sonia | Link & discussion: Lockdown & food

Disordered Eating: Food in Isolation. by Theola Ojo, a student at the University of Cambridge.

Mental health, especially disordered relationships with food, is one of the biggest issues of isolation as people are faced with a scarcity or abundance of food; moving less, disrupted routines and the absence of surveillance from others.

Her strong, affirming conclusion:

Everyone going into self-isolation or our national lockdown should know that even at complete rest we need to nourish our brains and bodies; restrictions don’t solve anxieties and it’s okay if you don’t want to do home workouts because movement should be joyful. Above all, gaining weight in quarantine, or ever, isn’t bad. It is only the negative connotations surrounding weight gain in our fatphobic society that is.

I thought I had more to say about this, but maybe she covers it. Maybe I need to say, I struggle with my eating patterns. My mom dieted a lot and my body is like hers and I also dieted a lot until I found HAES, sometime around the turn of the century. Before the pandemic, I had found a fairly functional pattern of eating that worked around my food intolerances and lots of movement that kept physical pain at bay and helped my mental health. I also got regular bodywork to help with chronic pain.

Lockdown upended all of that, and I'm relieved to see someone else talk about that. I feel like I've more or less gotten back to a functional pattern, although I miss the pre-pandemic amount of biking and movement I was doing as part of working and running errands. I'm naming that loss and that struggle, because part of the problem is that it's completely silent and invisible here alone in my house.