an intervention re: your destructive relationship with food

I am sure I'm not alone in saying that my relationship with food could do with some work. I'm also sure that I'm not the only person who had developed destructive patterns of though in regards to eating -without even realising that I had done so. Recently I have come to realise that in the past few years I've adopted some behaviours that don't serve me very well. The problem is that those thought patterns that I have realised are destructive are also the ones that are more and more common, even celebrated, in our image-obsessed society.

When you are surrounded by a society obsessed with body image, it's difficult to acknowledge the absurdity of it all.

It's very telling that most of the people who buy cakes from the coffee shop at which I work preface their order with "I really shouldn't, but..." or "oh, okay, I'll be naughty". I don't think that eating a slice of cake with your coffee is going to put you on Santa's naughty list, but even I have found the icing of my cake laced with a little bit of guilt. In a culture of excess, it often feels like you can have all or nothing; we've given up on the happy medium in between. Cake is no longer a treat, it's a naughty naughty thing, and that makes it all the more enticing.

I have not yet submitted to that dreaded word "diet", and yet to a small extent, I still participate in that slightly absurd bargaining system to permit myself one of those 'sometimes treats'. Something that should be perfectly simple and is entirely essential to our existence has become scary and complicated. Eating is less pleasurable and moo anxiety-inducing.

The increased popularity of health food among the masses demonstrates that 'we' can see a problem, but we are blind to the solution because we're still bombarded with the ridiculous idea that food is the enemy. It seems to me that in order to shift the onus of responsibility, we have made food the enemy, not our own willpower. And so the health food craze has come to save the day; the white knight who will save our idea of food forever.

I have a few thoughts on the solution to this dilemma.