Permission to Eat Weird
There are no dietary prophets, only survivors. You don’t owe your body to science, influencers, or dead-eyed optimisers.
I came up on red meat and single origin. Not Atkins. Not Keto. Not because it was proven, but because some opening sentence in a musty textbook set me free:
Carbohydrate is a non-essential nutrient.
Which I translated as: want is negotiable, but need is mine to define.
So I built a rule. My rule. You have to deserve your carbohydrates. Not deserve like moral worth. Deserve like: have you earned the right to soften? To taste something sweet and comforting without shame?
I wasn’t chasing optimisation. I was building something human. Primitive. Half-mad. And for the first time, I didn’t feel hungry and wrong at the same time.
This was before food became performance. Before we turned diet into content. Before people started calling hunger “biofeedback”.
Now there’s a method for every mood. A tribe for every fridge. And still, it doesn’t work. Because it’s not yours.
You’re renting someone else’s rulebook and calling it a system.
What you need isn’t a better method. It’s a stranger honesty. A plan stitched from appetite and accident. From your timing, your boredom, your private devotions.
Not a diet. A dialect.
One plate. One ritual. One unmarketable way to be with your own hunger, without moral panic.
The experts will call it non-compliance. You can call it a vow.
Want a protocol? Make one up. Eat only when you’re done apologising. Eat only food you can draw. Fast when you're angry. Bless each bite with your breath. It doesn’t matter what it is — it matters that you made it.
Because the body hears sincerity louder than macros.
When you borrow someone else’s food rules, you borrow their self-hate too. Their cravings. Their deadline hunger. Their need to be congratulated for suffering.
You don’t get to be free while still trying to look good doing it.
You don’t need another protocol. You need a break-up.
Not with bread. Not with sugar. With the part of you that thought discipline meant safety.
Protocols don’t heal. They preserve the part of you that needed one.
So: What would you eat if no one was watching? What would you spit out if shame wasn’t paying for it?
This isn’t advice. It’s a food fight.
Pass it to someone whose grocery list still reads like a performance review. Not because they’ll thank you — but because you’ve seen how hunger performs when it’s never been loved.