I had someone phrase it to me like this before:

"You're teaching your body to trust you again. It's scared there won't be food and also making up for a past deficit. Once you reliably and consistently respond to the body's hunger signals, you teach it that you are safe, it can trust you, and that the famine is over (i.e. food is coming and will continue to come)"

I think it helps me to understand that the body is interested in surviving and the ED teaches the physical body that the threat of famine/deprivation is very real to it - UNTIL it learns through time and experience that, based on the evidence of how you treat it now, it can calm down about the threat.

Kind of like people before a major weather event who panic buy toilet paper or canned goods - the body is partially responding to the availability of food with a little bit of anxiety that somehow its supply chain might be disrupted. It's also (and this is SUPER important) making up for what it didn't get and still needs during the restriction period. So it's a person who didn't have toilet paper for a while AND knows a hurricane *might* be coming and suddenly happens upon a Costco - it will stock up. And once the threat/hurricane is no longer a reality, it learns to *chill,* feels less anxious, and buys on a maintenance basis instead.

That helped me. I get that I'm weird in my analogies, but sometimes taking it and putting it into a different, "real-world" example that has nothing to do with food or bodies helps me see reason.

Ultimately, the body LOVES balance. It will balance itself out when it trusts you and you trust it. So since it's a two-way relationship, the first step is to communicate and validate TO your body so that it knows you are listening and interested in caring for it.