Fearne Cotton: why cooking is my happy place
Finding your happy place may take some time and experimentation. When I say 'place', I don't mean a white sandy beach on a far-off deserted island. I mean a time and space where you can get into your creative flow; where you can feel blissfully calm, content and balanced. Maybe you already know exactly what that is for you and can happily relax into this activity whenever needed.
Whenever I feel anxious, stressed or down, I instinctively walk to my cookbook shelf and look for something to create. Every step of the cooking process fills my head with calm, melts away any self-doubt and boosts my feelgood levels to the max.
Measuring out the ingredients, stirring, grating, chopping, blending - they all send my busy brain into a catatonic state of ease. A meditation, if you like. I focus only on the task at hand and the result I want. And that result offers me so much comfort, too, whether it's because I get to eat and enjoy the fruits of my labour, or because I get to watch others smile as they chomp away merrily.
As I get older, I want to know exactly what's going into my body and I want that fuel to be the best and most natural it can be. This sort of cooking or baking gives me tons of much-needed energy, as well as making me feel balanced and healthy.
When I was in my 20s, I would rush about from work to a gig to a friend's house to a party, snacking and eating on the run. I rarely gave much thought to where that food had come from or what it was doing to my insides. Now, I love every mouthful of food, as not only does it taste delicious, but it's doing my insides good, too.
We seem to have forgotten, in this fast-paced day and age, that our bodies are linked to our minds. We tend to see them as separate entities, acting differently when given the same information, but our emotions will, of course, be more balanced if we eat well.
Good food goes in, our bodies work to their optimum, we have more energy, which is being distributed evenly - and so we ditch the highs and lows of crash dieting or eating poorly then substituting calories with sugar and processed foods.
Fad diets take up time, have quick results that don't last and usually leave you feeling moody and wired. Not a situation you can keep up for long. Cooking healthy homemade food is something that's realistic long term. And so good on so many levels: for your body, your mind and your happiness. For women, food is far too often synonymous with 'weight', and it doesn't have to be like that. Food is something to celebrate, to create, to empower, to enrich and to enjoy.
Cook Happy, Cook Healthy by Fearne Cotton is out now
Simon Di Principe
