ED Disordered eating

[ms spock]

So I have lost it a bit over Xmas with the eating, some of that was by choice, and some of it was blocking feelings, some of it was lashing out and enjoying Xmas, and some of it was not feeling. So it is a mixed bag.

I got a couple of king hits.

My psychiatrist said after my wedding that my sister is unconsciously & passively aggressive acting out her internalised perpetrator on me. I wish she was wrong.

So I have to come to terms with the fact that my Mother did win in the end. She told me she would make all my siblings grow up to be like complete strangers to me. f*ck man! Destorying her other children in order to deny me social connectedness with me is really quite evil? Not sure how to describe it?

So Radical Acceptance is the way to go? I really don't know how to deal with this.

Unfortunately I slid back into all day comfort eating and binge eating once again.

So there is my sister thing, and the appalling way she behaved, and the even more appalling way she justified her abusive behaviours using gaslighting and all the family favourites.

The cousin thing with ripping B off so much money, and being so manipulative, and menancing, and the loss of the little bit of family stuff with him. That hit me hard.

Main thing I didn't do my block and run off somewhere - f*ck I felt like it. I felt like self destructing quite a bit.

The eating is not optimum I know.

I did dissociate a huge amount and that wasn't the best either. But I got through. And I looked after my partner and Papa Bear really well over Xmas so that is really good. I didn't completely collapse.

 

[ms spock]

So I did much better today with my eating. I didn't over eat. I didn't under eat. I had appropriate meals, and I also had some fruit snacks as well. So much improved.

It has been a tough couple of weeks.

So I have a lot of work to do in not comfort eating or binge eating as a strategy to manage my life, however I have made so much progress in the last year it is phenomenal, and it was so slow and painstaking. It really took up so much time and attention. I am so glad that I have done the work, and now I hope that adding working to my tool box of things to do will give me purpose, structure, and routine to my life.

I hope that eventually I will be too busy to spend time comfort eating and I will also actually just be living a life, playing my musical instrument, making art and writing again. I do much better with structure and routine so I expect that once I have them again that I will improve dramatically just by the virture of having those in my life.

 

[ms spock]

My eating doesn't have to be perfect or completely healthy. It just has to be good enough. Lately I slipped into the unhealthy side of things, but I am back again, and it will slip and slide. It does help to notice I have put on a kilo in a week so I don't put on 5 kilos plus in a month. I am not as dedicated to noting down my meals as I once was, but I am much better at noticing going over portions now.

 

[ms spock]

So this time last year I was obese, and I am not obese anymore. I am overweight. And I am not overweight too badly either. I am 4 kilos off the top BMI of my weight. My BMI range is 53.5 - 70kg so it is a huge improvement, and it has meant a lot of behavioural changes in my life which are challenging. But I have done them.

Anyway I am a bit over WW now. I not as keen as tracking what I eat, and partly that was because I was indulging in comfort eating - this is a time of huge annivesaries for me November, December and January - usually the part of the year I lose my shit. Wow I had forgotten that until just then. And I had my sister pull some real gaslighting and my partner got ripped off in a big way by his cousin financially and Papa Bear's dementia is getting worse and he is getting frailer.

Of course I gladly overindulged at Xmas a bit! I enjoyed myself! WW there are no off limits foods. You don't have to give anything up at all. If I allocate my points I can go straight down to the shops and have a scone, jam and cream right now! So deprivation doesn't work for me. It triggers my eating behaviours. And I am at the point now, if I comfort eat well hell at least really enjoy the comfort eating and hey what's the biggie? So I am not as hard on myself as I once was. I am trying to put in other types of behaviours to take the place of the comfort eating. I still want to stay away from my sister and other people who consciously or unconsciously sabotage me. Sometimes I can have stuff in the house and I don't over do it, and sometimes I have to have stuff out of the house or I will over do it. I am at the potentially overdoing phase at this time so less stuff in the house, but really for this time of year I am doing really well.

I think I will stay with WW for another year as it a good sense of actually being more aware - it helps me be out of the dissociation, depersonalisation, derealisation and maladaptive daydreaming. So it is really good as a way to move out of those states and not put on 10 kilos and be shocked that this has happened because I wasn't aware of what is or was happening in my body.

So now the focus will shift from weight loss, which I haven't always managed to do, to making myself really nourishing and fulfulling meals. I have been resisting taking responsibility and doing this. I don't want to do it. I feel like I work really hard and shouldn't have to do more hard work. I am a bit sulky about it. But I am a good cook, and I can do it. So I will get there.

I have stopped eating when I am thirsty as much, that was a big change. I didn't realise how much I ate when hungry and I still do that! So that is a new awareness., which I periodically forget.

Portion size - still haven't adjusted to what a regular portion size is - as a kid I would eat 7-8 portion sizes and it would all burn through me due to my activity levels. Food was my sole source of love and care for much of my childhood. It was the way I emotionally regulated. It was the way I numbed myself through what I endured. So large portion sizes symbolise love, protection, security, safety, the ability to withstand, the ability to put up with a huge amount of shit, and comfort in a big way. So these are regular WW portion sizes - so instead of eating 5-6 portion sizes I am eating maybe 2 or 3 and some days I just eat a regular portion size, so much, much improvement.

Changing disordered eating patterns from childhood is pretty arduous but I am slowly doing it.

So anyway lots of improvements I do have a fair way to go with it all, but now I think near enough is good enough. If I can get down to my BMI that would be great because I am in the high risk for a range of cancers given family medical history. Still 12-15 kilos lighter than this time last year is pretty good, and I am happy with that.

 

[VioletButterfly]

Changing disordered eating patterns from childhood is pretty arduous but I am slowly doing it.

Yes it is and yes you are. I'm so very pleased for you! :)

 

[ms spock]

Doing well with eating nourishing meals today, and not comfort eating in between - instead went for a walk, swam 6 laps, visited Papa Bear and played bocci for 1 and a half hours, spent some time on twitter, shopped for food, and played banjo.

 

[ms spock]

I had fish and salad this morning for breakfast and half a mango and a sugar lady banana. Nouring myself is really important. I need to get organised with meal preparation. This is a goal for 2019.

I got up and went walking at 5.30am. I am looking at doing other things to do other than eating. So I am playing my banjo. I swam 6 laps yesterday which really helped me calm down.

I am also drinking a lot more water as well as different herbal teas. So self care and self nurturing is really important combined with providing myself with things do, and learning other stress management techniques other than eating. If I do eat I am not going to beat myself up for it. Just note it and do a course correction. I have decades of eating to do emotional management so gradually I will improve over time.

I also need to learn how to ground myself as I use eating to ground myself at times.

So there are many new skills to learn to manage and improving my eating strategies.

 

[ms spock]

Day 2 of not comfort eating, stress eating or boredom eating completed.

I got through yesterday and I am so pleased!

I am making great progress.

Mistakes will be made but I now have the capacity to learn from them and not just endlessly beat myself up! I have improved out of sight! I am not the same woman I was this time last year!

 

[ms spock]

My whole life and relationship to eating has changed! I am feeling full of food! I ate enough food. I have a sense of how much food is enough. Today just now I have a sense in my body of how much to eat, and how much would be too much. It has taken a year to develop this awareness. It is a huge achievement for me! I had thought I would never get here!

I have set myself up a new 30 day challenge! I am SO grateful to be on Day 3 of my 30 day challenge of not Stress Eating, not Boredom Eating and not Comfort Eating. I am going really well with this. All the skills I have built up are coming into play. When I started I would never have thought that this would be a possibility for me in a couple of decades. I worked really hard on this for a year, and finally it is actually paying off.

I lost 1.5 kilos this week, which takes me down to 72.4 which means this year I will move out of being overweight to being the top of my normal BMI of 70 kilos.

I never lose more than a couple of hundred grams per week.

I am a total turtle weight loss person but I sure can put a couple of kilos back on in a week so easily. I can put on 5 kilos in a week from anxiety eating!

As a stress/comfort/selfsoothing/boredom eater it was a huge success to move from being obese to overweight but I am going to finally make it to 70 kilos which means I will be just within my BMI.

I will no longer be overweight. I will be in a normal weight range. I can feel now when I have had enough food to eat. I could never feel that before. So that is a huge change in mindset and understanding my body. I am actually feeling my body now. I have never really felt my body before, except through stress and pain. So all the exercise to learn to connect to my body has paid off as well as the Alexander Technique, Mindfulness, working on David Burns' distorted thinking, reading the anxiety book, therapy, going out and facing that social anxiety again and again and again and again and the other million strategies that I have tried are working.

My whole self talk changed this week, so I went from beating, bashing, criticising, harrassing myself all the the time which led to the constant comfort eating to manage all those horrible feelings to constantly saying supportive and caring things for myself! I have changed my self talk after years of practising self compassion and positive self talk! So that would be why I lost the weight as I wasn't comfort eating/grazing all day to self medicate myself.

I am no longer self medicating with food to get through the day! After 4 decades plus of disordered eating I have really turned a corner!

The ruminations, distorted thinking, maladapative day dreaming, dissociation, depersonalisation and derealisation are all still there, but I am getting better and better at managing them. I am shifting my mindset.

I have also accepted that I need to take Valium at night because otherwise I am going to grind all my teeth away. I have just cracked another splint. I have upped my exercise - 15,000 steps yesterday and 22 laps in the pool. I need 3/4 hours of exercise per day to calm my nervous system down.

I am not totally and completely freaking out that everyone will abandon me if they ever got to even know the tiniest little bit of the real me. I still have my barriers up. Every time I am with people I used to go over everything a zillion times to see if I could have done something better or I ask myself did I embarrass myself? I am doing this a bit less as well.

I have more of a sense of agency within myself. I have worked on the feelings of hopelessness and helplessness so much!

 

[ms spock]

Day 4 of not comfort eating, stress eating or boredom eating. I am making great progress. Mistakes will be made but I now have the capacity to learn from them and not just endlessly beat myself up! I have turned a corner now which is amazing. It has been a year of pretty dedicated work on my disordered eating. It is really paying off.

So my whole relationship with food and with my self has dramatically changed. I wouldn't have thought it was at all possible this time last year. I have been in WW for just over a year now. I have lost 13-15 kilos and kept it off for 6 months now. I don't numb myself out all day with food which is really amazing. Gosh it has taken so much hard work to get on top of that, and it is still not easy. But bit by bit I am getting there. I am still not at the top of my BMI but I am close so I am happy with that. I am eating better. I do need to make myself some more nourishing foods but I am doing that more and more. I am really making progress.

On top of that I am feeling satisfied and happily tired. I worked my first new day, at third potential casual job, and it went really well! So all the many other things that I am doing have been helping as well.

 

[ms spock]

Today is Day 11 of my own self created challenge of not comfort eating, not stress eating and not boredom eating! It is amazing to get to this point.

I am going so well with it. It is not easy. This time last year I would have thought I would have flown to the moon rather than ever been able to manage my disordered eating in any way. I wasn't even aware of how much comfort eating that I was doing actually. It had been a growing awareness but it has been a hard slog to stick with it all!

 

[ms spock]

I am no longer overweight, it took quite awhile to move out of being obese! I am at the top of my BMI of height range.

Day 12 of not comfort eating, stress, and boredom eating! My whole relationship with food has changed.