Reclaiming Yourself

Quote of the day:

I'm starting to develop a sense that I'm the one who owns my body, and I'm starting to think more in terms of how I feel and less about my waistline. I'm much more interested in being comfortable and not self critical.
This journey to recovery continues. It's as though I'm reclaiming parts of myself every day. Slowly but surely, my soul is inhabiting much more of my body than anorexia.
~Jessica, from This is Who I Am by Rosanne Olson

Travel Weary

I am finally back home, I survived both the conference and the trip up to visit with some friends from high school. I tried hard with eating, etc during the conference and did a good job, but restricted starting around Tuesday/Wednesday, like I mentioned earlier, I always feel the compulsion to do that when I go back to the town where I went to high school (it's not my hometown, I was a nomadic Army kid, and my parents don't live there anymore). I did lose a couple of pounds total on the trip (despite having way more liquid calories last night than I usually allow myself), but am going to make an effort to restore that plus more before I leave for Central American Country in a week.

Travel home was a NIGHTMARE. I had to change planes once on my way back from the conference, and I had a nine hour delay at the airport (this is on top of my regular two-hour layover time). Insanity. I was supposed to land in the early afternoon, drive a couple of hours to take my grandparents to dinner and spend the night with them, then hang out with them for most of the day before heading up to celebrate my high school friend's 21st birthday.

Unfortunately, Delta Airlines had other plans. My original flight was cancelled, and I was put on standby for one, not allowed on, then put on a later one that ended up being delayed several hours due to weather. Lots and lots of unhappy passengers and airline workers, you could have cut the stress in the air with a knife, except you would never have gotten such an instrument through security. Just some useless trivia: for some reason I am randomly searched almost every time I fly, they either pull my bags off to rifle through or pull me aside for a thorough wand wave and pat down. I fit no stereotypical terrorist profiles whatsoever, not sure what gives.

Have I mentioned how much I HATE it when they over-aircondition public places? If it hadn't been for the anxiety keeping my adrenal system firing and metabolism revving at full blast I probably would have just curled up and frosted to death right there in my little plastic chair.

I was in hell, and it had indeed frozen over.

I ended up finally reaching my destination airport at 12:30 AM. That is the time we hit the runway. After we deplaned and I tracked down my bags (they had come in on two separate flights, neither of which were the one I myself had been on), I got myself utterly lost in the parking garage around 2:00 AM. At this point I gave up all shreds of dignity or collectedness and called my mommy, bawling. Keep in mind I had been up for 22 hours straight at that point. I did eventually find my car, and managed to escape onto the open road.

I had highly caffeinated myself and was going to try to push through the two hour drive to my grandparent's house, but once I got on the interstate I realized I had no chance of making it, so I got a motel room.

So, for Thursday: Time asleep: ~3:00 AM. Time awake the next morning: 6:30 AM.

I headed north the next morning, took the grandparents to breakfast and visited with them, then headed up another 1 hour north to stop by and see an old teacher of mine, then another 1 hour north for the birthday festivities. Seven bars later, I crashed on my friend's couch (exhausted but NOT drunk, I had about four drinks but that was over six hours. Plus, I have a freakishly high alcohol tolerance). I had to drive through three of the biggest cities in the Southeast to get home, so I set my alarm for early in case of major traffic/construction.

For Friday: Time asleep: ~3:20AM. Time awake this morning: 6:30.

To sum all of that up, I be very, very tired. The 6 hour drive home today was roughly equivalent to the total hours of sleep I've gotten since Wednesday night. Earlier I was reading a magazine and began freaking out because I was seeing a blurred spot in my field of vision with my left eye. I was almost in panic mode (glaucoma runs strongly in my family, so I am very paranoid about my sight). It took me almost a full minute to realize a piece of hair was hanging in my face, obstructing my view of the page. Apparently I am not at my cognitive peak right now.

So, in a nutshell, mission accomplished with both conference and road trip, there is more to say about each but that will have to wait until I'm a little more coherent. I started my malaria pills on Thursday, they are supposed to give you extremely vivid dreams. I was interested to see what mine would be, it would be interesting to try to analyze them, but I haven't had any of that so far. Maybe I just haven't had the chance for any REM periods in the past two pseudo-nights of sleep, who knows.

(Image source)

Travel regression

Well, I made it through the conference. I had an awesome time, and got multiple grad school offers, I am psyched. I got to have a beer with one of my science celebrity idols, and I heard all kinds of hilarious stories about my adviser from people who went to grad school with him decades ago. For the most part I did really well with eating, up until today. Exercise was still solidly in the disordered range, but I didn't lose any weight during this conference, which is an accomplishment considering how the last ones have gone.

Today I did restrict, because after I fly back south tomorrow I'm going to visit some friends from high school. Even though I have wonderful, compassionate, all around terrific friends, for some reason when I got back to that town, to that crowd, I automatically switch back into mega-ED mode. It's like I almost feel obligated to fill the role I played for the entire time they knew me back in high school. I don't blame it on them at all, they are all great. A couple of them know that I'm finally seeing a psychologist, and they have been incredibly supportive. Still . . . I wonder if they expect me to show up having gained a ton of weight? I am not any more than the last time they saw me, but will they see me as bigger just because they expect to? Why the hell does it matter, when I know that they are friends with me, not the number on my scale?

I should be focusing on staying strong because I leave for my fieldwork in Central American Country in a little over a week. . .but I can't shake the anxiety of going back into the Hot Zone where I spent the worst years of my ED, it's like I shift into autopilot, the ED is my default. I painted myself into a corner in high school, I literally was afraid to eat in public even at times when I wanted to do better, because I felt like it would bring unwanted attention if I acted in a way that people didn't expect (ie if I ate). Going away to college really helped me break through a lot of behaviors (I can now eat in public with now problem, things like that), but it's like as soon as I cross back over the state line I instantly regress.

I need to go pack my stuff and get sleep. The walls in this motel are paper thin, and my neighbors are smoking and watching something that does not exactly sound like the Disney channel. To wrap up: conference = success, jury is out on the second leg of my trip.

Musings from the Meeting

I have had much less internet access than I expected over the last few days. I’m staying in a cheap, hokey hotel, BUT they advertised free high-speed internet PLUS microwaves and fridges. Good deal, right? Not quite: apparently you get internet OR appliances, but not both, and they randomly assign you to either type of room without asking your preference. So on night one I had a fridge, no net. I switched rooms yesterday (which involved repacking all of my stuff and keeping it in my car all day), but then their server was down. Did I mention that the only internet rooms are the ones facing the indoor pool? That means high noise levels and a bed that smells like chlorine. There are worse things that fleabag motel beds could smell like, I guess I should consider myself lucky.

To summarize the journey: on Saturday I got up, dropped the dog off with a friend, drove 2 hours to Major Southeastern Airport, walked around for 3 hours, flew to Major Midwestern Airport, barely made my connection due to a delay, and then flew to Great Plains City. Rented a car in Great Plains City and drove an hour north to the university hosting the –Ology Meeting. Checked into fleabag motel, cursed the lack of internet, and then succumbed to sleep. The past two days have been awesome, I learned tons of amazing things from the research presentations and have been brushing shoulders with legendary –Ologists. My own presentation went well, I got lots of good feedback, I was so relieved!
I’m having a good time, but conference days are long. I haven’t had more than 5 hours sleep in about four nights, so I just have some random and minimally coherent notes and observations. Eating is going okish, but not without constant effort, and exercise is definitely an issue, but I’ll talk about that when I’m feeling a little more coherent. Anyway, a few random notes:

1. People are strange. I love walking around airports, I always make an effort to get there even earlier than I really need to, just so I can walk around and people watch. I live close (relatively, it’s a 2 hour drive) to one of the largest airports in the country, and it really is just like a human zoo, fascinating.

2. My body is much more helpful to me when I treat it nicely.
a. When I was hauling my luggage in from the parking lot on Saturday, I had a flashback to the last time I was at the airport, when I was returning from spending Christmas with my parents. I weighed about 10% less than I do right now; I had slipped into restriction mode for pretty much the entire holiday trip. It took me almost an hour to get to my car with my bags (all of them put together literally weighed more than I did) because I had to stop to rest so frequently, and by the time I got there my heart was arrhythmic and was really, really scaring me. This time it was still a strain to get my bags in, but I only had to stop to rest once, and that was because my arms were tired, not because I felt like I was going to pass out.

3. When trying to dress professionally and impress future employers, refeeding belly sucks. Actually, it defies the laws of physics: it sucks and blows at the same time.

4. Midwestern State (the site of the conference) is beautiful. I expected it to be flat and unremarkable, but I am really in awe of the landscape. I had to drive an hour from the airport to the town where the meeting is being held, and the landscape is so pleasant and peaceful. Very little civilization (I only passed a single gas station on my 50 mile trip up the interstate, and that lonely one was almost 5 miles from the exit), but that is not always a bad thing.

5. We Southern belles suffer when forced out of our microclimates. My eyes, lips, skin, etc have been parched ever since I got here. Where I live, on summer afternoons it feels like it would be faster to swim through the air rather than slog through the humidity on foot, and I am not at all acclimated to this dry atmosphere on the Great Plains.

6. People in Great Plains State talk funny. It’s very close to a Minnesota accent: they do strange things with their O’s. “About” is pronounced “aboot.” Of course, I have gotten a few odd looks whenever I let a “y’all” spill out, so I guess we’re even.

I feel like I had more notes on the experience so far, I guess it will come to me later. Thanks to everyone for the support before I left! The eating/exercise is much more of an issue here than it should be, but nowhere nearly as bad as I have let myself get at the last couple of conferences I’ve attended.
More updates soon, assuming the internet server doesn’t decide to flake out again.

Pre-Travel Anxiety Vent

So, my trip anxiety is at fever pitch right now. I always do this when I have to travel, the 24 hours before I leave is ridiculously stressful, and then as soon as I am loaded into the car and on the road to the airport I will relax. It's just the prep that gets to me, the packing, making arrangements for the dog, putting last-minute touches on my resume and printing copies so I can hand them out on the off-chance that anyone is interested in me, making sure all bills are paid before I leave, etc etc. I will really be a basket case right before my flight to Central American Country for fieldwork in a couple of weeks.

I don't have any kind of an eating plan for tomorrow, I can't decide if I should sit down and make myself a menu or just wing it and try to let myself get what I want when I want. I am really, really trying to look at this as a vacation from the ED, a chance to leave all the usual rules at home and make the most of the trip. The thing is, my body is not good for intuitive eating right now, if I tried that I'd come in way, way under my calories. But menu-making gets me into a very obsessive mode, I will spend hours and hours agonizing over it. I have the rest of the day to put it off before I can really have a well-justified anxiety attack over what to do.

Lastly: I just did the online check-in thing with Delta, and since when do you have to pay a fee to have two pieces of checked luggage? I just flew with them a few months ago, they must have changed the policy since then. This world, my friends, what are we going to do with it?

Does This Outfit Make My Schema Look Fat?

I have done a lot of driving (around 600-700 miles a week) for my job this summer, and I have spent some time contemplating how people’s cars become an extension of themselves on the road. That inspired me to read up on proprioception and cognitive body maps (yes, I can be a NERD!) and I have found some interesting hypotheses about how the neurology behind our perceptions of ourselves can lead to eating disorders. (This post turned out to be a little bit long, I am easily wrapped up and carried away by science topics, but trust, me it’s cool stuff!).

One of the core concepts is that of the body schema, and how that differs from body image. In a nutshell, body image is how we perceive ourselves. Not the literal reflection in the mirror, but our subjective reaction to it and feelings about it. This does not necessarily correlate to physical reality, and includes many psychological and cultural factors. Someone that weighs X in a given culture might view themselves much more or less positively than a person of the same proportions in another society. Same physical image, different cognitive body image.

Body schema, however, is much different. It is a neurological map based on actual physiology, and results from our networks of sensory receptors that keep our brains informed about the location and activity of all of our bodily bits and pieces. It incorporates the five classic senses everyone learned in kindergarten, in addition to balance (via the vestibular system) and our awareness of the space immediately surrounding our bodies (aka “peripersonal space”).

So, how do these concepts interact, and how are they distinctive in people with eating disorders? Some researchers have suggested that diets spiral into eating disorders when our two types of body maps become mismatched as a result of weight loss. Basically, body image is based on a library of experiences, emotions, and other psychological factors that are stored as steadfast beliefs in the areas of our brains responsible for memory. As anyone who has battled an ED knows, it is very, very hard to alter thought patterns that you have held, year in and year out, for decades. Sometimes it seems damn near impossible. That disordered voice becomes the default reaction to almost any situation involving food, body size, etc.

In contrast, your schema—a purely physical phenomenon based on sensory input—will automatically adjust itself as you lose weight. This allows you to maneuver your 'new' body without regressing back to bumbling around like and adolescent klutz (awkwardness in adolescence is also thought to be a proprioreception issue, caused by sudden growth spurts).

Thus, when we lose weight, our body schema and body image can get out of sync. Your body gets smaller, but psychologically you fail to perceive the change. This is one reason it is common to get a shock when you pull on clothing you have not worn in a while, and find that it doesn’t fit the way you expected it to. This can happen in different contexts: finding your summer clothes are unexpectedly snug after adding poundage over the winter, or being surprised at how loose your jeans have become after shedding a little weight. You might have been aware that your numbers (pounds, etc) have changed, but it is still surprising to be confronted with physical evidence that contradicts the way you are accustomed to viewing your size/space requirements.

Studies have suggested that body schemas seem to be formed by circuits in the right parietal lobe of the brain (yellow arrow in image). Interestingly, fMRI scans of recovering anorexics have shown much more activity in the left hemisphere of the brain when patients are at low weights, with a shift towards more activity in the right hemisphere—especially in the parietal region—as weight is restored. This could explain why ED recovery is inhibited by irrational thoughts and anxiety unless someone is able to push through and restore weight.

So, the take-home message from all this data: Eating disorders can be triggered by a lag in aligning our psychological perception of our bodies with physical changes, and building physical health can be a tool in restoring healthy thought patterns.


A couple more thought provoking points of interest related to asynchronized image/schema and EDs:
~ Testosterone has a profound influence on development of the right parietal lobe. This explains the fact that—on average—men outperform women in tests of spatial abilities. Could it also be a factor in explaining why women are more likely to let a diet spiral into an ED, do females just have a harder time with syncing their body image to their body schema? Statisically, females are more likely to have neurological imbalances that affect the right parietal. Some scientists have suggested this as an explanation for the fact that EDs strike females more frequently than males, although the issue of culture and societal pressures can’t be overlooked when examining the gender issue.

~In a study on tactile perception (explore a figure with your fingers only, no peeking, and then draw it), anorexics performed miserably compared to other people, despite having higher average IQs.

~It is thought that our body image tends to become solidified (via specific neural circuits) in adolescence, around the time of puberty. This could explain why this is a common age for developing an ED. Of course, someone can fall into an ED at any age, but the teen years are thought to be especially high-risk.

~All of this evidence for neurological factors, which are based on the physiology of the brain, give support for the idea that EDs and related psychological conditions are heritable, aka that they “run in families.” I have EDs and alcoholism on both sides of my family, so I’ve always believed there is at least some genetic component, this supports that theory.


The bulleted points are hypotheses, ideas for things that could contribute to EDs but certainly don’t explain everything. Cultural factors can't be overlooked, but there is more and more evidence accumulating to show how culture can act as a trigger on specific biological phenomena that leads to disordered thoughts and behavior. See this article for a terrific overview of more information on current research about the science behind eating disorders.


(Image credit)

Species vs Smoothies: Getting a Grip on Priorities

In approximately 48 hours, I will be leaving for a week-long conference in a far-flung part of the country. This isn't the first professional meeting I've attended, but it is most definitely the most critical one for my Career-To-Be up to this point. The last few times I've traveled to meetings I've slipped into restriction mode and lost significant weight. I hit lowest weight I've been at in about four years after a conference in Raleigh back in January. I can’t explain why, I guess it’s just being out of routine combined with lack of “safe foods” available at the meetings.

I can't do that this time. I'm applying to grad school this fall, and this meeting is specific to the exact specialty (-ology) I'm hoping to go into. Almost every -ologist in the country will be there. Cammy cannot screw this up. I am not being melodramatic when I say that my future as an -0logist could literally depend on people's perceptions of me at this event, because I will be doing a lot of networking and wooing potential grad school advisers.

I am trying to keep myself in perspective, to make myself realize how the things the ED has me worried about are so ridiculous in the grand scheme of things. I am going to be presenting a research project I've worked on for three years, with some pretty damn cool data (revision of the distribution of two species, including the first documentation of a rare subspecies in my state). I scored within my goal range on the GRE, I've started a chapter of an international organization at my university, dean’s list GPA, yaddah yaddah yaddah, I’m not going to try and pimp my resume on here but basically I have a lot of things I that I have worked incredibly hard to achieve, and this is my chance to make myself known to Important People.

Yet, in spite of all those things that should be on my mind in order to psyche myself up for the event, the issue I have spent the most time thinking about is whether I can "afford" a smoothie at the airport. Literally, hours spent bouncing between the Atlanta airport's website and Google to analyze the calories in all my options, hours I should have spent going over my presentation, refreshing myself on the statistics, doing tribal dances to summon positive energy, really anything else besides playing the numbers game with my ED. This is not how normal people operate. I need to work on living in the real world, and I have to be able to step up to the plate.

I’m good at juggling work, school, etc along with the ED, or else I wouldn’t have lasted this long. The thing is, just because I can perform despite the ED doesn’t mean I should, and it doesn’t mean that I am fooling anyone (except, often, myself) about the fact that things are not all well. Yesterday my T said something that has been replaying through my mind ever since leaving her office: “People are going to look at you and know there is a problem, how are you going to handle that?” Ouch, H. Ouch, but only because I know I’ve brought this on myself. And if I brought it on myself, I should be able to work on bringing myself out of it, right?

So, yesterday H. and I went over my toolbox of coping strategies when I’m thrown off my routines, ways to keep my priorities in line and not let the ED trump everything the is on the line with this meeting, and I went shopping for purse-friendly backup foods that I can bring along. This actually has the potential to help me make progress, because it will force me to go cold turkey from all of my exercise routines. Maybe that 5 day break will help me realize that the sun will indeed continue to rise and set if I don’t get in X miles, Y hours, Z sets every day. And I am officially cutting off the nutrition-fact-research neurosis. I’m going to wander through the airport on Saturday and buy myself whatever looks the most appealing at the time.

My purpose on this trip is species, not smoothies. I am going as a professional scientist, not a professional dieter, and I cannot, will not let myself mix up priorities and misdirect my focus.