The place of culture and humanity in ED treatment

When my mom placed a bowl of daal (lentils) and rice in front of me, I stared at it not sure of whether I was ready to eat it. That's because, during the three months I was in recovery, I saw nothing like this bowl of daal and rice. 

As an Indian, I grew up solely eating Indian food in my house. My parents were averse to any other cuisine, and even when we went out to eat, we always had the same food we ate at home (An occurrence I've heard many Asians relate too). As Muslims, we also strictly adhered to Halal requirements in Islam, so we only ate at restaurants that could prove they fit all of Islam's standards of meat preparation. 

After my struggles with an eating disorder were discovered by my parents, I was sent to a treatment center for residential treatment. At this center, there were fourteen food options that were repeated in a two-week cycle. Besides the occasional falafels we received once in two weeks, none of the food was Asian, and it was definitely not South Asian. Most of the food was Mexican since I lived in Texas, but it was cooked in the treatment center by people that were not Mexican, leading those foods to be seasoned with only salt and pepper—a flavorlessness I had thankfully not grown up with. Since I had not been exposed to much of the food there as well as their lack of seasoning, I wasn't able to get used to it, and I didn't like anything. 

On top of this, I had to go vegetarian during treatment. Since none of the meat was Halal, I couldn't eat any of it. Boiled soy chicken, peanut butter, beans, cheese, and the chickpeas in the once a week falafels were my protein options. I had to often have larger portions than everyone else for my beans or cheese to match the protein in the meat everyone else was having. It made recovery so much more difficult than it needed to be. 

And it wasn't like the treatment center didn't have access to South Asian foods or Halal foods. We were in Houston, a place where Halal Indian restaurants were on every street corner. The treatment center ordered things from restaurants occasionally, but even when I requested for them to order from an Indian restaurant I knew was close, I was turned down. 

It was almost like torture. I wanted to recover. Having an eating disorder wasn't fun. But I already struggled to eat, and now I had to eat foods foreign to me that didn't taste good and have larger portions than everyone else. And when I didn't finish something and explained that it was because it tasted so bad I couldn't eat it—that it had nothing to do with my eating disorder--I was scolded for giving in to my ED voice. How could I make them understand that I wasn't trying to restrict, but that I was simply a human who wanted to be able to enjoy their food? 

When I got out of recovery, I wasn't able to figure out how to eat the Indian food cooked at home. It had oil floating on top—could I eat that? At the treatment center, our fat was always given to us separately as butter, with the food itself always cooked in minimal fat. Indian curries weren't like that. I knew how much protein I needed to eat when it came to beans and cheese, but what about the beef my mom had cooked for us? When you come out of recovery, you don't just begin eating intuitively. You still follow a meal plan and portion out your food to make sure you're eating enough. But I just never knew how to portion this food I had never seen anything remotely close to at the treatment center.    

The goal of eating in recovery shouldn't be simply to nourish us. It should prepare us for the future.  While I may have been nourished during recovery, I wasn't exposed to the foods that I would actually eat outside of recovery. Along with preparing us for the future, our doctors, and therapists, and dietitians in treatment should listen to us with an open mind. Not everything is coming from the place of an eating disorder. Even now, the thought of my experiences at recovery makes my heart beat fast, and the guilt of being told I'm just making excuses for my eating disorder when I expressed my food preferences overtakes me again. Just because we struggle with this illness, doesn't mean our humanity is gone.