Women have complicated relationships.

We have complicated relationships with our boyfriends, our husbands, our ex-husbands, our children, our step children, our parents, our siblings and our friends. But I contend that perhaps our most complicated relationship, just edging out the historically tricky and tenuous relationship with our mother-in-law, is our relationship with food.

When we are healthy and balanced, food is simply fuel, and occasionally a pleasure. When we’re hurting, food can be a confidante and comforter. When we’re critical of ourselves, food can serve as a weapon. We can punish ourselves by feeding our body too little, or we can hide deep beneath the results of feeding our body too much. When we’re bored, food can become entertainment or the mindless mollifier of a restless spirit. When we’re lonely, food can become the thing we look forward to. When we’re sedentary, food can become the “activity” we do with our friends. When we’re nostalgic or homesick, food can remind us of places and people we miss. It can become a placebo for an aching heart, the false filler of empty spaces or an attempt to nourish hunger of other origins. We can be sad-skinny, stressed-skinny or skinny-in-love. On the flip side, we are just as prone to putting on pounds of neglect, complacency or contentment. During the holidays food can be a burden or a sacrifice, an offering of love, martyrdom or grief; it can mark tradition or tension. During PMS or pregnancy food can be a raging dictator, demanding immediate gratification for every whim and craving.

Maybe our relationship with food is so complicated because we have given food too much power. For some, mealtimes mean flashbacks to childhood and a mother who raised a critical eyebrow at the dinner table, the doctor’s office scale or in the dressing room, or siblings whose taunts linger long after leaving home. Some of us allow consumption to serve as the barometer of how we feel about ourselves, labeling the sum of our existence with, I was good today or I was naughty, all based on what we ate or did not eat. Some of us are punitive, allowing ourselves certain treats only if we believe we have earned them with previous effort or exertion, or by virtue of certain circumstances. Some feel the need to atone for “bad” choices with exercise or an ascetic day (especially if we believe exercise to be a punishment instead of a delight). I think, at age 39, I have made a modicum of peace with food. Becoming a mother healed some places in me, helping me realize my body had a higher purpose than simply serving myself. Becoming a runner healed other places, helping me see and respect my body in the context of what I could do rather than how I looked doing it. Either that or I just get so damn hungry sometimes that I no longer care what I shovel into my mouth post-run. Or perhaps I would rather save my skills for helping my kids with homework instead of wasting my math mojo on counting calories. Or maybe I finally got tired of trying so hard, and so I must accept the simple fact that today I am as young and as hot as I’m likely going to get in this lifetime, and that’s okay. I have more important concerns now, like helping my daughters grow up strong and make peace with food long before I did. If they are going to learn that food is fuel and a pleasure, they are going to have to learn it first from a mother who lives it.

Anyway, if God didn’t intend for us to reward ourselves and live it up once in a while, why on his green earth did He create chips and queso, pancakes, peanut butter and jelly, cookie dough or red wine? That’s what I mean. He must love us. So we may as well love ourselves.