Positive Trip Report, for Once!

I'm back home and recovering from yesterday's road trip (coming back from a Match Weekend) that ended up hitting both morning and evening traffic in big cities.  I'm a pretty good traveler and have done lots of long, solitary driving sessions, but 12 hours behind the wheel is still a wee bit much for my taste.

It was, of course, worth every hour and mile.  I think that Match Visit was the best one EVER.  I can't even pin down why.  We actually did a lot less structured activity this time (going to museums, shopping, out to eat, etc).  We did go to two plays (gotta love student rate tickets), but those were the only formal outings besides his morning class on Friday and Monday; we mostly just hung out with each other.

It was fantabulous.

I also did the best ever with my eating while I was there.  The reasons for this are easier to identify, I think.

• 1) I did manage to get some workouts in.  Match got me a guest pass for the university's rec center to use while he was in class.  It seemed like a nice compromise, because it didn't take time away from Us, and it improved my mood and anxiety level by orders of magnitude for the rest of the day.  I know some of you are thinking "he checked his EDer girlfriend into the gym?" I do feel bad that I put him in positions to potentially be enabling sometimes, but we specifically addressed that beforehand.  The truth is that that gym time while he was in class was still less than half the working out I would have done on a typical day at home, but it gave me enough of an endorphin boost to be a lot more relaxed and confident the rest of the day.  It vastly improved our quality of time together, because usually by the latter half of a visit I'm getting very cranky and anxious and am restricting my food quite a bit, which sucks for both of us and makes me feel interpersonally incompetent on top of everything else swirling in my mind. 

• 2) The weather was nicer, so we got to do some nice long walks.  Being out moving and talking in the sunshine is a major mood booster on top of helping with the exercise anxiety.

• 3) We ate in much more, instead of going to restaurants.  We are both achingly broke at the moment, so the primary reason was money.  But another benefit is there are some things I am way more comfortable eating if I prepare it as opposed to someone else. So eating in is both cheaper and tends to improve the quality/quantity of what I consume.

• 4) I think I'm just getting more and more at ease with eating "real foods" in better amounts around him.  Long-term exposure therapy, I suppose.  He still eats like a growing boy, so it's not as if he's going to judge me for putting away X amount of anything non-salad, you know?

Anyway, that's the run down of that.  I still wasn't eating 100% of meal plan, but even with the gym sessions I was exercising much less than usual and I did consistently come closer to MP amounts than on previous visits, so at least my trajectory is positive, right?

I know it doesn't seem ideal that a big reason this trip went better was that I caved to exercise urges, and I know I need to keep working on that.

But getting in that bit of activity cleared my mind enough to really enjoy randomly laying down on the couch one afternoon and ending up staying there for over two hours, just talking about everything and anything with my boy; or on the spur of the moment to decide to make ourselves pancakes and Malibu screwdrivers for dinner, just as two examples.

And having that positive experience will make me a lot more likely, in the future, to realize those things are worth sacrificing a few days of routine.

My overall mood and outlook is a lot better now than it was a couple of weeks ago, too, I think this trip was a much-needed booster.

By the way, I really, really love that my boyfriend is the best friend I have ever had.  I won't turn this mushy, but I didn't want to leave.