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Almost 2 months - People’s comments, life with an ED, period

So, I forgot my tumblr password and have not posted for almost a month. It’s not a problem because nobody reads this, but I actually tried logging in to “vent” multiple times and couldn’t so... yeah! Anyway, we are here now :) Let’s make some bullet points for updates: - Next week it’ll be 2 months since I had a normal meal. I am still doing ok, although I have been feeling bad occasionally. Those days are hard and scary, but of course I got through them and it’s too easy to forget and think you can just go on forever.  - I did go for blood work because the “bad days” have been happening progressively more often, and I have my follow-up appointment to see the results next week. I expect them to be not too great, but obviously they are not an acute emergency or they would have asked me to go in earlier.  - I lost my period, this second month. Not surprising because I also lost my period when I had an ED in the past, nor does it bother me because, well, I think I have worse problems to worry about. - People have overwhelmingly started commenting on my weight loss. I know most of them noticed my weight loss already a month ago, and some people even spent whole days with me and saw me not eating at all. I guess now the change is perhaps too striking not to say anything. I never know how to react and I am surprised to find that some people don’t even quite know what they are trying to say. They will just come up to me and tell me I have lost a lot of weight, in this undefined tone to which I can only answer “Yeah, I guess”. It honestly makes me sad when someone comments, because it reminds me of what I am stuck in - but a part of me is gratified (the disordered one, I believe) and a part of me is glad that some people, with time, eventually do say something, even though it’s very little and completely ineffective. - Living life is just harder overall. Everything tires me a lot; shampooing my hair, doing the stairs, studying (which I have to do restlessly now since I am going through finals). Hanging out with people is a lot harder, because it involves food a lot of the time. Last week it was my boyfriend’s birthday and it was just the hardest day of the week. I had to plan extensively just to mentally get through it - eating as little as possible (so much that I actually under ate by a long shot that day).

To conclude this post, my goal is to reach a sustainable level of nutrition and it has been for at least 2/3 weeks, but I am still far from it. I am now eating around 850-900 calories a day, but 2-3 days a week I am anywhere between 750 and 0 (yeah, fasting still happens). So we’ll see! I am hoping to improve.  Hugs to any readers, “see” you next post!

[earth-born]

[earth-born]

ph. Cameron Davis

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Almost a month - Disclaimers and Body changes (the complete truth)

I have not posted in a while and I would like to, but I have not “planned” something specific to write about, so I think I will make this post a mix of disclaimers and body changes. 

The disclaimers first: if anyone is reading this and my blog, please do not think that I encourage or support eating disorders. I do not wish this to anyone and it is truly the hardest thing I have been through. I know how bad this is for me and it is not something I promote in any way. It is just something I am stuck with, and it will reflect in my personal posts and things I reblog. Again, it does not mean I support it (I don’t).

Now the body changes: some of these won’t be nice to read. In two days it will be a month since I have had a “normal” meal. In this month, I have had no binges, and I have never eaten more than 600 calories in any day. I have never been so stuck in restricting, so the body changes I have noticed have been very new to me:

1. Of course, I have lost weight. I don’t know exactly how much, but around 15lbs. The doubts on the exact number come from the fact that I had already started losing weight before the heavy restriction set in. When I came back from my trip home in January, I weighed around 175lbs. Last time I weighed myself (2 days ago) I was 148lbs. Of these 27lbs, I believe 15 were lost during this past month. 

2. My nails are more fragile. They will break right in the middle, the tips don’t last very long without breaking (I often break them just lifting a normal box of something), and overall they are a lot “softer” (very flexible and thin at the touch).

3. No poop. I have gone once in the whole month, and it was awful; very painful and very exhausting, mostly water. 

4. Heavy breathing. Some days I feel this a lot, others not very much. My breathing will be a lot heavier, deeper, slower, and overall just feels like it takes more effort.

5. Chest discomfort. This happens quite often, it is usually not pain but rather pressure and heaviness. 

6. My heart rate is still quite normal; the lower it has been in the month is around 50bpm when relaxed. (It used to be 70-75 pre-ED)

7. Sticky mouth/Weird breath. Very often my mouth will feel “sticky”, like somehow my saliva has gotten thicker (I totally don’t know if that is even a thing, I am just trying to describe the feeling). The taste of my mouth is different as well, but I don’t know how to describe it, it is just what I would call “weird”.

8. Achy. I get achy very easily, just from doing the stairs that bring me home, or walking a little more than usual, or doing any sort of lifting. 

9. Really cold. All the time. Not only I will feel cold, but my body will get cold; including face, chest, everything. I have been waking up at night from being too cold, so I have had to sleep with a heater pointed at me for the past 2 weeks.

10. Sleepy. I feel tired a lot. I get sleepy several times during the day, and at night never very late.

There are at least a couple more things that I could mention, but I think these are the main changes and, well, they suck. So, in fact, I hope that if you are reading this and you are struggling, you realize that this is really not good for you and you should never, ever consider this as something that is ok or manageable. It is not. 

I will write again soon! Hugs to any readers.

[earth-born]

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How my ED came to be

This title is funny because it is almost as if I am talking about a human coming to life. I know some therapists will humanize eating disorders as a part of disassociating oneself from the disordered behaviours, but I don’t do that with myself (at least not intentionally). 

I think someone may say that I feel the eating disorder is just another part of me because I have not learnt to see it for what it is - and you might be right. 

In my defense I can say that I strongly believe my eating disorder is just another self-destructive behaviour in a long list of self-destructive behaviours I had during my life (and maybe the one that will end up doing the most damage long-term).

So, I do think it’s just part of me. Just another manifestation of whatever stupid subconscious suffering keeps invading my conscious life every now and then.

                                               ---------

Now, onto the “story”. 

In May 2015 I went to visit my family in Europe (I moved to Canada on my own when I was 18). I have never been skinny, but when I came back in early June I felt I had gain some extra weight on top of being already full figured. 

I made up my mind that I wanted to be healthy and fit and stop eating too much bad quality food as well as too much in general. My boyfriend at the time who knew a lot more about nutrition than me suggested a variety of books on healthier ways of eating; I read those and a few I found on my own.

So I changed my diet, and it was then somewhat similar to paleo/primal. After only a month, I started distorting everything - I cut out more and more carbs from my diet, avoided sweets and started logging everything I ate.

It got obsessive very quickly. By September, I was counting every calorie and measuring everything, weighing all my meals with a kitchen scale, and restricting to a certain calorie limit. I would weigh myself almost every day. I would think about food all the time and I started being terrified of social situations involving food. 

I lost my period in August. By November I had lost 20lbs. I hit my lowest weight of 143lbs in late March of 2016 (30lbs lower than my regular weight I weighed as long as I can remember).

The loss was steady at first, but became erratic soon enough because I started binging regularly. At first it was once a month, then twice, then once a week. When it became impossible for me to control my binges whatsoever I went to therapy - I felt helpless and I felt miserable and I was gaining weight from the binges only to fall back into restricting, but not enough to get back into losing weight. 

I will write about therapy separately because I think it deserves its own discussion. I guess I was eventually considered recovered because I gained all my weight back and I got my period back during the summer of 2016. I stopped going to therapy in September. My binges never stopped throughout this period and I reached my highest weight ever at 185lbs at some point during the summer.

In October (2016) I started controlling myself more. I only started slightly restricting again in late November 2016, but I went to visit my family again in December, and again I relived the same experience of gaining extra weight during the trip.

When I came back in January 2017 I weighed around 175lbs - my usual life-old weight. I relapsed into heavy restriction almost instantly when I was back, with occasional binges. This time, there was an extra motivation that sucked me back into full-blown ED - another topic I will write about separately.

We are now in March 2017 and I am experiencing the longest period of restriction so far. For almost 3 weeks, I have not binged or eaten a normal meal once. As of today I weight about 150lbs. 

There are so many things that go through my mind when I write the “end of the story” up to today, but I don’t want to touch on too many things in one post.

I just wanted to give an overview of what my ED has looked like from beginning to now, which is really not the end, but rather “during”.

This post was a little more uncomfortable to write than the first one, but I think I need to continue writing about this and maybe it will take me somewhere. 

So yeah, this is post #2. I will write again soon! Hugs to any readers.

[earth-born]

Somewhere I can think for a second

I opened this blog three years ago and it is funny to see that now because that was the “before”. I guess now is the “after”, and I wiped everything out to write on a clean “slate”. 

What exactly has happened? 

I ask myself that all of a sudden sometimes. I can never quite explain.

As much as I would never admit this out loud, I got sick. I have an eating disorder. It has been two years now and it has been the hardest thing of my life. I read what I just wrote and want to delete it. Something in my head tells me to shut up (i.e. not write those words). Even if I write them, they do not explain what has happened. It is barely a symptom, I believe, and it doesn’t provide answers. I need a place to write because I don’t talk about it - who would want to? and to who? - and it just feels lonely.  I am afraid to write about it, because my words, as anyone’s, can be twisted. On the other hand, no one may ever read this. I think they are both equally scary scenarios. 

But this is the best I can do, because anything more terrifies me; change terrifies me, getting real help terrifies me, people knowing and pitying me and trying to help absolutely terrifies me. 

So here I am, post #1. Good luck to me (the part of me who still cares enough to write). Hugs to any readers.