I have been experiencing a lot of mental hunger recently and to be perfectly frank I am not sure how I should respond to it anymore. If I honour it I end up either overeating, feeling out of control or really ill as I tend to crave sugar heavy foods. If I resist it I end up feeling like I am letting the anorexia win and am taking steps back in recovery...
Mental hunger is when your mind or psyche craves the food rather than your physical body. I often find it makes me feel very impulsive and is incredibly overwhelming. In my case it comes on very strong after a few drinks, which is not very helpful as I deal with annoying calorie guilt after having alcohol as well, (I know I shouldn't but I do and I am working on it!). When I first went into treatment I started eating a lot of the foods that Kevin had forbade me to as part of my meal plan. Although it was a struggle, I had the support of my carers and slowly got more and more adventurous with my baked good afternoon snack. However, as I began to eat more and was able to think more independently away from the eating disorder the mental hunger began to kick in. I just wanted to eat chocolate, ice cream, cake, domino's pizza, pancakes and peanut butter and more for every meal. I refrained from doing it all in one go but rather built it up and tried following my cravings instead of my parents guidance or my ED. Honoring my mental hunger essential boiled down to the concept of permission. Whose permission did I trust? Was it reliable? How fast would eating the foods make me gain weight? Was the taste worth the guilt? All these questions would swim through my head and still do when I eat my fear foods.
When you are under weight in theory eating calorie dense and sweet foods should be a good thing. Yet people forget eating disorders are never about the food. Jarring as that may be, EDs are a byproduct of something else which has manifested into a disordered relationship with food. Hence why honoring that mental hunger is such a difficult thing for me to navigate. Those foods represent what I would eat when I was incredibly uncomfortable in my body, hated every aspect of it and was disgusted to be in my own skin. My current cravings are what I craved all the time when I was younger. Thus, satisfying that mental hunger in a way is satisfying my inner child, the girl who just wanted to eat what she wanted without external or internal judgement.
I am sure I will find my feet with it soon but I just wanted to shine a light on an integral part of recovery that people tend not to talk about. I believe the way to honor that hunger for me is in a controlled and safe way, avoid binges and instead taste the food, process what I just ate and then do it again, over and over until it is just a normal food that is natural to crave rather than foreign. However, finding the time and mental head space to do this has and will be a hurdle to overcome.