Dispatch from Match City

Last week I did a 1,500 mile road trip from my parents’ house to PhD Town with my mom, as I described in my last post. She and I are great road buddies, and it went really smoothly. We talked exhaustively about her imminent divorce, but she really needed to have someone to process that with. My “dad” that she is divorcing is actually my stepdad – they married when I was four and he adopted me, and did a good job of being a dad to me when I was younger, but we don’t have much of a relationship and I don’t really feel any special bond to him, at the risk of sounding like a cold bitch . . . He is doing increasingly worrying things and I just want to get her out of there.

Food on that trip was . . . okay. I under-ate in terms of food calories but most days made it up with alcohol, and was on about half-exercise for three days, so overall it could have gone worse. That was easier for the most part for the days Mom stayed with me in PhD town, except that she’s sometimes really obtuse about the kind of structure I need with food. She has always had a pretty intuitive relationship with food --- if she has a big, late lunch, she’ll have almost no dinner, for example. Not at all as punishment, she ahs never counted calories, but just because she’s not hungry for it.

This caused problems a couple of times. There was one day when we had a big/late lunch, and when dinnertime came she announced that she didn’t feel like eating. She insisted I should eat if I needed to whether she was or not, but I WAY undershot my calorie/nutrition needs that evening.

This taught me an important lesson: I think that because my weight came back so quickly from the relapse, I forget that my body is still doing a lot of healing and gets off-balance VERY easily. I felt godawful the day after that non-dinner. It didn’t help that we ended up having breakfast about three hours later than planned the next morning. I felt ill, grumpy, and unbalanced for the rest of the day. A day or two after that, I had a decent, substantial breakfast but felt seriously ill from hunger just two hours later – my metabolism is just all over the map right now. My mom has never really seen what that’s like up close – I basically eat alone all the time when I’m at her house and don’t discuss food with her at all. So I think by the end of the trip she “got it” that my body is still pretty delicate despite looking healthier. But there were a few trying times. Overall, though the trip went great in terms of spending time with her and was about as good as could be hoped for at this point in terms of food. I didn’t do big “vacation mode” eating and also didn’t catastrophically undereat, and my weight stayed the same.

That last part brings up a couple of interesting things that I’m learning. 

1) That my fast weight gain wasn’t a perpetual thing, which I knew intellectually but still scared me. It has officially leveled off for the past few weeks, so that now if you average that gain out over the eight weeks I’ve been back from TRC (where has THAT time gone?), it doesn’t seem like a weird/unreasonable rate.

2) I think that although I know my own patterns and that binging has never been an issue for me, I worried that the “vacation mode” eating when I returned would become a habitual problem. Now that my weight has been settled at a healthier place (not in the BMI range where H. wants me yet but a hell of a lot better than where I was two months ago) I am reassured by the fact that my appetite has pretty much moderated itself, unless I let myself get really off balance by being restrictive or distributing calories too unevenly. Bodies are smarter than we give them credit for.

I’ve been in  Match City for a week now. I have to say, seriously, being with the Boy is bliss. It’s nice to be here for a month and to feel like a “normal” couple with a shared household, even if it’s temporary. I’m doing well with food here; settled into a pretty healthy routine.

There have been two main challenges:

1)   The obvious: the anxiety of having someone else around who is HIGHLY aware of and interested in my body. Especially when I’m still not used to how this regained weight feels/looks on me. Match has been ultra-validating and complimentary and supportive and all of those things, and keeps telling me how I look way better like this than when I was thinner and he wishes I’d gain more. I try to just listen to that and let it be what it is, but it’s hard sometimes.

2)   We eat out a lot more here than I do at home, and have had an inordinate number of social events/meals out this week alone (Groupons are a budget lifesaver, fyi). Typically my biggest meal of the day is lunch, but when I know we have a big restaurant meal coming up for dinner I tend to try to eat lighter earlier in the day to “save up” for that. This inevitably gets me off balance and cranky and emotional. This all comes to the surface when it’s time to get dressed to go out and I can’t. handle.it. and freak out about how I look in everything. Cue Match and the dog hiding on the other side of the apartment while I crash around Godzilla style. Not that I wouldn’t do that anyway but being depleted makes it worse. So we’re working on that. Match is having some extensive dental work done Monday, which will definitely put a stop to the frequent eating out for a while.

Those are the challenges, and I’m still definitely uncomfortable in my own skin, and dealing with a wonky metabolism, but I do have to admit that I feel better than I have in a long time. I can tell I’m more playful and patient with Match, which he loves and makes things better in pretty much every way. I’m less wigged out about my PhD, even though I’m officially in the thick of things with getting data from this year analyzed and studying for my quals. I still spend an inordinate amount of time planning food stuff but not in the paralyzingly obsessive way that I was a couplefew months ago. I think every time I have a relapse-restoration cycle I appreciate food even more and learn to enjoy it to a greater degree, which can be rewarding. 

Just this week I started to feel an uptick in my appetite/signals from my body even though I haven't been undercutting my meal plan, which may be a sign that I should bump up the intake soon, dunno. Okay, I do know, and it definitely is a sign. Here with Match/Match City I have more opportunities for "incidental intake" (i.e., improptu froyo after dinner, an extra cocktail at a show, etc), which saves me from having to formalize a higher meal plan, but I get the feeling that's something I'll have to do soon if I'm serious about getting my body up to a normal BMI.

So things are still challenging and I have a long ways to go (H. hasn’t even begun to challenge me on exercise stuff yet), but I am starting to feel my brain calm down enough to appreciate that I’m in a much better place than I was.

Dispatch from PhD Town

Yet another post-travel update. Y'all might think all I do is wander around the globe and then write posts about how hard the eating situations were. This week's wandering was a 1,500 mile road trip from my parents' house to my place in PhD Town, with my mom along for company of course. She is my best friend and we are awesome road buddies. I guess it's a sign of what good company we are that yesterday morning we were late getting out the door after two straight days sitting in the car talking . . . because we were sitting in the hotel room talking. I'll take it.

As I wrote prior to the trip, I was out of my mind with anxiety about getting off balance with food and body stuff again. One difference between this trips and my other ones this summer is that I'm basically never alone on these road trips. That tilts the scales (no pun intended) towards undereating rather than overeating, because I feel under the microscope, even though my mom never, ever criticizes my food intake. Also, on a road trip with another person I have no opportunity to disappear from the scene to get in exercise, which really inhibits my motivation to eat. I picked hotels along the way with fitness rooms so I could get some token amount in each day, but of course the first of the two hotels had their closed for renovations. CUE POTENTIAL MELTDOWN. I didn't actually meltdown but was in a really shitty/stressed mood for the first part of the trip, although it got better after we got coffee. We also got to our next hotel early enough that afternoon for me to workout anyway, so it wasn't disastrous, but that was the hardest day of the trip.

As to how I did with food, okay I guess. I underate but made up part of it with alcohol (I don't really drink at home, so trips or date nights out with Match are pretty much the only time I indulge in alcohol calories). I do think traveling with my mom at least gives me a model for moderation — she has pretty much always had a healthy relationship with food and her body, she is at a very healthy weight, and my frame is a lot like hers. A lot of times (not always) I just order what she is having or some version of it, because 1) it seems like it’s probably smart to use her as an example and 2) we also just have a lot of the same preferences and tastes when making menu choices.

She does sometimes make really unhelpful comments about food without thinking, but it's never to criticize me. Like at the little hotel breakfast yesterday, she said "it's like an anti-Atkins carb bonanza", even though I know she's never ever done an Atkins diet and doesn't think carbs are "bad." Or the night before, when we were leaving the restaurant at dinner and passed by the bar, and she noted that she really liked one lady's dress but that "You really have to have the right kind of body for a dress like that." She is absolutely not being malicious, just thougthless. I think people normally make those types of comments casually and I just internalize them because of my own issues. She also goes out of the way to point out the fact that she's happy with her body (she is well within the healthy weight zone but after three kids not "thin") and doesn't count calories and sometimes takes a week off running and this that and the other, and those parts are more meaningful.

We also spent more time talking about my ED than ever before on this car trip. H. is really on me to discuss it with my mom more, and I'm trying. I tell her pretty much everything else about my life, and she had to see me go through the very worst parts of this disease, so I'm not sure why it's hard. I talk to Match about it freely all the time. Working on it. We talked a bit about how hard this last field session was for me and how uncomfortable I am in my skin with this new weight gain. I won't recount the whole conversation here, but she was really supportive although I think her thoughts about my ED are mostly about rationalizing guilt for how she handled the start of the ED when I was in middle school and generally about how hard that time was for her. That's normal, I guess.

The most triggering thing I have done in a LONG time is unpack all of my clothes while getting my apartment set up. About half of my clothes have been in storage for eight months, and it's REALLY hard to look at something and know that it just doesn't fit anymore, or if it does technically fit it will fit so differently that my head will be fucked for days if I dare to put it on. Mom and I went out to dinner last night with a professional contact she has here (small world), and just walking to the restaurant I was so hyper aware of how snug my clothes (NOT ones that had been in storage) were; it kills me. I suppose it gets better but damn. I can catch a glimpse of myself in a store window and other reflection and see that I'm not a fat person, but I'm still really having a hard time adjusting to this body and am not 100% sure if I'll be able to keep it up. . . I don't know. I don't think I've gained any or lost anything significant on this trip so far, so I guess that's a win since my main concern was getting out of balance and going to one extreme or the other. H. has me scared of ruining my thyroid if I restrict again, so I really don't want to go back into that mode anymore than I want uncontrollable weight gain .  . . it's just hard, you know?

Mom is here for a few more days doing fun stuff and helping to set up the apartment. She flies home Thursday, I have one day here that includes a doctor's appointment, and then Saturday I fly to Match City for a month. Where has this summer gone???

Mind-Hurricane Strikes Again

I am totally consumed with anxiety today. It's like I'm a stomach on legs -- I've been hungry even after meals that past few days, and even though I haven't been eating anything extra I feel like a blimp today and am just starting to feel defeated about everything.


I've taken the last couple mornings off running to try to keep my stress fractures from getting so aggravated again, and Match just reminded me that I tend to go through a bit of endorphin withdrawal when that happens. Also, I have to get a ton of stuff ready for this week's road trip . . . and my weight was up a smidge this morning. Still, I feel like a normal person wouldn't have a hurricane in their head over those things. Today is just a day when I really don't feel like I'm winning.

Road Trips, Stress Fractures, and Psych Cynicism

So, Thursday my mom and I leave for our 1,500 mile road trip to PhD Town. I am anxious to get out of this stressful household, and to get my mom out of it too, even if just for a week.

But I’m also anxious, of course, about food/exercise stuff on the trip. I am still feeling oogly about the weight gain (although I haven’t gained any more over the last week, though, have actually bumped down a teeny bit), and three days of sitting on my ass seems like a recipe for another freak-out that gets everything off balance.

Last year I went into this trip at essentially the same weight I am now, but was already planning to restrict later in the summer, so I sort of had a “well fuck it, I’ll fix it later” attitude, and that worked according to plan -- I ate relatively well on the trip, then restricted for the rest of the summer and got down to precisely my goal weight, which I maintained the whole fall semester. This year my hold on sanity is too tenuous to let myself repeat that approach. I guess just acknowledging that is progress, but I don’t really have a solid grasp on another healthy approach, so I’m just wigging out. That’s how I roll.

Aside:  H. won more points for Psychologist Cynicism during our session today. We were talking about the ways that being nutritionally depleted affects my thinking, and I mentioned that I literally felt like I was going crazy a couple of months ago, due to the confused-anxious-inchoate swirl of obsessive thoughts and fear and desperation that comes with severe restriction. When I told her that Match had told me “there’s no such thing as crazy.” H. replied, “No, you were pretty much crazy, but you’re fixing it.” Hahahaha. I think she has a knack for figuring out who can handle that kind of humor and who can’t.

This will come as a shock to everyone, I’m sure, but running more miles per week than ever before in my life appears to be aggravating the same old stress fractures that forced me into a running hiatus last fall. Funny how that works. Actually not funny, actually really scaring me.

I’m going to scale back the weekly mileage and really try to keep myself fueled for healing purposes. But damn I hate this. Today H. and I also talked about how my weekly mileage threshold (after which I start racking up injuries like Chuckie Cheese tickets [god did I just age myself, is CC still a thing?]) seems to be a lot lower than other people’s – it’s not super low, but training for even a half marathon would be too much per week. This is where H. reminded me that perhaps if I weren’t also exercising X hours every day, with no rest days, and periodically starving myself, my body would let me run more miles without breaking down. This is why she gets paid the big bucks.

I’m also becoming hypermetabolic this week, which means hot flashes in the middle of an oppressively muggy summer and constantly feeling hungry even though I’m eating a lot more than I was as my daily routine for the vast majority of this year. Maybe this is what it feels like to be pregnant. I know that having a fast metabolism is technically seen as a good thing, and I don't want a slow metabolism, but I hate the pattern of feeling hungrier when I finish a meal than I did when I started it. And a lot of times it’s what I usually call “body hunger” – my stomach isn’t empty and growly, and I don’t actually want to eat more (meaning, it’s not just raging appetite/munchies), but there is some sort of energy need that signals itself in a way that’s hard to describe. Or at least that’s how I think it works, for me. Anyway, I’m not always sure how to handle that – I worry about slowing down my metabolism if I don’t feed it, but then I worry that my body is just tricking me into gaining more weight, etc etc. Dunno.

That’s my update for now.  I hope everyone is having a good week!

Weekend Reading

So, change of pace from my usual belly-aching; weekend reading recommendations.

First, this article from The Guardian is a beautiful critique of the whole "wellness blogger" fad and why most of it is pretty much bunk;  unqualified people with no formal training are somehow being seen as holy gurus for how to eat/exercise. Clip:

Within the last decade, being a wellness blogger – someone who writes on nutrition and counsels others on how to change their diet – has overtaken fashion stylist and yoga teacher as the fashionable job option for young women. . .
Instead of qualifications in boring things such as nutrition and science, the wellness guru has a blog and an Instagram account. From these, she advises thousands, even millions, of followers in her friendly, informal tone to avoid the likes of tropical fruits (too high in sugar) and stock up instead on cold-pressed green juices. She makes dark references to the many ways in which today’s food industry is making us all sick. She also includes many, many photos of herself to confirm the efficacy of her recommendations.
The wellness blogger is, crucially, photogenic and young, which is why “wellness” looks so much more desirable than it did a decade ago, when it was Gillian McKeith, say, telling us all to eat more fibre. Eat like me, look like me, is the message. Typical photo poses include sitting on a beach lounger in a bikini while drinking from a coconut, or reclining in a rustic kitchen in skinny jeans, a cute porcelain bowl of vegetables in one hand.

Next, this column in the New York Times hit home in a different way. It's an account of a woman struggling with severe depression and her partner's unflinching support. It reminded me of lucky I am to have/have had Match. With this last relapse especially, I started to worry that eventually this whole thing would get old and he would leave. He has been consistently patient with me, even when every iota of my brain space was devoted to food/body stuff, making conversations boring and probably very frustrating, and even when I was grumpy and touchy and reactive, even when he was worried about what I was doing to my heart and kidneys and brain and bones. Somehow he manages to keep more faith in me than I have in myself, and inexplicably finds it somehow worth his while to ride out the bad times with dogged confidence that "it gets better." Anyway I'll stop gushing now, here is one clip from the article.
I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t angry, why he wasn’t feeling completely betrayed that I had been ready to leave him widowed at 26, bailing on all of our hopes and dreams. I felt angry with myself on his behalf and berated myself for everything I’d failed at as an adult, as a newlywed, as someone who had everything and nothing. . . .
I had been waiting for him to prove with words that he loved me, thinking: “Say it again. Say it three times. And keep saying it because I don’t believe you.”

I had been waiting for the reality of the situation to hit and make him realize how deeply I’d wronged him by duping him into thinking I would be a good wife, when in reality I was depressed and self-destructive. But that realization never came.

Instead, as he stood in the hallway watching me in the midst of a mental breakdown, I saw what he’d been trying to tell me all along.

I love you.

I’m worried about you.

I want you to be happy.

I’m still here.

 

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

DISCLAIMER: I just read this right after posting it and found three typos. I fixed them but am not sure if the original text is what shows up in RSS readers.  I swear I am literate in real life, I just switch more into stream-of-consciousness mode when I blog. 

Yet Another Trip Recap - 4th of July with the Xs

First things first, before I get all rambly and lost in thought-tangents: I am trying REALLY hard to establish a routine of eating my "normal" calories versus TRC rations now that I'm back from my latest trip. I hit that goal yesterday, but am REALLY aware of the last month's weight gain today and could use some "it gets better" or otherwise reassuring comments about weight restoration if you've got them; I don't usually specifically request things like this but it's a day I felt like I  needed to reach out.

So, on with normal programming: yet another post-trip update.

I went up to visit my biological dad's family over 4th of July weekend, and it was interesting. I did not go full-bore vacation mode with my eating. I think that was partly out of fear of it becoming a pattern that evolves into lost control, and partly because my body isn't as desperate now as it was when I first got back from TRC. I still had a couple of splurgy days, but it wasn't as pronounced as when I was at my conference a few weeks ago.

Like I mentioned before, Aunt X had ED issues when she was younger, and I know that her oldest daughter (22) at least has had body image issues (she used to be on the dance AND wrestling teams in high school). Also, apparently her younger daughter (18) has been having anxiety issues so severe that they manifest as GI issues and involve her throwing up a lot, or that's what I was told.

I'm starting to understand why eating issues are a strong theme in this family, though. Grandma X felt the need to "warn" me that Cousin 1 "has really packed the weight on" and also that Aunt X has gained weight. Then when we were out to dinner one night, she saw her (female) pastor, and after going over to chat with her the first thing she said when she sat down was "wow she has really gained weight." I couldn't tell a difference in Aunt X from the last two times I've seen her, and although Cousin 1 has definitely added a lot of weight, I kind of respect her for it in an intangible way.

Grandma X is pretty controlling about food and does not let ANYONE else prepare food or do anything in the kitchen. That became a problem because she is also progressively losing her memory, and it seemed like she sort of forgot about meals, and would get surprised and flustered when a mealtime came and I asked what the plan was. I think she and Grandpa X mostly just graze casually when they don't have guests. Her food supply also wasn't really equipped for balanced vegetarian meals.

Typically, that would have been the perfect opportunity to restrict. But I think I actually rose to the challenge on this, and a few times either made up an excuse to do an errand and went grabbed a quick lunch in town, or drove to the grocery store to get dinner supplies for myself. Same with 4th of July meal -- I was proactive in going to get veggie burgers so I could eat the cookout meal with everyone else. A few years ago it would have gone much differently. So that was a win. Another win was that I ate when she and Grandpa weren't eating -- at least half of our meals involved her sitting there without food while I ate. Again, doing that would have been unbearable a few years ago. But you know what, I just spent months starving myself in TRC, and I guess I just told myself that I've done my time feeling hungry this year and was going to eat if I needed to.

Still, it was kind of a relief to leave, even though everyone up there is nice to me (despite the awkward unmentioned spectre of X's existence). I absolutely ADORE Grandpa X and also enjoy hanging out with Aunt X. Although somehow when Aunt X and Cousin 2 took me out for an evening walk we ended up talking about fad diets on the way back -- Aunt X is on a gluten-free kick and I think was jonesing for my opinion as a scientist about paleo. It made me pretty uncomfortable. Cousin 2 said nothing.

I also had a really revealing conversation with Grandma X. I have never said a single word to that side of the family about my ED, and went from the age of 18 months to 24 years without seeing them at all. But when she was telling me about Cousin 2's anxiety issues, she said that for a while she worried Cousin 2 had an ED, and then basically told me that they knew about mine but was so glad I am "better" now. "I mean, you eat, and you look great." So that was a cringe-worthy, as most of you readers probably understand, but also interesting. She also revealed that when I was a kid/teenager she would periodically call my Nana (my mom's late mother) and chat with her about me. Maybe that's where some of the ED info came from. I don't know. She said she asked Nana not to tell me or my parents she was checking in, and Nana didn't. I'm not sure why she did that, since my mom sent her letters/pictures about me throughout my childhood, and I've been in email contact with her since I was 13 or 14. So that's that.

Now I'm back at my parents' house for another week before my Mom and I take off on our 1,500 mile road trip to PhD Town.

I'm at the highest weight I've been in a long while. I'm desperately trying not to freak out about how that happened so fast, metabolically. It's not like it happened without a calorie increase. I think my body is less tolerant of excessively low weights after being stable at a higher (if still underweight) place for a while, and maybe aging also has something to do with it.

BUT I think that after a few weeks of being better nourished, I can feel my brain/thoughts slowly starting to heal. I was feeling outright crazy for a while, y'all. And it scared the shit out of me. I think I've also felt a shift from wanting to be thin to just desperately wanting to be okay with where I happen to be in terms of weight. I don't really know how to do that, but I guess at least wanting it is progress.

I had a decent body day yesterday, even though this weight would have made me spontaneously combust with anxiety a couple of months ago. It's harder today. I can see the changes and this time I KNOW they're not in my head. No one has commented on it but I am still sure they notice. I haven't outgrown any clothes yet but if that happens I don't know what I'll do. Match has been encouraging as always, but it's still hard. How do people with body-shaming partners ever do this? Maybe they just don't.

So that's how things stand now. A couple of randoms:

Has anyone seen 'Inside Out'? It is NOT just for kids and definitely worth a viewing, especially for people that have experience with depression/anxiety/etc. Although I do agree with one slightly scathing op-ed that I read that criticizes it for the symbolism of making the "Joy" character thin and lithe while the "Sadness" character is chubby.

Also, Apple Music. I love it on my MacBook, and think I will probably drop my Spotify subscription for it, but trying to get things to sync to my iPhone is like a untying a Gordian knot. I am usually smart enough to refrain from using the first version of anything that Apple puts out (although I am 100% an Apple devotee); I'm sure it will get better.

Okay, signing off. More soon. Also, any weight-restoration inspiration/reassurance y'all could offer is appreciated -- I'm trying really hard and just want to be okay enough to enjoy feeling healthier.

Love y'all.

Mixed Messages

So, that 10 year high school reunion was last night. It was okay; it wouldn't have been worth traveling a long way to attend it, but I had a good time.

As I expected, it was WEIRD walking into a room full of people who mostly knew me at sick weights when I was a teenager. I'd only seen a handful of high school people since then (none of my closest friends from that time were able to attend last night). Even though I'd been in tears earlier in the evening because I felt so "fat" in my dress (I usually don't wear clingy clothing because anything that hugs my stomach freaks me out), I kept my head high and had a good time. I got compliments, and the only comment I got that directly alluded to my change in appearance was supportive.

As I've talked about before on this blog, compliments are so complicated. I have to work incredibly hard at not hearing "You look great" as "Hey this is the maximum weight you can be at to not look gross." Brain games.

It was a day for a variety of messages about my body. The same evening that the people I went to high school with were seeing and commenting on a much-expanded version of me than the one they'd known, I got a FB message from an ED friend I hadn't talked to in a while saying she thought I was looking overly thin in recent photos. And then there's the issue that my disordered thoughts often get worse as I gain weight because I start to panic about my body changing.

I was just telling Match this afternoon that I felt like I maintained for a long time at a weight that wasn't optimal but that wasn't too risky and was comfortable for me, and I've completely fucked that up this year and made both my brain and my body go topsy-turvy. It happens, I guess.

I leave for another trip tomorrow. I'll have two nights in Match City and then fly out to see X's family. For some strange reason a 3-city flight was the same price as a round-trip ticket to see the family and come back here, and when I booked the trip I was holding out hope that Match might end up coming with me to see the family.

I think a ton of my recent food/body panic has been related to anxiety about meeting expectations of people I haven't seen in a while. Match and my family after I got back from TRC, people I see once a year at the conference I always attend in June, high school reunion people, X's people that I only see once every other year or so. (When I told this to Match, he asked what perceived expectations were making me anxious, and I didn't really have a good answer). I'm hoping that after this next trip, when I have a break from all these reintroductions, I will be able to calm down about things a bit.