Lucky 7

Hey there, I hope everyone had a great holiday!  I was looking forward to it, and was not disappointed. It was the most time Match has spent with my family (I've spent a lot more time around his), and everyone got along great. He and my oldest younger brother especially hit it off, which was nice.  The weather was beautiful, which means we got to play football and go for hikes, which was awesome.

I know Thanksgiving is officially past, but since this whole holiday season (yes NOW it is legitimate to have Christmas decorations and music and food! It annoyed me back in October, though) is about appreciating people and life etc, I have a random "lucky 7" list of things that the holiday reminded me to be grateful for:

1)  My boyfriend's family, who treat me as one of their own, except possibly even more special.  They have always just had boys (Match is one of three brothers, one of which doesn't seem to date and the other of which has an Evil girlfriend no one can stand), and so they are pretty thrilled at the novelty of having girl around. Thus, I get indulged at every opportunity. For example,  M.'s dad made a big deal about winterizing my car for me, installing some new gadgets, treating the windshield and tires, etc etc. He also cranked his thermostat up about 8 degrees for the days that I was there because he knows I get cold, and he stocked his fridge FULL of fresh fruit (as a single man he almost never buys produce for himself) because he knows I like it.  As if M. didn't spoil me enough all by himself...

2) My family, for being smart and fun and friendly and affectionate and awesome in general.

3) This wonderful region that I live in, which is extremely beautiful in the fall.

4) One word: Zinfandel.

5) My dog, who is incredibly well-behaved and the best personality fit that I ever could have found for myself.  His age is starting to show more and more, and I find myself contemplating his mortality more often these days.

6) I promise that I will never TMI y'all with details about my sex life, but indulge me some Girl Talk for a second, because I think there is something about recovery (for adults) that is not discussed enough: the fact that being physically healthy enough to have a libido again is not the same as being mentally "together" enough to really appreciate your body as something that is sexy and attractive and strong and just plain fun sometimes. I think it's easy to not even realize/remember what you're missing from intimacy until you get to that point...honestly, is there any bigger of a mood killer than stressing about whether a certain position makes your belly pooch? Or anything more rewarding than realizing you've just spent an entire evening having fun and being admired and pleased and not giving a shit about any of the other stuff? Anyway, I guess that's the main thing I wanted to say about that. Now that I've used the word "sex" and "libido" in a post, my search string stats should get a lot more interesting this week.

7) My first thesis draft is turned in, my qualifying exams are done, my PhD applications are all submitted...I be wrapping this up, yo.  Just 6 months left in this town (which I hate) and at this school (which I HATE) until I get a couple more letters behind my name and move on to the next era of my life. I can't wait.

I won't say I was entirely relaxed about food the entire holiday, but I think I handled that part well all things considered. Especially since on holidays my family tends to eat the main meal as sort of a lunch and dinner combined in the mid-afternoon, which always throws me off.  One thing Match does that helps me a ton is that if I let him know I'm hungry and need to eat, he will get a snack too because he knows I can't stand to be the only one eating.  One small but significant new victory for me is actually telling him when I'm hungry between meals, instead of either sucking it up til the next meal or finding a way to escape by myself for a few minutes to eat a granola bar without anyone seeing.

Thankful for Thanksgiving

Hey! I am in such a ridiculously good mood today, and it has had me thinking about some things.

A few years ago, I think I would have never believed it if you told me that I'd be looking so forward to a week-long trip (read: removal from all of my routines and rituals and general comfort zone and empty-air foods) for a holiday revolving around food.  But here it be, in 2011, I can't wait for Thanksgiving.

And not because of the food, which I haven't even really thought about.  I know there will be something there I can eat, and so that's fine. And that's that, I guess. And I think it took me til today to register how little I had registered the food part, which feels HUGELY satisfying to me, because it used to be that I would stress over every bite I consumed for the week leading up to the holiday to "save up" for the family meal (and then usually end up restricting on the holiday anyway).  This year, it just doesn't seem like a big deal, and the only thing I plan to micromanage is to make sure that we have varieties of red wine on hand that don't remind me of taking communion as kid.

Obviously I'm not looking forward to going so many days without my normal exercise routines. I won't pretend it will be an issue-free week.  But ever since M. and I have been long-distance, I've gotten better and better at coping with that on visits, and he has learned ways to make it easier for me too.  Again, in previous years I would have added to my daily routines days before and after the holiday to compensate, and now there is none of that.

I am SO looking forward to time with my family and my Boy, and on being more a part of his family too (we're seeing both my parents and his over the course of a few days).  I have been pretty much giddy knowing that I get to fall asleep in his arms tomorrow night. Okay I will spare you further mushy stuff, sorry.

When I rewind my tape of Thanksivings Past, there were so many in middle and high school where I was nothing but a bundle of anxiety, so drained and depleted and anxious that the holiday felt like a rite of torture more than anything else.  Then in college I just plain never came home for it ("free at last!"), spending the holiday studying and weighing my grapes and logging treadmill miles instead of with the people I loved. So, this year, my "I am thankful for" item has got to be: I am thankful for Thanksgiving and for having the chance to make up for all the years that I wasted it in the past.


Anyway, I'm in supergreat mood right now and just felt like sharing, since I'm trying more and more to avoid using this blog disproportionately for negative venting.

Random: My youngest brother called me while I was in the middle of writing this post, just to chat and ask some advice about college.  I fucking love being a big sister, especially since my brothers are actually very awesome young men.

Random: I'm sort of a sucker for "limited edition" holiday foods, which is why it was impossible for me to leave Target today without mint M&Ms, pumpkin spice waffles, and Christmas tree shaped Reese's cups (which, if you've been reading for any amount of time, you will be aware are my long time bestfavoriteeveninthedepthsofEDsnack).

Random: I have been ghetto in driving my car around with the bumper dented in even though I've already gotten the appraisal and check to pay for the damages--but I had to have *my* vehicle to transport G. home for Thanksgiving, so it will have to wait.  It's really not that bad looking, though, and nothing is at risk of falling off.

Random: I've checked off another milestone towards getting my Master's degree, and it is SO nice to feel like I'm making it farther towards the light at the end of that tunnel so I can gth out of this town and on to a school that's a better fit.

Random: I am totally obsessed with this song right now:


Random: Love y'all, happy thanksgiving, safe travels, good times, you are all something to be thankful for. <3

Positive Snowballs

It's been a while (again). I was traveling (again). And busy with grad studenting (always).  But here I be, for better or worse...

So the trip last week was interesting. In some ways I did poorly with food--I was at a relatively high elevation, which always seems to absolutely evaporate any hunger or appetite cues.  One of my most severe relapses ever came when I spent a summer in a high elevation city, because I just never felt the need to eat and was accidentally apathetically blasé about taking care of myself.

 BUT there was some success on this latest trip--on more than one occasion I handled eating events much more "normally" than I would have been able to even a short while ago. I ate at dish at a restaurant that was very hard to estimate calories for, had dinner very late one night (what equated to past midnight for my body clock if you take jet lag into account), and when I was struck with a case of ravenous-itis after getting back, I tried to honor those cues, and loosened my rules on meal times and such as a result.  And felt surprisingly comfortable and low-anxiety with ALL of that.  Kinda blows my mind?

I don't want to shirk responsibility on the appetite and intake issue, btw, but I did want to mention that the friend I was visiting offhandedly mentioned she has lost a significant amount of weight since living there, because she's just never hungry, and the guy behind us in line at Starbucks overheard and spoke up to say that he'd had the same experience.  So my point here is that I think that my body's response to the environment was fairly normal, although I acknowledge that I am conscious (and overconscious) enough about my food intake that I should have been more on top of it.

Still, I felt really happy that I was able to function like a pretty normal person in the group eating sessions.  The eating issue I struggled with the most the entire weekend was my lack of skill with chopsticks...

yes, I still have to eat sushi with a fork if I don't want to make a fool of myself.  And asking for a fork for sushi involves making a fool out of myself anyway. Sigh.

But overall I felt like I handled things pretty well. And I was a little easier on my body for a couple days after I was back, because I knew it was a bit depleted after being sick for a week and then being fairly deprived for a couple of days.  I guess I know I didn't handle things perfectly but I know I handled them way better than I would have in recent memory.

I'm not sure if you readers have picked up on this, but I'm feeling like more and more often I am coming away from challenges feeling a sense of success or at least progress--and it feels like it's getting easier and easier.  I have used the "snowball effect" metaphor at times to describe relapse, where small habits and rules and obsessions add up over time and build on one another to result in a rapid descent into the depths of EDdom. But I think I'm learning that the snowball can move the other direction to--it seems like breaking little barriers here and there, in a positive direction, really is making the whole thing more and more manageable and rewarding over time.

Cue Blind

Text exchange from this morning:

Cammy: I have no idea if my stomach hurts because it is sick or because I am insanely hungry. 
Match: That is a problem, love...

Indeed. Glad his two psychology degrees are serving us well here...*

It is a problem. I've had this stupid stomach virus since Saturday, and it is really, really frustrating me. I've been really good about getting my calories in, but it seems like instead of being rewarded for that I've been punished. I could really use a little bit of this both to and from my body:

I think the main issue is that my hunger cues are whacked out even in the best of circumstances, so when my body is also a bit (or a lot more than a bit, as it has been the past few days) off I have no fucking clue how to read it. Does it hurt because it is hungry and needs a big meal after being sick for a few days? WHOOPS no wrong move, it hurts because it was still sick and now I've done gone and pumped the wrong kinds of food into it. Or later when it's quiescent but uncomfortable, I don't know if it needs fed or if that will make it worse again. I may as well be trying to read instructions with a blindfold on. Commence the agony here.

And here I will also cease the whining. Sorry y'all.

*that is a JOKE, and probably a bad one that I may delete. I am super-careful about never treating M. as my personal therapist or making him feel like it's his job to help.  He encourages me to let him know when I'm having a hard time, with the understanding that I neither need nor want him to fix it for me.

Blogging and Weight

So I lately I have barely been doing two posts a week, and here I am posting two in one day. I really hope the swamping effect doesn't discourage people from reading. But I got a very, very important question on Formspring that I wanted to address right away, because it's an issue I've spent a lot of time worrying about:

Do you ever think your blog can be triggering? You mention your low weight a lot. While you don't mention numbers, you do mention how you're thin, too thin, etc. What if you didn't mention that?

 I am often conscious of whether I can say X or Y without it being seen as triggering or striking someone in an unhealthy way.  I actually deleted a fairly long paragraph from the last post because I decided I didn't want to chance it.  I absolutely don't use numbers, and I wouldn't post photos even if I weren't pseudonymous.

What if I never mentioned my weight at all? To be honest, I never thought that alluding to the fact that I'm not fully weight restored was very big news.  I figure it is not surprising that a person in recovery from a serious eating disorder is probably at least a bit under the average for weight.  I often see other people mention that their treatment team wants them to put on a last set of pounds, and have always thought it was just part of the process that is taken for granted. From what I've observed/experienced, it seems like that last few pounds to a mandated "goal weight" is a pretty long hard slog sometimes, because you look relatively normal and feel way better than you did before weight restoration, so it's hard to push yourself the last leg. I was a little worried that the person that asked this question (and THANK YOU for asking the question because if it's a concern I want to know about it) mentioned that I mention being a low weight "a lot." I scrolled through my posts from the last month and didn't see mention of it, but I know I have mentioned it occasionally and will be extra-conscious of it in the future.

 If I were writing this blog claiming to be fully recovered, now, I think that would be different and it would indeed be inappropriate to say that yes I'm under X BMI and it's all cool. But I think I've been pretty open about the fact that I'm a work in progress, and I know it's not all cool--but that I've made worlds of progress from when I was very sick and am on the ascent at this point.

And the truth is, I'm not extremely thin. I hope I have not made it seem as if the situation were currently otherwise. This is going by my own perceptions of course, but I am pretty sure that if you saw me on the street or scrolled through photos on Facebook (not that I would EVER post ultrathin photos there), your first thought would not be "I bet she has an eating disorder."  I'm not always the skinniest person in the room, can't wear half the jeans in my closet, and actually have a real butt and boobs now (woot!), modest as they may be. (Not that I think any of those factors mean that a person is not thin/slender at all, I just meant not gaunt or abnormal thin. Walking on eggshells a bit here, really don't want to be triggering!). Like I mentioned in my last post, I think most of my remaining progress in recovery needs to be cognitive/behavioral, even though I do actually want to work up to adding the final batch of pounds, even though I probably look/feel healthy as I am now.

And the other truth is, I don't think it's desirable at all to be very thin. I didn't really think that even when I was at much lower points in my ED.  It was more of a compulsion than anything else, and I didn't necessarily think it was attractive. It was just a process of progressive entrenchment more than anything else.

I have always really, really tried to make this blog an honest but non-triggering and absolutely non-competitive forum to air concerns, challenges, woes and successes, both to reach out for a bit of support for myself and to reach out to let people know that they're not alone in what they're going through.  But at the same time, the issue of being triggering is very worrisome to me, because I know you can never predict what will be triggering for everyone.  If someone ever sees something in a post that they think was in poor taste to mention, PLEASE leave a comment and tell me. I moderate comments, so if you want to just send me the question without it being posted publicly, just mention that and I won't publish it but will heed your feedback.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (and the Consolation)

Written last night, and then I couldn't publish it because the internet went down:

Well hello there. This weekend has been sort of a mixed bag so far.

Good: I had my big qualifying exam on Friday, and it was challenging but I got great feedback from my committee and they passed me, which is Mega Good news as it would screw over my degree plan if they didn't.  The exam is basically sitting in a conference room with 4 professors asking me questions about whatever they feel like for 3 hours. Some of the questions are just designed to be curveballs and to get you to show your critical thinking skills rather than to know the answer off the top of your head. There was one that I talked through for about 20 minutes before conceding I didn't know the answer, and the professor just said "Yeah no one really knows why X is like that."  Doh. I came away feeling good about the experience, though.

Bad: I had a fender bender on my way out to celebrate with friends that evening.  I actually surprised myself with how calm I stayed, but 1) my car was not at all disabled and 2) there was no way I could be faulted with accident, as I was stopped at a red light when the person hit me. It was mainly inconvenient in that it took up an hour of my evening to get the police out there and do the report, and that at some point I'll have to relinquish my car to the shop to repair the bumper.

Ugly: Stomach virus. I felt a little nauseous for most of the day, ate normally anyway (good Cammy), and then by this evening I was certifiably sicker than I've been since the last time I was in the tropics. Lovely.

Consolation: I had a super hectic day yesterday, with two meetings in addition to my exam, having a traffic collision, making an appearance at a grad student gathering and going out to dinner with my lab later on. I had no meals that were 'in routine', and didn't get my full exercise in. And yet I did not restrict and was pretty calm throughout everything.  I can definitely see myself making some progress, and I have to say it feels pretty empowering.

If I could put one message out there about EDs, it would be to make people see that there is not always a linear relationship between external and internal progress with recovery.  You can put all your weight back on but still be an obsessive anxiety monster with rigid and disordered routines. For me, the cognitive work (loosening routines, still calculating everything, general anxiety and fear of more weight gain, EXERCISE, etc) has been way harder. For me, the behavioral/mind aspects  have been way more of an issue than physical infirmity/discomfort for the past couple of years.

My therapist from college (who I non-hyperbolically credit with pretty much saving my life) dropped me an e-mail the other day just checking to see how I was doing, which was a huge booster for me. I like the new person, but still really miss H.

Okay that's the state of things at the moment, hope everyone is having a good weekend.

Hi there

I promise that I have not died, I've just been studying like a mofo for my oral qualifying exams tomorrow.  Been a little frustrated with myself for my lack of focus/efficiency, but this probably was NOT the wisest week to choose to detox from caffeine.

Anyway, therapy this afternoon and updates to come soon. As a consolation for being a crappy blogger, here's something cute to look at:

(Source)

And yes, if you actually click the link you will find that it is a very depressing site to have such a cute picture, but I suppose a healthy dose of irony never hurt anyone.