To be honest, I don’t think I’ll have the same exact relationship with food as I had before. I now know too much about nutrition, and that information will never be eliminated from my brain. Bring out a handful of grains, or a spoonful of oil, and I can automatically tell you exactly how many calories are in it.

Also, my taste buds have changed. I used to avoid vegetables and vegetables like the plague, but now I love and crave them. I don’t like meat as much as I did, nor do I want to eat 2 Super-sized McDonald’s french fries every single afternoon like I used to.

But recovery doesn’t mean that I need to revert back to the way I was before. It just means that food no longer controls me. I don’t obsess about food as much, I no longer fear any certain food, I don’t avoid social eating, I don’t obsessively count calories, I don’t freak out over a missed work out, I don’t have a rigid eating schedule, and I don’t always have to eat “healthy”.

Alison also mentioned the “monster in the head”…that terrible voice that likes to call you names. Fat. Weak. Lazy. Loser. It likes to mock you, and tempt you:

“Why did you eat so much, you fat greedy pig?”
“Hey, you missed your run this morning. Why not restrict today?”
“Bah, so much stress! You’re losing control! But at least you can control your food intake!” 
“Whoa, check out your Thunder thighs! Your underpants will burst into flames from the friction between them!”

Well, here’s the bad news: this voice might always be there. Why? Because it’s habitual. I’m in such a habit of living in such negative thoughts, that sometimes I just instinctively think them. I might eat more than usual, and immediately think, “Sophia, you fatso.” Or I might feel bloated, and panic, “Am I gaining all the fat on my stomach?”

But here’s the good news: Recovery means that you might hear these voices, but you don’t act on them. And as time goes on, the voice will fade away until it’s just a distant memory. Just as it took time to get into the habit of thinking such thoughts, it will take a bit of time to get out of them. But as long as you continuously and consistently ignore them, they will go away.

Therefore, I have hope. In fact, there are a lot of times when I would think back to all the crazy-ass, disordered stuff I used to do: only eating protein and vegetables, throwing away egg yolks, browsing grocery stores all day, buying fat-free cheese and low-carb bread, writing out all my calorie-intake of the day, even hiding food in my socks (WTF?)…and I would just be absolutely flabbergasted and disgusted at myself, exclaiming, “I did WHAT? What the hell? I can’t believe I used to do that!”

But I feel the need to emphasize on one thing: In order to gain full recovery, you have to let go of everything that is disordered. You can’t pick-and-choose; it’s all or nothing. You all are smart enough to know what is disordered or not without me laying out the details. Your conscience will speak to you.

I hope that answers your question, Alison. Thank you for such a thought-provoking comment. And I’d like to open this topic up for discussion, so anyone who has any thoughts on this, please speak up!

So, I’ve mentioned above that my taste buds have changed since my eating disorder, but two things that haven’t: My distaste for rice, and my passion for kabocha. My love for kabocha is self-explanatory, but let me explain why I hate rice: I just don’t get how anyone can like that plain, fluffy, texture-less grain! That doesn’t mean I dislike all grains though. As long as they have an interesting texture to them, I love.