Monday 7 October 2013

Fast Forward on Moving Forward - Part Two

So then I went on a healthy eating plan - a diet, if you will.

Which still sounds pretty bad, given all that I've said previously about the damage I have done to myself by dieting. It sounds like I did a complete 180 overnight, I know, but in truth, it was a difficult decision to make.

I felt guilty for contemplating yet another weight loss plan. After all the advice, guidance, information and knowledge, I've gained through years of recovery work, how could I find myself back here again? I felt as if I might be throwing away all my hard work thus far to overcome disordered eating by engaging with behaviours that hurt me so badly last time.  I didn't quite trust my own motives for wanting to diet in the first place. I felt confused as to whether I was trying to fix something else with food. Was it my body which was really an issue, or was I getting mixed up again with something going on in my head?

Being entirely honest with myself, I couldn't be 100% certain of anything. I didn't, and still don't, totally trust myself when it comes to my relationship with what I eat and how I see myself. I had to ask other people I trusted for their advice, and luckily for me, the people around me are generally kind and sensitive to my issues with food (why have people around who aren't?!). Objectively speaking, my then weight made me obese; it gave me physical pains and contributed to my losing confidence in myself. People I loved could see this, too, and they wanted to support me in whatever way I chose.

So I decided to go ahead with a healthy eating plan. It was a diet, in the sense that I wanted to steadily lose weight and get back to a healthy body size for me. I felt guilty for taking this route and I guess a bit hypocritical for going back on my word. Yet without reducing my food intake, I wasn't sure I'd make it back to healthy on my own because I wasn't getting to grips with intuitive eating, as much as I'd like to have done. I was still eating emotionally and was getting lost in it.

I hoped that having a plan would help me re-learn, in practical terms, what it is to eat "normally" and change my practical eating habits in a way that my previous self-reflections hadn't managed to achieve.

However I planned for the worst, putting special measures in place to help keep me from falling into disordered eating and thinking again. I promised to eat sensible amounds of food with no cutting or skipping on meals. I promised not to eliminate junk food or particular food groups. I promised not to let my eating plan to get in the way of joining in with meals out or celebrations. Trusted friends and family were told of my plans, and I invited them to interfere if they felt I was getting out of line.

And it has worked for me. I'm back to a healthy weight and size. I no longer have pains in my body. I feel more like myself and feel confident and able to wear clothes which reflect who I am inside. I feel more relaxed around food than I have done in a long time, largely because I feel able to say no without feeling as if I'm being deprived (whether or not I actually want what's being offered). I possibly eat more than I did before, and definitely as far as fruit and vegetables go that is the case. I've been swimming and I enjoyed it. People who know me have seen me in a bikini and I haven't run away.

Saying all this, the process has not been perfect and it's definitely not been easy. It took time for my body to adjust. My mind took time to get over the fear of even trying to eat a little healthier. Sometimes, I still get the disordered thinking and it can feel even more real because my body is once again going through the weight loss process. Other people aren't always supportive and sometimes, they change around me as I look different. My life isn't any more exciting and I still get down at times.

I want you to know this because losing the weight I'd gained ultimately as a result of disordered eating has been a really important part of my recovery. And even though I know that it would be totally wrong for someone else in my position, it has worked for me. Losing weight never fixed my problems before, and it still doesn't fix things. I guess the difference now is in me; I don't expect it to do anything more than change the shape or size of my body. And that's it.

By doing this, I'm essentially putting myself back together again in a way which works for me, and me alone. My body and my mind are slowly coming closer. I'm not always sitting in the back of my own head, watching and waiting for life to happen. I'm a little bit more "here" and I am glad to be back.









Fast Forward on Moving Forward - Part One

It's been a while since I've been here. Okay, so it's been a long while; much longer than I thought it had been. If anyone has been reading this, I apologise for leaving things so... unfinished, I suppose. It feels a little awkward even being here, writing again, if I'm entirely honest. I'm not really sure what I'll be writing, or where I'll be going with this blog. It just feels like a good time to write again. Where have I been since late 2011? I can't even remember properly since it all seems so long ago. Life-wise, work-wise, I'm in the same place; working a 9-5, living with my partner, same friends, same family stuff. Food-wise, I'm in a somewhat different place. Having issues with food, eating and body image feels a little like living in a hall of mirrors, or being thrown down Alice in Wonderland's rabbit hole: I never quite know what I'm going to see, or what to expect, of either myself or the world around me. I just get used to one new "normal", and then seem to move towards another, my feet having barely touched the ground in-between. Okay, so what's happened since then? I stopped attending the eating disorder support group sometime later in 2011, or maybe early 2012. I started to feel as if the group couldn't offer me the support I needed as someone who felt pretty much recovered from an eating disorder. The focus seemed to be on those new people who were only just acknowledging they had a problem with food, and I'd been over that ground too many times before. I carried on over-eating, which didn't bother me too much, really. I'd never gone back to the way I'd eaten before developing an eating disorder. Which makes sense really because it wasn't something I thought a lot about until I had the eating issues, and then it was all I could think about... You can't un-know what you now know, right? I just ate the way other people seemed to eat; often over-indulging in "treat" eats, and slowly gaining weight without really noticing. Having struggled for so long with the disordered eating, it was kind of a relief to not really think about it at all for a while. I just ate and then put it out of my mind. I figured that this was a part of recovery, and maybe it was being recovered itself. Fast forward to the start of 2013 and I wasn't feeling too great in my skin. I started to see what I looked like in the mirror, and I didn't like it too much. I was much heavier than I had been pre-eating disorder days, and over the previous year I'd gained a little more. My knees hurt when they'd never bothered me before. I got random pins and needles sometimes. My clothes were tight and didn't really fit too well anymore. I felt sad, and a bit ashamed of myself. I think what bothered me most was that didn't really look like me anymore. I don't think I had for a while, but it took me until then to really look and see, objectively, and without kicking myself so hard I'd look away again. I was slipping further inside myself, hiding in the back of my head. And I was angry with myself. Frustrated at the way in which I repeatedly self-inflicted pain through over-eating. Despite knowing so much about my issues with food, I had been acting them out, over and over. I saw what I was doing and I still didn't stop myself. I just let myself hurt me, making me slip further away from myself, and go deeper inside. And I'd had enough. Turns out, that this was what I needed to start making some changes.