running up that hill

I really need to stop blogging late at night, I'm so tired! I always get paranoid that I write incoherently at this time too! Still, I've been out all day so this time I have an excuse :)

Have been in Brighton with some friends...first check out my pictures, I made sure to take a lot for you guys!



lunch at a ridiculously cheap & cheerful Chinese which we used to go to when we were at school. plastic plates/cups and all! mine is king prawn stir fry with ho fun noodles (basically flat rice noodles). tasted amazing and thankfully didn't bother my stomach too badly considering the probable fat content. I love going back to visit places I spent a lot of time in with friends, always good memories!



some graffiti in the Lanes (shopping area) which I thought would make a good photo.



soy lattes are happy :)

going out to London tomorrow too, this week is turning out to be pretty busy and pretty expensive! at the moment I am pretty much planning to start showing fiscal resonsibility when I get to uni...oh well. hanging around with my friends a lot is giving me more confidence for moving out...I seem to do SO much better when around other people, not just behaviourally but mentally too. I feel more stable and happy, and my thoughts are far less distorted. I actually got annoyed today cause I really wanted to buy a dress but when I tried it on the fact that it showed too much of my arms/shoulders meant that I looked stupid & like I needed to add half a stone to look vaguely decent. totally bizarre experience! when I'm alone I tend to be totally accustomed to the way I look, and now, with half my weight restoration done, I would generally tend towards thinking I should be done already.

slightly annoying thing playing on my mind - I got a letter from the local ED team saying they've called me to try and arrange appointments and I haven't answered...probably since I missed my last one then was in Yorkshire away from my home phone and with crap mobile signal. anyway. I am so sorely tempted not to bother going in until my final review the week before I move out. this rings alarm bells, I don't know whether it's a bad idea because last time I stopped contact with them it ended in total chaos! but I can't see myself getting anything out of it - my appointments consist of being told to eat 2000 calories a day (and I often eat a bit more than this b/c I am hungry since I stopped killing my stomach with fibre and can actually feel hunger! and THAT obviously makes me feel like crap when I'm being told to eat less lol) and being told that purging is ineffective (arghhhhh). so the question is, am I reluctant to make one or two more appointments before I go to uni because of the useless nature of them, or because I am being stubborn and have the attitude that I'm doing good behaviourally recently (eating well, not b/ping) and my weight is at a more reasonable level now so I don't think I 'need' them? I have to admit, I am also pretty AWFUL about being weighed when I'm not emaciated or very close to it. I tend to refuse flat out at times and it really bothers me because I have enough trouble seeing higher numbers myself when I am 'in control' of the situation, but being weighed by someone else is even more difficult for me because I don't have a choice about it and I don't seem to be able to 'psych myself up' in the same way. now that I think about it this is probably another big reason I don't want to go in. but I'm not sure if that's something that needs to be worked through or not. I mean, being weighed by a random person you don't really trust or like isn't part of normal life I need to adjust to right? argh. I am confusing myself now, I should go to bed :)

I slept for about 5 hours in a seriously uncomfortable bed last night, so bear with me if this is a really nonsensical post! I was at my friend's 21st birthday, and about four days ago I realised that driving home at three in the morning might be a really awful idea (and I wouldn't have been able to drink!) so I managed to locate a guesthouse on LateRooms. despite costing £50 I probably don't have it was well worthwhile - I had an amazing time :) I went to boarding school from age 14 to 18 and one of the best legacies has been the friendships we all made. from my earlier day school I only stay in contact with one person, and only because we've always been ridiculously close. she also stays in contact with only one person besides me. boarding school friends are a different story though - we grew up together, lived together, know every little irritating detail about each other! although a lot of people are in other countries now whenever I meet up with anyone it's just like no time has passed. honestly I feel incredibly grateful for this cause it's made the two years I've spent at home due to my eating disorder much easier to bear. I'm meeting up with some friends on Friday for a night out and I'm already excited ;)

the reasons I went to boarding school are slightly more depressing though - I remember very clearly coming up with the idea myself and asking my parents if I could move after my first hospitalisation age 14. that was after I had taken two potentially fatal overdoses within a couple of months, not because of my eating disorder although it was around that time that I began to deliberately control my weight too. I had been spiralling into a brutal episode of depression for about a year prior and my immediate reaction was dangerous and impulsive self destruction. in the hospital though, I was told that depression at my age was 'impossible' and accurate or not, my perception of the 'teams' view was that I was a spoiled child who needed to get over it. I'd been pretty underweight since forever, mainly due to ridiculous food 'preferences' which meant I ate about five things rather than actual design. faced with a profound sense of shame and a need to function and appear normal if no one would believe me though, it suddenly became very attractive to continue to hold my weight low by restricting, so I never gained anything through my teen years and in fact went on to fall lower on several occasions. obviously as I got older my weight was probably falling further below what should have been 'normal', and the restricting became more intense - but I was happy. I didn't have to fight against the crushing depression I didn't understand which had me sitting in my room in the dark for hours at 13, staring into space.

nowadays my beliefs have shifted to some extend and I understand that anorexia isn't a comfortable alternative to any other mental illness. despite that, reactions of family & doctors and just general stigma over the years have done nothing but cement the idea that low weight = feeling of capability, people who will try to understand, no guilt, much easier to access treatment. I almost want to stop writing here because it feels like every logical progression of thought leads to a reason to stay ill. I have to say though, last night reminded me of the non-logical, slightly intangible motivations which counteract that. as the years have passed and I've stayed ill, and recently become more so, it seems like I'm pushed further and further away from my true personality and what I enjoy. remaining underweight undoubtedly numbs you, quietens you in social situations, turns you into a shell of yourself. it might work on the most negative emotions but you can't pick and choose. and especially for me - this isn't who I am! being a multi impulsive (bulimic!) anorexic I suppose I probably have a combination of personality traits associated with anorexia and bulimia. I am a perfectionist, obsessive and stubborn as hell, but I'm also loud, disorganised and chaotic. or at least I think I am - when I'm very ill I hardly know! one of my strangest memories from being in hospital is that in the first few weeks I was so dulled and not myself because of my weight & starvation that I acquiesced to almost anything, told doctors what they wanted to hear, didn't complain...in the weekly 'community meetings' I was deadly silent! towards the end of my stay when I was a bit healthier though, I was one of a few who would be brash and assertive/confrontational (whichever you want to call it!). in a ridiculous twist, the main function of my illness seems to have backfired and turned me into a totally different person. I'm actually slightly excited to see if I get 'myself' back some more as my weight goes up!

moving back to the here & now, my week has been alright, mainly thanks to a couple of meetups with friends already mentioned! food has been a bit of a struggle though and it's really starting to hit me just how many deeply held beliefs I have to change. it was just a few days ago that I realised my dietitian's instruction to 'eat every three hours' was not an order that I should not, under any circumstances, eat before three hours have passed! sounds stupid, but my whole adolescence has been spent constructing a belief set about food and weight which was designed to keep me restricting and keep me underweight. it's frustrating that changing it has to go bit by bit and I can't just erase it all at once! I went through several periods when I was ill when I wouldn't let myself eat unless five or six hours had passed, so turning this on its head and saying 'don't go too LONG without food' is bizarre. it mirrors a day soon after I was discharged from hospital when I realised it was 'ok' to drink at a non specified 'meal/snack' time. I seem to turn around every instruction I'm given about my diet and convince myself that it's an attempt to keep me from eating too much and gaining too much weight. I wish I could just 'make the commitment' to gaining weight/recovery and this would all fall into place, but at the moment it seems as though I have to keep questioning myself every day to slowly erase the things I'm doing which are motivated by the eating disorder.

since that was a long/heavy post (and my fingers are hurting!) I'm going to leave it there - but here's a quick picture of a lunch I had out in London...I will never get sick of sushi!



we also had red bean bubble tea without the bubbles (don't get me started on how much I hate the texture of those things!)...perfect meal :)

haven't had this breakfast in ages. ok obviously it includes soymilk and a banana, what is with me and photographing incomplete food preparation! Frosties really make me laugh cause I always think of IP - when we ran out of cornflakes there would literally be absolute mutiny on the ward and people would go to any lengths to ensure they got bran flakes as the 'alternative' instead of Frosties. me? I was absolutely terrified of how much pain I'd be in if I had to start my day with a bowl of bran flakes and even resorted to going and pleading my cases with the nurses setting up breakfast the night before so I could get the Frosties everyone else was so afraid of!

in any case, I am obviously a child at heart cause I went shopping this morning and bought the new Munch Bunch half and half strawberry/vanilla fromage frais. YES they are kid's yogurts. no I don't care. I bought quite a few new things, within the constraints of my diet...including blackcurrant jam (I stood in front of the section for five minutes trying to figure out what I LIKE, but suceeded!), oyster/thai basil stir fry sauce and udon noodles. the noodles are made with wheat flour but I hope the fibre count is low enough that I will be ok with them once in a while. I'm actually planning on spending some time later today trying to think of some more recipes/meals I can eat so I don't get stuck in a rut.

I want to apologise for my freaking out in the last couple of posts. reading so much obvious and blatant 'anorexia talk' makes me feel a little ill today. if I'm honest it was probably a precursor to yesterday as I felt worse than I have in a very, very long time. this is one thing which frustrates me about recovery - so many professionals have told me that I 'just have to conquer the fear' and 'weight gain won't be as bad as expected'. to be honest, I usually find that it is as bad, and worse until I've pushed through it. it's not a logical thought process of 'I weigh X so I can't cope/life is terrible'...more that I have held my weight at a low level and derived emotional stability from this for so long that the 'feeling' of being at a higher weight or not feeling 'starved' has very negative associations for me and I start to become unstable very quickly. for example yesterday I was driving home, and for about 50 miles down the M1 I was crying and hyperventilating so much that I could barely breathe and I got scared that I couldn't drive safely so I had to pull over. no rational trigger or anything like that...but obviously once I feel like that my immediate reaction is 'anything to make this stop...must lose weight'. for the next 12 hours I was still in such a state that I had to force food into my mouth through tears and while using all available willpower to prevent myself scratching at my hands/face with anxiety. it wasn't a matter of 'wanting to give in to my ED' but at the time I honestly thought 'I can't do this' and as though recovery was probably more of a hazard to my health than anything else! I'm a bit better today...I think going to sleep gave me a break funnily enough! I'm trying to just keep breathing and remember that this will end.

starting with breakfast: Fage, Coco Rocks and Fruit Flakes yogurt raisins...yum! actually I'm cheating as this is yesterday's breakfast, today my brother ate my LAST banana before I got up so I had to have 1.5 cups of cereal instead. fail. holidaying with family is such a minefield! they tend to not bring ANY food thinking they'll eat out, then realise that having breakfast out every morning just isn't feasible. in this one aspect I'm more organised than them!

have been struggling a bit and really up and down today (oh fuck I said I hate the word struggling in my last post. oh well.) I seem to go from happy, upbeat and positive about the future to terrified in the course of an hour. when I am not ill there are so many questions - what am I doing with my life? where is this degree taking me? am I actually still vaguely intelligent or did I starve all my brain cells away? will I be ok fitting in with my year at uni when my dropping out means I'm living with a bunch of third years? this almost makes me long for the days when all I worried about was where my food was coming from! key word almost, I think I've walked round enough supermarkets in a starvation induced daze for one lifetime.

don't know if it's related (it probably IS!) but I feel almost totally convinced today that I'm at my first target weight already. reality check Fi - gaining 8lbs in three days is almost certainly NOT possible! I've been looking at facebook pictures of myself at my highest weight for the last half hour. probably a bad idea. I wish I could look at them and think I looked better, happier. but I really don't. I look awkward (I felt it!), uncomfortable (I was), out of touch with my own body (yes!) and to top it all off my face looks totally swollen and you would never believe I was only just over a bmi of 18. ridiculous eating disorder talk really as I can look at the friends next to me at even healthier weights and think they look great. it's NOT a vanity thing. I feel vulnerable writing this thinking 'seriously? you sound like you're just worried about how you look!'...but it's like I said...it's the way I come over in those pictures and how I remember I FELT, more than anything. I know how quickly I always relapsed after those pics were taken, and I know why. learning to deal even at my initial goal weight will be hard, I've never maintained that for more than six months either (I was underweight before my ED), but getting to where I was in those pictures and higher? I believe now that I will. I don't want to just do 'harm reduction but at a higher weight'...let's be honest if that was the goal I'd rather stay as low as possible! but thinking about all of this makes me want to cry. ok I am crying (shut up, I become a human fountain while refeeding. you should have seen me in IP. EVERY meal I tell you! lol). and I feel vulnerable as hell because why should this matter? I never admit that I care about my weight in 'real life'. it's always 'accidental'...I never make an effort, didn't you know!

another probable cause of my random terror - went over to our rented place near uni today, and found a letter addressed to me from the local hospital. asking me to an 'initial assessment' appointment on the 5th October. apparently my GP referred me, so I can get some more support when I'm up there. just the thought of having to explain to a random stranger about everything scares the living daylights out of me. but 1000 times more so when I remember that I WILL (yes, I still will :P) have gained another 8lbs by the time I go to it. I know I will still be fairly underweight, but I don't look it at that point, not after having gained such a lot, especially not to 'normal' people who only notice when you look like a skull! so what, I will have to actually use my words and explain how yes, I was a total wreck at the beginning of this year, that I've come from a place where I was extremely ill, that I am simply 'doing' better now...I am still not ok. I already feel like a fraud talking about the details of my illness NOW when I'm not so grossly emaciated anymore. no doubt this appointment will having me fighting like crazy with thoughts that I am attention seeking and they will secretly write down 'who does she think she's kidding?!'

I want to bash my head into a wall reading this post. I just wish I was more stable mentally and it's incredibly difficult not to pretend that I AM, and write about fun 'normal' things. I definitely could, there is other stuff which goes on in my life, but at the end of the day when I'm alone, this is still there. and it will still be there for months or years to come.

today I am joining you from Askrigg, a tiny village in the middle of nowhere where my parents are on holiday...aka the Yorkshire Dales :) can't believe there's internet here actually! the place they're renting is SO cute, check this out...



cute fireplace.



blogging location complete with laptops ;) these sofas are so deep it's practically impossible to get up once you're sitting on one!

I've been driving up here most of today so I have nothing much interesting to report. random fact about me though - I love driving so much I almost think I was meant to be born a boy. it's one of my healthiest stress relief tools - get in the car and just drive with the radio on loud and preferably the windows down if the weather allows! I get confused when most people seem to dread long drives, I love them! plenty of time to relax, but with something to concentrate on and keep me focussed. another good reason I could never be chronically anorexic for years - if I kept going in and out of hospital I'd also inevitably keep losing my driving licence cause of my weight! huge fail. I miss driving even if I go on holiday and don't use my car for a few weeks...no idea why, it's just one of those things!

anyway, I was pretty tired today actually. I think I had to stop about four times in the end? here's a pic from one of my breaks!



Costa coffee frescato, and my dashboard :)
the frescato was good, never had one before. I am beginning to realise though that altering my diet is forcing me to really challenge myself with ED'd thoughts. I was GOING to write that I was really struggling with it but I decided to put a positive spin instead, since 'struggling' can so often mean 'lieing down and letting my ED trample over me', at least when I say it ;)
anyway, this is odd because I never was one to worry about nutrition, even when I was a solely restrictive anorexic, but it's probably because the changes I'm making to my diet are quite extreme. I keep having paranoid thoughts about how much sugar I'm eating/drinking now, and how little actual nutrition I'm getting. It has helped a little to read up online about dietary recommendations when you have delayed gastric emptying, as so often the message is 'any calorie is a good calorie if you can digest it without pain'...which is something I know I need to remember. and I AM much happier now. but it seems very overwhelming for someone with an ED to have to live on refined carbs, with NO whole grains and hardly any fruit or veg. even now I'm still wondering if people will look at me and think 'wow she eats rubbish!', or worse, encourage me and secretly think 'I would never in a million years touch that kind of diet'. yes I am a paranoid person, lol.
on the bright side, I HAVE learned that some 'ideas' about food I really believed in are totally false. for example, that liquids do not fill you up. if I weren't drinking caloric liquids right now I'd be on a maintenance diet, maybe even less. but I'm not hungry, anxious, obsessive or anything else associated with eating too little for my needs. I think I probably do just absorb ideas from a culture of 'healthy eating' which is associated with weight loss too easily. I'm also surprised at how full I feel considered the low amount of volume I'm eating. not in a bad way, just a 'I can tell this is a weight gain diet' way! it's very reassuring to realise that my body knows how MUCH I'm eating, and that it is enough, despite it being things which have a reputation for being 'empty' calories and not satisfying. my body works!

so now I will leave you as I'm watching Teachers and catching up on various online rubbish! thought I was tired but apparently the lure of time wasting is waking me up...

I am SHATTERED tonight and have to get up at some kind of reasonable hour to drive up to where my parents are on holiday tomorrow, so this will be short. it's my dad's 50th and we have a birthday dinner booked on Thursday, plus I seem to have been roped into taking my brother to (yet another!) theme park! still, I don't really mind ;)

today was a review with my psychiatrist in the morning. among other things, another weigh in, which I hadn't anticipated! anyway, after having stalled then increased what I was eating, I was up another pound :) bizarrely, the smiley is justified - I didn't have a freakout moment, I actually smiled! I'm now 20.5lbs above my lowest weight, and I haven't been here in nearly a year, hovering just below on several occasions because this weight was a sort of 'limit' I set myself. of course, it was a limit in more ways than one. I used to hang onto the fact that I wasn't 'prevented' from studying, socialising etc at a low weight, but I think I'm starting to believe that I might actually be happier when I am healthier. there is a sense of panic there too - I am gaining now beyond what I did in hospital when I was sectionable. I am choosing to. which is partially really empowering but I have to admit there is a huge fear there of the unknown, and of 'hiding' the trauma (yes I feel justified in calling my last relapse trauma, I can't even believe now how horrifying it felt :P) I went through. even though I wasn't at my lowest these past few months I still felt like it was 'visible' before because I was obviously making a 'sacrifice' to maintain a higher weight. now...ah I don't know. it makes me nervous how strange I might feel in a more healthy body, with the memories of the low points I've been at. it's scary that I don't know what's changing - if I was that crazy, how can I be doing so well now? how does that work? do people really change?

lol the title of this post was originally 'just a quick one' cause I was tired...then I went and turned that paragraph into a ramble! oh well :)

some pictures to brighten this post up are in order!



I went out shopping randomly after my appointment and needed something to munch on to supplement my liquid (frappuccino :D) snack. enter ice cream chewits. normally I hate sweets but these were reduced to 69p for five packs and I had to try! I think I must just hate fruit flavour sweets cause they were brilliant!



of course, I am incapable of window shopping without picking up something, so I bought these purple trackies from TKMaxx. most comfortable thing ever...you may have figured out by now that I love comfy clothes. also, I'm not good at this self photography thing, all our mirrors are tiny and awful, so I had to resort to this method instead!



tonight's snack (and probably a favourite to be enjoyed for awhile, I am addicted!)...toast with light Philadelphia (cream cheese) and set honey. obv the other slice did get honey in the end, I photographed halfway! this was so yum. I'm sure I can find more good combos like this on my new diet if I think about it enough!

back tomorrow probably as I'll be babysitting my brother and bored. apparently there is internet in Yorkshire so I won't have to go through withdrawal!

apologies for previous depressing post ;) and for not updating yesterday!

however, for once in my life I had a seriously good Monday! of course Mondays have no meaning when you don't work, but nevermind! I did a lot of thinking over the weekend and realised that I really need to be sticking to the dietary recommendations which are supposed to help my digestion problems, rather than just 'bearing them in mind'. the whole thing started when I was an inpatient earlier this year, when I obviously had no choice at all over what I was eating and was on 3000 calories a day...a lot of the time I was in excruciating pain and also went through the fun of involuntary vomiting and other nasty symptoms I will save you from hearing! in any case, my situation was quite difficult because obviously a lot of anorexic inpatients will go to any lengths to avoid eating, and I guess my doctors didn't know whether to believe me or not. I was told that it could be delayed gastric emptying or gastroparesis, and prescribed Metoclopramide/Reglan, which I still take. but no changes could be made to my diet, despite that delayed gastric emptying is significantly helped by a diet low in fibre, volume and solid fats.

the bizarre thing is that when I got out, I didn't actually adust my diet accordingly. I did cut down on vegetables, the biggest source of volume/fibre, but to some degree I think I was in denial that my eating disorder could have had such a drastic effect on me. I definitely also had an underlying resentment and feeling that 'if I have to limit WHAT I eat so much, why bother eating?'

so anyway, today I decided I have to get over this. I'm never going to gain the weight unless I work with my body. so I went shopping! and I have to admit...it was a highly depressing experience. no whole grains? no peanut butter, avocadoes, butter? how do you get the calories in? well I'm happy to say I think I'm managing it, although it's bizarre to be drinking so many caloric liquids (hello convenient incentive to squash ED fear!). this morning I was emptying the dishwasher after eating breakfast and I suddenly realised that I wasn't in pain. sounds simple...but it was priceless. honestly I nearly cried. obviously I still feel a little bit full and uncomfortable, but that comes with the territory when refeeding ;) it's also good to know that it wasn't 'my eating disorder speaking' or 'just normal discomfort'...because I can tell now that THIS is more bearable rather than excruciating.

I'll show you some of my new discoveries for Fi-friendly sources of nutrition :)



have I ever mentioned my hatred for milk? probably. anyway, soymilk and flavoured milk are bizarrely enough totally ok, so I went for strawberry vanilla cause it was 2 for 1!



more fun stuff...milk, apple/mango juice, Coco Pops, black bean rice crackers, chilli rice crackers, chicken slices, Extra Light Philadelphia, prawns, ciabatta roll

if anyone has any interesting ideas for low-fibre low-fat foods (it's such a stupid combo!) please let me know! I'm just working this all out for myself.

another happy thought today: I definitely have a lot more energy when I'm not struggling to digest things which don't agree with my body. I'm not tired at all for the first time in ages. hopefully I won't have to restrict my diet like this forever, but for the moment I just can't believe I didn't do it earlier to be honest. I also increased my calories as planned and it's all been rather easy. (lol, now I'm worrying about jinxing myself!)

I'm going to be home alone for another couple of days until Wednesday, then off for my dad's birthday dinner in Yorkshire. what do you guys do when you're home alone? somehow I'm more bored than when there are people around, even though it's only my parents and my eight year old brother so we don't exactly have interests in common! I'm tempted to just go window shopping tomorrow to be honest...it's like my standard boredom killer!