Cover Stephanie Ng shares with Front & Female exclusive extracts of her first book ‘Big Bites Break Boundaries’ (Photo: Instagram / @bigbitesbreakboundaries)
Stephanie Ng shares with Front & Female exclusive extracts of her first book ‘Big Bites Break Boundaries’ (Photo: Instagram / @bigbitesbreakboundaries)
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In Big Bites Break Boundaries, Front & Female Awards nominee Stephanie Ng goes deep into what it is like being voiceless in a cultural environment that frowns upon open discussions about mental illness
Although I have shared my story of navigating recovery from an eating disorder countless times during my nearly decade-long journey as a mental health advocate, the idea of immortalising my thoughts in writing through the form of a book has been unexpectedly daunting. But I feel that publishing this book represents my growing acceptance that life is meant to be messy and that, as humans beings, we are bound to change and evolve. While the primary focus of this book is to challenge the boundaries surrounding mental illness in Hong Kong, it also pushes back against limiting beliefs and harmful stereotypes that we may hold in general. No matter who you are, I hope you can join me in sparking the #BigBitesBreakBoundaries movement—one that aims to spark bold and intentional conversations about ‘messy’ topics that may have felt ‘too scary’ to broach in the Hong Kong community and beyond.
I have picked two excerpts. The first one is from the chapter “Rice Bowls and Pimples”, and it captures one of the key messages of my book: our eating habits are rarely, if ever, “just about food.” This is to say that these habits are significantly shaped by the people and experiences in our lives, and therefore are closely tied to our mental and emotional health. Ultimately, I hope to emphasise the importance of building awareness surrounding the factors that shape our attitudes towards food and our bodies. By doing so, we can foster self-compassion, which contrasts with the critical mentality that diet-culture messaging can instil in us.
The second one is from the chapter “Omelets shaped like pigs”, where I share a personal story of finding joy and playfulness in the act of eating again whilst recovering from an eating disorder. Here, I hope to convey the message that satisfying hunger means meeting both physical and emotional needs—an idea that is often forgotten or misunderstood due to the negative portrayal of emotional eating in diet-culture messaging.
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From “Rice Bowls and Pimples”
A lot of character-building happens at the dinner table.
For me, it has been during mealtimes that I have learned how to show respect for my elders (e.g., cleaning my plate meant acknowledging and accepting the love that it had taken to make the food), how important it is to make time for family in everyday life (e.g., my dad coming home for dinner no matter how busy he was), how to show gratitude for what I am provided (e.g., trying not to waste food as much as possible), and general life lessons in the form of folktales and fables (e.g., “do you know what happens if you don’t finish all the rice in your bowl? You’ll marry a dude with a pimply face!!”). Throughout my life, the dining table has been a site of community, connection and learning.
I don’t remember exactly when the dinner table transformed from being a place of togetherness to a place of tension, but I do remember how it felt when it changed. I remember feeling like I wanted so much to enjoy the food on the table and the love that had gone into making it, to scrape my plate clean because I knew that it would make my grandmother happy, but at the same time, feeling a building sense of anxiety in my chest as I remembered what the lady with the perfect plastic smile in the magazine had told me: food intake needs to be monitored. You must have discipline. Your body needs to be controlled.
I remember feeling real fear as I watched a family member who lives in a larger body being ridiculed for eating more than she ‘should’. I remember questioning whether there was ‘too much’ of me when a family friend told me to stop swimming because my shoulders were becoming too broad. I remember feeling heat rise in my cheeks when a doctor said to me, “You have too much muscle. If you gain any more, you won’t be able to find a husband.”
I remember realising with a start how much sense it makes, that so many of us growing up in Hong Kong come to develop such fraught, anxiety-ridden relationships with food and our bodies.
From “Omelets shaped like pigs”
I never liked to cook when I was a child, but I loved to bake, mainly because I loved making my food into fun shapes. I was a big fan of alphabet soup, and adored animal crackers with a passion. I recognise now that this early love for food was an intertwining of both physical and emotional appetites. I deeply enjoyed the act of eating in and of itself, but equally, if not more so, relished the experience of getting to feel new tastes and textures dance on my tongue. I revelled in being able to satiate my appetite for adventure, curiosity, and zest for life through exploring both familiar and new foods. I learned to fear this voracious, multifaceted appetite of mine. The more I integrated the rubric of what society had defined as the ‘perfect’ woman into the fabric of my being, the more I felt the hunger within me subside and dim. I learned that women were not supposed to be hungry (or at least, hungrier than their male counterparts), expressive, loud, or curious. I learned that women should nibble, shrink, and shut up.
My aunt Jessica, who is the most quick-witted, creative, and artistically-talented person in our family, played an integral role in rekindling my childish, simple, and wholehearted love for food. Detail-oriented and deft with her hands, Aunt Jessica conjured up omelets shaped like pigs, fried rice moulded to look like my favourite chicken cartoon character, and cocktail sausages that blossomed like flowers. I felt the withered leaves of my physical and emotional appetites begin to flourish again, reigniting long-dormant sensations of pleasure, enjoyment, and excitement for eating. Each meal was a new adventure.
My mom recalled a bittersweet memory of sharing a meal with me during the early days of recovery. I was eating a plate of fruit when a stroke of creativity hit me, and I decided to put a blueberry inside a raspberry just for fun. We both laughed and laughed until we cried. “That was the moment that I knew you were recovering,” she told me. “You were having fun with food again.”
This extract is taken from Big Bites Break Boundaries by Stephanie Ng, available now.
