How long have you struggled with eating? Do you remember when it first got complicated? What if you have struggled your whole life after years of abuse, shame and fear? Is there a way to heal in our current diet focused and fatphobic world? Listen now for possible tools to promote your Food Peace journey. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. This episode is brought to you by my courses: PCOS and Food Peace and Dietitians PCOS and Food Peace. You CAN make peace with food even with PCOS and I want to show you how. This episode's Dear Food letter: Dear Food, Dear oh dear food, you have been the bane of my existence since I was born. I started with diary allergies that took time to diagnose so from a newborn, my food relationship has been difficult. That difficulty has morphed into many different things, anxiety soothing with food, fear of food, restriction, bulimia, anorexia, binge eating and so on. I’ve struggled to understand you. When I was young, about six years old, my life changed a lot because of an abusive homelife, then at seven, it turned to shear torture due to physical and sexual abuse. I coped by stealing food (at home, other people’s houses, stores and so on), hiding and eating it. I learned to eat until sick, then purge to make myself feel better so I could eat some more. One very traumatizing event, I remember hiding multiple PB&Js behind the trashcan in the cabinet for later and once the event was over, I hid where I thought I belonged, behind the trash and ate them all, at seven years old… The trauma (really torture) went on and on and I ate and ate, and I gained and gained. I was also tortured in school for my weight and lack of social skills. Through all of this, I was caring for my younger sister since no one taking care of either of us and was also caring for my parents who could not care for themselves. As I grew into a teenager my body started to change, but it was changing differently from others. I didn’t know at the time that it was PCOS at the time, but it was. I was growing hair on my face, I started shaving my face at about 12 or 13, my body shape was different, and my weight was going up at what I was told an alarming rate. By 6 th grade, I was “obese”. Once the torture stopped at home (not in my mind), I was 20, I kept on eating, doctors kept telling me to lose weight, my mother kept telling me how terrible I looked, and others would tell me “you would have such a pretty face and eyes, if you’d just lose some weight…” I kept eating and purging. I had two stays in a mental health facility and they tried to work on my relationship with food, but that was not the major reason I was inpatient, there was a much more intense reason I was there. They tried but I was not ready. Eleven years ago, at 28, after trying to conceive for about a year, I was diagnosed with PCOS. It took us three years to conceive the first time which ended as an early loss. I had six more losses and then no other pregnancies. I ate through all the losses and was told, had I not been so fat, I would not have gotten PCOS and would also be able to get and stay pregnant by a doctor. I ate some more until I didn’t. I started restricting about six years ago and lost a very significant amount of weight. I was restricting so much I would pass out due an inability to my keep my blood pressure high enough and could not keep my body temperature stable to the point where I wore winter clothes in the summer. I kept this going for two years then the binging started again. I was never able to get my weight low enough to alert any doctors of an eating disorder, but I would guess that is from the PCOS. I have since been working with a wonderful therapist for seven years and an amazing eating disorder and HAES registered dietician for almost two years. I still struggle to this day with the thoughts that go along with an eating disorder. Dear, oh dear Food, will I ever “get” you? Will I ever “understand” you? I know none of this is a