There are many, many misconceptions about restrictive eating disorders. One of those errors in thinking, and the topic of the ensuing blog post, is the idea that people with restrictive eating disorders hate food.
I can’t count how many times I’ve heard even the most qualified of professionals make that generalisation.
In this blog, I want make 2 main points:
1) It is very rarely true that people with ED’s hate food itself.
2) Recovering requires learning—and daring—to like, want, and enjoy a far wider range of foods.
Dispelling the Myth
Whatever was the case before the individual fell ill, starvation generally (and rightfully) forces an organism to be fixated on food. Often this happens to the extent that food, and all things about it, become an obsession. I remember all too well my own tendencies to research food in my spare time as though it were a science project, being captivated by MasterChef and Bake Off as though it was an action thriller starring Theo James, and being incredibly excited about the prospect of new supermarket products. This excitement showed up in a way that was completely absent preED and is non existent postED. It was, therefore, an adoration and infactuation that not so curiously developed concurrently with my reduction of food intake, and faded as my intake improved.
A good demonstration of this — and challenge to the idea that somebody with an eating disorder hates food — is that when I was deep in my eating disorder, if you’d have asked me the best thing of my entire week, it would almost always have been food-related. Maybe the cookie I had tried, or the mind-blowing new cereal I'd sampled. If you asked me that same question now, my week would have to have been pretty dull for my only memorable experiences being what I had consumed.
Biologically speaking, my tendencies to somehow make everything related to food make a whole lot of sense. Deeply rooted in my brain and body’s deficit of energy and nutrition, I was utterly (and appropriately) obsessed with the resource that would lift me out of that debt. This interest— in trying new restaurants, marvelling at new products and the infatuation with certain flavours —is something I have witnessed many, many individuals with eating disorders experience before they renourish. In short, food obsession seems pretty universal (and unavoidable) in those who deprive themselves of food. Think of your dieting colleague who always talks of food; of the men in the Minnesota Starvation Experiment who turned to cooking books in their spare time; of your browsing history, your camera roll or Instagram suggested feed in your stint of undernourishing.
And yet— just as I am saying that it is very common for people with eating disorders to love food, there are many, many people I know and have worked with who have restrictive eating disorders also do a lot of disliking when it comes to food. I would put my former self in that category self, too.
I honestly don’t like it, mum. It tastes funny.
It’s got an odd after-taste to it.
It’s too thick, too creamy, too…
I don’t know – I can’t put my finger on it – but it’s just not nice at all
I have very vivid memories of attempting to convince my mum that the new purchases she bought me, in this case yoghurt, weren't to my taste.
I pushed the bowl away.
I sipped on a glass of water for extra impact.
I chewed my tongue to display a very overt displeasure.
The yoghurt in question, you will likely not be surprised to learn, was a portion full-fat yoghurt. I should add that this is a yoghurt that I eat and hugely enjoy multiple times a week now, fully recoverED, with no displeasure at the ‘aftertaste’ or texture. Curious, hey?
Back then, my judgement was absolute and ornately delivered, with as much detail as I could muster to sound genuine.
As I think back to it now, I recall how, so often, I went to huge lengths to describe my disapproval of the item, elaborately spinning and weaving details of my sensory reaction into my verdict before offering a taster to somebody else as the final convincer.
When my mum believed my fabricated reaction and suggested to just have the granola instead, my attention would turn to making known my opinion of that:
Nor do I like that granola you’ve put on top, mum. It’s too crunchy. Overly sweet. Unenjoyably raisin-y. Ridiculously seedy. Far too nutty. It almost tastes like they’ve burnt it! Here, give it a go! See for yourself!
The granola in question, you will again likely not be surprised to learn, was a very standard supermarket granola. Nothing too extreme. Not on the nut, seed or raisin front. Nor do I now find it to taste in the slightest way burnt. Is it that my tastes have U-turned, or, is it too much of a coincidence that as my fears around food lowered, my enjoyment of food without such heavy- handed critique increased?
Opinions about food
It’s not all that unusual to hear people (without eating disorders) talking in very snooty and critical ways about food nowadays. Maybe ‘nowadays’ seems like an odd thing to say, as that makes it seem like I have a name like Maud and perm my hair. However, I really do get the sense that food is more of a hot topic than it ever used to be. Perhaps this is because until very recently, disliking specific foods was quite futile: For most of our history, satiating hunger was predominantly for the purpose of staying alive. In primal times, you didn’t like the beast parents had just caught? Tough luck. Eat it anyway or perish. 80 years ago, you didn’t like the biscuits that came in the ration pack? Appreciate them anyway. Or even now in areas affected by food limitation by poverty or environment: you take what is available without too much fuss.
Don’t get me wrong. This evolution from times when the sole purpose of food was sustenance is no bad thing. Food for cultural, social and spiritual purposes is a beautiful thing. However, this transition unfortunately doesn’t come without consequence. Though it is perfectly possible to share opinions on foods without underlying currents of disorder, I feel that many, many opinions are indeed generated by some sort of unconscious diet-culture-infused judgement. In this way, a supercilious and conveniently restrictive disordered stance blends quite naturally into the food dialogue of today’s world wherein the expression of opinions is so rife.
The reason that this is such an issue from a recovery P.O.V is that if these food binary preferences/judgements/opinions remain unchallenged, it is likely that an individual will not deviate from a limited set of foods, and not be open to wider food experiences that go beyond what can be personally controlled and manipulated. This does not mean that sed individual does not eat. They may well eat a great deal of food. But, it does, unfortunately, mean that individual will likely never fully psychologically recover, since some options and situations will continue to be skirted around in a way that is not conducive with absolute food freedom.
Even if that individual does eat delicious food in their diet, those foods may well tick the box of being justifiable to the eating disorder in its weird game of disordered cost/benefit analysis. What I mean by this is that one deems a food acceptable to consume 'because the calories within the food are ‘worth’ the trade-off due to how good it tastes' it is still disordered behaviour. Though that is relative freedom to eat what you wish, it still comes with tendrils of disorder. It still risks a limit to dietary expansion. It still rules options out. It still exerts more attention on food than there would be if all food was morally neutral.
What lurks beneath the apparent dislike?
There are a fair few things that contributed to my conclusion of a dislike of a food that actually had nothing to do with the dislike of the food. I’m going to talk through a few of those next.
Fear
The first and most obvious reason that I concluded I disliked a food was that, in reality, I was scared of it. For me, this was generally fear of the calories within the foods, but other properties like an items macronutrients, ingredients, my assessment of it’s ability to fill me, how long it may take to eat and its general sense of ‘healthfulness’ played into it as well.
My fear presented in various manifestations of fight, flight or freeze. But, upon being offered a perceived threatening food item, I would say it was probably most commonly 'fight'. As I have described above in the yoghurt and granola example, I tore apart the sensory profile of foods, hyper-analysing all aspects of it with extremely critical language and strong opinions that I couldn’t dream of feeling today. These reactions, be they hostile or not, are necessary to be very curious about.
It is also important to be curious about any food dislikes that rule out entire categories of food. Some examples of these are garlic or spices. Though these foods are not generally feared based on their calorie content or nutrition, they provide a very easy escape route because they are so often contained within larger, whole dishes.
Whilst it's conceivable you may not like garlic when it is the main flavour (e.g., garlic bread, or studded in roast lamb) , you must allow yourself to be open to trying it in different formulations, since how these are cooked very much changes their influence on a dish. Furthermore, if you point blanc rule an exceedingly common ingredient out, it offers a very convenient escape route as and when the ED needs to take it. For example, if your ED brain determines you despise garlic, your brain will be hypervigilant of the hint of garlic within your mum's homemade soup. If you do not address this with openness, it is far too advantageous for the eating disorder and allows restrictive behaviours to ensue (e.g., preparing separate foods for yourself, avoiding social eating occasions and rejecting new items entering the rotation).
Finally, it is very important to be inquisitive and distrustful of any preferences or aversions that align with common diet-culture conceptions of what is 'healthy' and what is not. When out for dinner, I remember scanning down the menu, ruling out the things I had previously emphasised I detested. I didn't like burger buns. Nor the mayo in the coleslaw, or the crispy bacon, caramelised onions or pub chips. Even the 'overpowering salad dressing' didn't meet my criteria.
Considering the litany of foods that I stated I despised, I was often conveniently only left with the option of something like the grilled white fish. It's not that I don't like white fish. I do. A lot. But the issue was that the other options on the menu had been erased before the chance for consideration and that preferences so neatly aligned with orthorexia's judgements. Just to prove a point, because I didn't like anything 'too saucy', the sauce would have to be in little cup on the side of that white fish. It was as barren, scant and reductive is as could be and thus ticked every single box that the ED deemed best.
Unfamiliarity
The second reason I often concluded that I didn’t like something was that the food tasted different or new. With food and almost everything else in my life at that time, my brain immediately correlated different or new with ‘wrong’/’bad’. After a while of having fairly similar foods day after day, anything new added in was met with great hesitancy and sensitivity. The vast majority of flavours were more intense than I had become accustomed to, and if in doubt, my overwhelmed head knee-jerked at no.
Unnecessary. Too much. Excessive. Overly X or Y… were my reactions to most things that surpassed anything the most reductive (read: restrictive) versions of foods.
Initially, though I enjoyed many artificially sweetened, uber sweet, diet versions of foods, I found myself to be extremely alert to 'sugary' tastes of new foods. I remember one occasion when scanning down a pub menu and seeing one of my favourites: a warm chocolate brownie with ice cream. But to my horror, when it arrived, it was swimming in (a delicious sea of) salted caramel sauce, too. "Yuck! Far too sickly sweet. What a shame." I remember saying.
Bullshit. It was just unfamiliar, unexpected and unplanned for.
Liking 'too much'
During a healing process from a mental health issue, it is important to recognise that any self-worth/self-esteem issues that lead to the development of the illness will also be issues upheld by everyday punishing behaviours. For example, why would you punish yourself by doing X movement every day (that you absolutely hate doing) if you actually cared about yourself? You wouldn’t. It’s a terrible, terrible cycle. But that’s a whole other topic I won’t go into for now.
Much of recovery, therefore, is about learning to take your true desires seriously. It is about stripping away the layers of shame that you might feel about honouring them and removing the idea of 'excess' that you have associated with anything deeply pleasing. And it is likely these true desires may, first, be difficult to even identify. And then, they may be exceedingly uncomfortable to admit, especially when they are polar opposite to the restraint that eating disorders often dictate as ‘right’.
(Aside from desires for food, true desires about rest, love or intimacy, hobbies and aspirations are all relevant here too).
Fears of “what if I never stop wanting?”"what if when I start I can never stop?" have a habit of turning up here, as the deficit of the resource means the yearning can sometimes be more desperate and manic than feels 'normal' or safe. The hunger is intense, and sometimes it can be easier to attempt to squash this force, rather than embrace it. The important thing to hold close here is that once debt is repaid, this desperation will go and a very natural and unmicromanaged balance will be imposed by your body.
Liking and enjoying not being automatically linked to wanting or desire
Another important (re)connection that must be made during recovery is (re)establishing the relationship between a preference of something with actually going ahead and acting on that preference. Often, the liking is demonstrably there, but its natural translation into wanting is blocked. For example, I openly admitted I liked ice cream, but this often wasn’t coupled with a response of ‘I want ice cream now’. This was often predominantly habit based, and thus required direct confrontation of any ED-OCD tendencies that may have been blocking the alignment between enjoyment and wanting. Yet, it is also obvious that fear is a barrier here. I think it’s quite likely I didn’t act on getting that ice cream because of all of the ‘issues’ that would have arisen if I were to have gone ahead and had it. I think, after all of the upheaval I would have to go through to make it ‘fit’ or agreeable to Anorexia, I found myself not too desperately wanting it.
Lack of euphoria
Fairly often, when I had my eye on a new food to try, I had real expectations of its glory. Then, when I had it, and it wasn’t mindblowing life-altering, I was disappointed, and rather than simply conclude it was ok, my disappointment led me to believe it was quite horrid. I remember a particular example of wanting to try a gingerbread man for weeks. It was a suggestion I had made several times to my mum, but whenever the time came to actually acting on it, I sidestepped with a nifty excuse. When I did finally come to having it, it didn’t make the world shake around me. It was just ok. However, at the time, I remember going to great lengths to describe its dryness, its staleness, its lack of ginger-y tastiness. A necessary reminder here is that if everything you consume is only permitted based on the otherworldly experience it provides, your dietary range is bound to be limited. Sometimes, food is absolutely fantastic. But, sometimes, food is also just food and supports other things than your tastebud’s day.
Another good example to bring in here is crisps. In recovery, had somebody offered me crisps, they would have been deafened with an outraged response something along the lines of "YOU KNOW I HATE CRISPS!!!!". In truth, I am pretty impartial about crisps. If there was a line up of crisps, pretzels or salted crackers, the vast majority of the time I probably wouldn't pick them as my first choice. However, I am not offended by them at all and there would most certainly not be any sort of a reaction like there used to be.
Rounding it off
In my perception, there is no need to love everything we eat. But to me, a relationship with food that is most ‘natural’ is one that is either positive or neutral. It should be, by default, liking, but otherwise not caring.
In my time of working with people with eating disorders, I have never met somebody to have fully recovered and still proudly proclaim themself to be a really fussy eater. I don’t think this can be a coincidence.
Though there is nuance to this, I believe that the more foods you like, or rather, the more foods you are open to eating without ripping to shreds with your hyper-analysis, the better recovery will tend to be going. This is true from a physical standpoint, of course, but I mostly mean this in relation to neural healing and radical change from anything that has whispers of your disordered past.
Without wishing to make too much of a sweeping statement, I want to stress the importance of this topic as pertinently as I can.
It seems to me that there are 2 categories of people in recovery.
One who likes food, and is prepared to plunge into a world of food pleasure. And, one who doesn’t and isn’t.
My advice is to do every single thing you can to be the former. To force a reset. To approach this entirely differently to how you ever previously have, or believe is reasonable or even ‘fair’. To take reasons to eat more seriously than the litany of reasons not to eat that your ED will likely produce. To explore, to be curious and to let yourself relearn what you truly do enjoy with openness.
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