Meal plans can be very helpful in recovery. I never used one, but some people do. If you are using a meal plan, you have to be very careful not to treat it like a maximum. It should be a minimum. If you are hungry for more or can eat more food, then you must!
But what happens if extreme hunger hits? Do you stick to the meal plan? Can you go above it?
This is another post that will likely get me on the lynch list for some people. How dare I suggest that the sacred meal plan will sometimes only get us so far. This post is my opinion; please feel free to give me yours in the comments section.
But the truth is that meal plans do not address extreme hunger. And extreme hunger exists. So with both those things in mind …
The meal plan is a minimum
Extreme hunger or not, the meal plan should be seen as a minimum intake. Aim to go over this minimum as much as possible each day. The problem with meal plans, is that they can quickly become a form of restriction in themselves.
For many people, a meal plan turns into a maximum. If this is true for you, then you have to turn this around in your head pronto. There is no maximum in recovery. You can and should eat all that you want. If you don’t want, then you can and should challenge yourself to eat above what was planned.
Here’s how a meal plan can be restrictive:
What if the meal plan says have a sandwich but what I really want is a cheeseburger? You can bet my eating disorder will tell me not to deviate from the meal plan, right?
What if my meal plan says that I have quiche a lunch and I decide I want a dollop of mayo with it? Sure, my eating disorder will pitch a fit. My eating disorder will tell me to stick to the meal plan and that because mayo is not on the plan I am being a greedy pig to even consider it.
Well, in that instance, not deviating is restriction. I am not having additional food that my body and mind want.
On the flip side, my eating disorder would tell me that deviating from the meal plan is a fabulous idea if I undercut it. Nope. The rule that the meal plan is a minimum was very helpful for in sorting out the ED deviations from the pro-recovery ones.
Positively challenge your meal plan
(This next point is true with or without extreme hunger)
I’m eating to my meal plan. That’s good enough, right?
Nope.
Your responsibility as an adult in recovery is to be always challenging your eating disorder and this means positively challenging your meal plan too. The meal plan says 2 crumpet — why not see if you can manage 3? The meal plan says a latte? Why not make it a hot chocolate?
I know that challenging is incredibly mind-blowingly anxiety provoking. But if you keep doing it the anxiety around doing so decreases at a more rapid rate than if you doggedly allow your eating disorder to dictate that you are not to eat a pinch of salt more than your meal plan says.
Additionally, this can turn it into more of a fun game where you are winning points over your eating disorder with every choice you make. This is how I learned to look at it. Each meal was a me vs my eating disorder game and all I had to do to score points was to eat more than I had intended or pre-planned to. This could be a dollop of mayonaise, but the more confident I became the more I would find myself making a second sandwich, or going back for another slice of cake. Doing so became rewarding. I could get almost giddy with the adrenaline of doing something that terrified me such as having double the amount of ice cream as I had had the day before. Frankly, it turned into a bit of a power trip — one I was winning.
When you positively challenge your meal plan, you are not just complying to a meal plan because you have been told you have to — you are crushing it!
Extreme Hunger
Extreme hunger hit me early on. I could have eaten the whole day’s food before breakfast and still be starving. This was a dilemma for me. I didn’t know what extreme hunger was. I didn’t know it is common in Anorexia recovery. Nobody had ever said anything about what to do if suddenly I wanted to eat the entire contents of my fridge and freezer in one sitting.
I felt like I must be the greediest pig in the world. My eating disorder screamed at me that if I allowed myself to eat more I would balloon into obesity by tomorrow morning. My eating disorder yelled that I would never stop eating if I let myself eat freely. My eating disorder told me I would develop Binge Eating Disorder overnight. My eating disorder told me this was what I got when I didn’t restrict and that the only way to control this insatiable hunger would be to restrict.
My eating disorder told me too many lies over my lifetime. I was learning (slowly) not to pay attention. I was also curious. What would happen if I ate more?
I ate more. And what happened is that I ate even more than I felt was humanly possible for what seemed like forever. And them slowly the urge to eat reduced. Waned. Normalized.
Recovery Binges
Not many people like to talk about these but the majority of us go through them at some stage — we just prefer not to tell anyone about them due to the unnecessary shame. Let’s not keep it a secret. These are a normal part of recovery for many of us and if you know that and know it is okay they do not derail you if they happen.
Recovery binges can feel wildly out of control and you eating disorder will do everything to try and make you feel guilty afterwards. No matter how bad your eating disorder tries to make you feel about what you have eaten know this:
Whatever you ate you needed. This is a normal part of recovery for some people. Everything you just ate will help your body recover. This will not happen forever. Only until your body has decided it has enough reserves to repair and recover. Trust your body it knows what it is doing.
Then know this:
Whatever you do you cannot restrict or purge in an attempt to undo some of what you ate.
Your body ate all that food because it needed all that food. If you try and restrict you are not helping it do what it needs to do in order to recover. Trust your body. Do not use this as an excuse or reason to restrict. Now would be the time to revert to your meal plan if your head is totally spinning and you don’t know what to do. Just pick up on the meal plan whatever the time of day is and go from there.
I’ll be writing more about recovery binges later!
Summary
I think is it healthy and wise to see your meal plan is a minimum. There is no maximum. The sooner and more you can let go of restriction the better. Eating disorders live in restriction, so even if your meal plan is relatively high intake-wise, if you want to and could eat more you are restricting if you do not. The urge to eat an incredible amount of food in recovery is normal if that happens to you. If it happens it happens and it is nothing to be afraid of — it can be like a bit of a golden ticket actually. It will not last forever so long as you respond to it without restriction.
And yes. It is scary as shit. But that is okay. You can and will get to the other side.
Another extremely helpful post, Tabitha. I’m definitely guilty of using the meal plan as a sort of maximum not to be exceeded, and I like your suggestion to constantly be challenging that at every opportunity. It’s strange, because with everything else in my life, I go at it full force and really try to give it my best, but with the eating disorder for some reason, I seem to tiptoe around it and just do the minimum needed for recovery. I’m tired of that — it just prolongs the process as you’ve indicated, and what’s more, it probably won’t even lead to a true recovery because I’m still obviously afraid of something and letting the ED dictate to me what I am and am not ‘allowed’ to do. Well, pardon my language, but I call Bull Shit. Enough of that nonsense. I’m tired of being told what I can and cannot do. So I especially like how you say, “When you positively challenge your meal plan, you are not just complying to a meal plan because you have been told you have to — you are crushing it!” Right on! I think I”m ready to start crushing it. Thanks for the encouragement 🙂
Thank you SO much for this; for your honest and forthrightness.
I really needed to hear this right now. I have just started eating more ‘normally’ again; by this I mean 3 meals a day after restricting to just one a day for years. I now feel hungry ALL the time. Like you said; I will eat breakfast but feel soooooo hungry less than an hour later. I couldn’t understand it as I felt less hungry when I wasn’t eating !! Reading this has made me feel so much better about it. I am just looking at it as my body’s way of trying to get me back on track. The need to restrict after eating more than I wanted is HUGE but I’ve been carrying on; and after reading this I am determined that I can do it. Thank you so much for this honest account. Nobody really talks about the fact that you want to eat all the time when you start your recovery, I think everyone needs to hear this.
The meal plan I was given included double snacks and an extra muesli bar at lunch. What a joke. I think there was one week where I ate seven family blocks of top deck to round because I was just so hungry. In retrospect, this wasn’t at all binge eating. I was just hungry.
And you needed it. Bravo to you for listening to your body and eating because it is even harder when you have a meal plan that doesn’t encourage free eating.
I have been reading through some of your blogs and posts Tabitha refers to a meal plan often. However I haven’t found information that says exactly how to come up with a meal plan. I see it says 3 meals and 3 snacks but doesn’t state how many calories an individual should be aiming to get within that meal plan. If my husband and I are planning out the meal plan how do we know how many total calories the meal plan should contain as a minimum.
If I just eat what my body wants then it usually is less than what my body really needs so I need to push and know how many calories will help me to gain weight and be free of eating disordered thinking.
Thanks
Your blogs are so encouraging so thank you. I have been restricting and over exercising for 30 years now and whenever I try to stabilise my eating I go through extreme hunger. This freaks me out everything as often I eat so much I vomit. Then I feel crap and don’t want to eat for days. Should I continue to honour extreme hunger even though it makes me sick?
Wow thank you thank you thank you ?
I am currently ‘in recovery’ from anorexia, and have been feeling completely hopeless and overwhelmed by my reactions to food and eating during the process.
I have read this post and the one about recovery binges and they have both given me hope and reassurance that I can keep fighting and hopefully this mental torture does have an end.
You are truly inspirational, I wish I had found your posts months ago xxx
Good advice thanks
Hi Tabitha! Thanks for taking the time to maintain such a helpful and validating blog! I have a few questions that I am also going to ask my nutritionist this week, but I’d like your input as well.
Is every restricted for about to the point of not eating for few day stretches at a time, losing a huge chunk of my body weight in only a few months. Now, as I am committed to recovery, I’m working to gain weight without setting too many rules (because rules are what got me in trouble in the first place).
Now a few months into recovery, I am just breaching the 3000 calorie mark each day, sometimes I don’t quite get there. Here is my question: my body is becoming programmed to crave food right before bed, and a good amount. Is that ok? Is there a way to condition my body to not want a huge meal before sleeping? I’ve tried eating more throughout the day and it still wants it! Maybe because my body does a lot of repair during the night it actually needs all of that…cause I do wake up sometimes in the morning with a rumbling tummy even if I ate a lot right before bed. I feel like I’m getting ready for hibernation each night! Would talking to my nutritionist about a more regimented meal plan be a good idea?
One more thing: the other day, I could not stop eating all day and then the next day my whole body was sore and I was so physically tired. Is that because I had finally eaten enough to get some good overnight repair work done? Thanks!
The second paragraph should start with “I severely restricted for about a year to the point of not eating”
Yes to the overnight repair. You need consistent food and rest.
It’s fine to eat at night. Many of us do this. I feasted at night huge amounts for a long time. The key is to push yourself to eat more in the day too. When you hit energy balance your desire to eat so much at night will diminish.
I found your blogs and you you tube channel yesterday and watched them all after suffering from a eating disorder for 20 years I’m now 33 I have never had anyone explain to me the way my brain was working everything you say makes sense and how to fight all the urges. Some times when I think I’m winning I always seem to relapse and i would rather be dead then fight it again and I just couldn’t see a way out finally have hope I can beat this and this is thanks to you I was literally crying and laughing watching your you tube yesterday everything you talked about was the voice in my head and you tips on how to shut the bitch if anorexia up couldn’t of come at a better time I feel like you are my guidance angel thank you so much xxxx
Has anyone experienced extreme hunger episodes even after weight restoration? It seems every couple of days I experience extreme hunger even though I eat regularly and have gained weight back. Just when I think I’m back to normal, I can’t stop thinking about eating more. I find it incredibly frustrating because I feel great for several days, then I feel like I’m starting over again. I ate very liberally for several months and gained loads of weight back. The extreme hunger seemed to go away for a bit. But has returned. I now try to eat healthy and balanced meals regularly. Any thoughts as to why I’m still experiencing extreme hunger episodes? Perhaps I’m still not eating enough? I’m super frustrated!
I am in the complete same boat as you, Tara. I had suffered with anorexia/restrictive eating on and off for about 5 years. I attempted many recoveries where I let myself eat whatever, whenever, however, but always seemed to end up restricting and falling back into ill thoughts and behaviors. I am assuming that I am still recovering now (though I am not certain, which is frustrating and makes me anxious as it is), BUT I think I am weight restored. All I know is that I too try to eat healthy and full meals, yet every few days I experience extreme hunger and cravings that can lead me to eat for the entire day. The next day, I wake up anxious, scared, frustrated and in a lot of pain and nausea.
Some guidance and reassurance that this is OK would be so, very helpful.
Hi Tabitha,
I love your posts and totally agree with the need to fight the restriction to get over the psychological aspects of anorexia. I’ve also just started experiencing extreme hunger and feel like I could eat forever. But I’ve also just started going cold turkey on exercise (this being the much bigger deal for me ), and I’m finding it hard to believe that I could eat the huge quantities that I want to without doing any exercise at all. Could I be eating those massive amounts while being totally sedentary?
I am in recovery from past 2 weeks, i have strong mental hunger, but i still try not to eat because i am scared of bingeing, some days ago i had a afternoon snack, my parents bought some pastry and after an hour of my snack i had a huge urge to eat those pastries I couldn’t resist and ate 3, didn’t felt satisfied, and had a full meal dinner afterwards, yet I wasn’t satisfied, but i was full and after few hours i started feeling more hungry, so i had peanut butter on toast, i was soo full afterwards like the food was literally on my throat, after that i finally been able to sleep. Is this extreme hunger?
I would love to read a response on these posts from Tabitha too. Also, Tabitha…If you don’t stop exercise, but you are eating a ton through binging- not balanced meals and you gain the weigh will you be over the anorexia? Or will you still fear sweets that you binged on?
Reading this was such a relief. I was convinced I just binged and I’d swung the other way and developed a whole new eating disorder, etcetera, etcetera. Nah, I was just hungry! So breakfast happened to be six of those mini pancakes and lunch was four giant cookies. So WHAT? I wanted them. They tasted good. And my body has been starved for years. So why shouldn’t I eat what my body was clearly so desperate for? A few months ago I’d have been so terrified and tried to purge or restrict again but now? I’m good. It’s all good. I’m just mildly surprised that my stomach actually had room for all that, and I’m not full at all. Maybe I’ll say to hell with the dinner on my meal plan tonight (jacket potato, baked beans, vegetables, not very inspiring) and make pasta, which is what I actually WANT.
I needed this so much, especially as I just started my meal plan for anorexia recovery a week ago. It’s been really difficult, and what you wrote is my exact situation! Thank you for giving me some hope and reassurance.