when my mom asks me how my midterms are going

This sounds very odd to people who haven’t been malnourished, maybe even to those who have, but scientifically speaking, your body will actually override your brain and make you eat. You suddenly find yourself hanging up the phone after having ordered a pizza, with no way to hide either pizza or the hunger it implies. You lock yourself in your bedroom and eat it and puke. Or, you find yourself alone in the cafeteria, filling plate after plate, and you’re so bloody hungry that the smell of the food, the existence of all-you-can-eat buffets, the garish light and the laughter and hundreds of mouths opening wide and taking in food, take over and you eat and eat and eat and run to the bathroom and puke. Or, one day to find yourself walking along, and you impulsively stop in a restaurant, order an enormous dinner, and puke in the woods.

Maybe the issue is that your body remembers a time when you did eat normally. When you were hungry, you stopped at a restaurant and ate. There is a kind of buzzing that goes on in your brain, and you miraculously forget, at least long enough to eat, that you are studiously trying to be a good anoretic. Midway through the food you remember, but then it’s too late and you’re still fucking hungry and you’re hungry even after the food’s all gone, but then you feel so unbelievably guilty and hideous that you have to, you have to throw up, and so you do and everything feels better.