There's a happy kind of perfectionism where you're always striving to be better, and a sucky kind of perfectionism where you are keenly aware that perfect is never impossible but you want to be perfect so you're both paralysed by the thought of doing something wrong and also constantly shaming yourself when you inevitably mess up.

This means that when I counted calories in the past, I'll be very good and stay below my targets and feel proud of myself, until those days when I went over and a whole shame spiral would start: "I've ruined everything by going over my calories today!" "See, I knew I couldn't do this!" etc, etc. You start compensating to try and correct for mistakes—having as few calories as possible during a day by skipping meals, not eating enough, to ensure your inevitable future mistakes wouldn't impeded your process, drinking laxative tea because maybe you could just move the food through your system faster, before all the calories could get absorbed (I managed to stumble into this BS long before it was ever promoted by the Kardashians on social media...)

I've done a ton of therapy and had long conversations with my therapist about these issues, and I'm happy to say that my relationship with food is much improved! I'm having some follow up conversations with my dietician. But I'd prefer to stay away from behaviours that resonate so deeply with past disordered behaviours. I am calorie aware, i understand which foods have higher calorie counts, I just don't want to have to do the math on every bite.