My long, messy breakup with calorie counting
Found this in my drafts and I suppose I was nervous to press publish. So here goes x
TW: This essay discusses calorie counting, and restrictive eating.
I don’t fully remember the day my obsession with food began. Was it the moment that I walked onto campus at the University of Miami? Joined the dance team? When I filled my fridge with slimfast, even though I was by all accounts…slim? Or if it was just something that slowly happened over time.
All I knew was that one moment I ate whatever - and whenever - I wanted, and the next I lived for little check marks in my agenda.
One checkmark = went to the gym
Another checkmark = ate ‘well’
Bonus checkmark = ate ‘really well’
God how I loved when those happy little checks that stared back at me.
Now, eating ‘well’ isn’t inherently a bad thing. But I suppose that my definition of ‘well’ being 700-1k calories a day was a little fucked up…in hindsight.
As I’m writing this now I’m thinking to myself…perhaps my unhealthy relationship to food was actually an eating disorder? But for someone who LOVES labels, I don’t really feel like giving myself one.
By my sophomore year I knew the number of calories in every food I ingested by heart.
Let’s see if I’ve still got it:
One banana: 90 calories
One egg—with yolk: 65 calories
One avocado: 240 calories
Pack of Quaker Oats Instant oatmeal (my breakfast/lunch/dinner obsession): 120–160 calories
My brain calculated every meal. This could be a typical day.
On a “good” week, when the checkmarks added up and the numbers stayed low, I felt amazing. In control. Powerful, even. Like I was winning at life.
But of course the high never lasted. One “bad” day and it was all undone.
I always told myself I had it under control. That if I ever slipped into really dangerous behavior, I’d notice and tell someone. And because I always toed the line, I think I slipped by undetected.
But I minimized parts of my social life to keep up the front — skipping brunch because it was my sacred “gym time.” I even remember packing something like a hundred packets of instant oatmeal to bring with me on a semester abroad. To Italy, of all places.
For any friend reading this now, if I ever made you feel uncomfortable, I’m sorry.
By junior year, my body started rebelling. I had stomach issues and ended up needing to get a colonoscopy. I was diagnosed with chronic constipation, and left with prescriptions for fiber, probiotics, and Miralax. And still, somehow, I managed to slip by.
At home, my family didn’t suspect anything either. Probably because when I wasn’t eating “well,” I was eating everything. At group dinners or family gatherings, I could never manage moderation. Seconds, thirds, always leaving stuffed and ashamed. From the outside, it just looked like I had a healthy appetite.
After graduation, I moved to NYC, and my body changed. Free office food, after-work drinks — while I may have dodged the horribly dubbed “freshman 15,” I didn’t dodge the real world one.
So my hyper-fixation on food only intensified. At this point I was bored of oatmeal, and the mega-restriction of college wasn’t sticking anymore.
But luckily (she says dripping with irony), it was so easy to diet. Every magazine, online article, and kitchen counter, offered a new fix.
Atkins, South Beach.
Let us not forget the cabbage soup diet, the grapefruit diet, the apple cider vinegar diet.
Every article that said you can drop ten pounds in one week
Whole 30, Paleo (my chosen favorite)
I tried them all.
Restrict. Eat everything. Restrict. Eat everything.
My mind was so consumed with food. I labeled everything - good, bad, really bad.
And if I forgot the calories, American menus reminded me.
And if the menus didn’t, the conversation did.
At every dinner table, someone was modifying their order. Dressing on the side. Hold the butter. Can I get a half portion?
“My diet starts tomorrow,” someone would joke after pizza.
Food talk was everywhere, and still is.
Then I moved abroad. And everything changed.
I’ve been in Amsterdam almost ten years now. No glaring calorie-count menus. Friends cooking with butter. People happily drinking non-alcoholic beers. A beverage with calories but no buzz! Unthinkable in the States when I moved, but totally normal here.
People eat when they’re hungry, stop when they’re not. If there’s cake, the only comment is “Fucking Lekker” (“tasty”).
It took years, but slowly I forgot. The number of calories in a slice of pizza, my password to MyFitnessPal, the shame spirals.
I’m sure parts of this will always be with me, and you never know when you might fall back into old behaviours.
But what I do know is I feel lighter. My mind has space again. My body feels steadier. I’m way less bloated, my weight’s been stable for four years, and the chronic constipation diagnosis I got years ago is gone :)
These days I don’t count calories. I count orgasms, laughs, glasses of wine, moments of pleasure. And honestly? Those are the only numbers I care about adding up anymore.
I know I’m not the only one who’s lived or who is living with food as the main character in their brain. If this resonates with you, I just want you to know that you’re not alone. And it is possible to feel at home in your body again.
Thank you for sharing your story with food! I started hating my body (thighs especially) at 11, dieting at 13, my body never let me be anorexic so binge eating disorder all the way, with lots of exercising. Then I tried going vegetarian at 14, vegan at 15, which were obsessions too, but I stopped obsessing about the amount of food, and I found my best friend, now fiance, which also helped me change priorities. Ironically, I had the most weight on the vegan diet, afterwards I went back to vegetarianism and stayed with it as I was sick of meat anyway, and my relationship with food is basically restored. The only trigger is stepping on the scale, so I absolutely avoid it unless it's a doc appointment. The thoughts start flowing out otherwise. What also complicated things was that at 16, I knew I wasn't fat, but my brain still labeled me as so. Only during the pandemic in my uni years, did I have the time and space to realize I'm trans, and what I deemed fat until then, was actually the hatred for female developed thighs and hips (aka dysphoria). I'm still figuring things out, have a myriad of mental health issues, but at least I can let my basic need of eating do its own thing.