Feeling like a "failed anorexic"

Recovery from anorexia comes with a deep sense of shame, because it feels somehow like a failure. Caroline Knapp has referred to this as “the post-anorexic riddle of identity, a sense of wild shapelessness.”

Aimee Lui writes accurately that;
“Eating disorders sabotage identity… You’ve failed to reduce yourself to a perfect object…

“For years you’ll move along just fine, gaining weight, gaining confidence, gaining all the trappings of a thriving life, and then, unexpectedly, a shadow of your past will resurface in the face of a long-lost friend or a moment on revived anxiety, and your bright new self will cringe, yearning for that old mask of perfection.”

Sheila Reindl has valuable insight into this area as well:
“We all have to integrate the light with the dark… the noble and ignoble aspects of ourselves. That’s a normal developmental task. It’s just harder for people with eating disorders.”

Source: Lui, Aimee. Gaining: The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders.

Eating your feelings

"There is not enough fried chicken on the planet to soothe a broken woman."

"I would eat so I didn't have to talk, drink so I didn't have to feel, smoke so I didn't have to be close to another soul."

"Nothing is better for numbing your soul than the sheer, unbridled love of the carbohydrate."

"You can eat your life into submission, or drink it down with so many bottles of wine, or smoke it away on a patio. You can look for love and respect in the eyes of another, and it still will not fill you up. This I have finally learned. Nothing will ever make you whole except you."

- Laurie Perry, Drunk, Divorced and Covered in Cat Hair