All of those things would typically mean one thing for me, food would go out the window. Mostly my reaction under these circumstances would be to stop eating, but it may also be peppered with terrible carb binges. And I am not going to lie, the night I left the gym in tears there was NOTHING I wanted to do more than visit Dairy Queen, McDonalds and go buy a cake.
But the big shocker to this week has been that I held it together on food really well. My calories were over 1800 every day this week (my goal is 2000+ but we have all agreed if we get to 1700 or so it is a good day, considering my norm previously was in 300 range), I cooked all my own food, I brought lunches to my client meetings and I met all the rules (no dairy, no eggs, no wheat, no yeast, no high tyramine, high healthy fats, extreme low carbs (I am eating anywhere from 1-3% carbs these days) and adequate protein.).
I don't want that to sound like it was easy, that is actually the point of my post. I am doing this, I have been successful for about 5 weeks now with following the new guidelines, and it IS working. At my highest recent weight I was 258 *gulp* at my weigh in this morning I was 244. 14 lbs in less than 2 months is a big feat, since the nutritionist defined success at losing 1 lbs a week.
And logically I can sit here and tell you why its working...I am avoiding carbs (kryptonite to me), I am avoiding all the foods that cause me inflammation reactions, we are slowing upping my body's desire to burn fat over glucose, but most importantly..................I am eating (I have my body out of starvation mode). Logically I "get it".
But for someone with disordered thinking around food, "getting it" and even doing it don't change the struggle. Despite how easy I have learned it to make the foods I need, no matter how much I can this is working (Nick was right *rolling eyes*) and what I was doing before wasn't. I still hear that same voice in my head. Lately it is less about food being evil or having to force myself to swallow the food and more the voice that nags at me "wow if you lost almost 3 lbs this week imagine how much faster it would come off if you dropped the calories and skipped meals". This voice also has a companion set of noise that says "just lie on your food journal, up the amounts, no one will know". Even when the noise is quiet, I also have to fight my normal tendency to just not eat. I literally have to remind myself "it's lunch time go find food". I went through a short period when we started this new plan where I was hungry for the first time in a long long time, but that has faded as my body adjusted. I am back to having to eat off the clock because the cues from my body don't exist.
It amazes me the tenacity of an eating disorder. I truly thought by now this would become habit (the conventional wisdom is it takes 30 days of doing something for it to be a habit) and the ED crap would fade but so far that isn't happening. Some days I actually think the eating makes it worse, it definitely did in the beginning. I truly wonder if I will ever be programmed like other people for eating to just be a normal part of life or not. Certainly not there yet.
Next week is the first time I travel under this new plan. I'd be lying if I didn't say I wasn't scared. I don't know how to do this when I cant cook my own food. I keep bouncing between whether I fear I wont eat at all, or if I fear eating the wrong things. The first seems less damaging (because we wont need to clean out those substances again from by body) but either one is going to slow progress or move me backwards. Finger's crossed I figure it out......
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