Thursday
11A M Puffy with a food hangover, I slug
lukewarm breakfast tea from a travel mug.
12PMCoffee with soya milk, vegan gluten-free
leek, mushroom and sweet potato tart – I say
I don’t mind it unheated (‘I love a cold tart!’)
but it tastes like sandpaper. I scoop off the leeks
and eat the depressing shell in the preserved
prison of Lincoln Castle and it makes good
sense because I’m in a prison of my appetites.
1PMMore Earl Grey, two-thirds of a ginger
‘detox’ bar that invites you to ‘slip into your
skinny jeans and enjoy!’ Why are they selling
this at a castle gift shop? But this is what
I deser ve after last night. And isn’t that the thing
about food diaries, a vaguely embarrassing
form? It’s not what we eat – it’s about what we
think we deserve, who we imagine we could
be, and the painful truth about who we are.
It wouldn’t be so humiliating to reveal what
we ate if we didn’t think our appetites were
dark, forbidden and altogether too much.
When I commit my meals to paper, I make the
wild leap towards being honest about what
I want. Imagine if we all told the truth about
our desires? The world would be lousy with
demand for pizza, Louis Vuitton-print furniture,
jungle cats kept as pets and – gasp! – love.
1.15PMTime to get lunch. I stroll down a street
whose claim to fame is its preserved medieval
architecture and, I now see, meat pies. I already
ate a pie: that grotesque
little sand tart, but oh,
it smells so good and
look at them sitting in
the window waiting for
me. So I walk in and ask,
‘How much is that meat
pie in the window?’
Soon it’s mine, a perfect,
delicious, warm lamb
pie, which tells a million
stories with its crust and
is on par with A&E’s healing powers. After one
bite I’m in ecstasy. After the second, I miss my
mom, the only person or thing that can rival this
pie for comfort. After the third, I shed a tear.
For all the bad bites I’ve ever taken. For all the
things I’ve hated and finished anyway and all
the delicious things I haven’t allowed myself
to finish. Loving this meat pie means I’m alive.
Loving this meat pie means I can feel. Loving
this meat pie means I am unafraid to open the
door to pleasure and that, just for this moment,
I am saying goodbye to pain.5PMMore oat cakes (always more oat cakes,
I can’t tell you what sights I saw today because
I was so focused on not finishing the oat cakes).
7PMScallops and prawns in spicy broth with
marsh weeds. (Marsh weeds! Lambs eat this
and make good meat, Fergus says. I stare at him,
but he’s focused on his reasonably portioned
bowl of pasta.) Lamb with flowering broccoli
that tastes like regular broccoli, shepherd’s pie,
which is pulled lamb with sweet potato on top
(so much lamb), t hen pineapple tar tin wit h lime
ice cream that sticks in my teeth and is hard to
chew but I press on. I also eat half of Fergus’
chocolate soufflé, then order another sparkling
water and feel so sick that I lie face down in my
hotel room and moan. I dream about Canada
Dry ginger ale like some might dream of
a romance on the windy bluffs of Cornwall.By the time I was five months out of my long-term
relationship and nearly out of my post-break-up
affair, I’d also completed in-patient treatment,
known to the public as rehab for trauma and
prescription drug dependency or, as I like to
call it, a five-star hotel where they confiscate
your razors. On my first day, I sat down for lunch
with a group of strangers who dug into a family-
style meal of roast chicken and vegetables,
brownies and sorbet. They all ate happily,
chattily, and I heard one man look down at
his plate and sing a little song. The lyrics were:‘I like chicken, and chicken likes me.’ Forgive
me, father, but what the heck am I doing here?
Later that day, I sat across from the facility’s
nutritionist, who gently told me that if I didn’t feel
I could enjoy their offerings, they’d be happy to
make me ‘a smoothie or a soup’ but I had to eat.
‘You don’t get it,’ I told her. ‘I love food.’
She looked like she’d heard this protest before,
from women who’d
denied themselves
for so long that they
had forgotten the
alternative. Maybe,
she surmised, as I got
more comfortable
with my surroundings,
my appetite would
return and I could
swallow ‘a little
something’. It took a
week, but as the drugs left my body and I made
peace with the fact that I was here to heal, not
just to cut my own bangs and weep (just kidding:
you can’t cut your own bangs because they
won’t give you scissors), I got real hungry, real
fast. If it wasn’t nailed down, I ate it. Before they
cleared breakfast, I grabbed fistfuls of bacon. At
lunch, I tasted three kinds of burgers at the burger
bar. Before bed, I got into a habit of eating three
butter sandwiches lying down, using my chest
as a tray. By the time I completed the 3O days,
I was sober as a bone and my socks were tight.IN THE DRIVE THRU
Dunham purloined
Fergus’ snack box
as he drove her
around the country“IT WOULDN’T BE
HUMILIATING
TO RE V E A L whatWE
ATE IF WE DIDN’T
THINKourAPPETITES
wereFORBIDDEN ”ELLE.COM/UK November 2O19 115ELLEFeatureIllustrations: Jo Bell. Photography: Harr y Borden/Contour by Gett y Images, Ian Page.