The Real Why

In 2019, I confessed to my therapist that my business was semi-born of an eating disorder and cried throughout the entire session.

I have lived with disordered thoughts about my body since I was 16. Harmless, really, eating without restriction but aware of my choices. Opting for mango instead of doughnuts and buttery toast like my friends, often wishing I ‘could’. Equally active and enjoying exercise but quietly anxious to miss my scheduled gym days. Behaviour I felt was normal, a ‘healthy’ attitude towards food and body image. I never saw it as an imposition or restrictive - definitely not a “diet” (clearly a lifestyle) - mere sacrifices that had to be made to both feel as good as I could among my insecurities and appear how I wanted other people to see me. Cellulite in particular is my nemesis. I believed what they said and went to lengths to prevent it: body brushing, lymphatic drainage massages - I even used a hand-held machine! Whatever the influence, certain ingredients are ‘better’ for me and others are not. Quite frankly, sugar scares me. The main culprit for making me feel subjectively ‘fat’ and thus increasing my chances of becoming subjectively ugly.

In 2012, during my first year of University, my fear of not being good enough - failing in every aspect of my life and being too unattractive to love, not to sound dramatic - intensified and I succumbed to the pressure of second year results counting towards my final degree. The more it built the more I crumbled and eventually I became anorexic. What started as wanting to lose a bit of weight became a compulsion I could not stop; I remember crying to my friend, wishing to be like my old self, I missed how I used to be; the first time I could not cope with what was going on in my head. It was my responsibility to work hard, be liked, belong and impress others, to earn my place and feel worthy of it. Controlling my body was easy. It gave me the self-assurance and security I thought I wanted.

Three years later in 2015 - with a less restrictive diet, less external worry, one therapist down (still no signs of my period, but, priorities) - my intrusive thoughts were quiet but had never left. Aspiring to be like the influencers of the time, I increasingly began to compare myself; I wanted what they have and literally copied their lifestyle. Often scrolling through Instagram accounts to find the food permission I was looking for. More often than not, I positioned my body in front of a mirror and posed for the camera to see if I could and did look the same. (Not the sought-after kind, I assure you). My self-esteem lack went as far as fixating on their diet. If they drank coffee, I allowed it, too; if they practised yoga, I - the opposite to a yogi - attempted headstands against my wall (and even considered becoming an instructor); and if for whatever reason they avoided dairy, so did I, banished straight to the (bin) naughty list. Given the majority were vegan, I ate my coconut yoghurt feeling rather sorry for myself.

Under the guise of ‘healthy’ I became more strict, limiting. I fooled myself into living vicariously through someone else, and this charade stuck. Scrutinising back-of-pack ingredients and avoiding anything deemed ‘unhealthy’; the ‘better’ I eat, the ‘better’ I am. #CleanEating, now coined as Orthorexia, once again was something to feel good about. It gave me purpose, and a sense of accomplishment for following its rules.

Making ‘healthy’ Nutella came with the territory. As well as finding recipes online unnecessarily sweet, it began as an experiment to improve my own diet. Satisfying cravings for ‘treats’ I restricted whilst preventing me from feeling subsequent guilt, regret, or, worse, ‘wobbly’. Although none of this was my intention, the resulting nut butter exceeded all expectations, accidentally, it was next-level good - more than this I came to rely on it. It picked me up when I felt down and became one of the only ‘indulgent’ food items I trusted to binge on in the evenings. So long as it was ‘healthy’ I wanted to eat jar after jar, unafraid of the consequences; it filled me with confidence, quite literally. The kind of product that makes all of your worries go away, feeling self-conscious and having body shame is not even worth it when it tastes as good as it does.

Setting up a business is something I knew I had to do, I felt responsible to share my discovery. Serving as both my personal solution to caring less about body image, and my professional muse for creating no-added-sugar-or-naturally-sourced-sweeteners food products. It was never about the nut butter, had this feeling been triggered by any other recipe, I guarantee I would have had the same instinct to set up a business. And it was never about the money - although I should have considered this more having done enough unpaid work experience to annoy me. I wanted my nut butter to reach as many people as possible to help make them feel as liberated and uplifted as I did.

Except nobody talked openly about fear of food or weight gain. Admitting to my trail of thought could only prompt questions of concern - and part of me wondered whether they would be right to. What if there is something wrong with me? What if I solved a problem that is only a problem for me? When asked why my business exists, I failed to tell the whole truth, I was shy to try. If it is just me, similar to 2012, I wanted to protect myself from repeat worry, oh God there she goes again. Blending in is far more appealing than becoming a target; even I understood that having an eating disorder as co-founder was not the best marketing strategy.