Atypical My Ass

Something that frustrates me the most about finally addressing my mental health is that I would absolutely LOVE to be able to just turn it off. I am on my lunch break. My routine for my lunch break is go home, check the mail, pick up my daughter from school and drop her off at daycare, then run back to work. Occasionally, I have a few extra minutes to run to the store or gas station.

Today, I have been particularly hungry. I checked the mail and went inside. Keeping in mind my next appointment is tomorrow morning, and I have homework to complete…. I figured I would look for a snack.

I looked in the cabinet. I wanted soup – too calorie dense. Peanut butter? Too many calories. I looked in the fridge. I was there, crouched in front of my refrigerator for 5 minutes… And couldn’t bring myself to actually make a decision.

I haven’t put my number for dinner into my tracker, and so everything had too many calories.

And as I sit here in my car waiting for school to dismiss for the day, I’m unhappy that I didn’t make a choice. I’m upset that I can’t just eat. Why is that so fucking hard? I mean… it’s not in theory. Just in practice.

My stomach is empty. And I should just eat. But something in my brain is preventing me from doing just that. So yes. I am suffering from an eating disorder. And progress doesn’t just happen. It takes time. It takes effort.

Today has been a bad day. But that doesn’t mean that I’ll never get there. Each day starts fresh. And tomorrow will be better. I will be stronger. And every day after that. And when I DO finally get this thing under control, I will look back at this, and be proud of getting myself away from feeling like this.

Hypocrisy

Let me start this one out by saying, I try my damndest not to allow my little girl, who is 8, to see me stress about my appearance. That being said, I know how observant little ones are – even when you think their heads are in the clouds.

My precious, beautiful little girl is so kind, and loving, and innocent. So very emotionally fragile…. and the pickiest eater ever. I have tried just about everything in the past, and have FINALLY gotten to a point where if I put something, a small morsel, new on her plate, she understands that I expect her to try it. To give it a real go before she decides she doesn’t like it. We’re making progress.

I ran into a problem with her a few weeks ago. It was right after making a big deal about how she’s getting the first signs of puberty – AT 8 YEARS OLD! So I had measured her little mosquito bites to make sure I was shopping for the right sports bra. Shortly after that, I started getting questions from her about how many calories are in certain foods, and her asking to see the nutrition labels on things. 😐 My. Heart. Sank.

I explained to her that at the age of 8, it wasn’t her responsibility to focus on those kinds of things. I explained to her that she needed a high number of calories, as a growing little girl, and that it was my responsibility to make sure that her needs were met – so she didn’t have to worry about it. Just put her trust in me that I was giving her the nutrition that she NEEDS to grow big and strong, just like her mama.

Now the tricky part. I eat, on average, less calories than it takes to run the body of an 8-year-old. How can I preach to her that nutrition is SO important, and food is there to fuel her body so that she can grow… when I have such a hard time allowing (there’s that word again) myself the correct nutrition for my own body. It’s possible she may think that I’ve eaten throughout the day, and my dinner is just a small part of my overall diet…. but I also know she’s more observant than that.

I will say, when I look at her, I see myself. And when I see the ways in which she looks like me, I can’t believe I could ever think so little of the way I look. She truly has done wonders for me. And, unlike my mother, when she tells me how beautiful I am, I shoot right back at her – “And how lucky are you, that you look just like me.” Big talk. I’ve always been good at coming off as confident and self-assured.

She is the real reason I want to get better. She is my rock, though she won’t know that for many years to come. She is my inspiration to be healthy – so she can look at me, and know how to be healthy. Know how to take care of herself. So as difficult as it will be… I will STOP being a hypocrite. I WILL get to a point where I can be a role model for her, instead of a talking head. Do as I say, not as I do – does NOT apply to health. Health is important. I want to be around when she graduates, when she starts her career, when she needs me to lean on when she feels like the pressure of the world is too much for her to bear… and if I don’t beat this… she’ll have to talk to the air. Ask me to ‘guide’ her when I can’t answer. I will not allow that to happen.

I will be there for her. Here. Healthy. I have no choice.

Homework…

I have homework to complete before my next visit with my doctor. I’ve been kind of dreading it, even though it’s really small changes.

1.) Only take measurements on weekdays. No measuring on weekends.

2.) Deleting 10 of the oldest photos in my ‘body’ album.

3.) Only buying vending machine food if I eat it within 30 minutes of buying it.

4.) Reduce Social Media with targeting ads.

5.) Bring a small amount of food into work one day a week.

Here we are. It is Friday, and I have chosen today to be the day that I bring food into work. I carefully counted out 20 baby carrots, measured out 2 tablespoons of powdered peanut butter to mix when I’m ready, and plucked 4 strips of red bell pepper out of my pre-cut preserve. It is now in my refrigerator at work… and I already don’t want to eat it. My brain is so used to thinking that my stomach is always full that even that small amount of food – in the middle of the day – seems like so very much. It is 95 calories. It is NOT too much. It is NOT ENOUGH.

Now I have a snack. In the refrigerator. That I have to eat. Before I leave today. A healthy snack. A delicious snack. And at 12:15, I will eat it. And because it is Friday, I will not be able to measure myself tomorrow, or Sunday. I don’t want to follow these rules, but I want to get healthy. It’s like I tell my kids – you don’t have to like the rules. You don’t have to question the rules. But you WILL follow the rules. I will follow the rules. Because I am a fucking adult. Lead by example, right? I hate this.

It is NOT too much!

Okay. Dinner is one of my biggest stress points. My boyfriend and I eat dinner together most nights, and the question I always dread is, “What are you thinking for dinner?” My answer is always, “I can’t even think about food yet. It’s so far away.” What’s even worse is when he asks for my preference on the NEXT dinner. Rarely do I know what I want to eat – WHEN IT’S TIME TO EAT!! And of course, on the two or three nights every other week when I don’t have him there to make me feel like I MUST eat…. I don’t. And, As mentioned before, not eating is not good.

So last night, we had a rare night without the kids. In the middle of the day… I get the question. “Are we going out tonight, or do you want to stay in?” We discussed this for hours. Me, going back and forth in my head about what I could and could not eat. Thinking about which restaurant would have the ‘healthiest’ option. Wondering if I wanted to take a night to ‘cheat’. And then, we decided on a place to go get gyros (we hadn’t had a gyro in years due to our area). I HAD to go back to work, Google the shit out of the restaurant, and figure out if it was ‘okay’ for me to order what I wanted.

This is behavior that I recognize is definitely not logical.

This next bit is where the Atypical part particularly sucks. I decided on exactly what I was going to order. I plugged it all into my handy dandy calorie tracker – using the closest thing I could possibly find as this restaurant did not have any nutritional information anywhere – and I was determined.

After one appetizer, one little spanakapita, I was full. But then my gyro came out. My giant, greasy, fantastically delicious gyro. I stared at it in disbelief – am I REALLY going to eat that entire thing? The numbers were already in my tracker, and I had already determined that – Yes, Vim. You are GOING to eat that.

So I tucked in. After about half an hour of taking awkward bites of this huge Fair Food gyro in a sit-down restaurant…. I had done it. I had eaten the entire giant, greasy, fantastically delicious gyro… And I felt disgusting. I felt like crying. I felt like I needed to get out of that place where everyone was staring at me eating this awkward hand food in my work clothes. I looked at my number again. Sitting there, feeling inundated with grease and meat and tzatziki sauce, trying not to get sick… and my number for the day was a whopping… 710. It is NOT too much. It is not enough.

I was disgusted with myself. I felt terrible. Like I was one good cough away from my stomach getting rid of all my progress. I felt like I had eaten way too much, and I was beating myself up for hours. But I kept it down. And eventually, I felt like I wasn’t going to get sick. And THAT is a victory.

I am happy to say that I even had a little (I’m talking 50 calories more) snack in bed. I CAN do this. I WILL do this. At this point, I don’t have a choice. Any small victory is a giant step toward becoming healthy. And I will become healthy. Eventually. It just sucks.

I told my boyfriend that I had wanted to stop after the appetizer, and he, being logical and all-knowing, said “But you knew that wouldn’t be good”. Duh. So I told him that obviously I did, but I kept eating for him. He had an issue with that mindset. But let me tell you what. Sometimes – a LOT of times – it’s difficult for me to do something specifically for me. So if there is anyone else I can make a difference for – him, my children, my friends – I will latch onto that as my “reason”. I am tricking myself into thinking healthy by thinking that I’m doing it for the people around me. But… It’s okay to want to do something for me. It’s GOOD to something just for me. That’s a hard thing to get used to.

I am NOT healthy. This is NOT a diet. This is NOT something I can just think through logically. And this is why it’s called an Eating DISORDER.

It is not too much. I am not disgusting. I didn’t gain anything overnight from indulging in one meal. I will be okay.

Sick Enough

So here I am. Making a public blog about something about which I may still be in denial. Totally normal. No one at my job knows. A grand total of three people in my personal life know. And now, anyone who reads this will know. I, Vim, have an Eating Disorder. I have been diagnosed with Atypical Anorexia Nervosa. For anyone who doesn’t know what that is… it’s Anorexia Nervosa that hides inside the brain – never quite ‘bad enough’ to be a ‘real problem’. At least… that’s what I’ve told myself for the past 15 years of my life, and what I still find myself thinking a majority of the time.

I mean… How ‘sick’ can I really be if I made it to 26 without being diagnosed? I’ve never really been UNDER weight, so I can’t possibly have an Eating Disorder… But here I am. I talked to my doctor about my concerns over my eating habits after my kidney health declined over the last year, and now my liver is taking a bit of a hit. Did I mention I’m only 26? That is not normal, and neither is the way my brain thinks.

I like to think of myself as a relatively intelligent person. I know the logistics behind the right way to lose weight and exercise. But for some reason… my brain just sometimes seems to hit a wall. I understand not eating is not good. I know that in order to burn calories, I need to eat calories. But I also know that when I start working out, I will see a more immediate result if I don’t eat as much. There’s still some logic to that statement. That logic goes away when I don’t eat ENOUGH.

So Here I am. One day closer to being healthy. One day closer to accepting that I do have a problem. I will have set backs. It will not happen over night. But I am here. And I’d like to stick around for a bit.