And so the weight just started falling off. I hadn’t even realized it because I had been wearing yoga pants a lot, but one day over the summer, I put on jeans, and they slipped off of my waist. And let me be honest here: I liked it. I liked being thin. I’d finally lost my baby weight, and more.While I had never had a great relationship with food, I’d also never fallen into disordered eating. But now I was starving myself. I read the back of every package at the grocery store to see if foods had sugar in them. I learned all the different types and names of sugar, and avoided all of them.Being afraid of food meant questioning every dietary choice I made, not only for me, but for my daughter. No hot dogs, only organic, almond butter, wheat rice… I was struggling but too embarrassed and afraid to ask for help. My family was already doing so much for my body. How could I ask them to take care of my brain, too?My sister actually put a stop to it. One day before a chemo session, my doctor asked how I was, and I told him I felt just fine. She interrupted and told him I was so thin because I was refusing to eat. He grabbed me by the shoulders, looking right into my eyes. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Eat. You need to eat. We didn’t do all this so you could shrink away on us. You need the strength that food gives you to withstand these procedures.”My husband started watching me more closely after that. “You have to eat,” everyone around me started telling me. And I wanted to, but I was paralyzed by an irrational fear. You are sick and trying to find a reason for it. If you blame food, at least there is a culprit. And an action plan. Maybe I just shouldn’t eat at all, I thought. My stomach hurt most of the time anyway.Somehow, I made it through the ordeal alive. I’m coming up on three years since my diagnosis, and the cancer is in remission. But food is still something I struggle with daily. Whenever someone posts an article about their new fad diet, I can’t help but read it, and the anxiety comes flooding back. Or if I eat regularly for a few days in a row, my brain thinks, “Wow, that was a lot of sugar, you better stop this.”Do I have an eating disorder? Probably. I feel like even though cancer didn’t break my body, it may have broken my brain. Being afraid of food isn’t healthy — for me or my daughter. In fact, she’s the one who’s really saving me from this. She’s started noticing my eating habits and keeps asking about them. “Oh, mommy, why aren’t you eating with us? Oh, mommy, you are just having that little bit?”She’s a healthy and happy girl, and I want her to stay that way. I would be devastated if I passed my food issues along to my daughter. For her, I fight to get out from under fear’s grip. I force myself to eat, and over time, it gets more and more normal.If any of this sounds like you, get help. I didn't realize I was in the grip of an eating disorder until I was lucky enough to be working my way out of it. I managed to persuade myself that not eating was a by-product of my physical diagnosis, and I was wrong. That's how insidious this can be. By the time I started reading about 'fear of food,’ I was in remission and already on my way to regaining my normal diet — even though it's a battle. But I’m confident I’m on the right path: Each day my cancer stays away is another day closer to eating healthy.For much more information about eating disorders, or if you think you need help, contact the National Eating Disorders Association.