Lessons from the Field

Hey lovelies, I hope everyone is doing well. I'm in the field for about another 10 days, and haven't been thinking much about the ED stuff lately. I felt a little adrift and purposeless the first few days as I was still meeting people and getting oriented, but then things got super busy here. I've been going around tagging along with several different people on their projects in order to get to know the area as well as possible before I come back to collect my own data next year.

I think I actually ended up overextending myself—going out into the field from 6 AM-noon, getting a workout in, cramming down lunch and then heading straight back out into field until dark, another workout and dinner, then maybe a night excursion or something else until I finally crash under my mosquito net. The workouts were really more of a default than a conscious anxiety thing, I think, at least, as there were days when we went out on a trip and I didn't have much formal exercise time and still did fine with eating. I'm just not quite over my tendency to default to using that to fill spare time, I guess, something to work on.

Anyway, I have also not been counting calories, which is a HUGE deal for me. Seriously, I never thought I'd get to that point. I can't take all the credit, since in many ways trying to keep strict counts here would just be impossible as I am so unfamiliar with the way they prepare the foods. But I have been a bit proud of how well I've handled that. 

 I think a result of the lack of calorie counting, however, is that I've been drastically undercutting my calorie needs most days, honestly unintentionally. I took time to try to estimate it a bit today, and realized I've probably been coming in under my usual cals even when I've been exerting myself quite a bit almost nonstop, even though I truly haven't been hungry most of the time. Oops. I think I've mentioned this before, but I tend to lose my appetite at high elevation, and I'm in the elevational range right now at which that tends to affect me. Plus we eat self-serve style in a dining hall, and I am a bit self conscious about going up for seconds. So I once again fail at intuitive eating, but at least for more innocent reasons this time?

The accumulation of hyperbusyness and the appetite issue, plus lack of sleep due to the many critters that chorus throughout the night here, plus being exposed to a host of new bugs and pathogens, means that my poor immune system just couldn't take it anymore and I've been really sick today. Which makes it even MORE difficult to eat any amount of food; lovely cycle, that one.

I'm trying, though. Took an easy day today with minimal time out in the field (the climate is INTENSE here, yo), and used it as a chance to catch up on some reading and blog posts. I'm eating as well as I can although everything except tea makes my stomach freak out right now.

I think I've learned some things about my patterns from this so far. One was the default tendency to fill time with exercise. It doesn't even feel like a choice to think about or decide, it's just what I do. So I need to work on taking time to ask myself if that is REALLY what I want to have to show for that hour or whatever, rather than working on something else.

I sometimes do find that I eat less than enough at meals (if it's something I don't like, which happens when the menu is planned by other people) and then supplement with bars and such later, and on days when I do that I am more likely to start obsessing about calories again, just because the numbers are there on the wrappers and allow me to do arithmetic gymnastics in my head. When I go back home I'll be back in a position of cooking for myself, of course, and all the measuring/calculating that entails, but I'm hoping this experience with at least partially turning it off will help me to ease off the tallying in other situations too.

Being here has also REALLY eased my transition to being more vegetarian (no meat except fish). There is always a veggie option at meals here, and the meat option is usually a mammal (beef, lamb, goat, etc), which I not only cut out years ago but truly have never had a taste for. When my mom was pregnant with me she would get really sick every time she ate red meat, and apparently I have maintained that opinion of it into adulthood. Giving up poultry was my last big step into vegetarianism, and that one was hard because it was such a default (discussed here), but it is served a max of once a week at this site, so it has been really easy to get out of that ingrained habit of having a meat as the last course of every main meal (usually lunch).

So that's the food update, I guess. I have no idea where my weight is, I'm pretty sure I haven't gained any, and yes I guess I still do think about it, but baby steps, right? Despite the bumbling with intuitive eating without calorie counting to guide me, I do feel like I've handled this way, way better than I ever could have before, and it's encouraging.

I find myself with a lot less interest in the whole ED thing overall lately, actually. I hope that doesn't come off the wrong way. Eating disorders are awful diseases and are totally legit, serious problems, I'm not questioning the validity of that at all. I just find myself thinking about them less and wanting to spend mental energy on them less and less as I'm making progress and getting excited about all the other things coming up for me. I definitely still have symptoms/issues to work through, but I think I'm starting to see them as quirky habits/behaviors more than anything else, and that makes it somehow seem more manageable to me, I wish I knew how to explain it better. A habit is less intimidating to quash than a disease, I guess, even though I know that an ED is unquestionably an illness. I think that even though I tend to default to those habits given the opportunity, I've become really good at being adaptable when I have to, and that helps me to set a good example for my future self and gives me a good deal of hope. As long as I don't let that shift in focus to allow me to let slippage occur without taking it seriously. I know I still have an ED, but feel like it's becoming a smaller and smaller slice of the pie chart of my life.

Okay I wonder how many people I offended/alienated with that last paragraph, really wasn't my intention. :( I love y'all.