Anita,

It’s unfortunate to hear you have suffered from an ED yourself, I hope you had a good road to recovery and have a much healthier relationship with food.

I’m not sure lack of nurturance would be the root of my problem, perhaps in a way? To answer you though, it would have benefited me to have healthier food options, less fried, processed, greasy, carb heavy, fatty, sugary foods available. Of course my parents did not feed me absolute garbage or anything they provided well. As far as eating when expected to, skipping dinner or any meal shared with the family wasn’t really an option, I couldn’t just say I wasn’t going to eat, and on few occasions through my life I experienced the typical “you can’t leave until you finish your food”. This wasn’t necessarily traumatizing or anything, it’s just choices I would make differently if I had been able to.

I’m just about positive the reason for my poor relationship with food is because I was made to feel bad about the way my body looked from almost the beginning of my life at this point. As far back as my memories go there has always been someone to say something about me being overweight, telling me I probably shouldn’t eat something so I don’t gain more/ turn out like my grandmother who was a very obese woman. I don’t know, I think even  if that’s not what did it for me, it’s still pretty messed up to tell a small child there’s something wrong with them like that. This had definitely made me feel the need to sneak food. I have had almost a whole lifetime of feeling guilty for being hungry when hunger strikes. I eventually started convincing myself that hunger actually really felt good. But here I am indulging in everything that sounds good to me lately.

D