Front-Strike Success

I haven't written a lot lately; have been pretty wrapped up in thinking about other parts of my life and there doesn't seem to be much to report here.  I have had a little break from traveling, but it kicks up again for another 2-3 week stretch soon. All the travel has sort of arrested my progress on the exercise reduction, since it's incredibly hard for me to let myself cut back when I know I'm facing several weeks of planes/shared hotel rooms with little chance to work out at all.  I'm really so, so ready to have a life that isn't controlled by workout schedules, though, and want to make progress on that a bigger priority once I'm back from being on the road.  And I do think I have been handling the reduced exercise conditions during travel pretty well, so that's a different form of progress that has been a success.

Speaking of exercise, I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but D., my dietician, gave me the green light to test out running again--albeit with some strict rules.  No more than 2-3 times a week, and for a very modest amount of time each session, and it has to be a substitute for other exercise (not added on top of what I was already doing).  We were talking about my exercise patterns, and sort of hit on something I'd never consciously realized before: my exercise was always very rigid, but didn't really get uber-excessive in terms of volume/time until I had to give up running due to my joint health (basically ran my knees into the ground by the time I was 21--not an unexpected result from going years without any days off during a period of severe food restriction, low bone density, and a few stress fractures/bone spurs).  

After I had to quit running, it was like I was still trying to get that endorphin hit, doing more and more and more of other exercises but never getting the same runner's high.  So D. and I agreed that I can start testing myself on runs again in order to help me tolerate larger cuts in overall exercise time.  My knees were the main reason I'd stayed out of running for 4ish years, so I studied a lot on proper form, bought some special front-strike running shoes (not the funky vibram toe shoes, though!), and gave it a try.  And so far....absolutely NO joint pain! Nada.  I'm amazed and thrilled.  It's murder on my calves, because with front-strike stride they absorb a lot of the impact that my knees used to take, but they'll get stronger.  Especially since I'm being good and taking plenty of non-run days between sessions.  Also, I started on the couch-to-5k program for designing runs, so it's really not strenuous (considering I was definitely not starting from "couch", cardio-wise).  

Anyway, of course I do NOT mean to imply that taking up running is recommended as a recovery strategy, and I don't think anyone should add to their workout in recovery at all without approval of their treatment team, but the point here (sanctioned by my team) is for me to learn how to add back in an activity I enjoyed pre-ED, but in a healthy and balanced way. I've been doing pretty excellent with the food side of things, especially given my recent travel schedule. I had a recent health workup that showed I'm very stable medically, even if I do have some weight left to gain. I definitely feel myself shifting more towards a fitness than thinness/calorie-burn oriented workout mentality, which is really refreshing and empowering.

(NOTE, though, that bloodwork can sometimes be misleadingly normal for people that are doing poorly with an ED, it's weird like that.  The only things that ever came up abnormal for me, even at my sickest, were liver enzymes and T4 levels).

In other news, I met a friend for breakfast this morning and had a nice catch-up session, which made me feel great and amazingly normal.  I need to start working on my thesis defense talk, which means it looks like a great day to clean my apartment. ;)

Despite the sky-high background stress, my mood has been great recently.  I credit the days getting longer and the huge relief that I am wrapping up this era of my professional life and moving on to something bigger and better soon.

That being said, where I'll be at the next step is still entirely up in the air, as is Match's, which is stressful as hell but we can't do a whole lot about it at this point.  I'm getting very worn out on some aspects of the long distance relationship setup.  It's just not ideal emotionally, financially, hormonally, schedule-wise, etc...but it's been worth it so far, and we're taking/enduring it a day at a time.  I'm not sure at all how things will play out at the next stage.

I hope everyone had a great weekend, love y'all.

Unwelcome Twists

I hate it when I think I have things figured out, but when it comes to making decisions/acting on them, I second guess myself and everything just turns into an inchoate swirl of anxiety and dread.  It twists what should be fantastic news into a nightmare.

Life is just a bit of a mindfuck right now.

Fetters Loosened

This has been a challenging past 10ish days, as I've been traveling almost nonstop and have been in a ton of social eating situations with people upon which it is imperative that I make a good impression.

And honestly, I think I handled it incredibly well.  Nearly every day, I ordered and consumed adequate amounts of non-salad foods, had extra treats I probably didn't "need", including everything from wine to brownies.  Some days were pretty active, others were pretty inactive, most were in the middle. My intake did flux with that somewhat but I think overall it was a pretty successful experiment.

I wasn't adventurous calorically (except for maybe yesterday, but we were on our feet and active literally the entire day), but I did really challenge myself with ordering things that made it difficult for me to estimate accurately how many calories I was consuming.  I also tried some new types of food I'd never had before (and had NO clue of nutritional content).  I think that Ethiopian cuisine is one of my new favorites, and it was definitely a cool experience (look up "injera", it sounds weird but is incredibly good).

I think that breaking rules (as far as what food I can consume when and in relation to how much exercise I've done) is actually a lot easier when I travel.  At home (meaning both my house and my normal circle of social interactions around campus, town, etc), I am so entrenched in rules and routines, that it seems incredibly hard to make changes, but in new situations it is as if the fetters are loosened and it's easier for me to shift my habits to what the people around me are doing. It really is all psychological, but it's interesting to observe/experience the shift.

It's also interesting that at time it goes completely in the opposite, as I've also had problems with restricting when I travel, due to the loss of the routines discussed above.  Who knows.  I think that the social factor has a lot to do with it. I'm a lot more likely to shift to the restriction side on a solo road trip and the free-er side when I'm in active social settings during travel.

I think I handled all of it fairly guilt free, too, until today.  I had major morning-after regrets about what I ate/drank at a party last night (I was nowhere near drunk, just as a disclaimer), and it has made me super uncomfortable today, but I suppose I'll survive.  I've also been running on a major sleep deficit for over a week, which always makes those things tougher, so I'm hoping it will blow over.

I'm starting to think that one option for my school choice is starting to rise above the others in my mind, but it's also the one where I'm actually not at all sure that I'll get an offer, for various complicated reasons.  I should have answers within the next 2-3 weeks, and then it's on to the next round of big decisions and milestones to figure out--when to move, whether to buy or rent when I get there, how to make money over the summer, etc etc...

Participatory prompt: Do you notice that it's easier or harder for you to break eating rules when you are away from home and your normal routines?

I am way behind on blog reading/commenting, but have a little bit of a breather before I have to travel again.  I hope everyone has had a great weekend, love y'all!

Uncertainty Overload

That weekend was . . . confusing.  Actually this year is just confusing so far.  I'm starting to feel really, really crushing anxiety over not knowing where I will be spending the next (and super significant) portion of my career, who my adviser will be (very important professionally), where I'll be working in the field, how my work will be funded, whether I'll get to take my dog when I move or if I'll have to leave him with my parents (don't laugh, this is a big issue for me), if/where/to what degree I'll be employed this summer (ie whether I will be able to make car payments, not to mention some form of rent and groceries), how often I'll see my family after I move, how far I will be from my boyfriend, or if he and I will even still be together. . .

This last Match visit was very rocky in places.  In some places it was ideal.  I just don't know, it seems like there is very little in my life that is certain right now.

I think some of the rocky-ness was from background stress.  Case in point: on Saturday afternoon Match and I took a cuddlerelax break on the couch and he fell asleep, so I started ruminating about stuff . . . and half an hour later he woke up covered in alternating layers of tear-soaked t-shirt and sniffling (okay, snotting) girlfriend, because I just felt so overwhelmed and emotional.  And instead of getting emotional and flooding other people's shirts with tears when he's stressed, Match just gets short-tempered, and so THAT dynamic was colorful, to say the least, at times. :/

 I had 13 hours in the car to ruminate today, and by the time I pulled into my driveway I was nearly in full-on panic attack mode.  I think I either have a stomach virus or stress-induced tummy ooglies, I can't tell yet.

On the plus side, I have an awesome family and some very good friends, I can't discount that. They are constants. Must remember the positives.

I suppose this is a pure whine/rant post, sorry I don't have any insights/wisdom to offer up tonight.

Yoga Stress and Other Conundrums

I've talked before about how satisfied I've been with the Pill (none of the side effects some people dread from it, nice weight redistribution), but I have one gripe: in the process of going on/off of placebo week. I get pretty dramatic mood swings. I was on top of the world yesterday, and tonight I specifically avoided all phone calls because I was afraid I'd just end up crying in the unlucky caller's ear. Such is life.  Fortunately the mood swings (for me) are only in the transition days between the placebo pills and the real hormone ones (or actually from no pills to the hormone pills; I never actually bother to take the placebo ones, just take a break from the pack for a week).

I just discovered the blog Eat the Damn Cake, it's pretty awesome.  Definitely my recommendation d'jour, especially this post: This One is Your Real Body.

A friend of mine invited me to go to a power yoga class with her tomorrow morning, and it's given me a maddening amount of stress over what should be a simple decision. The main issues are 1)  is that it's during my normal workout time, and thus would automatically interfere with routine (What! The OCD monster is rumbling to life...), and 2) I also have no idea how it would compare to my usual workouts in terms of energy, which means I don't know how much it could substitute for, whether to count it against my exercise budget (at a time when I'm trying to cut back), how I should time my food intake in relation to it, and a million other calculations/quantifications/evaluations.  Welcome to my brain, watch where you step because it's a mess.  This is really frustrating me tonight, because it's just this kind of bullshit that eventually robbed me of all the team sports I used to be involved in,  Ironically, I couldn't play sports because they interfered with my exercise routines.  Makes a ton of sense, right? Anyway, we'll see.

I blamed the Pill for my mood swings, but it seems as though the fact that I haven't slept for more than 4 hours per night (and never 4 contiguous hours) since sometime last week is probably not insignificant. Hence I should probably wrap this up.  I hope everyone's week is off to a great start.

Baffling Body Works

I have actually had a really great week; my mood was pretty high, despite a few external stressors going on. I was on top of the world yesterday for no immediately discernable reason. I had a pretty kickass session with D. on Wednesday, as mentioned in my last post, and it really lit a fire under me to start tackling some real exercise challenges.  I think I was finally at a point at which I was realizing--and, more powerfully, resenting--just how much those routines really do control my day and rob me of a lot of productivity and life experience. I also think this week was the first time I really started to believe that I can eventually get a handle on this, and that really helped me in putting myself into action mode.

The important part to me is not just to do it a few times to prove that I can, but to make the reduced amount into the new norm. And then work on progressively creating newer norms until things are where they should be.  I am an incredible creature of habit, and making something into routine is really critical for me in 1) remaining compliant and 2) not freaking out.

My body is an enigma to me sometimes.  For the past few days I have been hungry.as.hell.  I honestly don't think I've felt unhungry in days.  I don't just mean that my tummy is a little growly, I mean like "my stomach is going to consume itself from the inside out" hungry. And even though I have not reduced food at all (woot) despite the exercise cuts, my weight has been incrementally down a little bit for the past few days.

All of which highlights the degree to which we're misguided sometimes when we treat body and energy maintenance as a simple "in versus out" equation, especially during the recovery process. As Carrie pointed out on Twitter last night (see her excellent post on the science behind hypermetabolism) when I was whining about the hunger issue, oftentimes if your body suddenly has extra energy available, it will rev up and burn it, and sometimes even burn some extra while it's at it. Bodies are not nearly as passive as we sometimes seem to think.

I went through periodic hypermetabolic stages during earlier weight restoration, and did not miss it. I know the omnipresent "fitness"industry is always advising us to maximize our metabolisms! increase your calorie burn while sitting still! eat these five foods that burn more energy than they contain!, but believe me, it's confusing and frustrating when your body function changes and suddenly your balance is completely disrupted.

Anyway, I'm highly aware that the logical response to being hungry all the time and seeing weight drop is to . . . eat more. Imagine that. As T. pointed out, you're (and by you I mean me) not being fair if you claim to sometimes undereat because you're "just not hungry" and then don't allow yourself a supplement when you are actually famished. I think that if I hadn't been doing the exercise cuts this week I might have been a little more liberal in allowing myself extra calories.  Another factor (which I am obviously using to rationalize my actions, acknowledged) is that I'm going to be traveling away from home for over half the days in February, and am really getting the pre-travel anxiety about how my body will handle all of that, the sort of anticipatory clenching down to pre-compensate. Not by restricting, but just by being terrified to boost anything at all. I don't say that as justification, more of explanation, I guess.  Going to work on that this week.

I get to see M. soon! We tend to have a sort of U-shape in our interactions in between visits--we end a visit on a huge love-high and are really happy with each other, then after a couple of weeks we get cranky, lonely, etc and have a fight, then make up and rise back to the top of the mood-closeness curve in anticipation of seeing each other again.  I think we've been good at making the U a little bit shallower each time, but I'm just glad we both recognize the pattern enough to know that we spend most of the time near the top.

Anyway, I hope everyone has had a great week. Despite the metabolic woes and a few stressful things, I've been feeling really awesome lately. Participatory prompts: 1) Have any morphing metabolism stories to share? 2) Tell me something great that happened to you this week?

Return to D. is Vindicated

I had a session with my dietician this morning, and we did not specifically mention food once the entire hour.  And honestly, it was one of the most productive/thought provoking therapy sessions I've had in a long time.

 The irony abounds, right? I'l take it.