The Half Plate Rule
Misconceptions about Eating Disorders
A common misconception about anorexia is that anorexics never eat. They survive on sticks of sugar-free gum, cups of coffee and cans of Diet Coke. While you may never see your anorexic friend or loved one eat, I assure you that they probably do. A better statement might be, then, that anorexics never eat enough. The human body can only survive for so long with no nourishment at all, and so anorexia involves a delicate, dangerous balance. How little is too little? How much is enough?
Those are questions that occupy our thoughts, often obsessively. When I was younger, I had an array of rules that helped settle my anxiety over those questions. I knew how much I could eat of almost anything in front of me. I knew what felt safe and what didn’t, what I could eat in public and what was just for private, shameful snacking. What I didn’t know was how to answer whether I was hungry or full or why I was eating or not eating in the first place.
Just as people assume anorexics never eat, they also assume we are never hungry, either, or that we have this tremendous willpower that allows us to resist hunger for impossible lengths of time. The reality, however, is that eating disorders disrupt your sense of satiety. Because you go hungry for long periods of time, or because you stretch the limits of what “full”…
