Feeding My Family

This year I turned 30. My life has been really great, but one challenge that I have faced since my youth is body insecurity, which naturally made my relationship with food a bit tumultuous… okay, very tumultuous. I am going to share with you my food journey and how embracing my love for food, cooking, and community, helps me lead my family of four into vibrant living and health.

The first moment that I experienced shame regarding how I looked was on a family vacation. At six years of age, I would swim all day by the lake house in the hot sun with my cousins. Suddenly, looking down at my red and white striped swimsuit I noticed my stomach had grown a little pudgy. My eyes were opened. For the first time I felt self-conscious about my body. As a pre-teen, photos were embarrassing reminders that my body was not what I wanted it to be. I thought my face looked puffy and swollen like a balloon. Joining a volleyball team quickly got me into shape from all the conditioning and long tournament days but a new challenge emerged: now it became difficult to not compare my body to the other players. I was never the tallest, the thinnest, or the most athletic. At the same time, I loved food! As a kid, I would beg to watch cooking shows and loved to throw parties, but what I most enjoyed was the time spent in the kitchen with my mother. She was famous in our community for her soup recipes and at one point she was selling mason jars of soup for people to buy at our church. One day, in preparation for these large pots of soup we cut onions and cried until our make-up ran down our faces. Our laughter filled the kitchen as we threw open the windows for fresh air.

Unfortunately, joyful food experiences were quickly associated with the feeling of my body never being good enough. Wishing away my love for food, I rationalized, if only I didn’t love food so much I would have more self-control around it. The irony is that my passion for food would be a tool that would help me to heal my body and my mind. After high school, I moved around a lot–living with some family members at times, living with friends at times. Like a chameleon, I would adapt to whatever environment that I was in, in regards to health. For example, if someone I lived with was on a diet, I was more than happy to join in. If I lived with a runner, it was easy to tag along. When it came to making health decisions on my own, I didn’t take much initiative When I tried to improve my habits I quickly felt overwhelmed and discouraged. Sometimes I would start a diet but quickly lose motivation and inevitably fail. It was frustrating, and I hate being frustrated with things that I love…like food.

During college, I studied abroad for several months in Oaxaca, Mexico while I was finishing my Spanish degree. Each student was assigned to a host family who served us traditional homecooked meals. Breakfast was a meal I often neglected at home, normally just rushing out the door with a cup of coffee, but here in Oaxaca, breakfast was served promptly at 8 am and lunch was served at 1 pm. Fascinated by the cooking methods and the authentic dishes I begged to participate in the kitchen duties so that I could learn some of the recipes, but I was quickly shooed away by Martita, the house grandma who was also our chef. There were no food groups restricted; no gluten-free, or dairy-free, and no accommodations. We ate meals made with whole (or minimally processed) foods based on locality, seasonality, and affordability. Surprisingly, the desire to snack throughout the day and the cravings I was constantly battling at home were diminished when I started the day with a hearty meal. Throughout the trip, I began to feel confident in my own skin. My weight came into balance and my inflammation reduced.