Trip Review: ED Stuff

This is Part II of my review of my spring break road trip. In my last post I mentioned the things that went well: bonding time with my boyfriend, meeting his family, etc. Eating and exercise were bigger challenges, which, although I think I did manage decently overall, did present a few rough patches.

Exercise

Not only was I out of my normal habitat, but I had way less opportunities to exercise than I would have liked. Two of our days were spent sightseeing, which kept us on our feet, but two were spent in the car (although I got quite a bit of workout time in before we left on Saturday morning), and the other one was mostly sedentary visiting with his family. On the visit day, I told Match ahead of time that it would do wonders for my state of mind if we could fit a walk in at some point, and he was very understanding. It worked out well, because we ended up going with his mom and her dog, and I got to see a bit of the neighborhood. Still, it was a minuscule amount of activity compared to what I'm used to. This definitely did affect my eating. Although I didn't do terribly badly, I knew I was often in a deficit during the trip.

Eating

The only very difficult incident was Monday night when we went out to dinner with M's dad (we actually ate dinner out with him every night, this was the only really hard one). I tried to be adventurous and order a non-salad thing, especially since it was a day we'd been moving a lot and I knew I was in the red on my calories. But the item I ordered was way bigger and greasier than I expected, and it threw me off. Uberstress. M's dad noticed I was picking at it, and started making comments about me not eating it and generally making it obvious he was watching me like a hawk. This is the HUGEST appetite killer for me, and totally shut me down for the meal. I was frustrated because I knew I needed to eat, but really felt too anxious, off kilter, and under the microscope to touch the food. I was was pretty near tears. I knew he didn't mean to make it difficult, he was just trying to seem attentive, but the whole point is that I cannot handle attention to my eating. Match picked up on my distress and tried to keep the conversation going to take me out of the spotlight, but at that point I was in internal meltdown mode and it didn't matter. My Twitter pals (you know who you are) "witnessed" this in real time when I had a chance to type on my phone during a bathroom break and in the car on the way home. You ladies are awesome, by the way, not sure if I conveyed at the time how much I appreciated your support.

So I ended up not touching a bite of it, and going to bed empty even though I had walked all day and only had a moderate sized lunch around noon. In retrospect I can see how I could have coped with what I was served (scrape X off of Y and eat it, have bread from the basket, etc), but I was just freaked out at the time. And the thing is, I truly didn't feel hungry once I was in panic mode, even though my stomach had been growling before we got to the restaurant. I did feel fat and soft from not exercising. And I felt no hunger the next morning either, absolutely none, and I felt just as fat as ever. I think this was the scariest part of the whole incident. Just a reminder of how easy it all is, how smooth it would be to turn back in that direction. I did get back on track that morning, because we had some great activities planned and I wanted to have enough energy to enjoy everything.

So Monday night was the only complete failure. I did eat much better than I would have in the past, although still didn't meet my mealplan most days. Most of that stemmed from self-consciousness around Match, who tends to be a bit of a light eater himself. I know that is ridiculous, that he wouldn't think less of me for eating when I'm hungry, but still.

Candidness

M did pick up on my meltdownishness on Monday night, and we discussed it after we went to bed. He was very understanding about why the situation made me uncomfortable. He noticed I'd disappeared for a few mins and had been using my phone right after, and asked if I had someone I contacted when things like that happened. He said he wished I could come to him instead, which was nice, but I felt like I needed to calm down a bit before talking to him about it.

On the car ride back on Wednesday we spent a couple hundred miles discussing the ED and body image stuff, actually. I've kind of been giving it to him piece by piece as our relationship has progressed, and I think spending extended time with me helps him to get a better grasp of where stress points and other issues might be found. Overall he was incredible about it. He had some probing and specific questions, but I'm at the point where I feel ok about answering pretty much anything for him. The only thing that bothers me about how he handles it is that he still likes to stroke my stomach sometimes, even though I've told him several times that it makes me uncomfortable. If I redirect the hand once he does it, though, he goes along with that. And he is a pysch major, and apparently has learned some things about EDs in his classes that I really do not agree with, but he was open to hearing my opinion on those (like using BMI as diagnostic criteria, certain differences between AN and BN, etc).

Ok, so that was that. He has now seen/learned way more about me, and I apparently have not scared him off yet.

I think I underestimated how much a few days of calorie slashing would affect me, I have felt extremely lethargic and a bit "swimmy" ever since I got home, still trying to get my balance back. So in a nutshell, some significant challenges, but the trip was definitely worth it.