I’ve been assuming all along that a) I do not now have, nor have I ever had an eating disorder, and b) that I *must* eat too much, because I’m so fat (though this hasn’t generally resulted in any dieting – sometimes in little spurts of determination to only ‘eat healthy’, but mostly in protestations that I’m in grad school and can’t afford to be hungry all the time *right now*, so it’ll have to wait, y’know?).

But that’s just it: I don’t get hungry. Sometimes I get interested in something (not necessarily something productive) and don’t eat at all for a day or more. When it happens, I usually don’t remember to eat until I’m either suddenly presented with food or have gone without so long that my stomach is rolling. I’m not depriving myself deliberately (though going without food so long has been known to make me feel secretly powerful) or even trying to lose weight, I just don’t get hungry. That’s not good, right?

I’m not trying to suggest that my situation equates to the very serious plight of someone with a life-threatening, diagnostic eating disorder. But I am realizing that this thing about myself I’ve been treating as a mere quirk might actually be a real problem. With some embarrassment, I will admit to having thought that my not getting hungry was my body trying to tell me, ‘Clearly you’ve already eaten enough for a lifetime, you cow!’

The last couple days, I’ve been keeping track of how much I’ve actually gotten around to eating, and if I’m doing the math right, it ends up being a lot less than you’re supposed to eat each day. I’m glad you pointed out that replacing one disordered mode of eating with another isn’t the way, because my anxiety about this was steering me in the wrong direction. I’m definitely gonna check out Good With Cheese.

Good With Cheese, your comment reminded me of a friend Sweet Machine and I had in college, who was a really good smoker. She knew all the tricks, and she had this amazingly beautiful sculptured face so she looked great doing it. I was 50% more impressed with her, when she quit, than I was with any of my friends who were only middling smokers. It takes a lot to give up something you’re great at.

I was an awesome dieter because I flat-out wasn’t good at (or didn’t perceive myself as good at) anything else in my life.

goodwithcheese, your comment just made a light bulb go off over my head. I think one of the main reasons that I narrowly escaped ED/dieting hell as a younger woman is that I wasn’t good at it and I’ve always been an annoying striver. ;-) I don’t know if it’s because my blood sugar tends to be touchy or because I grew up with brothers or what, but I was really bad at restricting food. Obviously, I was bad at being a thin person, too, but not quite *as* bad.

You’d think after 28 years I’d already know this kind of thing, but I guess not. Thanks for leading me to it.

I would add one bullet point to your good list: Learn to feed yourself joyfully and competently. (I didn’t make this up; this is Ellyn Satter’s premise.) That includes eating when you’re hungry, not eating when you’re not. Learning to recognize cues of hunger and satiety. Learning to trust yourself–that you won’t allow yourself to go hungry. That there will always be enough.

And starving babies. That tends to be harmful.

But we wouldn’t want them to be OMG FAT.