You won’t get nutrition information from me.

Not calories, not a macro breakdown, not whether or not something I make is “keto friendly” (surprise, it’s not!)

I’ll tell you about allergens, because allergens = health.

Weight doesn’t equal health.

Nor does whether or not something is made with date syrup or sugar.

I recently had a conversation within my Facebook group, Feed Me A Story, about how I used to hate baking (the irony, I know.)

“It’s too time consuming”, I would say.

“Too many rules.”

“Too precise.”

But what I really wanted to say is, “I hate my fat body, and therefore I cannot find joy in baking because that’s shameful as a fat person.”

Whew.

I avoided baking, claimed I hated it, tried to contort it into things that were a far cry from the original intention. Like pancakes made from banana and egg whites. Or cakes without sugar or flour or eggs. Bread that was keto-compliant, pudding that was thickened and substantiated with chia seeds, the list goes on.

And on and on and on and on.

Here’s the thing. You want to make “pancakes” out of banana and egg whites? There’s nothing wrong with that. But instead of an attempt at pulling-down-the-wool, let’s just call it what it is.

Banana-and-egg-white-cakes.

Or something.

I’m not here to diss the idea of different stroke for different folks. In deciding to be done with dieting and diet-culture forever and ever, amen, I also made peace with the idea that people can, and will do, whatever they want, depending on their values and ideas, especially around fat people, and like, fine. I’m not here to tell you that intermittent fasting is simply starving yourself for a portion of the day (okay, yes I am) or that you should love your dimpled ass cheeks and stretch marks (surprise, they’re hereditary, and you don’t have to love them, I don’t love mine, but they’re just, like, there.) 

But I am here to challenge why you think thinness is next to godliness, and why you can’t just make pancakes for breakfast Sunday morning without finding the most macro/Whole 30/keto/hEaLtHy friendly recipe on the internet before the idea of pancakes is tired, and you’ve resigned to the idea that you actually hate pancakes, and questioned why you ever wanted to make them to begin with.

I am fat.

I have gotten fatter over the last year.

This isn’t a dig, this is a matter of fact statement, just like when I tell you my eyes are brown.

My body changes, yours does too.

There’s been pregnancies and celebrating and stress and grieving and more movement and less movement and a whole host of other things a long the way.

You know what didn’t make me fat? 

Sunday morning pancakes, okay?

From ages 8-30, I was committed to hating my fat body and anything that could possibly make me fatter. Never mind genetics, or, like, the fact that being fat is actually not the worst thing you could actually be…

And surprise! When you decide that being fat is actually not the worse thing in the world, and you can actually exercise because you love to exercise, not in hopes to be thinner, and you  cook meals because they taste damn good and they’re fun to make, because you can follow a recipe as is, and don’t have to carve out 90 minutes each day to enter in every. single. macronutrient. into a calorie-counting app.

And then, SURPRISE! When you aren’t making a Frankencake and you just make the fucking pancakes on Sunday morning because they SOUND good, and for that reason alone, and you eat them and you enjoy and you move along, the end.

Wild, right?

So, as I mentioned, it wasn’t that I ever hated baking, it was that I hated being fat, or admitting that I was fat besides the self-deprecating jokes I made with my friends, and wouldn’t be caught dead baking a CAKE for FUN and ENJOYING it as a fat person because, like, the audacity, you know?

The true crime here is-

That you don’t think fat people are entitled to joy in cooking or baking or eating.

Or the fact that you still insist on thin = health (S U R P R I S E! I paid thousands of dollars for a holistic doctor to tell me that my thinness and “diet” *I was a “whole food vegan” at the time* was at the very core of why I felt like a GARBAGE person.) 

Or that you insist that every fat person is lazy (call me lazy, I dare you) or eats fast-food all day (I eat fast food maybe once a month?)  or doesn’t exercise (I actually love a lot of forms of exercise.) 

Those are the real problems worth talking about.

So, no, I don’t know the calories in these cookies. You know what I know? Is what I was doing when I made them for the first time. The way Scarlett ran around outside with a cookie in her hand after they cooled, and I watched on with my ever-swelling-belly from the patio door. I remember the sense of relief I felt when I realized I didn’t have to hate my fat body, or your fat body, or theirs, and make up wild assumptions as to why them or me are fat in the first place. And I’ll never forget baking my heart out while I healed my relationship with food and my body, which led me to opening a cottage bakery where I, you know, bake for a living.

Make these cookies next time you need a smile and a chocolate fix, and just enjoy them because they’re good, yeah?