I've spent most of my adult life feeling like I was failing at something everyone else seemed to manage just fine.
Food. The thing that's supposed to be simple, innate and natural.
Except that's not how it went for me. For years, food was a war zone. Something to earn, something to apologise for, something to negotiate with. Cook Myself Happy is what came out of the middle of that.
Not the other side, but the middle. I haven't arrived anywhere. This is an ongoing, sometimes messy, but genuinely hopeful work in progress.
Hi, I'm Laura.
It's so lovely to meet you.
Food was the language of our family - meals every night, always something on the stove, the kitchen the centre of everything. And then things changed, the structure disappeared, and somewhere in growing up I started relating to food very differently. The women around me were navigating diet culture in their own way, and I absorbed it without ever being taught it. By the time I was a teenager the pattern was already set. I did that for a very long time.
I lost my dad when I was 20. Grief makes you look at things differently. He cooked with such delight - with the complete absence of guilt or anxiety. Somewhere in missing him, I started to want to find my way back to that.
And then last year, life gave me a partner who loves me without condition. And a small, chaotic, utterly devoted Cocker Spaniel named Luna, who reminds me daily that joy really can be found in the simplest things.
This January was the first January of my entire adult life where I didn't start a diet. I just cooked things I loved for the people I loved. I now feel so compelled to share the journey I'm on, because I know how many women must feel exactly the same.
Where it all began.
My dad was a professional chef.
You'll find recipes worth making and a conversation worth having. The food here is comforting, generous, and completely free of the guilt that diet culture loves to attach to eating. No numbers, no swaps, no small print and no justifications.
And when you're ready to go deeper, Done With Mondays is the podcast where we get into all of it. The stuff nobody talks about, the sneaky places diet culture hides that you'd never expect, and what it actually looks like to start doing things differently. It's transparent, unhurried, and recorded very much from the middle of the journey. Because here's what I know for certain: the way you feel about food isn't a personality flaw. It's the entirely predictable result of growing up in a world that profits from making you feel broken.
You were never broken. You were just never told the truth.
A kitchen without judgement.
Good food, good company, no guilt.
Food was never the enemy. It was just caught in the crossfire.
You'll find recipes worth making and a conversation worth having. The food here is comforting, generous, and completely free of the guilt that diet culture loves to attach to eating. No numbers, no swaps, no small print and no justifications.
And when you're ready to go deeper, Done With Mondays is the podcast where we get into all of it. The stuff nobody talks about, the sneaky places diet culture hides that you'd never expect, and what it actually looks like to start doing things differently. It's transparent, unhurried, and recorded very much from the middle of the journey. Because here's what I know for certain: the way you feel about food isn't a personality flaw. It's the entirely predictable result of growing up in a world that profits from making you feel broken.
You were never broken. You were just never told the truth.
I didn't fail every diet I ever tried. Every diet failed me. It just took me years to understand the difference.
