Scheduled Binges . . . Why not?

This is the best I've felt in a really long time -- I made it through the whole weekend without a purge!  I also made it through the entire week leading up, but the weekend was the biggest hurdle.  It feels amazing.  It feels like I should never have to worry about ED again.  I know I will, but right now he's living on top of the dusty old bookshelf at the back of my mind.

For the past few weeks, my plan to cut out the purge has been going pretty well.  And, for the most part, the urge to binge is leaving with it.  Without the promise of a purge, my mind won't let my body binge, for fear of excessive weight gain.  Dr. C keeps reminding me that I'm only supposed to be focusing on the purge, and not the binge.  But I keep reminding him that without the purge, I don't want the binge.  The concern is that I will inevitably, eventually, binge.  And I need to be prepared to deal with that in a way that does not involve a purge.  So my homework for the next few weeks is to plan and have a weekly binge, but under no condition am I to purge.  Part of the reason for this plan stems from my difficulty with down-time, and my fear of relapse on the weekends.  Rather than torturing myself by thinking ahead to a less-structured weekend, and the fear of the binge and relapse, and the overwhelming anxiety that I feel when I think about getting through a weekend without a binge, Dr. C suggested I give myself permission to binge.  That way, I don't really have to think about the stress throughout the week, because I know that come Saturday, I can binge if I want.  The caveat is that I cannot purge.

The experiment is to allow myself a weekly binge (sans purge), and see if it results in the immense weight gain I have conditioned myself to believe it will.  After all, the reason I purge after each binge is to combat the obvious weight gain that will occur.  But how much weight will I really gain if I just binge once a week?  Maybe it's not going to affect me at all.  Maybe it will be just enough that I can live with it.  Or, maybe it will be a lot, but worth it enough to up my exercise.

This past weekend, I actually had my binge on Friday night.  I was exhausted and grumpy after a busy week, and wanted nothing more than to hole up in my room and watch mind-numbing tv.  Which is exactly what I did.  I had a few cookies and treats when I first got home from work, and then I wasn't in the mood at all for a regular supper, so I just didn't have one.  The urge to binge was pretty high, but not overwhelming.  As I watched tv, I was thinking about the Reese Peanut Butter Chipits in the cupboard.  So I decided that I'd let myself eat as many of them as I wanted, and I did.  I ate a little over half of the bag, and then I fell asleep.  Mission accomplished!  Certainly not a huge binge, but a binge nonetheless, and one that was not followed by a purge!  I felt okay about it; not great, not terrible, just okay.  If I had been bingeing for a purge, I would have undoubtedly consumed the entire bag of chipits, along with a huge bag of chips and some licorice.  But I still think I passed the test -- why force myself to eat a bunch of food and feel miserable if I'm not in the mood for it?

I also need to thank my body for continuing to work, and work well, despite all the terrible treatment I've given it.  This morning, out of curiousity, and also as a benchmark for the experiment, I stepped on the scale.  I prepared myself for the worst - I was thinking/feeling 160's.  But you know what?  155!  That means I've dropped 3lbs since the disastrous 6lb gain over March Break.  Despite all of the ups and downs, irregular eating patterns, forced purges, and distended stomachs from greasy, salty, fatty, sugary, disgusting food, my body can still function as a normal, metabolic system.  After eating pretty well (but without restrictions), and regular exercise, my body has reset itself.  Thank you, body, I needed that.  It gives me hope that I can be a regular eater without being really overweight, which is one of my constant fears.  Of course I would still like to lose some, but I'm trying not to focus on that.

I'm training for a 10k race with a few friends, and it keeps me motivated to stay active and eat well to fuel my body.  As I train, getting in my regular runs and workouts, I try to focus on muscle strength and overall fitness rather than weight loss.  I know it's a bit of a superficial thing to say, because of course weight is always at the back of my mind, but my point is that I'm trying to keep it shelved along with ED.  My smaller jeans are still calling to me, hoping to be worn again in the near future.  And I would very much like to get back into them.  I think I will get there, but I think it's going to be a very slow and gradual process.  I'm okay with that, if it means that I can continue to eat without restriction and trust that my body will find its ideal set weight.  I just need to be okay when my body's ideal weight and my ideal weight aren't the same thing.  But maybe by then I'll realize that they are one and the same.

Check-In

Quick update: things are going well!  Small setback on the weekend, but back on track this week.  I'm super busy right now, so it's tough to get posts in, but it's great to keep ED at bay.  No time for his antics!

I will write very soon to talk about my newest homework from Dr. C.  I had a great session with him tonight!

For now I must sleep.  And dream sweet chocolatey dreams.  (The good kind.  Not the out-of-control kind where I dream I'm bingeing on a batch of brownie batter.  That used to happen a lot when I was first 'in recovery.'  The dreams, not the alliteration.)

Chocolate Permission

Chocolate Morning: small piece of black-bottom cheesecake (decadently rich and moist chocolate cake with cream cheese swirled throughout).

Chocolate Afternoon: another scrumptious bite of cake after work.

Chocolate Evening: lots of mini-eggs on the drive home from class.

Chocolate Dreams: coming up!

And I feel awesome about it.  I wanted it, I ate it, I enjoyed it.  This is a giant success for me.  

I had a good check-in chat with Dr. C yesterday.  I was nervous to tell him about my mangled March Break, but I was completely honest.  I also told him about the successful week prior to the Break, and my back-on-the-wagon week so far.  Overall, he said he is very pleased and thinks I made some excellent progress.  It was exactly what I needed to hear.  It's so hard to think about recovery as black-and-white; success and failure.  But the journey is long and there are bound to be detours, pit-stops, even accidents.  (My apologies for the lame metaphor - it's late.  I promise better next time.)

There are a couple of reasons I allowed myself so much chocolate today.  It didn't have to be chocolate, you see, I just wanted to eat for pleasure and without guilt.  After talking about the past weeks, Dr. C reminded me that my current goal/challenge is to get rid of the purge, not the binge.  It's too much to try to cut out both at the same time.  Now, he's not saying that I should sit and binge every day as much as I want, only that I should not be restricting my eating as much as I usually do when I'm 'in recovery' or eating healthily.  Usually I have to limit myself to very wholesome, healthy foods in order to keep the purge at bay.  You see, it's difficult to rationalize the chocolate, or any other 'junk' food, as part of my regular eating.  It usually leads to an unstoppable momentum of ED thoughts, and the inevitable binge.  Followed by the evil purge.

Really, if I take away the purge, I'm not going to binge anyway.  Sure, I'll occasionally overeat, and maybe I'll binge a bit, but I certainly won't plan to binge in nearly the same way.  If the possibility of a purge was eliminated from my life, I am quite confident that the binges would disappear, too.  I know I've said this before, but I feel like it's important to remind myself.  Exploring my recovery from the purge point of view is still pretty new; I've always thought the binge was the problem, and that I had to stop the binge in order to stop the purge. But it makes so much sense to stop the purge first.  I am so much happier without purge in my life.

He haunts my thoughts, he's pissed I've been ignoring him.  Which leads me to another reason for all the chocolate.  I had to go to the grocery store tonight.  I was hungry and tired.  Talk about asking for trouble.  

As I wandered the aisles, at first I purposely diverted my eyes from the tasty items.

And then I peeked.

And then I started thinking about just giving in and buying a few things.  

And then I really started to plan a binge.  

And then, I decided that I would just buy some mini-eggs and allow myself to eat as many of them as I wanted.  

I gave myself chocolate permission.

And then I was fine.

ED backed off, almost right out of my thoughts.  Just that simple self-allowance, knowing that I would buy the treats and eat them, planning to do it out of pleasure and not out of guilt, well, it saved me.  It might seem like a small, passing moment in a grocery store, but I am certain that it was pivotal.  If I had broken down and given in to ED tonight, I guarantee it would have been the start of a terrible downward cycle.  I wouldn't have gone to the gym tomorrow, I would have binged all weekend, and then I would have really been a mess the next week.  But instead, I gave myself chocolate permission, and all the sudden ED didn't find it quite so fun.  ED is my rebellious kid who wants to get a tattoo behind my back, but the second I say, sure, I'll even help you pick out a design and drive you to the shop, he doesn't think it's quite so cool anymore.  I've taken away the element of secrecy, I've taken away the all-important "don't do that" that every kid invariably sees as a direct challenge.

Today, I had my cake, and I ate it.  Twice. 

Happy St. Chocolate's Day!

Dissipation

The fog has lifted.  I'm me again.  ED is a mind-control bastard and I can't even explain the complete mental shift that occurs.  Gah.

The return to routine after a week of March Break-ing is just what the doctor ordered.  There are many reasons I struggled over the break, but I think a big part of it is that I thought I was going to have a hard time and then just proved myself right.  I wish I had a more rebellious instinct.

I went to the gym today for the first time in over a year and it felt great!  Ok, the second part of that sentence is a lie.  It felt awful.  The treadmill sneered at me, mocking me with its low numbers and high heartrate, and the stair-climber wretched the sweat out of me on the first step.  I felt jiggly and out-of-breath, immediately sore, and not the least bit athletic.  But the fact that I walked through those doors and threw down a solid hour of work-out time is a huge accomplishment, and that feels great.  Just like writing an essay - the first lines are the hardest to get down, but once you've started in, it's much less daunting.

I'm feeling a little low because I stepped on the scale this morning and discovered (confirmed my suspicions) that I managed to gain 6 pounds in a week.  Remember how I was going on about not purging for two weeks, how much damage could I possibly do, blah blah blah.  Well, there you have it.  6 pounds.  With purging.  And this is an example of why bulimics are often average to overweight.  And why, when I'm at my worst -- bingeing and purging the most --  I'm usually at my heaviest.  It's the ultimate slap in the face.

Last week was exceptionally terrible because of the immense amount of guilt I felt with every binge and especially every purge.  There is always guilt, every single time, but it was intensified because of the two-week no-purge deal I made with Dr C.  And so, as I often do when I'm trying to 'teach myself a lesson,' I don't allow myself to purge everything.  And I wait for a very long time before a purge, so less of it will come up.  It's not necessarily a conscious thing, only something I realized upon reflection a while back.  It's a flawed logic that I'm not entirely certain about, I just know it's a recurring thought pattern and practice.

Enough about last week.  I don't want to go exploring through the fog for fear of getting lost in it.  Today is a good day, and I am going to turn it into a good week.

Well put

www.peak.sfu.ca/the-peak/96-1/issue5/bulimia.html

Quotes that move me

It's been a difficult week.  For me, a big part of ED is isolation, even from my own thoughts.  Or, more accurately, from processing the endless barrage of thoughts.  I was browsing through some great websites this weekend, and came across a wonderful collection of quotes.  Some of them really reached me on an emotional level.  (ED makes me cry.  A lot.  At everything.  I hate admitting this.  I never allow it to happen publicly.  But I'm a mess.)  

These are the ones that either stabbed my heart, made me laugh, gave me pause, or felt like they were pulled right from my own thoughts.

"You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."
C.S. Lewis

"Whenever I feel the need to exercise, I lie down until it goes away."
Robert Maynard Hutchins

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."
Anaïs Nin

"One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain."
Bob Marley

"All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt."
Charles M. Schulz

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
Marianne Williamson (A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course in Miracles)

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
Maya Angelou

"we accept the love we think we deserve."
Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

"Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted."
John Lennon

"I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you."
Friedrich Nietzsche

"It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are."
E.E. Cummings

"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."
Mark Twain

"Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it."
Mark Twain

"I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles."
Audrey Hepburn

"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares."
Henri J.M. Nouwen (The Road to Daybreak: A Spiritual Journey)

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."
Ernest Hemingway