On Compassion, On Cooking; How food has shaped my relationship with my mental health

“How food and cooking have shaped my relationship with my mental health”

Growing up, dealing with weight issues was tough for me. I was the big kid who couldn’t run, wasn’t confident enough to talk to girls, didn’t feel comfortable around certain friends and family because of their comments, ate in secret and for the most part of youth, and hated the way I looked. It made me super anxious about being in public, and while I didn’t recognize it at the time, these things started to take a toll on my mental health. And because I couldn’t recognize it, I couldn’t talk about it. I wasn’t particularly exposed to spaces where feelings were openly and honestly discussed, especially as guy. 

Now though, I can do that. We talk a lot more about mental health issues and I love it. At the same time, I’ve struggled with finding a place to have conversations on what I’ve had difficulty with. Being an African man, finding other guys like me who have struggled with eating disorders and body image issues hasn’t been easy. I don’t doubt that we’re out there. It might just be hard to talk about it; trust me I know.

**********

Food has always been a big part of my family. It may in fact be synonymous with our last name. I sometimes think about how my cousins and I would gather on the floor at my dad’s parents’ house. We’d share a loaf of sweet yellow bread, our individual plates of oily peppery stew, and bite sized pieces of meat. At my mum’s parents house, we had perfectly ripened fried plantain (dodo) and fried eggs - an unmatched pair. We’d layer our eggs between our plantain and make little sandwiches. Most times we’d (at least I did) add ketchup because we were kids.  

“Being an African man, finding other guys like me who have struggled with eating disorders and body image issues hasn’t been easy”

But wherever it was, what stood out to me is how we always gathered for food. It didn’t have to be a party. We just went to see either grandparent on a Sunday afternoon and they’d always be ready to feed us and anyone else who came that day.

At home, food played an even bigger role in our family dynamic and my relationships with my immediate parents and siblings. My mum’s signature jollof was it. Her crayfish stew ? Unrivaled. You’re talking smokey crayfish soaked in a stew that’s just spicy enough to match the sweetness of onions it’s fried with *insert drooling emoji*. My mother’s cooking is simple, but it hits the spot every time. I sometimes wonder if when she experimented on her jollof recipe (we all have one I think, kind of a rite of passage), she considered how I would take elements of her cooking and infuse them with mine. She loves cooking simple delicious meals, but eating the most unusual things like frog legs and I definitely picked that up from her. That, and my love for late night carrot cake and tea is most likely my inheritance and to be honest, I’m not mad. 

“My mother’s cooking is simple, but it hits the spot every time.”

With my dad, on the other hand, I think sometimes he cooks because he needs to. It’s one of the many ways he speaks to and shares himself with us. He’s not a simple cook. He’s a person of process. His prep game is mad strong.  Growing up in Lagos, Nigeria we’d go to his meat guy at Costain. Costain is hard to describe. Is it a meat market? Is it a butcher’s store? Is it just land underneath a bridge where you could choose your ram, cow, chicken, turkey, guinea fowl whatever you wanted, and have it carved up for you in no time? The details are trivial. I was more blown away by how he picked his ram of the day from, watched his guy slaughter and carve it up and then head home to help him prep. It’d be a whole day’s work that culminated in a pot of pepper soup thick with offals. Each spoon was half fatty goat meat, half spicy broth, the flavours elevated by hints of efinrin (African Basil) we grew in our garden. Pair that with some Goodies pita bread and you’re in heaven. When he comes to visit here in Canada, he spends hours fishing. He’s out at sunrise and back by midday with cooler full of cleaned fish ready to fry, grill, stew, you name it. Half of our conversations, our interactions are about food. He’s taught me a lot, but hands down my jollof is better than his, and I will teach him this one day.

“Each spoon was half fatty goat meat, half spicy broth, the flavours elevated by hints of efinrin (African Basil) we grew in our garden.”

My brother? My brother...MY BROTHER is hands down the best cook in my family. I have the utmost respect for his dedication to the art of cooking. Demi, after you na you. My sister though, I feel is like my mum. She cooks when she needs to and she makes a mean curried goat I hear. That and her egusi are allegedly quality dishes. I haven’t tried either, so she has to sort that out. 

Bottom line? We all love food. We all nurtured an appreciation for food and what it meant to us as a family, but the challenging part of all this was that while I grew up around all this love for food, I didn’t feel safe expressing my love for it. I heard the term “orobo” (fat person) or the phrase “ah you’re eating again?” One too many times. And now looking back, I gotta say the amount of body shaming kids get is unnecessary. Cut that shit out.  Speaking from experience, it can create an unhealthy relationship with both themselves and food. Both things necessary for survival.   

 I eventually lost a ton of that weight when I was 12 and with that, finally came all the acceptance I craved people around me.  But what they don’t tell you is that that deep down the internalized shame still lives on. I grew up with a very fraught relationship with food. I loved it, I loved cooking it, being around it, wanted to,  but I couldn’t enjoy it. It was a huge part of my identity and I couldn’t embrace it.  

“We all nurtured an appreciation for food and what it meant to us as a family, but I [still] didn’t feel safe expressing my love for it.”

I think what stands out to me now when I think back is the boundaries that were put around just what I could eat.  I remember wanting to eat a Snickers bar many years ago and being told that it had a certain amount of calories and so if I ate it, it’s a meal. Done. No more food until  it was time to eat again - a schedule, which I couldn’t control. I wasn’t even 10 yet and I was counting calories and watching my waistline. To this day, I struggle with buying clothes that actually fit. I’ve been stuck in this idea of what my plate should look like; vegetables and protein, and what my waist should always look like - size 32. The most fucked up part about this is that to be human, to be normal means that you don’t ever stay the same. You grow, you make different choices about food, about clothing, about what you like and what you don’t. 

For me, when I talk about disordered eating, it looks like cutting meals, taking whole portions of food and throwing half out before I eat, working out right after I’ve eaten something “fatty.” Ha. I remember I used to look for quiet places at gatherings, at home, wherever I was, and do push ups till I max out just so I could eat. Like I had to earn it. It’s weird. Other times it can look like not eating throughout the day and trying to sneak in meals at night when everyone else is asleep.  I didn’t talk about this for years and even though I’m seemingly healthy now, it’s still hard to be that vulnerable. I don’t think I fit the stereotype of someone with these issues, so having to validate these things to people is exhausting. 10/10 do not recommend. That said, I just want to eat when I want to and not care about what anyone would say. It’s taken time but I think I’m finally here. With therapy, a lot of unlearning, and the support of my friends, I’ve felt less alone. More capable of being myself. 

 I work part-time at a restaurant right now.  The other half of my time is spent working with people with young adults who have experiences with mental health challenges. For me to be good at both my jobs, I’ve had to acknowledge my limits in both areas, and keep finding spaces to grow. 

“When I cook for people, it’s how I share myself. It’s me letting you know that I feel safe with you. That I appreciate you.”

At the restaurant, my current challenge in improving my skills is tasting food. The same food I stopped myself from eating for years. Can you imagine? My anxiety is through the roof sometimes. Years ago, for example,  I stopped salting my rice and pasta. That sort of turned into not eating both at all for a while because I thought it made me unhealthy. Now I’m a goon on the pasta station at work— ask about me. My wrists tell the tale of forty-two thousand pans of pasta tossed.  Often my chef will yell, “Funmi taste your pasta water!”, or “season your sauce” My unseasoned palate didn’t know how much salt I’d need, and this hurt. I thought back to cutting salt for my health. I was a healthy teenager and now, something simple as tasting my pasta water, or any dish I serve, has pushed me to break through that mindset and realize that maybe this is how I survive. 

Sometimes that survival translates to cooking at home for friends. When I cook for people, it’s how I share myself. It’s me letting you know that I feel safe with you. That I appreciate you. That I want to communicate with you, and seeing you enjoy my food is how I do that. I’m not the most expressive person with words. My grandmother used to sit in her office on Sundays as crowds of people ate. Sometimes I’m her. Sometimes I’m my mother. A quick meal that hits the spot is all I need to show you I care. Other times, I’m my brother or my dad. But whoever I'm channeling, I’m about the process, and this has been the most healing for me.  

“ I was in therapy, but I needed this too.”

Now once a month or so, I’ll save enough money to buy ingredients I haven’t cooked with before. Planning the meal days, sometimes weeks ahead, I’d wake up on a Saturday morning and head over to  Kensington market in Toronto. I prep and cook all day and maybe invite a friend over to share this with me. Over the past few months, this has saved me. My mental health was in the gutter a while. I was in therapy, but I needed this too. Cooking at work and cooking at home was a huge help. I spoke to my therapist about this recently and I think I actually love cooking and working at a restaurant because it’s healthy way for me to interact with food. 

I think the most important lesson here, and the bridge between cooking and mental health for me is how much goes into my “final product”. In cooking, my food is better when I prep ahead. When I’m mindful of how each component will play into the dish, I can set my mise en place and build the meal accordingly. The outcome is not always perfect, and that’s okay. As long as I’ve got my mise, I can always try again.  Working on my mental health is similar. My mise en place or in this case “wellness plan” could look like weeks of self-reflection, countless conscious attempts to be different, rest, healthy boundaries, self-compassion, and support.  Even if the outcome of all of this falls short, at least my set up is there; I’m ready to try again. 

“I think the bridge between cooking and mental health for me is how much goes into my “final product.” Even if the outcome of all of this falls short, at least my set up is there; I’m ready to try again.”

At work, somewhere in the middle of all the madness, the chef is yelling “1 minute to the plate!” and I’m pulling up baskets of boiling pasta, throwing them into 7 different pans. My co-worker and I toss and taste, season if necessary and then it’s on the plate. Somewhere in the middle of this all, I’ll have an out-of body experience. I see myself improving. My body is moving ten times faster than I can think. I see the evidence of the hundreds of times I’ve done this before and now , maybe each dish is perfect 8/10 times. Like now, maybe I have 8/10 good days. But those last two days, like those last two plates may just be shit. I may hate how I look, judge myself for eating something, still deal with anxious thoughts around food. What I cooked may be sent back to be remade, or the chef may taste it and ask me to remake it on the fly. But I always go again. 

I don’t know that I want to be a full time chef, but I don’t know that I can ever not be around food.  The discipline, the madness, the process, the consistency, the failures, the growth, all the things you need to embrace in therapy, I keep finding when I cook.