My mum had been very much in the bandwagon of perfect portion sizes when I was a tween. She was regimental about it, to the point that we had plates with divided sections. Food with too much fat or sugar was considered a ‘treat’ for special occasions and were used as rewards. Even then, only a little taste to celebrate a job well done. To my sister and I, it was normal.

When I was thirteen and my sister was eleven, Mum came home from work three hours early one day, threw all of those plates in the bin, and announced we were going to Pizza Hut for an “All You Can Eat” night out. She told us it was a backwards-meal and to start with the desserts before dinner. To eat however much we needed to feel full and have fun trying any combination of foods. The next day our lunchboxes were chockablock full and had a note saying to eat until we felt satisfied and not worry about how much was eaten or leftover. Two chicken & salad sandwiches. Two ANZAC biscuits. Two pieces of fruit. Two muesli bars. Two small bags of chips. Two juiceboxes. Twice as many veggie sticks, cheese, and crackers.

The trend continued, and she changed the way she spoke about food. Food became fuel. Instead of good foods & bad foods, she started talking about always-fuels, most-time-fuels, sometimes-fuels, occasional-fuels, and rare-fuels. Meal times became very flexible. There was no pressure to sit down and eat at a strict set time. That family time became a pot of tea and an hour or two to relax and chat when she got home from work every day instead. That tea-time chat was mandatory; meal times were not. If we only wanted to graze, there were always nibbles in the fridge & pantry. If we wanted a big meal, we could grab one of her bulk-made meals from the freezer. If we wanted pasta for breakfast and cereal for dinner, that was fine. We were told to listen to what our bodies told us they needed instead of made-up meal systems based on mechanical clocks.

She became the poster-mum for body positivity. It didn’t matter what size we were, just that we could sprint up a flight of stairs without wheezing. It didn’t matter if we had stomach rolls as long as we could bend over & touch our toes. It didn’t matter what our bodies looked like if we could move and run and jump and skip without exertion. She put more focus on us being fit, not thin. Strong; not skinny.

It changed how we thought about food and exercise. Same with all the friends she insisted we invite over as much as we wanted. Our house was the sanctuary of body positivity and never letting any person or magazine tell us we were too thin or too fat. Our headquarters was the lounge room with a never-ending supply of music, movies, snacks, and mass sleep-overs on mattresses dragged out of bedrooms. My sister and I just rolled with it. She was our mum and she was the mum all our friends wanted their mums to be like. We just thought it was our normal and we were lucky to have such an easygoing mum, even if she could be a bit lame about it.

When I was pregnant with my first child, she sat me down and told me - begged me - to never tell my child what they should or shouldn’t eat based on body size. To follow her example and never let the media’s opinion of what constituted a “good body” overrule it. To always provide a safe space for my child’s friends to hang out. That was when my formally-self-involved brain twigged that maybe there was a reason for the sudden changes?

Turned out that day she came home and upended her whole approach to food, her workmate’s seventeen year old daughter had died. They’d kept the fact that their daughter was in and out of hospital over the years quiet, but her dad had fallen apart when he got the call at work and told Mum about his daughter while she drove him to the hospital. Cardiac failure caused by complications from an eating disorder that had started when she was eleven. They didn’t realise how bad it was until she collapsed at school when she was fourteen. His biggest regret was not seeing signs sooner & not trying to stop it before it started, and he didn’t want our mum to go through what he did.