Before recently struggling with food, my diet was quite balanced. It wasn't perfect, but I ate anything and everything in moderation - nothing was off limits.People may remember me posting lots of baking/cakes i'd bought. I really miss that. I keep telling myself 'one day'.
I was at the supermarket yesterday and felt completely overwhelmed with all the food around me. I imagine myself putting any food I wanted in my basket, Cakes, bakery rolls, ingrediants to cook a nice meal. Seeing others around me fill up their trollies with lots of nice things, i felt envious. Again, i told myself 'one day'. It's just daft though with eating disorder thoughts. 'They can buy those nice things but you're not allowed..yet anyway'. I'ts like i have to close my eyes whilst navigating the shop, ignoring all foods I would have once picked up and just grabbing the 'safe' foods i'm allowed. It feels rubbish.
I've noticed my thoughts around 'nice' foods have increased. I will spent time on instagram looking at nice food people have cooked/baked. This is an embarassing confession, but I downloaded the Ocado app (I never shop there and don't intend to ) , but i add loads of nice food to my basket and imagine what I would buy if I could. I get a weird sense of enjoyment from it which I know sounds mad.
It's weird how the eating disorder brain sometimes work. If you're depriving your body of certain foods, I think your mind tries to convince your body you are, in some way, shape or form, getting these. (Doing the 'fake' ocado shop, looking at other peoples baking etc').
I've bought a couple of food items I'd love to have eventually, I just feel like I can't just yet. A few years ago when I was struggling. i used to buy and hoard loads of food. All the things I could eventually eat one day, but that day never came and the food went out of date. It seems quite a common thing for those with eating disorders to sometimes hoard food.
I remember in hospital asking staff why you become 'obsessed' with food, and do things like i describe above.. An amazing eating disorder recovery expert, Tabatha Farrar, explains it well...
'Despite the fact that it makes perfect biological sense that a creature living in an environment of scarcity would hoard items, this is another behaviour that isn’t picked up on consistently. It is one of those things that you probably think is something weird and specific to you. It isn’t, many of us turn into super-storers when our anorexia is active. These are observations from my own experience, and the hundreds of emails I get a week from people with anorexia.When you don’t eat enough food, your brain perceives that food is scarce. When your brain perceives that food is scarce, it may also come to the conclusion that general essential resources are scarce. Hence, the desire to hoard all sorts of items after prolonged energy deficit. (And you get that restricting food is what leads to the perception that food is scarce, and energy deficit, right?)'
I also hope I can wake up one day and just think 'f*** it', i'm going to eat what I want and not feel guilty'. I'd love to get to that point. I know rationally it's not going to be that easy, but I guess in the long term I can hope to achieve this one day
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