“Life is too short to be uncomfortable”

Those are the wise words of one Miss Meghan Tonjes. If you don’t know her, then I’m sad for you, but it’s ok because I’m here now 😂

Meghan is a youtuber, singer/songwriter and also has an amazingly funny podcast called Adventures in Roommating. She is extremely honest about her body and food issues and she started #bootyrevolution and posts pics of her booty when she is having a positive body image day. I respect her for her talents, her confidence and her truthfulness. Click the link to watch the video I quoted in the title 🙂 

Life is too short; wear a crop top  
If you have struggled with your weight, your confidence, societal pressure to be a certain way, are in ed recovery or have ever felt ashamed of your body, then you should watch the video, because Meghan hits the nail on the head: life is just too short. 

Xoxo

Dieting doesn’t mean you “know how I feel”

I know being on a diet can make you obsess over food, or develop lethargy from under eating, but the person in my life who diets think that they understand everything about eating disorders.
Knowing about calories doesn’t mean you know how it feels to eat when you have an eating disorder.

Your taste buds are soaring as the piece of food hits your tongue. Everything tastes different after restriction in my eating disorder. My body craves food in a way that makes it feel like a drug.
But the moment of flavour and enjoyment passes. It’s like you can feel the weight and fat crawling all over you. It’s too much. You can’t think about anything but making it all ok. You have to do something. Thoughts race.
Purge. Exercise. Restrict more. Anything. Now.
It’s the adrenaline that fear brings which makes you almost lose touch with reality. Soon, everyday is about this avoidance of food, the moment of eating and then immediate regret.
That’s not like a diet.

Going on a diet.. or not.

I know a few people that are currently dieting and it got me thinking about one of my biggest fears about being recovered: what if I can never lose weight again?

I believe that once you have had an eating disorder, the thought patterns will still be in your mind, so surely any attempt to control food intake or decrease body fat would trigger those patterns. I am afraid that if/when recovered I will be unable to place limiations on my diet without falling back into being extremely obsessive about it.

This isn’t some crazy worry I have manufactured in the disordered part of my brain in order to let it continue by the way! A friend of mine has had an ed, became a little too heavy, tried to diet years later and relapsed. This is just one of many reasons I have for wanting my body to reach an “acceptably” (to me) low weight before I permit myself to engage fully with changing. Right now I’m toying in the middle, by challenging some things while allowing other things to get worse…

The more time goes on, the more important it is that people notice my eating disorder, which is twisted, since I feel pretty uncomfortable when they actually mention it! But I’ve had a tonne of time on my hands the last few hours and I’ve come to the conclusion that this want reflects the increased inner anxiety and stress, and so if they notice, I’m no longer carrying this pile of crap in my brain alone. (Just a theory, not too sure…)

Tomorrow is a fast day and I just can’t wait to feel empty. I just want to get to this end point weight wise so everything can be normal again. I know it isn’t that black and white, but if it were that is what I’d whittle it down too. Ah too stressful.

More of a question than a post…

When my ed began, I lost weight eating around X calories (don’t wanna talk literal numbers). Now, I eat similarly but usually do about 3 times as much exercise. I am terrified that over the holidays, despite maintaining my calories control, I will not have lost weight. My measurements (waist etc) aren’t bigger though, and the amount I eat is still a weight loss level .. so worried 😦 HELP?!

My logical brain tells me that my weight loss will have been slower, due to less opportunity to exercise while on holiday, but that my body needs more than I have given it just to run itself.

My ed says I must be fatter, disgusting, a failure.

I love food (sort of)…

The average citizen usually assumes that anybody with an eating disorder simply doesn’t want to eat. I do want to eat, and whatever amount I am eating I like to prepare and eat it in my own perfectly organised fashion.

For me, this means cooking it to the precise minute, weighing it all out accurately, cooking alone, eating with matching cutlery, eating alone &  eating slowly. Although I can sometimes become afraid of gaining/ not losing enough weight whatever my intake is, I have a sort of love for eating in this obsessive kind of way.

A Christmas present to myself this year is going to be asking to eat alone… they said I can do whatever makes me happiest. 

Energy(less)

The other day I reached total exhaustion point. I just never thought that undereating would ever “get to me”, yet there I was feeling sick, total not with it and ready to fall over! After numerous tears and panicky moments I decided to attempt to make a mature decision: I told somebody what was happening. Although they can’t do anything, the reassurance that it was out of my own head was soooo good.

I guess it just made me realise that however strongly I try to be positive and be in control of how I feel, it will inevitably not be possible to do so without energy. Will I eat more now? I doubt it, but maybe next time I have an exhaustion day I will have a little more patience with myself. I hope that other people who feel like me can reach this point of accepting the ups and downs of it all as part of a journey (that will hopefully arrive where it is meant to!)