I’ve had eating disorders my entire life. I’ve been bulimic, anorexic, overweight, and everything in between.
Like many people with eating disorders, my life revolves around food and either eating it or not eating it.
My family has always had a very predictable approach to my weight- delighted when I’m slim, horrified when I put on weight.
One of my first food-related memories was my father slapping a chocolate yogurt out of my hand when I was 6 because he said I was too fat.
I’m now at my parents’ house for an overnight visit and it’s like I’m suddenly seeing things clearly.
Their house is full of food. It’s just the two of them but they have three fridges and three freezers. Very little of it gets eaten. It’s left to go mouldy and then thrown out.
Today, I took some bread from the freezer to make toast but had to throw it away as it was covered in green mould.
There’s food in the cupboard that’s years and years out of date. They won’t let me throw it out.
Yesterday, a giant traditional Christmas dinner was cooked but very little of it was eaten. It’ll be left to go off and they’ll throw it away in a week and I’ll get a call to say that they had to throw out so much food because they ate so very little.
It’s like they take pride in the fact that they eat so little, that food goes off before they get around to it.
Small quantities of cooked foods are frozen and reheated for later. Takeaways are ordered and the put into the fridge for a week and then transferred into the freezer. Today, my mother has eaten c. 6 chips from a takeaway bag that they had at some stage in September and then froze- she reheated them in the air fryer.
I’ve always blamed myself for not being able to manage my relationship with food, but I’m seeing now that this is how I was raised. I have so many instances over my life of my parents either exerting control with food, or using it as a reward or a punishment.
Currently, I’m restricting my food intake quite aggressively. I’ve lost a lot of weight. I’m currently sitting here with my stomach grumbling (which is usually something I usually welcome and aim for), but now all I can think of is taking a knife to the leftover Christmas ham, but if I do that, there’ll be comments.
I have several siblings and every single one of us has food issues and most have had eating disorders.
Does anyone have experience of therapy for food issues who could give me some advice?