My Story

As long as I can remember, I’ve always loved to cook. Four years old fresh out of Nursery, I can remember delighting in helping my Mum make scones and top-hats (if you’re a non-Irish reader, this likely means nothing to you and I imagine you are now envisioning me as a hat-maker at the age of five).

From as young as ten, I have had complex feelings about my body. Does it look like it should? Am I as thin as my classmates? If not, why not and what does that mean? As time went on, these feelings have peaked and troughed. My confidence has soared and plummeted. Naturally, these feelings lead to a challenging relationship with food. My enjoyment of working with and tasting good food remained intact, but in many ways had been tainted. Every delicious mouthful laced with feelings of guilt, shame; always questioning. Attaching morality to food is something that has become the norm in our society. And it’s sad.

I became more interested in how to nourish my body from around sixteen. If I’m being honest, a lot of this was housed in a diet-mentality, but this has morphed and transformed into something more – something healthier (both physically and mentally). Having completed a Bachelors degree in Food Science & Nutrition and a Postgraduate degree in Dietetics, I have more knowledge now than I did before. And surprisingly, this has helped my relationship with food. I now realise that science does not show food as something to be feared as the media would have us believe. Having a very real first-hand experience of disordered relationships with food, I can empathise and connect with the many women who are also walking through this. How is it a society obsessed with food, with the multi-billion junk food businesses booming, also expects unattainable “perfection” in our bodies?

“Health and wellness” has many definitions depending on who you ask. But to me, it’s the balance between physical, emotional and mental wellbeing. Yes, it means recognising certain foods eaten more regularly will be beneficial for physical (and I believe mental and emotional) health, but it also means not achieving physical health, or a thin ideal, at the expense of your happiness or mental sanity.

I am absolutely passionate about women realising their worth – something I have always and maybe always will struggle with – and that it is something totally unrelated to how you look or how much you weigh. I want food to be about enjoyment and nourishment, not punishment and restriction.