A Food Writer Without An Appetite
and the Grief That Comes with Losing the Ability to Enjoy Food
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Not having an appetite is a painful experience for any human being but there is something especially cruel about someone who works in and with food to lose their appetite.
For me, having an appetite or craving food has always been connected with creativity. They are deeply interlinked. Losing my appetite has meant struggling creatively, and for me that creativity is found through writing and developing recipes.
My motivation is also rooted in and intertwined with my appetite. I bake, research, teach, cook, and write about things I love and long to eat. Even my bakery was built on this principle.
The last 2.5 years, but especially the last 6 months, of my life have been quite tumultuous. One bad thing after another. One stressful thing after another. And the war, the ruthless, endless, fucking war.
When I’m under a constant stream of stress, I am often completely disconnected from my body. This includes losing access to some of those important physical cues such as hunger and cravings. The dial has been turned way down.
Don’t worry. I am still eating. I’m still a healthy weight. I have a support network of family and friends and I am safe, but I am still utterly depleted, devastated, ass kicked, and just exhausted. Deja vu, right?
I guess the most obvious place that I am struggling with is recipe development and all the steps that go into that laborious process including writing, testing, filming. My lack of appetite has made recipe development super challenging, or if I can be honest, agonizing.
I am just not enjoying what I eat like I used to. I am just not enjoying food.
I walk into a grocery store or even a market and my brain is empty. I feel no calling. No triggers are throwing me into excitement. No ingredient is making me see, feel, smell dishes. Certainly some of this is due to our recent relocation: the shelves are different, and of course this could be because of how fucked the world is right now too. It is regressive. Food deserts are real.
Me, I simply cannot connect to the joy that comes with eating and therefore preparing and developing a delicious meal. It’s not depression, but it leads to depression and then we’re dealing with that too—on an empty stomach, no less.
There is so much shame that comes with this specific struggle. Thoughts such as; I should be able to create dishes without the desire to eat. I should be able to write about food and think about food even when I am not enjoying it. Others are doing it and hold full-time jobs in food but you are failing miserably. I should be able to come up with creative ways to use ingredients even if I myself am not hungry. It shouldn’t be this hard, it’s clearly you that’s the problem. Do you see anyone else struggle with this? You shouldn’t either!
I know this last sentence isn’t true. There are many people in the food industry and food media that have lost their appetite and are struggling every single day to keep going, to keep their jobs.
The unchecked guilt is unhelpful. I know I need to stop shouding all over myself. Unfortunately, nowadays, even making a cheese sandwich has turned into a struggle since the joy of eating is taken out of the equation. In other words, the reward is no longer rewarding.
Stress, again with that catch all term for too wide a spectrum of doom, has resulted in me struggling with what are now almost daily migraines. At least I think it’s stress. The fatigue, the nausea, the dizziness, the insane sensitivity to smells, and the endless tension in my neck and head have made it difficult for me to experience joy (of any kind) or be able to enjoy food specifically.
Overwhelmed yet? It is okay. I’m carrying this and you can too. We can do it together.
Why am I telling you all of this? I am writing this to remind anyone who is struggling with a similar experience that you are not alone. You are not weird or broken. Fuck shame. Fuck guilt and humiliation. Life is just fucking hard. It gets so hard that we lose our ability to feel and experience joy. It’s probably not permanent.
My lack of appetite is this strange void, this missing piece in a chain of bits and pieces that add up to me. It is as though some chunk of the recipe is missing even though I still try to laugh, have fun, and find excitement beyond food. But food is such an important part of my life that so much of my identity is built on top of.
Gradually losing my appetite over the last couple of years has been one of the most difficult/challenging experiences of my life. It took me 30 some years to find and embrace my appetite for it to abandon me when I need it most.
There are tiny glimmers of joy and relief. Moments of the before times. Eating a slice of my naturally leavened Paska (Easter bread) brought me to tears last week. Those were happy tears. Even though I was back in my current reality where things just don’t taste as good almost immediately, there was that second of relief and reconnection to what it was like to experience bliss from eating good food.
You sure better believe that I will be holding on to that glimmer as tight as I possibly can. If I can experience joy for a split second that means I can experience it for a whole second, then two, then three and so on.
Food for a very long time has been one of the only things that brought me real joy, fulfillment (this includes personal and professional), and comfort. Eating was one of the only times my family wouldn’t fight.
My mom and I can’t talk about much but we share a deep love for food and even though we can’t cook together, we always connect over recipes and conversations around food has helped me slowly heal my relationship with my mom. Eating and enjoying good food is also something that my sister and I have in common and share a deep bond over, we are two very different people, but eating together was always our shared language.
I do continue to make things. My partner makes stuff. We go out. We enjoy dinners with friends and I savor their delicious recipes. But I wish I could taste their amazing food and crave it because goddammit I should. I know I should. It's just that right now, my joy of food has been numbed. The longest it ever has. In many ways, I am numb to life and going through the motions, it’s like something is just quiet, I am just trying to survive and get to the other side.
As I mentioned before, developing and sharing recipes has been one of my biggest challenges. I feel little motivation or have barely any energy to research, develop, test, and write recipes. If I can’t enjoy the process, what’s the point of me doing it?
And here is where I want to end today’s essay. A reminder that there are many important reasons to continue sharing and developing recipes with people beyond their taste.
For me one of them is to preserve diverse Ukrainian culinary traditions. Another is to preserve my family and community's recipes as well as tell mine and their stories. I want these recipes to be made and known by more folks ensuring their survival and the traditions they hold.
If you are struggling with something similar, I encourage you to look past the food. And encourage yourself to articulate the other why(s) for your work.
Once I get a better grip over these migraines, my stress levels, and fatigue I am going to go back to pitching recipes and sharing them here in my newsletter. I know no one wants to pay me to do this work, and I haven’t figured out a sustainable way to do it quite yet, but I know I will. And if I don’t, my notes will pass on to someone who will continue where I left off. In the end, it’s a community effort.
We all go through phases. Periods when we eat more or less. Periods when we enjoy cooking or going out more. Periods when we write a lot or nothing.
Relearning how to feel joy is my true challenge. Learning how to write and develop recipes without an appetite is another. And that’s okay.
Do you have your own story of losing your appetite?
This essay is a work in progress and I appreciate your thoughts and feedback!
I just read the forthcoming book Tell Me How You Eat by Amber Husain, which explores just that! I will let you know the contact so you can get a galley—I think you’d have a great conversation with her.
Thanks for writing this Olga. I think it’s brave to stare this in the face.
There is so much tied into appetite - so many emotions. Working as a clinical dietitian, in the hospital we are often called to see people in the hospital who have no appetite. Or who cannot swallow. So many emotions are caught up in swallowing (blocked emotions / throat chakra) and eating - always linked to nurturing and building up in a positive sense. And guilt. So much guilt tied up in eating or not eating.
I think the world is so traumatic just now, there are so many negatives politically, along with outright trauma in Ukraine and Palestine, and many other countries, appetite must seem like an unaffordable luxury. As a child I never had an appetite - growing up in a family of trauma. It’s like in the hierarchy of survival needs, appetite isn’t a thing.
I have gained much from your writing and the information you have shared. My whole sourdough practice has changed (now using reduced hydration which is so much more manageable), still trying to get the pannetone perfect (my Italian partner loves pannetone), and I have subscribed to Katrya on Patreon as a result of your sharing, and make many of her recipes, to my family’s delight!
I think staring something in the face and going deep into it, although not easy, is a brave and valuable thing to do. I had a book once about exploring the depths, can’t remember what it was called and I think I gave to to my daughter- but it was a worthwhile read!
From the 🤞🏼good fortune of living in Australia (hopefully our upcoming election is not as disastrous as the USA outcome), I am sending gratitude and thanks for your words. 💖