The cycle of food fear
Honestly, the way we relate to food is so toxic. For most of my teens and 20s, eating was either an indulgence I felt guilty about or a logistical strategy I had to plan out. I spent years obsessing over belly fat—chugging green tea because Instagram told me it worked, cutting out carbs after a friend judged my lunch, and doing intermittent fasting. It’s giving major 'nutritional chaos.'
I vividly remember being 19 on a family trip in Paris, sitting in front of a mirror and literally wishing I could rip the fat off my thighs. That was my baseline: seeing my own body as the enemy.
The shift in Montana
Everything changed five years later. I was living in Belgrade, Montana, working for the hunting brand MeatEater. Inflation was making meat prices skyrocket—ground beef prices jumped nearly 80% since 2020—but for me, the shift was more personal.
In 2021, I went hunting with my dad in Wyoming. I shot a white-tailed doe, and as I knelt beside her, I realized she was packed with fat. It was her survival fuel, a healthy layer meant to keep her alive through the winter. It wasn’t 'bad' or 'unnecessary'—it was essential. That realization hit me like a ton of bricks. We’re taught that any weight fluctuation means we’re 'broken,' but nature literally functions on these cycles.
Why it matters
Psychologist Dr. Hannah Carl points out that we’re completely disconnected from how our food is actually procured. We live in a world where we treat food as either 'fuel' or 'the enemy,' using language like 'cheating' or 'indulging' while talking about dinner. As author Elise Loehnen notes, the old 'calories in, calories out' math is outdated and simplistic, yet we continue to push women toward an impossible standard of perfection. Trading a decade of your life just to avoid being 'categorically obese' isn't just sad—it’s a wake-up call that our culture’s obsession with body size is highkey damaging. It’s time we stop pathologizing our bodies and start respecting the actual biology of survival.
