An all you can eat food tour to a binge eater is like a red flag to a bull. The words “does anyone want seconds?” is enough to get your heart pounding against your chest, your mouth filling saliva and your pits moist with a thick, cold sweat.
How many times have you approached an ‘all you can eat’ buffet knowing full well the guilt, stomach cramps and belching you will experience for days afterward. You dive in powerless anyway, knowing exactly how hard it is to “get back on track” and eat “like a normal human” after a night of passionate binging. I know all of this because I am a binge eater. I know that I am always probably going to have struggles with binge eating, and I have reluctantly grown to accept this.
My main goal forward from here is to learn the skills I need to prevent myself from feeling as though I am spiralling out of control with my eating, to stop feeling guilty over small hiccups and to never again avoid a situation of pleasure for fear of eating too much. So I decided to go on the London Bridge Secret Food Tour.
I arrive late. I’m never late, and so I begin my tour with an accelerated heart rate and a halo of frizzy hair before I even have a chance to eye up the brownie stall. I was on this tour with a group of tourists, mostly from America – who, much like myself, didn’t consider that you’d have to walk much in a food “tour”. Surely I’ll just be plonked onto a conveyor belt and the cakes shall pile into my mouth, right? Wrong.
We begin at Borough Market. Borough Market is beautiful, if you haven’t already been, stocking the most perfectly arranged, elite foods from around the globe. Thick, earthy truffles cling to my nostrils as we are given free reign to explore the market stalls.
The first dish we try is fish and chips. Classic fish and triple-fried chips. I eat the whole portion awarded to me, even though I tell myself I won’t. I don’t want to spoil the other dishes, I say, but I’m hungry! I say. I try not to feel too bad about it as I watch the tourists poke at this foreign delicacy.
We move on to try more british staples. A Ginger Pig pork sausage roll, cheese and cider, strawberries. I slowly start to relax about a third of the way into the tour and I begin to enjoy learning the history behind all of the places we visit as I bite and neglect to finish all the free samples. Did you know that Borough Market began in 1725?
We end the day with a doughnut from Bread Ahead. If you aren’t aware, these doughnuts were voted the best in the world. The world! Think how big the world is, now look at this little cushion of sweetness in my hand. How might I feel! How exciting this is! A pouch of icing busts out of its top like the only good part of an iced gem.
I eat half my doughnut. It’s good, but I am full. I am happy and I am full. I go home with a swarm of bees in my bonnet.
