Eating for Pleasure

I have a question for you:

Do you eat your food in order?

When I was a child, eating was a full-on activity.

I ate KitKats layer by layer. I sucked the salt off pretzel rods. I adorned my fingers with olives. I ate the chocolate ridges off my Reese’s. I ate popcorn without using my hands. I sucked the color off my skittles. I saved the goldfish who were smiling. I left all my Lucky Charms marshmallows for last. And: I made snowflake art out of salami.

Eating was more than just sustenance or stress; it was a pleasurable pastime. But somewhere along the way, these foods began to feel less like enjoyment, and more like “sinful pleasure.” Eventually, we begin to accept the milieu we’re steeped in. Accordingly, we agree that these foods are dangerous, and eating for pleasure goes by the wayside.

Unfortunately, it took fearing these foods with my life, and then recovering, to realize that pleasurable foods just aren’t as dangerous as they’re made out to be. If you’ve read my ebook, or have been following my posts, you’ll know that the #1 focus of getting out of semi-recovery and into remission is:

learning to Weed out any remaining disordered behaviors.

But disordered behaviors can sometimes stay hidden in the most interesting of ways, and weeding out the stigma of eating pleasurable foods is one of them.

You see, while I was busy saving smiling goldfish from certain annihilation, I was also doing something else: at dinner, I always saved my favorite thing on my plate for last. And this wasn’t just a “me” thing. In fact, when I joined my niece for dinner one night, I noticed that she’d eaten every last thing on her dinner plate… except her most coveted item: macaroni. When I asked her if she was saving the best for last, she looked at me incredulously and said, “Of course!”

It got me thinking: How many of us are saving our favorite foods for last? And more importantly, Why are we doing it?

For me, saving my favorite food for last was just one brick on the path I paved toward my eating disorder. But does this mean that everyone who saves their best food for last, including my niece, is fated for this illness? No. But what it does signify is this: that there are acceptable disordered behaviors in our culture. In fact, I’ll take that one step further and argue this:

Generally, outside of an eating disorder, nearly all disordered behaviors are accepted by the public.

Eliminating foods, fasting, cleansing, and extreme exercise are only a few examples of the many disordered behaviors that are seen as culturally acceptable - so long as the person practicing them doesn’t have an eating disorder. This is mainly because unafflicted people (without disorders) are generally incapable of practicing these disordered means to the point that they’re as self-destructive as someone who has the genetic predisposition to starve themselves. Nevertheless, these behaviors are inherently disordered, no matter who’s practicing them. And, in the case of weeding out disordered behaviors, one such among them is (surprise!) the notion of earning pleasure.

It’s common in semi-recovery to adhere to one disordered rule to ameliorate the anxiety of breaking another (i.e. eating for pleasure). But keeping one foot in the door of your eating disorder will never bring you to a full and robust remission, no matter how culturally acceptable your disordered behaviors are.

The fact remains:

Even holding on to one disordered rule holds you hostage from reaching remission.

Maybe it means adding in a safe food, or maybe it’s performing a safety behavior to “negate” the “harmful effects” of eating pleasurable food. Either way, the medicine is always the same:

Eat more anxiety-provoking, pleasurable foods, and flounce in the way of disordered rules.

Every disordered behavior you root out is another step closer to remission. Remember:

You gotta prune the garden to grow the flowers.

I believe in you. 🌸

Maria