Why did no one tell me this about food?

Unravelling years of body and food obsession with a nutritional coach...

I have something to admit: I have a special someone in my life. This special someone understands me in different ways to my husband. They notice things about my body that no one else does. I send them some of my most revealing pictures, and they reply back with little heart emojis that fill me with joy. They are often the first person I speak with in the morning and sometimes the last person before I go to bed at night. I share with them my secret fears- and dirtiest thoughts.

I think this person may well change my life.

Her name is Nicky and I have high hopes for our relationship. After all, I am letting her into a place I allow few to enter. On paper I suppose you would call her a nutritional coach. But really she is more than that. She’s part therapist, part friend; a woman about roughly the same age of me who knows what it feels like to grow up with screwed notions about body positivity (that means being thin, right?) and a pathological fear about what you put in your mouth.

Nicky teaches Crossfit at the gym down the road. She has a filthy sense of humour and a body that is slim and sensible. She adores her body, I can see that. They have an easy, loving relationship. She never speaks badly of her bum or her stomach. She adores her boobs and is aware her legs are both a thing of beauty and something to be nourished and nurtured with squats and short dresses. I want that, I have thought on many occasions. I want to have the sort of relationship with my body that is based on respect and kindness and all the other emotions you reserve for those you love.

I had heard whispers that Nicky ‘did’ nutrition. People talked about eating more with Nicky but losing weight. One woman told me Nicky had completely transformed her relationship with food. And there were big, mountain-sized men who said she’d changed their lives.

Was I skeptical about a nutritional coach? Of course. I’d been here many times before. And it has never worked. I mean, not really. They worked in so much as I lost weight, slotted back into pants I had long given up on and felt lighter and healthier. But they didn’t fix anything. Telling you to eat turkey bolognese, ‘ditch sugar’ and ‘take a Tupperware filled with crudités on your next mini break,’ will help you lose weight. It will also help you lose friends and alienate your very soul. But that sort of advice doesn’t fix a person who has a hopelessly broken relationship with food. It just feeds further into the spin cycle of ‘good’ and bad’ behaviours that have plagued me since I was 14 years old. (Tupperware of crudités is good. A king-sized Cadbury’s Caramel bar shared with a loved one is bad.)

Which meant that within months I’d always veer wildly off plan, falling back into the motherly arms of cake and biscuits and all the things I know bring me deep comfort when I’m jangled.

So why give Nicky a chance? Because dear reader I was desperate. Am desperate.