You’re looking at a slice of pizza. The smell of it is intoxicating, and the sight of it? Exhilarating. It is beauty in its purest form, and you want that pizza. However, the moment you reach for it a little voice in your head says, “Don’t do it. You will feel guilty and you will feel fat. “ Or, it says, “If you eat that now, you can’t eat dinner tonight.” At this point you realize you have two options: eat the slice and feel shitty about it, or leave the slice in the box and feel like you’ve missed out. There is no way you can win.

If this situation sounds familiar to you, then you probably have the same kind of relationship with food that I do. For us, there is an inner struggle every time we make the choice to put something into our bodies, and although I wish that it were only the two of us who suffer from this problem; that unfortunately just isn’t the case. In a world of Kendall Jenners and Gigi Hadids it can feel impossible to look in the mirror and feel like we are good enough. I often find myself lingering on their pictures when I am scrolling through my Instagram, and wishing that I could look like them. Why don’t they have rolls when they sit down? Why don’t they have dimples on their thighs? Why was I cursed with all of these things? Why weren’t they? It is these kinds of thoughts that feed the little voice that makes us feel guilty about eating, and it is so, so sad.

What I’ve realized though, is that the food itself isn’t the central issue here. It is not our relationship with food that makes us feel this way, but our relationship with our bodies. We are constantly comparing our bodies to what we believe the perfect version of them would be, and it is truly exhausting. If we can learn to love ourselves, to truly believe that we are beautiful the way we are, then maybe we can extinguish that little voice. I wish I could tell you the steps to take as individuals and as a society towards loving the bodies we were given and towards forming a better relationship with food, but I can’t.

But, what I can tell you is this:

Eating shouldn’t be an unpleasant experience. Food was put on this earth to sustain us, to give us energy and strength. We are born with only one body, only one chance to love it and to take care of it and food is there as a tool to help us do that. Eating should feel like we are doing what is best for our bodies and for ourselves, it shouldn’t make us feel guilty. So, next time that slice of pizza is calling your name, listen to it. Enjoy it. Though we may not be able to quiet the voice telling us that our bodies aren’t good enough, that we aren’t good enough, we can muster the strength to respond and tell it that it’s wrong, and that we are.