oats are back!
17:06 Edit This 9 Comments »
before I get on to the confused mess that was today - I think I actually ate a ridiculously 'typical' thing for a blogger just now :P
I gave in and bought gluten free porridge today, despite the extortionate price tag, cause this mix has only 0.7g fibre per serving, and I have seriously resented not being able to eat porridge recently! I have to say, it wasn't as good as regular porridge, but I prefer it to rice flakes. and my randomly inspired topping tasted damn amazing...
frozen cherries (another fairly low fibre discovery! fruit, I missed you) and cream cheese 'icing', basically mixed up with a tsp of Cadburys drinking chocolate. sounds weird, tastes great! if I really wanted to fit in I would call it chocolate cherry cheesecake oats ;) but let's just say that, being an odd one out again, I've eaten cheesecake many many (too many?) times in the last few years and it doesn't exactly taste the same. still really good though. and far cheaper, lol.
(added a sidenote - there are numbers in the following rant, feel free to skip!)
as for the confused mess - I am starting to remember (one of) the reasons my weight restoration efforts have tended to slow down and reverse themselves in the past. I'm noticing a huge change recently in the way my body and mind function and feel. a good one! but really pretty triggering. in the simplest possible way: I'm starting to feel far less hungry. that's misleading though, I don't mean hungry in the stomach rumbling physical way. I wouldn't pay any attention to that anyway cause my stomach is so damn screwed up! what I'm referring to is the more subtle physiological manifestations of starvation. I'm sure lots of you reading this will have experience of this - the anxiety around food, inflexibility, physical signs, clock watching. beyond that I experience it just as a FEELING...an extremely uncomfortable one at that, like a psychological gnat biting you! generally although I'm unaware of physical hunger when I'm ill, it is fairly obvious that there's a war going on - my body is screaming for nutrition and I am brutally ignoring it. what is confusing me now is that I'm not feeling that anymore, it's dropping away scarily fast. and I remember this happening over and over again during the period where I 'managed' my ED in my late teens. I bounced between a bmi of 14 and 17 thereabouts for a couple of years, and I'd try to gain then run out of steam and feel like I was ok when I got close to the higher end. even when I am eating a pretty high intake, if I'm at a lower weight the mental & physical awareness of being starved doesn't go away. but I am noticing it changing a lot now, which fits as I'm in the low 16s bmi wise.
sooo, as for why this is a bad thing?? ok, it isn't actually at all. but I've spent all day driven to absolute frustration with the spiral of thoughts that I'm obviously just 'greedy' for trying to gain more when I feel like my body is saying 'stop'. coupled with the fact that I've been getting periods for quite awhile, the 'obvious' (or totally deluded :P) conclusion for me is that I don't have 'permission' to gain more because I probably just have a weird body. of course all the stuff about menstruation being related to body fat percentage doesn't help either. I've always heard and thought that the body should 'settle' and hunger should decrease when you are close to a normal weight, so I'm really just questioning what the $%£$ my body thinks it's doing...I pretty much 'want' to still feel hungry? very strange...
before I go any further...the whole thing rings HUGE alarm bells for me and as such I am being stubborn and eating exactly the same way I have been, despite a distinct feeling of meal times rushing up on me incredibly fast and being bored of eating. for the moment I'm totally capable of continuing to gain purely on the premise that it's not going to hurt anyone :P and even if I were healthy, remaining underweight would hurt psychologically. plus I think I'll look better with another 20lbs, lol. but I'm still an obsessive crazy person who really needs answers rather than generic assurances. I really want to know what's going on with my body, because every sensible part of my brain is telling me that the odds of me being healthy at this bmi or a bit higher are absolutely miniscule given that I'm 20 and Caucasian. there must be some other odd explanation, I would just really love to know what so I could beat my ED over the head with facts. is it actually possible for your body to 'adapt' to anorexia, hence why I've had periods at lower and lower weights etc? do I just not know what 'healthy' really feels like? heh, I am probably going to research this like crazy and find nothing now. hopefully I will find a way to either rationalise it or just ignore it soon though...in terms of not thinking about it, not just ignoring the thoughts which I am already doing ;)
I gave in and bought gluten free porridge today, despite the extortionate price tag, cause this mix has only 0.7g fibre per serving, and I have seriously resented not being able to eat porridge recently! I have to say, it wasn't as good as regular porridge, but I prefer it to rice flakes. and my randomly inspired topping tasted damn amazing...
frozen cherries (another fairly low fibre discovery! fruit, I missed you) and cream cheese 'icing', basically mixed up with a tsp of Cadburys drinking chocolate. sounds weird, tastes great! if I really wanted to fit in I would call it chocolate cherry cheesecake oats ;) but let's just say that, being an odd one out again, I've eaten cheesecake many many (too many?) times in the last few years and it doesn't exactly taste the same. still really good though. and far cheaper, lol.
(added a sidenote - there are numbers in the following rant, feel free to skip!)
as for the confused mess - I am starting to remember (one of) the reasons my weight restoration efforts have tended to slow down and reverse themselves in the past. I'm noticing a huge change recently in the way my body and mind function and feel. a good one! but really pretty triggering. in the simplest possible way: I'm starting to feel far less hungry. that's misleading though, I don't mean hungry in the stomach rumbling physical way. I wouldn't pay any attention to that anyway cause my stomach is so damn screwed up! what I'm referring to is the more subtle physiological manifestations of starvation. I'm sure lots of you reading this will have experience of this - the anxiety around food, inflexibility, physical signs, clock watching. beyond that I experience it just as a FEELING...an extremely uncomfortable one at that, like a psychological gnat biting you! generally although I'm unaware of physical hunger when I'm ill, it is fairly obvious that there's a war going on - my body is screaming for nutrition and I am brutally ignoring it. what is confusing me now is that I'm not feeling that anymore, it's dropping away scarily fast. and I remember this happening over and over again during the period where I 'managed' my ED in my late teens. I bounced between a bmi of 14 and 17 thereabouts for a couple of years, and I'd try to gain then run out of steam and feel like I was ok when I got close to the higher end. even when I am eating a pretty high intake, if I'm at a lower weight the mental & physical awareness of being starved doesn't go away. but I am noticing it changing a lot now, which fits as I'm in the low 16s bmi wise.
sooo, as for why this is a bad thing?? ok, it isn't actually at all. but I've spent all day driven to absolute frustration with the spiral of thoughts that I'm obviously just 'greedy' for trying to gain more when I feel like my body is saying 'stop'. coupled with the fact that I've been getting periods for quite awhile, the 'obvious' (or totally deluded :P) conclusion for me is that I don't have 'permission' to gain more because I probably just have a weird body. of course all the stuff about menstruation being related to body fat percentage doesn't help either. I've always heard and thought that the body should 'settle' and hunger should decrease when you are close to a normal weight, so I'm really just questioning what the $%£$ my body thinks it's doing...I pretty much 'want' to still feel hungry? very strange...
before I go any further...the whole thing rings HUGE alarm bells for me and as such I am being stubborn and eating exactly the same way I have been, despite a distinct feeling of meal times rushing up on me incredibly fast and being bored of eating. for the moment I'm totally capable of continuing to gain purely on the premise that it's not going to hurt anyone :P and even if I were healthy, remaining underweight would hurt psychologically. plus I think I'll look better with another 20lbs, lol. but I'm still an obsessive crazy person who really needs answers rather than generic assurances. I really want to know what's going on with my body, because every sensible part of my brain is telling me that the odds of me being healthy at this bmi or a bit higher are absolutely miniscule given that I'm 20 and Caucasian. there must be some other odd explanation, I would just really love to know what so I could beat my ED over the head with facts. is it actually possible for your body to 'adapt' to anorexia, hence why I've had periods at lower and lower weights etc? do I just not know what 'healthy' really feels like? heh, I am probably going to research this like crazy and find nothing now. hopefully I will find a way to either rationalise it or just ignore it soon though...in terms of not thinking about it, not just ignoring the thoughts which I am already doing ;)
9 comments:
I think about the same things (errr, obsess, rather! lol) I got my period the day after I was admitted to IP back in March! Quite the mind fuckery going on there, really. It's so easy to fall into all those unhealthy thoughts and justify them with even unhealthier things. I don't have any answers for you at the moment, I just hope we can both combat this will healthy, rational thoughts! It won't do us a bit of good to fall backwards (been there before, anyway, right?)
Your oats look really nice, btw - I need to start experimenting with different toppings as I'm getting bored with the same plain oatmeal I eat every day. Might as well make this 'keep down food' thing fun!
<3
I think it's possible that you're reading signs into the way your body is feeling that aren't there; seeing what you want too see, as it were. Obviously I can't advise from a point of view whereby I've been in a similar situation, but perhaps you're just feeling more comfortable around food psychologically so the anxiety and clock-watching are lessening. Those are behaviours that have previously defined 'you', behaviours which seem secure because they're familiar and your ED is attempting to force you to cling to them by rationalising them with a physical explanation, i.e your body not needing to gain any more weight. Isn't it more likely that those signs of starvation are disappearing because your mind is better nourished (being that the brain is predominantly fat I'd imagine it's probably the first thing to recover with quite a few calories being directed there as well as the vital organs?), not because the rest of your body is healthy? It needs to 'catch up, perhaps? And periods may be linked to BF percentage but there are so many cases of people still having them even at a 14 BMI that I don't think it's concrete: everybody's body is different.
I hope this didn't sound too presumptuous and I wish I could give better advice! I just really, really want things to work out for you this time because you're such a bright, talented girl (err...woman?) with bags of potential and it would be a travesty to see you lose more years to your ED.
*hugs*
xoxox
^^ you may well be right ;) and yes, I've had my period at bmi 14. why does my blog not have emoticons so I can used a 'hmmph' one? I don't know that I am suddenly 'better nourished' now though, I've gained 26lbs, and I was eating more than I am now at the beginning. so maybe it's just mental progress and nothing to do with my body? ahh confused. thank you for the thoughts, it helps :)
Bodies are crazy things... I can't figure mine out either. I kind of know what you mean about not being "hungry," albeit not in a physical sense -- it's not that I want to eat seventeen thousand calories, it's just that I want to know that theoretically, were I so inclined, I could, and not blow up. It's weird, and unfortunate, because the closer to a "healthy weight," the less you actually need, so ... yeah, that part kind of sucks.
As for getting your period at a low weight, I'm not currently getting mine, but I have had it at a lower weight before. Freakish things happen; it doesn't mean that I should have said, Oh, yay, I'm getting my period, I don't have to gain weight, because that would have been ridiculous. Some things just can't be explained.
And cherries in oats? Must try.
<3 <3
I am intrigued by your gluten free porridge :P gluten free oats have 11g fibre per 100g so it can't be them...rice and buckwheat flakes? Rice and millet? I've never really experimented with other types, rice flakes are cheaper and they work for me ;)
I actually didn't notice when I stopped obsessing about food. I did last time - I noticed every tiny difference in my body and my mind and tried to analyse it all. I think sometimes you just have to try not to over think things. Lots of people get their periods at low weights - you wouldn't tell any of them that their set point must be a BMI of 14/15/16 etc, right? Do you really NEED answers? I mean, you might want them but sometimes you can't have them :P eating disorders are mental illnesses, not making sense is kind of essential! You have to stop expecting this to all be logical, because it just isn't. With some things thinking about them will only tie you in knots, you just need to stick to your original plan and stop second guessing yourself.
I can't wait for Tuesday :D
^^ lol. no I don't NEED answers, you're right...and as for other people, yeah I tell them it's just illogical and they need to get to a healthy weight, obviously! but, secret, that's cause I want my friends to be happy not cause I have a blind clue in hell what's going on with their bodies. come onnnnn, you're like the fact queen, you really telling me you wouldn't have a niggling desire for some facts if it were your body? :P
the porridge is rice/buckwheat, I just checked! it really really didn't agree with my stomach though, although I have no idea why...so if you want some? ;)
x
LOL yeah I'm the fact queen! :P and yes, I also hate being a medical mystery. But there are some things you can't intellectualise your way out of, you just have to work with what you do have and try and accept that sometimes things are going to be left hanging. It's not the wanting answers I was questionning anyway, it's the fact that you seem to be still...I don't know, letting yourself believe that there's some truth in the eating disordered thought processes. I don't know if this is coming out right! What I meant was that sometimes it's more effective to just tell yourself that those sort of thoughts are there because of the illness, and that all the logic in the world isn't going to make them make sense. For some reason I feel like this reply is going to make you pissed off with me :P am I just being irrational because I've confused myself? Possibly!
lol it doesn't annoy me! I might have been unclear though...there's no way I believe any of the actual conclusions I would like to draw are true ;)
obviously I believe that I do get my periods and I do apparently feel like my body has stopped running in crazy circles screaming 'FEEEED MEEE!'...but what I was having problems with is I refused to believe the distorted explanation, so I wanted a REAL explanation to make it easier. because using facts to help you out is a lot easier that doing things 'because you know you should but you don't know why'.
maybe I made that clearer, maybe I didn't :P lol
Hey hun, just super quick thoughts - yes your body does "adapt" to long term anorexia... but it does so by way of things like, gastroperesis! The body is pretty smart and it will do all it can to keep you alive and it can take ages to help correct it and let it give up its ways of looking after you. So adapt yes, but adapt in a "good healthy" way, nope. Keep going! You can do it... (although I read yr next post and wow, it really does look like this is just NOT your week!) *hugs*
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