Ceci Browning opens up about outgrowing the calculus of calories that defined her childhood.

When my Mum answers the WhatsApp call, I can see from where her phone is perched on the kitchen counter that she has her entire torso in the fridge. 

“I’m making chickpea curry for tea,” she squeaks from behind the white door, “because it’s basically all vegetables.” 

And then I watch her frenzy herself with the preparation as we virtually catch up: chopping, cutting, whirring, stirring, blending, dipping, standing over a deep saucepan as the steam rises up into the familiar grooves of her face. 

Despite the fact I once lived peacefully inside it, my mother’s midriff is a zone of conflict. Over the last three decades, it has witnessed countless battles, territory gained, territory lost, brutal conditions and sudden changes in fortune. She has fluctuated only by a stone or so, but in her mind this number is what determines how the rest of life can be lived. If she is heavy, stationed at the top end of the range, all is lost. Guilt glues her to the sofa. If she’s light, she’s victorious. This, despite the fact that she’s always had a jaw-dropping figure. 

From the moment I was young enough to eat whole foods, I understood what portion control meant. Mum always made clear that being fat was “a very bad thing”. In order to overcome this risk it was important I viewed food as having appropriate numbers. 

Five parsnips + two potatoes + one chicken breast = a meal. No more. No less. 

She was also, though, a total hypocrite. Some days, when my brothers and I weren’t looking, she’d eat whole sleeves of biscuits, emptying the cupboard of its tasty treats. This eternal yoyo-ing between balance and binge meant I became hyper-aware of what I was eating, every meal, every day, all of the time. Aged nine, my growth spurt hit and suddenly I was noticeably bigger than most girls my age. Knowing no better, I understood my size difference as being ‘fat’. I was enormous, ugly, a troll who nobody wanted to interrupt their line of vision. When strangers in sunglasses passed by on the street, I wondered whether they were staring at me in steep horror or averting their eyes. 

Hitting teenagehood, and plunged into this new thing called social media – a digital world of plastic Love Island bodies – my Mum’s approach made more sense. Now, I could grasp why she’d told me that getting fat would be “a very bad thing”. Taking her lead, I developed the habit of tracking everything I ate on an app, scanning barcodes and weighing serving sizes. Every morning before breakfast, I stood naked on the scales in her bathroom, desperately hoping that the numbers would morph into ones that friends at school had complained about seeing, despite them being much lower than my own. 

It took me close to a decade to step outside of my Mum’s weight-watching ways. To enjoy the taste of food without thinking about how much heavier it might make me. At 18 or so, I began to grasp what my body could do if I powered it properly, running faster, jumping higher, arm wrestling boys in my history class at school and winning. Seeing how far I could go because of the food I was eating – whether that was almond croissants or earthy carrots or a big creamy bowl of carbonara – was astounding. 

“This eternal yoyo-ing between balance and binge meant I became hyper-aware of what I was eating, every meal, every day, all of the time”

Like the slow thrill of tuning into a recently learnt language, I could now listen to what my body was asking for instead of straightforwardly prescribing it what the packet said. When I rang my Mum to catch up and she launched into a frantic report about the “salad-I-had-for-lunch-because-I-need-to-lose-four-kilos-as-soon-as-poss”, it still took all my willpower not to throw away the foil wrapped bar of milk chocolate I’d picked up from Tesco on the way home and prepare a plate of green leaves. But, somehow, I managed not to. 

“What are you having for tea tonight sweetheart?” Mum asks as she returns the glass lid to the pan, satisfied that her chickpea curry has the precise amounts of ingredients that her new 30 MINUTE HEALTHY MEALS recipe book demands. 

I tell her matter-of-factly that I’m having pizza, leaving no gap for her to reply before I tell her I love her, say goodbye, and end the call. Because I am having pizza. No vegetables, just pizza. Maybe, if I’m still hungry afterwards, I’ll have a couple of the jammy Müller corner yoghurts I bought last week too. It shouldn’t matter to her if it doesn’t matter to me. 

There are a lot of things we learn from our parents and countless ways that we end up like them without meaning to, but it’s taken me a whole lot of years to realise that it’s important that how we build a relationship with food is not one of them. The good parts, like how my Mum always cooks casserole on Christmas Eve, or that her remedy for heartbreak is a pouch of Maltesers – I’ll keep them. But the bits that make me feel like I have to shrink or grow myself? I’ve left those (and the scales) behind.