"On a break"

So, it's been quiet. I'm in the field. I'm doing well healthwise--my eating is probably as "normal" as it ever has been and I'm exercising regularly but not excessively. So, go me.

On another front, things feel like they're falling apart a bit.

Match and I are sort of broken up, as of this past week. "Sort of" meaning that we're doing a 3 month break while we reassess somethings, then we'll reassess. I'm both relieved and a bit bereft, even though I'm the one that insisted on this. Such is life.

Again

It appears I might have pneumonia again. Get it together, body, you're being pampered now, remember?

Great article on body fluctuations and why body-checking is torture

So, body-checking (specifically with my stomach and, to a lesser degree, arms) is one thing I'm still really struggling with, even though I've made tons of progress on many other things. I wanted to share this article, because it speaks to a lot of those issues and I felt like it was a useful/healthy thing for me to read this morning:
'These "Bad" Changes to Your Body (and Weight) Are Perfectly Normal'

This is a really tough habit to break, and is one of the reasons I got my new recovery tattoo on my upper arm (serves to usurp body-check as a reality check).

love y'all

NEDAW and Other News

So, just had a great weekend with Match. We had a couple of big Talks after things were so rocky at the end of the holiday break, and it all feels like it's right again now.

So, ED update . . .  I feel . . . really fucking good. My hair is awesome right now. My skin is awesome right now.

I'm still hungry all the time. Seriously. Like it never stops. I've upped my "baseline" (meaning never go under that number) calorie standard and have often had extra on top of that, without gaining any more weight. Still having gross night sweats and hot flashes. But I do feel way more energized, and to be super cliché, "alive" than I did a few months ago.

I deleted my calorie-tracking app from my phone. I still know the calories in things and run tallies in my head at each meal, but I do think it's helping not to be obsessed with recording everything.

Haven't weighed myself in weeks and H. FINALLY convinced my physician to quit weighing me in the office. When I worked with H. in college I gained dozens of pounds without anyone monitoring my weight; I sort of need to be free of that to do well.

Part of my reduced exercise plan is going to a couple of group classes at the gym with a friend each week (i.e., it becomes social and there is a defined ending time designed for real nondisordered people). We picked a spin class, and it is INTENSE.

And you know what? I feel like energized exerted afterwards, not "omg I hope I can make it home to my planned measured dinner without passing out first."

Also, I am starting to like that I look more like a girl in clothes. Spending a weekend with Match brought LOTS of affirmation on the body image front. After a couple of days he even had ME appreciating how new curves look on me. He's a persuasive fellow, that one.

Moodwise, pretty good. I'm busy with work but not overwhelmed and am doing a lot more social things regardless of the food situation. My puppy is still AMAZING and the most adorable creature ever to exist.

That's me. I'm also sharing a few more National Eating Disorders Awareness Week things publicly on Facebook and Twitter this year. I feel like the people that actually matter to me are generally enlightened enough to handle that, you know? I haven't made any of it personal, but I know it's revealing at least to some degree to even know what NEDAW is.

Also I am IN LOVE with my new tattoo. Another picture soon.

Love y'all, happy NEDAW 2016!

B12

So something is going on: I’m having numbness in two of the fingertips on my right hand. At first it was just my index finger and now it’s in the middle finger a bit too. It started maybe a week or so ago and has gotten worse.

Some Googling immediately turned up ‘pernicious anemia’ as a cause, which, from what I read, is the type caused by low B12. I’m still totally clueless as to why my B12 levels have fallen since last semester (when they were already on the very low side of normal). This past week I started taking a B12 supplement, but the numbness has been getting worse, not better. I’m still eating well and haven’t upped exercise or dropped weight. I’m not sure what else I could be doing to make it improve. You get B12 from animal products, and I've upped my meat and full-fat dairy consumption since last semester, so I have no clue.

I have probably been pretty lucky that my health has stayed so good for so many years considering what I've made my body endure. We'll see how things go I guess.

Extreme Hunger During Recovery

This article on "extreme hunger" during recovery is spot on about what has been stressing/confusing/frustrating me so much lately in terms of my hunger cues etc. Just posting in case it's useful for someone else too.

Positive updates and new ink

I'm short on time but wanted to do a brief update. I think I've been using the blog to vent when I'm having a hard time and haven't necessarily taken time to talk about what's going right. I think my routine in PhD town is much healthier this year, including:

-Much less exercise, and some of that involving walking my awesome pup and enjoying being outdoors (even when it's cold here, it's usually sunny and beautiful).

-Trying to do more to honor hunger cues. Probably another post on this later. It stresses me out and is hard when I know I have a weigh-in coming up, but H. talked to my physician about doing that less often now unless I start losing again.

-Actually seeing the dietitian regularly; I think she's a keeper.

-Getting to the office earlier in the day (due to change in exercise schedule) and feeling a lot more productive.

-Making a point to actually cook at least once a day instead of grabbing "safe" prepackaged stuff.

-Being more flexible on social plans and hanging out with friends; I have FANTASTIC friends here and I always feel better after time with them.

-Trying to reframe when dealing with X (asshole PhD advisor) and to see him as an annoyance when he's grumpy, not a noose around my neck.

So even though I do have tough days/periods (this past weekend was especially shitty), I think overall I'm in a much better place. Turns out I had gained more weight over the holidays than I expected: UNDERestimating gain instead of OVERestimating is an entirely new thing for me. I think being on an SSRI, after so many years of refusing to try one, has helped me with a lot of the typical body ooglies.

Also, I love having this pup. She is super cuddly and goofy and always a source of comfort or comic relief. Also, having something at home that is dependent on me keeps me more accountable (ie, not so tempted to add extra hours at the gym).

Also, this happened yesterday:

The thought behind this:
1) That spot is one I habitually body-check, and it will be good to have a reality check there instead.
2) "Enough" has two meanings here: first, that I've done enough time being sick, being preoccupied, wasting energy, having birthday parties without cakes and weighing carrots and this that and the other, enough of all that shit that from now on I should be able to do and have pretty much whatever I want.
3) Also that I can be enough as me without the disorder, without putting myself through the wringer just to end up making myself sicker and more removed from life.

Maybe that's kinda corny, but there you go. I'm happy with it.

Love y'all.

Vent

Currently in tears because I've been hungry all day (despite having normal cals at every meal) and am still hungry after dinner and am so fucking sick about thinking about whether to eat or not. So, so, so tired of it. Supposed to be "listening to my body" but that earned me a fuck ton of weight gain over the holidays, so I don't trust that it's actually hungry, I suspect it's actually just greedy. I am really starting to give up on ever being normal. I wish I could just go into standby mode and turn my brain off.

Just needed to vent.

Back to real life.

So for some reason as soon as I got back to my place in PhD Town and unpacked I had a full-blown ugly-cry anxiety attack.

 I'd been feeling good about my body and had been so relaxed about food stuff (sista had a DONUT on the drive today) but suddenly feel like I have the physique of a snow woman. I'm sure it's generalized stress about the semester starting and maybe some relating being here to stress with my adviser, dunno.

If you have ANY "gaining weight is good" messages or insights to share, I could really use them right now.

Holiday Break Comes to an End

I am now back in Match City, stopping over for a few nights on my way back to PhD Town. It was hard leaving my mom and grandfather; that month passed too quickly.

Last weekend I took a road trip to Historic Southern Town with my mom and Brother 1, and actually had a great time. My mom had a conference to go to there, and I got to bring P. along. I caught up with good friends from high school and college and generally just played tourist; it was awesome. I also ate like I was on vacation.

But between two days of driving for that, all day in the car yesterday, and the two-day drive back to PhD Town starting Friday, I am getting REALLY sick of sedentary car time and it's making it harder to sit with my recently restored weight.

Since I haven't been weighing myself, I have no idea how much I've regained. I lost almost all of my summer weight over the fall and don't think I've regained all of it, but I've still put on enough for me to really notice, both in terms of physical sensation and what I notice in the mirror or pictures of myself. I can still wear all of my jeans comfortably, but they had gotten big on me by the end of last semester.

Honestly, I'd be totally happy with my body with this weight or even more except my stomach --  that is still by far my biggest hangup. I like having fuller breasts and booty, and having healthier looking arms, etc. Just need to deal with feeling like I have a spare tire and a bit of a moon face. When I get back to PhD Town I'm going to try to do a max of half the gym time I was this past fall, and to make at least 1/3 of it strength training rather than just cardio, because I think that will help me sit with the weight gain better instead of panicking and letting myself lose it again.

I'm actually shocked that I haven't gained more given how liberal I've been with food and how much I've cut exercise. Go figure. Also been hypermetabolic as hell; I think I mentioned that in the last post.

Also, getting to Match City last night meant the First Sex After Weight Gain session. That's always really hard for me. Match is great and really insistent that he's a safe space and will be happy with my body whatever happens, loves it looking more filled out, blah blah blah, but it's still difficult.

Fortunately for Match, my libido has been like whoa now that my body has been better taken care of for over a month.  Unfortunately for me, his back injury means that we really can't do as much as we used to (it's still regular but less frequent than before). I'm getting really frustrated with his refusal to do any kind of treatment for his back and how much that affects us both (NOT just because of the sex, a lot of things are more affected than that). That's for another post, I guess.

I have a lot of post-holiday processing to do during my session with H. tomorrow. I'm getting stressed about dealing with my landlord and adviser when I get back to PhD Town. Real life sux. Also, between all the crises with my jerk adviser, jerk dad, jerk Brother 2, jerk landlord, and jerk dad-in-la in 2015, plus Match being a grump at times over the holidays, I have just about lost all my patience for men over the past year or so, real talk.

Alright, love y'all.

Hello from 2016

Hi all. I didn't intentionally go silent on the blog, but got behind and then it felt like a chore to catch up, so I got farther behind and even less motivated to catch up . . . so yeah, the holidays happened. Here are the main headlines from the last six weeks or so:

1. I GOT A DOG. 
A pup-dog, to be precise, squarely in her adolescent stage but still a doll. Let's call her P. When G. died I didn't think I'd ever have another dog, but it had been 2.5 years or so and I finally felt ready. I am SO in love with her. H. (psychologist) wrote a letter "prescribing" an Emotional Support Animal so I can have her at my apartment. That was a bit of drama; my landlord is a total dick. But I'd rather deal with him being grumpy than not have her. She was a stray and is wary of new people but bonded to me quickly, and I absolutely adore her.

2. Christmas
I don't really like Christmas anymore. It was my Nana's birthday, plus with my parents being recently split it was more a cause for stress over who saw who when than anything else. We didn't exchange presents this year, which was actually a huge relief and made the whole thing much more about just spending time with family.

My youngest brother (Brother 2) chose to spend Christmas with my dad. I chose to spend it with mom, my grandpa, and my favorite uncle at his farm about 4 hours away. My oldest younger brother (Brother 1) decided to come there with us but have mom and dad meet halfway on Christmas day so he could spend the evening with Dad and Brother 2.  I rode along with my mom for the trip so she wouldn't have to spend two hours driving alone on Christmas Day.

When my dad got there (it was the first time I'd seen him since they split), I said "Merry Christmas Dad" but he just said "no" and brushed past me. I saw him for less than a minute total for the four hours of car time. Honestly I did it for my mom, not for him, but still. Rude. Match and I went over to his place for dinner about a week later and things went better then. I know he's hurting, but he is also SO volatile. He's been doing some pretty ugly things towards mom, too (cutting her off from bank accounts, sending her mean texts at all hours, etc), making this as hard as possible for her.

We went to yet another state to see Match's next oldest brother (he's the baby) and his dad, and that visit went amazingly well, especially considering the debacle that ended his last visit with us. I could tell he was trying REALLY hard. Food was stressful at times because those two are more of the "have one huge meal a day and snack the rest of the time" sort, which doesn't work for me, especially when my metabolism is revving out of control. But we managed.

3. New Year's
Celebrated at my Grandpa's house, not all that noteworthy.

4. Match
I went to Match City from PhD Town (with P. in tow, of course), then we came down to my mom's house together. He is under a lot of work- and money-related stress right now, and was a bit cranky for a big chunk of our time in Match City, but we talked about it and he really did do a good job of turning that around. He also told me I seemed distant and distracted once we got to my family, which is probably true because I was pretty caught up in family stress.

5. ED Stuff
I wish I understood my brain. Somehow I go into a completely different mode of being when I leave my place and go to Match's. I have been gaining weight, although I don't know how much, because I haven't been weighing myself OR logging my food, two more wins. I've basically been eating to match hunger/appetite, which is actually hugely foreign territory. AND at least during the Match visit (he went home on the 5th, a week ago) I was exercising (either walking outside or gym time) for half my usual time at max, sometimes just 1/4.

I've actually been pretty shocked that I haven't gained WAY more weight, but I've also been hugely hypermetabolic. Still, a lesson for the future that splurging doesn't translate linearly to bulking up.

6. School/Work
I am a bit ashamed and stressed that I don't have more work done to show for my time over the break. I DID finish a manuscript with my MS adviser and get it submitted, so there's that. And there has also been all the family and health stuff to attend to. So oh well. Fortunately X (my PhD adviser) doesn't teach during the spring semester so hopefully he won't be around all that much, which makes me a lot less anxious. He DID fail to sign my PhD candidacy forms before jetting off to Tropical Research Country this week, even though I reminded him multiple times in December, dropped them off at his office, and he swore he'd do it. He is not very good at this job.

7. Miscellaneous
My mom and I are plowing through 'Making a Murderer' on Netflix. RIVETING. She is an attorney and has seen a lot of despicable things done during investigations, but even she has been shocked. I'm not done yet so no spoilers, but everyone go watch that show so we can discuss it soon!

My new dog's tail is long relative to her body that when she gets really excited and wags hard, she smacks herself in the face with it. True story; I have video.

I saw my first ever Star Wars movie; the new one out in theaters now. It wasn't by choice; Match and his brother and Dad wanted to see it. I didn't really think much of it to be honest, but chase and battle type movies always bore me. The little round robot did remind me a bit of P, though.

I guess this is a long enough post for now; I hope to be updating regularly again now.

Happy belated new year, love y'all.