I don’t have a tag for dieting on my blog, all the posts about dieting and my relationship with food go under physical health. I wonder whether I should create a separate tag for that to make it look like it’s important?

If you read my blog regularly you may know that I was overweight most of my life and since I can remember. I have lactose intolerance that was not picked up when I was a child and my main symptom after drinking regular milk are massive stomach cramps that feel like hunger pangs and only eating can relieve them. I was brought up on a farm where we had milky cow and due to shortage of food during communism we had milk all the time. It’s actually surprising now, when I think about it that I was only approximately 10kg (1 and half a stone) overweight with all the bread and potatoes I could sometimes eat.

However, there must be something more going on here as giving up on lactose (I can still have some yoghurt or cheese) didn’t get rid of my problem long term. I had periods in my life when I was slim and felt fantastic but they never lasted long and – another neurotypical stereotype – I was told by people that it didn’t last because I was starving myself. But I really wasn’t!

It got worse the last couple of years. There’s so much body positivity in the UK and it makes me wonder what British public really thinks about it because the attitude that I see is ‘you can be as fat as you want as long as you don’t eat anything’. I feel judged a lot for what and how much I eat.

In Poland, if you visit your auntie for her birthday, you can easily have five slices of cake and no one would care. If anything, people will be happy that you enjoyed the food. And it’s me saying, someone who used to be overweight most of my life – I never felt judged for what or how much I ate when I was in Poland. In the UK it seems constant. I only worked out quite recently that when people offer me food I’m supposed to refuse. Why they offer it then? To test if I’m not greedy? But I love food. That doesn’t mean I can’t buy my own. But I can’t go to the shop right now so I take what I’m being offered.

At the same time, when I try to diet, I’m being judged too. And mostly by the people who are overweight or obese. They are best to dish out dieting advice while at the same time telling you, you shouldn’t really be doing that. You shouldn’t be denying yourself what you want because that creates obsessions. So basically, if I’m offered food when I’m not on a diet I should refuse but when I’m trying to lose weight I should eat whatever I f***ing want.

In Poland, when you start talking dieting around overweight people they keep quiet. And I really respect them for that now.

Oh, I forgot to add that I also frequently feel judged for eating Polish as well as British food. I suppose Polish because it then looks like I didn’t adjust to living in this country and British because it looks like I forgot about my heritage. Eating Indian or Chinese seems to be ok so far.