I tried.

I tried, I really did. It’s a goddamn pandemic; if there’s one time where the size of my thighs shouldn’t matter it’s now. I tried just eating whatever and not weighing myself. I tried to get back into exercise for the purpose of health rather than weight loss. I tried.

But now I’m just fat and miserable instead of (less fat) and miserable. Like I’ve legit gained ten pounds since quarantine started.

So I feel like I need to let ED back in. I need to go back to eating just two meals a day, no snacks, and scheduled exercise. I need to quit drinking during the week, stop eating carbs with reckless abandon, and not let my husband guilt me into eating as much as him. But I really don’t want to start puking again, so it’s super important that I stick with the restriction this time.

Why does this keep getting harder every time? I guess if I just stuck with it I wouldn’t have this issue. Ugh. I’m in my mid-30s and I’m dealing with the same shit – doing the same shit – as when I was 17. What a fucking failure I am.

I miss my ED

My doctor considers me “in recovery” at this point, b/c I’m only purging like once every other month or so. But I don’t feel recovered. In fact, every time I eat something that seems like a good recovery move – like letting myself eat Mac and cheese, or candy, or whatever – I just feel like a complete failure. Part of me feels like I’m failing my ED by giving in. Part of me feels like I’m failing myself by using recovery as an excuse to eat garbage. And then all of me just feels like a blob. I’m afraid to weigh myself but I know I’ve gained again; my fat pants are now fitting just fine and the rest of my pants are far too tight. I miss when starving was easy. Its like the saying goes, “I wish I was as fat as I was the first time I thought I was fat.” I understand that ED messed with my head and made me even more unhealthy than eating crap sometimes now and honestly made me a little bit crazy, but at least my fucking pants fit. I just … I don’t even know what I’m trying to say. Help me.

Blobby

I am such a gross blob. I’m also probably really unhealthy. I skip actual meals but stuff my face with Cheetos and candy. I never ever exercise. And I wonder why my body image is such shit??

I want to change. Obviously I want to lose weight but also I don’t want to end up with like diabetes or something like that. But ED has had me trapped in this binge-restrict-binge cycle for so long that I don’t know any other way of being.

I want to trust that my body will even out and my weight will stay stable bc even tho I won’t be restricting I also won’t be binging. But what if it doesn’t even out until I’ve gained 10-20lbs? Can I accept that as my new normal?? I honestly don’t think so.

But god how much more energy would I have if I was healthy and didn’t spend so much time obsessing about food and calories and weight.

Neverending

Right before class ended (actual class, not finals), I was down to my wedding weight. Now I’m terrified to get on the scale, so I don’t have an exact number, but even my fat pants are too tight so I’ve got to be up 10 lbs.

Luckily the new year starts next week and I go back to class, so hopefully I’ll be able to shed this weight in a month – it’s no longer holiday season so there won’t be that pressure to eat sweets constantly, and I can go back to black coffee for dinner instead of peppermint mocha lattes and all that (delicious) sugary holiday shit.

I wonder if my husband notices? Not that he’d have any right to say anything; he’s gained like 50 lbs in the decade we’ve been together. But does he see my love handles and pouchy belly and jiggly arms and bat wings? I know he’s not into fat chicks, but where does he draw that line? And how thin can I get before he starts to get on my case about eating? God I wish I was a mind-reader.

But anyway, the New Years’ weight loss plan is nothing new. My concern is what happens when the spring semester ends and I’m back home all the time again. Will I just gain it again and be fat until the fall? Will the cycle ever end? Can’t I just find a happy medium and stay there? I honestly feel like I maintained my weight better when I was b/p-ing every day; at least then the net intake was approximately consistent. Now I’m rarely puking (although I did this afternoon, after eating half a sleeve of Girl Scout cookies) but I’m either ingesting 5,000+ calories a day or I’m restricting to 800. This is not sustainable! But when the alternative (daily b/p-ing) is even more harmful, what do I do? I’d rather be sick than fat.

ED is so fucked up.

I’m too old for this shit

After like seven years together, my shrink is moving to St. Louis. She wants me to get set up with someone new before our last appt next month. But I don’t want to. I’ve been doing this shit for half my life, and I am fucking tired of it. I’m so goddamn tired of caring so much about the numbers on the scale and on my pants. I am so goddamn tired of my self esteem being inversely correlated to the number of calories I eat each day. I’ll begrudgingly call my PCP’s office and ask for a referral a few days before I see my shrink for the last time only because I need someone to keep writing my prescriptions. But I don’t want to start over working through my issues. I don’t want to start over trying to be happy when it’s February and I haven’t seen the sun in a week and I’m eating a pint of Ben & Jerry’s for lunch. I just want to be a fucking normal 30 year old. I’m too old for this shit. 

My Confection

Just finished reading this book, which is a memoir by a sugar addict. I binged ALL day. I ate a whole bag of chips, a few handfuls of chocolates, half a bag of gummies, plus breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I’ve taken less than 2000 steps all day. I also haven’t kept ANY of my resolutions from my last post. 

But then I finished the book. I’d been waiting the whole time for the “happily ever after,” where she beats her addiction and everything is perfect. That moment never came. She still struggles, decades later. She still slips up.  But instead of quitting she keeps going. She starts fresh. She doesn’t let one slip ruin everything. And it gets easier. 

I need that mindset. I’m so black-and-white in my thinking, it’s no wonder I never get anywhere in beating this shit. If I’m not totally starving, I’ve failed and might as well just binge on everything. But I can’t starve all the time. Even when AN was my primary dx, I was still the b/p subtype. So all my plans are fundamentally flawed in that I can’t “go back” to a behavior that I never really had. Something needs to change. 

As soon as I finished reading, I threw out the bag of gummies I was binging on. Honestly I’m so nauseated at the moment that I’m not tempted to go fish them out of the trash (which I’ve totally done, even with things that aren’t in a package 😔), but I’ll put the cat’s litter on top just in case. 

Perhaps it’s time to start cutting sugar out completely. I know I’m an addict; I’ll probably never be able to eat in moderation. But goddamnit I still want to try. So my new plan is to focus on quality. Before eating I need to ask myself if I really want it; if it’s really worth the calories. If I do, I’ll take a portioned-out serving. 

Is this mindful eating? Who knows. All I know is my period has stopped, despite being on the pill (not pregnant, thank god), which is clearly a sign that I’m doing something wrong. I guess the body doesn’t want to reproduce while subsisting in a diet of pure sugar and alcohol. 
Maybe taking my health more seriously will be helpful. Maybe I can at least pretend to give a shit about myself for once. Maybe focusing on health will let my weight go down on its own. Now, to find a new location for my alarm clock. 

Pink Elephant.

I somehow managed to stop focusing on weight and food and exercise and calories for a couple weeks – I was working overtime and think I was just too busy to think about it – and, lo and behold, I got back to 122. But then of course I started thinking about it more and worrying about maintaining that and wishing I could keep going and now I’m right back to obsessing about food and eating junk all the time and I’m afraid when I get on the scale again I’ll be back up five pounds. And like I wish I could just go back to that mindset from a couple weeks ago, but of course it’s like the pink elephant – when you try not to think about it, it’s the first thing to come to mind. Sigh.