I LOVE FOOD OKAY!

Hey girls,

Happy weekend to you all!

This week I wanted to talk to you about food. Delicious, melt in your mouth, explode your taste buds food. I have always been a food lover since I was a baby and I was THE FATTEST baby (see below evidence!). My mum used to give me a bowl of Weetabix or a yoghurt for breakfast and I’d ask for seconds and thirds and probably fourths too. I was also the first child my parents had out of 3 so they probably weren’t quite sure how much food to feed a baby and thought my eating was just normal.
This approach to food definitely did not change throughout my childhood, in my teens or even to now as the year I turn 25. I absolutely love cereal (Shreddies, Crunchy Nut, Coco Pops you name it!), I love all carbs, I love all meat, I love bread, I love chocolate and vegetables aren’t that bad either. I love a well cooked meal where a lot of love and care has gone into it either from a restaurant or at home. That is how I was brought up coming from a family of chef’s (my mum claims she makes the best, well, everything and she’s not half wrong!).

My love of food has never decreased or turned negative in the past even if my self love about the way my body looks has over the years. I’m naturally quite curvy (a size 12-14) and an average height of 5 ft 6. I don’t remember having an issue with the way I looked when I was a child. Apart from being much taller than everyone else (again another throwback photo; I’m the tall one on the left below).
I never connected my love of food with the way I looked and never thought I should be thinner even when I was a teenager. My negative thinking towards my body only really started when I was in my early 20’s. In those years my weight fluctuated more rapidly (probably because I wasn’t doing sport weekly in school anymore) and therefore it became more noticeable to me when I felt fat or thin. I also think Instagram and ‘influencers’ became more of a prominent thing in my early 20’s which definitely didn’t help.

I’ve spoken before about my attitude towards exercising and that last year I really worked hard to get into an exercise routine and loose weight, I ended up loosing 2 stone. One of my biggest aims was to not put on lots of weight and get out of my exercise routine in the run up to Christmas. It’s so easily done with Christmas drinks with friends nearly every week, chocolate all day every day in the office and the fact it’s so cold and dark outside you don’t particularly want to exercise. Anyway, I managed to do it and stick to my exercise routine for an entire year which felt amazing to proof to myself I could do it.

Then this past month I’ve found it really hard to get back into it after a week or two off over the festive period. I found that going in the mornings and booking myself onto classes means I’ve got it over and done with before the day has even begun and that I can’t back out. But I’ve been giving myself a hard time for not being super healthy, for not going on a January diet or a ‘health kick’ as I was seeing it all over Instagram and it’s all anyone could talk about.

Then it dawned on me last week, I’m always going to love food, I’m always going to love cooking because it’s an interest of mine and a hobby. I shouldn’t dismiss that and eat only salad because it’s what everyone else does in January or that it’s the only way to live healthily. As long as I continue exercising then I can continue to eat what I want without any substituting and be able to maintain the weight I achieved last year (with a little natural fluctuation of course). It sounds obvious right but you’ll be surprised how your mind can become blind to it when daily you read about the diets we should be on and how to count calories blah blah blah…

Anyway, this kind of thought process is called ‘intuitive eating’ which has become a hot topic recently among nutritionists. Now I’m not going to be pretend to be an expert in this subject and give you lots of advice because quite frankly I’m not a professional and you need to hear advice from said expert. Instead I am going to recommend you listen to podcasts. A great one I listened to this week is a podcast by Dr Hazel Wallace called The Food Medic. Season 2 episode 5 is with Laura Thomas and called Ditching Diet Culture where they talk a lot about intuitive eating. It’s so insightful, I definitely recommend you give it a listen.

So with that, I’m going to share a few pictures of some of the recent deliciousness I’ve eaten over the last couple of weeks. Perhaps it’ll help you not feel guilty as I did for having that pizza last night or that chocolate bar at lunch. You enjoy that food! You feel that joy when you’re eating something delicious without that niggling voice at the back of your mind saying ‘oh you’ve had carbs, you better kill it at the gym tonight’ – just ignore that girl, she’s a bitch.

Mmmm… amazing beef ragu tagliatelle (oh no carbs?! WHO CARES!)

This week I made a lasagne with zucchini strips and lots of cheese and a rich sauce, it was scrumptious (without blowing my own trumpet!) I will eat that croissant and many others!Pancake heaven!