Appalling I know, but sometimes I’m glad I have an eating disorder

I’M GOING abroad for the next fortnight, mainly to avoid seeing myself on TV. I’ve just made an embarrassing, unedifying programme entitled Me And My Eating Disorder. In it, I talk frankly about the fact I’ve starved myself since the age of 11, and continue to starve myself at the grand old age of 58.

I tell the camera that I always know what I ate yesterday, what I will eat today (half an avocado, four Cox’s apples, perhaps a celebratory five almonds; yes, I do count them), and what I will eat tomorrow.

How my life has been one of bartering, and elaborate deals: if I can have a peanut butter sandwich today, I promise I will make up for it tomorrow by jogging/ performing sit-ups / starving.

The programme doesn’t make for easy viewing, particularly as I will be rubbing up, like a crumble topping, against the myriad cookery shows currently on TV. I love Bake Off, Nigella, Jamie et al, but I would never bake my own cake, let alone eat it; I don’t know how Nigella allows herself to be filmed cramming so much in that lovely mouth when I only really feel comfortable eating in private.

I merely watch, open-mouthed, stomach empty and growling, as bags of sugar are upended into bowls, butter softened, parchment paper peeled off soggy bottoms. Every time Mary Berry licks her fingers, and says a big plateful of sugar and fat is just ‘perfect for friends and family’, I realise the world inhabited by ‘normal’ people, ie those who consume more than my eight calories a day, and use an oven for anything other than storing cashmere (I’ve a fear of moths), is closed to me.

I’ve never had a BMI high enough to ovulate, let alone get pregnant. I don’t have any friends because most people can only imagine meeting up to masticate; suggest a gallery and they always say: ‘Hmm, err, shall we eat first?’

My addiction to not eating is therefore harder to cure than any other.

While drug addicts can avoid heroin, these days there is simply no escaping food.

Every high street is brimming with cafes, restaurants, stalls, pop-ups, Prets, Costas and, now, Leons. There is no nanosecond of human life that is not accompanied by chomping and swallowing. The other day I sat in my car at a motorway service station and watched families, salesmen, lorry drivers return to their vehicles, laden with cardboard vats and buckets and bags: not one person was not still chewing on the hoof.

Yes, I realise that for the past 18 years I have championed the bigger woman, railing against a fashion industry that dictates we should all be no bigger than a size 10, and I have argued fairly coherently against the Government’s obsession with fighting obesity, but the truth is that deep down I find all this consumption obscene: I will sit opposite my boyfriend in a restaurant, see spinach on his tongue, in his teeth, and want to retch.

I particularly hate eating out in the sort of overpriced, Michelinstarred, up-their-own-bottoms establishments that, when you complain – as I did not long ago, that out of four vegetarian options, three contained wild mushrooms – you are told you are ‘no longer welcome’ in that establishment.

(I’m a restaurant’s worst nightmare because, being anorexic, every calorie counts, and so you’d jolly well better ensure that, if I put it in my mouth, it’s worth it.)

Fancy restaurants aren’t staffed by fawning waiters, but instead are manned by dictatorial maitre d’s who stare at their computer screen when you arrive, saying: ‘Have you booked? What’s your name again? Oh, yes, here you are. I will need the table back by 10pm.’

These people are Gestapo officers, and God forbid you ever demur, or chew slowly, or request a rest between courses, or leave anything on your plate without an accusing ‘Was anything wrong?’

I’m quite glad I’m out of it, all this shopping and pushing heaving trolleys and competitive baking and cooing over a butterfly cake and washing up and sitting across a tablecloth from a monosyllabic nightmare, worrying about the enormous bill and whether to tip the waiter.

THE same waiter, incidentally, who has just said to my boyfriend, and I quote exactly: ‘She’s been ignoring me all evening.’ She! She! I’ve just paid your bloody wages! It’s so much simpler if you just don’t do food.

Lonely, yes, and probably dangerous and life-shortening. But the overriding feeling I wake up with every day is one of superiority. I’m not creating landfill. I’m not destroying rainforests so beef can be fattened on soya.

At least I’m not eating more than my fair share of the world’s calories.

Me And My Eating Disorder is on Channel 5 on October 27 at 10pm.