It?s lunch time and I have a picky eater. She?s always been that way; the look she gave me upon her first taste of avocado was as full of resentment as the one she gives me now, at nearly five, when I encourage her to try a bowl of spiralized zucchini.
I open a container with leftover spaghetti from the night before, which she ate enthusiastically with butter and salt. She turns her nose.
How about ramen" Nope.
Grilled cheese" Pass.
We somehow agree on cheese taquitos, and this negotiating has me so worn down that I probably would have agreed to ice cream just to get her to eat something.
These battles to get her to eat remind me of my own. But unlike my daughter, I?m not a picky eater. I?m a food addict, and I avoid certain foods because I?ll binge myself to death, most likely dying an early death from diabetes-related complications and obesity. This is my eating disorder. Before I found recovery for my eating disorder, I was blasting through giant Costco packages of 100-calorie snack packs in two days. This was in addition to everything else I was eating: healthy meals, followed by holiday cookies and candy from the employee break room and snacks from the vending machine. I?d tuck the snack bags into my desk drawer at work to last couple weeks, but they?d disappear within hours, like the boundaries of my latest diet. I?d blindly reach for a little package of controlled substances and deliver them piece by piece to my mouth without pausing or processing what I w...