the diet (separate from the drugs) as a result of the food changes or due to the placebo effect (i.e. Did I believe the diet would work therefore my non-conscious mind created a change in my behaviour because of that belief rather than the diet itself creating the change?)
I guess I'll never know because I was told I'd probably grow out of my ADD and I guess I believed that because I seemed to learn to function much better as I got older. I (slowly) improved my self-confidence through other means. I (eventually) worked out how to create and maintain friendships with awesome people. I even learned how to create spaces where I could concentrate and notice what works for me and what doesn't.
I truly believe that I "no longer have ADD" (even though I still don't function the way society tells me I'm "supposed to") but the strange thing is: I'm not sure that I ever did. One day I'll share more about my journey with Human Design and how this tool helped me to understand how I'm uniquely designed better than any other tool I've ever, ever studied (and how I finally came to the conclusion that I'm not broken; I'm totally magnificent the way I am and very different to the vast majority of people).
But this post is about food. Or at least, it's supposed to be; I might have got distracted 😂
I saw the contest post in the Ladies of Hive Community and suddenly realised I could share this story that I've not shared before on Hive, realising it could be helpful to someone else.
As usual, there were two questions to choose from for the contest entry. I chose:
2️⃣ What were your favorite foods as a child? Do you still enjoy them now?
So now that you have the backstory, let me actually answer this question:
My favourite foods as a child were all the foods I wasn't allowed to eat.
And there were a lot of them.
Imagine all the most colourful fruits and vegetables. Imagine them laid out in front of you like a buffet you can pick from as you stand beside your siblings, saliva forming in your mouth as you think about how tasty they're all going to be as you try to choose from this mouth-watering selection.
Then imagine that you're told that you're not allowed to eat 90% of them, ever, because when you do you're a "bad girl". And then watch your sister and brother eat all of them in front of you.
Painful. Heart-breaking. Anger producing.
(Note to self: Clearly I still have trauma around this that I need to work through!)
But let's go back to the second part of the question:
Do you still enjoy them now?
For me, the question needs to be "Do I enjoy them now?" because I didn't get to "enjoy" them as a kid. On the rare occasion I ate anything from the list I knew I wasn't supposed to have I felt guilty.
I so wanted to be a good girl. 😔
So now... now that I've seen over and over and over again that I can eat any of the previously forbidden foods in abundance and my behaviour or ability to function does not change one iota, I enjoy the heck out of them.
I eat berries literally every single day. And I relish them.
I cook with tomato any darn time I feel like it.
I eat stone fruit every time I can get my hands on any.
And there are so many more things on that list that I wasn't allowed to eat but I no longer remember all the individual foods that were on the "high" and "very high" (in salicylates) and I delightfully banished that list from my life a very long time ago.
So maybe there's a weird silver lining with the "food issues" I experienced in childhood. While I won't diminish the parts of me that still feel traumatised by the experience of spending most of my entire childhood being deprived of so many (healthy) foods I so longed for, I do see an upside:
By not being allowed to have so many glorious foods when I was younger I now totally and utterly relish these same foods probably far more than most other adults (who live in wealthy countries with plenty of food) who can and do, so easily, take their food for granted.
Thank you to 
If you're a lady (/woman/identify as female) and you see this post in the next few days (after posting) then you're welcome to come and join in the blog posting fun. All the details are here and you definitely don't need to be as deep and serious as I was in this post. This is just how I'm uniquely designed 😉
