I missed a week of blogging. If I don't get to it Saturday or Sunday, it just doesn't happen during the week. The last time I wrote I was having problems eating all the exchanges in my meal plan. That continued through the rest of that week and the food obsessions and anxiety did not wane.

Friday that week it sort of all came to a head and the restriction gave way to a weekend of poor food behavior, an all out binge Friday night and overeating over the rest of the weekend. There was no particular situation that triggered the use of food. Well not exactly anyway. I should say there was no traumatic event that triggered it but what seemed to get the ball rolling was our potluck at work. There weren't any foods I deemed acceptable or good for me so I told myself to go ahead and try a little of the things I wanted. Normally this would be a pretty adaptive approach but I think because I'd been so judgmental about my foods being good or bad, I just sort of let go and went for it after I allowed myself to eat those "bad" foods.

After lunch I sort of decided to give myself permission to binge when I got home that night, it was nearly planned (short of a special trip to the grocery store). I felt so disgustingly full and ashamed afterward. Saturday morning with the expected binge-hangover I felt crappy. I was super anxious and really would have paid money to curl up into the fetal position in my bed and cry all day. Of course I was at work so no deal there. I didn't plan lunch that day so I was very unsatisfied with what I did end up eating which was really more of a snack. The feeling bad about the previous night's binge and not being prescriptive with my meal plan that day lead to some overeating or as I called it at the time, a "mini-binge".

I was pretty amazed at how quickly and comfortably the cycle came back. It was so easy to fall into and so hard to get out of. This was the biggest binge I've had in months. I was completely being willful about eating. I had been so obsessed over what I was eating, what I judged good and bad that I ended up being so frustrated with having to plan and think and care about what food I'm eating I just decided not to care for a day (or so). There were plenty of pauses, opportunities for me to plug in my skills and I ignored those pauses. I knew they were there when they were happening. I knew while I was in the binge that I would have to discuss all this with Amy and Doug, that I would most likely gain weight, that I would feel physically and emotionally terrible after and yet I gave myself full permission to go that route and end up feeling really horrible about myself.

I have stuck to my meal plan since Monday last week. It's been difficult because I feel some guilt for eating what I feel is too much or "bad" even when what I'm eating fits into my prescribed meal plan. I see how important it is for me to stay on my meal plan even though I still want to eat below my exchanges because I feel totally desperate to lose weight. I hate my body.

Doug and I have been discussing body image and basically reprogramming how I talk to myself about me and my life. I will be starting a new group in a couple weeks that deals solely with body image. Once I start that I won't be attending the DBT group anymore. I'm totally freaked out and scared to be in a group discussing ANYTHING about my body. It is so so hard for me to believe there is anything at all good about it. I'm totally ashamed of it and am really not looking forward to concentrating on it with people I don't know. As scared as I am I know this is necessary. It's timely and very important and hopefully I'll be singing a different tune when the group has finished but right now I just can't fathom feeling anything but disgust and hatred for my body.

Geez, this stuff is just so much fun! Ha. I learned a bit from the binging weekend. Staying on my meal plan helps keep me even, balanced and definitely less anxious. I suppose it's worth it to stay with it - I know it is.

More education

More of the same this week. Perhaps a little deeper in than I was last week. It's been a tough week. Very "attached" to my emotions. I'm supposed to try to sit beside them, observe them and sort of let them flow through instead of latching on. I've been irritable, angry, sad, lonely...it's kind of exhausting, all that hanging on.

I know I should be focusing my energy toward more adaptive coping strategies but it just hasn't happened this week. I've been feeling extremely willful, rebellious I guess. Tomorrow's a new day and I am going to work harder at getting back to center.

I saw my dietitian Thursday. She's got some assignments that require me to eat more than I have been and that pretty much stresses me out right now. Hard to believe someone is actually telling ME to eat more, I could certainly stand to skip a meal or two. A couple months ago I would have laughed at the possibility of this situation. Now that I'm in it, it's of course a different story - less laughter, more anxiety. The willfulness comes in here, where I'm totally irritated someone is telling me to eat (more) when I don't want too. I know logically that the restriction could lead to a binge but it hasn't so far so my eating disorder tells me to keep up the good work scaling down the amount of food I eat. I've been having a hard time with my assignments from Amy and haven't achieved them yet since I saw her.

This phase of my eating disorder feels really odd. I've been here (diet mode/restriction) many times before but this time it's happening while I'm in treatment for an eating disorder so there is this strange awareness next to it while I'm experiencing it. I think part of what's so strange to me is that in the past when I've been here I've viewed this type of behavior as the type of behavior with food that I should exhibit. I have believed that dieting and restricting is "right" and more normal and of course binging/overeating behavior is "wrong".

Now I know that where I'm at isn't right. I'm ridiculously obsessed with food choices. I passed on lunch with co-workers on Friday so I could eat what I brought in order to be able to control and know EXACTLY what I'm putting into my body. This is maladaptive, I know. It's just that since I have viewed this behavior as "good" for so many years, I think it's harder for me to let go of it and get back on track with my meal plan.

Also, I've noticed that I think the behavior in the past week has become less about the weight loss and more about control and even punishment. I'm pretty sure on some level I am punishing myself by the way I am controlling my food. I've been feeling weak and vulnerable lately and I think that may be part of the reason for feeling like I need to punish myself. I sort of feel like I'm doing research while I'm here. I'm definitely learning more about my eating disorder. I'm trying like hell to come up with good reasons to stay in this mode but if my mood the past week is any indication on how well this phase is going - I need to try harder at getting unstuck from here.

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.