Two Days So Far

Two days in a row I have binged and then taken various pills to try to mitigate the damage. sigh.

I wish I could throw-up, I’ve tried so many times to purge that way but I can almost never seem to manage it. So instead I over exercise, and take pills that hurt my stomach but are supposed to rush the food outta me, and I take laxatives just in case the other pills don’t help, and then I restrict way more than normal for however long after that I can manage.

And oh yeah, during all this I hate myself, and isolate myself, and can’t focus on anything because I am so overwhelmed by the thoughts in my head.

I went for a long walk tonight after my first binge of the day. Partly to try to burn some calories, partly because I like to walk as it lets me think and not think all at once, partly because I enjoy listening to music while walking, and partly because it was finally dark out so I could go outside – after a binge I prefer to exercise, or do anything really, in the dark because while I am horrible to look at on a normal day, after a binge I feel especially hideous and can’t stand the thought of people looking at me. I’m judging myself enough thanks very much, I don’t need others doing it also.

I only walked 8km (5 miles). I should have walked for longer but all of a sudden, while walking, I got super tired, and my legs were feeling heavy, and I realized that I didn’t think I could finish the distance I had planned, so I cut the walk short. Lame I know. I should have pushed myself to go farther, but I caved.

Normally after a walk I don’t have any muscle pain or aches, things you get after a real workout, cause it is just a walk, but since I got back my legs ache. As if they got a real workout, but again, it was just a walk, so I don’t know what’s going on with them. My lower back is kinda sore also, but I’ve put some heat on it and I’m assuming by tomorrow it’ll be fine. Legs too, I’m assuming by tomorrow they will be fine also.

I must be getting out of shape to have such a simple thing as walking noticeably affect how my body feels. I’ve been taking part in a fitness challenge, in the last 7 days I have had 6 workouts. I guess I should up that since my body seems to be getting weaker and I’m trying to make it stronger. Well, thinner and stronger, which I am aware are goals that are at odds with each other.

It used to be something I spoke with my counsellor about but since I don’t have him anymore I guess it is just something I will speak to myself about. Or not think about at all. Ah yes, one more unsolved issue to have floating around my brain, awesome.

It has now been 2 weeks without him. I’ve stopped talking about him to anybody that knew about him because I don’t want to seem like some obsessed crazy person. I don’t know how to explain what I feel in regards to him. It isn’t like a crush, or when you break up with a boyfriend, or even when a friendship ends, but it is similar enough to some of the emotions that come up in those situations that I feel a bit like I do when I’ve been dealing with the end of a relationship.

And I’m kinda mad at him that he gave me hope. In his own odd way. When I said I was upset cause I’d never see him again an stuff he gave me this reassuring, compassionate, expression, and said I don’t know that, and I’ll have him around helping me for a while, and stuff like that. As if he is going to magically reappear in my world somehow. But he isn’t. And I have to acknowledge and deal with that. He isn’t going to reappear at my program and be my one-on-one counsellor again. He isn’t going to pop up somewhere else in my world and become a friend. He’s just a person that I spoke with for a short time that I’ll never see again. And that is messing with me. Usually people you tell private, important stuff to, are people you will see again, people you can contact, people you know. But now, I’ll never see him again, he’s probably already forgotten I exist, I’m spiraling from losing him as part of my support team, and I’m never gonna know what happens to him. Does he get a great job? Does he do amazing things? Does he have a happy life? I dunno. And I never will know, because it isn’t my place to know that about him, but I had this false sense of friendship because of our talks together and I feel a loss that I will never know those things about him.

I sometimes make up stupid scenarios in my head about running in to him. At one of my sports team’s competitions, or just when I’m out doing something. He told me in our last session that if he ever sees me, due to ethical stuff, the most he is allowed to do is nod, he can’t come say hi, I would have to initiate contact. And we can never be friends, unless, maybe I am better from what he used to counsel me about, and he sorta stretched the ethical rules. So even if I did run in to him, and say hi, it would never go beyond that superficial quick convo before we both went on our way.

I don’t want you to think I’m wanting to date him or something, I don’t, that isn’t what this is about. It’s just, I think he is someone who would be cool to have as a friend, not for the counselling stuff, but because he’s funny, and in to fitness, and has a relateable way about him. And I think that if somehow we had met in real life, not in a counselling session, maybe we could have been friends. I mean sure, I know we never would have met, our lives don’t cross paths anywhere and even if they did he’d never glance my way, but it is just this feeling I have.

It’s stupid. I know it is stupid. But it is how I feel.

I think all these feelings floating in me, about this, are manifesting in binges, and restricting, and self-harming, and other not healthy coping skills. I also have sunk in to a “don’t care” mentality and skipped meal support today. I also would have skipped drop-in but I got convinced to go by a friend. I feel like, without him there helping me, I can’t do this on my own, so why try. Why put in the effort when all I’m going to do is fail? Seems like a waste of time to me.

I miss him. I miss our sessions together. But I’m not supposed to miss him, so this is just one more thing I am alone in dealing with. And the person who would normally help me deal is him, but obviously he can’t help with this, and I don’t know how to deal with this, so I’m engaging in damaging behaviours and I don’t really care about the hurt I am doing to my body because really, what does it matter?

I May Not Always Be Right

Yeah so um, maybe I was lying the other night when I wrote things are fine. I didn’t mean to lie, I felt that at the time, but perhaps, possibly, just maaaaaybe that was me blocking that I wasn’t fine and doing my whole hiding behind a mask thing.

The only reason I say that is because I am sitting here, with a distended abdominal area, feeling super sick, after having a binge so large I am amazed my stomach didn’t literally explode. I haven’t had a binge this big in ages. It lasted hours. I couldn’t stop. The best I could do to make it not as bad as it could have been was at the last minute when driving home I cut across traffic so I could turn in to my neighbourhood instead of continuing on to the store where I had planned to buy allllllll the food.

Not like that stopped the binge though, I do have food in my place after all. I’m thinking I should rethink that, but that is something to ponder on a day when I’m not bloated, and a billion pounds heavier, and sick feeling, thanks to eating hours worth of food.

I’m not completely sure why it happened.

I had work, then group, then my team practice, then I got home and ate so much I should be rolling places not walking.

I didn’t say much in group, I had something I sort of but not really wanted to talk about. I might have brought it up but being there made me so sad I just wanted to disappear, not engage in the convo. I’m really struggling with the loss of my one-on-one counsellor. Last week was my first week without our session, this was the first group where he wasn’t there. Tonight it felt like there was this big void where he should be, but isn’t. Even though he was replaced by someone I like, I wish she would leave again if the trade off was getting him back. I know that is stupid. She has important stuff to teach and share and all that, hell, she is my case worker so she sorta has to be there for me to progress through the program. Its just I want him back.

While I was sitting in group someone said something, I wish I could remember what, and it got me thinking I might share, so I started thinking of how I would start my talking and I realize my opening sentence would have no meaning to anyone except him. But he’s gone. So no one would get the significance of what I was saying, so I’d have to explain in more detail what was going on, and I wasn’t up for that. That realization made me feel so alone. No one there just gets me, and I didn’t really realize how much I liked having someone who understood me, until I had him for a short time and he left and I now feel the gap in my recovery support system of where he was.

It is like a chair. Has 4 legs. In theory they are all equally supporting the chair but maybe one is taking the brunt of the weight. Then that one leg is taken away and the chair falls because it doesn’t have enough support.

I’m the chair, he was that one leg.

I am in this place of not really giving a fuck about recovery. Am I happy I binged tonight? No, definitely not. Am I unhappy about it because it affects my recovery journey? Only in the sense that I don’t want to get fatter and would much rather be restricting. As long as this binge doesn’t turn in to an often thing and I can get back to restricting tomorrow, which shouldn’t be a problem, then all is good. At least by my standards.

Maybe not everyone is meant to recover. I mean, if losing one person from my recovery journey affects me so much, maybe it is better to just not take this journey and instead figure out a way to deal with my disorder in a functional way. Like how there are functioning pot heads, and functioning alcoholics. Maybe I can be like that, only with restricting.

It’s something to ponder…

Too Much

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I think I’m having a panic attack. Except I don’t actually have panic attacks. Or maybe I do and I just don’t acknowledge them as such?

Ugh. Who cares what this is!!

Let’s go with, I am FREAKING OUT! And almost cried. And had a massive internal battle. And am still freaking out even though the damage is done. And I kinda still want to cry, or run away, or have someone say it will be ok, except there is nobody because I don’t have a freakin one-on-one counsellor anymore so I have no one to talk to. And I think I’m having a mental breakdown and oh my god someone get me out of my head.

Ok, lemme try to explain what is going on…

I started a fitness challenge yesterday, 44 workouts in 44 days. Nothing too crazy or extreme, just something to help me get back on track. I wasn’t initially going to add a food component to the challenge buuuuut I want results and results are 90% what happens in the kitchen and 10% what happens with your workouts so I can’t exactly ignore the food side of things completely, right?

I figured I’d track my calories, write the number on the day beside what my workout was, and it wouldn’t be a big deal. Easy peasy.

So not turning out to be easy.

I mean tracking is easy. But my response to the numbers hasn’t been easy to deal with. sigh.

Now, don’t get all judgy on me with this, but I don’t care to eat over 800 calories a day. 800 used to be my max, I preferred to be in the low 700’s. If I consistently ate in the 600’s or lower I’d have trouble functioning at work, but the low 700’s seemed to be a good spot for me.

While in this recovery program I am not supposed to track my calories *rolls eyes* For the most part I haven’t. I did have a day where I tracked because I didn’t know if I was still under eating or not since I didn’t know the numbers for how much I was eating but I knew I was eating more than I used to…wow, that is a convoluted sentence. When I tracked that day I was in the 700’s so I was ok with things.

Something I worked on with my one-on-one counsellor is pre and post workout food. According to him I have to fuel my body properly to get the results I want from my workouts, and to keep strong for my sport, and to heal quickly from my workouts so I can get back out there sooner. I don’t care for this logic but I trusted him so I started making sure I ate something about an hour to an hour and a half before working out and that I ate something after my workout.

By ate “something” I don’t mean just anything. It is always a carefully chosen, high protein, low carb, low fat, snack or meal.

Even though he is gone the idea has stuck in my head and I am still making something to eat post workout. I’m not quite as good with the pre workout but I’m trying…kinda…

After my workout tonight I came home and made a protein smoothie bowl, it is basically protein powder, a small banana, frozen mixed fruit, and a small amount of plain almond milk, all blended to a consistency that requires a spoon to eat it. It is kind of my go-to for a post workout meal.

My freakout is because I was sitting at a lovely 700 calories eaten prior to that smoothie bowl. Once I tracked that smoothie bowl I was at 1007 calories.

One thousand and seven calories.

ONE THOUSAND AND SEVEN CALORIES!!

1007!1007!1007!1007!1007!1007!1007!1007!1007!1007!1007!1007!1007!1007!

That number won’t stop flashing in my head.

Over a thousand calories. In one day. Oh. My. Fucking. God.

What have I done??

When I tracked the ingredients for the smoothie bowl I had the protein powder and the banana in the blender. I could have dumped them before blending anything. I saw that number before I had eaten the smoothie bowl, I could have done something to stop myself from eating enough calories to put me over 1000.

I could have stopped myself. I should have stopped myself. I am a failure for not stopping myself.

Whyyyyy didn’t I stop myself?

When I saw that number, as I stood at the counter with ingredients in my hand, I froze, just stared at the contents of the blender and wanted to cry. My breathing became more shallow, and faster, I wanted to throw the entire thing against a wall, get rid of it, not see it anymore. I wanted to go back to the gym for an additional workout. I wanted to scream, cry, hide, fight. I wanted to do a lot of things. All I actually did was stand there, shaking, upset, lost, not sure what to do, not sure what the right decision was, and so I chose to trust in what my counsellor had said. Trust that needing a post workout snack is more important than keeping myself in the 700’s. Trust that eating that smoothie bowl, and as a result eating 1007 calories for the day, wasn’t throwing away all the work I did in the gym. Wasn’t taking away from the results I want to get. Wasn’t going to make me wake up fatter tomorrow.

I don’t believe any of it. I think he will be wrong, and I will get fatter, and I won’t get the results I want in the gym, and I made the wrong choice, and I am stupid for making and eating the smoothie bowl, and I am failing, and making bad choices, and I deserve all the bad things that will happen to me because obviously I have no self control and don’t deserve anything good. My will power is gone, obviously. My self control non existent. My worthiness never existed.

Why did I let myself eat so much today? What was I thinking? I feel so glutenous. I never once thought I’d eat over a thousand calories in a day unless it was due to a binge. How could I let myself eat so much when it wasn’t a binge? What if this happens again? What if this is the beginning of me losing total control and sliding in to a land of over eating every day? What if this is the first day of the journey to being super fat? I can’t. I can’t let that happen. This can not happen again.

CAN NOT HAPPEN AGAIN!

I think I’m going to cry, and I am NOT a crier. But I’m so alone. I don’t have anyone to talk to in person about this who will help me figure out what I am doing, or why this happened, or what to do in the future. The only thing I know to do is go backwards. Revert back to how I was. I know I can do that. I don’t know if that is the answer though. But if that isn’t the answer than what is? I don’t know how to handle having eaten so much in one day. It isn’t like having to handle having eaten a crap ton of food in a binge and dealing with the physical and mental and emotional pain of that. There is no pain, physically at least. I’m not having side effects from what I ate. I just ate too much.

I don’t know how to mentally and emotionally cope with having eaten 1007 calories in a day. I’m so ashamed I ate that much. I feel like I am going to be judged for having eaten so much. I’m going to go hide now.

 

About Thursday

I am writing this a day after Thursday, in the hopes of getting past, or over, or at least somehow in the process of dealing with, the shock of the 5 year anniversary. (Yesterday’s post)

Thursday was an odd day.

I had a binge. A huge binge. Larger than I have had in a long time. It wasn’t as big as it could have been. I had other food I was also going to eat but somehow managed to talk myself out of it.

Then I was horrifically full so didn’t eat for um, 8.5 hours or so.

I wasn’t going to eat again at all that day but I had practice and I am trying to stick with the whole “eat before and after working out or engaging in a physical activity” rule. sigh. I hate that rule.

Obviously I didn’t eat right before practice, what with all the food that was still in my stomach digesting – which side note, despite very much wanting to I did not take any laxatives or diet pills to rush the food out of me – a miracle if ever there was one.

I’d like to take some credit for that but I only refrained because I know that the side effects from those pills would have hit when I was at practice and oh wow would that not be good.

So…no pills…but lots of food in the tummy…

Then I went to practice, had a decent workout, and when it was all done wanted ice cream. What the fuck?! *rolls eyes* My brain was all “you already fucked up today, if ever there is gonna be a day to eat the ice cream it is today!” but it was also saying “sure you ate a tonne earlier but you just finished practice so you burned a bunch of that off which means you have room to eat more”

I would like to point out that both those arguments are flawed, and yet, both feel so valid.

The whole drive home I was arguing with myself if I was going to get ice cream. If I wasn’t going to get it did I want to stop somewhere else and pick up something ready made to eat for dinner? Did I want to just grab the McFlurry and be done with it? Did I want to make something to eat at home? Or should I just not eat?

Don’t you love how I go from eating ice cream to eating nothing, like middle options don’t count or something.

In the end I went home, with the fairly solid plan of not eating because I was definitely over my calories for the day so my body doesn’t need any more food in it. If it is hungry from practice, which it shouldn’t be, then it can feed itself from the food I already put in it.

After my shower though I remembered a talk with my one-on-one counsellor and how we talked about post-workout nutrition and how it is important.

Ugh. Sometimes I hate when those talks pop back up in my head because they make it harder to convince myself restricting is the right choice and some days I really want to restrict because oh my god all the food in me from earlier!! Ack! But, I know he is right, and I am wrong, so I remembered what we talked about. I remembered about fueling my body, and taking care of it, and how if I don’t give it what it needs post-workout than tomorrow will be harder, and my workout tomorrow will be harder, and I’ll be more prone to injury and exhaustion, and well, I kept remembering a lot of stuff.

Eventually all that remembering kicked my ass in to gear and I made something to eat. And not even my normal food, which would have been a protein smoothie bowl or an egg with some toast.

Nope. I went out of my comfort zone by so freakin much. I have no idea why, it just felt like the night to try…to be honest I think because I still felt like such a screw up from my earlier binge that I figured if I’m gonna eat something higher calorie than my normal post practice meal I might as well go completely off plan. So, not the best reasoning for why to try something new but whatever.

I cooked a beef burger patty, and topped it with cheese, because oh yeah, apparently I eat cheese sometimes now! How the fuck did that happen?!  (I’m gonna get so fat…no! no, in moderation it might be ok…right?) Aaaaaand I made these things, I don’t know what to call them, they are like tater tots but made of broccoli and cheese.

I bought them I don’t even know how long ago and they have been in my freezer ever since. I’ve been too scared to try them because (1) what if I don’t like them and I’m stuck with them or (2) even worse, what if I like them and eat them too often, or too many at a time, and do I really want to risk having yet one more food that I know about, and like, that I have to put on my “not allowed” list, cause you know that is where most foods end up. sigh.

Food stuff is so hard.

So yeah, the package said 6 was a serving, so I cooked 6 of them.

That means I ate a burger patty with some cheese melted on top and 6 broccoli & cheese tot things.

Can that be any farther from something I am comfortable eating?

And omg, later I ate 10 crackers so I got my freakin grain component.

What has come over me…

Oh, and one last thing for the day, our drop-in group on Monday is cancelled cause of the holiday so I actually reached out to the friends I made in group that I hang with sometimes and asked if any of them would be interested in chilling that day, sort of our own group thing, so we don’t miss that Monday connection we usually have. And two of them have said yes! I thought for sure they’d be all “omg do we not see enough of you already, back the fuck off woman!” but no, they actually seem happy with the idea. Not everyone has responded yet so some of them may be all “back the fuck off”, but not all of them are…I’m assuming it is more the need to stick to routine and take care of their own recovery than any actual desire to hang out with me but that’s ok, shrug, I can deal with that.

I’m trying to tally the day, in a recovery positive way, and here is what I have:

Bad Shit:

I had a binge

Good Shit:

I stopped the binge before it got even worse than it was.

I didn’t take any pills etc. to purge after the binge.

I didn’t bail on my practice and avoid humanity because of my binge.

I initially restricted after the binge due to being sooooo full but after practice I made and cooked a meal.

The meal I cooked had all 4 food groups, contained red meat (something I never eat), contained a completely new to me food, had cheese, and I willingly ate a serving of carbs.

I didn’t purge the dinner I made.

I reached out to friends to make arrangements to help us all have support on a day when I knew we would be lacking it.

So, it would seem the Good tally is winning, wouldn’t you say?

Now, I will be the first to admit I could be very wrong here. Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten the post practice dinner because of how much I consumed earlier. I don’t know all the new rules, and I get confused a lot about what to do, what is the right decision, and I most likely made the wrong one here. But even if it is wrong, I made a decision, and I stuck with it, no matter what the consequences were. And at the end of the day I guess that is the best I can do.

(I feel I should point out I wrote that last paragraph like it is no big deal but I was freaking out. Totally and absolutely freaking out about having eaten that dinner, having the food in my tummy, taking in even more calories. I have been doing so well lately with not eating too much and Thursday totally blew that out of the water. So ya know, panic, in spades. But I still didn’t go for the pills, or for a late night run, instead I drank some water and went to bed. Please let that be a sign of progress cause if it isn’t then this internal drama sooooo isn’t worth it! Just sayin’)

Why Stop…

Why stop eating when you’re full when you could keep eating until you are in physical pain and hate yourself.

Amiright?

I Can’t Even…

Every Friday, without fail, I go to the gym. I don’t think it is an ED thing so much as it is a time slot that fits well with my schedule and it became a habit to go then. That and I enjoy it.

With my one-on-one counselling we decided to change my workout plan a bit because after some delving in to shit in my head we discovered that while my weight workouts are enjoyable and don’t seem to feed my ED the cardio part of my workout does feed my ED. So as a challenge I shortened my cardio.

It sucked. I hated it. I felt like I was cheating on my workout. But I did it. I didn’t die or get instantly fatter and well, maybe it was a thing I could do again.

Thing is, the past 2 Fridays I go to the gym, I work out, then the next day or two I am sick. I mean, I am sick already, I’ve been battling a bug (or possibly two) for a couple weeks now and it seems that every time I work out after work it flattens me for a couple days. I work weekends and can’t afford to keep missing work because I am kicking my immune system in it’s ass with my workouts. I was toying with not working out tonight after work, in an attempt to be self-caring and all that crap, ya know, baby the body in the hopes it finally gets healthy again…well, as healthy as it can get considering how I eat I suppose. 😉

I was leaning on the side of still working out, because I didn’t want to miss my Friday evening workout – the gym is nice and quiet, it’s the best workout of the week!

And then shit went down.

There is a swinging door at work with the tiniest window and massive blind spots on either side. I was just about to push the door open, so my left foot was up mid-step, when another staff member pushed the door from the other side, really really hard. It smashed in to my foot, pushed my toes back really far, and as a bonus spilled the just made cup of tea I was holding so I burned my forearm.

Just. Fucking. Great.

Do you know how much paperwork is involved when a staff member gets injured? I do because I’m usually the person handing it over to the other staff members when they get hurt and threatening them with me in their face at every moment of their next shift if they don’t fill it in asap and get it back to me.

I’m not worried about the burn, I sometimes self-harm (real winner of mental health over here!) and my chosen method is burning, so I know how to handle that just fine.

My foot though is another story. The more I walked on it at work the more it hurt. Even when I sat and rested it, it hurt. By the time I got home my limp was pretty impressive. I had a shower, propped my foot up, and have been babying it all night. It still hurts though, which sucks balls.

The bigger problem for me though is…I didn’t go to the gym.

Now, ok, part of me, a teeny tiny I think rational part of me, is saying it is fine I didn’t go. In fact it is probably good I didn’t go because I would have definitely made the foot worse.

The larger part of me is saying I am a failure for not going. If I was really dedicated, if I really wanted to get to my goal, if I really cared about my fitness levels, if I really wasn’t a loser, or lazy, or pathetic, I would have pushed through and gone to the gym. Now I might as well give up. I will be a lame ass next week and find a reason to not go then too I bet, because that is what I am, a lazy, disgusting, fat, weak, loser who was just waiting for an excuse to not work out that they can then use for weeks and weeks until it was like they never went to the gym. This is the beginning of the end. May as well give up now.

I couldn’t get my brain to shut up. It was circling with these thoughts, I couldn’t make them go away, I couldn’t fight them, all I did was believe in them. Whole heartedly, 100%, believe them.

So I ate.

I ate my feelings away. I squashed them down under ice cream and cookies. I ate and I ate and I ate and for a little while my brain was quiet. All the insults, all the stressing, all the fear, it all went away. Then after a brief, too brief, quiet moment in my head, it was all replaced by guilt over what I ate, shame over letting myself go, horror at how much I ate, disgust at how much of a pig I am, hatred over my actions, realization that I am not dedicated, I am not strong, I am not a fit or on the way to being a fit person.

I am nothing.

I am a slob of a person who literally ate their feelings in to submission, only to be swamped by new, worse, feelings. Feelings that I earned, that I deserved, because our actions show what we truly want. Our words can say anything, our actions are what we should pay attention to. And my actions showed who I really am.  All the horrible things I am.

I say I don’t want to be those things, but if I truly didn’t want to be them I would have sat with the first batch of uncomfie feelings rather than indulge myself, eat all that food, and now have to deal with the consequences.

I am glad I got injured tonight, I deserve the pain. I deserve every pound of weight I gain. I deserve every stomach ache I get. I deserve every single drop of guilt I feel. I did this to myself, I deserve punishment.

And trust me, tomorrow, it will be meted out.

Bulimia or OSFED

Last week I got my diagnosis, sort of. I am either Bulimic or have OSFED. shrug. To be honest, I don’t really care what my diagnosis is. The doc said something about a sub-type restrictive, I wasn’t paying too much attention though.

He asked at the end of our appointment if I had any questions and I said no, I always say no when asked that by anyone, and inevitably I come up with a question when it is too late to ask. sigh.

I don’t understand how I can be labelled bulimic when I don’t throw up. I thought a core component of bulimia was throwing up…isn’t it?

I guess because I use laxatives and diet pills and exercise to counter act the food I binge eat those are being counted the same as throwing up…that is my best guess anyways. I’ve always wished I could throw up whenever I wanted, it seems a much more effective way to get rid of the food I binge on but I can never seem to manage it. Actually, that is a lie, I have very rarely managed it, but I never throw up a large quantity so I’m definitely not getting everything out, which makes it seem not worth the trouble. Plus, I like my teeth and don’t want them to rot out of my jaw due to all that bile eating away at them.

So here I am, a person who restricts daily, except for when she goes bat shit crazy and binges, and when she binges she then takes loads of pills to try to rush the food through her body, and who increases her exercise to try to mitigate the damage all those calories are doing to my body.

I don’t feel better having a diagnosis…not sure if I was supposed to feel anything by having it. I’ve read how some people become so attached to their diagnosis, it becomes part of their identity, I don’t seem to be having that problem here.

Guess that just goes to show how we are all different, shrug.

Today was a food gong show and I am so not happy with myself. 😦 I was out of town (only an hour away) and was about to start the drive back but had to get gas, I was super hungry, as in that level of hunger that can’t be ignored. I wanted to ignore it because I was actually driving back in to town to attend a dinner with my team so I knew I’d be eating within an hour and a half or so, but I caved and bought some almond M&M’s.

Why do I do these things?!

I started eating them sooooo quickly while driving, it was insane.

I didn’t eat the entire bag, I managed to get a hold of myself and stop, but I’m not sure how many are left in the bag because while driving I sorta put the bag off to the side and tried to pretend it wasn’t there, then hid the bag in my glove box when I got to the restaurant, and left it there when I got home.  Maybe I only ate half the bag, maybe three-quarters, maybe all but two of them, I just don’t know.

So there I was, feeling nauseous from the influx of chocolate and almonds and I was going to dinner. Ugh. We went to a Congee restaurant and I had no choice over what was ordered, the menu was pre-picked by our coach, and when I got there I was late so everyone kept pushing food at me so I could “catch up”. In situations like this I lean heavily on picking vegetables and shrimp, I don’t touch the rice, I usually don’t touch the noodles but tonight I did, and I took some of the beef and some of the chicken. It is all served “family style” so think Asian restaurant where all the food comes on platters that are placed on a large turning platform that is in the middle of the table and you take little bits of whatever. So when I say I took “some of the beef and some of the chicken” I literally mean two bites of chicken and about 4 bites of beef.

The good side to when we go to this restaurant is because it is expected you take a little bit at a time and put it on a smaller plate you never are expected to have a full looking plate and it is super hard for people to keep track of what you ate. So if I am strategic and time things right I can get away with only eating 3 or 4 bites of food the entire dinner.

Tonight I wasn’t strategic enough and ended up with more, and when I think about how I have no idea how anything was cooked or what was in any of the sauces or marinades I shudder. I imagine I ate over 1000 calories in that meal alone and that horrifies me.

It gets worse though.

We then went for coffee or tea and donuts after the dinner. It would have been worse and been ice cream but people wanted somewhere closer so to the coffee shop we went. I ordered a tea (that part is fine), and a Tim Bit (that is a donut hole). I thought it would make me look like I was blending in while everyone else was eating their cookies or donuts but it actually made me stand out because everyone thought it was so strange I ordered one Tim Bit and they kept commenting on it and teasing me about it. It didn’t actually bother me too much because that has been my go to for years, a single Tim Bit, you get the flavour of the donut with less of the guilt or calories.

When I got home it all came crashing down on me though. The M&M’s, the dinner, the Tim Bit. How can I fix this?? I couldn’t go running because (1) I’ve got this weird, super high level pain in both my hips that isn’t getting any better and is preventing me from running, and (2) it was really late, and dark, and chilly, and not safe to go out. Instead I pulled up workouts on YouTube and did some of those. I usually scoff at home workouts but this one got me sweating and moving a lot and it made my stomach feel better, like it moved the food along a bit faster. Thank goodness!

So now it is almost 2:30am, I am tired and going to bed soon, my stomach is growling which confuses me since I ate a lot today, and my hips ache and make me feel like an old person.

Not my finest day.

I guess though, since my one and only thought after dinner was how to get rid of that food, and throwing up is not a real option for me (though I keep trying), and my workout was specifically chosen to help mitigate the damage eating did, that counts as the purging part of the bulimia diagnosis?

I dunno…and like I said earlier, I’m not so certain I care. I’m not married to the diagnosis, or even to the idea of having a diagnosis. I wonder if there is a real point for me to have it, besides doctors being able to label me I mean.

Just one more thing to ponder I suppose.

Don’t Cave

I want chocolate.

Chocolate cake to be specific, but let’s be real here, I’m a binge eater (when I’m not a restrictive eater) and I’d happily take any and all chocolate I can get my hands on. And hey, if there isn’t chocolate around I’ll just take food, all the food, any food, in large quantities.

Holy fuck do I want to binge right now.

dontbingedontbingedontbingedontbingedontbingedontbingedontbingedontbinge

I do not need to binge. I ate more food today than on a normal day, but not more than a normal Sunday. Sundays are my weird day because of my schedule, I eat breakfast, lunch, and sometimes dinner. If not dinner then maybe a snack. The breakfast and lunch I eat don’t change (oatmeal for brekkie, salad with grilled chicken for lunch). Not exciting but it doesn’t send me in to a giant stress ball so I’m happy to stick with it. If I eat dinner that can change, and actually varies widely. Some weeks I go high protein, other weeks I lean towards carbs, and then other weeks I eat something stupid like ice cream. *rolls eyes* The weeks I like best are the weeks I don’t indulge in dinner.

This Sunday I had my breakfast and lunch and when I got home I made dinner. It took about two hours, no, three hours, to convince myself to make and eat something and when I did I made scrambled eggs that I split between two mini tortilla wraps, I had spread a bit of light cream cheese on the inside of the wraps. Oh, and because I am supposed to be eating from all the freakin food groups each time I eat I ate a yoghurt. Yes I know adding a yoghurt doesn’t get me all the food groups but it gets me closer to all of them and sometimes you have to take the little wins.

After I ate I wanted to immediately get up and eat more food, which sometimes happens when I eat so I know to ignore it because it’ll go away.

Tonight it didn’t go away.

All I want to do is eat. I can practically see myself eating something, ice cream, toast, cereal, pretty much anything. I can envision it all and I want it all. Lucky for me I don’t have many foods in my place so indulging in this binge craving would require I go to the store and that is soooooo not happening!

I’m hoping by saying that so firmly I don’t cave and go to the store…

I think part of my wanting to binge is because I hurt and when I’m in pain I either want to eat for comfort or I don’t want to eat cause the pain is making me feel sick. My hips have been seriously aching for days. Yesterday it was so bad I took pain meds at work because I couldn’t function. Today isn’t as bad so I’m hoping by tomorrow it will have faded away even more, but just because its faded doesn’t mean it isn’t still there and it makes me want comfort type things…like food and heating pads. I am indulging in the heating pad, but refusing the food.

Logically I know that eating won’t make the pain better, all it will do is make me feel nauseous because for sure I’ll over eat and it will make me feel guilty and hate myself. So emotional pain on top of physical pain, not a good thing to do to oneself.

Does it count as personal growth that I realize the binge won’t help and am trying to fight against it?

Something else I have noticed is that some days when I eat more than normal instead of feeling fuller for longer and not wanting food again as soon I sometimes feel hungrier sooner and feel like I need to eat more often. What’s with that? I feel that if I eat, especially if it is me eating dinner (like tonight) that should fill me up and I shouldn’t want to eat, or feel the need to eat, until at least mid-morning tomorrow but my stomach doesn’t seem to know that and gets all growly and demanding before the evening is even over.

So not cool. 😦

I’m gonna go have a shower then go to bed early, sleep through this hunger (and hip pain). Hopefully when I wake up tomorrow the urge to binge is over cause I gotta tell you, if it isn’t, I just may end up going to a bakery after work tomorrow and then I’ll really hate myself.

The Brink of Tears

I’m fairly certain that eating two eggs (scrambled) on a hoagie bun is not an activity that is supposed to make a person almost cry.

And yet…

I feel like it has been almost an entire week of failure. I had my massive binge last Sunday, then days of physical recovery from that, then I ate half a pack of cookies a different day, then I ate some cookies and ice cream last night, then today I ate food after coming home from work.

In my world these are all massive failures, and having them all happen in one week, one right after another, is messing with my head.

I’ve got to get a handle on things over here or I’m going to end up back in the land of binges multiple times a week and I can’t handle that. I just…I just can’t.

Normally I don’t eat when I get home from work, when I work an evening shift I don’t get home until around ten at night. Once I am home I shower, do random things, make some tea, and by the time I might even be slightly thinking of food I’ve decided it is too late and I’m not going to bother. Doesn’t matter if I feel hungry or not, I don’t eat. I used to, and I found that was one of my most likely times to binge, so I cut that shit out. My body got used to the not eating after work thing and I stopped feeling hungry when I got home, something I count as a win!

But this past week I have really fucked things up. All those random extra high calorie foods has got my body thinking it wants more food and it has the nerve to send me hunger signals. Signals I am scared I might not be able to resist.

You might be thinking whats the big deal, if you feel hungry than eat. But I’m scared that I will eat things like ice cream, or other high calorie disastrous foods that I don’t let myself eat and that whatever I do eat I will eat in large quantities because heaven forbid I know and follow things like proper portion sizes.

Those, fyi, are totally valid fears.

So tonight I was in my post-work shower and couldn’t figure out what I was feeling. I wasn’t sure if I was feeling hungry or if I was feeling like I wanted to eat but for reasons other than hunger. Maybe I thought I wanted to eat but I was actually just bored, or thirsty, or upset about something…I should be careful because no point in eating if I am not actually hungry but being tricked into feeling hunger, right?

I knew that my brain kept thinking about ice cream so I promised myself that if I was going to eat it would be an egg, maybe an egg on toast (which is how I usually eat an egg), but at least the egg. It has protein. It is healthy. I am allowed one a day and I haven’t had an egg in a while. Plus, if I was legit hungry than an egg is an ok option for taking care of that hunger. If I am not actually hungry well, an egg won’t cause too much damage, least not as much as say, ice cream.

I ended up scrambling two eggs and putting them on a toasted hoagie bun. I don’t know what came over me. All those carbs. TWO eggs in one day. Ugh. Broke sooooo many rules with that meal, and yet, I ate it.

After I ate it and there was no turning back from what I did I sat there, watching a movie but hardly paying any attention to it, and I wanted to cry. I kept thinking about how last week I would never have even considered eating something once I was home from work, even if I had felt hungry I wouldn’t have eaten something, and today I caved because I thought I might be hungry. And not only did I cave I ate something that isn’t a safe meal (though I suppose it is a variation on one) and I ate a way larger portion than normal. This is on top of eating dinner at work aaaaaaaaand some oatmeal before going to work.

That is three freakin meals in one day. THREE!

Now do you see why I wanted to cry?

I feel like a failure. I have let myself down. I am so depressed and I don’t see the point anymore.

I look in the mirror and all I see is a fat, disgusting, woman. I have rolls of fat. My stomach sticks out so far it is heinous. Every part of me is swollen, and pudgy, and gross. I swear it wasn’t this bad last week. That binge started me on a free for all that has resulted in me looking noticeably fatter already. How is that possible? Why does it take so much hard work, so much dedication, so much sacrifice, to lose even one pound, but I can gain so much of that lost weight back in one stupid week.

The scale, urg, the scale. I didn’t step on it today but I stepped on it yesterday and it showed I was the same, but it has to be lying because I can see what I look like and I am definitely noticeably fatter. 😦

So I sat there, post egg on a hoagie bun, realizing that I have just pushed myself farther away from my goal by caving and eating.  Realizing that I was already noticeably fatter when I went to work today and now that I came home and ate some more food I am going to be even fatter tomorrow. Realizing that tomorrow I will step on the scale and will hate myself. Realizing that I am a failure. Realizing that I had gone so long without a binge, then I had one last Sunday and I am still dealing with the fallout from that binge. Realizing that what is the point of recovery when I’m still binge eating after all this time. Realizing that recovery may not be for everybody. Realizing I am freakin exhausted and I wish it was like it was before I realized I had a problem because I may have been engaging in just as many (or even more) bad for me behaviours but at least I was oblivious to just how much I was fucking up and could pretend what I did was normal.

This sucks. And I still want to cry. But I don’t do stuff like that so instead I’ll go try to sleep, at least when I am unconscious I am not aware of how much I hate myself.

Mini Revelation

I’m laying in bed reading a book about eating disorders, it is called Eating In The Light Of The Moon and is by Anita Johnston. It’s pretty good, full of metaphors and stories and not overly preachy about how to get better an stuff. 

I just read a chapter about dreams and what they can tell us. The author talks about a dream one of her clients had and how it provided a break through as to why she engaged in a binge-purge cycle. 

The dream helped her realise that she would binge (and then purge) after her sister would criticise and put her down, or she perceived she did. 

I won’t go into all the details of the dream and the stuff the author wrote about it, but it made me have a tiny possible revelation. 

I had my sport team training this evening, we have a competition coming up so the practice was kinda brutal, which is fine, I’m not complaining, just explaining. 

We have some shitty air quality right now due to forest fires so myself, and some others were having trouble breathing. When we tried bringing it up to the coach she said to breathe deeper, basically to suck it up, deal with it, and keep going. I was really upset about (1) her lack of caring about the people she coaches , and (2) how much trouble I was having during practice – physically I mean. 

Normally I can find the strength to keep going, to give it my all, regardless of if I have been eating or not. But lately I’ve been having a harder time of it and tonight it was really bad. I think it was worse today because of the air quality, at least, that sure didn’t help!

So I left practice upset at my own physical weakness and at my coach for her not caring. 

I don’t know why her comment bothered me so much, she has always been mean, never pretended that she cares about us as people, we are just a means to an end to her. Which again, is fine, I’m not complaining. That is how she is so I just have to learn to deal with that. 

But I think that is the problem, I don’t deal with that very well, and when I got home I not only ate but I ate dinner (which was sorta planned so kind of ok) and then I ate two cookies and then I ate an unknown amount of ice cream right from the tub!

It wasn’t a full on binge, I didn’t eat till I felt sick, well, I felt a little sick but I think that was from all the sugar, it was nothing like my binge from last sunday. I wasn’t even sure why I was eating those foods (the cookies and ice cream), I didn’t really want them, wasn’t craving them, didn’t feel like I needed some crazy binge, didn’t even use the food as a distraction from hurting myself. I just kinda grabbed them and ate for a while, then put the ice cream back  in the freezer. 

I think, and I could be very wrong, but I think maybe I ate the ice cream (and cookies) to distance myself from my feelings from practice. Maybe I didn’t want to feel upset, and mad, and disappointed, so instead I ate for awhile.

Does that sound crazy? I feel like maybe it sounds crazy… 

I don’t know why I stopped before it turned into a full on binge, all I was doing was watching a movie so not like I was purposefully trying to figure out and work through anything. I am very glad I stopped though!

If this eating was an act of dealing with my disappointment in myself I gotta say it is super counter intuitive. There is no way eating cookies and ice cream is going to help me do better at my sport, in fact they will do the opposite! So I guess I better sort some shit out in my head to see if I can stop this from happening again. 

How I go about that though I’m not quite sure…