Dying to be hungry?

If you’d told me ten years ago there was a way to completely lose my appetite without taking any pills, apple cider vinegar shots or “skinny teas” that make you shit yourself, I would have jumped at the idea. For over a decade I starved myself with purpose and became very, very good at it. Not because it was easy, but because I have a lot of self discipline when it comes to my appearance and having any sort of tangible control over the chaos in my life. When your world is falling apart, not eating feels like an intentional choice you can make every day. We all know my historic eating disorder psychology. Part skinny girl competitiveness to fill an insecure void, part I’m so anxious and depressed, maybe not eating will pacify some of those bad feelings.

However, over the past six years I did a hell of a lot of work to unlearn my eating disorder lifestyle. Dating during COVID’s “eat out to help out” scheme time period really did wonders on turning meal time into something exciting and desirable. After being cooped up in my house for the best part of a year doing cocaine, I actually wanted some normalcy— and food! And shoot me, a nice dinner with a nice man really was the ticket to my heart. While dating this man, I learnt to fall in love with food as I fell in love with him— some pretty damn good Pavlovian conditioning if you ask me. And after three years, I had overcome so much, my progress re food was actually abundant. I was no longer afraid to eat all my fear foods: bread, white grains, oil, anything cooked in oil, potatoes…

I actually thrived as I gained more control over my eating. I do also attribute my veganism to helping me get over my eating disorder too. Though in the start I turned vegan, as we all do, to sort of disguise and justify my eating disorder as a “lifestyle choice”. By the end, veganism helped me fall in love with food all over again. Because I completely reeducated myself about food, through a lens of compassion.

I even got out of my OMAD —“one meal a day” for those of you who aren’t insane— diet phase a year or two ago, which honestly I never thought I’d be able to do. I was one of those wispy twigs who preached the health benefits of only eating once a day —“you’ll never feel sluggish!” I’d chirp, while also not admitting that I couldn’t stand up without getting head rush. It took a lot of hard work and lifestyle changes to reprogram me from Apex pro-Ana Tumblr girl paragon into a genuinely healthy living, food loving, vegan. The craziest part was, when I made the change I didn’t even pile on weight like I thought I would. I do certainly attribute this to my veganism, and prioritising food that is nutritionally dense, even if it is, too, calorie dense, over low cal, low nutrient alternatives like the unsalted rice cakes I used to snack on, convincing myself they didn’t taste so tasteless they might as well have been crafting styrofoam.

So recently, having lost my appetite completely through grief has been pretty hard to swallow! Pardon the pun.

As I boasted at the start of this post, losing my appetite is something I would have spent all my pocket money on back when I was a teen. Any gimmicky fad diet food or supplement I would buy —anyone else remember “raspberry ketones”? Back when Holland and Barrett actually had that toxic “weight loss” shelf, I rotated through every supplement that I fact checked for efficiency through Reddit, Tumblr and those infamous eating disorder blogs.

Honestly lord knows what I was doing to my body, ingesting all this crap, but I did manage to permanently restrict my height at age 14! So I guess something was working?

Now, at the age of 24, I have lost my appetite and I don’t think I have ever felt worse —in my entire life. Of course there are other factors at play here too, obvi. I’m going through a mental breakdown worthy of a 00’s tabloid magazine front cover and four page spread! I can practically picture it now! And I suppose it is thanks to magazine covers like those, that I grew up with, that I don’t demonise myself for being a suicidal blonde hottie. Those magazine covers, as awful, misogynistic, and inflammatory as they were at the time, did in a way normalise and dare I say, commoditise the menty b.

I’m pretty shameless when it comes to mental health —I mean, clearly. Lol. I do think growing up during a period of time where I couldn’t tell the difference between women on the cover of glossy fashion publications being praised and women on the cover of trashy gossip mags being trashed, and the total blurred line between the two, installed some radical self acceptance into me. Like… both women got the cover, who cares why. — And obviously that’s a problematic statement devoid of nuance. But truly, the old gossip mag covers featuring the likes of Britney, Paris and Anna Nicole are certified, triple platinum legendary pieces of pop culture media! That have been reshared and reposted millions of times. Not for their journalistic value OBVIOUSLY, but because they captured a moment of ridicule and sexism so insidious it became a caricature of itself. —And was extremely camp!!

Like seriously! I think all these (predominantly) male editors were so misogynistic they turned themselves gay! Because only a gay man could be so catty!

Play Piece Of Me by Britney Spears on Spotify.

I digress; the point I keep trying to make before bleeding off on a contextual tangent is the fact that I simply cannot eat at the moment. Not for love, nor money. Everything makes me sick, totally sick to my stomach to the extent that the idea of eating is not only unappetising, but stomach-turningly unpleasant.

And it’s been like this for weeks now.

I’ve tried to bribe myself with, well with everything! My favourite restaurants, Deliveroo delivered straight to my door, my weekly Ocado food shop which is usually a joy now feels like anxiety provoking tedium.

Treat foods. Healthy foods. Comfort foods. None of it is working! And as someone who has grown to really love and appreciate the joys of eating, I cannot tell you how unusual this is for me. Worse still, as everyone with an ED history knows, the less you eat, the less you can eat. Your stomach shrinks. You feel sickly. Your cognition, and particularly decision making ability, is greatly interfered with. Everything is thrown off when you’re not eating properly. And I guess, when this is a purposeful choice, that’s fine. But when this is thrust on you against your preference, it’s very distressing. Piling stress upon stress.

My strength and sanity is being absolutely destroyed over here and I haven’t even begun touching upon the panic attacks, sleepless nights and overuse of medication to combat my ailments. I’m honestly incredibly at the end of my tether with the way I’m feeling. What’s worse is no matter how hard I try to coax an appetite out of me, everything feels like it’s exacerbating. Recently I can’t keep down water and as well as throwing up, I threw myself down the stairs on purpose during a crash out, collecting lots of little cuts and bruises that become particularly noticeable and sting when I’m stooping in the bathtub. Funny how hot water does that?

Anyhow! If you were wondering where I’d gone, perhaps concerned over my posting absence, now you know. I’m too busy killing myself over here, being an involuntary skinny legend. I would actually kill to feel normal again. Not that I ever feel normal; but at least for my appetite to be back to normal.

Though I hate hate hate hate them —due to my bad experience of them not working AND losing all sensation and the ability to orgasm! I am seriously considering going back onto an antidepressant if I cannot manage to worm my way out of this horrific nightmare over the next few months. I know grief takes its time, and takes its toll. But this is getting scary and I have too many adult responsibilities and positive intentions to let myself die right now. Otherwise getting sober would be all for nothing if something like grief is going to be the thing that takes me down. Seriously.

That would be a joke.