Culture and recovery

I don't know if this is because of growing up in MENA/culture but I don't think I was ever taught how to listen to my body's cues. Like when I'm hungry or full - I was always taught to finish the food on my plate no matter what, and maybe sometimes I had family members who were far too giving and filled my plate a little too much.. I couldn't choose what time to eat and we weren't organized with consistency in meals. I was never underfed though, even if we only had two meals a day which might sound weird to other cultures.

So when I had started to struggle with body image and developed anorexia, I went to the far other extreme. I won't get into detail for this.

Then when I had started recovering or ATTEMPTING to recover, I went to another far extreme. I ate too much. I didn't know when my body was full and I was convinced I shouldn't think or restrict myself whatsoever because part of healing (to me) was to just eat without overthinking. And then I started over-eating. And now I have binge-eating habits.

I have been recently sick with fungi and a stomach infection which means that I had to watch what I was eating to limit acid reflux, indigestion, etc and this brought me back to obsessing over the contents of my food. Now I'm back to another extreme and sometimes it feels like I'll never find the sensible middle-ground between both.

I thought I would stop struggling with food, and I now realize that struggling with food isn't just when you're focused on it. But because I didn't receive this foundational skill of understanding my body cues, I feel like I struggle more to fix my eating habits. I fear that even soon when I stop circling back to disordered behaviors I'll still always struggle with getting this right.

But for the most part, I'm really happy it isn't as much about my body as it was before. It's just subconscious bad habits but I'm not obsessing over my physique like before

Healing isn't linear anyway, I just wondered if growing up with this cultural teaching impacted my relationship with food.