As I mentioned before, a lot of the blog posts a wrote were done about a year ago. I just didn’t have my website up and running to be able to post my experiences yet. So today, May 20, 2022 is being written in real time.
TRIGGER WARNING – WEIGHT AND NUMBERS COMING UP.
Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE wants to know what’s going on with my weight. Most of the emails I get are asking about my current weight. And to be fair, I think this is a valid question. I know it’s the question I always had. The answer I’m supposed to give you is “don’t worry about my weight, look at ALL the other things that are happening with my body that have NOTHING to do with weight”. But I think for someone who is weight-restoring after anorexia, it’s important to see the spectrum of what that looks like.
Some people only gained weight for 6 months and then plateaued. Some gained weight for a year, some gained weight for 2 years. The common theme in all this is that eventually EVERYONE plateaued at what their overshoot weight would eventually stabilize at. That number is different for everyone.
Here’s what mine looked like.
October 2020 (starting weight) = 140 lbs
February 2021 = 215 lbs
July 2021 = 240 lbs
October 2021 = 240 lbs
May 2022 = 245 lbs
So as you can see, if I had to guess, I would say that I gained almost 90% of my overshoot within 4 months. The extra 10 lbs I would consider negligible, as it is such a small percentage of my overshoot. Once I reach my set-point weight (or if I already have) my body weight will fluctuate between 5-15 lbs throughout the year. And as you can see, that’s exactly what it did. There was no significant weight gain after I gained my overshoot. This to me is VERY promising. I can’t tell you if this is the right mindset, but I always told myself that I just wanted to stop gaining the overshoot so that I could settle into what my body was going to look like. It was significantly more distressing for me to see the rapid weight gain SO FAST than it was to just become accustomed to my new 240 pound-ish body. It was easier to practice self-care, compassion and mirror work when I saw the SAME body day in and day out. Ironically, the fact that I stopped gaining and have stabilized was the BEST thing that could have happened because it took the guess work out of everything.
When I weigh myself, I don’t really gasp or cry or get depressed anymore. Because I’ve come to terms with the fact that the ONLY way to change that number is to become anorexic again. And it’s no longer an option. It’s like the line from one of my favorite movies, the Shawshank Redemption – “Get busy living or get busy dying”. Either way, life goes on.
Relationship wise, my husband and I are at a crossroads. We are cordial to one another and the emotional abuse has stopped. I’m taking the time to HEAL myself. I recently started working through my childhood trauma as well as the trauma of being abandoned by my husband, family & friends when I started recovery from anorexia. The two are tied by the way – my childhood trauma caused me to seek out someone like my husband who in turn re-traumatized me with the exact same emotional trauma I had as a child. If you are struggling with self-worth, compassion, empathy, etc for yourself, I would encourage you to explore your childhood.
Everyone seems to thinks that if there was no sexual or physical abuse that, “you turned out just fine”. But in reality there are things that occurred in your childhood that causes trauma, that if you “add” everything up, end up impacting your FAR more than you think, For example, the following are absolutely considered traumatic: Bullying, Divorce, Loss of a Pet, Legal Trouble, Infidelity, Parent with Unresolved Trauma, Interpersonal Conflict, Developmental Trauma, Emotionally Unavailable Parent(s), Relocation, Financial Instability, Being Shamed and/or Humiliated, Failure Experiences, Minor Medical/Dental Procedures, etc.
It’s a HUGE rabbit hole to go down, but all I ask is that is that if you are still struggling, it’s definitely something to look into.
Food wise, I feel like this is the least of my worries now. Seriously, it is. I have pretty much stopped ALL mental restriction (which was what I had left to work through). I eat whatever I want, whenever I want. Do I still eat “junk foods” – absolutely I do because they are delicious. But, things have been fine-tuned a bit.
Here are some things I learned about my food choices:
-I don’t like white roasted potatoes. I KNOW, RIGHT? I much prefer sweet potatoes
-I don’t like oranges very much, but love clementine’s
-I don’t like blueberries, but I love raspberries
-I love apples and bananas
-I love corn and beets and green beans
-I don’t like pinto beans, hummus or pickles
-I like Kalamata olives
-I like quality ice-cream and purchase Haagen Dazs over all other brands. The pint will last anywhere from 1-2 months in my freezer.
-I do love ice-cream sandwiches when they come out for the summer
-I don’t like chips except for those first couple fresh ones when you first open a bag. Knowing this, I keep a variety of small bags and get to eat fresh chips when ever I want. I found that if I purchased larger bags, I’d open it once, eat it and then the rest would go bad and I’d throw them out as they became stale
-I love freshly baked chocolate cookies. I don’t like them any other way
-I love fruit in my salads – I try to replicate Panera’s Fuji apple chicken salad every chance I get
-I actually love the taste of regular pop/soda, but realized I liked the feeling of the carbonation and switched to the Bubbly drinks and I don’t miss the regular at all.
-My favorite full sized chocolate bar is…..drum roll… Cadbury Fruit and Nut! It’s the ONLY full sized bar I still eat regularly after than infamous day when I ate 12 at once!
I also, and I can’t believe I’m one of THOSE people who are saying this – crave salads sometimes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m never going to be that person who eats salads everyday for lunch and LOVES to do it because she is so intuitive and knows that what her body wants. I’ll never be that person and kudos to you if you are. But for example, for breakfast I normally have the same thing everyday. A toast with peanut butter, honey, banana and hemp hearts as well as a key lime Greek yogurt. That’s it – so simple, but for me “chef’s kiss”. I haven’t gotten tired of it yet, and if I do, I’ll switch it up for oatmeal, cereal or a smoothie.
Lunch is always an after thought. I basically end up eating left overs from the night before or something fast and quick. Think peanut butter & jelly with an apple or carrots (and chips, YUM!) or a Mr. Noodle or a bagel and cream cheese. Just recently I’ve started making an effort to balance my meals (ie have a carb, protein, fat and veg/fruit) but most of the time I don’t even think about it. I don’t have to balance my meals; actually I can go the rest of my life and not balance my meals. And to be fair, I don’t notice a big difference when my meals are balanced. It makes no difference to my body at all. This was actually pretty hard to come to terms with because diet & wellness culture will tell you that balancing your meals will ”stabilize your blood sugar, keep you fuller longer, give your body the nutrients it needs, etc:. While to be fair, this may be true, the ONLY person in the entire world who can tell me if I feel better eating balanced meals VS not eating balanced meals is…..ME!!!
Most of time, my body is excellent at telling me what it DOESN’T want – I get clear and strong indicators when I don’t want to eat something that is available to me. So I typically use that as a gauge. Then, after she tells me what not to eat, I get subtle signs as to what she may want at that meal.
What does my eating schedule look like? I typically don’t like to eat first thing in the morning. But, I do always want my cappuccino! Do you remember the cappuccino? The one I made myself when I was JUST starting off allowing all foods? Well, around 7 am I have one; still with 2-3 teaspoons of REAL sugar and with beautifully frothed milk. I sit at my kitchen table before the hustle and bustle of school morning routine and just look out my back window at the garden. It’s only about 5 min, but it’s glorious.
After school drop off, I eat breakfast around 9:15-9:30. That’s also when I normally get my first pangs of hunger too…. I welcome it and I basically tell my body – I hear you; we’re almost home. Thank you for letting me know you’re hungry. I keep a granola bar and some trail mix in my purse if I’m really hungry like at 8 am for some reason, but normally I’m totally fine eating after 9 am. I normally eat lunch between 12:30-1. I mentioned about what I normally eat. I don’t like a big lunch. I’ll eat until I’m full, but with drs apt and running errands after lunch, big meals make me feel so sluggish that time of day. Around 4-4:30 after picking up the kids from school I normally need a snack. Now, let me preface this by saying that I probably should have a snack earlier. But I’m usually driving on the highway and it’s tough to eat in the middle of traffic. So sometimes I’ll reach for my granola bar/trial mix if the hunger pangs are really strong. If I don’t eat something in car, I normally like to have a fruit at this time. Think apple, tangerine, peach. And that’s it. I don’t want to eat too much because then I know I’m going to eat less at dinner, which is at 5:30 pm and then I’ll end up needing a snack around 9 pm.
Now let me preface this by saying there’s nothing inherently wrong with eating a snack at 4 pm, eating a small dinner at 5:30 and then eating again at 9 pm. But I know me and I know my patterns and such. I get tired after 8 pm. I get up at 6:30 am and I drive an average of 3 hours a day doing pickups and drops off at my kids 2 schools. So sometimes, SOMETIMES when I’m hungry at 9 pm, I’m just tooo darn tired to get something to eat. The need for sleep overrides the need for hunger and I just fall asleep. I realized this wasn’t the healthiest for my body because ideally I’d want to fall asleep AND not be hungry. In order to do this, I realized I had to make MUCH MORE of an effort in choosing my afternoon snack so I wouldn’t decrease my appetite for dinner so that way I wouldn’t be hungry at 9 pm when I was ready for bed.
So now, as much as I hate eating and driving, I bring a snack with me in the car that I eat around 3-3:30. It’s perfect, helps me get through the stress of driving in heavy traffic and gives enough time for my body to digest so that she’s ready for a larger dinner at 5:30. That’s not to say I don’t have a snack at night sometimes too…. Because I do! And sometimes the need for food overrides the need for sleep and I MUST get a snack before bed – and that’s ok too. But I never wanted to get “annoyed” by my body’s hunger cues. I had been doing that for so long and I made a promise to myself that I would HONOR those cues as a wonderful gift and letting me know that my body needed just a little bit more energy so she could fall asleep peacefully and happy; nice and satisfied.
Feel free to email about questions regarding my food – I’ll do my best to answer. My advice to you is this; if you are thinking about wanting a food and you *feel* that slight hesitation…. like a pull AWAY from eating that food – EAT IT. Eat the food. Because that pull you feel is a craving your body is having. And listening to your body is the BEST thing you can do. I can tell you from experience (and every other person who has healed from their ED) you have to honor ALL OF YOUR CRAVINGS at the beginning. There is no other way out of it. I PROMISE you they will become less powerful and less frequent. There will come a time when you will say NO to the food that may have caused some of your WORSE binges or was the ONE food you knew you could never keep in the house. If you are still playing that back and forth, that struggle; tog of war with food, you have more work to do my friend.