Restricting reflections

I did well today; 775 calories. I wish I could restrict more, but I don’t think I can do it well… 800 calories a day is better than binging and purging. And if I could just maintain that number… that would be ok with me. It’s not my eternally ideal 500 calories or less per day (preferably 350, duh), and it would be a slower loss, but the current cycle is the slowest fucking method of all…

The recent cycle has been: 

• Restrict super hard
• Can’t maintain it
• Get super hungry and binge 
• Purge
• Restrict 
• Binge
• Purge
• Binge
• Binge
• Binge

Then I’m fat… 

I think if I just try to restrict to around 800 calories a day, that’s doable for me. It doesn’t mentally feel great, but it I know it’s logical. It fits the math in the end. It gives me enough wiggle room to maintain my blood-sugar and metabolism well, and it’s still half of what my daily recommended intake is. 

Dude. 

No one knows more about how the body manages food than an eating disordered person… wtf is this skill even useful for? How does knowing the calorie content of every food known to man help me? How does my knowledge of how fat is created, metabolized, stored, burned, and how it actually gets out of the body (through respiration when we sleep, primarily) ever going to help my fucking life?? These are just facts I torture myself with. And the amount I know about actual eating disorders would rival most practitioners who treat it. All of this knowledge is not helping. I’m still disordered. I know it all, but I am a victim to it. 

You can’t unlearn this stuff - all the things Ana and Mia have taught you. You can’t ever really get away from them. You just find a way, somehow, at some point, to stop listening… 

But then, to do that is to be fat. And we aren’t meant to live on this side of things. We have been thin, and we worked hard to get there. 

The recognition that it’s a problem is there in your knowledge bank also. When you recount how many hundreds of times you have thrown up in hundreds of bathrooms over the years (and what you know about plumbing due to this), it sets in that this is not really ok. 

So we put it aside. We decide not to listen. Not to pay attention to all we have learned. Not to count. Not to constantly do the math. We close our eyes and ears and hope that maybe we can go back to a time before we got like this; before we knew all this. 

And then you expand. You buy bigger sizes and tell yourself it’s ok. You look at photos of yourself and gasp - who is that fat person, and where is the girl I was before?? You trade your thigh cap for thigh rub and you want to die just as much as you did before - you just also look ugly. You think, “I’m probably more miserable like this.”

So then you start to listen again… You know what you could do. You know both sides of the coin. It would be possible to fully embrace it again - to mold your entire life around eating and not eating like you did before. You still know the way. 

But, you know it can’t be like that again. You don’t even truly want that. It sucked. Being fat and sad or thin and tortured are two equally terrible options. 

So, maybe aim for the middle? Maybe my weight can be just ok and my brain can be just ok about it. Maybe a compromise after 20 years of the yoyo. Maybe it’s dumb that it took you this long to figure that out. 

So you have to balance what they have taught you with what you have learned on your own without them. It’s a fucking impossible balance. It contradicts itself. Food is everything. Food is god. Food is the devil. Food is defeat. 

Why does this exist within me?? Why does it feel like a balance is not possible? Have I ever really given it a chance??

I ended up smoking tonight, because I started to feel physically sick. Idk why - I threw up the water I had just drank and laid in the bathroom feeling like garbage for an hour, and it wouldn’t pass. Idk if it was low blood-sugar, adjusting to my glasses, adjusting to meds, or what, but I couldn’t get it together… It’s funny how I can force myself to throw up a million times in my life, but when it’s my body naturally doing it, I don’t like it… I smoked one bowl, ate some food, and called it a night. No more food and no more smoking. 

I think if I could consistently do that, it might be ok. If I could repeat my choices today every day, I might be ok with that. 

Maybe smoking is another thing I get extreme about - either don’t smoke at all, or smoke all the trees…

Is moderation a possible thing with me?? Why am I so goddam intense, and how do I stop being like this??? 

Planning and plotting

I need to stop smoking. It makes me binge. Especially at night. And I think it’s giving me weird dreams and interfering with my sleep. I put all my pieces and weed away and am setting rules internally. 

I say this all the time, and then I don’t stop. But I need to. I need to stop talking about it and just do it. I’m not even going to tell the husband this - I’m just going to stop smoking. Smoking = binging even tho I try to pretend that’s not the case and won’t be the case. It is. I’m going to stop for two weeks and see if I stop binging. If I do stop binging successfully, I’m going to try to introduce it again and smoke only once a day when I’m cooking dinner and handling the bedtime baby stuff. Not any other time. It’s become too much and I don’t think I need it now that I have the Wellbutrin honestly. It’s like a fucking miracle has occurred with that shit. 

Wellbutrin is making me way less hungry, but at a certain time of day it wears off, and then I’m starving because I haven’t eaten enough. That’s being paired with smoking at that time of day. And then I can’t stop eating. I’ve been purging on and off and it’s not good.

So, plans:

• Stop smoking 
• Stop binging 
• Eat meals on a schedule 
• 800 calories max per day 
• 160 cals protein shake for breakfast and coffee or tea 
• 300 calorie max lunch with fruit
• 100 calorie snack of nuts
• 250 calorie dinner of meat and veg
• Take all the supplements 
• Do for two weeks and see if there are results 

I have been taking my meds in the morning with a protein shake and letting my body digest a bit before I take the supplements. I’m taking multivitamins with hair and nail boosters, coconut oil, apple cider vinegar gummies, and fiber. These are all things that are supposed to help with weight loss… so we shall see. 

I need to stick to this for fuck sake. What the fuck is wrong with me?? 

Insomnia

 My mood is improved but still a little tough. I feel like I now have the energy to get things done more frequently and feel more motivated and less anxious and lethargic, but I’m still really struggling with my eating disorder stuff and still struggling with feeling down. I hope the mood improves as I get it built up in my system properly. 

I ordered shorts that I think are going to arrive too small for me. I will have to decide if I return or wait until I have lost weight. I am pissed about it. I hate myself for being this fat. 

Today was meh… I was active and took a nap but my eating was weird. I was picky today and everything was unsatisfying aside from like bread. My sleep is weird. It’s hard to fall asleep but then I sleep soundly. I’m a little tired but I think it’s from the actual lack of sleep at night lately. 

Talking to my brother about my parents was cathartic and hard. I know he’s remaining neutral. I can respect it. I can respect that my husband can’t be. I just wish my mother was a different person.

White noise tonight. 

I’m a mess.

Binge. Purge. Binge. Purge. 

I’m fucking depressed. I don’t deserve happiness. I’m a terrible person. In the past especially, but even now. I’m a goddam fake ass stupid pathetic fat bitch. I’ll never. Ever. Fit in. I have no real friends and no one who even really knows me. I’m hidden from the entire world. 

Because the world will just hurt you. The world will fucking kill your will to live. 

There’s that familiar thought…

Fat and scared and unloved.

I desperately need to lose weight. At my doctor’s appointment, she gave me a number. It’s realistic for me, but it’s very high… I can’t believe I ever got to this point… I have lost 15 pounds so far this year, and I’m just now back to what was previously my highest weight. When I think back, I have a hard time actually identifying what caused this gain and where the fuck this all started. I think I was so depressed for so long… it was terrible. I look thinner in photos of when I was pregnant than I do right now… That thought makes me want to fucking cut… I’m so fucking ugly right now. Sometimes it’s hard to even work seeing my own goddam face in the corner of my screen on video calls…

My mood has been better since I started meds; it’s shocking. I hope it’s real. I hope it lasts. I’m so scared that this is just one of my up swings that I sometimes have, and that I’m going to crash real hard real soon. I’m terrified that my depression is just untreatable and incurable. It’s been nice to feel more capable and motivated, but I’m trying not to think this might be an actual solution because so many others have failed. Zoloft, Prozac, Vybrid... even therapy was not helpful (I guess because I didn’t like my therapist if I’m honest…) Why would Wellbutrin be different?? I haven’t had the constant obsessive thought, “I want to kill myself,” in a couple days. It’s been there in the back of my brain constantly for years now… I tried to access the thought earlier today, and it felt like there was a layer of fog between myself and that thought. Like I could still make it out, (I think I will always low key want to die…) but it was fuzzy. I’m so scared to be hopeful about this. 

The husband has been emotional and on a rollercoaster with that, and it’s so hard to stomach. He is so defensive be constantly says I’m having an attitude. He hates not working. He hates that we have been struggling. He doesn’t feel like a man. I get it. But it’s not my goddam fault, and I can’t do shit about that. Everything I say he takes it as an insult and if I try to objectively look at interaction, I truly don’t see where I’m doing anything wrong. I had a thought yesterday that we might turn out to be one of those couples who you look at and say, “it’s so weird that broke up. I wonder what went wrong - they seemed genuinely happy for a long time,” and when you ask them, they just say something like, “I don’t know. We grew apart.” I questioned if I’m falling out of love with him. I’m not sure I have answer to that question currently. It’s on hold. I have decided to try to just take the relationship one day at a time. Some days are good. Some are terrible. I have been sleeping in the guest room a lot lately. I think we both need space. There are elements preventing actual good night sleeps, and it’s not worth it to me lately to stick it out and sleep in the same bed. I just go off to my office/workout room/bedroom and sleep alone.

I always did like sleeping alone… it’s not what I just tell everyone. 

Started meds

I started Wellbutrin. Idk if it’s placebo, or if my depression cloud just managed to part a bit the past couple days on its own, but I feel like it’s a good thing already. I feel like I felt it immediately yesterday and again today. And I feel like yesterday at a certain time, it wore off… I know it doesn’t always work that way, but Prozac did this also - I felt it immediately. I’ve been on some message boards, and they all say some people react to it immediately. I am feeling quite good. I don’t think I’ll up the dose yet. I want to wait a month and see if I have any major episodes. And if I do, I’ll up it then. If not then we can leave it at this dose. 

I even got the urge to paint today. I’ve organized things. I went outside for hours the past 2 days and didn’t have a moment of panic. I was a little swingy yesterday, but is kid that was the meds or circumstances or a bit of both. 

I just realized I haven’t had one thought of death since I took my first dose… huh. 

Last night I did get those late night binge urges. Half asleep and wandering to the kitchen to eat food standing in front of the fridge… not my favorite thing… 

Meds and sleep

Went to the doctor today. They prescribed me Wellbutrin and referred me to psych. Today I am going to fuck it with the attempt to lose weight and not go nuts but let myself eat and starting tomorrow I am going to start meds and get myself fixed up a bit. I’m tired of feeling like garbage. 

And lately I’m just plain tired. Baby is not sleeping well. Which means I’m sleeping like 4 hours and not consecutively. 

I got a nap. It was a lifesaver.