No, it's not another term for the Atkins diet

There is a recent trend in pop-culture adaptations of various "-rexics:" pregorexic, manorexic, etc etc. Today I came across a new one: carborexic. No, this is does not refer to Atkins devotees or other people who restrict their carbohydrates. This latest term actually has nothing to do with eating disorders, it refers to people who are obsessed with reducing their carbon footprint. I still felt like sharing, because I find the cutesy plays on "-rexic" to be a little annoying, they seem to take a term for a legitimate disease and twist and trivialize it at will.

Maybe that is just me being overly sensitive. The various permutations do demonstrate that eating disorders are much more multi-facted than some people realize. Would we really need the term "manorexia" if the public was aware that some experts estimate that 1 in 8 people suffering from eating disorders in the U.S. are male? Would we need the term "pregorexia" if people realized that often even "recovered" ED patients have issues that settle down into sub-clinical latency until a major upheaval, such as finding out that a body you may have never really come to terms with in itself is suddenly inhabited by another growing human being?

This was supposed to be a one or two sentence blurb and has turned into a ramble, CliffNotes version is: apparently carborexia is on the rise, consider yourself (and your SUV) warned.

J.?

By the way, J. has been showing a definite increase in attentionage to me lately.  As in going out of his way to make sure we happen to meet up at least twice a day, making excuses for reasons we need to get together (really, J., you could have totally e-mailed me those files, it was NOT necessary to rendezvous so you could loan me your USB drive), pushing for us to go out for whatever meal happens to be closest at any point when we see each other.  What's up with this? Doesn't he have something more worthwhile to do with his time, like studying, washing the car, organizing his socks? Why do guys have to try to make things so complicated?   He would be extremely desirable IF we weren't such good friends already.  Oh yeah, and IF I didn't have that teensy little huge aversion to addressing feelings, emotions, etc.   Maybe I am reading too much into the whole situation.  I have NO TIME for drama right now, none whatsoever. Blah. 

Pondering the Positives

I have a major exam tomorrow and cannot fit one more piece of knowledge, not ONE MORE. If I cram in single extra item, some other vital piece of information will slip out, slide away, evaporate into cognitive dust. This factoid could be something useless, like my ex-boyfriend's birthday, or it could be some vital tidbit of information up on which my entire career as a scientist hangs in the balance. Can't risk it, so now I am done with learnin' for tonight and am cooling my circuits in the blogosphere.

So, my perceptions are pretty much ping-ponging around right now, and in honor of "No Fat Talk Week," I figured it would be good to document a positive day to try to balance all of my recent wailing and flailing. I have been letting my weight inch up a little again after sliding backwards for a couple of weeks, and I am trying really hard to make myself ok with it.

So, for the past day or so I have felt good. What is "good," anyway? It's funny how that is such a relative and ambiguous turn. In the very recent past, a "good" day might have been one with no episodes of passing out. "Good" could mean finding an extra pocket of time to exercise, or getting really lucky and "only" having minimal heart palpitations for an entire day. Glamorous, huh?

Fortunately, as I am working on shedding the ED, my "goods" seem to be getting "gooder." Today: I felt strong, physically and mentally. Not strong in terms of mustering the energy to endure the day, but strong as in truly motivated and energetic. Strong as in realizing that treating my body right really does make the day 2934% more enjoyable. Strong as in slowly coming to terms with the fact that living in a more realistic physique might not be so bad after all. This week I have been able to see myself a bit more objectively, and to force myself to view food in terms of what it can do for me, instead of what it may do to me.

Positive observations:

~As I have noted before, I am starting to acquire a butt. However, it's actually a pretty cute one, I think.

~Starving makes your mind constantly obsess over food. But there are so many more interesting things to think about than counting calories and stressing over the next meal. I am really, really frustrated with myself over the amount of time I spend each day thinking of nothing but food and calories and exercise. Seriously, if I channeled that much brainpower into something else, I probably would have discovered the Higgs Boson or mapped the Bigfoot genome or invented toilet paper that can be used without shredding the first three sheets of a new roll into ribbons. Since my body is slightly less in survival mode these days, my brain is able to take longer and longer breaks from obsessing over the next meal, and it's such a freeing feeling. Maybe my body is growing, but my mind is able to grow infinitely more, and that's a pretty good deal.

~A little extra padding makes sitting in plastic chairs a much less agonizing experience.

~It feels good to hear a favorite song come on the radio and have the energy to jam out to it, dancing with the dog and making a general fool out of myself, albeit within the privacy of my own walls. I can distinctly remember times in high school when I was so utterly sapped that I would sit there and weigh the pros and cons of reaching up to push a strand of hair behind my ear if it fell into my face. Then it was too. much. effort. No more.

I think I may start randomly posting observations like these as they come to me, I want to make sure this blog has a positive spin while still giving a real picture of what a bewildering process this whole recovery thing can be. Some days I feel as if I look like someone stuffed a basket ball into my stomach, and some days I can see my body and realize how much better it looks and feels to have tone than bone, to feel fit instead of feeling like a broken toy held together with cheap scotch tape. I still have a lot of weight left to gain, not sure how I am going to handle that, but I guess I will get there the same way I got here, one day at a time, keeping enough perspective to rebound from the slides.

So in the meantime, happy No Fat Talk Week, please do me a favor and try to make a list for yourself of things your body does for you, instead of things that you can do to it. As always, take care and treat yourselves kindly.

Poisoned Kaleidoscope

I feel like I am living in a poisoned kaleidoscope.  I am having a Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Body Image Day (gold star for anyone to identify that literary allusion).  How can I feel so huge when over the past two weeks I have actually lost about 1/3 of the weight I’ve gained since I started seen H. ten months ago?   Why is my mind such a perpetual see-saw?  Everything is scrambled, and it just plain wears me out.

  I hate the way my flesh moves, I hate the way fabric clings to my skin.  I can’t stand the feeling of being in this form.  Sometimes, though, when I catch glimpses of myself in the mirror I can see the bones, the hollows, the veins, etc, and I know it’s not attractive, healthy, or desireable.  Then the next time I pass a mirror all I can see is a ridiculously round belly and chipmunk cheeks.  What is reality, anyway, and how can I find it?

  I can tell myself that normal grown women do not wear the same jeans they wore in the 7^th grade, but when I am too stressed/busy to eat I still get twisted comfort from hypoglycemia highs. 

My stomach twists in dread at all the horror stories about stress fractures and joint degeneration, but I don’t even consider cutting back on workouts to be an option.

 I just finished the book Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters by Courtenay Martin, which is possibly the best, most inspiring, most insightful and thought-provoking ED book I’ve ever read (please, please do yourself a favor and read it.  Read it, highlight in it, write down passages on post-its and stick them to your mirror, I can’t overemphasize how great it is).  After absorbing Martin’s 350 pages of practical perspective and empowering insights, I want more than anything to step out of this box forever.  Then again I read every word of it while pedaling away on the exercise bike.

 I like having coffee with my breakfast instead of having coffee for breakfast, but I am still disturbed and frustrated with the fact that it kick starts my system and makes me even more ravenous later in the morning than I would have been if I’d just abstained.

I am hungry for knowledge, almost overwhelmingly so, resulting in this semester's crazed schedule.  I want to know.  I want to discuss, I want to hear and share and make ideas, I want to build connections and create patterns.  I crave the world and all of its intricate, fascinating parts.  I am almost depressed by the sheer volume of things that are out there to learn in the limited amount of time that we exist in this world.  I am in awe of the world, but I keep myself walled off from it, a spectator rather than a participant.  I feel like my appetite for information and experience can never be satisfied, and I vent the frustration from that disappointment through tyrannical control of more concrete appetites.

I am scrambled, spinning, struggling for a grip.  Why is it so hard to just be human?

 

 

Exposure Assignment of a Different Sort

I had a good session with H. today, and one thing we talked about was the "picture panic" from last weekend.  I could tell she looked really sad when I told her about how much fun my trip was and then mentioned I had been too embarassed to send the pictures to my family or post them online (except for one fairly nonthreatening headshot) because of how I think I look in them.  Not exactly traditional "exposure therapy," but sort of similar in that it involves doing something that I know I'm not going to be comfortable with but that should help me gain some perspective if I think about it hard enough.

H. doesn't give me homework very often, but this week my challenge is to go through those pictures and find ones where I am doing really cool things, and post those in the places I usually put my field photos (when I am not repulsed by how I look in them, at least).  The idea is for me to focus on what I was doing, the experience, instead of how chubby my cheeks look.  Is an adventure any less cool or thrilling of you weigh X or X+Y?  No, or at least it shouldn't be.

Anyway, just wanted to share that little exercise, in case anyone else might find it, or at least the idea behind it, to be somewhat useful.

Picture Panic

Panel discussion was fairly good but not that remarkable, I may have comments on it later but wanted to address some stuff from the weekend first:

The camping field trip was a mixed success.  I had a pretty good time overall.  We saw some amazing animals and gorgeous landscape, and I had a great time with the people (more on that later).  

But when I uploaded my pictures I was really appalled at how grotesquely huge I look.  Damn, how can I walk around like this, with my disgustingness on display to the world?  Objectively I know I'm still underweight, I haven't gained any weight in weeks, but I am heavier than I have averaged since I've been in college, and I hate the changes.  It doesn't help that I went on the same camping trip last year, to the exact same site (I wasn't in the class last year, but I was allowed to tag along), so I have two sets of pictures to compare, with the Cammy of 2008 significantly heavier than the Cammy of 2007.  I'm embarrassed to send the new ones to my family or post them on Facebook, even though I'm doing some awesome things in the photos and really want to share those adventures.  

It's not just my overall size in the pictures that bothers me, it's mostly my face.  I HATE it when my face fills out, I just don't like the shape of it.  One possible reason for this (H.'s favorite theory, at least) is that it's because I look so incredibly similar to my biological dad.  If you compare pictures of us at the same age (yes, he was just a little older than me when I was born, SCARY) we could seriously pass for fraternal twins.  thus, filled out face = reminder of abusive alcoholic father.  That's a hypothesis, but I don't really buy it, because I honestly can go weeks without even thinking about him, I just don't consider him all that relevant or significant.  At least not compared to the crippling relevance that fat feels like.

If I feel like this right now, how am I ever going to handle getting to what H. has decided my minimum first goal should be?  Why is this so hard?  And why, when I looked at pictures of myself in another -ology lab just three days before the fieldtrip, was I struck by how thin I looked?  I didn't gain any weight between the two sets of pictures, but I swear I look way huger in the weekend photos.  What gives, my friends?

One other downside to the weekend is that my metabolism is a Big Growling Beast right now, so I spent a lot of time hungry.  When you're in the field food is mostly granola bars, etc, and those just don't hold me very well right now.  As a result I spent way too much time thinking about how much I wanted food, it was pretty annoying, I would have much rather been focused on other things.

One upside to balance the downers: I opened up to a friend about the eating issues and the fact that I'm seeing a therapist.  She used to be a gymnast, and she has never had food issues but she has definitely witnessed the downward spiral in others.  She was really understanding and supportive, it wasn't as awkward as I imagined something like that would be.

I have two exams tomorrow, and not only did I spend time going to an event on campus tonight but now I am sitting on Blogger.  Bad, bad Cammy, I need to go hit the books.

Panel Discussion

There is a student-run eating disorder awareness organization group at my university that first started my sophomore year and has since developed many great programs on campus.  I was involved for a semester, but I was already involved in so many things that I didn't really have time for it, plus I was vacillating between various degrees of apathy about my own ED.   Also, the projects do tend to be a little Greek-focused (although by no means exclusive), and I'm not in a sorority, so sometimes I felt like I was minimally useful anyway.

Even though I'm not an active member, I've stayed on the mailling list and do try to attend when they have speakers and events, they did a great job with NEDAW last February, we had a top name speaker and it went really well considering it was the organization's first attempt developing the awareness week activities. 

So, tonight they are hosting a panel discussion with therapists and former patients from our state's major ED inpatient facility.  It is actually the place H. has been pushing me to go.   I am way to busy to go do anything (we had major rain last night and my ceiling is leaking, dealing with that on top of the 89374 other things I have to do right now, plus I have TWO huge exams tomorrow), but I am going to go to the discussion.  What can it hurt?  I am still 100% sure that I'm not going to enter an IP program, but I am intrigued and want to hear what they have to say.  

I always feel a little awkward going to ED events, looking around you can almost take it for granted that everyone there has dealt with an ED in some way, even if it is just through a loved one's experiences.  It's thought-provoking and disturbing to see, in living, breathing reality, the number and diversity of people that have this shit going on under the surface.  Could you guess they had a problem if you hadn't seen them in this context?  Sometimes yes, often no, and there is always that niggly voice wondering what they think when they see you there, trying to be proud of taking up the space you occupy, literally and figuratively--in both the room and the world,--while still wondering whether you deserve it. 

So, if it is especially interesting I'll have an update on it later.