Why Stop…

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

Amiright?

An Odd Stressor

At one of my jobs I get fed when on shift. They make amazing food there, better than anything I could ever make, and depending on what they are making will depend on if I eat at work.

Over the years (cause yes, I’ve been there yeeeeears) the chef’s have gotten used to my quirks, sorta. I get teased by some of them about not eating certain things, or lectured by others about needing more fat in my diet, but even the ones that tease me respect my food choices…they can’t really argue with them when I’ve dropped weight and everyone thinks I’m oh so healthy *rolls eyes* At work I eat lean protein and vegetables. Exciting huh?

It is usually fish, or chicken, or turkey, or eggs, for the protein. The veggies vary widely. I don’t eat starchy vegetables, (ex. corn or peas) but I eat a bunch of the other veggies. I steer clear of carbs in any obvious form…I say obvious because all veggies have carbs in them but I’ll eat say, asparagus, but not potatoes or rice or other higher carb food items. Does that make sense?…I mean, in the way weird food rules can make sense? lol

There is one food I don’t eat, and haven’t eaten in more years than I can remember, that is not on my no-go list because of my eating disorder but because of broader reasons.

I don’t eat pork, in any form. It started because I don’t care for the taste or texture of most pork products and from there it expanded to not wanting to eat pigs because they are ridiculously intelligent, freakin adorable, and ethically I don’t feel right about it.

All the chefs at work know I don’t eat pork. One of them teases me by saying pork is in everything (from the egg salad mix, to the vegetables, to the fruit salad), it is a long running joke at this point.

Last week I worked an extra shift and the chef working asked if I would eat the meatloaf for dinner. I didn’t want to, it looked too greasy, I felt I had less control over it (as if I somehow control the salmon they feed me on other days? *rolls eyes*) and I dunno, it rang all kinds of alert bells in my head as a “no” food. Sooooo, trying to get out of it I asked what was in it. He said it was fine, and gave me a tiny piece to taste. I tasted it, it wasn’t horrible, I figured I had plans to work out after work so maybe I could do this, and I said fine I’d eat the meatloaf.

I wasn’t happy about it but I was trying to think of it as testing my comfort level.

Then someone else at work mentioned they weren’t eating the meatloaf because it was a combo of three meats and they didn’t like the sound of that.

Three meats? What three meats? I was led to believe it was beef…

I asked the head Chef what meat was used in the meatloaf and he said beef, veal, and pork.

I ate pork.

I want to cry.

Even thinking about it days and days later makes me feel nauseous and teary and disgusted.

I went back to the chef who gave me the piece to try and snapped at him, turns out he assumed it was beef, didn’t actually check, the jackass.

Now, I think a more normal person would be pissed, but get over it, and the next day be fine with getting their meal at work, especially when it is fish and there is no chance of a mistake being made and they would be fed pork again.

But who says my brain does normal? I was stressing out about my meal at work all day (I worked the evening shift so I was getting fed dinner). What was going to be on the menu? Could I trust any food coming from the kitchen? Did I want to eat from that kitchen ever again? Maybe I should just not eat.

Somehow my brain went from one chef making an assumption and accidentally giving me something with pork in it to I can’t trust any of the food that comes from that kitchen no matter which chef makes it so I should no longer eat at work.

Some days I want to smack my own head against a wall.

Just because I am irritated with my own thought process on this one doesn’t mean eating at work has become any easier since this incident. I can manage to eat vegetables, for the most part, but much more slowly than before and it takes a lot of convincing to get me to eat them…by that I mean me convincing myself, I don’t have some cheerleader that follows me around cheering me at my meals lol I’m poking and picking at my veggies more than I am eating them and using the excuse that they have gone cold and don’t taste good anymore as a reason to not finish them and just throw em out. Don’t even get me started on the protein side of things. Since the pork incident I’ve been given salmon, chicken, hard boiled eggs, and turkey…of those I was able to eat without issue the hard boiled egg, everything else I pick at, take nibbles of, and then swear it feels like a lead ball in my stomach.

I don’t want to eat the food.

I seamlessly went from not sure I can trust the food, to nope I can’t trust the food, to the food makes me feel unwell in my tummy (further reinforcing why I shouldn’t bother with eating), to guess I’m not gonna eat at work anymore.

Which correct me if I’m wrong but just might be me going in the wrong direction recovery wise.

I don’t know how to fix it. And to be honest, I don’t know how driven I feel to fix it. Part of me feels like not eating at work is a good thing because really, I don’t have any control over that food, I don’t cook it, or prep it, there are probably all kinds of hidden calories in that food, it is probably better for me if I don’t eat at work. And no, I won’t take food to work cause, well, that’s a whole other blog post of crazy, but in my world that isn’t an option, so I am essentially backing myself in to a corner of self-imposed food restriction for 4-5 days per week, 8 hours each of those days. Which isn’t soooo bad, I’ve done worse, but I’m trying to do better, except I appear to be a bit ambivalent about it.

Oh my god, see why I irritate myself?

I have my one-on-one session this Wednesday, let’s see if I can irritate my counsellor just as much as I am irritating myself. Arg!

Meal Plan

I was given a meal plan to follow, starting August 23rd.

So far I have sucked balls at following it.

I have an appointment with the nutritionist this coming Wednesday and I am dreading having to tell her I failed.

I have all these legit reasons for why it hasn’t happened yet, why I’m not following this meal plan, but I think she won’t see them as reasons, only excuses.

I couldn’t start following the meal plan the same day I got it because I didn’t have the food in my place to be able to follow it. Then I went out of town and my eating was all over the place because of being away. When I got back I had gained 1.5 pounds and I had to lose that before I could start some meal plan that had me eating more on a daily basis then I usually do. I can’t start off a meal plan when I am up on the scale, how will I ever lose that weight I gained from the weekend?

Hey now, don’t go judging my logic, it makes sense to me!

Then I was finally down on the scale but still didn’t have the right food in my place. Add to that the whole high potassium thing I’m going through. I can’t just eat what I want I have to be checking the potassium levels of everything and I gotta say, that is screwing with me.

I like spinach, spinach is high potassium, I am no longer supposed to have spinach, but I can’t just swap in some other type of lettuce where I would normally eat spinach, so now the choice is do I eat the spinach anyways and get some dark leafy greens or do I not eat any type of lettuce?

le sigh.

I’m having this issue with a bunch of foods.

So yeah, I have this meal plan, and I’m not following it.

Today was my first real attempt to follow it. I didn’t do great, but at least I sorta tried, that maybe counts for something…

I didn’t eat within 1.5 hours of getting up (that is rule number 1 from her), but I did eventually eat (which sounds stupid but isn’t). When I eventually ate something it was an actual meal, with food groups!

I had a two egg omelette with 1 tablespoon of shredded cheese inside. I topped it with 1 tablespoon of salsa (which I am trying to figure out if that counts as a veg serving…), I also had toast (that is an easy one for me), and a yoghurt (NOT an easy one for me). I was also supposed to have a fruit and a meat, but maybe the egg counts as a meat? I’m not clear on the rules…wait! I just checked, the eggs do count as meat so score for me!

I couldn’t fit a fruit it with that meal, it was too much food already, but I ate a nectarine about 3 hours later.

Then I went to work out for a couple hours.

Then the big dilemma.

When I got home from working out I didn’t want to eat. I wasn’t feeling hungry, I was feeling like any food I ingested would be taking away all the gains I got from my work out, I didn’t want my work out to be wasted because I ate after, ya know?

So I literally paced my kitchen, back and forth, back and forth, do I eat, don’t I eat, should I eat, should I not eat, I’m not hungry, I have been told my hunger signals suck and I need to eat on schedule, I already missed the scheduled time to eat so no point in eating now, eating now is better then not eating at all, I’ve eaten too much today, you haven’t eaten as much as you promised you would when you were given the meal plan, food will make me gain weight, you need to fuel your body, I don’t want to eat, it doesn’t matter what you want, I am in charge of what my body gets, you have to give your body what it needs, I don’t need more food today, yes you do, I’m not hungry, you’ll feel hungry soon and you might binge then, I could just go to bed early, you’ll sleep better if you eat something first…and so on…

Eventually I settled on something, and ended up with a meal that had, get this…food groups! And not just one!

I had a small tortilla wrap with some coleslaw (no dressing), home made turkey salad mix, and a small amount of shredded cheddar cheese.

That is grain, meat, veg, and dairy, all in one!

I ate it. I still wasn’t feeling hungry when I ate it and eating when I don’t feel hungry goes against everything I believe in doing but I said I’d try to follow the meal plan and so far I haven’t and eating this meal put me closer to following then not eating would have done.

Honestly, I still wish I hadn’t eaten anything. I’d be feeling better about myself and not paranoid that as I sit here typing that food is turning to fat and making me bigger.

But at least this way I can go to my meeting next week and say I sort of, kinda, in a way, tried to follow the plan.

Not A Good Sign

I think I am failing at recovery. Not intentionally, but regardless of if it is on purpose or not, I think I am failing.

Fuck.

Today I felt like I spent the whole day at my recovery program’s offices. First I had a meeting with my nutritionist. Then I had Meal Support group. Then I had book club…which I was deluded into thinking would be fun because I like to read but is still somehow turned in to a freakin therapy session! *rolls eyes*

So yeah, ok, my meeting with my nutritionist had some unsettling sentences being said, by her, which makes me think I need to be less honest about how things are with me cause, um, yeah, not good.

She said she is going to talk with my case worker about me and some things I have said and about potentially a new approach. I feel like I am in trouble and being tattled on. 😦

She also said perhaps I need more support than what I am getting now in getting out of my eating habits and adopting new ones and I should consider inpatient treatment at the hospital.

What the fuck?

First off, I am not under weight, sure I am losing but I am nowhere near under weight so no fucken way do I need inpatient. Second, I have a life, a job, a cat, rent to pay, shit to do, not like I can magically disappear from the world and go inpatient. Thirdly, no. Just no. I hate doctors. I hate medical stuff. It is bad enough when I have to go get blood work done, or have some other reason where I need to see a doctor, but going and being in a hospital 24/7? Nuh-uh. Not happenin.

So yeah, not the most pleasant of convos.

She goes on vacation for three weeks so our plan (I say “our” but it is actually hers) is that while she is gone I will focus on breakfast. Usually I put off eating as long as possible when I wake up but now I am supposed to eat within 1.5 hours of waking up, and it is supposed to be a healthy balanced all the food groups kind of meal. *rolls eyes* Then, when she returns she is going to put me on a meal plan. It will apparently be tailored to my height, weight, age, etc. She won’t tell me how many calories it will be. She also says I am not to track or tally the calories myself. I am supposed to blindly believe what she gives me will be ok. Cuz ya know, blind leaps of faith are things I am oh so good at.

After meeting with her I had Meal Support, which is also led by her. You sit, with others, and eat a meal that has all the food groups. You are supposed to eat the food within 20-30 minutes and after eating everyone plays a game to keep us distracted. I am the slowest eater ever, and couldn’t finish in time. I started to put my sliced apple away because everyone else was done and I didn’t want to hold up the start of the game playing but I got called out on that and was told I had to keep eating the apple while we all played the game. In one sitting I ate a strawberry greek yoghurt, an apple, and half a wrap with 1/4 of a chicken breast, spinach, carrots, cabbage, and bbq sauce in it. That is a LOT of food. Way more than I usually eat in one sitting. When I was done I thought I was ok, the game had kept me distracted from noticing how full I felt, I didn’t have a breakdown or anything, all was ok. Then I left to go buy a tea before my next group and as soon as I wasn’t distracted all I could notice was how full my stomach felt. It was so incredibly unpleasant. Ugh. I think if I do that group again I’ll go for a walk (or a jog) instead of going to buy tea, help get rid of that feeling.

I guess that group wasn’t a complete fail since I managed to eat all that food, even if it did take me longer than the time limit. But it was probably a fail in that I didn’t eat again for a really long time, and when I did eat it was something small and not calorie dense because I felt I had to make up for eating all that food earlier…

Then book club. We are reading Daring Greatly by Brene Brown and I’m not really liking it. I am not a self-help book reader by any means, and this one is so, just, ugh. I don’t have words for it. I don’t connect with this book at all! In book club we talk about the chapters we were assigned to read that week, what if any connection we felt with what we had read etc, then we get a 5 minute break before we do some sort of project. This weeks project we were given a large piece of paper and told to draw a shape on it that symbolizes vulnerability to us. Then we went through a bunch of magazines to find pictures, or words, or whatever, of things that make us feel vulnerable and we had to put them inside the shape we drew. Then we had to find pictures, or words, or whatever, of things that allow us to be vulnerable and put those outside the shape. Then we had to describe the whole thing to the group. You may be laughing but you go try it, it’s harder than you think! Normally I really struggle with things like this but this week I managed to create something that seemed to impress the two people running the group. I think it was because I needed the distraction from how my stomach was feeling and the knowledge I ate all that food and the activity helped with that.

So yeah, that was my day in recovery and I think overall I didn’t do all that well. I got told inpatient might be the way to go and am being tattled on to my case worker. I ate a shit tonne of food. I didn’t handle eating all that food properly. Then I used the project in book club to distract myself from how I was feeling.

This recovery thing sure can suck, sigh.

3 Days

For three days in a row I lost 0.5 lbs a day! 🙂  That’s 1.5 lbs in three days!

I know other people lose faster but for me that is freakin amazing! I weighed myself Friday and Saturday before work, those days I worked the late shift so I had slept in (ensuring I didn’t have to eat or realize I was skipping breakfast), had a quick step on the scale before getting ready for work, and was quite happy with where the number was going. I wasn’t going to weigh myself Sunday as I worked the early morning shift and I don’t like weighing myself at different times of the day – these things matter ok? For some reason I decided I would hop on the scale “just to see how it differs at 5:30am vs 12:30pm” and holy fuck I was down another half a pound.

Three days in a row!

I was practically beaming with pride.

What is annoying is there is nobody to tell and celebrate with. Nobody else would think this is a good thing, although I am over the moon happy about it.

I didn’t weigh myself today, I worked the early morning shift again and slept in so I didn’t have time to strip, pee, weigh myself, either celebrate with a happy dance or stare at myself in the mirror and criticize myself (if I had gone up), so I skipped the scale today.

I’m thinking I probably should have taken the time to weigh myself because today after work, and after my after work exercise, I ended up buying two different types of ice cream and ordering a burger and fries from a restaurant that has amazing burgers, sigh.

I ate the burger, the fries, and one Drumstick ice cream and holy fuck my stomach is so messed up now. It has been almost 6 hours since I ate the food and I can still feel it in my stomach! Why isn’t it going anywhere?? It is this lump of food, it is painful, my stomach is actually rounder (food baby anyone? ugh), I am so uncomfortable – and not just “omg I ate something my brain is panicking” uncomfortable, you know, the kind that is all a mental game that you can try to distract yourself from. Nope, this is actual physical discomfort that is making me feel sick, but not throwing up sick, just so not well in my stomach. I don’t have the words to describe how it feels, its just bad ok? It feels bad.

So all that happiness, that pride, that yay I am doing so well at losing weight and being so good with my restricting has come to an abrupt end. A brutal, fast, calorie dense, end.

Sigh.

Why do I always have to fuck up like this?

To top it off I cancelled my appointment with my nutritionist for this week, and tomorrow I will be calling to cancel my being at group session this week. In my defense this isn’t a random decision, I got offered a 12 hour work day for that day and I really need the money so I would have cancelled a visit with the Pope in order to take the work. It does suck that I’m cancelling two recovery related things though…except, does it suck? It should suck. If this was two weeks ago I’d probably be bummed, hell, I might have convinced myself to not take the work, but it’s been a little while since I’ve had a one-on-one cause of scheduling and I barely said two words in group last week so it was almost like not being there, and well, I’ve sorta distanced myself emotionally from the whole process.

I’m debating staying in the recovery program. I don’t know that it is for me. I think I was becoming too reliant on having people that I saw on a regular basis when really, I need to learn how to stand on my own, how to cope with stuff by myself. I think I’ve gotten a bit better, I don’t binge nearly as much now, and that is what I wanted help with. My restricting has become the more prominent behaviour which is helping me lose weight and that was the end goal I wanted – not necessarily to be restricting more but to be binge eating less so I’d lose the weight I put on from binge eating.

And wow this got off track lol this was supposed to be about how I was so excited that I lost half a pound a day for three days in a row – and I would still be happy about that, if I didn’t have a burger and fries and ice cream sitting in my stomach slowly trying to kill me. Ugh.

Does anybody know if slow digestion of a large quantity of food after restricting for a while is normal? I think I heard somewhere the digestion process slows down or something? I swear I can already see the fat from the food making my body fatter, not just my stomach but everywhere. 😦  Thank goodness I have a high activity, low food day, planned for tomorrow!

Do You Ever…

Yesterday I ate horribly. Not a binge, just a lot of food for one day. Waaaaaay more than I would normally eat in a day, maybe the amount I would eat over the course of two and a half days or even three…so, a lot!

I won’t list the food, just trust me when I say it was too much. Though I wonder if my counselors would think it was me showing improvement because (1) I didn’t avoid social situations and (2) I ate food like a normal person. I mean sure, on my drive home I was almost in tears because of how I felt having a tummy full of food and I kept obsessing about what I ate, and why I ate it, and why didn’t I at least only eat half, and omg just stop fucking eating already! Ya know, totally sane thoughts like that. 😉

As the evening drew to a close I consoled myself with (1) I resisted using any of my diet pills or laxatives to get the food out of me quicker and (2) I could always restrict the next day to make it up.

So today rolls around and I know I can’t restrict for the entire day, not because I’m not strong enough to resist food, but because even I have clued in that doing that would be frowned upon and definitely not considered progress. I had my standard breakfast, which took forever to eat because I really didn’t want food. It got me thinking that I could easily get out of dinner by taking a Premier Protein drink with me and lying and saying I wasn’t feeling well and just drinking that. Technically it is a meal, least, I think it counts as a meal replacement, and it would be me ingesting calories around a standard dinner time so that follows the rules, but it wouldn’t be heavy and gross and compound the damage I did the day prior.

Oh the lovely loop holes my brain can find!

In the end I ate dinner. sigh. The chef made me an incredible salad and his salads totally count as a safe meal for me because well (1) it is salad, and his are not loaded with hidden high calorie scary foods, (2) the only time I eat veggies or most fruits are at work so his salads help me get my veg allotment for the week, (3) he put a lot of time and effort in to making my dinner and I didn’t have the heart to tell him I couldn’t eat it. I am so weak sometimes, ugh.

The salad took me a super long time to eat, which is hard at work because I don’t actually get a break so I am usually eating in between doing other things, or trying to find 5 minutes to scarf something down uninterrupted. But this salad was epic, and took time because every bite was me fighting my brain. Every time I took a bite my brain was telling me why I shouldn’t, was telling me I have too much food in me from the day before, was telling me I don’t deserve this amazing dinner because of how badly I ate yesterday. My brain was telling me a lot of stuff, none of it nice, and it didn’t get any quieter the more I ate, it just got louder. Almost out of spite I ate every last bite, even the blueberries!

I’m kinda fucked if I am only eating out of spite *rolls eyes*

When I got home I realized I hadn’t entered all the food I ate today in my tracker and I have to do that because it helps me realize if I have actually been under eating (it usually tells me that) or if I ate way more than intended and need to put on the breaks. So I sat and put all my food in to the tracker and did something that I wonder if others do…I fudged the data…

Even though no one but I sees my tracker I sometimes fudge the data so that if someone were to see it they would see something that might possibly be less alarming. So say I ate 1 or 2 strawberries (they are sometimes cut up in to my salads at work), I’ll track it as 1/2 Cup Strawberries so it looks like I ate way more of them. I know when looking back which data is faked because I pretty much always fake the same stuff, but someone who isn’t me would see this tracker and think I get all my fruit, all my veg, a decent amount of protein. I don’t know if it would look normal but it would look more normal than what I actually eat.

I also fake the data not just in case someone else sees it but also to trick my brain. Tonight I remembered I hadn’t put the food in to the tracker when I was sitting in the living room and starting to feel a bit hungry. I didn’t want to eat so I put the food I already ate in to the tracker, saw how much under I was for the day, wasn’t happy because I wish I was farther under my food goals for the day, and that helped me not go to the kitchen and get a snack – the tracker showed I didn’t have enough room for more food today, I should feel more full than I actually feel right now so my stomach must be lying to me about being hungry, don’t believe the signals from my body, they are fake, believe what the app on my phone says.

Shit like that.

In case you are wondering, I have resisted eating since I put the food in to the tracker. Even though I know what I put in is exaggerations of what I actually ate and I probably do have room to have a snack of some sort, I won’t eat because of what the tracker says. I don’t know if that makes sense but it makes sense to me…I also resisted making more tea or even getting a glass of water because I have felt all day like I should be cutting back on my fluids, dehydrating a bit, because lately I have been taking in more water and that has to stop…why that has to stop I am not exactly sure but I just keep feeling like it has to stop…which the rational part of my brain says isn’t a good idea because it is fucking hot out where I am but since when did being rational play a part in this? *rolls eyes*

Permission

Last night, around 7pm, I realized I hadn’t eaten for 8 hours. Now, 8 hours is nothing, I have gone upwards of 48 hours with nothing but tea and diet coke, but at the 8 hour mark I started to feel hungry.

I knew I could resist it, fight it, not give in to it, and eventually the feeling would pass. I was really tempted to do all of that. I had a weigh-in the next day and if I didn’t eat that evening then by my weigh-in time I would have gone without anything solid in my stomach for a little over 24 hours. Add in some planned dehydration and it would be a great weigh-in!

But then this niggling thought entered my head, telling me normal people would eat something. Not just a small bite of something, but a meal. Normal people eat more frequently than every 8 hours or longer. According to the nutritionist I see, they eat every 3 to 4 hours…something I find ridiculous but whatever, shrug.

So I sat, and I wondered if I should eat, and I really couldn’t figure it out. I would think “yes, I should eat something” and then I would sit there paralyzed by a bombardment of thoughts…

• what should I eat?
• what quantity of food should I eat?
• I ate 8 hours ago, do I really need to eat again so soon?
• what kind of food prep am I going to have to do?
• I’m tired, do I really have the energy to cook, maybe I should go to bed instead

I sat, curled up in a ball, staring at the kitchen for almost an hour, not knowing what to do. Even when I would decide I was going to eat I just kept sitting there, scared. I felt like I needed someone to tell me it was ok to eat, but who is going to tell me that? The only one I live with is the cat, he certainly isn’t going to tell me anything. I have no one I can reach out to about this, and even if I did, what would I say? “Oh hey, can you please give me permission to eat because I can’t give it to myself” They’d think I was a lunatic.

Eventually I went in to the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror, trying to tell myself it was ok to eat. When I wasn’t able to do that I tried telling myself why I should eat, that didn’t work either. I don’t have any catch-phrases to tell myself, little inspirational quotes to get me believing I should eat. Hell, I couldn’t even come up with a plausible lie to convince myself to eat.

I ended up telling myself “you need to eat because…well, just because” and left it at that. I made a deal with myself, I could listen to music and dance while cooking, as long as I cooked and ate something. I couldn’t dive right in to it so I cleaned for a little bit and after a while started prepping my veggies.

I made roasted sweet potato and beets. I keep trying to roast root vegetables and they never turn out as good as they should, sigh. These turned out edible, but not amazing. I paired them with two little sausages so I would have some protein in there. I’m supposed to eat something from all four food groups every time I ate but I can’t quite seem to manage that yet.

That sweet potato had been sitting on my counter for 2 weeks! I bought it with the intention of eating it but couldn’t bring myself to cook and eat it. Too dangerous. Last time I tried eating one it sat on my counter for so long it sprouted these long stalks and I planted the thing outside to see if I could grow my own sweet potato…fyi, it worked, but only kinda. I had to plant it in a pot and one cutting resulted in 5 sweet potatoes but the pot was too small and the potatoes were tiny. Ah well. I really wanted to not have to do all that again with this one so I’m kinda happy I managed to eat it, even if it didn’t turn out as tasty as I wanted…I should’ve steamed it, it always tastes good done that way.

After I ate that I didn’t eat anything else for the rest of the day. I’m super pissed I ate it because I was up at weigh-in today, I’m sure if I had fasted I wouldn’t have been! Arg. So annoying.

I’m told that eating a “healthy amount on a regular basis” will not have me gaining huge amounts of weight and getting fat but one meal put me up over a pound! It’s hard to believe the counselors when the results of eating are easily seen in the number on the scale. If it is a choice between believing what people tell me or believing the scale I gotta say I lean heavily towards believing the scale, how can I not when it gives me concrete truth?

New Bones

Last week I noticed that the rib bones on the top part of my chest (above my breasts) are more visible. I don’t know when exactly that happened, it isn’t an area I focus on a lot, and I never thought I was fat there before but now that I can clearly see the bones there I wonder how I didn’t notice I had extra fat there.

Was I oblivious?

I think it is more that my collarbones are fairly prominent and I’m more concerned about the extra fat on my abdominal area and thighs. Gotta prioritize ya know?

So yeah…I’ve been losing more weight, yay! and gained new bones, yay! and I have massive amounts of fear that I will screw this up and lose them, boo!

Lose them…like they will fall out of my body or something *rolls eyes* Losing them would be having them once again hidden under dreaded fat. But seriously, why couldn’t the fat have come off other areas first? sigh.

For days after I noticed the new bones I was happy, I wished I had someone to share this new development with but not like there is anybody to tell. So I stayed quiet about it and hugged the news to myself, using it to boost my mood when I started to get a bit down. I also used it as motivation for restricting even more and helping to bolster my will power when tempted to eat.

Pretty fucked up huh?

I didn’t think it was all that noticeable to other people, I generally wear not high neck tops but not low ones either, so the area is covered up for the most part but something odd happened. I went to work and three different managers took time to sit down with me, give me some serious eye contact, and ask if I was ok.

Strange huh?

There is one person who knows a bit of what I go through, she doesn’t understand and keeps telling me to “just eat already!” but someone who knows a little bit is better then not having anybody, I guess…I’m not really sure…but in theory it is better. So yeah, she is a friend at work and I got paranoid that she ratted me out to management but I asked her about it and she swears she didn’t. She thinks they sat me down to talk because my initial weight loss was a “wow, how awesome” kind of thing but has gone too far and is now a “she’s getting too skinny” kind of thing. I don’t believe her, she is definitely exaggerating because I am nowhere near skinny enough to look like someone who anyone should worry about. I still have too much fat on me in too many places. But the timing sure was odd.

My initial happiness about the new chest bones has faded. I’m still happy about them, and I look at them in the mirror every day to make sure they aren’t getting hidden under fat again, but life gets in the way and other things have over ridden the happy emotions I got after first noticing the bones.

A friend died, and I’m not handling it well. I’m binge eating like crazy, which is making me more paranoid about losing the bones, which drives me to take more diet pills and laxatives, which gives me abdominal pain, which leads me to not eat because of the pain, which leads to me feeling too many emotions and stuffing my face to squash the emotions, which starts the cycle up all over again.

It sucks.

I was watching an old tv show on YouTube, it is about teens who go to a ranch for therapy instead of detention. It is from the late 80s or early 90s I think. I’ve been binge watching it and there was an episode where a girl has an eating disorder and also is super athletic and she had a heart attack because of an electrolyte imbalance and being near starved to death…though the actress they cast doesn’t look at all anorexic…but since you can’t always tell from looking at a person maybe that is why they cast her…ok not the point…

It got me wondering thought, about health side effects from eating disorders. I always think that the negative health stuff only happens to anorexics who are super under weight. I’m not gonna have electrolyte issues, or heart attacks, or whatever else might happen because there is still too much fat on me. I haven’t reached that level of danger. But maybe that is wrong? I dunno. I know I get chest pains, and sometimes shortness of breath from activities that shouldn’t cause me to be short of breath, but that is a far cry from actual heart issues.

I should probably ask my case worker at our next meeting but I think it is gonna be bad enough having to admit I started using my pills again. I can’t see a conversation that organically grows from that admission to “can I have heart issues even though I’m still so fat?”. It was bad enough the other week when I hadda talk to her about my self-harm action. *rolls eyes*

Something I don’t get about her, she hasn’t yelled at me yet. I keep waiting for her to get exasperated, or mad, or just plain yell or order me to do or not do something, but she always talks to me in a calm, patient, voice. Its weird.

This post is kinda all over the place. But so is my brain right now so I guess the post is a good reflection of the inside of my head.

I was supposed to work today but I called in sick. I had abdominal pains so it was a legit reason for calling, but during the day I realized I was acting odd…sorta numb, sad, depressed. I wanted to eat everything and anything but I wasn’t hungry, in fact the abdominal pain I had made eating rather unpleasant. I think it is a reaction to finding out about my friend dying…I was told yesterday and lemme tell ya, after I was told, the rest of my day did not go well. I was all over the place emotionally, mostly mad, but with burst of overwhelming sadness thrown in there for good measure. I just couldn’t face people today.

I’m so mad. Mad that he is dead. Mad that I’m going to have to deal with people at work talking about it for the next week. Mad I didn’t get to say goodbye. Mad that I let myself get attached.

Just. Mad.

That anger is driving pretty much everything I am doing right now. It drove me to eat two desserts today that I definitely didn’t need, or even want. It is currently driving me to not eat anything more until tomorrow as punishment for eating the desserts. It is why I keep punching the wall. Why I took my diet pills today, I wanted the stomach pain they would give me.

I feel like I deserve the pain. My inability to control my eating today means I earned pain, and punishment. I feel like I am being torn apart inside and it makes me want to scream that no one who sees me can tell. Is it because people don’t really look at people any longer or because I am that good at hiding what is really going on inside me. Does it matter which reason it is? Not really. The result is the same.

I hurt. I don’t mean the pain from the pills. I mean me, my heart, it hurts. My body hurts from how I treat it, my heart hurts because I was stupid enough to let it get attached to some people and one of them is now dead.

Death. It is so fucking final. I hate that I’ll never hear his voice anymore. I hate that no one will ever call me the nickname he called me. I hate that we’ll never joke around, and I’ll never read anymore stories that he wrote, I hate that we’ll never talk movies or books or stuff happening in the world. I hate that he is gone, and I especially hate that I am so fucking selfish that I keep thinking that his being gone means I am even more alone.

 

 

Pain, Such Pain

Today didn’t start off bad but you know those days you think will go normal but quickly take a downward turn and boom! Food craziness! sigh.

I woke up with a headache, I almost didn’t get up and go out but decided the headache would be with me whether I got up or not so I might as well get up. I had to fill a prescription and the wait time was 2 hours. I wandered the store for a while, it was Costco, but had to leave because I kept thinking about their french fries. By this time I had eaten a protein bar so really, I shouldn’t have needed any food, but Costco french fries make me weak. *rolls eyes*

By the time I was leaving there and going home I felt…weird…I don’t know how else to explain it. I was hungry but not hungry…I had abdominal pain that I couldn’t explain…I wanted to eat but didn’t want any of my safe foods…I wanted to exercise but I was exhausted…oh, and I still had the headache.

All the way home I kept thinking of places I would stop to get food, not just any food but binge food. I have no idea why I was semi-planning a binge. I managed to get home without buying any food but had no idea what to make when I got home. I ended up making a box of macaroni and cheese and inhaled the entire thing. Ugh. Then I had ice cream. Then I had more abdominal pain, still had a headache, I swear my energy levels were even lower, and I still kinda wanted to eat. I wasn’t hungry, I just wanted to eat…

I was supposed to go to practice tonight but I didn’t. I could barely move from my living room chair to the bathroom let alone get ready and take part in 2 hours of intense activity. I promised myself I would go for a run instead, to make it up to myself, but I didn’t. I ended up falling asleep on the living room chair. I have to admit, it was a good nap.

Problem is, I woke up from the nap sooooooo hungry! Like, stomach growling hungry! Wtf?? I had eaten so much before I fell asleep and now my body wants more? Plus! Still having all kinds of abdominal pains. Ugh, the pain is becoming an issue but I don’t know why I have it.

It is an achy, persistent, throughout my entire lower abdominal pain, that I don’t know how to get rid of. 😦

Maybe it is from the cayenne pepper and green tea extracts I took yesterday in an effort to purge the food I ate? Which, fyi, didn’t work. It usually makes everything in my system rev up and it flushes out what I ate (I’m trying to not be too graphic or gross lol) but it didn’t do that…not sure if that means it has stopped working for me and I need to find something else or just increase how much I take?

So now I am more awake than I should be considering I need to go to bed soon, I still have abdominal pain, I still want to eat the other tub of ice cream, and I don’t know what to do. Despite being more awake my energy levels are still low, I think that is because every time I get up the pain becomes even more noticeable, it is making it hard to stand straight…should be an interesting shower…