I’m really excited about the way this is working for ME, right NOW, though. It has lessened some of the worst side effect of my anti depressant significantly, like my stomach problems and the stiffness and discomfort caused by water retention.

And props to you. Seriously. Without this blog I don’t think I would have made it far enough beyond my ED to get to a place where I trusted myself enough to try anything that even remotely restricted what I could eat without falling back into the disorder. Which I haven’t! So thank you, Michelle. You are making such a difference.

Well, I mean, it is at first, but then after a certain point you feel sick and don’t enjoy it anymore. It’s a critical learning experience to have, in my opinion.

When I first started giving myself permission, I definitely had some days when I went overboard. It was a learning experience — I learned it wasn’t necessary and my body didn’t like it much.

Trust the process. The world tells us that we’re inherently out of control — not just on food, but on many other things. I believe we inherently want good things for ourselves and others and if given the freedom and opportunity, exercise good judgment.

I’d also caution you to make sure that there’s not a sneaky lack of permission somewhere in the background that is scaring you – saying to yourself, “Well, if I keep eating like this, I’ll just have to go back on a diet/cut back/etc” can be enough to scare the bejeezus out of you and set up what I think of as The Last Supper Phenomenon.

If some part of you believes that Monday morning is coming around the corner, and the other shoe is going to drop, then you won’t reeeeally believe that you have permission, and your eating will continue to be out of control.

You need to keep feeding yourself reliably, following your preferences, and work on calming and reassuring yourself. Remind yourself – you can have this. You can have as much of it as you want. There will never again come a point in your life where you WON’T be allowed to have it.

Another good way to do this is to give yourself a bit of structure around your eating, within which permission can happen. This can help with “panic eating” episodes. If you catch yourself eating in a panicked way, give yourself permission and make a deal with yourself – “Okay, I’m allowed to eat this food and I can have as much as I want. But I’m going to sit down, and eat calmly and attentively until I feel done.” Take a nice deep breath, compose yourself, and eat.

This can help to get a grip on the “out of control” feeling – you still have permission, you can still have whatever and however much you want, but you have to eat it in an orderly fashion.

Is this common when you first begin this practice?

It has been a long road, and so hard, but I’ve been extraordinarily lucky in that for whatever reason this was easier for me than for a lot of other folks, and I’ve never, since the day I decided it had to stop, actually backslid into starving myself or going nuts with the exercise. I’ve thought about it, I’ve come within spitting distance, but I’ve managed to stick to it. I wish it were so easy for everyone, and my heart is with everyone who has to wrestle with that particular bear over and over again. It’s big and it’s hairy and it has frightfully large teeth, but it is possible to win. I swear this is true.

I’m trying to pick up healthy foods as I go along, but it’s hard when you have no money, no time, and no spoons most days. I’m re-introducing exercise, completely different ones than the ones I used to do, and I’m hoping that goes well. I don’t care about getting thinner, but I need to be healthier, and I can feel that I am not at my best.

Based on your description, I would classify that intense hunger (similar to the feelings you had while anaemic) in the “chemical hunger” territory – I imagine it as a signal coming from severely depleted nutrient stores. The more of those stores depleted, the more intense and all-encompassing the hunger.

I know the self-acceptance part of this whole process is probably the most difficult, but I’m incredibly happy to hear you’ve gotten over the big hurdle with eating.

Then, when I started eating again, I felt hungry all the time . . . not mechanical hunger, but aesthetic, according to what you’ve written here. Or something else . . . anxiety-driven, primal, wrenching, but it didn’t involve the stomach or even a desire to eat any particular thing . . . nothing at all sounded yummy, I just had a craving for food . . . anything . . . the fattier and sweeter the better. It didn’t feel like any hunger I’ve ever had before or since. It was overpowering, and felt totally unnatural. To someone trying to get over an eating disorder, it was utterly terrifying. No, no, I lied. I felt something a bit like it once before, when I was severely anemic, and was driven to chew ice constantly . . . and gnaw the ends off of chicken bones to get at the marrow, which is what I am convinced the ice-chewing is trying to satisfy. I also craved red meat, but it was less viscerally satisfying than the crunchy ice. But that was far less powerful than what I felt after trying to learn to be hungry again.

It was months and months and months before my hunger returned to normal and I started having more-normal-for-me levels of craving for fatty/sugary foods . . . as opposed to needing to eat them all the time, even when I felt sick to my stomach — denying myself food caused such intense psychological distress I would eat anyway, trusting that eventually my body would get a clue.

Mechanical hunger was the last thing to return, some two years (TWO YEARS) after I started eating again (not eating normally; I am still not eating normally . . . I can’t stand to eat any of the safe foods that I ate while I was starving myself, which is basically vegetables of any kind, and I still eat more sweet things and fatty things than I used to, and I am telling myself that this is fine, that it’s just another stage in my recovery, and I should not push myself to eat things that make me miserable or trigger those memories so strongly).

Now I feel strong mechanical hunger at normal-for-me intervals, and it is a wonderful feeling. I sometimes just let myself sit and feel it for a little while, to remind myself that it is normal and healthy and needs to be there and I am glad to have it back.

For those folks re-learning normal-for-them eating habits, stick with it. It can take a very, very long time, but it will work. Be patient with yourself. Know that it may get worse, both physically and psychologically, before it gets better, but it will get better, and it is awesome when it does. Even with the scary parts and the weight gain, this is better than what I was doing to myself.

It has been much harder learning not to hate myself for all the weight I gained back, with interest (meds plus a bum thyroid plus being unable to trust myself with exercising or restricting my food in any way whatsoever . . . yeah).

Thank you for this. Fascinating stuff. And I am so glad that you assert that all forms of hunger should be respected. I appreciate that so much.

I haven’t ever felt that, because I’ve always been really hypoglycemic, so I’ve always had to keep feeding myself with very short intervals to avoid passing out. The desperation for carbs would arrive before I became aware of any emptiness. But now I don’t get these sudden crashes, so I get to feel what normal hunger is and eat to fill my stomach. I feel so normal and steady, all of a sudden :)

Hunger is really an awesome mechanism, and I love that I finally get to experience it in a normal way where I don’t feel like my body is dying because my dinner is 10 minutes over due. Eating is so much more straight forward and primal and much less anxiety-ridden. I love it :)

However, I have no desire to cut out all things that aren’t nutritionally good for me, and I’m still going to eat out and consume oil in other people’s food. Also, I like cupcakes and chocolate, and I’m going to keep eating them. It makes me sad that in the McDougall camp, as in other forums, people feel the need to judge themselves/others and say they’ve been “bad” if they were less than “perfect” per the plan’s guidelines.

I’m thin, but I’ve been nagged in my life about weighing too much when I was younger or eating junk by my husband (who also eats his own brand of junk!), and the result is that part of me wants to rebel. I think you’re totally right about that.

If we allowed more permission along with education, as you’re doing, people would be a lot more well off. *sigh*

Anyway, thanks for the work you do!