Dining Hall Struggles: Healing My Relationship With Food

Photograph by Dana Albala

My first love was food. My Venezuelan father, a skilled home cook with a truly inspirational passion for food, would feed my curious, young self extraordinarily rich dishes packed with spices that express intricate ancestral and cultural stories spanning back generations with a single bite. My mother, a hardworking role model who deserves everything she’s worked for, rewarded herself on weekends by dining at the city’s trendiest, most upscale restaurants. Tagging along with her, I experienced extravagant three course meals, superb customer service, and the joy of tasting exquisite meals with the rest of my table. I formed a one-of-a-kind connection with food through my individual relationships with each of my parents; every bite was a religious experience. I eagerly anticipated the next meal and put my heart and soul into every dish I prepared. Food was my refuge, dearest friend, and personal retreat.

Ironically, I do believe this would be an enchanting fairy tale if I didn’t go into detail about the conflict of food becoming my prince charming. While my childlike wonder with food was once seen to be endearing, it quickly faded as I entered adolescence. Society tends to turn against teenage girls, and as a result, leaving them hyper aware of the space they take up. As I grew older, my relatives advised me to “Watch what I eat,” “Be careful not to gain too much weight,” “Be quiet and listen up,” “Quit crying. It's not cute.” 

At the family dinner table, I became increasingly insecure. The sentence “Farah loves to eat; she never gets full” became less of a fun quirk and grew a negative connotation. As I got older, I became aware of my female relatives’ complex relationship with food, as well as how they projected it onto me. In familiar households, certain “food rules” were applied: don't eat too many carbs; in fact, don't eat rice with potatoes. You can't have eggs with avocado toast every day because it’s too high in fat. After dinner, you are only permitted three pieces of chocolate. The sugar content of the processed granola bars is excessive; don't pack them in your lunchbox every day. It goes on. If I was brave enough to go against even one of these dogmatic rules, I would be committing a sin. I don’t blame  my female friends and relatives for projecting these habits onto me because they are also victims of societal norms. No one is genuinely to blame for this situation, yet as women, we experience great guilt just from having one slice of pizza. Why is that? These behaviors can become a toxic religion that you might come to when your life takes an unexpected turn. This is exactly what happened to me during my first year of college.

I was eager to move to Boston for school alongside a massive group of first-year students with the same rush of adrenaline and naivete. Despite the fact that it was utterly surreal and everything I’d wished for, I instinctively felt stranded in this noisy city. I was in a single dorm, so I didn’t have a roommate to vent to at the end of the day like many of my peers; finding friends was much more difficult than I anticipated, and while I did manage to form a few lasting relationships, none of them compared to those I had back home. The days were getting shorter and colder. Suddenly, in the midst of the unfamiliarity, I went to what was familiar: food.

With the lack of supervision, it was easy for me to follow the strict food rules once more. However, in a dining hall setting, this easily escalated. I’d been comparing my eating habits to those around me: their food preferences, the amount of food they ate, and their body types. Eating in large groups made me feel self-conscious and in the midst of my winter loneliness, eating alone while everyone around me sat with their companions caused me to lose my appetite. The only thing I could manage was to upscale these rules, and before I knew it, I was feeling guilty for pouring almond milk in my coffee, keeping myself busy to avoid lunch, and prioritizing the treadmill above finishing my assignments. 

Here’s what they don’t tell you when you revert to that mindset, especially in college. They don’t tell you that your body is supposed to change in your twenties or that carbs and calories provide energy. That you are not a terrible person for not fitting into your beloved high school jeans, and skipping meals will result in you not being able to recall the slightest moment from a lecture due to nearly passing out or having the energy to get through a simple final presentation. Food will sustain you throughout your college experience, fuel you, and provide you with energy—energy to feel and to live rather than to simply survive. 

Perhaps I should have known that everyone’s metabolism and dietary needs are different. I’m maturing into my adult body and mature self. I want to pass all of my classes, write the most impressive honors thesis I can, and most importantly, I don’t want to feel obligated to spend the majority of my days exercising because of the guilt I felt over eating a fast-food meal. Because my weight isn’t a reflection of who I am, and while I temporarily lost my control, I gained life, I gained knowledge, and most of all, I gained what I was trying to find my freshman year: emotional fulfillment.