It’s okay to eat what you want. It really is.

I don’t care whether what you want is a five course gourmet meal, a bag of Skittles and a Diet Coke, a small green salad with dressing on the side, fois gras or tofu dogs. It’s okay.

You’re an adult. You get to choose. You don’t have to justify your decision to me, your mom (unless you happen to be cooking it in her kitchen), your next door neighbor, or the complete stranger who felt justified in giving you squiggle eyes at the grocery store for choosing whatever you chose from the shelves.

The measure of your waistline does not give anyone the right to judge what you choose to eat. You do not need to carry a permission slip from your doctor explaining that even though you’re not a size 0 you are not this moment dying of: heart failure, type II diabetes, high blood pressure, joint failure, or a fat-related earache.

Nobody can judge a person’s general health from a glance at the size tag in their clothes. What’s more, you do not owe anyone on the planet eternal health. It’s not in the human contract.

You do not need to represent the fat community, either by attempting to prove that not everyone who shops the women’s section does nothing but shovel Twinkies into their mouths all day long, nor by actively defying expectation that we should all be on an eternal diet to combat our natural bodies.

Food is fuel. Your body needs fuel to function properly. There are myriad reasons for choosing what fuel we do. There’s preference, availability, culture, funding, culinary knowledge, time, religious belief,  philosophy, compromise to suit those we are eating with, allergies, chronic health conditions, and a host of other things. There’s one thing that is never a good reason to choose or deny yourself a particular food: fear of what someone else will think.

We’ve been conditioned by society to apologize for wanting to eat. All day long the television blares out ads for weight loss programs and pills – not to mention shows like The Biggest Loser, I Want to Save Your Life, and Bulging Brides. The radio harangues us about getting ready for swimsuit season or avoiding temptation during the holiday season. Every day when I turn on my computer and surf the net, I am visually assaulted by more ads telling me my body is wrong, I’m on the verge of death no matter what my doctor says, and I should be ashamed to eat. Half of all water cooler conversation these days seems to be about refusing or shamefully failing to refuse edible treats.

Enough, I say!

Repeat after me: It’s okay to eat what I want to eat.

You want to know what happens when you say that? When I said that some two years ago, I felt as though a weight was lifted from my shoulders. I felt free. I haven’t stopped feeling free since that day.

I didn’t suddenly gain a thousand pounds. I didn’t eat the world. I didn’t fit back into my size 8 jeans (and a darn good thing, too, considering how completely out of fashion they would be today). My hair didn’t fall out, my lifelong aversion to mushrooms didn’t vanish, my social circle didn’t change, I didn’t collapse from malnutrition or have a heart attack, unicorns did not magically begin to cavort in my garden,  and I didn’t win the lottery.

What did change was that suddenly I didn’t feel compelled to eat a hamburger because I happened to be in a restaurant that features huge hamburgers. If what I really want is a salad, I’ll order that. If I feel the eyes of others on me, waiting to be offended if I dare to get the burger I happen to be craving, I order the burger, anyway. It’s not my problem if someone else has the time and mental space to hover around waiting to find my behavior offensive. Most people don’t have the time, the space, or the monomania to be horrified at my order, it turns out. And if they do, well, I don’t have the interest to apologize to a complete stranger for perfectly reasonable behavior on my part.

In those extremely rare instances, I only have time to spend a nanosecond feeling sorry for their empty lives before I dig into my meal and enjoy the hell out of it.

Oh, and I order dessert if I have the room in my belly and the desire for something sweet on my tongue. If I don’t really want dessert, then I don’t get it.

Why? Because I’m an adult. I’m allowed make these choices for myself. So are you.

Say it out loud and proud: I’m an adult, and it’s up to me what I want to eat.

Then get out there and eat what makes your body, your mind, and your taste buds happy.

This is the end of another Food Friendly May…but in Twistie World food is friendly every day. I hope it will be in your world, too.

Last night, Mr. Twistie and I ate in one of our favorite restaurants. It just so happens it was also a favorite of Mr. Twistie’s mother. Why? Because she felt it was the best Japanese food in the Bay Area, hands down.

She knew whereof she spoke, too. She was Japanese. Not of Japanese descent, but born and raised in Japan and a Nagasaki survivor to boot. It wasn’t something she liked to talk about.

Anyway.

Kamakura was one of her favorite haunts. One year she took us out to Kamakura for my birthday. Since Mr. Twistie’s mother was friends with the owner, we wound up getting some extra goodies added to the meal on the house.

I’ll never forget the appetizers Faith sent out to us. They were luscious little Asian eggplants filled with miniscule shrimps. The downside? Mr. Twistie won’t touch seafood with a barge pole and has even less intention of ever allowing another eggplant to pass his lips. His mother loved eggplant and seafood, but happened to be allergic to shrimp. I was forced to eat the entire plate by myself. After all, we didn’t want to offend.

Okay, and eggplant and shrimp are two of my favorite things ever and I think they’re even better when combined. I was in culinary heaven and my mother in law beamed.

As it turned out, lung cancer took her from us before my next birthday.

So last night as we had our gyoza and shogiyaki and green tea ice cream, it turned out we were both thinking of that night and of Mr. Twistie’s mother. And though I’ve never gotten them again, I thought about those shrimp-filled eggplants. I thought about the flavor, yes, but mostly about how happy my mother in law looked watching me eat them.

There are times, too, when I find myself making a pot of split pea soup and realize how much my decision was prompted by nostalgia rather than appetite…or rather nostalgia for my mother and appetite combined. She made amazing split pea soup. I never asked for her recipe, and mine has never turned out quite the same, but I think of her every time I make it.

Last week I was in the grocery store looking at the ice cream. It was a hot day, and I wanted a nice frozen treat. As if compelled, I reached for the mint chocolate chip. It wasn’t until the ice cream was in my cart that I thought about the fact that it was my fathers’ favorite flavor.

Food has a way of making us think of the people who have eaten it with us. It connects us viscerally with friends, lovers and family years after they are gone. The scents, the flavors, remind us of times gone by. Sometimes it’s a bit disconcerting, but I also find it comforting, in a funny way. It’s almost like visiting with people we miss, including our younger selves.

Last night Mr. Twistie and I missed his mother, but we also remembered the best parts of having her with us. As we left the restaurant, I felt well fed in both body and soul. And I know that when the weather turns colder, I’ll spend time in the kitchen making split pea soup with my mother, too.

I’ll even share it with people I love who are still around to build memories with.