Tag Archives: atypical anorexia

Extreme Hunger in Eating Disorder Recovery: Why You Are Not Binging and Other Fears Explained

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Recently I have been inundated with questions about extreme hunger. This is not unexpected, as extreme hunger is one of the most terrifying aspects of recovery, and one that the eating disorder will latch onto; screaming all of your/its fears into your brain and how they have/are about to come true. Extreme hunger is probably the most common topic that comes up in messages to me asking for information and advice, alongside digestive issues. Recently though, the questions have become even more unrelenting: I could answer five questions in a row about extreme hunger and then within hours receive five more, even though their question was answered in the previous messages. Either the senders of these messages did not take the time to read them (or my FAQ), or, as is understandable, they see themselves as the exception to the recovery process (the “I am a magical unicorn” thinking process).

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Our anxieties and our eating disorders tell us that what we are experiencing isn’t the normal symptoms of recovery; that we are different; that our experiences with an eating disorder do not warrant the symptoms of recovery; that we were not sick enough for this; that somehow we need less food; that somehow our weight gain is not normal; that unlike everyone else the numbers on the scale will increase forever more and we will gain into infinity. And I get this entirely, because I was the same, but there is only so many times that I can repeat the same things over and over again, especially when they are in messages that come directly after one another. And so I decided to create this article to address the fears and doubts that are the most common: the ones that come up in those messages time and time again. The first part of this issue is to talk about the main fears of those with extreme hunger. The second part is a collection of experiences from those who have gone through extreme hunger and come out the other side.

Without further ado:

You can experience extreme hunger regardless of what weight you are or how much weight you lost.
If you restricted your intake, your body experienced an energy deficit. This energy deficit causes damage. This can result in extreme hunger.

Extreme hunger varies in severity and length of time.
It often lasts longer, or is more extreme, in those who have restricted for long periods of time, or those who have restricted very severely. Combining the two is therefore likely to double the chances of this. However, everyone is different, and the severity of extreme hunger is down to how much the damage the body has to repair. If you have extreme hunger, you have it for a reason.

Extreme hunger can come at any time.
Extreme hunger can come and go, be constant, start on Day 1 of recovery (or even during your ED, hence “binging” episodes), come during the middle of the recovery, or the end, or not at all, and it can last for varying periods of time.

It is totally normal to crave what you may call “unhealthy” or “junk” food.
High carb, high fat, and high sugar foods are foods that you are likely to have restricted during your eating disorder, which is why your body craves them now. It is deficient in those things and also in energy, and these foods tend to be high in energy and are easier to process by the body. Basically, this food is easy energy for a starved body. Your cravings for these types of foods will calm down in time as your body gets healthier and your mind recognises that you will not deprive it of these foods again. As a side note, just remember, that there is no “healthy” and “unhealthy” foods; “good” or “bad”, there are just foods that have different nutritional and energy values. Food is food, and also food is not a moral issue.

Extreme hunger is normal, natural, and expected.
If you starve your body, it is going to need more calories than a healthy, energy-balanced body, in order to get back to its balanced state. You can read more information about extreme hunger, why it happens, and how to cope with it here. I also have a video on the topic here. You are not alone in this experience.

Extreme hunger will not lead you to gain forever.
If you starve and lose weight, you will gain that weight back when you start eating more (and possibly more if your body is still growing and developing as your natural weight is not static until around 25ish when you have grown fully into your adult body). However, extreme hunger is more about internal repairs. So yes, some energy will go towards gaining weight, but lots of energy also goes into healing the damage done to your insides, which means it is used up doing this and is not part of weight gain. When your body is not so severely damaged, your appetite will taper down.

Extreme hunger will stop.
Extreme hunger is there for a very good reason: because your body is severely damaged and needs energy in order to repair this damage. When the body is healthier and not in need of so much energy, it will stop giving you signals for so much energy. Trust the body. It wants to heal you. It wants you to be happy and healthy. Your eating disorder wants to kill you. Put your faith in the right one, even though handing over control feels so scary. Remember that the illusion of control is scarier, and that with your ED you were never in control at all. You were controlled by something that wanted you as miserable and as sick as possible. It’s ultimate goal is your death. Take back control by working with your body, not against it. By giving over control to your body, you will be more in control than you ever have been, because you are reclaiming your health and happiness.

Your eating disorder will try and tell you that you are using extreme hunger as an excuse to eat, but that you were “not sick enough”, “didn’t restrict enough”, “didn’t lose enough weight” to warrant experiencing extreme hunger in recovery.
This is manipulation and bullying by your eating disorder. It can feel that it is losing, and it will try anything to have total control over you again. P.s. you never need an excuse to eat whatever you want, and if you can eat amounts that are “extreme hunger amounts”, then there’s a very good reason for it, and that reason is that the body needs it.

What you think is extreme hunger might not be extreme hunger.
2,500-3,500 calories is a very normal appetite. 3,500-4,000ish is more of a grey area. It is a larger appetite than most people with a healthy, energy-balanced body (although can be reached by energy-balanced people, usually by eating lots at a restaurant, or a buffet, or a night out drinking lots of alcohol and mixers), but it is not exactly extreme. 4,000-4,500+ is when it would start to be more in the extreme hunger range. All of these ranges can be experienced by a person in recovery from a restrictive eating disorder.

You are not binging and you do not have BED.
It feels very very much like binging, but it is not BED, and here we can look at the criteria for Binge Eating Disorder:

DSM-5 Diagnostic Criteria

Recurrent episodes of binge eating. An episode of binge eating is characterized by both of the following:
- eating, in a discrete period of time (for example, within any 2-hour period), an amount of food that is definitely larger than most people would eat in a similar period of time under similar circumstances
- a sense of lack of control over eating during the episode (for example, a feeling that one cannot stop eating or control what or how much one is eating)
The binge-eating episodes are associated with three (or more) of the following:
- eating much more rapidly than normal
- eating until feeling uncomfortably full
- eating large amounts of food when not feeling physically hungry
- eating alone because of feeling embarrassed by how much one is eating
- feeling disgusted with oneself, depressed, or very guilty afterwards
Marked distress regarding binge eating is present.
The binge eating occurs, on average, at least once a week for three months.
The binge eating is not associated with the recurrent use of inappropriate compensatory behavior (for example, purging) and does not occur exclusively during the course Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, or Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder.

You will probably read these and think but this is what I am experiencing! Let’s go through it point by point:

Yes, you will eat food that is larger than most people would eat in that time because you have a starved body that needs loads more energy than most people.
You will absolutely feel a lack of control because your eating disorder (which gives you the illusion of being in control) is not driving this: your body is, and therefore your ED will feel out of control.
Yes, you will probably eat rapidly because your body wants to get energy is as fast as it can because it is desperate for it.
Yes, you will feel uncomfortably full because a) your stomach is shrunken and b) this is an amount of food that your stomach is not used to at all.
You may not feel physically hungry because extreme hunger can be experienced in many different ways. Extreme hunger can be the feeling of hunger and tummy rumblings etc, but for the most part, from talking to people and experiencing it myself, it comes in the form of feeling empty and/or intense urges to eat/mental hunger.
Feeling embarrassed, disgusted, depressed, and guilt, along with marked distress, whilst and/or after eating a large amount of food, is quite obviously going to be experienced by someone with a restrictive eating disorder.
Again, it can be experienced every day, or on and off on some days and some not, or once a week, or not for a week and then constantly for weeks, etc etc.
Now if we take a look at the last in that category, I want to draw your attention to “does not occur exclusively during the course Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, or Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder“. You are in recovery from one of these eating disorders (or OSFED/EDNOS). This means that you still have that eating disorder, because even though you are moving forwards from it, it is still active for you, until it is inactive and you are in remission. Meaning that you do not have BED. You have anorexia, bulimia, OSFED, or ARFID, and your body is trying to recover from the physical effects that this has had on you.

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Personal Experiences With Extreme Hunger : Those Who Have Come Out The Other Side

Extreme hunger was definitely the most daunting part of the recovery process for me. Mine began about 1 week into recovery and lasted non stop for approximately 3 months and then fairly regularly for the next 9 months with only the odd day here and there after that. It was emotionally traumatic and I was, like many people who go through it, certain that I had developed a binge eating food addiction. I had not… it was exactly what my body was screaming out for and all I had to do was listen to it and respond appropriately without compensating through exercise or attempts to restrict afterwards. I would eat thousands of calories in single sittings, often after a meal is when it would hit me. For example I’d have a normal lunch and would then suddenly feel like a bottomless pit, like my insides were desperate for more. I’d eat several family packs of biscuits, boxes of cereal, whole boxes of magnum ice-creams, share bags of salted nuts, loaves of bread, you name it. It was terrifying but I battled through the fear and the hatred my ED would scream at me and allowed my body to do the healing it so desperately needed to do. Over time the episodes of EH would become fewer and further between and now I simply couldn’t eat as much food as that in a single sitting- now I look back on it and know with confidence and experience that it was essential for my recovery and pivotal in my battle of overcoming my eating disorder. – Emily, 22

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I developed an eating disorder when I began restricting calories in order to lose weight. It got out of hand and I then developed bulimia. I wish I had known that my binging (extreme hunger) was a normal reaction to the restriction. Eventually I realised the only way to end the bulimia cycle was to just go all in and let my extreme hunger run its course. It was really really REALLY hard, and scary, with many slip ups, and I recommend building a good support system around yourself. I didn’t count my calories at the time, but I’m sure they went to at least 4000-5000 most days. I think on average I would have hit 4000 calories a day. But there were definite days where it could have easily been 8000 calories. What I remember most is eating entire loafs of bread with butter in one sitting. Definitely entire large icecream tubs were in there. Just complete freedom. It was the best decision I have ever made. It meant I could enrol into university and study. It took the better part of a year for the extreme hunger to completely subside, and then another year for me to be completely rid of disordered thoughts around food. I know I’m so lucky to have gotten through it. I’ve tapered down to a weight that has stayed stable for months without any effort. I now have the brain space to focus on things I actually love doing. I wouldn’t have gotten here if I didn’t let extreme hunger run its course. – Ira, 24

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Before I experienced extreme hunger, I had tricked myself into thinking I wasn’t sick anymore, because while I was eating the minimum amount of calories recommended for me for my body weight (which turns out is less than half what I should have been eating to live a normal life) and experiencing extreme orthorexia, I was still, in my mind, eating. I thought that I was well enough to go back to work as a chef. In the six months that followed the years and years of starving myself overwhelmed me and extreme hunger kicked in. I had no idea what it was and was terrified I had developed BED. I would eat cake until I felt sick, throw it away in tears, and then feel the need to eat it so badly that I’d get it out of the bin again. I would eat entire loaves of bread and cheese and all of the food I’d told myself I wasn’t allowed to eat, and panic until I had anxiety attacks. I was terrified and felt so wildly out of control that I started making myself sick again. After months of this, although it was incredibly difficult, I stopped being sick, I stopped counting calories, and I tried really hard to eat what my body was telling me to eat. I threw away my scales. I didn’t look in a mirror for months. I just told myself that it was going to be okay, and that I had to let my body do this so that I could live my life without spending every waking moment thinking about fat and weight and diet plans. I just wanted to be able to live like normal people lived. Obviously I put on weight, because my body was starved and was desperate to hold on to the calories I was putting in to it, but after a few months of extreme hunger, my body began to calm down. My appetite lessened, and my weight evened out. I learned how to eat normal food again, how to eat without calorie counting, and how to eat meals like normal people at normal times. Extreme hunger terrified me because I didn’t know what it was, but I needed to go through it not only to let my body recover from all of the awful things I’d put it through, but also to learn how to eat again. Anonymous, 24

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My experience with extreme hunger was a scary one. Going from eating so little to so much in such little time was a shock both mentally and physically… and was actually kind of terrifying at times. My extreme hunger began very soon after embarking on a ‘3000 calories a day’ meal plan. After a few days of this plan, it was as if my body completely took over my mind and wouldn’t rest unless it was well fed. For the first few days of extreme hunger, there was actually very little fear or hesitation involved when it came to eating. I felt FREE. I ate pretty much everything I’d been restricting by the bucket load. If an award could be won for the most chocolate consumption in one sitting I’d definitely win them all (are these awards a thing? I hope so). I’d say that my consumption started at around 5000-6000 at the beginning for around 2 weeks and then crept up to around 10,000 calories a day which I’d say lasted for around 4-5 weeks. Can I just add that it sounds WAY more terrifying than it actually is. Yes – it is scary, but it is also the most freeing thing you could ever experience. After eating around 10,000 calories a day for 4-5 weeks, my hunger began to taper a little; week by week my intake lessened slightly until I was eating 3000-4000 calories naturally and comfortably a day.
Body wise, I gained weight quickly. I had the whole puffy face, slightly pregnant belly thing going on. At the time, I honestly didn’t concentrate much on how I was looking. The feeling of freedom was completely overwhelming and overshadowed the physical effects of what I was going through. That being said, extreme hunger didn’t come without its discomfort. My body was obviously not accustomed to digesting this volume of food, which meant that I experienced fairly severe stomach cramps. I ensured that I stuck to easily digestible food at this time and after a couple of weeks, they passed.
My extreme hunger diminished completely at around 7 months into recovery and I am now 3 years in! Extreme hunger helped me break down so many barriers in recovery and it has enabled me to build a far healthier relationship with food. – Emmy, 22

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I was meeting with a nutritionist about once a week at the beginning of my recovery. She would give me a meal plan, calorie goal, etc. It was extremely difficult at first because I had to not only eat, but keep in, the calories I was consuming. Once I was on this meal plan for a few weeks the extreme hunger started to kick in. The biggest issue I had with extreme hunger is that in the beginning you don’t trust your body or think that it’s accurately telling you the things that you want. But one day I just said “fuck it” and tried a different approach. Whatever I was craving I ate, no matter the amount I wanted. The extreme hunger lasted for six months, and was one of the more difficult parts of the recovery process but it is so, so worth it, and is exactly why I can be typing this right now while enjoying ramen with my roommates and knowing that yes, this can be overcome. – Natalia, 21

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Last year, I used MinnieMaud to recover from anorexia. Extreme hunger hit me like a truck, and I was a ravenous beast for a solid 4 months. I went from about 90 lbs to 150 lbs, and once I hit that weight, my appetite normalized, which was pretty awesome and relieving. It was a rough and scary road, but having confidence in the principles of MM, and especially the Minnesota starvation study, and TRUSTING my body, helped immensely. – Anonymous, 30

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During the early parts of recovery my hunger was huge. I was CONSTANTLY hungry/craving large amounts of food. I would eat blocks of cheese, chips, sandwich after sandwich and still feel hungry even though my stomach felt so full and bloated. It was scary to think the hunger would never end and I’d just keep on eating and eating. BUT, I trusted the process and resigned myself to allowing myself grace during this period knowing many other people had experienced the exact same thing with good results in the end. I knew the key was to not limit myself when it came to food and cravings. It took awhile but slowly I started noticing myself eating and craving smaller portions and feeling satisfied with those portions. The body just needs all those calories and nutrients after being in the negatives for so long. Give yourself time to make up some of the deficits without freaking out too much! You can do it! – Shannon, 34

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My extreme hunger started before I even chose to recover. My body eventually decided that after seven years of restriction that varied from minor to severe during that time span, and one year of severe, unrelenting starvation, it was going to have to do something about it. My body would put me in what I can only call “trances”, where I would go to the kitchen and eat loads of porridge oats, then “wake up”, and chaos would ensue, both in my mind and my reactions to what I had eaten. A month or so of this ensued: with my body taking over, and then my eating disorder reacting to it and making me compensate. Then I chose recovery, and tentatively gave myself permission to respond to the hunger and cravings that I was experiencing. During extreme hunger I would eat whole cheesecakes; pints of Ben and Jerry’s; bowls of cereal; whole big Thornton’s chocolate boxes…I was terrified that I had developed BED; that I was using recovery as an excuse to binge; that I would never stop eating so much…but it did. It stopped when I was healthier. My appetite tapered down. It stopped demanding so many high carb and high fat foods. My days of experiencing extreme hunger lessened and grew farther apart. During the second year of my recovery, my appetite was generally normal, with a couple of days of eat around 4,000 calories (in the grey area between normal appetite and extreme hunger, but then again some days I probably didn’t eat enough for my body and therefore ate more on other days). Now my weight is stable, my appetite has normalised, and I haven’t experienced extreme hunger for years. It was terrifying to go through, but it is not endless. It does stop. And it is so important to trust that your body is that hungry for a reason. – Myself (Sarah Young), 25

I hope that this article answers most of the questions related to extreme hunger and gives some reassurance that this is normal and does end.

Extreme Hunger – What Is It, Why Is It Happening, and How Do I Handle It?

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It has come to my attention that I have not yet addressed one of the biggest topics of recovery from a restrictive eating disorder in any of my articles on this website (shame on me!). I’m not sure how I managed to miss it but it may be because I have a comprehensive video on the subject, and also refer to Your Eatopia’s articles about it. It was, after all, Gwyneth Olwyn who did coin the term “extreme hunger” (as far as I am aware). But let’s get started.

Extreme hunger is a rather controversial subject in the recovery world. It is rarely recognised by professionals regardless of the clear logic that shows us that it is totally normal and expected to experience a surge in hunger after a period of starvation, not to mention the sheer amount of people that talk about extreme hunger being part of their recovery (or “binging”, which is actually the same thing, but we will get to that later).

Extreme hunger is a very rational experience when you look at the facts. A body that has been starved has a large energy deficit, and therefore calories that are needed for daily expenditure are not going to be enough to get an energy-deficient body back to its energy-balanced state. This is because it will need calories for daily expenditure and calories to make up for the energy deficit. This energy deficit in itself will have resulted in damages to the body, and it can also result in weight loss which also causes harm to the body – and frequently the more extreme the weight loss the more severe the damage. Damages like that require energy to heal, and that has to be energy on top of daily energy needs, as that is expended in – you guessed it – the energy that you use up in your daily life.

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So if you imagine that energy-balanced is the number 0 – a neutral place with a healthy body, and let’s say you need around 2,750 calories to stay in this energy-balanced place. Then starvation brings you to -10 on that scale, which means that you are in an energy-deficient place. Let’s say you now enter recovery and bring your calories up to 2,750 again (after increasing gradually because of the risk of refeeding syndrome). Your metabolism is probably very suppressed, so for a while, 2,750 may cause weight gain either slowly or rapidly as your body will store as much energy as it can rather than burning it, to get you to a healthier weight. The metabolism will then speed up and you might a) experience hypermetabolism and end up dropping weight or maintaining a fairly low to low BMI (or a BMI too low for your personal body), which will mean that you will need to increase your calories until you are gaining again or you may b) find that you maintain a certain weight or that your weight gain slows down. This does not mean that you need fewer calories. This means that your body is now able to maintain its weight on those calories. It does not mean that it is done healing the many internal damages done through starvation, so if you experience hunger or cravings for more than the 2,750 your body (theoretically) needs, then it is really important to respond to those signals and eat. Your body is your team mate; your best friend; your rescuer. Listen to it. It if it telling you that it is hungry, then it is hungry. I know – this is ridiculously difficult, and I will talk about that in a moment.

Now let’s say you are recovering on a sub-optimal amount of calories and have stopped gaining weight. My body must be recovered! I hear you say. It must only need this amount of calories! Wrong. Let’s say that you are recovering on 1500 calories. Your body is maintaining a weight that is not its natural or healthy weight because it needs more energy to repair and gain weight. In order for it to gain to its set point and heal the internal damages done to your body, it needs adequate and consistent energy, and that is much more than 1,500 calories (or whatever your sub-optimal is). Let’s say you are recovering on a sub-optimal amount of calories and are gaining weight. Well clearly I don’t need any more calories if I am gaining weight on this! I hear you shout. Wrong. Giving your body an inadequate amount of energy means that it is extremely likely to keep your metabolism suppressed and therefore will continue to store more energy as fat rather than burning it like it would if it had a normal-speed metabolism. To find out how many calories you need (base level, without extreme hunger), check out my recovery guidelines here. Remember that activity level also factors into being energy-balanced, and that if you are engaging in excessive exercise, this will put you in an energy-deficient state too. It is also important to note that whilst your body is healing, any energy put into exercise will put a strain on a body that is desperately trying to heal a multitude of damages, and exercise will eat into much-needed energy for repairs. This is why it is important to rest during recovery (and for more on that here, here, and here are my videos on exercise).

You may be experiencing extreme hunger right now. It may be something that you will experience in the future. It is something that most likely makes you feel terrified beforehand, and extremely guilty after. It is something that may be heavily weighing on your mind (excuse the pun). You may think that you have lost control; that you are spiralling into a different eating disorder; that this is binging and you are never going to eat like a normal person ever again! You are not alone in those fears. I had them too. Extreme hunger is utterly anxiety-provoking. It feels as if it will never end, and it evokes a multitude of negative emotions and thoughts, including shame, terror, and disgust. The eating disorder will scream and scream and scream at you inside your head. It will do anything to stop you eating what you need to eat, and the more you eat, the louder it will usually scream.

This is an extremely chaotic time inside the mind of someone recovering, and you are not alone if you feel completely overwhelmed by your hunger and your eating disorder’s reaction to it. The eating disorder hates anything that goes against its cruel, life-threatening rules, so for something like extreme hunger to hit and be responded to is something that will enrage it. People also have fears that it is binge eating disorder – and these fears are understandable, given the volume of food that might be consumed. Yes, you will be consuming a large amount of energy. You might eat anywhere from 4,000 calories to 10,000+ (although the latter seems to be quite rare – but again, not unheard of and if you are experiencing this you are not the only one). This would be a lot of food for an energy-balanced body. But you do not have an energy-balanced body. You have a starved, damaged, energy-deficient, nutrient-deficient body that needs far more energy than a healthy, energy-balanced body, to get it back to that state of equilibrium again. This is okay. This is necessary for your body. You are not alone.

You may experience extreme hunger at the beginning of your recovery. You may experience it in the middle, or near the end. You may find that it comes and goes throughout your recovery. You may never experience it at all – and that is okay too. This could be because you may need less energy to repair internally – this does not negate your need to recover. It may be that you may have repressed hunger cues and find that you struggle to even eat your calorie guidelines let alone have any desire for more. Extreme hunger may come to you later, or it may not come at all. It may be that you are someone that finds that you eat a little more than what your body needs as an energy-balanced body for a long time and your healing is done more slowly.

It can also be that during extreme hunger you find that you are eating a certain type of food: sugar, carbs, and fats are generally the types of foods that are most highly restricted, and because of that, the body needs and craves foods high in these things. It is also easier for the body to quickly process and get energy from these types of foods. Those who are highly lacking in fats may find themselves eating jars of peanut butter – this seems to be quite common so don’t freak out if you are eating whole jars of peanut butter, nutella etc, and strange combinations also seem quite frequent during extreme hunger or recovery in general. You may find yourself chomping on lots of meat or iron rich foods. You may find yourself digging into ice cream, milk, cream, and cheese because you are deficient in fats or calcium. There is a reason for the foods you crave. Listen to your body and respond to it.

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The message that I want to get across is that if you have been through a period of restriction, experiencing a raging hunger is totally, absolutely, 100% normal. I want you to know that it is not forever, even though it feels like it could be, and even though that is your greatest fear. Your body will become energy-balanced (or close to energy-balanced) and the intense hunger will dissipate as your body gets healthier. Your extreme hunger may taper down, or it may vanish from one day to the next, but you will not have extreme hunger forever. Everyone I know who has gone through the entire recovery process has experienced extreme hunger, and they have come through it and out the other side. They have eaten whole cakes for breakfast, or pints and pints of ice cream, or whole cheesecakes, or whole large Thortons chocolate boxes (that one was me), and they have all been horrified; ashamed; fearful. They have all been scared witless that it would never end. They have all questioned whether they had gone from one extreme to the other and developed Binge Eating Disorder. And they have all, in one way or another, either come across information on the topic and been a little soothed until the hunger calmed down, or have freaked out and then, in time, found that the hunger normalised. If you (unsurprisingly) need help with anxiety management, check out my article on it here.

Why more research has not been done into this topic, I don’t know. I have talked to thousands of people in recovery since I began my journey over four years ago; on the Your Eatopia forums, on my blog, on this website, on my Youtube channel, and on my Instagram account, and one of the most frequent topics is extreme hunger. I don’t know why it has not been researched or recognised by many health professionals, and it is one of the most frustrating and saddening things for me when people are told not to respond to these very natural, obvious signals from the body. But I can say with conviction that if you are experiencing this, you are far from alone. You are okay. You are healing. Work with your body, not against it. Be strong, and patient, and kind to your body and your soul. What you are experiencing is normal, and expected, and you can get through this.

Fat Girls Can Wear Crop Tops Too

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Yep, you heard me. Fat girls can wear crop tops too. Let me say it again for the people in the back:

Fat

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girls

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can

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wear

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crop tops

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too.

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But this article isn’t just about crop tops.

I understand that we live in a society that has brainwashed many of us into believing that fat bodies are worth less than thin bodies; that fat is synonymous with ugly; that there is nothing worse than being fat; that we cannot be fat AND happy (these are all lies by the way) but I still do not understand why anyone would feel that it is acceptable to attempt to police the clothing choices of any other human being, regardless of their weight, shape, or size.

Fat girls are told implicitly and explicitly that they should not wear leggings, or crop tops, or bikinis (or even go on the beach at all), or bear their legs in dresses, or wear mini shorts, or…the list goes on. There is even a hierarchy of privilege amongst fat bodies, depending on how fat you are or where your fat is stored or whether you have big enough boobs to even out your thick thighs and hips. And frankly, I find it all disgusting.

We are all people. We all lead different lives and have different values and passions and hobbies. And we all have different bodies. And the weight, shape, or size of our bodies does not alter our self worth or how beautiful we are. It also does not give anyone the right to dictate what we wear. Fat, slim, curvy, thin, chubby, muscular, pear-shaped, apple-shaped…you can be star-shaped for all I care and wear the same clothes as anyone else. Certain clothes are not reserved for certain body sizes or shapes, and whether you are a size 6 or a size 26, you are the only one who gets to choose what you wear. Don’t let ignorance get in the way of your clothing preference. If you want to rock a crop top, a mini skirt, and nine-inch heels, you do that. If you want to wear a cute summery dress to the beach and then whip it off to reveal an itsy, bitsy bikini, you do that. If you want to wear leggings and a bralet, you do that. And if you feel more comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt, you do that too. Because you should be able to wear whatever it is that you feel the most confident in. And if our fatphobic, asshole of a society has made you feel too uncomfortable to wear a crop-top even if you really like them, it doesn’t make you any less badass if you save the crop tops for another time, or even never.

You do not have to wear whatever society thinks is most “flattering”. I only recently took a real long hard look at this word, and saw it from a totally different angle to what I previously saw. People use it as a compliment towards each other all of the time, and it seems like a genuinely nice thing to say someone until you examine what it wearing something “flattering” really means. The word “flattering” in itself is oppressive: it implies that we should be aiming to look a certain way – and that certain way is “as thin as possible”. No one should feel that they have to disguise their hip fat or accentuate their waist or push up their breasts or flatten down their bellies. You do not have to hide any part of your body as if it is shameful. Not one part of your body is shameful, and you have the right to wear whatever you want, at all times. Everyone deserves to embrace the body that they have and everyone deserves to love it for what it does for them and for what it looks like.

It is summer time, and it is hot outside, and fat girls are entitled to dress in the clothes that make them feel coolest – both in temperature and in style. Don’t ever shame anyone for wearing what they want to wear. It is their right to do so and to feel confident in doing so. Respect everyone’s clothing choice. Respect everyone’s bodies. Respect everyone.

crop tops me

(Here’s me and my crop top)

Is Intuitive Eating a Good Idea in Eating Disorder or Dieting Recovery?

7 Replies

food1

Intuitive eating is a concept that really resonates with me. In a society entrenched with diet culture, a huge percentage of people have lost the ability to trust their bodies, and instead opt for counting calories or macros, or eliminating food groups, or trying out various juice fasts, veggie cleanses, cabbage soup diets…the list of restrictive diets and ways to self starve is endless. The fact that we do not ignore other bodily signals: emptying our bladders or bowels; sneezing; coughing; itching; removing our fingers from a burning surface; blinking; but ignore our body’s signal for hunger and then call it a good thing is absurd. We have decided to stop trusting our biological body; a body built for survival, and instead listen to the multi-billion dollar diet and weight loss industry, our unhealthy thin-obsessed culture, and the media which panders to both (again, to make money). It is nonsensical. It is ridiculous. It is madness. And yet nearly all of us are guilty of listening and responding to it.

Intuitive eating is a nutrition philosophy based on the premise that becoming more attuned to the body’s natural hunger signals is a more effective way to attain a healthy weight, rather than keeping track of the amounts of energy and fats in foods.

This is why I love the idea of intuitive eating (although do remember when reading the above that a “healthy weight” is whatever your body needs to be at naturally, and has nothing to do with BMI). Reconnecting with your body; listening to it; honouring its cues and signals; respecting it and giving it the treatment it needs and deserves…this is exactly the right attitude to have, and exactly the right action to take. However, when it comes to recovering from the effects of dieting, or even more serious, an eating disorder, intuitive eating becomes a little trickier to throw yourself into.

Months or years of damages done to the body through restriction can cause huge issues with the way the body communicates with you, especially when it comes to hunger. Your hunger cues may have become suppressed, and therefore will be unreliable during the recovery process. When this is the case, it means that both hunger for the correct amount of energy and cravings for the right types of foods that the body needs won’t be felt by the person experiencing this, and so intuitive eating would be a disaster for them. It would mean that they would not get the energy that their body needs for daily energy requirements, and would not get the types of food that the body needs and nutrients that the body is lacking in. For these people, intuitive eating would not be something that they could jump into straight away, and would have to be a goal for later on in the recovery process. Those without reliable hunger cues would need to count calories to ensure that they are eating enough (I wrote about calorie counting in recovery here), and also keep an eye on the types of foods that they are eating to make sure that they are getting enough of each food group.

Those with reliable hunger cues will find that they are able to move to intuitive eating sooner, although I would always suggest counting at first whilst you establish if you have reliable hunger cues or not (and I have a video on when to know when you are able to eat intuitively here). Those with reliable hunger cues may find themselves ravenously hungry, or may be hungry for the amount that they need day to day, and then find themselves absolutely starving most of the time. This is normal and expected and in recovery is called “extreme hunger” (I have a video on this here). This is something those in recovery often experience, but not always. Those with reliable hunger cues find that they are hungry for the amount of energy that their body needs each day.

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Some people in recovery go through periods of both reliable and unreliable hunger cues, and during this time it is best to keep counting calories and keeping an eye on what you are eating until you are receiving consistently reliable hunger cues.

For both those who have reliable and unreliable hunger cues it is important to make sure that you are eating all food groups, as they are all important for health. It is important to note for both those with reliable hunger cues and those with unreliable hunger cues that it is normal in recovery from restrictive eating disorders or dieting to crave foods that are high in energy, especially foods with a high fat, sugar, or carbohydrate content. This is because processed food can be one of the best things for recovery, especially during the initial stages. Foods high in energy help to fill the calorie deficit and repair the extensive damage done through starvation, as well as providing energy for the day. Foods high in fat help with regaining your period, aid bowel movements, and most importantly, the brain is made of at least 60% fat which requires eating fat in order to heal and maintain its health. Fat is also most easily processed by the body, which is quite essential to your damaged digestive system. Usually in recovery people crave “junk” food because this is just what their bodies need, and that is okay. If you are eating far more carbs than any other food group, that is okay. If you are eating far more sugary foods than any other food groups, that is okay. What is not okay is if you are only responding to these cravings and not having any other food group. Responding to the cravings is really important, but it is also important that you don’t go without an entire food group. Some people find that whilst their bodies are busy craving foods high in energy, it can end up not sending signals for fruit and vegetables. It is quite common for those with eating disorders or even dieting to have issues with filling up on fruit and veggies, and for these people, cutting down and thinking about it less is the goal, but for others, they can find that in recovery they can have reliable hunger cues for the energy that their body needs, but do not have the cravings for all the food types that it needs. The body, in this way, is being reliable in letting you know exactly what it needs in order to become energy-balanced (by craving foods high in energy), but has made this a priority and is not giving the right signals in order for the body to get all the nutrients that it needs. So if you realise that you are going days without fruit or veggies, make sure to incorporate some into your diet. Don’t become rigid or fixed upon a certain number, but just make sure you are having some throughout your day. The same applies to any other food group that you might find yourself not eating through lack of cravings.

fod 2

Whilst many people crave “junk” food, you may also experience cravings for dairy, cereal, and meat/fish. You can have cravings for anything! You may also find that you have cravings for odd combinations of food, and that is perfectly normal too. Just respond to what your body is asking for.

If you are experiencing extreme hunger and/or having intense cravings for only one food group or particular type on food – don’t panic. Appetite settles down when the body is healthier to include cravings for a massive variety of foods: chocolate, milk, fruit, cereal, doughnuts, pizza, pasta, vegetables, fish, steak, cake….EVERYTHING. No foods should ever be off limits, and your body will start giving you more and more reliable hunger cues as your body gets healthier and healthier, until you are able to really connect with it and trust it. Throw out your magazines. Forget the media. Forget diet culture and societies unhealthy obsession with thinness. Trust your body and work with it. There is no wrong way to have a body (and please please please check out weight set point theory, and health at every size under my resources section).

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For some people, intuitive eating can be something that they start doing fairly early on in recovery from an eating disorder or dieting, but for others, it can take time for their bodies to adjust and be able to communicate correctly. Whichever is the case, intuitive eating is a fantastic goal to work towards, but it is important to recognise that it can take time, patience, and perseverance. I would always suggest it be the goal, and would never want anyone to have to return to listening to diet culture – it’s what got a lot of people into a terrible place emotionally and physically in the first place (particularly those recovering from dieting as eating disorders are nearly always a lot more complex . However, recovery is certainly not helped along by diet culture). Listening to your natural, biological, earth-given body is the best thing to do for your mental and physical health when it comes to eating. Not concepts created by society. And always know that food is not just about nurture and nourishment, but about pleasure and enjoyment too. Do what makes you happy and healthy, both physically and mentally. You deserve it.

Recovered Does Not Mean Cured

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I like to write positive posts about recovery and what it means to be recovered and all the fantastic things about it. I like to illustrate how amazing it is to go from being very mentally and physically sick to being a functioning human being with passions and interests. I like to talk about going from empty to fulfilled; suicidal to content. But I also want to talk about the realities of recovery, and talk about where the eating disorder goes once you reach remission.

In an ideal world, reaching full recovery would mean that the eating disorder was banished from our brains for good. It would mean that the war, once won, was never to be fought again. In a way, that can be the case. You don’t have to fight that war ever again if you remain stable and strong in your remission, but there will be a few riots to deal with, and the odd battle here and there. The war will be won, but the eating disorder will always try and rebel where it can.

The eating disorder will always be there, in each and every one of us who have been a victim of this deadly disease. It is part of our genetic make up, and worse than that, it’s a part that has been triggered. It cannot be un-triggered, and it cannot be un-learnt. But that’s okay: people who have suffered from an eating disorder and fought it are some of the bravest and strongest people. If you’ve never had an eating disorder you will never know how exhausting and gruelling it is to fight it, but take my word on it: it’s one of the toughest (if not the toughest) that we will ever have to do. With all that strength we have, after beating the eating disorder, keeping it in check is a hell of a lot easier than what we have already been through.But it is important to know that it will be there, and you have to make sure that you are the one that stays in control at all times.

It is a mistake that those who haven’t had an eating disorder can easily make: that once it has been defeated, then it is gone. Sometimes people don’t understand that once a day, or once a week, or once a month, there will be a little battle that we have to fight. And it is fairly easy to win it, but if we give in due to not being vigilant, or feeling too tired to resist it that day, it is something that can quickly spiral out of control.

Take my last 24 hours, for instance. I had to go home from work with a severely upset stomach. My mum told me not to eat for 24 hours (a sensible thing to do in this situation), so I geared up for that challenge. After eight hours, I was starving, so I ate a cracker and smoked a cigarette, and my hunger pretty much vanished. That reared the head of the beast, and a little voice said see how easy it is to make your appetite disappear. I also kept stroking my stomach to see if it felt flatter, because when I was sick and would have an upset stomach, my stomach always felt super flat and I liked that. After 20 hours with only 3 crackers, I tentatively made some toast to test out my stomach. The little voice told me that I could just go longer without eating, and that I’m too sick to eat at all, and I felt resistance to wanting to start eating again. I will fight that small battle every time I get a stomach bug and can’t eat for a while, because for me, once I stop eating, I find it a small challenge to start again. I know that I can fight that, but there is always the possibility that I could give in to it and that the eating disorder would take the wheel and I would fall into the back seat. It is so important to recognise when the eating disorder is trying to worm its way into your thoughts and influence your actions, so that you can roar at it to get back in its place (metaphorically, of course – I’m not sure how those around you would react to that kind of outburst).

Another example is exercise. I enjoy some types of physical activity like badminton, swimming, and walking. I love doing it, but so does my eating disorder. That means that I have to constantly assess how I am feeling towards it. It means that when I can’t do exercise (like now, being ill), I feel anxiety. It means that I have to consistently challenge myself to make sure that I am in control, not my eating disorder. This means that I take rest days where I don’t exercise whatsoever. If ever I told myself to take a rest day or two, and couldn’t do it, there would be a problem. It would not be me taking charge in that situation, and I’d then have to work through that and fight a bigger fight. I think anyone who chooses to be active in their remission and has had exercise addiction will always walk a line with it. If I ever exercise when I am ill or injured, or when I have challenged myself not to, or because I feel I have to even though I am not enjoying it, that is when there will be an issue. I have to watch out for that, and so does everyone else in my position.

There are also bad body image days. In our society this is – tragically – normal, but for those with an eating disorder it can be accentuated, or a trigger and therefore more dangerous. It means accepting the bad day, or week, or month, and not responding to it, which can be incredibly hard as someone without an eating disorder, let alone someone with one.

There are many different things that will trigger different people, and although a lot of triggers become null and void, most people have one or two (or more) that remain with them. Having those triggers, and having the eating disorder itself, means that we are always at risk of relapse. It means that we do still have to fight battles that other people do not have to fight. It means that we have to be vigilant and careful and assess our thoughts and behaviours towards things like food, exercise, and our bodies on a regular basis.

Recovered does not mean cured. Recovered means in remission. It means that it can come back, and it means that we will always be fighting, even if the fight is a million times easier to win.

Counting Calories and Recovery

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It seems like something that would be counter-productive to suggest, but counting calories is a really important part of recovery – especially during the initial stages. Counting calories is very likely a large part of you or your child’s (or partner’s/sibling’s/friend’s et) eating disorder, so it can seem like madness to say ‘continue doing this’, but hear me out.

Whilst counting calories was used as a way to restrict, it now needs to be used as a way to heal. So we are turning around a negative habit and using it to make sure that the person recovering gets enough energy into their body. Getting enough energy is essential for recovery, and it is likely to be something that proves impossible to do unless someone is counting the calories of the person recovering.

For most people it will be you; the recoverer, that counts. Sometimes it will be parents or partners. Either way, those calories need to be counted because after an eating disorder, people have unreliable hunger cues. The body has gone so long without food that it has repressed the signals, and so it can take a long time for reliable hunger cues to return again and for the body to learn to expect food and give signs as to when it needs it. This can mean that eating can feel like a chore to some. It could mean that you will have no appetite and feel too full, but it is important to ensure that you continue eating adequately regardless. It could mean that you feel really hungry sometimes, but other times have no appetite. Respond to any hunger or cravings that you have, and continue eating enough even when you don’t have an appetite. You may have reliable hunger cues straight away, which would be great and would lead you to eat what you need to eat in order to recover. Responding to mental hunger is also really important. Mental hunger is just another signal from the brain to tell you that you are hungry. All signals come from the brain, and it is crucial to listen. So if you don’t feel the physical signs of hunger but are wanting or craving food, then it is necessary to listen to that signal and respond to it – always.

So how are you going to count calories? I would advise staying away from apps such as MyFitnessPal, as they can be incredibly triggering due to the fact that they try to suggest restrictive amounts to eat, and they are an app focused on weight loss. You could just use a ‘notes’ app and count it up yourself and keep the number on record for the day there, or you could write ‘500’ as many times as adds up to how much you need to eat on a sheet of paper or on a notes app on your phone, and just cross it off every time you reach 500 calories. This can mean that you know you are getting closer to your goal but don’t need to count the number if not thinking of the number helps. If your parents or partner are very involved in your recovery, they could do the counting for you if this is possible and more beneficial for your recovery.

Calorie counting can be triggering for many people, but the alternative of under-eating is much more harmful. Under-eating – which many people in recovery will do due to unreliable hunger cues if they do not count calories or have them counted for them – will mean that the body cannot heal. Mental and physical recovery are interconnected, so if the body is not getting enough energy, this will also impact on mental recovery also. Under-eating means that neither mental nor physical recovery will be able to take place, so counting calories until your hunger is reliable is a necessity. This is one habit that will have to be saved until a bit later to break – which is okay, because there are many habits and thought processes to manage, change, and break, and there has to be something that is saved until last (or later on)!

So you’ve been counting calories for a while and making sure you that you get the energy that your body needs. How do you know when you can stop counting and start going by hunger? When you start feeling like your hunger is happening in a reliable way which is consistent with when you should be eating and how much you should be eating, you can start thinking about testing out that hunger to make sure that it is naturally bringing you to the amount you need. A good way to test how reliable your hunger is, is to write out everything you eat for a week (or two weeks), and then count it up for each day, add it all up to get the total amount, and divide it by seven (or fourteen). The average figure should come to around the amount that is suggested as the minimum for you to eat during your recovery (this is around the amount that you should need forever). If it is three hundred to four hundred calories below that total, then I would really suggest that you continue to count calories as your hunger signals are likely to be unreliable. Most people will naturally and intuitively eat the amount recommended for them, or close to it, as this is the amount that an energy-balanced body needs each and every day. Some people do have hunger that is below or above the average (for example, someone who is expected to need 3000 calories for their age, gender, height, and activity levels could find that they naturally eat 2400, or 3600), and that is absolutely okay. However, if you are eating more than three hundred to four hundred less than what is recommended as adequate, it is more than likely that it is your hunger cues that are unreliable and you still have a little way to go before they are back to normal. If, say, 2400 calories is your normal hunger, eating 3000 for while longer will not have a negative effect on your recovery process, and will not have an impact on your weight. Your body will adapt to deal with the excess energy by putting it to good use (e.g. to continue repairing your body) or the metabolism will speed up to burn it off. (As a side note, when you are adding up your calories for those tester seven days, if one day has a really low amount, and another a higher amount, for example, 1000 calories one day and 4500 the next, this is a sign of unreliable hunger cues, even if the average does come to around the amount suggested for you. As a second side note, if you are consistently eating well above and beyond the minimum you require for recovery, your hunger cues are working and you are experiencing extreme hunger or higher energy needs still, which is totally normal for recovery).

So let’s say your hunger cues seemed reliable, and testing this out has shown that they are, now what? You can start trying to eat intuitively, but you will need to keep reassessing yourself to make sure your eating disorder is not sneaking in and manipulating the situation. It is important that you eat what you want, when you want, and don’t let the anxiety of stopping calorie counting come out in other ways, such as restricting certain foods types or resisting eating something you want because you are worried you are eating more now you have stopped counting. It is going to make you feel more out of control, but it is important to continue onwards, and not use any other behaviours.

But how do you go about stopping counting calories? Calorie counting is a hard habit to break. It can become so ingrained in you that it can happen even without consciously thinking. There will be different things that work for different people, but here is a list I put together with some suggestions about how to stop counting:

Get yourself and your family to put labels over the calorie amounts on packets etc. This can deter you from looking and also remind you when out of habit you try to check that your goal is to not look and not to count.
Get your family to serve you at dinner time, to challenge skewed perceptions of portion sizes, and to learn to relinquish control over amounts.
Stop measuring foods or liquids.
Eat intuitively for one day (or even one meal). In a week or so, try doing it for two days (or meals). Work your way up until you can ditch the habit altogether.
Visit cafes, restaurants, cinemas, and other places that are uncaloried to get you used to eating meals where you don’t know the calories to face that anxiety and start to overcome it. You can then start trying to do this at home and challenging yourself there.
Listen to your body and its signals (this is also something you should start doing as soon as you get into recovery, even when you are counting calories). Follow your body and tune in to what it is telling you, rather than going by calories you’ve already eaten today or any other calorie “rules” you are sticking by. Start learning to listen to mental and physical hunger, and also learn that you can also eat when you are not hungry if you fancy it.

There are only six suggestions here, and there will be countless other things that can help. If you have any tips that helped you or someone you know, write them in the comments below so that others can benefit from it too!

Counting calories and not counting calories are both big parts of the recovery process, and both relevant at different stages in your journey. Again, make sure that you are not using compensatory behaviours when you start trying to eat intuitively and stop counting calories, such as eating smaller portions, cutting out calorie dense foods, or not drinking liquid calories, out of anxiety. Learning to eat intuitively without compensating due to anxiety is a big part of recovery. You need to learn to eat what you want, when you want, without letting your ED get on the stage with you. Make sure it is not running the show, or even making compromises with you. It doesn’t have a place in the life that you are creating for yourself. This life is yours, and yours only.

Eating Disorders and Willpower: An Absurd Association

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Willpower. It’s something that we associate with strength. It is something that we admire in others, and it’s something we want for ourselves. And in this day and age, it is problematically associated with dieting and weight loss. The association even extends to restrictive eating disorders. I want to tell you how wrong it is to think that the two are synonymous.

I want to firstly consult the dictionary. Let’s take a look at the definition of “will”:

Will
noun
1. the faculty by which a person decides on and initiates action.
“she has an iron will”
synonyms: determination, firmness of purpose, fixity of purpose, will power, strength of character, resolution, resolve, resoluteness, purposefulness, single-mindedness, drive, commitment, dedication, doggedness, tenacity, tenaciousness, staying power, backbone, spine; More
2. control deliberately exerted to do something or to restrain one’s own impulses.
noun: willpower
“a stupendous effort of will”

A person with an eating disorder does not decide to have one. They do not have any power or control when developing or having an active eating disorder. They do not initiate action: the eating disorder does. They have no say in the matter whatsoever. So using “will” in the context of eating disorders is absurd.

Let’s also have a look at the definition of willpower itself:

noun
1. control of one’s impulses and actions; self-control.

Again, there is no control when it comes to an eating disorder. There is certainly no self-control. In actuality, it is the opposite that is true: someone with an eating disorder is completely out of control. They are not deciding to abstain from food or drink. They are not deciding to compulsively exercise. They are not deciding to vomit their meals into toilets and trash cans. They have no control over their ever dwindling intake, the inability to eat ice cream, or the ten miles they feel they must run. The severe mental illness that they are suffering from is running the show, not the person with the illness. Eating disorders are not a choice, and to insinuate that someone with an eating disorder has willpower is to insinuate that they have a choice.

You might be someone who has previously considered an eating disorder to be a choice, and are looking for an explanation of how it is not. Let me first stress: eating disorders have a genetic link. This means that if you do not have the genes to develop an eating disorder, then you will not develop one. If you have the eating disorder gene (which is being researched: the specific gene has not been identified as of yet, and it is most likely a combination of genes, not just one) then it is possible to go through life without triggering it into action. However, if environmental factors trigger the gene (and the triggers are plentiful: dieting, bullying, death of a loved one, abuse, parents divorcing, illness, fasting – you see how these can be both emotional or physical triggers), then you will develop an eating disorder. Genetics load the gun, environment pulls the trigger, the saying goes. So genetics have an important part to play in the development of an eating disorder, and you don’t get to choose your genes.

Here are some examples of how it works inside the mind: if you had to choose between eating a highly restrictive amount of calories and living with aching hunger, or feeling like tearing your own skin off, would you comply with your eating disorder or your hunger? If you had to choose between exercising until you felt like you might vomit and pass out or feeling so disgusting in your body that you would consider killing yourself, what choice would you make? If you had to choose between not eating a slice of pizza that you desperately crave or feeling like such a failure that you punished yourself by cutting you body multiple times in multiple places, what would you choose? And when you see those options, does it really look like much of a choice any more? Each option is torturous and punishing, but one always gets you closer to the goal of losing more weight, or at least attempting to. You’ll feel better when your body is perfect, the eating disorder says. You’ll feel better if you barely eat. You will be more in control, it lies, and there are so many lies it will tell to keep you from fighting against it.

The more the illness pervades the mind and the sufferer responds to the eating disorder, the more things like food and weight become a source of anxiety. Each time you respond to the voice telling you not to eat or you will feel something unbearable, the more the message in reinforced in the brain. You see, when you avoid something that makes you anxious, the more the brain is told that it is something to be anxious of because it is being avoided, and the more anxious you become of it. Another sneaky way the eating disorder survives is to completely distort the perception of the sufferer, so that their body looks to them to be completely different to what anyone else sees, and in a lot of cases, the thinner they become, the fatter they feel. This way the eating disorder continues to dictate the actions and thoughts of its host (and yes, that is what you feel like: just a host to a demon that is making you diminish in size inside and outside day by day).

I could go on, but let’s get back to willpower.

Meghan Trainor caused uproar with her incomprehensible comment about her apparent lack of willpower to “go anorexic”.

I wasn’t strong enough to have an eating disorder. I tried to go anorexic for a good three hours. I ate ice and celery, but that’s not even anorexic. And I quit. I was like, ‘Ma, can you make me a sandwich? Like, immediately.’

Her comment is one of such extreme ignorance that it makes my blood boil. For one, strength doesn’t come into eating disorders. Strength is something of value. It is a brilliantly positive trait to have; something you use in the face of hardship; to get through something or to defeat it. It is something that you use to fight and beat an eating disorder, not something you use to continue its existence. It does not take strength to have an eating disorder: it takes sickness and misery and intense self-hatred. It takes strength to recover. Secondly, you cannot “try to go anorexic for a good three hours”. Anorexia is first and foremost a mental illness (like all other eating disorders), not something that you can just “try” and then stop because you get a bit too hungry. “Trying” is not part of an eating disorder. You would never in a million years “try” to have an eating disorder if you understood what it entailed. It’s not about having the willpower to “go anorexic”. Any eating disorder is a disease that creeps up on you and slowly invades your mind bit by bit until it has wormed its way into every part of it, and then suddenly you realise that you are drowning in it and there is no conceivable way out. You don’t just “go anorexic” for three hours and then choose to stop. Need I say it again: there is no choice. And no, funnily enough eating ice and celery for three hours only does not mean you have a serious and deadly disease.

Willpower is inextricably linked to choice, and we know that eating disorders are not a choice, so the two cannot be thought of in conjunction with each other. Ever. To talk about eating disorders requiring willpower undermines the helplessness and hopelessness that someone feels whilst being under the control of such a powerful and deadly disease. To talk about eating disorders requiring willpower – a positive trait we all want – undermines the sheer anguish and torment someone suffering from one has to experience every second of every day. To say eating disorders require willpower is to inadvertently say that there is something that tortured person has that you admire. You are looking into eyes full of pain and saying, “I want what you have.”

Willpower is a positive thing. Having an eating disorder is a living hell. Willpower is strength and control. Living with an eating disorder is being crushed under a dictator that ultimately wants you dead and feeling unable to do anything but obey and walk knowingly into the jaws of death. Willpower is willpower and eating disorders are eating disorders. Let’s not mix up the two.

Celebrating Three Years Since Choosing Recovery

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TRIGGER WARNING – this post shows images of my body during my eating disorder, as well as images of my recovered body*. Please do not look at this article if these are images that are likely to trigger you.

In the last three years (and a bit), I have come further than I ever thought I would. Just over three years ago I was a suicidal, starved, insane mess of a human being. I was throwing glasses across the room in anger because my partner at the time had turned around my horrible self-reminders not to eat that I had plastered around the house, and had instead written lovely messages on the backs on them. Just over three years ago I was screaming at him because he put a dash of milk in the scrambled eggs. I had intense urges to eat food off the ground because my body was so hungry. Each day was all about filling out the time until I was “allowed” my next measly portion of food. My life revolved around the number on the scales. Everything I did was for that number to decrease. I walked around with my brain feeling foggy, my body weak, and put it through intense and draining physical exercise anyway. I was a walking corpse. I wasn’t alive. I was merely existing.

It took me a couple of months of uhmming and aahing to really choose recovery. I was uncertain. I was scared. I was in denial about having to gain weight in order to be healthy and happy. But eventually I got there. Gradually I solidified my decision, and I although I had ups and downs (understatement of the year), I never really looked back. I had many, many, many moments where I said to myself “I’m done! I’m going to relapse!” but I would cry it out and keep on going anyway.

A year into my recovery, I made the photo above. If you know me and my blog, you’ve probably seen it before (and I posted it on another post on this website too). The hollow, unfocused, red-ringed eyes had been replaced by bright, shiny ones. My grey, matte skin now glowed. My smile didn’t seem stretched, and the happiness showed upon my whole face, rather than looking tired and empty. I love the comparisons. It always shocks me, and it always reminds me how terrible I looked then and how healthy I look now. It always reminds me of how far I have come.

My hair is shiny and soft now, not falling out, and not desert dry. After two or so years in recovery, it suddenly grew really fast and is now really long and I love it. I now engage in the world: my senses aren’t dulled due to starvation, and I take in what is around me. I am fully present when conversing with friends and thoughts of my body don’t cross my mind when I am with them, when before I was utterly distracted by how my body looked in that moment. I feel strong, rather than feeling like I am going to pass out at any moment. I feel like I am really in the world, rather than miserable and alone in my own harrowing personal nightmare.
During recovery, my personality that had been smothered by my eating disorder emerged, stronger than before. During the first two years of my two and a half years in recovery, I grew more than I had ever done in my life. I established who I was and what was important to me. I developed hobbies and interests that I had never had before, whilst regaining my love of old ones. With help from feminism and the body positivity movement, I felt empowered and impassioned. I found my drive and my purpose, and I established my worth as a person inside my own head. In simple words, I now feel solid. I feel strong.

My eating disorder starved me. I lost myself, not just my weight. My relationship disintegrated. I couldn’t concentrate around my friends (although, unlike a lot of others with eating disorders, I managed to maintain my friendships). I didn’t do anything without thinking about losing weight. Recovery gave me back my sanity, and my ability to function within the world and within relationships. I regained weight, and I regained myself. Unfortunately, my relationship came to an end six months into recovery, but I now know I will be able to have a healthy, happy relationships without my eating disorder destroying me, and in turn, destroying my relationship.

For me, sleep was first an escape from the pain of the life I was living when my eating disorder was active, but after a while, as my body became more and more starved, it became impossible to sleep. I would be thinking over and over about my “meal plan” for the next day, and would find it really difficult to fall asleep. When I did, it was food that I dreamed of – that, or gaining weight – and I would wake up in fits of anxiety, or stroking my hipbones; a bizarre habit that occurred in the worst period of my eating disorder. One of my favourite things about being healthy is being able to sleep properly. Resting is so important to me now, and such a relief.

Giving up exercise was something that I really struggled with during recovery, and was something that I relapsed with two or three times. Once I’d started eating and my survival instincts took over, restriction wasn’t something I wanted to engage in again (even though my eating disorder kicked and screamed against that thought), but exercise was something I could do without having to feel hungry all of the time but could still burn calories and feel “healthy”. Even though my weight didn’t change whether I exercised or not, I still had the severe compulsion to work out because I felt so anxious and guilty if I did not. But even though I didn’t have to deal with being hungry all the time, exercise made me so utterly exhausted that I could not even sit up in bed with my laptop on some days. I had to lie down instead. Eventually, I was able to cease exercise until I was healthy enough both mentally and physically to be able to do what I now like to call “recreational activity”. I walk a fine line in choosing to be active in remission, but I have my “red”, “amber”, and “green” types of exercise so I know where I am with it, and I’m constantly evaluating how I feel and how much I’m doing. I see the activity I do as enjoyment rather than doing it for my body – the health benefits are secondary for me. Having fun comes first and foremost in the choice to do physical activity, and I think it should be that way for everyone.

The picture above is me today. I am now over 8 months into remission (full recovery). I feel strong and healthy and confident. I have bad and good days with my body, but I more or less accept it for what it is now. Today was a good day, and I feel powerful as a person. I’m about to have a delicious dinner with my family, on holiday, with a view of the sea. This evening I am going to a bar to have cocktails with my brother. And it won’t even matter to me how many calories any of what I have consumed today has.

I am enjoying being me.
3 years 6

*The reason I have included photographs of myself when I was ill is because for me, it’s an amazing transformation. Recovery should be equally about mental and physical recovery – you can’t have one without the other – and I wanted to show both, because for me, my experience with weight gain was a huge part of my recovery. I can only show my physical recovery through photographs, and my mental recovery through expressing it in writing. This article is not about the process but about the comparison as to how I was then to how I am now. I also wanted to show that it is possible to gain a significant amount of weight and look very different and be able to accept that. My body and the changes it made throughout recovery were hugely significant to me, so to be able to show that comparison and say that I made those changes to my body and I got through all the self-loathing, guilt, and anxiety, and found my way to accepting my body as how it looks now is incredibly important to my journey. Some people may not agree with my choice to include photographs, but that is why there is a trigger warning. That was my body, and this was my journey, and I want to express it in the way that is significant to me.

Distinguishing Your Voice From that of Your Eating Disorder

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Recovery can be really hard when you are unable to distinguish the eating disorders “voice” from your own. Making decisions becomes an uncertain task that can end up taking up far too much of your time because you are anxiously torn between what you want and what your eating disorder wants, and not being able to tell which is which. Because the voice actually sounds like your own thoughts, this can make it really difficult for someone to tell what thoughts are really theirs, and what are those of the eating disorder.

When it comes to telling your voice and the eating disorder’s “voice” apart, the first thing to think is “do I really want this?” Some people are able to quite easily separate the two with just that first question, and others are still unable to do so.

When it comes to food, and choosing to eat a certain food or comparing between two choices, the easiest way to tell what it is you want is to ask yourself; if it had no calories, would you really want to eat it? Or would you prefer something else? If the two you are comparing to had no calories, which one would you actually want to eat more? Another thing to do is think, if I walked away with this one and bought it, would it give me more anxiety than the other option? The one that you have more anxiety over is the one your eating disorder wants you not to choose, and is therefore the one you should choose to confront and overcome that anxiety. I would bet that the other one is something your ED picked to get you to choose that “safer” option rather than the one you really want to eat.

When it comes to negative thoughts about yourself – that’s not you. Hands down anything negative that comes into your head will be your eating disorder. I say this because now, in remission, I rarely have negative thoughts about myself or my body. When I do, they are quite mild and I can tell that they come more from a “normal” brain and have developed because of the society we live in. Negative thoughts caused by an eating disorder are usually very forceful, very malicious, and very hateful. They are cruel comments, not just “hmmm I’m not sure I’m loving those back rolls but meh okay what was I doing let’s carry on with that.” They are hurtful, vindictive, venomous comments like “you are disgusting” or “you are worthless” or “you are a worthless fat bitch”. When you experience thoughts like that, they are the lying, bullying voice of the eating disorder and you need to recognise that that voice does not carry truth. It just wants to hurt you. I would place my bets on saying that 99.999% of negative thoughts going on in the head of someone with an eating disorder are eating disorder thoughts.

When you are eating, or buying things for yourself, or doing something you enjoy, etc etc, and a thought comes into your head about not deserving to eat it, or buy it, or do it, then that is not your own thought. That again, is a bully inside your head that should not be there. Kick it out. Tell it that it is wrong. You deserve all the things that you want and you should be able to have all of the things that are within your reach.

When it comes to negative thoughts or thoughts that you don’t deserve something, ask yourself “is that something I would say to someone else?” If it isn’t, chances are it’s your eating disorder speaking. The things that eating disorder says to us, we would not find it acceptable to say to others, or let others say it to us, but we let that internal voice say it to us and submit to it. Start changing that and fight back. Recognise that the “voice” is just playing on your insecurities and is making unacceptable and vile comments towards you. Tell it to f*** off.

When it comes to other habits or behaviours, for example using certain items of cutlery, using certain plates or using only bowls to eat out of, challenge that. If you feel like using a bowl, use a plate. If that invokes anxiety in you, then using the bowl is a disordered habit. Use a different fork/knife or spoon. If that invokes anxiety in you, then using certain items of cutlery is a disordered habit. The same goes for every habit or behaviour. Test out if they are disordered by switching things up. If you find it hard to sit still or sit down, but are pretty sure you’re just an active person, have a duvet day. If you eat at certain times because, you know, that’s just how it is, make it earlier or later. If you avoid white carbs because you just never really have the urge to eat them, make up a nice crusty roll or a bowl of pasta or some egg fried rice using white products. If you are eating low fat yoghurt but are pretty sure you just love it, buy some full fat yoghurt. Stop making excuses and just do it. It won’t be a problem if it is not a disordered habit. If the change freaks you out, the habit or behaviour is disordered.

These are some ways for you to tell apart yourself from your eating disorder when it comes to decision making and making the choices for you instead of your eating disorder. These tactics, of course, are not exclusive. I would welcome any comments to this post suggesting other ways for people to distinguish between their eating disorder “voice” and themselves. The more the better.

Why You Need More Calories than the Government Approved Recommended Daily Allowance

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We all know the recommended daily allowance of calories that the government has handed us, but do you know where those amounts originate from? Do you know enough about it to trust that those are your energy needs? Because I’m telling you now, you shouldn’t.

I would recommend reading Gwyneth Olwyn’s ‘MinnieMaud Method and Temperament Based Treatment‘ and ‘I Need How Many Calories?!!‘ for an extensive and in-depth analysis of how the RDA guidelines came about, and why they are so inaccurate – complete with references. However, I understand that, although sound in science and reason, many people do show doubt in Your Eatopia and want more evidence: to which I would say, look up the references! Regardless, I am going to write this shorter article in less detail to illustrate why we all need more than that magic RDA.

The recommended daily allowance set by the government came about by using surveys that relied on self-reporting. This means, in short, that members of the population filled out the survey and the results were averaged out. The actual results were above what the RDA is now:

The FDA wanted consumers to be able to compare the amounts of saturated fat and sodium to the maximum amounts recommended for a day’s intake–the Daily Values. Because the allowable limits would vary according to the number of calories consumed, the FDA needed benchmarks for average calorie consumption, even though calorie requirements vary according to body size and other individual characteristics.

From USDA food consumption surveys of that era, the FDA knew that women typically reported consuming 1,600 to 2,200 calories a day, men 2,000 to 3,000, and children 1,800 to 2,500. But stating ranges on food labels would take up too much space and did not seem particularly helpful. The FDA proposed using a single standard of daily calorie intake–2,350 calories per day, based on USDA survey data. The agency requested public comments on this proposal and on alternative figures: 2,000, 2,300, and 2,400 calories per day.

Despite the observable fact that 2,350 calories per day is below the average requirements for either men or women obtained from doubly labeled water experiments, most of the people who responded to the comments judged the proposed benchmark too high. Nutrition educators worried that it would encourage overconsumption, be irrelevant to women who consume fewer calories, and permit overstatement of acceptable levels of “eat less” nutrients such as saturated fat and sodium. – Marion Nestle (from here)

In short, the results came up as an average of 2,350 calories, and even though that has been shown to not be enough for the average man or woman, they still went and lowered it to 2000. We also know that people under-report what they eat for numerous reasons: not knowing the accurate calorie count of food, missing out liquids and condiments, and reporting what they think they should be eating, rather than what they are eating. Even without mentioning that information on the subject of under-reporting, the NHS has written that the calorie guidelines have been underestimate by 16% due to revaluation of people’s average physical activity, including walking, breathing, and even sleeping.

To put it even more into perspective, the RDA for children aged 5-10 years old is 1800 calories. That’s for small children. When you look at that logically, growing teenagers and fully developed adults are clearly going to need significantly more than that.

Although it does not say what the calorie intake was for either groups, in one interesting study, where they studied the eating of healthy, everyday women, they found that those that were eating in an unrestrained way were eating 410 calories on average more than those who ate in a restrained way, and had a relatively lower weight, which feeds into the relatively well-researched theory that eating less actually can cause you to gain more weight due to a decreased metabolism.

When we talk about teenagers, researchers conducted a study involving more than 200 children between the ages of 8 and 17, and used a lunch buffet to give them access to unlimited food. They found that boys routinely eat more compared to girls of the same age, but the amounts that both parties ate do not fit with the RDA that they are supposed to follow. They found that boys in their mid-teens ate an average of 2,000 calories during the lunch hour, which they thought made most sense due to the age that puberty hits most boys. Their calorie requirements appear to shoot up drastically in late puberty (between the ages of 14 and 17). They found that with prepubescent children, the boys averaged nearly 1,300 lunchtime calories, compared to 900 among girls. Girls consumed the most calories during early- to mid-puberty (between the ages of 10 and 13), as they tend to have their most significant growth spurts during that time. Girls consumed an average of 1,300 lunchtime calories.

A study of teenage girls between 16 and 17, where 204 were dieters, and 226 were not, showed that “the mean reported energy intake of the dieters was 1604 kcals/day compared to 2460 kcals/day amongst non-dieters”, and that “more than twice as many dieters as non-dieters failed to achieve the reference nutrient intake (RNI) for retinol equivalents, thiamin, riboflavin, folates, vitamin B12, vitamin B6, zinc, copper and selenium,” which is obviously not healthy at all and suggests that consuming a low intake results in not being able to get enough of what the body needs, both in energy and in nutrients, because the body requires a much higher level of both. There was a similar study conducted on teenage boys.

Now you might say: yes but these studies show that on average unrestricted eating then leads women to need around 2500 calories on average and men to need 3000. Well, yes, those over 25, whose bodies have stopped growing and developing and so no longer need so much energy, do. But those below 25 still need 3000 and 3500 respectively, as their bodies need additional energy to grow and develop. Do remember here that the two studies above on teenage boys and girls are again, self-reported studies where the unrestricted eaters ate 2460 (females) and 3064 (males) – and as Gwyneth Olwyn points out, under-reporting can range from 2% to 58%, and that “if we average the studies reviewed by JR Hebert and his colleagues, then people eat on average 25% more than they think they do (or report that they do).” Also keep i mind that normal, healthy, energy-balanced people do not know the accurate calories in foods, which is why under-reporting can occur in healthy people, and the healthy intake can then be reported as lower than it is because they are going by what they perceive to be a healthy amount, which is constructed by our society in the form of the daily recommended allowance.

And there we have come full circle.

These intakes (2500 for women under 25, 3000 for women under 25 and men over 25, and 3500 for men under 25) are guidelines but best seen as absolutes during the recovery process due to the nature of the eating disorder and the way it will use grey areas to eat less than needed. If your own individual body requires, as a 30 year old woman, 2300 calories, then a extra few hundred calories will not mean that you gain a significant amount of weight more, if any at all, due to the fact that our bodies are able to get rid of energy by burning it off when it is not an excessive amount more than it needs (which would only be consumed by force feeding when you had reliable hunger cues – this does not include making yourself eat when you have unreliable hunger cues), and when you did eat intuitively when fully recovered, any excess weight would be lost again. Any small increase in weight past set point for a small period of time would be far more desirable than under-eating and remaining both physically and mentally ill.

As a p.s. I just want to put a study in about pregnant women and their energy requirements, as this is sometimes a question I receive on my blog. It reports that “in the normal-BMI group, energy requirements increased negligibly in the first trimester, by 350 kcal/d in the second trimester, and by 500 kcal/d in the third trimester.”

I would also like to refer you to Wikipedia’s list of how many calories on average people consume in each country.