(Just a fun little post.)
Like most eating disordered people, I have always had unique eating behaviors since childhood. They are not necessarily a problem by themselves, but perhaps can provide a link somewhere between food and obsession.
I, like Marya, eat my Skittles in order of color. This got me thinking. What other odd habits do I have?
To eat a KitKat, I separate each piece, then chew off the chocolate coating - sides first, then tips, then bottom and top. Then I separate each wafer and eat one at a time. (If occurs to me now that I can no longer eat KitKats at all - no more wheat.)
Since I was eating solid foods, I've always hated when my foods "touched" on my plate. I would leave a line of mashed potatoes and peas mixed together, where I'd eaten the "pure" parts on either side. I wouldn't touch casseroles. Nowadays I've learned to like some of these strange "mixed" foods, but only if they're supposed to be mixed - no gross potatoes and peas.
Every child has foods they hate. Most decry Brussels sprouts or broccoli, live and onions, mushrooms, typical things. I love all those. However, to this day I will not eat many standard "kid foods": canned tuna, peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, Kraft macaroni and cheese, apple sauce, mayonnaise. Barf.
Finding a suitable lunch for me was a daunting task for my mother. I hated bread that had been sitting in a lunch box. What I remember now is saltines with peanut butter and plain carrot and celery sticks (and the camp councilor harassing me about it).
Hm. Odd. I just noticed that my lunches are frequently gluten-free crackers with peanut butter and plain carrot and celery sticks. Some habits die hard.
Here's one I know I got from my mother: you must lick around an ice cream cone in circles, only eating the meting top layer, lest you be dripped on, which would just be terrible.
One could possibly make the argument for counting the fact that I feel "wrong" if I'm using the incorrect utensil to eat something. This is really an issue when it comes to Asian cuisine, which I simply cannot eat with just a fork. Chopsticks, please.
Probably the most pervasive habit I have (and perhaps the oddest) is that I need "balance" when I take a bite of something. Sometimes it's a fight to get the right amounts of things as they enter my mouth. For example, let's say I eat a BLT. In each bite I need bread, butter, bacon, tomato, and I need them in equal amounts. If there was too much bread and not enough tomato, it wasn't a good bite, and I'll have to try again. God help me if I take a bite with no bacon in it!
What are your odd eating habits?
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
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AGE: 28 
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I always eat colored candies in order of color too, and all my friends laugh at me for it. I like too dissect Swiss Rolls (Peel the top layer of chocolate off, then unroll it and lick out the cream, then eat the chocolate cake part) except i can't eat them anymore at all. I agree with the ice cream thing too. Haha. I guess it's just what all mom's teach their kids. And i totally agree about finding the perfect bite. I actually eye up my food to find the perfect bites and leave the rest. Lol. I guess we're all a little crazy here, but it's good to know i've got company.
OMG! I do so many of those things too! Hahaha! I have a routine for every kind of food I eat which usually involves lots of dissection and perfectly cut up and arranged pieces. And I don't feel comfortable eating around many people because of it.
Thanks for sharing, it actually made me feel a lot less alone.
Stay strong <3
Ana's Girl: Swiss Rolls! I forgot all about those! I ate them the same way. (And I can't eat them now, either. Damn.)
Dot: It's nice to know one isn't along in these things. From what I've read, it's pretty common among anoretics and others with eating disorders. Marya in Wasted talks about disecting food into specifc sections and counting specific numbers of bites. I figure we all do these things.
Lets see... eating M&Ms by color (brown, red, orange, green, blue). Like you and Ana's Girl, I dissected Swiss rolls and Kit Kats - actually I ate Kit Kats in the precise order you listed!
As a kid i could only eat healthy foods (as a self imposed rule). So, sometimes I would convince myself junk food was "Healthy", and could therefore be eaten.
Certain numbers of chews on my left, right, and front teeth. Everything had to be even.
And..an absolute compulsion to clear my plate - even tho my mother never told me to.
i can't eat a cookie, muffin or rice krispie square without breaking them into millions of pieces. that's a pretty common Ana thing, but i don't do it with everything, just sweet carb treats. i actually can't bring a whole cookie/muffin/rice krispie treat up to my face, it has to be in fragments before it passes my lips.
and like you, i need symmetry, balance and order. if i'm eating salad, i will eat a tomato, then a broccoli, then a mushroom, then a tomato, then a broccoli, then a mushroom... and so on.
i'm sure there are tons more examples that i can't think of right now.
i love your blog. i can't believe i've only just discovered it. thanks to Ana's Girl for linking me to you :)
Oh My Gawd, you just sparked all kinds of food eating memories from soooooooo long ago! Since I was a child not only was I the pickiest eater ever (no veggies--or anything green for that matter!) but I would be very OCD with the food i would eat. When I would eat sandwiches, hamburgers, pizza, burritos I would always (still do a lot of times) take bites so that it's straight across, like somebody cut it as opposed to a bunch of crescent bites. Eating by colors-check. Eating a rice krispy treat one puffed rice at a time--guilty....
...the list goes on. And this behavior goes back as far as I can remember to present day (accept I love, love, love ALL veggies-espesh the green ones-and eat healthy and am a vegetarian)
I like your blog :) I'm sad I didn't find it sooner!!
Oh wow no i think about it, i do the same thing!
for my banana and yoghurt for breakfast, i always have to cut the banana slices in half and have a little half with a bit of yoghurt. i can't bear to eat a whole slice or i feel greedy.
and i have to eat it over a certain time period (no shorter than 10-15 minutes)
and yea i have to have a bit of every flavour on my fork (in salads) and i also have to eat chinese with a chopstick. yea i also could never eat bread as a child, and mum used to make me a salad in my lunchbox and one day i asked her to stop cos kids were bullying me for it.
they're all such established but unrecognised things that i never even realised before.
i really like this blog, its actually quite rational and everyone is so nice!
I do all kinds of stuff like that. But I wouldn't say that I had a problem with food because of that. I would say I had a problem with food because I'm underweight. If I was 150lbs like you I would say I'm overweight and need to try harder. Sorry, but you are over thinking behavior that really isn't a big deal and calling it an eating disorder.
I do that kit kat thing too!
Only, I eat the tips, then the sides, then the top and bottom, and lastly, I separate each individual wafer.
I also have this carrot thing.
I bite down on it and eat around the "rod" in the center.
- Stef
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