A new twist

The past couple weeks have been sort of like a roller coaster. I think I've entered a new sort of phase of my eating disorder...a restrictive phase or diet mentality. I think that since I've been pretty under control as far as binges go lately, I'm starting to swing to the other side.

The restricting - or diet type of thinking offers me a sense of control that I actually really like. I'm kind of enjoying hanging out on this side right now. I'm pretty sure though the next time I see Amy (later this week) she'll be challenging me to get closer to center again. The last time I saw her she gave me a goal to not weigh myself because I was getting compulsive about it. I absolutely HATE the number on the scale but I have this burning desire to know if I'm up or down all the time. I think I may have a tendency to judge my worth as a person based on whether my weight is up or down. This is not to say that when I'm down - I think I'm a good person, no...it's never enough. The scale is certainly not my only gauge of my self worth but currently it's a handy little tool.

A couple months back I had promised to give my scale away to one of my co-workers. I kept forgetting to bring it in and by the time she asked me about it again, I was feeling very attached to it and didn't want to give it to her. I mean, how will I be able to judge my worth without my scale? I told her I'd bring it for her the next time we worked together. In my head I tried to come up with ideas on how not to let her have the scale after I had promised her she could. I thought about how the battery could have died or it could have just gotten broken. SO STRANGE that I would actually put that much thought into lying so I could keep it. I weighed myself this morning and then brought the scale to work. No more scale in the house.

As I mentioned earlier it's been sort of a roller coaster lately. I've been up, I've been down, I've been way up, I've been down. Today I think I'm sorta somewhere hovering in the middle toward down. I've got something going on in my life right now that is making me feel a bit out of control, as in, I am not able to entirely control the situation. I think that since this has come up, I've been drawn more into the dieting/restriction. I hesitate to use the word restriction much if at all. I am eating my meals but snacks, deserts, and portions are being skipped or watched very closely. To me real restriction is skipping meals.

I like to think the weight loss is faster but of course it's not fast enough. Earlier this morning when I weighed myself I was down about five pounds from the last time I weighed myself (and wrote it down). At that time I thought, that's not too bad for two weeks. Then a little bit ago I looked up the date of when I weighed myself last and it's actually been three weeks. My feeling of "that's not too bad" switched right over to "that's a lot slower rate of weight loss than I thought. I'm not doing as well as I thought I was". See now if I was weighing myself more regularly I wouldn't be as out of touch. That last line was meant to be sarcastic.

I suppose the downside to the diet mentality I'm noticing is that I feel a bit more anxious and obsessive about my food. I guess a big, duh on the obsessive part. I'm also noticing more guilt. Guilt for eating more than I think I should and not exercising as much as I would like. I know logically that the behavior and beliefs are maladaptive. I sort of feel like I'm playing with the line of balance and diet. I'd like to be as close to diet as possible yet still following the "rules" to appear more balanced. I may be a bit to close to diet right now. We'll see how the week goes, I guess.