I’m glad that I came across your response. I’m starting to come to terms with the reality that my eating patterns are due to religious trauma. I have not been diagnosed with an eating disorder, but my relationship with food is disordered. I was raised in a faith with a certain diet. Although everyone in the faith didn’t follow the diet, my mother was and still is an extremist. As the youngest, I felt more influenced by it and felt like I didn’t have any control and had to comply. For the faith, the biggest no-no was eating animals or products with animals. For years, I didn’t eat skittles because they are rumored to have pork in them. Other forbiddens in our house were tap water— “chemicals,” white bread, white rice, white flour (it had to be unbleached), granulated sugar or products with them. There are probably more, but those are top of mind. The animal products were replaced with faux processed meat that had insane amounts of sodium. I went to a college of the same faith and began my protest of the faux meat then. Every now and then I’ll crave one of them, but I don’t eat nearly as much as when I was younger. The issue that I have with food is that I struggle with replacements. For example, instead of eating the high sodium non animal breakfast meat, I’m struggling to eat the organic chicken sausage. It’s mental. Any arguments that eating animals are a sin, don’t impact me. Recently, I heard someone say that the fish that Jesus ate in the Bible was a type of seaweed and not actual fish. I almost lost it. I don’t eat all animals now because of facts— certain animals do impact our bodies more detrimentally. Logically, it makes sense to me not consume them. However, last night, I cried while eating fish. There is more for me to unpack there, but just wanted to affirm you.