I guess I should share why I was angry about hummus.

If you are struggling with an eating disorder, this post contains some discussion of calories and food quantities. I’ve tried to keep the content as ‘safe’ as possible, but of course, safety is personal and relative. If you think this might be triggering for you, please, please put your mental wellbeing first when deciding whether or not to keep reading.

On Saturday morning, I bought a tub of hummus. This is something that I have not done in quite a few months. I’d been avoiding anything too calorie dense for the arbitrarily defined boundaries that anorexia had set. Anorexia, or as I call her, the woman upstairs, had sadly decided that hummus – in the quantities that one is able to purchase – was against the rules. The spend-thrift in me was also not prepared to pay for a whole tub, use only a teaspoon, and end up throwing the rest away. 

However, during a particular moment of bravery, on this particular Saturday I committed myself to buying, and consuming, a whole 200g tub of hummus. 

I chose the one with the longest sell-by date, and decided to take my chances. Fired up, I took the hummus and the rest of my shopping home and spent the next hour or so planning how and when I was going to consume every inch of it. To be honest, most of my time at the moment is spent planning how and when I am going to consume things. 

I made a dent in it on Saturday evening. Another dent on Sunday lunchtime. Multiple dents on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Today, it is Thursday, and I’m feeling angry about that bloody tub of hummus that’s still sat in the fridge. 

I’m angry because I love hummus and if it weren’t for the woman upstairs making SO much noise, I would’ve finished that tub on Sunday. 

But I’m also angry because I just wish hummus was less calorie-dense so that I didn’t have to be so worried about how much of it I’m eating in one sitting. 

I’m ALSO angry because I hate wasting food, yet I’ve been eating small amounts of hummus in various forms multiple times a day for four days now and I’m so over it. 

I’m angry that they don’t sell hummus in smaller pots or create some technology that stops it drying out after it’s been opened for a while. 

I’m angry that my clinician was really pleased with me yesterday for introducing some more ‘scary’ foods like hummus into my diet,  which means I’ll probably have to go through this stupid rigmarole all over again next week. 

But most of all, I’m angry that this stupid pot of hummus has taken up so many hours and days of my mental energy…thinking, calculating, worrying, recalculating, guilt-tripping, justifying… 

I’m angry that this pot of hummus was significant enough to create an entire blog about it. 

It’s Thursday afternoon. I have finally successfully made it through the hummus. 

No applause necessary; it was nothing. 

Welcome to the complicated and dissonant mind of someone living under the wicked spell of anorexia. This is going to be interesting.