I cooked with my husband last night, various curry dishes. This in itself for me was a milestone, I have always felt the need to completely take control in the kitchen. This was largely so my eating disorder could make shortcuts or calculate everything that was going in. It normally caused me great anxiety to deviate away from my “known” and safe meal choices. This I know is very disordered. But sometimes behaviours and thoughts are trickier to identify and hide from sight.

Once we plated the dishes we had prepared my husband just mixed all his together. Partly because it was completely underwhelming in terms of taste (which in itself would have been devastating to me not so long ago). What I mean by this, if I had allowed myself to eat and then it did not meet the standards or expectations I had for it, I would truly feel irrationally gutted.

This is disordered. I mostly felt like this when I was deep in restriction and giving myself permission to eat was near impossible. I celebrated last night that this bland food that promised more gave me no more than a mild irritation that it took so long to be boring! But there was no emotional attachment or reaction.

However the biggest thing I recognised for myself, when he mixed everything together, you could pretty much say it blew my mind. When I considered doing it, the ED voice really kicked in. And I realised the reason why it has been hard for me to do this. Eating each food item separately, especially when severely restricting gives a false sense of prolonging eating, savouring the food.

It gives a sense of enjoyment of each food, feeling more fulfilled. Which I see now is really disordered. And so, I forced myself to mix my food together. This was probably the first time I have done this in nearly two decades. It felt wrong. But enlightening.

It told me, that there are small things, that often go unnoticed and don’t get discussed in ED recovery. Things we can identify ourselves. I feel now once I notice something is disordered I have to do the opposite. Even if it’s a tiny behaviour or “quirk” that to the outside wouldn’t seem like anything. For my ED recovery it’s the difference of staying in the ED vs eventually being out, free.

I can’t tell you what your own weird tiny disordered things will be, but once you do notice something that, either going against, or stopping causes you anxiety then it’s probably disordered and you can work to change it.