Anorexic Attitudes to Food: Caring "Too Much," Not Too Little

"This post is Part 1 of a series. Amongst the central myths of anorexia is the idea that it involves not liking food and not experiencing hunger. In broad-brush terms, folk perceptions of anorexia involve a rather idealized sense of a life to which food is irrelevant. There's obvious appeal in the idea that stopping eating creates simplicity: Food is complicated in every culture, and a common human energy-saving response to complication is to withdraw,"

"As a teenager sliding into anorexia, I heard some line about a friend of a friend "wasting away," and despite all I was already learning about the realities of self-starvation, there was such romance in that little phrase: hazy images of Victorian garrets, dusty white lace, femininely expiring (an equally sexist counterpart, I suppose, to the images of a woman "letting herself go" that I explored in a blog series last year-also involving dusty sunshine, oddly enough)."

Clichés about anorexia often portray absence of hunger and disinterest in food. In fact, food typically matters far more to someone with anorexia as a survival focus, indicating over-valuation. The idea of stopping eating as creating simplicity holds cultural appeal and can seem seductive despite painful realities. Self-starvation is not a romanticized gentle demise; it commonly involves tissue wasting, oedema, and digestive problems, with historical famine testimony contradicting idealized images. Personal experiences can include romanticized imagery of wasting away, even while learning about starvation. Other food-deprived animals show behaviors consistent with increased valuation of food.

Read at Psychology Today