ED Disordered eating

[mumstheword]

Thank you @Living in the 70s
I am steadily losing. It got to the point where I just couldn't bare myself and I had dealt with enough of the other symptoms to begin to lose again. I am accepting myself like never before.
I have lost quite a lot of weight in about a week and a half, about 3 kg.or 4kg I think. I was 83.9kg this morning down.from about 87.8, I Think.
I am drinking ketones occasionally, taking nigella oil occasionally, things like that. My appetite is very minimal. I eat tiny portions and fill up on steamed vegies mixed with a tiny amount of whatever yummy food I make for the family, when I get hungry, which is rarely. I managed to switch off the hunger, binge need and my tacit and life long overwhelm is being dealt with via writing in my diary and having hugs with my guy and giving my children love and care. Also therapy.
The ketones is very good. But the emotional processing is better.:-)

 

[ms spock]

You have found what works for you, and that is great!

You are tremendously brave to do what you are doing! It is amazingly hard.

I have never lost 3 or 4 kilos in a week. I am one of the turtles in the program.

Ignore the below if it is not useful.

I would suggest some protein in the morning, most people at Weight Watcher's meetings seem to be doing that. If you eat too little you will get away with it for a few weeks, and then binging returns with a vengenance.

The other thing is if you lose weight too quickly you body will go into starvation mode - so watch for that.

Turning off hunger cues does worry me a lot, you are precious, and we need you. Hunger is normal, as humans we are meant to feel that 2-3 times per day. It lets us know it is time for our bodies to refuel.

Eating a normal portion size of whtaever yummy food you cook your family sounds like a reasonable way to go to me. I still struggle just eating one portion size at one meal. I used to eat 3-4-5 portions of food. I could eat a portion size or two whilst cooking.

The World Health Organisation has some basics for healthy eating, maybe have a look at those.

All of us can lose weight, but sustainable weight loss is another thing altogether. If you are no longer feeling hunger I feel very, very worried that you are dissociated. I have caused my body permanent damage by doing things dissociated. Currently I am having dental surgery due to cracking my own teeth.

Losing weight is a good thing, but it has to be done learning our hunger cues and how to manage our bodies starvation mode, desparation for binging, etc.

Please ignore if not useful.

I just put 2.9 kilos back on in a couple of weeks, but it is part of the learning process. I was really sick and anxious. I thought I was eating a bit extra to line my stomach for the antibiotics but I was just basically comfort eating. I am really trying to learn how to eat in a healthy manner. It took a long time, a couple of years, to give up comfort eating with junk food and chocolate, and then overeating normal food, and learning to manage my eating will take me 3-5 years. Weight loss will be part of that, but learning normal portion sizes, healthy eating, how much sugar is in what food, and how to lose weight sustainably are some of the parts of the puzzle. Then there is learning more CBT and DBT to learn and practice so I can do emotional regulation without food, and learning Self Compassion and Loving Kindness to develop a relationship with myself that is not based on self hatred, self flagellation and corrosive self doubt. It is a multilayered journey.

 

[ms spock]

Thank you @Living in the 70sI am accepting myself like never before.

This is amazing news, and the best news, you have made my day!

@mumstheword you are tremendously brave to do what you are doing! It is amazingly hard. Eating, and disordered eating, and binge eating, and comfort eating going back to a childhood where there was little love and care is a huge thing to tackle.

I joined Weight Watchers early January 2018, and after 6 months I currently have lost 9.6 kilos. That is approximately 400 grams per week. 8 times I have been 10 kilos down, 4 times I was 11 kilos down and 3 times I have been12 kilos down, but I haven't learnt the skills yet how to sustain that weight loss. So I had pretty unrealistic ideas about how much weight loss would be possible and how. For those with habituated over eating and underactivity losing 1 kilo per week would be quite possible, but for those of us with PTSD, Complex Trauma, few emotional regulation skills, anxiety, depression, food as family and comfort etc etc it is a different journey. So I don't know how your journey will go, and I am looking forward to reading about it, but one thing I have learnt you do have to eat and nourish your body regularly.

My weight goal is 72 kilos as that is the top of my healthy weight range for my height, though another scale says 68 kilos, so it will be what works for me and my body. I am on Endep that increases my appetite, but I have to taper off that in a medically supervised and responsible way, and it is taking a lot longer than I would have liked.

You may be one of the fast losers, and good luck to you if that is so! The fast losers do struggle a bit when they plateau out.

WW is not the be all and end all for anyone, but they recommend a loss of a kilo or less per week as a safe healthy amount to lose. Some weeks you might lose 300 grams or 100 grams, some weeks you might lose 600 grams or a kilo. There are people who lose quite a few kilos for the first months or so but then they do the smaller amounts like the rest of us. Be careful of so much weight loss so quickly. But if that is your body's way that is your body's way, but then don't expect it will continue, because we all level off after a bit. I am no expert, I am not a nutritionist, or a doctor, and I am trying to learn what works for me.

Mindset is a huge thing in weight watchers, and I am learning what they mean by that.

I am so glad you can do some emotional processing, I am really stuck in a loop with that type of stuff. I am in a state of hyperousal most of the time, so I don't have the answers.

I just wanted to say some things, even though I don't know your whole situation, just so you have more information to take care of your precious self. This eating stuff is really tricky.

 

[ninja]

I agree very much @Living in the 70s with what you say. You've done so much work!
& feel quite strongly that a huge breakthrough with conquering the disordered eating comes when food becomes a source of treating oneself with respect, coupled with the acceptance of the process it takes to get to there. Then it ends up less about numbers and more about finding and making a home within yourself. Working with hunger to see what need it is trying to bring to surface instead of trying to control it or get rid of it. Different things work for different people, but slow and steady is great as well.

Just make sure you are eating enough @mumstheword too. With all of the amazing processing you are up to, your body and mind very much need that fuel.
Please ignore if irrelevant and rather take this as heartfelt concern (& my personal detest of the havoc ED's create). :hug:

 

[ms spock]

I have probably put this one in here but I am up to podcast as 10 or 11 Episode 1: Introducing the Brain over Binge Podcast: A Simple Plan to Stop Binge Eating | Brain over Binge

 

[ms spock]

Epic success I was in a social situation and didn't eat everything on my plate. I decided what was reasonable before I started eating, and I stopped at my decision point.

 

[lovak]

I hope I am welcome here, I've read a few posts and my disordered eating is the opposite. I don't comfort eat. I don't eat to be comfortable. I know it's totally the opposite, but I hope I can still be a part of the conversation here

I've been struggling with eating lately, for a couple of months now, really. My life is now so out of control and I feel the need to control something, so I don't eat. It's been a problem for me for a long time. Not eating, binging, compensating. Haven't really had many issues with it the past couple of years, but that's because I pushed all of my issues away.

I know why I do it; the first one; control. The second one, which is hard to admit, is so people will actually see that I am not well.

I'm not full blown anorexic or anything. I'm not constantly thinking about food or calories or my weight. It's just that, when I feel the urge to eat, I often choose not to.

 

[ms spock]

@lovak you are certainly welcome I have done that, and went there in a big way in 2013. It is hard not to have control, and my heart really feels for you as needing to be seen, and wanting to be seen. I get that.

 

[lovak]

@Living in the 70s
Thank you for your kind words. I've been there in a big way as well in 2007. I don't want this anymore. It's just now my coping strategy that I used for years and years has failed I seem to resort to every other coping strategy out there (and I'm not referring to the healthy ones). Disordered eating, drinking, self harm. I almost feel like I'm switching them up on purpose so not one of them will get really bad.

I haven't eaten yet today. I know I should and I will, but I don't even know what to eat and it's difficult to get myself up to walk to the fridge. I know that's bullshit, because I'm on my second cup of coffee and the coffee machine is right next to it. Fooling myself again...

 

[ms spock]

So in Weight Watchers world wide, the average weight loss per week is 300 grams. I just read that on Connect the weight watchers facebook book equivalent, so I have been around average with 400 grams per week.

 

[ms spock]

@Living in the 70s
Thank you for your kind words. I've been there in a big way as well in 2007. I don't want this anymore. It's just now my coping strategy that I used for years and years has failed I seem to resort to every other coping strategy out there (and I'm not referring to the healthy ones). Disordered eating, drinking, self harm. I almost feel like I'm switching them up on purpose so not one of them will get really bad.

That is better than letting anyone of them getting really bad, so that is a positive.

I haven't eaten yet today.

I feel for you, it is hard to be in that state, you are at least aware of that, which is a great awareness to have. I am really proud of you for having that awareness. I didn't for a long time.

I know I should and I will, but I don't even know what to eat

So what do you have in your fridge?
Museli?
Bread? How about a slice of toast with butter or something else on it like jam?
Frozen vegetables? How about half a cup of frozen peas and corn or etc? Do you have a microwave?
Any cans of soup in the cupboard?
Frozen meals in the freezer?

If you can't eat right now, then break it down and go the fridge and see what is in there. Come here and report back, if you feel like it. If you don't I won't mind a bit.

and it's difficult to get myself up to walk to the fridge.

Yeah I get that, I was like that. At the moment I am the opposite but I do remember what that was like.

I know that's bullshit, because I'm on my second cup of coffee and the coffee machine is right next to it.

Sometimes developing a more positive and a little bit caring relationship can assist. I am really a work in progress with this. The tricky thing is to approach yourself without setting off the constellation of disordered eating, drinking, self harm, so I am very, very, very slowly working on self compassion and loving kindness. Kristin Neff has a website on Self Compassion and Chris Germer has a website as well. Maybe they would interest you?

Fooling myself again...

So you are really, really, really not alone with this stuff. You are so not alone. I am trying to move myself out of my fooling myself as well, but beating myself up when I am down is not so helpful.

I sometimes have lots of suggestions some times for the members of MyPTSD, I mean well, I don't have the answers, I don't even have the right questions some times, so I mean well, if this is not useful, then please ignore.

So my suggestions for you, one day, when you are not struggling as much as you are struggling today.

- write a list of healthy options and think about them, I have done this with my eating and I am still struggling to do a healthier option, rather than a comfort eating option, but I am thinking about them, so eventually I will get there.
- can you drink some water to rehydrate yourself more regularly
-do you have a solid trauma informed professional that you are working with at the moment?

 

[ms spock]

So I cleaned the fridges (we have to even keep the flour in the fridge or weevils etc get into them) and made some soup this morning so I have lots to eat that is easy for me to manage with the pain in my mouth today.

So success last night I wanted to comfort eat before bed, but I didn't. I thought about it, but I have practised so much at not doing it, and thinking about ways of not doing it, and working on it in trauma therapy that I actually was able to resist going and comfort eating. I came up with a few good rationalisations of soft soup because of my mouth, and how I hadn't eating all my points in ww, but you don't need to eat all your points, as long as you have a blue dot, and I wasn't hungry, even though I had a normal portion size for dinner though this is "a really light meal" for me, as I am habituated to eating many more portion sizes than is necessary. So last night I did okay. So that was good. It will be up and down, and it will be a lot of practising.

I did not overeat in a social situation yesterday due to social anxiety, so that was really great. I have practised so many, many times being in social situations to bring the two together. It was a huge achievement for me.