I'm heading out of town for the holidays tomorrow. Lots of travel/visit (read: nonroutine) time, but I've been handling that better lately and hope that it will all be okay. Will try to make it so.
I've been having a lot of largely inchoate relationship anxiety this week, and am trying to tell myself it's just because Match and I haven't seen each other in a few weeks and are both stressed about grad school decisions. Sometimes I'm afraid that relationship stress is an easy target for my general anxiety to glom onto, and that it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy if I'm not careful. Going to try to avoid that. He and I will have a pretty long visit over the break, and I really want to try hard not to let anxiety and other stuff ruin it.
I have been working really, really hard at forcing myself to be okay with the fact that I'm finally starting to put back on some of the weight I lost last year. Still only about halfway to restoring all of it, but it's enough of a change that it's taking a lot of conscious rationalization to keep myself from freaking the hell out, especially since I haven't increased my food or decreased my exercise. I think that what's happening, to logic it out, is that this year I'm not going to my field site in the tropics and losing weight 2-3 times a semester, so the gain isn't so much a ton of adding but a lack of that periodic subtracting just as I was starting to gain it back, if that makes sense.
The weight thing is interesting at this stage: 1) seeing the numbers goes up and really challenges my sense of control. I HATE it when people reduce EDs to just being about control issues, because they're infinitely more complex than that, but I can't deny that it's at least a partial issue in my case (whether it's a cause or effect of the ED is up for debate). It's my body and I hate feeling like it's doing anything without my "permission." And yet... 2) I really don't dislike how my body looks and feels right now, at least a good bit of the time (Fat Days still happen, but I guess that's par for the course at this stage). I am noticing effects from the strength training, and I suppose there is some irony in the fact that I had to gain weight to get the best abs of my life, LOL...So I'm faced with admitting that I'm letting numbers freak me out without really paying attention to anything else, which is a recovery no-go.
In positive news, I arranged to start seeing my previous dietician after the holidays. She definitely remembered me and seemed excited to be working with me again, which made me feel a lot better. It will be a blow to my budget, but I really, really need to try to make as much progress as possible before I head off to the next stage of my career later this year. Plus, I felt like at times she was even more helpful than my regular therapist, so it will be nice to have her advice again.
I literally spent hours today combing through my Facebook Timeline...talk about memory lane.
Definitely spurred an overdrive of introspection.
I hope everyone has a great Christmas, and if you don't celebrate Christmas I wish you happy Hanukkah, solstice, New Year's, or just hope you have a good week in general. Love y'all!
4 comments:
It's hard to know that your body might be smarter than your mind, but the fact that you're gaining back your health pound by pound is great, as scary as that feels. You shouldn't have lost the weight in the first place (something I can relate to) so it's not like you're gaining an extreme amount in addition to what you need to survive. You're simply getting back to ground zero, and you can build from there, right? :)
I have not ventured into the FB timeline. I'm ignoring it for now.
Have a safe and happy (and healthy) holiday, my friend!
I really relate to your first point about weight gain - nothing gets me more freaked out than my body doing crazy things without any rhyme or reason. Any mysterious symptoms - whether it be weight gain, random aches and pains, breakouts, etc - bother me more because I don't know the cause than because the actual symptoms are that bothersome. (...I may have control issues as well.)
I really like what Abby said, that your body might be smarter than your mind. It's reassuring to think that if you are doing a decent job of taking care of yourself, your body will take you where it wants to be. Easier said than done, but that might help reframe the issue as your body working FOR you rather than fighting you.
I'm jealous of the abs! Keep it up :)
Exercise is what really helped me with my eating disorder. Seeing my body transform to sickly skinny to healthy and muscular did wonders for my self-esteem. I will admit it is hard though to deal with the weight gain. My doctor today told me that I am in the healthy weight range for my height, my stupid ed thinking thought that was a horrible thing to say when any normal person would be happy to hear that. I shoved the thought right out of my mind, and focused on the words "I am healthy."
"Sometimes I'm afraid that relationship stress is an easy target for my general anxiety to glom onto."
THIS!
I do this (and suspect that YOU do this) with my body. When I'm stressed about stuff but can't just "figure it out" quickly or resolve it, or when I'm stressed about stuff but won't admit it to myself, I find that I always feel "fat" or "like I'm gaining weight." I think we have little areas where our minds "store" our anxiety. It happens almost on autopilot until we're conscious enough to figure out that maybe the thing we think we're anxious or uncertain about isn't really what's bothering us. It's SO WEIRD. And I think it is so AWESOME that you can figure this out!!!
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