What I don't look for...

When I have high anxiety and have trouble craving food or having an appetite, I try to go to foods that are comfortable. That are easy. I try to eat foods that I know I love. Because even if I don’t feel the need to eat, I know that I will be able to eat certain foods with little to no problem.

During these times, I don’t look at labels or calories. I eat food to eat food. I think that there are so many stressors in life and food should not be one of them. When I don’t crave food, it doesn’t taste as good, making me crave things less. It’s an endless cycle. It can be very hard to manage healthy eating on campus when all the food is bland.

And when I say healthy eating, I mean healthy eating habits and not dieting or healthy foods. Campus food can suck. And with mushy dining hall foods and repetitive options in the student center, it makes it hard to find food I can swallow.

Food gets very boring. And I know. I need to eat. And I do. We all need to eat to survive. But food is about so much more than survival. 

Over winter break, my mom brought home donuts from a bakery a town over. And I am not a huge donut fan. I worked at Dunkin, I got tired of donuts. A donut is a donut. The donut from this little bakery was one of the best things I have ever had. 

During Thanksgiving break, we picked up bread from the Polish deli and after weeks of anxiety eating and not really being able to taste anything, it was one of the best things I ate all semester. 

There are moments when I find a certain food that just tastes really good. And it's moments like these where I think, this is why I eat food. Finding moments where food is food and is great. There is no anxiety telling me that I’m too nauseous to eat.

And that is why the only food rule I have is that I eat food.

No checking labels. No dieting. Eating because we need to eat and food tastes pretty good. And why should I deprive myself of good food? 

I never hated food and I don’t think I ever will.

Comments

  1. Mike TracyJanuary 31, 2024 at 9:33 PM

    in a way I'm kinda envious of you, not having to check every single label just see the ingredients. I have to check the label on pretty much everything I eat, I have a milk allergy, and if I have something that contains milk, well, I'm not gonna go into all of the details but needless to say, it doesn't end well. And the allergy is specific as well, its specifically one of the proteins of milk that I'm allergic to, so some packaging will say something like warning contains milk (whey) which means I actually can have that, but again I have to look at the packaging and double check and make sure that it's ok for me to eat. I'm envious of that freedom of being able to freely eat food because it tastes pretty good, as there are just some foods I'll never be able to eat simply because of the allergy

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