The 'clean eating' holiday tips you're reading are almost identical to my rituals as an anorexic teen

I took my own porridge to Paris and brought running shoes for what was meant to be a laid-back weekend break in Tenby. Now self-proclaimed 'wellness experts' are suggesting you should bring your own quinoa salad for the plane

"I made my ravenous friends leave bistros because chips were the only side dishes available" (Getty)

Tapping on my laptop before bed a year or two ago, I ended up staring at Instagram photos of Ella Mills, a.k.a. bestselling wellness guru Deliciously Ella, looking glowing and slim - the sort of look I have a tendency to covet late at night when in close proximity to the internet (being repeatedly tagged in Facebook pictures which reveal you to have thirteen chins and a curiously shaped right nostril is not renowned for its self-esteem-boosting properties, apparently). I would like to look like that, I thought, swiftly heading to her website and searching for hints as to how this might be done.

But a few sentences of a post named ‘Healthy Holiday Tips’ was enough to call a halt that night’s session of mindless clicking and scrolling (to this day a much-beloved hobby). As the title suggests, in the piece Mills offers advice about how to stick to a “healthy” eating regime while travelling, commiserating with those who, like her, “worry about finding a green juice on holiday” and suggesting merry-sounding things such as carting wholesome snacks around all day so that you don’t feel left out when the rest of your party stop for an ice cream. That particular post has since been taken down, although ‘How To Stay Healthy While You Travel’ is in a similar vein, including a tale from Mills about how she packs a “giant quinoa salad” for days in transit: “enough for two or three portions depending on how long my journey is so that I’m never hungry and tempted by the plane food”. This follows her earnestly opining that “with a little planning it’s pretty easy to feel amazing and travel”, which seems to suggest that it’s impossible to enjoy your time away without organising your food consumption.

Let’s get one thing straight: unless you're among the small proportion of the population who needs to avoid certain foods to manage a health problem, there’s no reason to worry this much about what you’re going to eat on holiday. (Come to think of it, there’s no reason to worry this much about what you’re going to eat full stop, but that’s a topic for another day.) The pieces peddle a joyless, pointlessly restrictive approach to eating under the guise of encouraging “healthiness”. So far, so wellness. But in suggesting it’s normal to have to exert this much control over unknown food situations, they look unfortunately like they’re packaging the sort of behaviour favoured by people suffering with eating disorders as a pleasing lifestyle tip. For in addition to skipping meals and the binging and purging associated with bulimia, eating disorders also manifest in obsessively planning what you’re going to eat, clinging on to food you feel comfortable with and going to extreme lengths to avoid everything else.

I noticed glaring parallels between the fearful approach to food detailed here and my own conduct on trips as an anorexic teenager. Holidays are hell if you have issues with eating, often revolving around the very things you spend your days seeking to avoid: food, alcohol, restaurants, lengthy periods of lying down during the day. As an attempt to combat this, I took my own porridge to Paris and brought running shoes for what was meant to be a laid-back weekend break in Tenby. When my mum stopped for a cup of coffee and a cake in the café of a department store in Edinburgh, I sat opposite her sipping water and eating an apple I’d anxiously packed earlier. Acting like this doesn’t ensure you “enjoy your summer holidays”; trust me, it ruins them.

Thankfully, I look back at these times with a very different mindset. Gone are the days when I marched ravenous friends out of Parisian bistros because I couldn’t bear the thought of chips being the only side dish available (at one point one of my many blacklisted foods). Counting “being able to eat a bowl of fries if a waiter brings them to me” among my notable achievements is not something I ever imagined doing; I did, after all, demonstrate an astonishing natural aptitude for this pursuit for my first 17 years on Earth. Yet, how quickly that carefree countenance can crumble. Knowing this is to blame for my now fierce devotion to the spontaneous feasting that’s synonymous with a spell away.

This includes trying weird confectionary, getting tipsy after drinking too much Prosecco in the midday sun and humouring your dad when he confesses that what he really wants for dinner, despite all of the options on offer in the charming Rome piazza, is a Big Mac with extra gherkins and a side helping of apple pie.

Try the Prosecco. That’s the only healthy holiday tip you'll be getting from me.