on the rooftops I remember there was snow
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except apparently our harsh winter hasn't ended and it snowed again today. YAY. well not really, particularly not when my fingers are about to drop off. I think I'm beginning to understand how healthy people feel the cold. yes, the most horrible chill inside my body is gone now that I seem to have an internal combustion engine on the whole time, but my toes and fingers are still very vulnerable in this weather!
I'm sitting in the front room while my housemate bakes brownies in the kitchen - I just had a prawn/veggie/udon noodle stir fry for dinner. we were actually planning on going out (to ASK...2 for 1 main meal vouchers at the minute) but I managed to scupper our plans! half an hour before we were meant to leave I was having nasty stabbing pains in my stomach, so I went to lie down briefly. and yeah, you've guessed it, fell asleep! and of course my housemate is far too nice and considerate to wake me up :) we've decided to go tomorrow though so all is well, I am seriously looking forward to it! downside is that now I somehow have 300 calories to make up. ah well, I'm sure there's a bar of chocolate in my cupboard somewhere!
I had my weekly appointment today and it amazed me how well it went and how productive I felt like the conversation was. previously I've felt really let down by the feeling that I was being told that maintaining a very low weight was ok and there wasn't really much hope. but, surprise surprise, now that I'm feeling better and more able to express my feelings, I've been able to get across that that doesn't help me at all. also I think demonstrating my ability to change BEFORE asking to be treated as a 'recovery patient' was a really good move ;). actually I also managed to put on a tiny bit of weight since yesterday (or last week who knows cause my scales are very inaccurate) which is awesome.
some of the things we talked about did confuse me and leave me with a lot to think about. I'm working on enhanced CBT, which involves making goals to try every week. I was asked what I thought would be a good 'challenge' for this week and actually was a bit stumped, since I'm not restricting at all and doing the best I can not to purge with quite a lot of success. my therapist asked me if there were any challenges which I would balk at and feel 'unable' to complete. at the moment, behaviourally, I couldn't come up with one. going out to eat or eating particular foods would be ok (well, within reason, I'm not about to eat offal or brussels sprouts etc. no need for self torture here!) increasing what I'm eating would also be ok, if I need to, now that you guys helped me out in relaxing about that possibility. however, all this is not a testament to me being perfect or anything. my biggest sticking point and fear has always been the weight aspect. of course this failed in the 'challenge' context, cause as I said, he couldn't exactly ask me to come back next week at a healthy weight or anything! after talking about my fears about this though, he suggested something interesting and/or confusing to me. basically, that we could aim for me to get to a certain weight first (he said bmi 15, but not set in stone) then stop, re-evaluate, and push my weight up in small increments as I build my ability to cope with it.
ok, so I don't know what to think about this. I've heard of people doing 'stepped recovery' like this before and it actually working, so I'm not dismissing it out of hand with the same skepticism that I would have for harm reduction for example. however. while I can see the logic, in some ways it goes against my intuition. we discussed (and I agreed) that being at a healthy weight is probably my most entrenched eating disordered fear. forgive me for going on about this cause I know it might seem obnoxious, but I was underweight before I got ill and have never been healthy weight wise in my life. not a boast or a 'woe is me recovery is sooo hard for me', but it does have a huge effect on my thinking. I can push myself to eat, say, a chocolate bar or a meal out at a restaurant and KNOW, even though I'm afraid, that it actually won't destroy me, because I've done it before and heck, I'm still here! the anxiety didn't kill me. it was all distorted. my irrational fears about weight restoration have a huge basis in the idea that I just won't cope and the anxiety will totally crush me, and I have no empirical evidence to disprove that idea. now my instant reaction to this is 'but you KNOW that in other people's reality, that won't happen, even if you can't see that as your reality just yet'...and that says to me that I just need to stop talking about how terrifying it is and do it, then this barrier will be overcome once and for all. at the same time I feel like my therapist is obviously experienced (and I trust him a lot more after the last few sessions where I feel he's really understood me) and his concerns about me not coping and relapsing if I push too fast are valid (well, it's happened a lot of times before :P). the trouble is that while a lot of fears can take a long time to dissipate in recovery, the fact that the weight thing is the one I feel so paralysed and incapable about kind of screws me over, cause in a sense it's the most important to get done relatively quickly! if I were terrified of eating in public, I could take that slowly within reason. but I don't know that appeasing this ridiculous fear by taking 'breaks' in weight restoration sits right with me. at the same time I don't know if I AM being overconfident! I'm definitely going to address this more in next week's session. and in any case, I told him that me gaining weight is utterly non negotiable in my head until I get to a bmi in the 15s, which gives me some time to think about it. has anyone else heard of this approach? or generally has an opinion on it?
ah also, because I want a picture to make this prettier, here's some of my stash from shopping yesterday! I took it cause it makes me feel like a 'real' blogger, hehe.
Eat Natural almond and apricot bars (how do I like these when I hate almonds and dried apricots? life is a mystery...), coconut bar, 9 bar, Nakd raisins! the raisins are my favourite, currently obsessed with eating them with Grape Nuts cereal and banana sliced into Greek yogurt. I swear Greek yogurt is like my biggest debt to blogging! ok no that'd be shallow :P
I'm sitting in the front room while my housemate bakes brownies in the kitchen - I just had a prawn/veggie/udon noodle stir fry for dinner. we were actually planning on going out (to ASK...2 for 1 main meal vouchers at the minute) but I managed to scupper our plans! half an hour before we were meant to leave I was having nasty stabbing pains in my stomach, so I went to lie down briefly. and yeah, you've guessed it, fell asleep! and of course my housemate is far too nice and considerate to wake me up :) we've decided to go tomorrow though so all is well, I am seriously looking forward to it! downside is that now I somehow have 300 calories to make up. ah well, I'm sure there's a bar of chocolate in my cupboard somewhere!
I had my weekly appointment today and it amazed me how well it went and how productive I felt like the conversation was. previously I've felt really let down by the feeling that I was being told that maintaining a very low weight was ok and there wasn't really much hope. but, surprise surprise, now that I'm feeling better and more able to express my feelings, I've been able to get across that that doesn't help me at all. also I think demonstrating my ability to change BEFORE asking to be treated as a 'recovery patient' was a really good move ;). actually I also managed to put on a tiny bit of weight since yesterday (or last week who knows cause my scales are very inaccurate) which is awesome.
some of the things we talked about did confuse me and leave me with a lot to think about. I'm working on enhanced CBT, which involves making goals to try every week. I was asked what I thought would be a good 'challenge' for this week and actually was a bit stumped, since I'm not restricting at all and doing the best I can not to purge with quite a lot of success. my therapist asked me if there were any challenges which I would balk at and feel 'unable' to complete. at the moment, behaviourally, I couldn't come up with one. going out to eat or eating particular foods would be ok (well, within reason, I'm not about to eat offal or brussels sprouts etc. no need for self torture here!) increasing what I'm eating would also be ok, if I need to, now that you guys helped me out in relaxing about that possibility. however, all this is not a testament to me being perfect or anything. my biggest sticking point and fear has always been the weight aspect. of course this failed in the 'challenge' context, cause as I said, he couldn't exactly ask me to come back next week at a healthy weight or anything! after talking about my fears about this though, he suggested something interesting and/or confusing to me. basically, that we could aim for me to get to a certain weight first (he said bmi 15, but not set in stone) then stop, re-evaluate, and push my weight up in small increments as I build my ability to cope with it.
ok, so I don't know what to think about this. I've heard of people doing 'stepped recovery' like this before and it actually working, so I'm not dismissing it out of hand with the same skepticism that I would have for harm reduction for example. however. while I can see the logic, in some ways it goes against my intuition. we discussed (and I agreed) that being at a healthy weight is probably my most entrenched eating disordered fear. forgive me for going on about this cause I know it might seem obnoxious, but I was underweight before I got ill and have never been healthy weight wise in my life. not a boast or a 'woe is me recovery is sooo hard for me', but it does have a huge effect on my thinking. I can push myself to eat, say, a chocolate bar or a meal out at a restaurant and KNOW, even though I'm afraid, that it actually won't destroy me, because I've done it before and heck, I'm still here! the anxiety didn't kill me. it was all distorted. my irrational fears about weight restoration have a huge basis in the idea that I just won't cope and the anxiety will totally crush me, and I have no empirical evidence to disprove that idea. now my instant reaction to this is 'but you KNOW that in other people's reality, that won't happen, even if you can't see that as your reality just yet'...and that says to me that I just need to stop talking about how terrifying it is and do it, then this barrier will be overcome once and for all. at the same time I feel like my therapist is obviously experienced (and I trust him a lot more after the last few sessions where I feel he's really understood me) and his concerns about me not coping and relapsing if I push too fast are valid (well, it's happened a lot of times before :P). the trouble is that while a lot of fears can take a long time to dissipate in recovery, the fact that the weight thing is the one I feel so paralysed and incapable about kind of screws me over, cause in a sense it's the most important to get done relatively quickly! if I were terrified of eating in public, I could take that slowly within reason. but I don't know that appeasing this ridiculous fear by taking 'breaks' in weight restoration sits right with me. at the same time I don't know if I AM being overconfident! I'm definitely going to address this more in next week's session. and in any case, I told him that me gaining weight is utterly non negotiable in my head until I get to a bmi in the 15s, which gives me some time to think about it. has anyone else heard of this approach? or generally has an opinion on it?
ah also, because I want a picture to make this prettier, here's some of my stash from shopping yesterday! I took it cause it makes me feel like a 'real' blogger, hehe.
Eat Natural almond and apricot bars (how do I like these when I hate almonds and dried apricots? life is a mystery...), coconut bar, 9 bar, Nakd raisins! the raisins are my favourite, currently obsessed with eating them with Grape Nuts cereal and banana sliced into Greek yogurt. I swear Greek yogurt is like my biggest debt to blogging! ok no that'd be shallow :P
5 comments:
Love all those bars! The coconut bar crumbled on overnight oats with sliced banana and fruit yog is delish..
As for everything it sounds like you're keeping a really good attitude and doing everything right. I'm not sure its helpful to think too far ahead and scare yourself. I've never heard of that approach to weight gain before, the stepped thing but it sounds like it might work to me? I can totally relate to your situation too- now I can deal with most food-related situations, eating with people, at restaurants etc. but it's just the weight thing. I've had a bmi of around 15 for quite a while now- like over a year and yes it's gone down a bit occasionally but I've always managed to get it back up, it's just moving on from here seems impossible. I've never had a much higher weight before either so it all seems v.unknown and the thought of being at a higher weight provoking a full on relapse is pretty terrrifying.
Sooo, what I meant to say was maybe taking weight gain from then onwards slowly so you can get used to it would be good for you (and me!) in avoiding a relapse.
For the time being I wouldn't worry about it, just keep doing what you're doing and know that it is definitely the right thing.
Love xooxoxox
I still think you are doing brilliantly :-)
What you describe sounds pretty good to me...from my limited experience it's often good not to think too much about the end goal too early on. I found it really helpful in the early stages to just focus on getting to bmi 15 (ironically my original plans were to self discharge at this weight!) and I never would have imagined accepting being at 19.9. No way. I'm so glad I did though, as I have a friend (who has had ED most of her life) who recently got discharged at 15 who is going downhill again.
So yes, I think it's good to not freak yourself out yet...but just to reassure you, where I am at the moment, my thinking and ability to do stuff has never been better. Once you get used to being here, it's actually kind of ok.
But I'll shut up about that...for now!
Really admire what you are doing, and I think alot of people will be inspired by reading about it.
Sarah x
Maybe you could do a pros and cons list? Therapists love that sort of business :P I can think of arguments for either side. I think most people with eating disorders would be able to think of pros so on the cons side, first of all, sometimes I think stopping on your way up can make it harder rather than easier to recover, because you can start thinking you're fine at whatever weight and don't need to continue. Maintaining messes with peoples heads, there's a lot of potential for relapse while someone is moving from gaining to maintaining so doing it repeatedly might be risky. Secondly, people with eating disorders rarely feel ready to weigh more! If you went by your ability to cope, your brain wouldn't be biologically capable of NOT being eating disordered at a BMI of 15 or 16, so you might end up with the worst of both worlds - being unable to accept further weight gain but partly due to your low weight. I think often it's a case of gain weight first, accept it later. Thirdly, everyone with an eating disorder freaks out when they get to healthier weights, there are biological reasons for this (Carrie and her serotonin :P ), I worry that taking this approach might make it seem like if you DO have problems you need to go slower and slower and slower, when it's actually unavoidable, something you just have to sit through. Or maybe you might start thinking that you can't recover because you've done it in this safer way and you're still feeling crappy, when that wouldn't be the case at all - it's just part of the process.
I'm being devil's advocate :P I remember the last couple of times that you were closer to a healthy weight and how difficult things felt, so I wouldn't want to rubbish this idea because different things work for different people. But it seems like an idea which would intuitively appeal to people with eating disorders, perhaps not for the right reasons, so I thought I would argue the case for the other side. I can come back and list three or four reasons why it might be a great idea if you want :P but it's really important to think about all the possible consequences.
Essaaaay. I should be doing physics, I'm procrastinating!
I was every bit as overjoyed to see the return of the snow as you were :P More's meant to be on the way this evening so I'd park yourself next to a radiator if possible!
I'm so proud of you for voicing your concerns instead of internalising them or somehow feeling ashamed to express yourself. It's not unusual for the weight gain itself to be the primary and/or only fear...it's not on the same level I know, but my OCD behaviours in relation to food are so much easier to deal with when I have 'leeway' in my head so to speak, but the instant that the result of breaking the behaviours appears (i.e weight gain) things become much harder to deal with. I don't know if I can add much to the fantastic advice you've already been given but perhaps it might be wise to take a step back from your confident + stable state at the moment (which is great!) and remember how hard it is when the going gets tough. We both have a black/white mentality and it seems that this might be coming through a bit here, as in 'all/nothing recovery.' Doing the weight gain in stages might seem like copping out or a failure to you because you excel at everything and want to do so here, which is understandable. But I just worry that if things happen too quickly then this year might be a repeat of the last one, and staged weight gain might give your body/mind time to adjust...but as Katie said, on the other hand it might be an excuse to 'stall' and stay in the grip of ED. However, you're not the type of person to make excuses for anything (example: you're not moaning! Being underweight for your entire life DOES make recovery harder but that doesn't mean it's impossible) and I just wonder if it might be good to do this as a means of not dealing in absolutes all the time?
Anyway, I've waffled on quite enough for one comment. Whatever decision you make, I am sure it will be the right one :)
*hugs*
~Jess~
Ugh the snow has made it back here to, I hate the stuff!
Its really good to read how your taking such a positive approach to recovery. There is quite a difference to how you were posting a few weeks ago, ie talking about trying to make up for 300 cals. Thats great to hear your making such an effort, well done :-)
Hmm I can see your point about taking the weight gain in stages, it might help to ease your mind a bit instead of fearing that you have to get to a certain higher number. I used to set myself a little weight goal and say once I get there I can stop if I want but I always had a second goal after that planned and usually I found once I reached the first I kept going anyway.
The only downside to it is like Katie said it can end up being a stumbling block. I kinda got to a certain weight and then got stuck and ended up maintaining and now its pretty difficult to get past. When the goings good you might be best to keep going?
Katie also gave a good idea about the pros and cons list, you might actually be surprised at the result of that if you try it, my pros list was pretty short!
I think your doing a great job so far!
xox
Laura
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