I’m sure that anyone who reads this blog can see how much I love food – and specifically, good, healthy, fresh food. But something that may not be as apparent here is that throughout my life, I’ve struggled with my relationship with food. From the time I was very young and into my twenties I battled compulsive eating, restricted dieting, and huge insecurities around my weight.
I believe that disordered eating comes in many forms and my greatest struggle has always been emotional eating. Over the years through dedicated personal work, I’ve been able to find other ways to fill that “inner void” that doesn’t include overeating — and this is exactly why topics like self-care, body love, and moving your body in a way that feels good (instead of using exercise as punishment) are so close to my heart.
A few weeks ago I came across Andie Mitchell on Instagram and was intrigued about her book, It Was Me All Along. I picked it up over the weekend and spent all day Sunday reading it because I seriously could not put it down. I’m not quite sure what I expected, but I instantly fell in love with her brutally honest account of her life and weight loss journey.
It Was Me All Along begins with Andie’s life as a young child and shares her intense childhood growing up with her father who battles alcoholism. From a young age, Andie falls in love with food and often uses food as a way to cope with the stress in her life. As a young adult she finds herself morbidly obese and after many attempts to lose weight, she finally begins to shift her life in a way that allows her to not only lose weight, but sustain a healthy lifestyle overall.
The reason I wanted to share this with you is because I love the message she leaves readers with at the end:
“I read and hear accounts of others who’ve lost a tremendous amount of weight, like me. And most often, they speak about their former selves – the bigger ones – in a very detached way, as if the here and now is indefinitely better and more lovely than the past. In many ways, perhaps it is.
But here’s the truth I’ve come to know: fat or thin, it was me all along.”
Whether or not you can relate to her particular story around weight, I think as humans we experience so many common feelings like sadness and isolation, thoughts of unworthiness and imposter syndrome, the need for love, acceptance, and validation, and insecurities around how others perceive us.
What if instead of pushing away these parts of ourselves that we consider to be less-than-desirable, we embrace them as parts of us and recognize that they only make us stronger in the end?
Specifically, I think for those of us (like myself) who do struggle with our relationship to food, our bodies, and really, ourselves, this all starts with accepting these parts of ourselves and learning to love ourselves because of these things instead of in spite of them.
I thought Andie’s memoir was important to share not because of its messages around health/weight loss, but because it’s a book about finding yourself and learning to value yourself in a culture that has very strict standards of beauty. If you’re interested in checking It Was Me All Along you can find it on Amazon, as well as local bookstores and your library.
But one thing you should know before reading it: Andie’s beautiful writing will definitely make you want cupcakes. 
The post What I’m Reading – It Was Me All Along: A Memoir appeared first on In Sonnet's Kitchen.