False alarm!

No cavities! Just stain from all the tea I drink. Which is another issue. (I rather overdue the tea partly because it's a diuretic)

Back to my writing

I've decided to go back to my recovery book again

It seems a little hypocritical since I recently experienced failure again, but right now I can use the book myself!

So organizing it, rereading it, using my own strategies that I wrote before. I am my own test case right now. I am taking out things that now don't seem right, that I can see I wrote from a perspective that was too shallow, not accurate, and not broad enough to capture enough different experiences.

Maybe I am intellectualizing again, but I like to think I am regaining my strength and my sense of self and purpose again through this effort that is so important to me. My recovery has been a source of pride for me. My relapses each have been brief, and each have allowed me to see "one more thing" that I needed to work on. There are so many pieces of the puzzle that one has to be able to work on with these conditions. I think until each puzzle piece is in place- you can not prevent relapse, otherwise you are still vulnerable- whether it is by psychology or physiology.

Wanting my reality

I have spent a lot of time thinking about the nature of reality lately.

How is it possible for someone to think they are recovered but not be.

I was not in active denial, or even passive denial. I believed I was in recovery. I believed I had active coping strategies. I knew I didn't feel as good, or was as strong or as healthy as I wanted to be. But I believed I was in recovery.

I came up with a list of things related to "reality" and related to "nonreality". This represents my beginning of a sorting process for this. These are underlying "unhealthy thoughts" or "fallacies"that still affect my thinking at this stage of my recovery.

Fallacy: I can choose whether or not to be hungry
Truth: Internal off-on switches do not really exist
When I am not living in the world of reality, I seem to believe that I can turn off hunger by choice, similar to turning on and off feelings by choice. This continues to represent suppression. Turning off hunger, choosing to deny food as part of my life as a recovery process, choosing to deny certain feelings also as part of a recovery process, continue to represent suppression and stall the recovery process.

Fallacy: To feel good about myself I just need to be "well heeled"
Truth: Physical appearance does not complete a person
My use of retail therapy, using men to make me feel good, the eternal pursuit for the right hair color and hairstyle, (etc). While believing these were ways to build my self-esteem in ways that were unrelated to weight, and in ways that would allow me to see myself as beautiful, in many ways continue to place undue emphasis on the role of physical appearance in my life. When I can not achieve the perfection I want, it still leaves me feeling empty and frustrated. In fact, one day last week, I spent all day in one of my husband's oversized t-shirts and my favorite velour loose pants and it was the most relaxing and self-nourishing days I had spent in a long time. It just felt good.


Fallacy: To recover, my body has to be within a target weight or other kind of "fitness"/ size goal
Truth: I need to learn to trust my body and accept it where it is
I have repeatedly traded in one body project for another. While having goals for weight and exercise can be achieved by people without eating disorders, I can not. I have allowed myself to hang onto this fallacy- and basically-- have a body project-- and basically have a mini (less devastating) version of the eating disorder (body image disorder at least). To truly walk away, I must first accept where my body is now and today. I must have no more body projects. I must have spiritual and mind and emotional projects.

Fallacy: To recover, I need a certain amount of emotional support and lack of stress in my life
Truth: I need nothing but myself to recover
This journey began alone in a bathroom 23 years ago. I do not need to have conditions surrounding me to stay healthy. When I am scared about life, relationships, feeling threatened or vulnerable, this is not an acceptable place to run. In fact, it is those times I need to be healthiest and strongest.

Change is stressful

The food plan is really stressful. It is challenging the restrictions I have placed on myself for so long that create a perception of safety and control for myself.

The thought of eating more to maintain (or even lose) weight is absurd.

Eating more carbs when I have been Atkins brainwashed is very hard.

The thought that I don't have to avoid certain foods, but can choose from any foods is so loose I feel unstable.

The thought of intentionally consuming fat at each meal is really pushing me.

Additionally, I decided to try adding the cardio. Everytime I have added cardio into my exercise routine I have always fallen into restriction and purging. This is very frightening to me. With the cardio, I know my appetite will return. And then I will eat, and then I will perceive that I am binging. I just have to tell myself that the food plan accounts for this and follow the food plan.

I have been doing very well for most of the day. By dinner time I am feeling very stuffed though and not able to keep up with the plan. But, overall I think this is positive. I think that means I am meeting my needs better. My energy is improved too. I have been gardening nonstop! I left work early on Friday to work in the yard because I had the bug. I don't feel the need for as much sleep or caffeine to get through the day. I believe the added carbs in my diet is making a nice difference. Also the regularity of the blood sugars must be making a difference. when I tracked my food intake for her, it was sheer chaos. No rhyme or reason except for breakfast which only makes sense because, it's when you wake up and that's a fairly well established time!

Maybe

just maybe....

I'm not fat.

So, I've been working with a nutritionist for about a week now. And had my second appointment today. She did not want me to set losing any weight as a goal. Not because of the trigger potential, but because she actually felt my figure and my weight were proportionate and healthy. She actually used the phrase "pretty slim" and "strong". She said she can tell I've worked hard on my body lately. And I'm struck. Maybe, I really am where I'm supposed to be. Maybe this lifelong fight to be somebody else, well, maybe it is rather silly.

So, I have to eat more though according to her and I need to eat regularly. Both tall orders. As she is saying this, in the back of my head I'm thinking- you are the enemy. But, I suppresed that voice repeatedly through the appointment. I have to eat more carbs, more fat at certain times of day, and lose my fear of cardio. That will be interesting to see. My recovery has been based on giving up cardio and cutting my calories and enjoyable foods out of my diet. The analogy I shared with her is I feel like I created a Kansas world of food and need to be able to live in technicolor again.

My recovery has been based on living in a very black and white blah world of food. Because if I eat food that is plain, then I won't overeat it. And if I don't overeat, I won't purge. It has worked for a long long time. And I have so many ingrained tricks for appetite suppression that I really noticed this week from recording my hunger patterns. I can fairly instantly go from peaking hunger- to "deciding" I'm not hungry. But this is wearing on me. And it wears on my family. I don't cook nearly as much as I should. Lately we have taken to eating out just because I hate cooking so much. They love it when I try new recipes, and I love it too. They love the smells coming from the kitchen and the table covered with dishes.

I really was thinking this week about my exercise patterns in recovery. I avoid it a lot of the time- fearfully. Cardio increases my appetite, and I have never been able to start an exercise plan without "supplementing" it with starvation and purging. Which usually leads to injury, hair loss, heartbeat irregularities, lots of bad stuff. I have done more damage through exercise bulimia than anything else.

She has left my exercise plan up to me, but is encouraging the cardio. I have two eating options. One for maintainance if I try cardio, one for maintainance if I don't do cardio (I already burn alot by walking, cycling and lifting, but don't do high cardio). If my knees continue to hurt and I want to try and lose ten pounds, she has a plan for that too.

The different Amy's

It's so strange how little a part of my life this is- yet how completely a part of my life it is.

Eating is one of the basic core functions of our survival. It effects all aspects of our being: sleeping, activity, thinking. When we alter our food consumption we alter our capacity to function. At some level, it is a white noise that I carry inside of me, in the back of my mind all day. At times, when I suffer most, it screams. At times it can still control me and I want to throw it off me. But rarely do I think of it as defining me anymore. Most of the time, these days, it is not screaming, it just sort of lives it's quiet shadow existence inside of me.

I am a highly functioning professional, ambitious, engaged. I feed my children, I feel as though I am a good mother. I love my husband and our marriage continues to grow towards something stronger. I have a fulfilling social life. I have largely conquered the emotional demons of the disorder from my childhood. I have read the books, and done the talk therapy. I feel rounded and complete. This me is puzzled by the eating disordered me. This me is puzzled by the relapses. And yet this me allows the eating disordered me a certain amount of leash to exist still. This me seems to have bartered and negotiated an existence with the other me.

I do not think this is real recovery. I think this is a truce. A poorly negotiated truce.

another consequence

I found another cavity. This time by the gumline.

It has to stop.

I'm kidding myself to think that this isn't a consequence of my behavior. I tell myself that an occasional relapse is no worse than if you get the flu a few times a year (oh, 5, 6, 15, 20, 25 times).

The aging bulimic.

Disgusting.