@digger - yup, I’m using the diet ones. I’m not even close to being underweight. I refuse to have a pair of scales in my home, because my sister had anorexia as a teen and I learned to hate the concept of weighing yourself - always seems like a no-win outcome when you get on the scales. But I know from my clothing size that I’m on the upper side of average.
Then in my 20s my BMI went up beyond 25 because of the amount of training I was doing (not training for anything specific, although I had it in mind to join a triathlon team vaguely) and I had almost no fat on me. That was before I became really unwell, but I’ve always been reasonably active.
I’m seriously resistant to the idea of having an eating disorder, but ‘disordered eating’ I can come at. Possibly. There’s a lot of contributing factors. And yeah, chronic SI makes everything harder.
I’ve avoided resorting to ordering groceries online, because...(there’s a reason but it doesn’t matter much, there’s always a reason). I had a panic attack at the grocery store last week because I’ve moved and had to change stores. That doesn’t help. I keep the number of aisles I go down at 5 per trip.
Even as I’m writing this my sister literally just dumped an armload of single-serve chocolates “from nan” on the coffee table in front of me and I can see that my reaction to that was disproportionate. She’ll finish them if I go to bed. And I’ll toss them out if she leaves them there.
I don’t know what’s going on with my body. I’ve had similar stuff checked out during long hospital stays in the past, and previous pdocs have referred me to nutritionists and dieticians (it was the dietician recommended the shakes to get my nutrition up), but there’s too much other stuff to deal with to make an issue out of my eating as well. I’m not thin. I’m not underweight even, so what’s it matter. My thyroid has been checked. I drink too much water but my electrolytes are normal.
Blah. I get angry really quickly on this topic. It’s not rational. It’s just, food is the last thing I want to make into an issue. And mostly if there’s consequences of under-eating or malnutrition I’m the last person to notice.
I have a part that used to take care of eating for me. She cooks. She’s revoltingly healthy - lots of stir fries, lots of “have I had a serve of oily fish yet this week” nonsense. Did sensible stuff like having a tv dinner if a day had been too hard and would add some microwaved veges to make a meal out of it.
I can’t bring myself to like food. I just can’t. I’m hypersomnolent, and probably that’s where my body makes up for lost energy. But I also have depression, so hypersomnolence makes sense.
And when you toss around “disordered eating”, like it’s an issue I need to deal with, then even I can notice that I’m not being particularly coherent and this is more like a journal entry than a literate response.
Every now and then, I end up at my parents place at meal time and they do something heinous like order in pizza, and you have to eat (because to my parents, if you’re not eating it must mean you’re not well). And I won’t purge because that’s something you do when you have an eating disorder. Which I don’t. So I’m guessing the additional calories from those occasions are getting me across the line.
In which case it’s not actually an issue at all. Because it doesn’t matter how you get your calories, so long as you’re getting enough. Which I seem to be.
And if you made it through all that? You’re more committed than you probably ought to be, because I had a crack at editing (not that you can tell) and I think that just made it worse.
The suggestion of increasing my calories doesn’t get a healthy reaction from me, that is one thing I am sure about. But I can see it coming to a head. I’ve moved in with my sister, and it’s an absolute certainty she’s going to tell my mother that literally the only food I keep is either apples, or it’s for my dog. I didn’t have a pantry cupboard in my last studio, but I didn’t need one. My dog almost does, but I just don’t do food anymore and it’s become really convenient and something I really seem to balk at changing.
Like, considering higher calories brings on the SI, ya know? And that’s probably not how it’s sposed to be.
Low iron can cause muscle pain.
Yeah, have become a vegetarian by default since I last had my levels checked, so I’ll get that done.
