Obsessed with food

Whenever I was starving myself or restricting my food intake I found it almost impossible to think about anything else other than food. I would spend my days sitting around waiting until it was time for my next meal (if i was eating anything at all at that stage). I think that many people presume that anorexics dont like food but this is certainly not the case, well as least for me anyway. It is important to note however that I only loved food while I was in control of it. While I was in hospital I hated everything that I ate as I wasn't controlling my intake at all.


I loved cooking or baking for other people around me but always refused to eat what I made myself. I also strangely enjoyed watching other people eat. I felt as though just watching others eat satisfied my own hunger, as if I was the one actually eating it. I would try and eat my meals as slowly as I possibly could so that I could enjoy them for longer and I insisted on eating all my food with tiny teaspoons or childrens cutlery so that I could savour the food for longer. I didn't only spend alot of time eating my meals but also preparing them. I had many rituals I felt as though I had to follow while preparing food and eating it.

I started watching cooking and food television shows all the time, my favourites being masterchef and man vs food. I also enjoyed shows like the biggest loser, supersized vs super skinny and secret eaters. The second I finished one meal I would start to think about the next. My poor body wanted food so badly but I continued to ignore what it was telling me. I still felt hungry all the time, I just learnt to ignore my hunger. It made me feel strong and powerful when I didn't give in to my hunger.

This is a part of Harriet Browns book brave girl eating that i think sums up how anorexia makes you feel perfectly.

Imagine that you’re standing in a bakery. Not just any bakery—the best bakery in Paris, its windows fogged, crowded with people who jostle for space in front of its long glass cases. The room is fragrant and you can’t take your eyes off the rows of cinnamon rolls and croissants, iced petits fours, flaky napoleons and elephant ears.
And you’re hungry. In fact, you’re starving. Hunger is a tornado whirling in your chest, a bottomless vortex at your core. Hunger is a tiger sharpening its claws on your tender insides. You stand in front of the glass cases, trying to swallow, but your throat is dry and your stomach clenches and contracts.
You want more than anything to lick the side of an éclair, swirl the custard and chocolate against your tongue. You dream about biting off the end of a cruller, feeling the give of the spongy dough, the brief molecular friction of the glaze against your teeth, flooding your mouth with sweetness. The woman beside you reaches into a white paper bag, pulls out a hunk of sourdough roll. You see the little puff of steam that flares from its soft center. You breathe in the warm yeasty smell it gives off. She pops it into her mouth and chews and you chew along with her. You can almost taste the bread she’s eating. Almost.
But you can’t, not really, because how long has it been since you’ve tasted bread? A month? A year? An eternity. And though your stomach grinds against your backbone and your cheeks are hollow, though the tiger flays your belly, you can’t eat. You want to, you have to, but your fear is greater than your hunger. Because when you do—when you choke down a spoonful of plain yogurt, five pretzel sticks, a grape—that’s when the voice in your head starts up, a whisper, a cajoling sigh: You don’t need to eat, you’re strong, so strong. That’s right. Good girl.
Soon the whisper is a hiss filling the center of your head: You don’t deserve to eat. You’re weak, unworthy. You are disgusting. You don’t deserve to live. You, you, you. The voice is a drumbeat, a howl, a knife sunk in your gut, twisting. It knows what you’re thinking. It knows everything you do. It has always been inside you and it always will be. The more you try to block it out, the louder it becomes, until it’s screaming in your ear: You’re fat. You’re a fat pig. You make everyone sick. No one loves you and no one ever will. You don’t deserve to be loved. You’ve sinned and now you must be punished.
So you don’t eat, though food is all you think about. Though all day long, wherever you are—doing homework, sitting with friends, trying to sleep—part of you is standing in the bakery, mesmerized with hunger and with fear, the voice growling and rumbling. You have to stand there, your insides in shreds, empty of everything but your own longing. There will be no bread for you, no warm, buttery pastries. There’s only the pitiless voice inside your head, high-pitched, insistent, insidious. There’s only you, more alone than you’ve ever been. You, growing smaller and frailer. You, with nowhere else to go.
The voice is part of you now, your friend and your tormentor. You can’t fight it and you don’t want to. You’re not so strong, after all. You can’t take it and you can’t get away. You don’t deserve to live. You want to die.
This is what it feels like to have anorexia.

Since starting to eat so much more I no longer spend my days thinking and obsessing over food but I think I do like food more than normal people. My meal times are usually my favourite times of the day and eating yummy foods makes me happier then anything else. I suppose it is natural for me to like food as much as I do since I denied myself of it for so long. Its kind of like the saying, you don't know what you have got until its gone. I didnt know how much I liked food until I stopped eating it and the more I denied myself of it, the more I wanted it.



Feel free to share your own experience of how you felt about food while restricting. Do you feel like having anorexia made you hate food or love food even more?