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.

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*

When I’m Tired

When I’m tired I make bad choices. Bad choices in every area of my life. At the time I am so tired I can’t bring myself to care, I am numb from exhaustion but afterwards, when I am pumped up on caffeine or had some sleep I care, I care a whole hell of a lot.

Right now I am on the upswing from taking in caffeine and carbs and sugar and I am pissed at myself.

I was tired all day today, I felt like I was moving through syrup, every action was harder than it should be. After work I went hiking with a friend and thought I was going to die when we were going up the inclines. How can one hill be so freakin long? Demonic path.

On the way home I was thinking about what, if anything, I would eat for dinner. There is nothing in my apartment I want to eat. Either I am unhappy with the calories, or the protein to carb ratio, or I’m just not feeling it. So I started wondering if there was something I could pick up on the way home, there aren’t many safe take-out options left for me but there are a couple (mostly sushi with no rice). Because I was thinking about food from outside my apartment my brain leapt to all sorts of things, like McDonald’s, pizza, cheesecake…things I can’t eat but wish I could.

When I got home I changed in to comfy clothes and basically collapsed on to my bed. I would have fallen asleep except I was freezing cold and the cat kept patting my face and meowing at me. Once I dragged myself off the bed I was working on auto pilot and made a stupid, stupid, stuuuuuupid decision…I ordered take-out. Not even something I can vaguely justify as mildly healthy either, sigh. I ordered bread sticks and the chocolate chip cookie from Pizza Hut.

Fuck.

Even as I hit the checkout button on the website I felt remorse. I sat there, rocking back and forth, instantly regretting the purchase, knowing if I had waited, maybe drunk some water to fill my stomach, maybe let myself fall asleep, maybe distract myself from my hunger by reading or watching a movie or well, anything other than ordering food, I would never have made this food choice. I couldn’t go back and change what I did so I sat, waiting for the food delivery, knowing I was about to eat super bad for me food, in ridiculous quantities, because that is apparently what I do when super tired. sigh.

Now I’m sitting here feeling oh so full, still exhausted but no way I’ll sleep for a while because my tummy is full of bread sticks and chocolate chip cookie.

All my super strict calorie restricting so I would make a good impression at the upcoming meeting about the adult ed program down the drain…I’m useless.

Bad Choices

Lately I feel like all I do is make bad food choices. Ugh.

Yesterdays oh so awesome bad food choice? Well, there were a lot of them but the worst one was when I ate 4 freakin huuuuge cinnamon buns drenched in icing. That was around 10:30 pm. What a way to end the day!

The other bad food choices I made yesterday include food from Tim Horton’s and food from Subway.

To make things even worse I only got 2 hours of exercise yesterday.

So basically I ingested a million calories and burned practically none.

No wonder I’m so fat. sigh.

Yesterday is just a sampling of what kind of boneheaded decisions I’ve been making. There have been others. They have been just as bad. Possibly worse…depending how you rate these things.

I keep telling myself I will do better and then I get this overwhelming urge to binge and instead of figuring out how to resist that urge I cave.

I start to hate myself right from the moment I know I won’t be able to resist the urge to binge. The self-hatred intensifies while I get the food ready, sky rockets while I am eating and as soon as the last bite is swallowed the hate and the guilt settle in to my stomach, with all that food, leaving me full not only with all the food I just ate but with all sorts of negative feelings and thoughts about myself.

I would cry if I was a crier. I would purge if I was a purger. I would cut if I was a cutter.

I would do anything possible to release how I feel from my body during and after a binge but I don’t know how to escape, how to step out of myself and no longer have to feel like that. So instead I wallow in it, I sit and I watch tv or a movie or YouTube and I get overwhelmed by the physical discomfort of all that food in me. I get overwhelmed by all the emotions swirling around inside of me.

Why can’t we purge emotions? How great would that be!

Then eventually I go to sleep with the hope I won’t repeat what I just went through again. I sleep to escape everything I just did and to avoid having to feel all that food in my stomach. As I drift off to sleep I tell myself tomorrow will be better, tomorrow I won’t binge, tomorrow I will go to the gym, or for a run, or to a fitness class, anything that will get me active so I can burn all those calories I just ate.

Even though thinking of the exercise I will do tomorrow comforts me a part of me knows it probably won’t happen, and that I will most likely binge again, if not tomorrow than the day after. Knowing that makes me want to never wake up. Makes me want to be a different person. Makes me wonder how the hell “normal” people don’t get so messed up with food. All that wondering has me despairing of ever getting out of this cycle.