My son was almost two when he came to me, he had been starved as a baby and been given limited types of solid food.
He would only eat beans, bread and any frozen potato product e.g smiley faces. He would eat until every scrap of food was gone no matter how much I gave him. Once I realised this I started limiting his meal sizes more, but slightly more was given at snack time and if he showed he was hungry he was always given food.
It took about six months for him to leave food he liked due to feeling full.
He had a huge aversion to new foods as well, which was also age related. After two weeks, which looking back was probably too early I started putting a new food on his plate at every single meal time, I would tell him what it was then it wasn’t mentioned again. When he reliably started eating it another food would be introduced and so on.
He’s now 4.5, he still becomes ‘hungry’ if he is very anxious, but he just wants to know the food is there. So just putting a banana or whatever out is enough for his ‘hunger’ to be managed. He now regularly doesn’t finish meals, especially if it’s something ‘boring’ or he wants to get back to playing. He now has food preferences, he does not like olives or aubergine, where as before he would have eaten them.
He is still a scavenger, at school he will get food out of the bins or pick food up off the floor. He doesn’t normally eat it, it normally gets shoved in his pocket.
Now he’s a bit older we can talk about food a bit more, he knows that BM didn’t give him enough food. He always knows what we are eating that day, I have laminated pictures of different meals that we velcro onto a board in the kitchen. We do it together in the morning, he has recently been able to cope if I rush us out in the morning and forget to do it.