I love food actually....>anorexia>

Okay so I have anorexia, and am currently trying to recover. 

I am not scared of actual food.....I have a fear of the calories in foods..like I know every count and keep a tally in my head throughout the day and "the voice" in my head tells me not to go over a certain number...whatever that number maybe.

BUT, everyone that is supporting me during this time thinks I am scared of the actual food....for example they think im scared of pizza....actually I LOVE PIZZA!...but I am afraid of the calories in the pizza..does that make sense?

Am I the only anorexic that actually loves food but forbids herself from it because of the disease?...I simply love to eat and get excited when I do "let myself"...

...anyone?

Yeah. I know exactly what you mean. I always wanted to eat when i had anorexia...I was obsessed with food. I was always thinking about it...what i was going to eat and when. I just severely restricted the amount/types of food i would allow myself to consume. You are definetly not the only anorexic that secretly loves food. It's very common...it's actually a symptom of the disease. When i was in an inpatient program I ate soooo much, sooo often, and once I accepted the fact that I was going to have to eat, and even more once i began to want recovery for myself, I looked forward to the meals. And so did everyone else.

i don't have anorexia... but i can relate to having a love/hate relationship with food... im going to culinary school right now, and i loooove all of the food, but i still have that fear of overeating and a fear of becoming fat. i have to be careful though, because food is basically my life, and its easy to become over-obsessed.

I'm was the same way. I love to eat but starved myself from certain foods that i knew had a lot of calories. Now i focus on the nutrition value of food, like fiber, sugar, fat, etc,.

I thought I was weird for loving food and loving to eat, too. But then I learned, like lena123 explained, that it's a symptom. Many people assume that anorexic people don't like to eat or aren't hungry - but in reality, most of us are constantly thinking of food and savor any bite we take, while hating it at the same time.

As you go through recovery, you will have to stop dealing with emotions through food. It is not something to be used for punishing or rewarding yourself, but as medicine and fuel. 

Trust me hun, you're not alone. Wish you the best of luck. :)

Interesting.

Does the calorie counting in your head eventually die down?.....

Like, I have a real hard time eating calorie dense foods when I could have a lot of low calorie foods instead...

Im more quantity--I like volume. is that common?

For me, I loved food too.  Cooked for eveyone, all the time.  I wasn't happy unless I was cooking for someone.  I always felt like if I ate more that day, then I did the day before, I'd gain weight.  So I slowly ate less and less.  Soon I got down to like just a few hundred calories a day, two or three hundred.

I'm healthy weight now, but calorie counting never goes away for me.  I'm always constantly adding in my head.  

Oh my gosh I'm the exact same way!!!!Eating is like, one of my favorite things, but I've become obsessive about how many calories are in everything I eat, which stops me from eating what I really want to be eating.I thought I was in the minority with this... well, my eating disorder isn't really anorexia though, it's more EDNOS because I think that it stems mostly from OCD.And I'm the same too about the quantity of foods... I think, why eat that english muffin with peanut butter if I can have an apple, yogurt, and a handful of pretzels?I wish I could just remove all the ED thoughts... can't stop thinking about food. 

like everyone has said I AM THE SAME way... clairabelle I am the same with quantity and then i get mad why cant i just eat the small, normal amount of something higher cal. Ugh. food. We learned in psychology though that negative thoughts (like wanting to starve yourself and obsessing over calorie contents) can be transferred into positive thoughts (like love of food) and I feel like that has helped me a lot, and i LOVE cooking now and eating my food! I also love dining at nice restaurants and eating good, healthy ingredients. it is a hard battle but I am becoming more and more interested in eating organic, unrefined foods than low cal, sugarfree ones! we can ALL do it!

Wow, that's me totally! I cook and bake a lot, and at the height of my ED was when I was baking up a storm! It was like, if I made it, I knew what was in it, and how the different ingredients combined, and that there was nothing hidden trying to sabotage my diet or something. There were some days when I wouldn't let myself eat anything except water, diet pepsi, coffee, and licking the sides of the bowl and the spoon when I made brownies. That's like, 200 cals TOPS. And nil on the nutritional value scale. Great, huh? And even when I wasn't baking or cooking, I was thinking about food constantly. I still do, actually. I still love to cook and bake, and food is still among the top 5 things I think about ALL the time. I don't know if it;s unhealthy or not, but I do like to plan what I'm going to eat all day, and spend a lot of time thinking it over, planning menus, making fun stuff, not to mention actually eating it. I wish I wasn't so obsessed but I guess that's part of my personality. As long as I can keep myself eating what and when I should, I guess it can stay under control. 

Original Post by oink420:

like everyone has said I AM THE SAME way... clairabelle I am the same with quantity and then i get mad why cant i just eat the small, normal amount of something higher cal. Ugh. food. We learned in psychology though that negative thoughts (like wanting to starve yourself and obsessing over calorie contents) can be transferred into positive thoughts (like love of food) and I feel like that has helped me a lot, and i LOVE cooking now and eating my food! I also love dining at nice restaurants and eating good, healthy ingredients. it is a hard battle but I am becoming more and more interested in eating organic, unrefined foods than low cal, sugarfree ones! we can ALL do it!

 darling, I think you just saved my life.

from what ive researched, all anorexics love food &are obsessed with it

I agree with peacelovehominy (love the name, also like but don't love hominy)...

I believe that anorexics are consumed by the love of food, as opposed to naturally thin people who say they never even think about food - have to be reminded to eat, etc. (like my husband).

It is a very sad disease and I pray for all who are going through it or in recovery.

i did the baking thing too. i probably made a cake every day haha :) but like everybody else, i never ate what i made. i was obsessed with recipes, the food channel, everything. i loved food too- i just didnt eat it.

ha ha-----this describes me to a TEE
in fact--I am currently in college for "Baking and Pastry"---yet I am recovering from anorexia and weight 88 lb. IRONIC right--
i told that to my dietitian when I first met her and she said it's actually quite "classic" because anorexia is truly a disease that deals with being OBSESSED with food--:)
  I would bake and bake and BAAAKE for my family/friends/co-workers ANYONE but wouldn't even TOUCH it myself--I mean,..of course I knew it tasted okay---or would eat some and spit it out or something--but I wouldn't sit down when everyone ELSE would and actually eat a piece myself! I really really annoyed my family when I wanted to see them EAT what I made but refused to actually eat it myself.
  I truly LOVE cooking/baking....it's my passion...and now that I am working to RECOVER from anorexia and have begun allowing myself to actually ENJOY the tastes, flavors, textures, of more and more of the foods I am around every day----it's been INCREDIBLE!
  I will ALWAYS have this as my passion :) and am SO excited to be in recovery from this horrible life stealing disease!

I just wanted to thank you all. I know that sounds really out of the blue, but I have new insight to what goes on in the mind of a person suffering anorexia. I knew a bit about it, but never really had this view on it before and wanted to thank all of you for stepping up and expressing yourselves. I wish you all the best!

Happy New Years!

Lol, no I totally get that. People are always like food is nice, it tastes good, chocolate is great and it's like I FRIKKIN KNOW IT IS, doesn't mean I'm going to ingest all those calories though!

At the height of my ED, I watched the Food Network like it was pronography--I'm NOT kidding.

Original Post by runner_girl:

At the height of my ED, I watched the Food Network like it was pronography--I'm NOT kidding.

lol, when i was dieting, i watched it alot too! but not that much... ;)

I am totally the same way. I watch the food network ALL THE TIME! I watch nothing else. It is an obsession. At my worst during my ED I would eat about 700 calories a day and nobody knew how bad it was. I would constantly lie to my mother when she asked me what I had eaten that day. I would start rattling off all of these things when I actually hadn't eaten anything.

Since I was a little girl, I was always overweight. Finally I decided that I REALLY was going to lose the weight and I lost like 80 lbs. in like 8 months and I felt great and I was just so scared that that wonderful feeling would go away and I would go back to the way that I used to eat and gain weight. My biggest fear was that if I let myself eat more than like 1000 calories one day, then gradually i would start eating more and more and just not care anymore and gain all of the weight back. But I am still trying to get over my ED. In fact, I had started to slip back into eating like 700 calories a day again, and when I found this website and found all of the support here, I've started eating more again because I know it's better for me than starving myself.

So thanks to everyone here. You're a big help.

Wow! I can relate relate to each and every one of these posts. I am a recovering anorexic and not until now have I realized how bad and to what extremes my ED actually reached.... peacelovehominy- I never knew that anorexics were actually obsessed with food...I guess that's why it took me so long to admit to myself that my doc. and mom had been right all along. I use to tell myself "how could I be anorexic if I love food and I want to eat every little piece in sight?"... malpal you are not in this alone, there are plenty of us recovering and as you can see we all apparently love food & obsessively watched the food network. Good Luck to everyone! =)