Excitement!

I know that I still have a long path to travel on my road to recovery but I'm so excited about getting there. Before I learned that I have a problem I just assumed that every one thought about food the same way that I did and that my thoughts about food would always be the same. I never questioned that I would have to fight with myself about food ALL the time forever and always.

I knew that I had a bad relationship with food. This is evident in the fact that I use to envy people with eating disorders. The voice in my head would say

look at them! at least they care enough about their bodies 

to actually develop a real problem. They are strong!

You are weak. You don't care enough. 

I know now that this was part of my disorder but I am still so embarrassed by these thoughts. To anyone who has ever suffered or is suffering with an eating disorder I apologize deeply for thinking such things. Please forgive me for being so ignorant.

However, now that I know a life without these destructive and disordered thoughts can exist 

I am Oh So Excited to find my way to that life. 

I can't wait until I can stand up and shoot 

"I was 'THAT Girl' and now I have recovered!"

*Disclaimer: Yes I know that my thoughts given here are in contrast to those given in a previous post (That Girl) but I am only human and therefore can have contradictory thoughts in my head. There were parts of having an eating disorders that I viewed as strong and envied but I also use to see those who suffered as weak; before I learned that eating disorders are a mental illness I wrongly thought they were more like something you caught. Now I view people with an eating disorder as normal everyday people, as unique and individual as every one else. 

Who is 'That Girl'?

Most people have some sort of assumption about what type of person has an eating disorder. I think it's partly a way to protect ourselves. There is a 'them' and an 'us'. We are not like 'them'; this makes us feel safe and to some degree lucky. We can sympathies with, support and love them but they are not like us.

As a member of society my heart hurts for 'those' girls. We see eating disorders portrayed in television and movies. We hear reports about actresses who suffer from them. The terminology has become part of everyday conversations and facebook status updates. Before I found out that I am 'that girl' this is what I thought about her:

A person with an eating disorder is weak and stupid. She would have to be in order to continually harm her body that way. She has an unbelievably low self-esteem. She is one of those girls who is continually (and often annoyingly) looking for praise and complements. When she gets them she often argues or disagrees with them. She is fragile, pathetic, insecure and selfish.

I'm embarrassed and ashamed to think about how wrong I was.

This is not how I would describe myself.

This is no longer how I would describe any one with an eating disorder.

This is what is keeping me silent. 
I have no idea what my loved ones preconceptions about eating disorders are and I can't bare to think that they might be as wrong as I was. I can't bare to think that they might feel this way about me. Or even worse they might not believe that I have a problem because I do not fit their preconceived notions of who 'that girl' should be.

Dear Self. You are not hungry please stop eating!

but on a positive note I am not eating food I'm allergic to

Temptation

I was driving home from yet another out of town business meeting yesterday, which created the perfect situation for an 'incident'. I was alone (no one could judge me and I could hide all evidence), I was bored and I was tempted. There was nothing preventing me from stopping at any number of convenience stores and eating everything. As a matter of fact, so the store clerk didn't think I was a pig, I could stop at many stores and just buy slightly too much at each (a 'trick' that I have used in the past to save face). As the epic battle between relapse and recovery ragged on in my head I managed to drive past every single store! and the thing that distracted me enough to keep driving was thinking about the Tea Party song Temptation.

You can listen to it here: Temptation

With the exception of one line ('Shaking as her sex takes hold')  this song perfectly describes my disorder.

What makes recovery so hard is that temptation is right in front of me all the time. Recognizing that 'temptation will never let me down' is helping prepare me for battles. Temptation wont change. It will always be there. So instead I must change. I must be ready to fight temptation at any given moment.

Seriously though, look at these lyrics, this is my life, this is my battle:

Driven by restrained desire
I want what I need

I've lost all control

Drowning in a sea of rage
I taste the embrace
Helpless as it steals my soul
I've lost all control

Temptation
It never lets me down
Temptation
One foot in the ground

We exist in a world where the fear of
Iillusion is real
And we cling to the past to deny and confuse the ideal

Destined by a fate so cruel
And drugged to delight
Laughing as these lies unfold
I've lost all control


Temptation
You satisfy my soul

*NOTE: The above is not the entire lyrics of the song. They are just the lyrics that I found most relevant to me. 

Chips For Breakfast

I was out of town for a few days last week for some business meetings and I was lucky enough to have friends who let me stay with them. Staying with friends however means that you're not allowed to be on 'just' a business trip. On Friday morning, after a few hours sleep, I woke up slightly hungover. Due to poor planing, being allergic to dairy and the fact that it was not at my house left me with literally nothing to eat for breakfast, which is the most important meal of the day (especially if you're trying not to get or stay fat).

Given that I was running very short on time, my only option was to stop at the grocery store beside the train station on the way to my meeting. A perfect recipe for failure!

I was hungry, hung over and in a hurry - Not the best time to be making good food choices.

I found myself in the chip aisle, with blackberries and a sesame snap already in my basket, staring 63-ish grams of tasty uncontrollable chip consumption in the face (and once I've eaten a whole bag of chips, what's to keep me from eat . . . . . . . and into the downward spiral I go). To make it worse, have you ever read the contents on a bag of chips? It is really hard to find ones without dairy. But like I said, I was hungry, hung over and in a hurry, my self control was at an all time low!

Then I surprised myself by walking by the 'late night cheeseburger' flavoured doritos and putting down the 'cheddar cheese & sour cream' flavoured baked chips (yes I actually picked them up and held them in my hand). I picked up the (completely dairy free) ketchup flavoured baked chips and ate them in moderation on the train ride. I knew they would all be gone before the day was over but I took great comfort in the fact that I was not allergic to them (i.e. eating them would not cause me physical pain) and the entire large bag contained a comparable amount of fat to a single serve bag of regular chips.

Today I won despite setting myself up for failure.

I am proud of myself!

On the Record

For the record I went to see an MD about my condition yesterday and now it's officially part of my medical record. The thought of that makes me sick to my stomach. Now anyone who picks up my file has access to judge me.

Part of me heard her: she said that she was really proud of me for taking such steps to recover and that an eating disorder is nothing to be ashamed of, there is something physically wrong in my brain, the neurotransmitters don't fire correctly. In an attempt to make me feel better she also mentioned that I wouldn't criticize someone because they had cancer, which is true but I don't feel like an eating disorder is not comparable to cancer. It feels more like a cross bread of herpes and schizophrenia - you didn't purposely get it but it's embarrassing and fraught with social stigma. You can hide it from most people but once they know they will always treat you differently from that point on. You can treat the symptoms, reducing their likelihood and frequency but you'll never be truly cured.


The reason I finally saw a doctor is that I learned (via this Questionnaire) that my unexplained health problems (the one's that have taken me to six different doctors (of three different specialties) in the last 8 months) may be a result of my eating disorder. Moreover, some of the things and traits that I had just accepted about myself may also be a result of it. It's scary to think how sick I have made myself without having a clue - I knew I had a bad relationship with food but I didn't see it as a problem because look at our society - it's clear that many people have bad relationships with food. However, mine apparently goes beyond the 'normal' bad relationship with food.

I am actually hurting myself and that knowledge was enough to get me over my fear of talking to a doctor. I needed to know how much damage I have actually done.

The 10lbs Conundrum

You don't put on 10 lbs in less than 2 weeks in any type of healthy way.

The fact of the matter is that the non-disordered aspects of my life have needed a lot of my attention and energy recently. Thus, there has been no energy left over to fight with myself about food.

In researching eating disorders I have learned that people with binge eating as part of their symptoms typically binge in one of two ways

(a) Fast and Hard - 2 to 4 hours of complete all consuming power eating

or

(b) Long and Slow - days of prolonged (secret) overeating, sometime with periods of type (a) bingeing. 

I am unlucky enough to be inflicted with type (b) binge episodes. Lucky me!

I hope you never know what it's like to eat so far beyond being full that it hurts (and more than just that undo-your-top-button-after-dinner type of pain) or to be so disgusted at the amount of food you've consumed that you cry as you put more food into your mouth. It is unpleasant. 

To paraphrase something I read on another blog:

Fuck you and your two cookie binge.

Two cookies are not a binge. 

Anyways, that is not the point of this blog. The point is that not having the energy to fight myself out of this epic binge has had (so far) a 10lbs consequence and this 10lbs has had surprising consequences of it's own: 

There are parts of my body I like more at this weight. My breasts look fantastic (both with and without my everyday padded bra on). The slight amount of gain to my stomach has pulled the skin slightly tighter making my stomach look firmer. Moreover, all my clothes still fit and the gain hasn't done anything noteworthily 'bad'. The larger breasts actually make me look ever so thinner by creating a more defined curve. 

I, by no means, plan to stay at this weight but something amazing happened:

I finally see how my boyfriend can see me as beautiful at any (reasonable) weight I may be. 

Celebrate the Small Victories

One of the characteristics of my eating disorder is obsessive thoughts about food. I can only assume that these obsessive thoughts are similar to what an addict experiences. I hear this voice in my head about a specific food and it is so loud that it drowns out everything else. The rest of my entire life goes into auto pilot as this internal battle rages on in my head. The thoughts usually focus on a food that I have in the house (or candy or chocolate, which may or may not be in the house) and my entire focus is on eating it. The battle goes something like this:

You need to eat it! It tastes so good. It's right there just put it in your mouth. 

You can eat better tomorrow. You'll make up for eating this today tomorrow. 

But I've already eaten enough calories today. I don't need it!

I know that I'm not going to exercise it off tomorrow. 

I never 'make up for it tomorrow'.

Just eat it anyways. 

-persistent thoughts about the taste, texture and smell of the food- 

You're not going to stop thinking about it until you eat it.

You need to eat it!

I don't want to be fat. Think about all the hard work

I've done to get into this shape and I want to get smaller. 

Eating this will not help! Please don't eat it. PLEASE!

This thought pattern will continue for hours on end and is often accompanied by negative thoughts of what other people will think of me if they see me eat it. The voice to eat is so loud that I often lose. 

Do you know that satisfied feeling you get when you eat a tasty tasty treat, especially something that you've been craving for a while. You savour and enjoy it. Often the calories and fat are worth that enjoyment. That is NOTHING like when I lose the obsessive thought battle. When I finally give in and lose and eat it there is no joy or satisfaction. I often don't even really tasty what I'm eating. The positive feelings associated with treat eating are replaced with guilt and shame. Moreover, as I eat there is a stream of negative thoughts about how weak, fat and pathetic I am running through my head. To make the whole situation worse the voice in my head is never satisfied when I give in and instead I hear one of two things (1) "that was so good, eat more!" or (2) "what are you going to eat next?". 

BUT today I won! 

Lately my obsessive thoughts have been focusing on cheese whiz - an unhealthy product that I haven't eaten in years but is in the back of the fridge - particularly cheese whiz on rice cakes. I've lost the battle many times in the past week and to make it worse I am allergic to cheese. So when I lose, along with all the crappy negative thoughts, I get physical consequences too. I break out, get stomach aches, gas, constipation and an overall feeling of lethargy - like the dairy gets into my muscles and makes them tired. 

BUT today I won!

I tricked the stupid internal voice by eating (dairy-free) cream cheese on rice cakes. I took such pride in figuring out how to shut the stupid voice up that I tasted every bite. I enjoyed it and the calories were totally worth it!

Today I won!