My Other Lover

In my pre-fab days my relationship with food was like a love affair. We were always sneaking around together, keeping our love a secret. I was hiding it in my handbag, my bedroom, my desk drawers at work, the glove compartment of the car. I usually had my lover stashed away somewhere easy to access and would devour it in private!

The sad thing is, our relationship was so one-sided. Here I was lovingly stroking and caressing my Cadbury dairy milk, crooning to my chocolate about how much I loved thee before ravishing the hell out of it and seductively licking the remnants off my mouth. Within moments however the feelings of love I had just languished on my bar of chocolate changed from sneaky bliss, to guilt and remorse.

Yep, just like an affair!

It's hard being a bigger person consuming food in public. Even if they are not, you assume people are staring at your choice of food. I'd be sitting at a table at the local food court with my all you can eat Chinese buffet piled so high on my plate that it been a precarious balancing act simply finding a table to scoff at without wearing half of it (that and the fact I couldn't see over the top of my plate).

I'd have lemon chicken, fried rice and spring rolls covering every available inch of my plate. Suddenly, sitting there with Singapore noodles hanging out of my mouth, and plum sauce splashes on my nose, I'd be all too aware that people around me were probably thinking "Look at that fat girl. Look at what she is eating. No wonder she is fat".

The self consciousness would set in and suddenly I'd feel sick to my stomach with my own image. Sadly however, even in times of immense humiliation like this, my affair was so great I'd simply continue eating, all the while telling myself I was just a failure with no will power so I may as well continue enjoying my fried beef in plum.

There were times where I would choose the healthy options. Salad rolls, sushi, subway 6 grams of fat or less, but even then I knew that once in the privacy of my home or car, I'd again return to the comforting arms of my non-judgemental friend, food. The full of saturated fats, let me add to your cottage cheese thighs, kinds of food.

Socially we have an enormous perception that in order to loose weight we need to DIET. To me the word 'diet' conjures up images of starvation, rules, fat pinching calipers, and eventually failure when eating a crouton for breakfast, lunch and dinner no longer suffices (as if it ever did).

Diets in most cases are so futile that we have even invented diets to try and disguise the fact it is a so called diet. Look at Atkins for example. Sure, there were no carbohydrates but there was BACON!! Fatty, crispy, artery clogging, salty and delicious bacon. SOLD! (As were three quarters of Americans. I'd add a great joke here about their intelligence but in this case it would apply to me also, so I'll save myself the personal sledge).

In addition to diets like this, there were also the crazy, guaranteed to shed kilos in a week diets; such as the 'soup diet'. All I ever saw anyone gain from the soup diet was a serious case of flatulence and a permanent aversion to cabbage, and soup.

I can't honestly tell you that my relationship with food is now perfect. It's not. In fact I know on a personal level I still have a way to go before I will be able to look at a bag of hot chips without curling up in the foetal position and rocking back and forth. It could be a little while yet before I can look at a block of chocolate and not get a twitch in my right eye, but for the most part I now make smarter choices. I am trying to live like the French. Not in the arrogance stakes, but certainly in the moderation.

I am NOT on a diet. I am simply making choices which will benefit me now and in the future.

These days when I think of lovingly ripping the wrapper off something, crooning with affection and languishing my love, I try and look for Muscle Man instead of a mars bar.

Muscle Man would like me to add at this point that I mustn't crave the above foods much because he is fairly convinced I never languish love, nor rip his clothes off.