Life took over recently and so I have not had a moment to write a post but now that I am forced to isolate as I have Covid I have some more time on my hands….
The trait of food perfectionism is a common one among anorexics. When you consume barely any food it naturally ensues that one would become obsessed with making the few meals perfect. I always want food to taste unbelievably scrumptious, have the time to savour each mouthful and know that it is worth it. However, my food perfectionism has not been limited to myself. I would and sometimes still do project it onto whoever I cook or bake for. I need it to taste and look amazing and during the extreme days of my ED I was in desperate need of compliments from the recipients. As I couldn’t let myself have it, I needed to know others were eating it and enjoying it instead. I used to get unnecessarily sad if my food fussy sister did not enjoy it as I felt it was a waste.
Food perfectionism is one of my biggest problems that I have not been able to get rid of and I hold it with me through every meal. When starting my meal plan in recovery I would only cook these very elaborate, or new and interesting recipes for dinner as I wanted meals to be worth every bite. I made all my baked goods for my afternoon snack so I knew what was going in them and so I was tasting exactly what I wanted to eat. I would have to melt the mozzarella in my bagel at lunch to make it better. All these things and more would fill my days. I would literally set aside an hour and a half or more to cook my food. My dietician set me as a challenge one week to strip away all the complications from food and go really, really simple. I mean plain ham sandwiches, one type of cereal in my bowl and beans on toast. It worked for a bit but as life took over I forgot to keep challenging it and so it has stuck with me.
I have always been a foodie but I was never such an extreme perfectionist. Well, now that I have lost all the nuances of my taste due to Covid there is no longer a need for this extreme perfectionism. I thought my dinner last night tasted bland and began to mentally berate myself for wasting a meal and then I had to challenge my ED voice as actually I hadn’t been able to taste things properly all day! Maybe it’s a good thing I can’t taste properly now as I can take the time to challenge the perfectionist voice.
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