When I started choosing to go hungry rather than face the prospect of cooking and, inevitably, doing dishes, that's when I knew there was a problem. I hit a wall last month with recipe development. I resented my body when I felt hunger cues because it was yet another demand I didn't have the energy for. I started ordering takeout several times a week - a rarity, usually. Or, even worse, I would choose to skip meals.
The rice started burning, the salsas were under-salted, and the lettuces under-vinegared. I began not to care. Which, for someone who derives almost their entire life's meaning from food and cooking, was a red flag.
I'm sure many recipe developers find it challenging to balance cooking as a professional vs. cooking because it is a necessary household chore. After all, recipe development and other professions in the cooking realm are unique because most careers do not overlap with one of humankind's most basic physiological needs. Developing apps, while important work, is not a basic physiological need. We cook to earn money, to make our mark, to fulfill our hopes and dreams, and then we also cook because our humanness demands it and getting takeout every single day is cost prohibitive.
And also, I am a cis woman married to a cis man. I constantly fret about spending my life cooking for a man and then wonder if I’m trying to make myself feel better by carving out a career as a recipe developer and food writer. Or is he just the lucky beneficiary of my profession? I want to think it's the latter.
Would I still feel this way if I were single? Or married to another woman? I don't know. It's not my husband's fault, though. I place this burden on myself by being a perfectionistic control freak.
My husband, who, bless him, is a super duper beginner in the kitchen, has offered to cook more to relieve some of this work for me. Unfortunately for both of us, I'd rather push myself to a complete collapse than eat a mediocre meal or, conversely, a great one that isn't documented and photographed.
In addition to inadvertently starving myself, I was also experiencing extreme fatigue and apathy, snapping at my husband for random things and going weeks without exercising. The simple question, "What do you feel like for dinner?" unleashed the beast within me. My husband began texting me daily to remind me - beg me - to please eat something.
This utter collapse of energy and enthusiasm made me feel like a failure. But then I learned about something psychologists call a "dorsal vagal shutdown," essentially being stuck in freeze mode. In times of stress, our bodies either go into fight, flight, or freeze mode. My body tends towards the latter. I get stuck in the "off" switch. This is the body's way of playing dead to stay alive.
Now, of course, stressing about how dinner will get on the table and whether I will have time to photograph our meal before the sun sets at 4 pm is, without a doubt, a privileged position to be in. It is not something that should be triggering such an extreme autonomic nervous system response. But past trauma has a role to play in these types of reactions, and I'm still healing from a big thing that happened to me two years ago.
Two things have helped me with this freeze state, although I'm not out of the woods yet. But number one was embracing the rut. I just leaned into the takeout ordering. I bought fewer groceries because I knew we would order out anyway. I started reading non-food-related books to force my brain to think of something other than food (shoutout to the All Souls trilogy by Deborah Harkness).
Giving myself space from the work (and it is work) of cooking, kitchen projects, and grocery shopping was essential. I allowed myself to Americanize my table, meaning it was only going on the table if it was quick and convenient.
The second thing I did was cook just to cook, without jotting down notes, measurements, indicators, or timings, without styling and photographing the meal. I place it on the table and eat while it's still hot. What a revelation!
These two things helped, but I still feel a more profound sense of fatigue and burnout that hasn't gone away. Most likely, I am feeling the cumulative effects of being a perfectionistic control freak who has had an objectively long, arduous year. I'm trying my best to show myself compassion and grace.