
Have you ever been on a date where someone orders for you? Or any situation, for that matter, when another person tells you what to do or how to feel? I spent almost two decades living like that. Every time I ate out, my eating disorder told me what I wanted. Orthorexia made my weekly grocery list; my hands were simply its vessel to write it all down. I became its servant, obeying its every command.
I’d love to be able to say those thoughts are gone, but nine months into recovery and I still face anxiety and guilt around my food selections. This is to be expected, I guess, after years of being told what I wanted to eat. Old habits die hard! Thankfully, those thoughts are becoming less demanding as I gain the strength and self-compassion to fight back.

On this bumpy path through recovery, I am rediscovering who I am and what I want. During my eating disorder, I became a pescatarian. After talking with my RDN, we decided this would be okay for me to continue in recovery. While I saw a mostly plant-based diet as a means to eating cleaner, I also cut out animal products for environmental and animal welfare reasons. These latter two factors being my driving force to remain pescatarian. I’d like to think that if I wanted a chicken nugget now, I’d have one, but I just don’t feel the desire to have one.
This leads to my main point. There is a blurred line between what I want to eat and what my eating disorder wants me to eat. I still find myself questioning whether I don’t want a particular food because I simply don’t want it or because my eating disorder says I can’t have it.
Have years of an eating disorder changed my personal preferences? For example, I’m not a big fan of bread. I’ll eat it, but I can do without. But is that because I spent years viewing bread as the devil or is that just a personal preference of mine? Do I maybe just not like bread that much?
I was addicted to healthy, clean eating. While alcoholics and drug addicts are encouraged to refrain from those behaviors in recovery, I cannot. I must eat every day, multiple times a day, which means I constantly face the temptations to return to my old habits. That’s why I must identify and understand my motivations behind my food selections.
As recovery progresses, I hope that this line will become less fuzzy, and I’ll be able to listen to myself fully. At this moment, I do question my motives around food. Yet, I know that when I reach for the regular milk sitting next to the almond milk that I am moving in the right direction.
—
Previously Published on orthorexiabites.com
—
Shutterstock
The post Who Wants What? appeared first on The Good Men Project.
Original Article