Being underweight, in recovery, eating disorder or disordered eating, or whatever the reason is, there seem to be certain comments that people say. The most common ones must be “just eat more” or “why is it so hard for you to eat more?”. I guess everyone has their own reasons, but this post is especially for those who do not understand why it can be hard to “just eat more”. It is also for those who try to find reasons that make eating more complicated than it should be (including myself). These are my personal experiences, and you cannot assume everyone’s situation is similar.
I am not hungry (wrong fullness cues)
This is a simple excuse. I tell myself I am not hungry anymore, as if I could magically decide when I’m full. I know it doesn’t work that way, but it’s the easiest response to avoid eating more. The problem here is that my hunger and fullness cues can be off. Especially after a longer restrictive period, hunger and fullness cues can be altered. In my case, I am still dealing with either a small appetite and getting full quicker or never feel full after eating. Funny enough the solution to this one is to “just eat more”. The more regular meals I have, the easier it is to recognize hunger. To recognize hunger and fullness cues, I also use mood and energy levels as indicators. My stomach might not be rumbling but when my mood is dropping and I’m thinking about food, it clearly means I should eat something.
I am eating alone
This is the time I can cheat, and I most likely will because there’s no one to tell me what to do. When I’m alone, I tend to go for comfortable portions, which might not be enough. The portions are not enough because what I find comfortable is still from my restrictive times. However, I have found something that can help restrictive eating when preparing food alone. Most of these ideas came from my boyfriend, who has helped me enormously. The best thing to do is to have mandatory elements you must have on your plate – protein, carbs, fats. One thing can go wrong here: I have all the elements but the portion size is still poor. Recently my boyfriend asked me “Would you send a kid to school with that breakfast?”. It was a good point, because a child would probably have had a larger breakfast than me that morning. So think about that – is the plate full? Is this portion for adults? Does it have all the elements?
I am counting my meals
Sometimes I do not have a snack in the afternoon, I leave food on my plate, or I refuse to eat anything that could be considered “extra”. Why? Because I have counted my meals. Hence, it is more likely that dinner times are harder than breakfast. I enjoy breakfast, in fact it’s my favorite meal of the day. But then dinner comes and I start counting “extras” that I had during the day. These “extras” could be milk in my coffee, piece of chocolate, and so on you get the idea. I wish I had a good solution for this one. I still do it, more than I want to admit.
I have created rules around food
Research shows that eating disorders can make changes to the brain. Of course various sources can be found regarding to this but my main point is that you can get too comfortable with your food rules. Following made up rules and routines around food have definitely changed the way I see food. If a certain meal does not correspond to what I expected, I start panicking or I label the meal as something I should not have. I have managed to let go of my fear foods (for example bananas and nuts) and in my experience it only worked by eating those fear foods. Hence, I believe that I can only let go of my routines if I break them and find ways to be flexible. However, this is still something I have to work on. A good starting point has been altering my regular meals and eating my meals in a wrong order.
There’s a lot going on in my mind which makes eating more hard. It doesn’t have to be that way though. Hopefully my experiences can be useful. Maybe you understand better why someone might find that extra snack complicated to finish or maybe you recognize your reasons and why you avoid food. Either way these are things that can be worked on – till “just eating more” is not complicated.