The Shift

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So I’m aware of a shift in thought-processes the past few days or so that is finally enough to scare me. Ever since I got to Research Country, I’ve told myself that all of my restrictive eating and intense exercising is so that I can "afford" to indulge on town trips; food is SO monotonous here most days. I convinced myself I was “earning” the right to splurge when given the opportunity. I’m not saying this was healthy, or right, or justifiable. But that’s what it was.

And until recently I was good at that. Really good at that, actually.  I could go in and order nearly whatever I wanted, telling myself it was my “day off.” Want that pizza? Done. The cocktail too? Sure. Banana split? You got it, girl.

Getting “better” at eating out is an ED victory . . . but the whole thing was predicated on me knowing I’d be back at my usual restrictive regime the next day, so the calories were really a wash within about 24 hours.

But I think I’m feeling a shift. From looking forward to those town/trip days as a nice break worth sacrificing for to seeing them as something to fear and stress about.

Background: Since Match can’t travel out to visit me this year, I planned a little mini-vacation for myself, a couple of weeks from now. Just a two nights at a hotel in a nearby national park. My research permit here means I can get resident rates at tourist lodges, which means I can afford to stay in a pretty nice place (resident rate means essentially a 75% discount on hotels and park fees).  

I know that every meal there is buffet, and when I booked the trip I was looking forward to it as a way to get a break from my super-monotonous, restrictive routine here. Like, truly looking forward to it with excitement, like a goddamn normal person ready to take a break from their diet.

But recently, I’m starting to shift to fearing it more and more, to the point that I have tossed around the idea of just canceling the trip.  It’s not like somehow I will undo a few months of weight loss in two days, right? I know it doesn’t make sense. But I’m working myself up to the point of being unspeakably stressed about it, which sort of defeats the purpose of taking myself on a lakeside vacation.

I think up to this point I thought I was pretty in control of this slide, but this gripping fear of breaking my eating routine, of dreading something I’d set up to be a treat . . . it’s actually starting to scare me about bigger things.

The Answer

As usual, PostSecret finds a way to hit the nail on the head.


Just the other day I was talking (lamenting/whining) to Match about how right now I honestly can't even conjure a prediction as to what will ultimately make for a happy and contented life. I don't have the energy for anything. I have no clue what the answer is.

Chugging along but doubting

I feel like I need to say something but don’t know what to say. Things are chugging along here. I haven’t really decreased food relative to what I was consuming the last time I updated, but I think the deficits are catching up to me in various ways. Every dream I’ve had for weeks now has been about food -- really vivid ones. I am failing to get data entry and proposal-writing done because whenever I have a decent internet signal I spent all my time looking at menus online for every place I plan to be over the next four months and planning exactly what I’ll order everywhere. I’ve gotten good at shifting into “vacation mode” and eating pretty liberally on town days or trips, and I think that is sort of what is buoying me through the normal routine here at “home,” both energetically and in terms of morale (ie, I do know I get treats periodically and have that to look forward to).

I think this is the first time I’ve really questioned whether I can finish this PhD program (not whether I want to, that hit as my mid-PhD crisis last summer, but literally whether I can pull it off). I just don’t have the mental energy to stay as efficient and proactive as I need to be to squeeze what I need out of this field season, and I feel like a lot of other things are slipping through my fingers as well. I just don’t know.

How to Train Like Mary Cain

This story is refreshing: it’s a profile of an up and coming American track superstar, and how her coaching team is making a pointed effort to NOT overtrain her and to prevent the notorious female athlete triad and other unhealthy weight control habits from setting in. Props to her and her support team.

Post Secret on NEDAW

In case anyone is interested, here is the NEDAW edition of Post Secret (I don't think any of the posts are triggering, but I guess consider this a generic warning if you're super easily triggered).

Excavation of the Mind

So, when I'm not doing great ED-wise I start to see significance/applicability in seemingly unrelated places. This passage from a (not very good) book today really stuck out to me in terms of being a metaphor for the slippery slope of relapse: 

"I remember halting before I turned the corner where again lay the Crawler, still busy and incomprehensible in its task. Unsure if I could endure the excavation of my mind once more. Unsure if I would go mad from the sensation of drowning this time, no matter how much reason told me it was an illusion. But also knowing that the weaker I became, the more my mind would betray me. Soon it would be easy to retreat into the shadows, to become some shell haunting the lower steps. I might never have more strength or resolve to summon than in that moment."

-Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

Field Dispatch, February 2015

So, I’m back. Sorry for the sporadic posting. I was having a really tough time when I started updating this again last fall, and the holiday season was so rough that almost everything in the world outside my family slipped through the cracks.

So since I last posted, my grandfather (husband of my Nana that died in November) got a life-threatening infection (from a dirty needle stick at a VA hospital, don’t even get me started) that involved two emergency surgeries, 16 days on IV antibiotics, and hospitalization over Christmas. In addition, my boyfriend’s back problems became downright debilitating, his car died on us (permanently) in the middle of nowhere on a road trip back to his city from my parent’s house, my brothers (age 19 and 21) both became more and more overtly aggressive towards everything as a way of acting out due to family problems, my parents’ marriage continued to deteriorate in front of everyone, and my dad was in a car accident the day before I flew out for my 2015 field session. We also weathered our first holiday season without Nana, whose birthday was on Christmas. We basically just didn’t celebrate anything.

So it’s almost the end of February. I’m now a month into my 2015 field season in Equatorial Research Country. Up to this point I’ve usually done decently on food stuff over here – I came back lighter after the 2013 season but willing to fix that, and actually came back a bit heavier in 2014 (not a lifetime high but at a relatively robust place for me). I’ve been here for a month of 2015 and have already lost enough that even I objectively realize something needs to change, but feel deep in enough to be scared to reverse course. And scared to go forward. I broke down today and asked my mom if she’ll help me with money to restart my Skype therapy sessions soon.

In other words, I’m being brought to my knees yet again by this thing.

Some days, the loss feels so clinically clean and efficient, and other days it feels like a hurricane inside my head is putting my body so out of balance that it will never know up from down again. C’est la vie, I suppose.