Unglossing the Scenario

I was surprised and touched at the comments/e-mails I got after my last post, you guys are awesome.  That compassion made me feel a bit guilty, however, because in hindsight there is one factor in the current overwhelmingness of my world that I sort of glossed over.  Not intentionally, because 98.572% of the time I don't even admit it to myself.  But still, I felt like people might not really be as sympathetic if they knew how much of this I bring on myself every day.  I hate that sense of failing to communicate about a situation correctly, and in case you haven't noticed by now I am a teensy bit type-A and can't stand things being incomplete, so I felt the need to address the part that I skirted around before.  (What is the opposite of "gloss over?" "Ungloss?" "Gloss under?") .

It's actually really simple.  It's the exercise.  I have so incredibly much to do as far as classes, work, organization stuff, everything else, but that has not caused me to give up even a single minute of my daily workouts.  I get home from 14 hours on campus, and the first thing I do is exercise for hours.  Then it is late and I still have all of my studying/writing to do, which results in my recent horrendous sleep habits.   This past month I have had no less than two tests and two writing assignments due every week, and managing that while also clinging to a full-time eating disorder feels like trying to climb a huge mountain while boulders keep falling down on my head.

Isn't it stressful, you wonder, wasting time working out when I have 589837 things on my to-do list?  Well, yes, as a matter of fact it is.  I spend the entire time obsessing over what I should be doing, what I could be accomplishing if I could just get off the damn treadmill or switch off the aerobics DVD.  This shoots my anxiety through the roof, and being hella worried and full of nervous energy makes it even harder to curb the exercise, so it all just sort of snowballs into a terribly inefficient and pathetic cycle.  

Pretty frequently I hear friends, professors, etc., comment on everything I've got going on this semester: "I don't know how you do it," etc etc.  They're right.  They don't know, they have no idea.  If they had any inkling of what my days are like, what my mind is like, who knows what they would think.  They probably picture me going home everynight and hitting the books right away, burning the midnight oil.  They don't know what it's like to spend my last hour at work dreading coming home to the obligatory workout when I am already completely worn out.  I am so tired I can nearly doze off in the middle of an aerobics routine, but I have to do the exercise first before papers that need written, before phone calls to my family, before sleep, before everything.  They don't know how intensely I hate myself for the hours that add up to days that add up to weeks and months and years of my life that I am throwing away, literally and figuratively just burning it up. 

 I hate it before I do it, I hate it while I'm doing it, I hate it after it's done, and yet I never even consider not doing it, that would be utterly unfathomable.

I'm a biologist, I am well aware of the physiological consequences of excessive exercise.  I am completely conscious of the fact that I'm eroding my joints, straining my vertebrae, destroying my feet, keeping myself amenorrhic and thus helping my bones to evaporate.  Do I know those things? Yes.  Does it stop me? No.  Behold: the power of cognitive dissonance.

I don't know where this post is supposed to go.  I guess I just felt bad because I got sympathy/commiseration about having an intense schedule, but deep down I know that things could be much easier if I just chose to put my foot down and cut the bullshit.  I'd still have crazy hectic days, I'd still have an overwhelming amount of looming deadlines, I'd still be stressed about grad school, etc etc, but there wouldn't be that omnipresent specter of  compulsion pushing everything else out of my life.  I wouldn't have to wake up at 5 AM to make it to my 8 AM class on time becuase of a pathological need to burn off breakfast before I consume it, and I wouldn't have to work out intricate ways of getting in all my workout time on days when I am on campus for especially long times and don't get home until late.  I could actually think about something behind numbers.  What fills the minds of normal people, if they're not scheming about calories in/out?  I don't know, but I'd bet it's something much more important.

To end on a slightly ironic note: This is possibly the best workout song ever, the beat is guaranteed to boost your system no matter how tired you are. (Really, click the link and listen to it, how can you not get out of your chair and bust some moves? ;P).  Another reason I think I listen to  it a lot is because the lyrics carry a lot of significance to me when I'm sweating it out at 2 AM, thinking about how screwed up this whole situation is (in case you don't like redundancy, verses are bolded the first time they're used and are unbold on repeats):

Disturbia by Rihanna:

What's wrong with me? 

Why do I feel like this? 

I'm going crazy now 

No more gas in the rig 

Can't even get it started 

Nothing heard, nothing said 

Can't even speak about it 

I'm a light on my head 

Don't want to think about it 

Feels like I'm going insane 

Yeah 

It's a thief in the night 

To come and grab you 

It can creep up inside you 

And consume you 

A disease of the mind 

It can control you 

It's too close for comfort 

Put on your green lights 

We're in the city of wonder 

Ain't gonna play nice 

Watch out, you might just go under 

Better think twice 

Your train of thought will be altered 

So if you must falter be wise 

Your mind is in disturbia 

It's like the darkness is the light 

Disturbia 

Am I scaring you tonight 

Your mind is in disturbia 

Ain't used to what you like 

Disturbia 

Disturbia 

Faded pictures on the wall 

It's like they talkin' to me 

Disconnectin' phone calls 

The phone don't even ring 

I gotta get out 

Or figure this shit out 

It's too close for comfort 

It's a thief in the night 

To come and grab you 

It can creep up inside you 

And consume you 

A disease of the mind 

It can control you 

I feel like a monster 

Put on your green lights 

We're in the city of wonder 

Ain't gonna play nice 

Watch out, you might just go under 

Better think twice 

Your train of thought will be altered 

So if you must falter be wise 

Your mind is in disturbia 

It's like the darkness is the light 

Disturbia 

Am I scaring you tonight 

Your mind is in disturbia 

Ain't used to what you like 

Disturbia 

Disturbia 

Release me from this curse 

I'm trying to remain tame 

But I'm struggling 

You can't go, go, go 

I think I'm going to oh, oh, oh 

Put on your green lights 

We're in the city of wonder 

Ain't gonna play nice 

Watch out, you might just go under 

Better think twice 

Your train of thought will be altered 

So if you must falter be wise 

Your mind is in disturbia 

It's like the darkness is the light 

Disturbia 

Am I scaring you tonight 

Your mind is in disturbia 

Ain't used to what you like 

Disturbia

Anasomnia and Scrambled Schemas

It's been a while. I have definitely been slacking in the blogging department.  I am so indescribably overwhelmed this semester, I honestly have no idea how I'm going to pull everything off. I'm active in a lot of things, taking a lot of classes, etc, all of which I thought I could handle...but it turns out that the number of papers I have to write this fall is unreal, more than all of my other semesters of college combined. Plus, I'm applying for MegaHugeGrant for my proposed grad school topic. It's worth six figures, this is the kind of thing that professors will take a semester's sabbatical to work on, but I'm trying to get it done on top of two jobs, 18 hours of classes, at least an hour a day with correspondence/coordinating work for the organization I am president of, etc...I have always been a "doer," but I have really found (and passed) my limit, I think.  So far I have spent a total of over nine hours on just one of the four essays required for the application, and the piece is still only about 2/3 done.

For once in my life, nutrition/exercise are not the biggest self-inflicted health hazards.  I think they have taken a backseat to sleep deprivation, which I am experiencing at a whole new level.  I can't claim to have insomnia, because I have no trouble falling asleep when I decide to let myself, I just have trouble getting to bed, if that makes sense.  Could we call this "anasomnia?"  

Exhibit A: 

Bad: This week it got to the point where I literally had to sit down and consult my planner to figure out when I had time to take a shower.

Worse: I had to decide that there indeed wasn't time.

Worst: This happened for three days in a row.  Hurrah for pony-tails and baseball caps. 

Exhibit B: 

I had do move my alarm clock from the bedroom to the computer room, because it has become routine for me to fall asleep over the keyboard and never make it to bed.  I'll fade out and fall asleep at the desk for an hour or so, wake up and squeeze out about 20 minutes of work before nodding off again...wash, rinse, repeat, and before you know it morning has come and it is time for the pre-dawn workout, G.'s morning walk, and frantic packing of stuff for a 14 hours on campus before rushing out the door to my 8 AM class.

Because I am a trivia junkie, a couple of interesting scientific terms:

Nocturia is the medical term for "having to pee in the middle of the night"

The crusty stuff on your eyes when you wake up is called "rheu."

Anyway, I am really tired of feeling crappy all the time, but I just have so much to do.  Thus far I have resisted falling back into my old caffeine addiction; the stuff leaches calcium from your bones and I cannot afford that.  I need to figure out something with the sleep, though, because I am really, really feeling run down and on edge most of the time, and that is not how I wanted my senior year to go.

Plus, I feel fat.  Some say fat is not a feeling, but technically it can be: you have sensors and special areas of your brain for building cognitive body maps, and one fo the things they keep track of is how much fat you have.  Back in June I wrote about body schemas.  Read the original post for the whole story, but in a nutshell your schema is your body's sensory map, it keeps track of all of your bits and pieces.  When we gain/lose weight, body image (how you see/feel about yourself) and body schema can change at different rates, so things get out of whack and you just feel weird.  I think I am experiencing this right now. Or something.  

It's hard to explain.  I just know that my weight was slowly inching up (and I mean slowly, I've been seeing H. for 10 months and I have gained less than 1/3 of what she wanted me to put on by July).  I was ok with it, I really was.  I don't miss heart palpitations, I don't miss "shakey brain," and I was enjoying having energy.  But the scale started crawling towards a threshold at which I really start to feel uncomfortable.  The number itself is pretty arbitrary, but then again what isn't?  So, there was anxiety about seeing and then passing that point.  Also, last week I was struck by the fact that all of the sudden my legs and ass move a little when I walk/jump.  Wtf, this feels WEIRD.  I have started to turn into a semi-voyeur, paying extra (yet subtle, I hope) attention to other people of about my age, and it appears that LOTS of people have jiggle and motion, some quite a bit.  Doesn't that bother them?  I mean, how does it not drive them nuts?I'm not being rhetorical, I really do wonder this.  And don't get me wrong, I don't even see many of these people as being fat.  They look good, like healthy young women.  Actually, I am often jealous of them and their synchronized schemas.  The issue, I think, is that I have had the ED since I was barely 13, and have just never had a woman's body.  It feels like putting on someone else's clothes: alien and awkward and just a bit icky.  If I had developed a womanly shape gradually like most normal people do, it would have been a natural transition from child to adulthood.  But at this point I'm already a grown-up, and the change is just from adult to heavier adult.  Yikes. And with everything else that is on my mind right now, being in a foreign physique is not something I can really afford to spend time stressing over.

So this week I have been inching back down a little bit, only semi-intentionally.  My schedule is crazy and it's easy to skimp on food without even realizing it.  I haven't really tried to take pounds off, but I haven't made the necessary effort to keep them on, if that makes sense. It's amazing how much a margin of just a couple of pounds can make a difference in how my body feels.  Or, more accurately I guess, how I feel about my body.  Schema vs image, right?.  It's also amazing how seductive loss is. . .the power to diminish the body at will, the ephemeral high that comes from reaching new lows.

I'm can't let this spiral into a relapse, though.  I won't.  I have way too much on the line right now. I can tell that my concentration and energy are much better than X pounds ago, and I have no desire to digress back to that place.  I know that if I keep moving towards a healthy weight my system will eventually equilibrate, it's just a matter of gritting my teeth and dealing with the awkwardness until I get to that point.  I know all of those things intellectually, but feelings are always what throws a wrench in the best-laid plans. . . we'll see how it goes.

"Positive Eating Trends" in the NY Times

I have been mapping out a few posts in my head over the past few days but am hellaciously busy with classes, work, etc, so for now I just wanted to pass along a link:

The New York Times has a positive article about an astonishing phenomenon: people who eat to be healthy and enjoy food, not to lose weight.   The fact that this warrants a news article at all stands as a comment about our current culture.  Several people who used to struggle with eating issues are profiled, and it is encouraging to see how they have been able to overcome the disorder and appreciate their bodies (and lives).  Dieticians are also interviewed about these emerging "positive eating trends."

I wish that our society was such that this kind of article would never be deemed news-worthy, but the fact is that we're constantly pounded with the idea that food is the enemy, to be avoided, resisted, and outsmarted at all costs.  We put so incredibly much effort into abusing ourselves-twisting food from a nourishing, cultural pleasure into an omnious enemy--that we damage both our bodies and our minds, to say it's a shame is a vast understatement.

Anyway, article is here.

Counting

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
~Albert Einstein

Progress is Slippery

(Note: I intended to post this last night, but fell asleep while I was doing it, so all references to "today" refer to Monday).

Progress is a slippery thing. I feel like I have been moving forward in my thinking, but my life is so hella hectic right now that it's easy to let "baby steps" get pushed aside and drowned out in the scramble of classes, labs, work, meetings, etc. I am gaining more and more of an appreciation for feeling strong, but some days it's hard to hang on enough to remember what it is I'm fighting for.

Example: Today I left for campus at 7:15 AM, and finally got home again at 8:45 PM, having had just a single one-hour break the entire day. My metabolism seems to have been in hypermode lately, so I was already hungry just an hour after my recently amplified breakfast., and stayed feeling hollow for most of the day. I pushed myself a little hard over the weekend also, just had a million things to get done, so I was already working on a little bit of fatigue . . . I definitely reached that point, where you push past the threshold between pain and anesthesia, that stage where you are exhausted into a frenzy, where you can almost stop being human. Or at least that's what the ED tells you.

H. and I call it the "Manic Machine Mode." So what if I've been on campus for almost 14 hours, haven't eaten in almost 9, just finished hiking for five miles in the forest for -ology lab. . . why shouldn't I come home and turn right back around to walk G. for another X miles? So what if that means it will be almost 10:00 by the time I get home, and that I still have an oppressive amount of studying to do for tomorrow's exam? Not to mention my evening exercise routines, which of course, have to come before any studying. Tired is just a feeling, and those aren't relevant, remember?

That sensation of empty lightness, craving insubstantiality so that pain can't get to me, it's pretty damn seductive. If I know I can push myself not only to the threshold, but beyond it, then why not just do it?

Because I'm tired of that, that's why. Maybe that's not the best way to describe it. I'm not just tired; tired has become default mode, it's taken for granted by now. I guess I could say I'm fed up, no pun intended. I'm fed up with being distracted by insignificant things (did that bagel have X or X+20 calories, and what does that mean for the rest of my day? How many minutes am I obligated to chew my piece of gum to compensate for its almost non-existent calorie content?) when I should be focusing on more worthwhile issues. I'm fed up with counting hours, with enduring, rather than experiencing. I'm fed up with feeling left behind, with putting forth superhuman efforts into whittling my humanity down to nothing.

I don't want to live like that anymore. I have never actually wanted to live like that in the first place . . . but "shit happens," according to Forrest Gump.

So my point...this is hard. I'm still flailing around like an idiot, trying to get my footing. The past couple of days have been a little bit of a backward slide, but I'm still making myself look forward.

Approaching the Light?

I think I am starting to feel a lot of things "clicking" in my mind. I am not sure exactly how to describe the shift, but it definitely feels different than any of my other previous blunders through pseudo-recovery. I am facing a lot of milestones in my life right now, gearing up for graduation and the great wide world that lies beyond that, and gradually it is becoming obvious that there are many things that should be much higher priority than playing slave to the ED.

Maybe it is because I am in a stage of major goal-setting and career maneuvering, and my list of things to accomplish includes many items that are much more significant than stumbling through each day in a state of deprivation. Maybe it is because I'm involved in a lot of things right now (awesome classes, teaching, research, organizations, etc), things that I am truly passionate about. I am constantly reminded of the wonders of the world beyond myself, and the great feeling of sharing knowledge/experiences with others.

I don't really know how to put this into words very well, I didn't mean for this to be such a ramble. It's the first since, well, I don't even know, that I am actually savoring times when I feel strong and energized, when awareness of my body and the physical space it takes up doesn't disgust me and make me want to whittle it back down to the absolute bare minimum. This probably sounds nonsensical, but it's almost like I am just starting to come to terms with the fact that I actually do indeed have a body, and that it is something that I can use rather than abuse. At our first or second session, back in December, H. told me that one thing I had to overcome was "living in my head," disembodied from physical needs, and I think maybe I am making progress in that regard. It's funny, because the state of living "in your head" usually results from having a lot of things twisted in your mind.

So, maybe this is moving in the right direction? I'm not sure. It's not something I am really able to define, not a decision I wake up and make every morning. It feels very novel and intangible right now. But I am noticing a gradual change in how I am seeing/feeling myself. I had a taste of this (no pun intended) when I was desperately trying to build up some strength before my trip over the summer, but at the time my goals and motivations were pretty short-term, I just wanted to be able to handle my summer work. Now I think I am approaching that stage where I'm ready to take up space, ready to have a body that can do, rather than one that I do things to. Obviously, I'm not ready to go completely turn a 180 and overhaul my life, boom tomorrow I'm recovered. But I am really starting to want life more than the ED, and to realize that although letting go is scary, it can't be nearly as scary as continuing to live the way I have for almost ten years now. I'm on the cusp of a new chapter in my life, and I don't want to let this disorder bleed into it.

It's kind of like coming out of a dark building into the sun. At first it hurts, you squint and try to make the light go away, it is truly painful. But gradually, eventually, you adjust and are finally able to see what is going on around you. And the light is so much better than the dark.

A Common Mistake

Quote of the day, along the theme of baby steps, because gradually "doing only a little" can lead to big improvements if you are consistent and persistent:

"Nobody made a great mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."

-Edmund Burke

The Next Baby Step

'What About Bob' was one of my favorite movies when I was growing up.  It's about a guy with OCD that manages to completely frustrate his psychologist, he becomes semi-stalkerish but in an innocent, needy way that you can't help but love.  It also brings out a lot of the psychologist's (Dr. Leo Marvin) neuroses, too.  It's a funny movie, I swear, I'm just not very good at 'splaining plots.

Sometimes when I'm feeling overwhelmed with things--especially tackling ED challenges--I have to make myself stop and picture Bill Murray doing his "baby steps, baby steps" chant.  One thing at a time, little increments that add up to bigger accomplishments in the long run. 

I think I am going to bump my meal plan up a little bit tomorrow.  I am going to try to psyche myself up to do it, at least.  I know I should, my food intake now is very bottom heavy, meaning much more later in the day than earlier.  Adding more food to breakfast and in between breakfast and lunch is supposed to be something I'm working on.  It will mean more calories at breakfast than I have let myself have since my very first stab at recovery/refeeding almost 8.5 years ago (unless you count the beastly breakfasts I ate while in the field this summer, but that wasn't "real life" and rules were different).   I think I had underestimated how taxing this semester was going to be, I knew it would be stressful mentally but it's really taking a lot out of me physically as well.  I have four labs a week, and they almost aways involve 2-3 hours outdoor activity, which is a significant energy drain when my calorie intake is pretty well calibrated to just get me through my daily workouts and dog walking.

Technically I know the amount I plan to add isn't extremely significant, but it seems like a pretty big deal to me and I'm nervous.  In my pictures from this past weekend, I think my face is filling out too much and I really, really, really hate that.  I just keep trying to tell myself to do it for my bones, my teeth, my heart, my hair, etc, not to mention my mind.  Or what's left of it, anyway. 

Ok enough neurotic rambling.  Tomorrow morning, one more notch in the smackdown on the ED, hooah.

What About Bob Clip @ Yahoo! Video

If you play the clip make sure to watch to the end, that's the funniest part, and it's really how I feel about this whole mess most days.  Step, step, step, AAAAH!

(By the way, when I Googled the movie to find the clip for this post I discovered a Baby Steps t-shirt inspired by the move,  now I have something to add to this year's Santa List... =p)

A Weekend of Alternative Therapy

This has been a rough, rough week in terms of crazy deadlines, exams, meetings, etc. I can't remember the last night that I slept more than 4.5 hours. Fortunately, the weekend should be a blast. One of my -ology classes is going on a weekend fieldtrip, we leave this afternoon and will spend two nights in a national forest (about three hours away). It will be pretty much nonstop finding/examining/learning about critters, I'm pretty pumped.

Eating has not been great this week, I wish I was feeling stronger for the trip, but I usually do well with eating when I'm doing fieldwork. I guess part of it is being removed from my normal routines and rules, and part of it is that it really helps me to see my body as a machine that needs fueled, and to focus on things in the big wide world, outside of the microcosm of Cammy's ED. Being in nature makes me realize how small my place in the world is, how many of the things that stress me so much (calories in/out, exercise, weight, etc) are pretty arbitrary and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. I'm pretty much just in awe of this planet and the mind-blowingly complex web of things that occupy it. And after this week, I am definitely down for some nature therapy.

Speaking of therapy, thanks for the comments/e-mail support I got for yesterday's appointment. It was less stressful than the past few sessions have been, I think H. is trying to play "good cop bad cop" on me. She did want to talk about how I felt during/after last week's appointment, when I got the most upset I've ever been in a session. I think I'm going to ruminate on things this weekend and later I'll write a more coherent, collected post about that stuff, because I don't really have it all sorted out in my head right now. I think my main problem is that after almost 10 years of this, I am really kind of shooting into the dark. I can't aim to just give up the ED and go back to normal, because I have no concept of what that's like, I've never been a "normal" adult. Going forward into the unknown is much different than going back to a better time, and I think that's where I'm stalling.

One thing that did irritate me this week, though, is that she is really pressing the IP issue. I am not going to do it, for myriad reasons, but she keeps pushing. Maybe it is an alternative, more professional way for her to dump me, to make me someone else's problem. Don't get me wrong, I know IP has helped a lot of people, I'm not trying to denigrate the general concept, it's just not in any way feasible (or, in my admittedly biased opinion, necessary) for me right now, even if I did want it.

Anyway, enough of that talk, I have to go do the panic-last minute packing ritual before heading out. I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Psyching up for the psych

Heading over for my weekly appointment with H....I really don't know what to expect, the last two have been disheartening, to say the least. I can't blame it on her, either, things are just a little, I don't know, complicated right now, and I know I'm not an easy patient. I'm not "noncompliant" so much as "nonpenetrable," or at least that's what I was told in the past by another psychologist that told me she wouldn't see me anymore.

Anyway, off I go.