Love Fat is now published, and I am going through all the parts that I edited out for one reason or another and posting them in my Blog.

Some things are obvious as to why the were cut out. Others, not so. This one just did not seen to fit in with the context of the chapter that I was writing. I do however think that this is a really important part of learning to eat normally—eating what others eat. I’m not implying that one has to eat nothing but fast food—as that is what most of the Western world seems to favour—but in moderation even this is fine. Realistically, if I can cook my husband a recent, balanced meal, and not eat it myself, am kidding myself that I am recovered. And that is exactly what I did for a number of years.

Cooking Dinner?

I cooked Matt fried chicken with vegetables and potatoes that evening, but I myself sat down to eat bread and low-fat hummus with a salad. This was pretty standard practice. Surely just being able to sit down and eat with my husband was enough to prove that I was recovered? I didn’t have to eat exactly the same as him, did I?

I couldn’t. I didn’t like the same foods a Matt did.

Matt liked to eat meat, and I would never begrudge him that. I, on the other hand, could still not bring myself to eat foods that were high in saturated fat. I had introduced salmon into my diet for a while after reading that I really should eat Omega-3 fats—but then I had taken it out again after reading that the seas were toxic and that a company called AquaBounty were working on a genetically modified breed of salmon. Everybody knows that genetically modified foods are the devil, right?

Let’s not even get into GMOs in this novel—I think I have covered enough controversial food concepts for one book. I’ll write another all about GMOs and why they are probably not what you think they are next year.

Anyway, back to dinner time. I never ate what I cooked for Matt. Well, that is not strictly true, sometimes if I were cooking him vegetables I’d eat some of those, but I would always have them with something low-fat and “healthy” rather than the meat and potatoes or rice that he enjoyed. For many years I kidded myself that this was okay, and that I way better. I wasn’t.

What is more, is that I had very much settled for this. I assumed that I would never eat what he ate. I accepted that I would not be able to have these things. I am happy to say that I was wrong there. Being able to eat meat and fatty foods for dinner was an achievable stage of recovery that I at that point had not even dreamed I could have.

What is really telling is the extent to which I could convince myself that I did or did not like a food. Sausages, pizza, pork chops, fried chicken, burgers were all things I would protest that I simply did not enjoy. And I really believed that. I can tell you now, that I was fibbing to myself. The truth is that I like to eat all of those things.

Sadly, had anyone have argued with me back then, they would have probably wished that they had kept their mouth shut.  I’d flare up like a beacon of low-fat science and defend my healthy-eating temple with venom. There is nothing more vicious than a hungry person defending her right to be hungry.