Skype, Sleep, and Other Updates

So, yesterday I did a non-update post, today is an update post, I suppose.

Like I mentioned a few weeks ago, I'm starting up therapy again, although in a different set-up than I've had before. I'm back with T, the last therapist I had during my Master's. I like her, and am so incredibly glad I'm not starting from scratch with a new person.

A few things are different. We're Skyping, and are only meeting twice a month (rather than weekly) since my current insurance gives me zero coverage for therapy and I'm paying 100% out of pocket.

Also, when I saw her before I was concurrently seeing a dietitian (who I LOVED and want back, but I can't afford her anymore). So D. covered most of the food and numbers talk, and with T. I talked more about just stresses, issues, concerns, and general life challenges. So now T is monitoring exercise, weight, etc more, which is a shift in dynamic. She has been surprisingly open about her own history with anorexia, and I always, always wonder if that's one reason she prefers to leave the food/numbers talk to D. when she can. But I have no qualms about her professionalism or the fact that she seems to have had a really thorough recovery (she just had a baby and I've never had any red flags that she's not over her own issues, unlike the first therapist I saw when I moved to Master's City).

We've had two sessions so far. One was sort of an update and "where do we go from here" session, and one was talking about how I hadn't adhered to the exercise goals we discussed in the first session. So there's that. I feel like being at my current weight has lost me the 'privilege' of talking about anything except food/exercise stuff. We always used to talk a lot about work stress, life goals (I was seeing her during the year I was applying to PhD programs), relationship stuff, etc, and I want that back. So I guess I have to get myself out of the weight doghouse first, or else it looks like I'm intentionally being avoidant about ED topics.

By the way, I was in Match City for about three weeks, and just got back to PhD Town a few days ago. I had a good visit with Match . . . our fourth anniversary is TODAY, and I feel like we're still getting better and better at this relationship thing all the time.

I really enjoyed Match and we have a good cohabitation dynamic at this point (a sign of how far I've come; when we first started dating I was still so food/exercise routine oriented that staying over for even a whole weekend would have been unthinkable, much less three weeks...). That being said, it was also nice to come back to my own space, run on 100% my own schedule, etc.

I have to be careful, though. PhD Town is at a pretty high elevation (higher than Denver), and for some reason my body goes into a monkish austerity mode for my first few weeks at altitude. My appetite shrivels up and dies to a degree that alarms even a veteran EDer, and I have trouble sleeping more than 3 hours a night. So that becomes a bit of a quality of life issue after a while . . .

Even when I'm not in altitude mode, I rarely sleep more than 5-6 hours a night when I'm alone. My body just refuses to stay dormant any longer than that. When I'm with Match, though, I can get 8-9 hours easily for a week+ at a time. No idea why.

Which is a good segueway to the fact that I'm increasingly aware of how much healthier I feel when I'm with him. I did gain a bit of weight back while I was there. When we're co-habbing I sleep more, I exercise less, and I eat more well-rounded meals (although I also drink more alcohol). I get roughly the same calories/day there, but at home I often don't feel like bothering to cook and for one meal a day I usually default to pulling out however many protein bars and yogurts (or, lets be honest, ice cream or cereal; I've never had hang-ups about junk food, just calorie totals) I need to meet my calorie mandate--a habit that used to drive D. absolutely nuts.

So now I'm home, left to my own devices, and am really trying hard to stay on track. I signed up to help a friend with some local fieldwork all week (the landscape and wildlife around PhD Town are UNBELIEVABLE), knowing that the times I'd be needed would interfere with my routine a bit and keep me from running before I should have. Classes start on Monday, so that will also give me something other than exercise to frame my day around. I guess it's sweet that I fall into healthier patterns when I'm around Match, but I don't like the image that creates of me being somehow dependent (NOT my style) and want to prove I can do it on my own too.

Feet/running update: They're slowly improving. I've run the same amount in the past month that I was doing in a week just prior to my feet going kaput. I'm trying really hard not to push it. As T. pointed out, if running is really that important for me and not ED-motivated, it's better to only run once a week or so and keep that going long-term than to "run yourself to death for a few months and then have to take several years off again." I concur, but it's tough.

So that's that, I guess. This is going to be a pretty intense semester, and I'm really trying to focus on keeping my priorities straight.

love y'all