Failure is not an option....it's a reality......

This is one of those times when I am feeling stuck between posting, being honest, sticking to the pledge I made when I started this blog - to tell it as it is, good bad and ugly, or to just shut up and hide. I am going to make an attempt at the first, because those of you reading this deserve truth and hopefully it will prevent someone else from making my same mistakes.

I screwed up big time and in the end it is costing me more than I ever imagined. The worst part is not only was I warned over and over and was too stubborn to listen but probably deep in my heart I knew what I was doing was wrong and dangerous, but it didn't matter. All that mattered was my goal.

It's no secret to anyone who knows me that once I set out on a mission there is little if anything that is going to stop me. As a friend put it when she selected my hebrew name in the 90's, Pam does not know how to do anything less than full out. BTW the name she chose was Lehava Rut (which translates in slang to "Stubborn Friend"). I have been on a mission for the past 6 weeks, logic be damned.

A year ago tomorrow I joined LTF, 51 weeks ago Saturday I started training with Gui. The first thing we did in that meeting was set out goals. I wanted to lose 150 lbs in a year, he scaled it back and told me 100 lbs in a year and we would talk about the rest after that. When we wrote it down I never believed it would even be something that I could dream of being possible, but as the year has gone on, it seemed become more and more doable.  Especially since the reality is if we count the weight I lost before starting at LTF I am already over 100 lbs.

If I am honest when I was forced to change trainers in August I believed the goal was lost. I gave up. I believed that I had to have Gui to accomplish what I had set out to, it was part of why accepting him moving on was such a blow at first. It wasn't just the thought of losing my trainer, but also of losing my chance at my goal.

Luckily Nick, my current trainer, and Todd, my metabolic specialist, were as determined as I was that the goal become about me and not about Gui or anyone else and if anything I got to a place in the last 6-8 weeks where I believed more than ever that I could do it. Or maybe the wording should be less about believing I could it  and more about I became fixated on doing it. I was determined that I was going to prove to myself and to the world that I could be successful...regardless. This is where the problem began.

The goal became more important to me than being smart or being healthy. And for someone with an eating disorder this is a dangerous slope. Thin, or thinner at all cost is pretty much the definition of an ED. But I think I hid that reality from myself. I was able to kid myself into believing that I was doing healthy things that were working, and was able to tune out the voices of concern around me, particularly my trainer's. I was eating, I was getting the right number of calories, so how could it be wrong.

I wont dive into the gory details of what I have been doing, but in short 1) I have been eating essentially the same 4 or 5 foods a day, every day for weeks and 2) I have been getting the lion share of my calories from protein shakes. The second is really the problem.

While doing this has been incredibly successful from a weight loss point of view (about 22 lbs in a month), what I wasnt hearing or thinking about was that I was teaching my body not to deal with solid foods. And that once I reintroduced them there were going to be issues. When I finally agreed to go back to solid food this week, I gained 4 lbs in a day and my digestive system totally freaked. Both of which sent me into a total panic (the weight more than the stomach issues of course). And led to a conversation with my trainer where the realities of what I have done and that I am definitely going to re-gain some weight fixing it, were hammered into my head.

I dont like it, I am not ok with it. And while logically I know it is right, and know this is incredibly dumb to say, feel and think, there is a huge part of me that doesn't want to care about the doing it right side and still wants to meet my goal and deal with reality later. But I know that isnt the right answer.

The reality is in the end, I lost track of one of the other goals Gui and I set down on day one, this is about a HEALTHY lifestyle change, not about fast weight loss, gimmicks and quick fixes. Now I just have to wrap my brain about which goal is more important, long term. I know the answer logically, I just have to get my heart to the same place.