Sequence of Eating

Continuing on with my labour of eating, I have taken a sequence of images showing the gradual eating away at my dinner. While the first image looks Instagram-ready, (referring to posts that people upload onto the social media platform of their own kai) the sequence of the food disappearing into the residue takes the images out of that ‘Instagram’ feel. It leans more toward labour of the actual eating away at the kai.

I’ve also chosen to put a word by each image to describe what I was feeling whilst at that stage of consumption. When taking the first image, 1, I was very nervous about starting to eat, also nervous that I wouldn’t be able to stop and that I’d start binge eating after this, cause this meal, is one of my safe foods. A safe food is something that I feel safe eating and that I will eat compared to something else. I’ll get fixated on this food for days, weeks, or months at a time. I felt a sense of gluttony when taking the second image because I had taken quite a few bites of my kai easily and found myself eating very quickly, causing me to feel that sense of binge eating behaviour starting to build up and feeling bloated already. For the third image, 3, I felt guilty. I had already eaten half of my meal and my brain was telling me to stop. I felt guilty for enjoying the taste of the food and for eating it in general. In my fourth image, 4, I felt pride. I had almost eaten an entire meal and that’s an achievement for me, especially for it being an average size portion of doos for someone my weight, age, and height. But once I did finish it, and moved on to take the final image, 5, I felt shame. I was ashamed of myself for eating all of it, for even scraping off a bit of it from the packaging. I felt horrible about myself and was disgusted at myself for doing finishing the kai. But I needed to, for my health, for my brief to in order to complete this labour sequence, and for my journey mentally, in hopes that one day this won’t feel like labour anymore.

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