Palatability: Isn't It a Matter of Taste?

Can somebody tell me who defines what is palatable and why so-called highly palatable foods have to contain a ton of fat and/or some sort of refined sugar? Surely, there are some non-ED people who don't find high-calorie foods that taste good to a lot of people and make a lot of people feel good, particularly tasty.
So elucidate me: Why is a peach less yummy than a piece of cheesecake, or a bell pepper not as mouth-watering as a burger? I know peaches are dripping with fructose and fructose is sugar, but I'm talking about these fast foods that folks claim are soooo much more delectable because they're fashioned from corn syrup, "the bad kind of fat" and possibly candy-laced heroin butter.
Now, don't get me wrong: I love food, even though I don't necessarily want to eat it. I even love me some snack foods. But try this: Go off of Doritos for a while, presuming you eat them, pick up carrot chips made from corn kernels, carrot juice, carrots, and whole wheat (unless you're celiac or believe in Frankenwheat, which no thanks to Dr. Oz I do), some sesame honey or spicy almonds from TJ's, several kinds of those black bean or lentil chips they sell at Whole Paycheck, and some Snapea or similar crisps. Munch on for a few months when the mood strikes, and then go back to the Doritos. Maybe it's me, but tastes are shaped by eating, and those foods with fewer ingredients and closer to the state in which they emerged from the tree, the ground, or wherever, beat the ones with a novella-length ingredient list every time. So yes: When I sampled the old tortilla chips after a few years of cool ranch hiatus, they just...didn't taste very good.
Offer me a bowl of cherries or a twinkie and hoho plate and I'll take the cherries, tyvm -- and that's not about the calories, it's about palatability.

Feminist Values, FA / HaES Activism and Anorexia

Yes, you can be a feminist and have a disease that alters your body by lessening its weight.
Yes, you can be a fat activist while thin -- as an ally who acknowledges your own privilege.
No, being a model/actor with AN doesn't mean that being a model/actor caused your AN.
But that's me.

Am I an AN sufferer who is a FA / HaES activist? I don't know.
I routinely publish pictures, statuses and events on the web to discourage the support of the diet industry and the use of fat talk.
But... I believe that certain medical consequences can come with a weight that is really low or really high. I also believe that just because you have diabetes or heart disease, have had a stroke, etc. ad nauseum, that it is not necessarily a result of that weight.  

Trivia: Weight loss does not lower heart disease risk from type 2 diabetes. 

I don't know if Set Point is more than a theory, but if it is, maybe eating nutrient-dense foods intuitively (not intuitively for an anorectic, of course, since we often don't care if we're hungry and rarely want to feel full) and regularly moving/exercising for enjoyment will show us our true healthy weight after a year or so. I like the weight-neutral approach to health embraced by the FA/SA/HaES communities. If weight sheds or accumulates as a result of consistent healthful living, so be it!

How this relates to recovery is another blog.

Why I Prefer the Fatosphere...

and hanging out with people in recovery:

They get it so much more than those who never learned why it's bad to "fat talk." They know that it's not OK to say certain things simply because they're only referring to themselves, anyway. I won't censor anyone, but I might go ballistic. Wouldn't be the first time I alienated someone and scared myself in the process. 
I asked my IP doc how to diplomatically deal with the triggering comments. He said I have to learn to get angry. I thought I'd already done that. 
My recovery is not strong, and reluctant or half-assed recovery is not recovery, but that doesn't mean it feels good to be enabled (even when I enable myself), that you can ask me for tips (even though I, myself, may seek them out online), that you can expect me to not get indignant when you imply that certain foods are immoral by virtue of calling others "guilt-free" (even though I buy the "guilt-free" versions if I buy the items at all).
People in recovery have done every fatphobic thing a non-ED person has, and to some degree likely still do them -- attaching value to weights and other numbers, dieting out of fear, talking to themselves like they wouldn't dare address even an enemy on the other side of the world from behind a computer screen encased in plexiglass -- but they've done the work, are doing the work, and have come further than most could ever hope to in a life less examined.

I'm afraid to weigh myself today.

I can see every pound I've gained or lost. I really can! I know we don't see ourselves properly but somehow I notice these trivial shifts that most doctors and personal trainers couldn't discern.
It's in the waist-to-hip ratio, it's in the width of the hips. And I'm always right, which is why I don't want to get on any of the three scales I have lined up.
I think I've gained. Plus, I haven't gone to the bathroom enough to get an accurate reading and have already swallowed the supplements I take an hour or so before eating breakfast (for all the wrong reasons), and those add a couple ounces.
This is turning into one of those boring ED blogs with the same old details pertaining to numbers neuroses and shit about shitting. Ho hum, sorry. I figure if my book is going to happen, journaling is the best way to move forward.
Speaking of personal trainers, one came over yesterday. Finally hired a guy to help me tone. I still have some sagging skin, and muscle would help fill it out, although I don't know how I'll deal with the numbers climbing as that muscle builds. Will probably compensate with more restriction, even though the increased activity will make me hungry. Who cares that my body will need more food when ED is a numbers game? Anyway, Marvin stayed 40 minutes, charged $40, and I was able to do all the exercises, even with my fibro or whatever it is I have. No Lyrica or other pain med, just an energy shot for stamina.
First thing he did after shaking my hand was stick a meal plan in it. It looked generic and printed from the net but he says he follows it, or some variation thereof. I told him I'd take it to Sara, the nutritional counselor I'm seeing on the 31st -- first dietician or nutritionist I'll have seen of my own accord. She's anti-standard food pyramid, like I am, is into nutrient-dense foods and is willing to work with my veg diet, which she doesn't view as a symptom of ED.
All day today I thought I was full from yesterday's food, in particular all the Skinny Pop, and then around lunchtime 1 pm I realized it was the muscles I had worked that were aching.

Sleep in Heavenly... Doy

I wrestle with insomnia. My anxiety/OCD keep me awake.
I bargain with insomnia. Starvation doesn't help. It makes me electric and I will usually eat rather than feel that way these days (these nights, rather).
I haven't used activated charcoal in a couple months. It had those effects and I'd get up dehydrated with a headache. I'd awaken at intervals with my head nodding, a staccato that I intuited as electrolyte imbalance. Then again, the indication is one or two capsules at a time, not sixteen
But I am using Garcinia and Raspberry Ketones. Thanks, Dr. Oz. My poop is orange and it's not much nicer a feeling. Do these things "work?" Yes, negligibly. Are they worth the money? Absofuckinglutely not, especially since my benefits got cut off, and they are certainly not worth the discomfort. But my anxiety disorder needs them. ED told me so. ED also said the anxiety that starvation causes is a sacrifice "we" have to make.
ED is a pud. And he should know that sleep aids in weight loss. Doy.

I'd Have Thought You'd Outgrown That.

I'm always flummoxed when I hear people refer to AN as a teenager's disease, maybe because mine is worse than ever now that I'm in my 40's.
Lots of MI's have onset at puberty. Would these same folks say, "I would have thought you'd outgrown that stuff by now" about bipolar (which I also have) or schizophrenia?
I'll leave that rhetorical, since you probably know the answer.
My Anorexia is Anorexia like "Manorexia" is Anorexia like "Pregorexia" is Anorexia like "Drunkorexia" is Anorexia like "Tanorexia," which is what the sillypress calls celebs-cum-Oompa-Loompa, is a joke.
We anorectics sound like a joke. I think I must look like one. I've been stared at. Jaws have dropped. People have conspired and giggled and said things they weren't raised to say. Except I was, and am, skinny, so that's OK. /sarcasm/ (Not that I don't understand who wields the privilege.)
While I now teeter on the line that divides what is sadly desirably thin and rightfully scarily skinny at 5'8 and 98-101 lbs., mere months ago I was just...scary.
Thin privilege had left the bare-bones building that was standing in for my body.

Why -ANA- When I Am a Million Things?

I am a complex willow of a woman. There are many things that I do, multiple interests, passions and illnesses I have. They are branches extending from the core I view as I.
I have chosen, today, to become a public blogger, and to devote my blog to this disease.
It wouldn't be the first time I "devoted myself to Ana."
I am not pro-ana, I am pro-support. We've heard it a million times in the anasphere. We don't believe it, except when we say it to those without the affliction, to defend our communities and convince ourselves them, that we don't want this.
It's complex. We don't want this. We want to hold on to this because we need to.
We defend our disease, cover its tracks, put its needs before our own, erase it with recovery gestures again and again.
Do I believe real recovery is possible at my age?
Yes. I believe I, we, can live in recovery or be recovered...and leave the old hag behind.

My Foray into the Anasphere

I enter a forest, it's stark enough to see limbs hugging cold birch trunks. It knows that some of the sturdier trees are in peril, too, and does not know what to do. Its population bears no one shape or color, cannot be sexed.
I am a feature of this forest, withered, knobby. Some say I'm a dying reed and others claim it's my kind that is going extinct -- not because the disease that gnaws our bark, sap and soul is obsolescent -- we are dwindling in numbers because it is killing us.
It. Kills. Us.

Adult Anorexia is Just Anorexia

I will be 45. In very few days. I left IP early enough last year that I can already start to contemplate the anniversary of my release. I can't see the forest yet.
I ache. My bones can't rest atop or against each other when I sleep without hurting. There's a different heaviness. My body is a burden upon itself.
I have held on to ten of the pounds I gained from an aggressive refeeding that lasted almost six weeks, and twelve pounds on a good day, which feels like a terrible day.
I was 5'8 and 88 lbs., psychotic and collapsing. My own pdoc and the one from IP treated me as if I walked that liminal line between life and death, probably because I did. State insurance paid because I also have bipolar, OCD, anxiety and PTSD.
AN is not enough, I guess. It's not serious. It's a lifestyle for the young and frivolous, a malady of the runway. The harm and death it brings on are made of paper and smoke, which is OK, I suppose, since I felt like I was made of those things. I spent five days in the medical ward before transferring to the acute IP. No one else would take me. I was a liability to everyone.