Why Does The Protagonist In 'The Art Of Starving' Struggle With Eating?

One day, I was the fat, unwanted girl rejected by the Beta's son. The next minute, the Alpha's son himself showed up... and claimed me. I didn’t know why, why Osborne came for me when I was at my lowest. But I quickly learned something—he doesn’t just want my body. He wants all of me. He says I’m his mate. But the way he touches me, holds me, breathes me in… This isn’t just fate. It's an obsession, raw, wild, and consuming. And the craziest part? I think I want to be consumed.

“He looked at Chloe and saw nothing. She is the perfect camouflage. She is safe because she is... undesirable.” Lorenzo Moretti, the King of Sicily's underworld, trusts no one. A deep, unresolved betrayal has poisoned his heart, leaving him obsessed with control and viewing women as a liability. He met Chloe Rossi: a clumsy, unfiltered cook drowning in debt. She stumbles into his life and is hired for her invisibility. She is too messy, too chaotic, and too chubby to attract the attention of assassins or rivals. But Chloe is an accident in motion. Her nervous, unfiltered honesty cuts through Lorenzo's defenses. When a moment of rage forces him to lock them both in his office, she becomes a witness to his deepest weakness. He told her she was undesirable. He hired her for utility. Now, trapped and holding his most dangerous secret, she watches the King’s paranoia turn into an obsession he can’t fight. She is the only one who sees the broken man beneath the monster.

I'm the heiress of the elite Graham family, and yet my life is like hell. After all, the rolls of fat keep clinging to my body. No matter how hard I try, I can never get rid of them. Even if I don't eat for the entire day, my weight still rises exponentially. When I'm on the verge of dying from organ failure, I see my parents showing up with the adopted daughter, Freya Graham, in front of my sick bed. Freya covers her nose while gazing at me with a mixture of smugness and disgust in her eyes. "Thank you so much for taking the brunt of the misfortune for me, Dakota! Otherwise, I'll be the one plagued by the fat! "Then again, you've already had it good. You've lived a lavish life for many years, after all. This lifestyle is something that you can never experience for the rest of your life!" I widen my eyes in shock. But it's because of my overwhelming emotions that I can't breathe at all. In the end, I die tragically with hatred in my eyes. It turns out I'm just the fake heiress who the Grahams have adopted. My purpose is to shoulder the misfortune that's meant for Freya this whole time! She gorges on food every day, only for all of her fat to accumulate on my body instead! When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the first day when I start putting on weight like mad. In this lifetime, since Freya doesn't want the body fat this badly, she might as well live her life as a living skeleton!

My girlfriend Chloe Bennett's childhood buddy, Daniel Miller, binds himself to a transfer system. Everything he eats gets sent straight into my stomach. He creates a live stream channel and eats nonstop for 12 hours a day to rake in money. Meanwhile, I end up in the ER with acute pancreatitis. I try to explain everything to Chloe, but she just looks at me like I've lost my mind. "How could something that ridiculous exist? If food could magically transfer, nobody would starve in the world. You're just jealous he's making money from streaming." Afterward, Daniel's every live stream triggers another pancreatitis episode, sending me back to the ER until I'm barely holding on. I get tested, but the doctors can't figure out what's wrong. They even want to admit me to psych. Later, in a desperate bid to outdo another streamer, Daniel downs ten pounds of mashed potatoes at once. The overload destroys my spleen and stomach, causing massive internal bleeding that kills me. When I open my eyes again, I'm back on the day of Daniel's very first live stream. This time, I rush out and order 20 takeout dishes before him. "This time, I'm eating first."

Anthony Seymour couldn't wrap his mind around it. He was the one who'd saved them. And yet, in the end, they kept pushing him away. They toyed with him using false confessions, treated him as someone else's stand-in, and left him gravely injured. He never got so much as a scrap of the good fortune he deserved. Instead, after one emotional wound too many, he developed a disorder that stripped away his ability to feel, and little by little, he lost all attachment to the world. Then, one day, Anthony made a decision. He would end his life, and when he did, he'd use his own organs to save seven others. That would be his final goodbye to the world. From that day on, he began searching for strangers who needed help, using death as his purpose and his method of choosing who to save. But once word got out, the very women who'd once hurt him came flooding back, begging him through tears not to die. Anthony, who'd already lost every last one of his emotions, only found it puzzling. After everything that had happened, he wondered—what were they even crying for?

In my past life, news from high society circulated about a single, wealthy heiress who searched for a single man who could complete 14 days of inedia. My roommate, Chad Kranz, was convinced that she secretly searched for her future husband. Chad wanted to become rich and powerful quickly, and he did not hesitate to shut himself inside our dorm room to fast. On the night of his 14th day, he went into shock and stopped breathing. The sight scared me so much that I forced half a bottle of glucose down his throat, and I carried him on my back to the emergency room late in the night. Chad survived, and he gained 300 pounds from imbalanced hormones and became paralyzed. His family vented their anger at me in front of the media. They shouted, "There was only half a night left! If you had not made him fail with that mouthful of glucose, my son would have become the son‑in‑law of a wealthy family! You stopped my family from becoming rich! We will make you pay with your life!" They forced me to give up my placement in postgraduate studies, and they seized my family's property. They even pushed me toward death by demanding millions in compensation. When I opened my eyes next, I had returned to the 14th day of Chad's inedia process. He sat cross‑legged on the bed while he mumbled with reddened eyes, "I'm about to achieve a breakthrough with a new life. Anyone who stops me from marrying into a wealthy family will be punished!" This time, I slowly chewed my hard‑boiled egg and said, "Do not worry, Chad. I'll be the first to stop anyone from preventing you from marrying into a wealthy family!"