Ready and waiting for the criticism that I may get as a result of writing about this. I don’t care. I don’t believe that shielding adults in recovery from eating disorders from the events that can, and do often, happen along the recovery path helps anyone. When we are taken by surprise by things like overshoot and extreme hunger it causes us to question the recovery path and relapse risk is much higher.
I don’t believe it is true that people are put off of embarking on the path of recovery because they read about things like overshoot and extreme hunger. The might react in the moment. The eating disorder might have a tantrum. But ultimately to fully recover one has to stop listening to the eating disorder’s fears. I think we all get to a point where the thought of recovery terrifies us, but we know we have to do it anyway. The better prepared we are for it the more chance we have in seeing it to the end.
This post contains swear words. Hope you don’t mind. If you have much experience with eating disorders you probably won’t. If anything teaches you the benefit of swearing it is a mental illness that is trying to kill you.
Extreme hunger is a pretty common part of Anorexia (or other eating disorder) recovery. I went though it early on in my recovery. Some go through it at later stages. Granted that some sufferers do not go through it at all. However, if I were to ballpark estimate the number of people whom I have known and worked with who went through it … 75%?
Maybe extreme hunger is more common in adult sufferers as we tend to have been restricting for 5, 10, 20, 30, 40 years? I don’t know. I just know it happens to more of us than is acknowledged.
Certainly more than less. Some resist it. Don’t want to admit it is happening because it is every eating disorder’s worst nightmare. Some embrace it because they, like me, have hit a point where they just don’t care anymore and know that nothing is worse than not eating. I got to the point where I knew that nothing that eating could do to me was going to be worse than what Anorexia was currently doing. Some of us trust that this is a messed up “fuck you” to our eating disorder from our bodies — a response of strength. A response of life.
That is how I saw it. I was done. I was never going to be hungry again. Still, when extreme hunger hit it terrified me. My eating disorder told me it would never wane. My eating disorder told me that I would eat and eat and eat and never be able to stop. But I had stopped listening to my eating disorder the day I committed to recovery. My eating disorder told me lies my whole life. Why would extreme hunger be any different?
It wasn’t.
The hunger did wane eventually. My weight increased, then slowed, then one day I was back to my “Old Me” weight. My pre-eating disorder weight. I was Tabby again.
The Extreme Hunger Mistakes I Made
I’ll tell you where I went wrong so hopefully you can learn from me and bypass some of the dead ends I went down,
Mental Hunger Counts
There are two types of hunger in recovery. Mental hunger and physical hunger. Neither of them are required in order to eat, by the way. You can and often have to eat in the absence of hunger. Hunger is a bonus.
Even if you do experience extreme hunger you probably won’t get it straight away. Recovery is about eating regardless of hunger, regardless of mood, regardless of stress levels, regardless of whether or not you like what you are eating, regardless of the time of day or night, regardless of what culture tells you about food, regardless of what the person next to you is doing.
You can eat crying. You can eat shaking. You can eat swearing.
But let’s assume you are reading this because extreme hunger has hit. And you have eaten. You have eaten so much that your stomach hurts and your brain is saying “How could you have possibly eaten that much? How is that even physically possible? How can you ever justify eating again? You just ate enough to last you a week!”
But you still want more food. That’s the mental hunger. Mental hunger counts. Even if you just ate 20,000 calories. If you are still wanting more you can and should have more.
I learnt that one the hard way. I was slow on the uptake there. I would eat and eat a lot then still want more. I would let my eating disorder tell me that to keep eating when my stomach was full was ridiculous. It is not ridiculous, it actually makes sense when you consider that the brain is still getting signals from the body that the body is underweight and needs to eat more.
The signals are conflicting. The stomach is saying it is full. The body is saying it is empty. This is where extreme hunger can be a total clusterfuck of mixed feelings.
The mental hunger is distressing. It is like fingernails on a chalkboard. It won’t leave you alone. Is is a clawing, screaming, kicking, poking, thrashing hunger. It is your body awake and freaking out about the years of restriction it has endured.
The mental hunger doesn’t trust your stomach. You stomach has lied to it before. When you filled it up by drinking water before each measly meal. When you shrunk it my not eating for days. When you ignored the knocking of hunger cues for so long that they stopped. The mental hunger does not trust that you have eaten enough regardless of what your eyes and your stomach tell it. The mental hunger is trying to save your life.
I could eat until I felt physically sick, and then half an hour later I was ravenous again. It was as if all that food I had just eaten had been sucked out of me. In a way it has — the body so depleted that it was taking all I could give it and using it then asking for more. I used to feel like my stomach was a furnace and that the food was hitting it and being absorbed so fast that no matter how quickly I shoveled it into my mouth I could never keep up.
I resisted the mental hunger initially. Extreme hunger led me to eat more than I had intended. Surely that was enough? Surely I was doing well to have eaten more today than I had done in 10 years? It felt unfair that the mental hunger was clawing at me still. Hadn’t it just seen what I had eaten? Didn’t it care that I had just eaten a burger for the first time in ten years? Didn’t it know how terrifying and liberating that burger had been? Why wasn’t it satisfied?
The mental hunger smirked at the burger, and the chips, and the crisps, and the chocolate brownie. The mental hunger absorbed and they disappeared without even making a dent.
Mental hunger doesn’t care what you think is a lot of food.
Another way to look at it: The (Almost) Bottomless Pit.
In order to understand the mental hunger, I had to reframe how I saw it. I think a large part of the fear that my eating disorder latched onto and replayed in my head was that I was eating far far more than what a “normal” person would eat in a day. I was able to shut that thought up by telling it “Look, a normal person hasn’t just gone though 10 years of restricting.”
My eating disorder also loves numbers, one day I worked out how to use this against it. The numbers are not important here, it is the intent behind them. The intent here, was to show myself how big the deficit that I need to fill was in a currency I spent a long time thinking about: calories.
How to prove to your doubting self that you need to eat a lot.
Let’s say I need 3000 calories a day (I don’t count calories, but this is just for sake of example). That’s around 1095000 a year.
Let’s say I only ate 1000 calories a day for a year. That comes to 365,000 in a year.
That is a deficit of 730,000 calories a year. (!!)
Let’s say I did that for 10 years.
That is a 7300000 calorie deficit I have to make up for!
Oh wait. I haven’t factored in the ridiculous amount of exercise I was doing in this time!
Lets just say that was a lot of exercise, hours each day. Now. even without the deficit that exercise created, I have 7300000 to make up for. No wonder a 1000 calorie burger didn’t even make a dent on the hunger, right?
In money terms that would be like having an overdraft of $7300000 and wondering why your bank manager wasn’t happy with $1000.
Now, I know that the body doesn’t do math like this. I know this is arbitrary. But looking at it like this did help me to be able to justify the hunger and why it was okay and needed for me to eat a lot lot more than “other people” around me were. Over the years and years of restriction I had created so much deficit that no matter how much I filled my stomach, my body and mind would be hungry.
I had a lot of making up to do. Understanding this allowed me to let go of the “being hungry still isn’t normal” voice in my head. So what. I am not normal. I am not like everyone else. I have anorexia.
Seeing the almost bottomless pit like this motivated me to start shoveling food into it. It also helped me to stop counting calories, as when you have that much to make up, it doesn’t matter. You just have to eat. No time to count or worry or overthink.
Nutrient Density Helps. Don’t fight it!
I learned that there was no point in trying to “fill up” on lower calorie foods anymore. All that they did was make my stomach more uncomfortable as the hunger would cause me to eat more nutrient dense foods on top of them. I put a temporary hold on foods like fruit and veg; rice; and other fillers that were not helping me satisfy the hunger. Instead, I ate cheese, peanut butter, butter, saturated fats. Everything got dolloped with mayo. I was finding the nooks and crevices in my diet, and filling them with nutrients.
My eating disorder hated this. But like I said, I went all in. I didn’t care. I was eating.
All this sounds very reasonable of me. However, the way that I came to this realization was neither reasonable nor dignified.
I was making a sandwich one day. I was feeling very proud of myself because I was making a cheese sandwich. Cheese was a huge fear food of mine. I was shaking as I made it. I was terrified. But I was going to make and eat this fucking cheese sandwich if it killed me.
It occurred to me I wanted to butter the bread. I got the (unopened) packet of butter out of the fridge. Then I baulked. It was too much. Too scary. I could not do it. Not cheese and butter. It was too soon for that. I was not ready. Especially since I had already eaten so much more that day than I thought was possible, surely I had done well enough even getting this much food in? Surely skipping on the butter would not make any difference?
But I wanted it.
But it was so much more! How could I be even thinking of adding butter! I had not eaten butter for years!
I made the sandwich without the butter.
I ate the sandwich with shaking hands, but I ate it, and I was proud!
I got up from the table and went to put my plate in the dishwasher. I noticed the stick of butter was still on the counter where I had forgotten to place it back in the fridge.
You should have had butter on the sandwich. You wanted it. You let your eating disorder win again.
But the cheese was enough. The cheese alone was scary enough.
Evidently not. What happened next was the result of extreme hunger mixed with sheer frustration about the fact that no matter how hard I tried to eat without restriction the eating disorder still won on some level. I grabbed a piece of bread and spread thick butter onto it and ate it. I ate fast in case my eating disorder tried to talk me out of it. Then I grabbed another piece of bread and did it again. Then, I took the butter knife and sliced off a slither of butter and ate that plain. Then another. Then another. Then the slithers turned into inches … .
I ate a whole packet of butter.
My eating disorder was horrified, disgusted. But I knew it was the right thing for me to do. My body needed it.
The moral of this story is that the next time I made a cheese sandwich I spread thick butter on the bread. Why not? Chances were I would eat the whole fucking packet later anyway. So what? My body needed nutrient dense foods and butter is one of the most nutrient dense foods you can get.
Interestingly, I found I only “binge” (I term these recovery binges, but will write more on that next week) ate in the way that I did with that packet of butter as a result of restricting and “not allowing” myself to have something. I learnt that in spreading some butter on my bread I would not feel the desire to eat the whole stick later. Restriction is rooted in many behaviours. Extreme hunger helped me weed it out.
The sooner I gave in and allowed my body nutrient dense foods, the sooner my extreme hunger turned into less-extreme hunger, into just plain old hunger, into a normal appetite.
You cannot counter it with exercise or any other purging
You are just making the whole process last longer. Go back to remembering the millions in deficit that you are and you will realize that exercising is dragging it out.
And if you know me you know where I stand on exercise in recovery anyway. If you are underweight you should not be doing any formal exercise of any kind.
It won’t last forever.
My eating disorder told me extreme hunger would last forever.
I didn’t have anyone to tell me otherwise. I was 100 percent alone in my recovery process — that, by the way, was my biggest mistake. Sure, I was right not to trust the therapists who tried to psychoanalyse me and tell me that my eating disorder was a response to feeling out of control with my life. But I could have and should have recruited my ever-willing family and friends to help me out. Shame on me listening to my eating disorder there, as it told me not to trust anyone.
Extreme hunger lasts merely weeks in some people and much, much longer in others. It will not be dictated to, and you can give up trying to bargain and reason with it. It will run its course. You will end up in the same place at the end of it. You have two choices:
- Eat without restriction and enjoy doing so.
- Fight it. You won’t win. You likely will binge eat if you try to restrict here. Then you will learn the hard way like I did that the only option is option 1 above.
I fought it initially and binge eating came as a result. It took me far too long to learn that if I fought it I only binge ate all the foods I didn’t allow myself to eat a little while later. When I surrendered to it, the whole process became almost enjoyable. Sure, my stomach hurt as it was full the whole time, but I enjoyed eating.
It did not last forever. The hunger subsided when my body and mind were good and ready to allow it to. I had to place my trust in my body 100 percent. I had to trust it would stop with the hunger when it was done. I had to trust I would one day not feel that scratching need to eat all the time. I had to trust that my eating disorder was wrong (well, look where listening to that son of a bitch had got me anyway).
But most of all I had to trust my body. Extreme hunger was a gift in that it gave me no choice. I knew I would rather die than go backwards. The only option was forwards.
The same is true for you if you are in recovery, extreme hunger or not. Going backwards is not an option if you want a life.
Next week I will be focusing on the logistics of working with a meal plan when extreme hunger hits. Shout me if you have any questions, or comment here.
Thank you for sharing this. It seems like you got inside of my mind and said exactly what I’m feeling
Probably because I felt it once Kristen. You are not alone
I have been a long-time reader, but this is my first time commenting. I have struggled with my eating disorder on and off for 24 years. It has been very hard to admit, since I never had any formal treatment or diagnosis and don’t have a lot of support. Through all of my attempts to recover, I have never experienced extreme hunger until this time around, and it is such a strange feeling. It reminds me of being pregnant, but without the excuse of growing another human being as a reason to eat whatever I want, which is terrifying. I am so afraid of being judged, of not being the skinny mom at all my kids’ events, at looking like I’ve “let myself go”. But I also know I just can’t listen to my ED anymore. I need to get on with my life, lol! Thank you for all of your posts. It is nice to know I am not alone.
this was… wow. i needed this so fucking much i’m not joking. i kept telling myself, “but i’ve only restricted for less than six months, and in four of those six months, the restriction wasn’t even that serious!” so what? it was still restriction. i am still underweight by about 10kg. i am still sick. if i am going through extreme hunger it’s because my body is finally ready to start healing up and trusts i’ll finally be able to give it enough food to do so.
This mirrors my thoughts almost exactly. This is really helpful. You have a way of explaining that helps me to see it is what it is. I read this page and one of my first thoughts was “I can finally justify myself!” even though it doesn’t need justifying just as you’ve said. I was getting so worked up trying to explain (or mulling over) in my own way to others how/why/ I feel so guilty and ashamed to carry out such actions. I’m not there yet but I could possibly see it on the horizon, it is scaring me a lot though. I’m not in the same place as I was maybe 3 years ago but I never moved on mentally.
Oh God, nail on the head Tabitha! In treatment, bingeing, overeating or eating more than your food plan were discouraged, not talked about or framed in the language of physco babble – trying to fill that elusive hole in my soul. EH is nothing to do with anything other than the body’s attempt to survive and get well. This is an invaluable post and information that should be available to everyone who embarks on recovery from an eating disorder.
Thanks for writing this, Tabitha. I definitely get caught up in overthinking what and how much I’m eating, to the point of sometimes just not eating at all because of the indecision. This helps a lot. I’ll return to it again and again to remind myself.
Thank you for writing this post.
However, as a sufferer of anorexia (sub type binge purge or whatever the hell they call it these days!), I struggle on a regular basis with not allowing normal eating to progress into a binge-purge episode. Do you have any specific advice on this for me?
Hi Sarah
You HAVE to make yourself eat again after a binge and not restrict. It is hard, and it takes a little time before the cycle reduces, but it will.
Um it’s been almost 6 months and it’s definitely not gone.. I weighed 107 and was 5’7 and now I’m 171 and am 5’9 (yes I grew 2 inches in 6 months) am I doing something wrong??? No believes that I’m actually hungry as well. Idk what to do. Lowkey losing my mind. Please help.
Thank you for writing this. My extreme hunger has hit me for the first time ever just yesterday and I had no clue what was happening to me. What worries me, and maybe you have an answer for this concern, is that by eating as much as I am now (because I’m choosing to listen to my body, but also the hunger is debilitating), I’ll gain back weight to my ”normal” self PLUS many many pounds more. How can I know that I’m not eating so much that I’ll be overweight by the time this extreme hunger ends?
İs your extrem hunger stopped?
Thank you for possting this! I’m 173cm and 45 kg and a recovering anorexic. I often get huge hunger strikes and i just empty the fridge in less than 5 sec… YEah, i ‘m basically experiencing the same as you. But will the cravings stop when i’ll reach my healthy weight? And also, the day after a bigne i weighed myself. I realized i was now 48 kg and my anorexic mind started screaming at me! Loudly!!! What worries me is that these binges leave me feeling bloated, guilty, and scared, that i’ll gain loads of fat. Any advice?
Advice would be as in the blog. Allow the binges and keep eating afterwards. They are more likely to reduce if you don’t prevent them or try and restrict.
I Have struggled for 17 years with this. Now I have been putting on weight but the more I eat now the more exhausted I feel and like I didn’t eat anything at all even when I eat alot. Do you have any advice what I should do? Is it normal to feel worse before you get better?
The fatigue is a sign that your body is finally doing the repair work that it needs to do. Allow lots of rest and keep eating!
How do I prevent going into binge eating disorder?
I’m currently embarking on my recovery process. I’ve been introducing foods into my day but freaked out and took a laxative to show my ed that I’m in charge I forced myself to eat something yummy but I’m giving so much anxiety now! Is it okay up eat late at night?
Its always ok to eat late at night! What helps me is a hot beverage and a netflix show to distract <3 Stay strong!
I’ve had anorexia for 11 years and have been in treatment for 6 months. I developed extreme hunger in 2010, 6 years before I even thought about refeeding. The hunger has not abated during those years. In 2012, I attempted suicide because I couldn’t stand being driven mad with hunger anymore. I”m eating well now, but my doctors all have no idea why I developed an insatiable appetite before refeeding. I hope it goes away eventually. It makes me feel hopeless and like I don’t even want food because I know I’ll still be hungry or hungrier after I eat it 🙁
Cindy how are you doing now ?
Thank Tabita! For your inspirational words I read them every hour literally to rev myself up and remind myself that I am allowed to eat. I held myself back for two days already, from using laxatives which is a major deal for me. Thank you for the permission that I needed and the consolation that everything will be OK.
Hi Tabitha- I dropped 10 pounds due to orthorexia and exercise but never was anorexic or severely restricted (I was at 1800-2200, it just didn’t eat enough for my body and situation: know that now since losing my period for months now and having low hormone levels and white blood cell count). This happened after coming out of treatment for exercise addiction and orthorexia and weight restoring (had those for 4 years before that- never had my period once and was between 5-15 pounds underweight). I decided to get back up to weight because I was having binge urges (which id never had before) so for 2 weeks I ate 10,000 cals a day of extreme hunger and didn’t exercise. I’m now back to my healthy weight, but am still experiencing extreme hunger and now I’m not giving in to it. I am fully weight restored and don’t know what to do about these urges 🙁 any advice?
You probably have to overshoot your weight so your body feels safe I’m in the same boat. I stopped restricting when I was at a healthy weight and my weight gain is still happening yet you have to let go and let your body repair that damage and feel same to let the urges and overshoot go.
Did your extreme hunger stop without you forcing it to? Thanks I’m struggling with this at the moment and could really use some reassurance!
Mine did yes, but I ate unrestricted
İs your extrem hunger stopped?
Can you experience mental hunger even if you have put on a lot of weight? Ive always resisted going beyond my 1800 calorie limit. I also never decided to recovery my body kind of decided for me and just started putting on a lot of weight without me really eating more. I gained around 40 pounds slowly but surely while still eating less than 1200-1300 calories (which was more than I was eating when I was at my lightest but still not enough to put on 40 pounds!).
Ive gained a lot of weight, I overshot my original weight.. still eating around 1300 calories but plateaued here. I was told to increase my calories. I slowly made my way up to 1800-2100 calories and my weight didn’t change, Ive been at this overshot weight for about a year now. I still resist when my mind tells me im still hungry depsite my stomach feeling full.
Im confused and dont know what to do.
Yes, because if you are still eating less than what your body needs you are still in energy deficit
Could you please post your hunger food plan! I’ve been struggling with anorexia for 10 years and I’m experiencing awful and sickening hunger nausea. I definitely do not eat much calories at all. To the point where I eat my meals so early then I feel sick and then I’m starved and sick again. I don’t want to feel this anymore. I feel weak cold tired and numb. Reflux gut issues.
I would love to work with you somehow to fix me. I can’t live this life anymore. I have no fun and no life. No friends. This hunger nausea is making me extremely sick. How do I fix this. I’m worried about over eating and becoming out of control with the hunger nausea. I don’t know what to eat or how much. Where will my body store this food. I don’t want to become too too overloaded and obese. ? how do I cope??? What can I do
Wow, I know I’m late, but literally this sounds like my current situation almost to a T. Except for I’m not and have never technically been underweight. The reflux and nausea as of late have been unreal, as have the fatigue. Probably doesn’t help that I’m on night shift also.
May I ask how you are doing now? I hope you’re alright.
Tabitha,
I pulled up this blog post to continue/finish reading it while i was bingeing at 1 am. I just wish i had read it earlier. It was so ironic that i began reading again at the part where you talked about the bread and butter…and i did the exact same thing ( i didnt eat a stick of buttwr, but i bargained with how much i was eating on my bread). Because of you i felt like it was okay to keep eating even though i was so ucomfortably full…ive had nearly a years worth of cravings on my mind. Ive been in a back and forth battle with restricting and recovering and I just hope that I can recover. I have been gaining several lbs over these past few days and it hurts to look in the mirror. My weight is currently higher then my pre-anorexia weight. Will it go back down eventually? Thanks for this post.
Ellie it may, but it would be healthier for you not to concentrate on you weight not going down but rather continuing to eat as your body wants to eat and getting healthy.
Wow, I cannot express how appreciative I am of this post, thank you
why am I eating so much but not gaining weight? When I look in the mirror I feel fat but then the scale says I haven’t gained anything even though I’m consuming a ton of cookies and ice cream to become weight restored. I need two more lbs but they aren’t coming no matter how much I eat. What’s going on?
Hi Tabitha I don’t know if you can give advice I’m currently trying to recover from anorexia I was nearly sectioned under the mental health act unless I increased my calories which I did. However my physiatrist told me to eat 2500 calories. I’ve not managed to do that but have been eating around 2200. But I seem to be gaining so quickly. This is my second time in recovery and the previous time I was eating 399 and was increasing weight slowly why is it this time eating less I’m gaining quicker. I want to increase my calories as still so hungry but just worried I will gain even faster and all ready feel like it’s spirialing out of control all ready. I’ve read somewhere that a recovering anorexia esting 2200 is still classed as starvation mode and the body clings on to everything ands that’s why I’m gaining so fast but I don’t know how true that is. Any advice would be great please can you help xxx
I love this article. I am in my third round of recovery from restrictive anorexia, I have been through all the hospitalizations, residential treatments, IOP and PHP and now I am in my second year of college. This time in recovery I am completely on my own and faced with the many choices of food that college offers. I am currently 85.8 pounds and know I need to gain weight. I am eating more than ever before and trying to enjoy it. I will have eaten 800 calories in one seating before I know it and still feel hungry. This article opened my eyes to the relevance of mental hunger but I still have a clawing fear. Every time in my past recoveries, I have gained so much weight so quickly and that caused me to relapse time and time again. I know that I have to gain weight but I do not think I’m ready to see it go up so quick. Also, I am afraid that if I continue to live this way and enjoy eating the things I am eating and the way I am eating, I won’t be able to stop myself… EVER. I already feel so out of control. I will have gone into the dining hall with a plan of what I am going to get then just go buck-wild and completely black out. I am so scared but I want to be able to have some structure and recover without just shifting from restricting to binging with the same outcome of over-thinking and guilt.
Hi Tabitha,
I’m so happy to have found this article and in some ways comforting to know that I’m not alone in this struggle.
I had eating disorders too. It started 3 years ago.. yes I lost so much weight as I used to eat 500 calories a day. All my friends felt I looked anorexic but I felt happy about myself. And yes, I have always been obsessed about my weight, always liked to be skinny. Then the scary part started, I started to feel hungry.. extremely hungry. When I started to eat, I felt horribly guilty and this went on and on for a while. It got me so depressed. It has been about 3 years now. I have learnt to recover on my own. I learnt to eat healthy and not be obsessed by calories and to embrace my body the way it is. It is a torturous process. I’m still recovering, yes I still feel guilty if I eat more than I feel I should. I also feel that I could never go back to old figure when I lost all that weight and I was about 45 kg. I don’t know why I feel that way. It can be so frustrating and makes me sad.
I just wish I am able to handle it better and look at food in a better way.
Hi, thank you for your writings. I’m 15 years old and I also have anorexia. This is how it happened :
I have always been a little unsatisfied with my eatings habits and body image. But it was never something that preoccupied me that much. I focused on my intellectual side telling my self each time those thoughts hit me : “There’s way more in life than a body image to stick to” ” At least my mind is full too” … But I never pushed them completely away. I attempted dieting so many times but I wouldn’t last a day following the diet. I was curvy, I was big ( not too much ), I used to be nicknamed … but I ate whatever I wanted whenever I wanted.
Then came Ramadan 2017. It’s the fasing month in Islam. It wasn’t my first time fasting but during this one, I observed some physical changes due to the fasting. I would still eat fried chicken and cookies with icecream at night but during the day … it was another feeling. After Ramadan I unconsciously started cutting some foods like bread, chocolate .. and when I started being conscious of it, it didn’t feel that restrictive : I was happy to do so. I cut off all junk food. It was summertime so me not having junkfood was an achievement. At that point , I was really really healthy. I would eat a whole bow of salad in the morning and not have the slightest desire for the cake on the table. I would eat fish, chicken but not fried. And at night I would have a soup or nothing at all.
Then came the part in which I started counting: from a 1200 kCal as a limit, I drpped it to 700, then 600 … until it reached 400.
I developed a habit of working out at least 10 miutes after waking up and for the rest of the day it differed but I had to be physically active no matter what.
Then school started, everyone was commenting at how much weight I’ve lost. I didn’t believe them. I continued restricting and walked to school 4 times everyday. it takes 30 minutes to get there so it was perfect to satisfy my pysical activity requirements. I also had 2 hours of kickboxing a week … There’s too much to say !
anyway, my weight dropped faster and faster and I wasq taken to a dietitian. I finally was partially convinced that I had a problem. She spoke with me very gentely and made me promise her that within a month I’d be heavier tha 50 kilos. I didn’t keep my promise at first, throwing away the food given to me and not washing the plate just to convince everyone else that I ate it …. I was satisfied with the way I looked. I was skinny, something I never imagined my self having as a property before. Some days I would eat nothing, Some days I would work out like a freak .. but when I allowed my self to eat more, it got messy. I started developing some bad habits with food from eating in secret to eating the shells and peels of fruits ….
and I would freak out in guilt after a bowl of beans because it drove me further than my limit.
One day I felt unstoppable. I started eating everything in front of me, like a beast, until I got physically ill. I felt like I wasn’t me. I just wanted to disappear so I went to bed. The next morning I woke up with guilt, worked out more than usual and told my self ” honey you’re gonna get punished” the punishment was not eating anything for days. that’s what I did for about 3 days. but psychologically , I was crushed. It resulted in me finally confessing it to my parents. as they encouraged me to eat saying it’s completely normal to feel so out of controle after all that period of restriction, it felt more okay to eat sometimes and sometimes not.
Last week, I did it again. The attack on the kitchen. I felt guilty, fasted the next day. Then I did it again , and I got very sick afterwards, promised my self to eat moderately, broke hat promise (…)
How about now ?
I’m confused. It feels like the anorexic me is a huge part of me. I weighed my self two days ago to feel satisfied with the number 47 on the scale. I eat in secret because I don’t want to be seen havng some foods now, and then when I get scared of them or don’t want to eat them, to be told ” but you just had bread the other day” I had unbelievable amounts of food these last two days. I’m so scared of gaining weight. I don’t want to go back neither to my old body, neither to my old habits. I want to eat that cookie but at the same time I don’t want to feel guilty and I don’t want to develop an addiction to eating junk food.
I’m lost. I’m living contradictory perceptions.
I still haven’t said everything but whoa it’s a lot already !!
I’m sorry it’s so long. I hope I get some help.
Thank you
Hi Emy,
I don’t know if you’ll see this, but I hope you persevered and are doing better every day! I just wanted to say that it’s now known that some people can be genetically predisposed towards restriction/eating disorders, so a period of fasting (such as Ramadan, Catholic fast days, a prolonged sickness, surgery, etc) can actually trigger you to develop an eating disorder. When you make the decision to recover and are in that process, and even after, you should *never* participate in voluntary fasting again — it can make everything come back very quickly, and make you very sick again as the body immediately remembers what restriction is like. Islam, Catholicism, and Judaism all make exceptions for people who medically cannot fast, because your life and health is the most valuable thing you have!
I hope you were able to navigate your extreme hunger. I am going through something similar and know that the extreme hunger will continue for awhile, but eventually the body will normalize and “normal” hunger signalling will come back. Your body knows what it needs and the best thing we can do is listen even when it seems weird. It can feel really, truly miserable and overwhelming, especially not knowing how long it will take to normalize, but remember that it is your body repairing incredible damage! Each moment of hunger that you feed is one more repaired organ, hormone, muscle, brain function, etc, to make a healthier you. As you begin eating more, you gain weight quickly because the body holds onto everything because it’s afraid you’re going to starve it again; as you recover more, your body starts to trust you and puts the food to more use, meaning you naturally need to eat a lot more than you would if you had never restricted at all. One day it will be closer to “normal,” but to get there you need to nourish your body with a lot of “extra” food 🙂
Katya
Hi! this was really helpful. I’ve read it twice. one 7 weeks ago when I was gaining weight and I am reading it now, at a healthy wight *includes my periods coming back after 5 years) however, I am now healthy and have been feeling a normal stable hunger at normal times for a few weeks. This week I am starving all the time, to the point I feel sick! do I give in to it and eat more even if I am healthy? will I keep gaining? I don’t know what to do or why it is happening!
I am eating around 2000 sometimes a few hundred more, so why am I hungry?!
I see what my friends eat and I don’t understand how I need too much more! its embarrassing!
its back to the eating disorder days when I’m constantly thinking and looking at menus and food pictures !
help!
HI! I’m probably really late to this but I’ve been restricting for only 5 months and going through extreme hunger and binge eating! I am under weight but I always been couple pounds underweight. I just don’t understand why am having these binges for WEEKS while only restricting for 5 months. I’m terrified to eat so much and not feel satisfied…
Reading this made me cry; it has SO many truths in it. I’m just starting to mentally accept and adjust to the truth that I have an eating disorder (never thought THAT would happen – I’m such a foodie). My periods stopped over a year ago and I am hellbent on getting them back. Who would know the process was so difficult and utterly terrifying. Thank you so much for writing this. I feel soothed that my crazy hunger is not my body spiralling out of control and wanting obesity. Love and light xox
Tabitha I am terrified. I have been restricting in one way or another for close to 10 years. I do not want to go back to pre anorexia weight b idk what that even is I was so young when it started. I started eating carbs but now I’m hungey all the time. I feel better when I eat on a meal plan though. Help please I’m scared and getting heavier feeling the restriction but I need to eat Help. ALso should I stop working out even though it eases my anxiety?
Hi Tabitha,
I’ve read many of your posts now and I’m so grateful to have found your blog! You write in a way that’s relatable and easy to understand! Thank you!
I just have a q, I’d really love if you could answer it as it’s something I’m really struggling with and I think it’s the final hurdle in my way.
I’m so confused about extreme/mental hunger, even after reading all your posts.
if I’m just thinking about food, no food in particular but literally just have the word food floating around in my head is that extreme hunger and mental hunger or is it the same thing? All day, even straight after I’ve eaten I just have the word food floating around in my head. I feel so lost. I’ve already increased my cals from around 2000 (prob under) to around 4000. After I eat the thought of food is straight back in my head it won’t go away. But I don’t know if its hunger or whether its just in my mind cos I know I’m trying to recover and know that requires food, so I just let it preoccupy me? Perhaps I’ve just answered the q myself there, I really don’t know.
Id appreciate any extra insight you can give me please as I need to conquer this once and for all. It’s gone on far, far too long! I’m just so overwhelmed now.
P. S can’t wait to start reading your book 🙂
Thanks,
sha
Hi Tabitha
I’m a 17-years-old girl who had anorexia for about 8 months. I struggled when I started recovering because of “not being sick enough”… but now I take the good road to heal. Even though, I don’t know if I’m experiencing extreme hunger because of my short period of anorexia and also, because I don’t know if I’m really hungry when I eat. I sometimes eat until I’m stuffed, and I don’t know if it’s binging… I still don’t eat pizza or hamburger or stuff like that because it makes me afraid but I could eat ten slices of bread with almond butter and honey and also yoghurt with maple sirup and bananas… I’m a bit lost, because I don’t know if it’s really extreme hunger or just because it comforts me…
Thank you for all your posts and Youtube videos, and sorry for my bad English (I’m French)…
Lou
you helped me so so much. I think you saved my life actually. This is the best i ever read in my whole annorexia time. Thanks
Thank you so much for this – it really helped me – I’m going through exactly this at the moment…
Thank you for that amazing post? it helped alot.
I’ve had my eating disorder for hell of 6 years and at last i had serious health problems that were leading to death! So 5 months and 20 days ago i decided to recover and like you on my own 100% i gained weight verrrrry quickly and in a matter of no time i overshot my set point like crazy.
I went from underweight to heavily overweight. I feel like i ‘ve ate well for the past 4 months and had extreme hunger for about 3 times a week.
Now I’m almost in the 6th month and i’m experiencing extreme hunger everyday and extreme water retention and fatigue. I’m sooooo scared!!! I’m borderline obese now so will my weight crawl even more??? What’s wrong? I don’t feel comfortable. I deleted the relapse option from my mind though, i just need reassurance PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HELP ME I’M DESPERATE
Thank you
I’m going through this stage now and struggling with the mental side of things. I logically force myself to fight the urge to burn calories every day. It’s good to know it will stop, but for me it’s also been a long time of ‘sculpting’ at the gym and sacrificing, which makes it harder, feeling like all that time was wasted. How do you get around that side of it? I love food so much, and haven’t had dessert for so long I only crave sweet things! I could easily eat a whole jar of chocolate spread and peanut butter and still not feel sickly full! (I used to be a long distance runner so my body is used to a high calorie intake anyway)
Hi An. It’s been awhile since your post. How are you doing? I am currently struggling with exactly what you described. I have worked hard to have a very fit muscular body and am terrified of losing that hard earned muscle tone. Has it gotten easier for you? I eat when hungry and fill up on calorie and nutrient dense foods so I haven’t craved sugary stuff so much. I’m worried the most about not strength training.
Hi Tabitha,
After reading your blog post I really identified with a lot of what you said. I’m 16 and have had anorexia for almost 3 years, been extremely underweight for about a year now. I don’t want to trigger anyone by stating my weight/BMI but for medical advice-seeking purposes I feel like I have to (it’ll be down below). I started restricting food at a healthy weight of 130 lbs for my height in August 2017, and lost my period in September of that year (still don’t have it) I continued losing weight until 2018 , when I was underweight but not to the extent I am now, and was sent to an eating disorder program (Partial Hospitalization). I was in the program for 4 months and weight restored, but my period still didn’t come back even though I was back at my pre-anorexia weight so after discharge they told me to keep following the 3000 calorie meal plan (with Boost meal replacement drinks included).
TRIGGER WARNING!
Obviously I didn’t and slowly restricted throughout the year and stopped restricting at 1700 calories per day in January 2019. From January to June I steadily ate 1700 calories and weighed about 120 lbs, but after school ended I relapsed and restricted to 1300 calories a day. From June 2019 to January 2020 I’ve been eating roughly 1100-1400 calories a day (and obviously losing weight). In February I weighed in at 95 lbs. From February to now (April 2020) I’ve been eating 1600-1700 calories a day again and slooowly gaining weight due to lack of exercise because of the quarantine and slightly increased calories (the online calculator said for my height an weight I’d gain 1/2 a pound a week if I was sedentary and ate 1700 calories a day, which I am doing). Now I’m worried it’s not enough calorie surplus, because the extreme hunger has hit. I’ll eat 300 calories and 2 hours later my stomach is growling, even though I filled it with water and ate enough carbs and protein. And at night I’ll go to sleep fine but wake up around 4-6 am to a growling stomach, and each time I think about food my stomach will growl in hunger even if I JUST ate. This is all really frustrating and I hate feeling like this. I know I have to gain weight and I want to, just no more than half a pound a week. Please, help! If you have any advice or know of some at home treatment options for me, please don’t hesitate to let me know.
Thanks,
Andrea
Help Tabitha, am getting horrible extreme hunger and dreams about eating, have been eating so much, literally a bottomless pit. I’m recovering alone from Anorexia Nervosa, feeling so guilty about eating because I am never satiated, just want to eat but don’t want to feel guilty or eat so much either! Help is this really normal? Does it really stop? I want to go back to being normal and not thinking of what I shall eat 24/7,to not being hypersensitive around food and eating so much and feeling like a starved scrawny rabbit, please help! I get scared by websites that say I should eat portions and “normally” because I try to but I end up begging myself for food… 8 want this to stop and be a normal person, anorexia was horrible but this is another huge obstacle. How do normal people say stop, I’m not hungry anymore? As a recovering restrictive eater I only know that feeling of wanting more than you allow yourself…
Reading this again a month into recovery because someone in my family just saw me eating several slices of bread and told me that this had gone too far and that I was now binging. I’m not taken seriously when I try to defend myself because I get overly emotional, and when I try to find sources to show people that binging in recovery is normal, I find mostly sources that say it’s good to follow a meal plan within which everything is eaten in moderation. Basically the opposite of what I’m doing (eating freely, probably around 8,000 calories a day even though I only had an ED for two years).
This really fucking sucks. I want to restrict now but I won’t.
I never knew what it was. Now that I know the name of it, I feel somehwat more understood.
I am not in recovery. In fact I’m not a typical anorectic, it’s been happening for the past 18 years of my life, but in no way that extreme in terms of physically altering my body. And I know I have to stick with it, becuase I’m a professional thelte, and my body has to be in the best shape, so I cannot even risk eating too much. I thought somethingwas wrong with me (physically) and that was why I felt hungry all of the freaking time. Now I know I can just ignore it. It won’t help me in the long run, but maybe I will make it for another twenty years or so, until I stop doing sport professionaly and can finally stop caring about what my body looks like.
It’s not dangerous, becuase I take my sport very seriously and track calories to make sure I am not failing in keeping myself well fed with good nutrition plan. It won’t take my life (maybe the joy of it, haha). But at the very least now I know I can just ignore this hunger, I don’t have a cancer or a parasite inside me, I just feel scared, tired and lonely in my brain.
It makes so much sense. Thanks!
Really interesting. I haven’t yet become really hungry. I have book marked UberEATS because I’m not up to cooking and I also reasoned – not hungry- then go for junk food aka food you can’t resist, absolutely irresistible and nummy especially if you’re not hungry. Also my point of view is that if I’m paying so much to have food delivered I’m not going to waste it and am going to bloody well eat it. Plus the cat loooves KFC
God I can’t stop crying. This was exactly what I needed. I love you and this post and I will forever be in your debt for this. I can’t stop crying. Just thank you.
Hi, my daughter is in recovery and has got to the extreme eating stage. It seems to have coincided with her getting bad tummy ache. We don’t know if she has a tummy bug (she has recently started to reattend school) or of the extreme eating can cause tummy ache struggling to go to the toilet. Any help would be very much appreciated.
I’m extremely hungry at the moment, I’m at the beginning of recovery and I used to eat barely 350, finally increased it to 700-900 and gained 3 kg very quickly from 35 to 38, now in times of extreme hunger, calories are per day over 3000, I try not to weigh myself but I still feel and I have to even logically to gain weight when I gained 900… I’m scared and hate it, I feel like I have to gain weight but I don’t want to gain weight so quickly, you know, it annoys me that I’m gaining weight on a small income and now I don’t want to be as hungry as before maybe in a month.. .. I hope my metabolism will speed up and what to do with the extreme hunger to obey? I’m really scared, same I eat only when I moving and have a parttime job, but im scared during day off when I less moving to listen to my extreme hunger
I’m really struggling because I can’t tell if I’m having extreme hunger because I only really restricted for a year but I just feel the need to constantly eat even if I’m not super hungry. Is this extreme hunger???