I struggled with restrictive eating and thoughts around that(I won't go into full details, but, lots of self-shame, anxiety around weight, etc.) for years before finally some time around a year ago starting what ended up turning into more or less a year of disordered and restrictive eating. I'm in hindsight very thankful that I had people in my life who would encourage me to eat more when I was making myself sick with hunger to "compensate" or otherwise acted as mitigating factors between myself and, well, myself.
I've recently made a commitment to myself to try to get better and to eat more in tune with hunger and what my body actually needs, rather than what I feel like it "should" need. After a couple weeks of eating more, though, I started getting a bit hungrier which I mostly shrugged off and tried to ignore before having a day where I ate what felt like a lot by my standards. Thinking about food a lot, looking at a LOT of recipes, buying a lot of ingredients, etc. The past couple days since that have been really awful, with a constant burning acid-y hunger and bile feeling in my stomach and throat and just insane hunger, where the stomach physically hurts. Even finishing breakfast and despite being full immediately wanting to eat more. I honored it a tiny bit but when I found it not going away I admittedly just started to ignore it and got used to the hunger pain.
Googling this I found this sub, and people talking about somewhat similar experiences! Which was comforting, but I keep telling myself things like it can't possibly apply to me, mine wasn't "bad enough", impostor syndrome around my diagnosis and whether its legitimate enough, etc.
Kind of rambling, but I guess im just looking to better understand what extreme hunger even is and feels like and if this is that and "legitimate".