Eat Up: Food, Appetite and Eating What You Want

The point is that when you eat during stress and upset, that psychological anxiety can manifest itself as physical malaise.

Clearly appetite isn’t the only factor when it comes to choosing our food: we each have a whole vast web of beliefs, anxieties, morals and judgements that play into the decisions we make about what to eat.

It’s what makes women ‘power-hungry’ or ‘manipulative’ where men are ‘ambitious’ and ‘shrewd’.

We are animals, which means that we need energy from food in order to stay alive. It’s a crucial daily reminder that we are finite, physical things.

Try out speaking your mind when you’re alone – talk to yourself in the mirror, saying things like ‘I would like you to go down on me, and I want the last slice of the strudel.’ No doubt some people, probably guys, will be thrown off balance by your forthrightness. Who cares. Eat their leftovers. If they carry on judging you, eat them, too.

This quasi-religious impulse comes through tellingly in the rituals of wellness. The church walls carry the stations of the cross, and the sermons fall into well-worn ruts of the sermon, prayer and scripture. There is a considered deliberation to everything that happens, and even the smallest act is cloaked in ceremony, from the altar cloth to the

But the food narratives we create when we shop, cook and eat don’t need to be exotic, expensive or rarefied. They shouldn’t be estranged from the humdrum, ugly, familiar mess of everyday life. They don’t even have to taste good. The important thing is giving yourself time to imagine your food, to touch, taste and smell the ingredients, and to reall

Often, mindful eating is a tactic used to encourage people to eat less (‘Listen to your stomach,’ they say, ‘and you’ll realise you aren’t even hungry’), but you can’t really use it as a tool. Mindful eating is something that will sometimes awaken a fierce hunger inside of you, and other times have you satisfied after a single square of chocolate.

These foods might not be packed with precisely the vitamins and minerals and macronutrients that your body really needs right then and there, but they will make your soul soar, and sometimes – when the very fabric of your life is one big snotty tissue – that’s all you really need.

Our appetite is only human, but that’s just the thing: unless you’re a man, those hungry, smelly, normal human things are taboo. Somehow, as women, we’re expected to be superhuman – perfectly engineered, low-maintenance, minimalist machines for life – in exchange for the ‘privilege’ of being declared less-than by the society that spawned us.