Get the Hit

[Random text conversation from yesterday that y'all would have no interest in, ending with this]:

Cammy: Taking G. out to walk, talk to you later.

Match: I'm gonna come tackle you to keep you still and save your knees.

Cammy: I'm tough, remember?

Match: In anyone else I'd see that as a virtue, in you I see it as a future compound fracture.

The joint pain woes are not abating. I told myself I wasn't going to work out after M left for work this morning, but I didn't follow through, even when I offered myself the option of cutting calories to compensate (bad, I know, I do not endorse that strategy!). I'm going to call my doc in the morning to ask for an X-ray order or something to help determine what the issues is. I actually tossed around the idea of going to the urgent care clinic today instead, since I may not be able to get an appointment with my doctor before I leave for my trip next week (not the big international one, this one is a weeklong venture for a professional conference). I'll see what they say tomorrow though.

Yesterday CG left a comment addressing the fact that I've made progress with food but not exercise. It's a good and interesting point, because I've had several "recovery"/relapse cycles, and in each successive iteration the issues were less severe with food and more severe with exercise. I actually exercised very little at my rock bottom (in middle school), but I ate extremely meagerly as well. Trying achieve the energy output I maintain today on that dietary regimen would have killed me, no doubt. As it has gone along, every time I've increased my routine food intake, the exercise has gone up to help relieve the anxiety of it and make it feel as though I'm balancing. At one point in college I was almost as thin as I had been at rock bottom, but I was eating more calories for one meal than I had eaten in an entire day at other points in my disease history.

I don't think that the issue is that I've become a big foodie (my food intake is about "normal" for someone my age and height, albeit not one on an extreme exercise program), because I'm often frustrated and uncomfortable with the amounts that are included in my meal plan. I am self-conscious about eating that much in front of others, and often have something light in front of them and wait til I'm alone to have more. So it's not that I necessarily work out so that I can eat more food, it's that I eat X calories so that I can get through my workouts. As evidenced by my dilemma this morning, when I passed up the option of cutting calories later (and the decreased amount of food still would have made me full) in favor of a very painful workout. Put the fuel in, push for exertion, get the hit of endorphins, feel anxiety melt away, and done. Wash, rinse, repeat.

In that vein, I had a slightly challenging dinner out with M last night and it went fine. The meal I'd had to psych myself up for turned out to not be as large/substantial as I expected, and I actually had a granola bar in the car on the way home to fill it out.

By the way DO NOT SEE 'SPLICE'. Terrible, horrible, waste of 2 hours worth of brain function. Just fyi.