Losing Weight

I really want to lose weight but I'm terrified of where it takes me, of how it affects my thinking. The fact of the matter is that I only want to lose about half a stone. The reality is that I don't know how to do it without becoming all disordered. It makes me think that I should have learnt the tools somewhere to adjust my weight without slipping into some kind of confused hell that makes me obsessive and frantic about food input vs exercise output.

I obviously don't want to diet, can't do that but then how do I lose weight? I'm still trying to manage the dangerous pendulum of exercise. I want a tiny portion of the discipline that I had back when I was anorexic but without the actual illness. I don't want to remain as sedentary as I have done over the past year as it doesn't make me feel good at all.

I have a feeling that I may be slipping into some kind of depression or numbness as I literally cannot motivate myself to make the changes in my life that may make it better, easier. I say some kind of because I don't feel the deep despair that my depression had previously taken me to. I'm just not enjoying life as I should given I have so many new opportunitiees open to me. This is where I am in recovery, probably a bit stuck.

Weighty issues

I struggle to control my weight and feel ok about where I am. A bunch of my friends remarked on how I had lost weight after Christmas, I hadn't noticed but maybe I had. Of course I then tried to look for the evidence. Did my clothes feel looser, had I eaten less, had I taken any more exercise? No, yes and possibly. Of course then I actively wanted to lose some more weight. Slow and steady right but I have the dregs of a bulimic mind. I, of course, get anxious about my food intake, which causes me to want to eat more and to feel out of control anytime I do eat. So I upped my exercise intake, took in more fruit and less refined sugar and started to feel good. Then my skin broke out in spots (could be due to my menstrual cycle but gut feeling says it's not that) and my exercise intake went back down again. But hoorah because I was still eating less refined sugar...until today. A child's party and a buffet full of creamy, oily food along with cake and sweets. I was overwhelmed and desperate to fit in. I ate more than I should from the buffet, devoured a huge piece of cake and some sweets. I then spent time thinking about whether I have been truly restricting or if I just overate. I can't decide which and it has been burning in my mind ever since. This is a day where recovery sucks.

I really do want to be just fit and healthy...and thin. Is it possible for all three to happen?

Parties

Parties. They still freak me out a bit. The food is overwhelming. I still succumb to those binge like moments. When  I saw a psych many, many moons ago she told me that my binges weren't really so much overeating as eating a meal sized portion or less of other foods. Foods like bombay mix are not a meal in themselves but they did make up a binge and high calorie foods help to keep the weight on. I am really attracted to crunchy food, I love feeling my teeth bite down, through and on something. I like the tastes of the crunchy food I choose. The salt, the sugar, the rush, the high. The need for more. The control for no more. It goes back and forth. So yes, recovery does not yet cover a certain level of anxiety about party food, about the need to skip a meal if I know I am going to one. Heck, recovery hasn't yet ceased the anxiety about spontaneous lunches at friend's houses if I ate breakfast that day. Recovery does not yet allow me to eat breakfast everyday comfortably or to eat dinner. Every. Single. Day. But recovery does allow me to not live in the perpetual cycle of binge-purge. Recovery has allowed me to say yes to those lunches with friends, deal with my anxiety and enjoy their company. Recovery has allowed me to enjoy my children, eat with them and feel ok. Recovery allowed me to have my partner trust me enough to have those children in the first place. I have a lot to be grateful for and today I went to a party.

Not My Bad News

I woke up this morning with the feeling that someone else's good news is not my bad news. So that was that, today I have been feeling good. When I realised, this morning, that today was going to be a good day, I was so happy and grateful just for that. So many days still do not start off so good. They are certainly not as crippling as they were when I was bulimic but still I wanna shout praise for the good days. I read somewhere that recovery can take 7 years and, just to contradict it, that recovery takes as long as the disorder prevailed. The latter is scary as I know that I had some disordered eating behaviours from age eight. And hey, I am old! However long it takes I am happy to be where I am, making progress and not obsessing over my weight or letting it affect my day.

Where Do I Start?

I have been reading a lot of blogs lately. A lot of blogs around eating disorders (I am fascinated by people's individual experiences), healthy living blogs and I have been in the company of people who's eating values both challenge and enrich my own thinking. Over the course of these experiences I have consumed a mountain of sugar!

I keep thinking about how I should set my year off, the goals that I should set for myself. I am in recovery from bulimia but my eating still has a hint of disorder to it. I manage, I succumb, I control, I do whatever it takes to get through my days. I should say that I am binge-purge free and have been since 2007. So I am making it. I'm not making a huge mark on the world but I do get to shape two young minds, my children.

I guess I feel the need to blog purely because I am ready for the next stage. I am ready to increase my exercise without it feeling like it will be a segueway into some kind of addiction. I am ready for my body to feel healthy and good and I am ready for me to feel good about it. The last one is a kind of a hard one since I have a hard time feeling good about my body. It is so easy to feel negative and quite honestly it drains my soul. My soul needs some lifting. 2011 saw some big changes in my life that may be both positive and negative, I have yet to decide. Well that's it for now.