those damn scales again

I’ve been pushing my dietician to find out my weight from my gp. I know my gp won’t tell me and I thought I would have a better chance of getting this information out of M, so that’s where I’ve been focusing my efforts. But truthfully I think deep down I didn’t expect her to tell me. So although she didn’t tell me the numbers, I was still very caught off guard on thurs night when she told me the trend of my weight over the last three or four months. Basically it went up slightly originally and has then been stable for the last two months.

Right.

How do I feel about this?

How about, completely confused.

M did spend quite a long time explaining what would have caused the initial weight gain. Firstly all starved people are dehydrated, even if they are drinking. And since 1L of water weighs 1kg, fluid alone will account for quite a large percentage of that initial increase. Then there’s the GI tract. Initially, of course this would have been pretty empty, but now that I am eating again normal changes here will add to the numbers on the scale. And neither of these factors will affect how ‘big’ I am. Just the number on the scale.

Okay. So I’m a scientific thinker. This all sounds reasonable to me, doesn’t it? Well, no. It must be wrong. I have always questioned Dr C’s scales anyway – they are so imprecise. So her scales must be wrong.

But is that me thinking that, or ED?

Like I said completely confused.

It’s not that I don’t trust Dr C or M, or that I think they are lying to me. It’s just that I think they must be mistaken. My weight simply could not be stable.

So I weighed myself.

And to say that I’m more confused now would be a gross understatement. My weight is where they said it was. It hasn’t increased that much. In fact I am okay about it.

But I’m not oblivious to how dangerous that decision was. What if they had been wrong? What if my weight had gone up more than I expected? What would I have done?

Don’t get me wrong – I’m fine. In fact I’m really pretty good. But that in itself concerns me as I think I’ve let those damn scales determine my mood again. Arrgghhh, so confused…

good advice from a wise friend

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The amazing, wonderful and all round divine Lori from Drop It and Eat came to my rescue (again!) this week; talking me out of wanting to weigh myself.

To see what wisdom she had for me check out her post:
Trust Yourself. Except When You Can't Be Trusted

Thank you Lori, so much :)

holding pattern

I think what I realised from writing my bravery post was that I'm okay with where I am now. Yes, I have big plans, but I'm not ready yet.

Patience, PJ. Patience (hmmmm)

So let's take stock. Where am I and what's working for me right now?

1. Support

• I try to add a new person to my growing list of supports every week. I have learned the important lesson of 'support not secrecy' and because I hate the thought of being a burden to anyone the more supports I have, the less likely I will feel like I am constantly boring just a handful of friends with my problems. 
• Also means that when I have a specific problem (like I did the other day with my jeans not fitting) I knew who to turn to. My regular friends wouldn't understand why that was such a big problem for me. I know that even though they love me and want to be there for me, their first response would be "that's not a problem, look at how tight my jeans are, I'm the one who needs to lose weight". So I rang D - she gets it.

2. Safety
I am not weighing myself at all as this would definitely cause me to panic and I know this for certain. And I know that panicing is not good for my safety.
I am not exercising because my body would not cope with it and I do not want to have a heart attack.

3. Meal Planning
I have realised that I have been having trouble especially with dinner. Once I've wrangled the pickups, struggled with homework, and cooked dinner amidst whining, bickering and a leg clinging toddler it's so easy to come up with 1001 excuses why I'm not hungry and couldn't possibly eat dinner (note: that's excuses, not reasons). And after reading the list of suggestions compiled by June Alexander for mums with ED this is what I came up with:

• All meal planning is done ahead of time (on sundays). I have a basic plan from my dietician, but the actual dishes are up to me.
• Pre-cook five dinners on sunday night
      - this frees up my evenings so I can eat with a much lower stress level
      - also means that the cooking is done at a time when I won't actually be eating the food so there's much less pressure
      - my husband is in the room with me while I'm cooking so it's all a bit friendlier :)
• If I go out to dinner I choose someone else (my husband or a friend) to pick off the menu for me. And whatever they choose is it. No swapsies.

4. Relapse Prevention
I've decided to go back to my counsellor at least one more time to try to talk about ways to deal with conflict better. I know it's something that I am hopeless at and avoid like the plague, and I know that getting upset is my biggest relapse trigger - so I really want to deal with it for my own benefit.

5. Future Improvement
I still restrict while I'm at work. I hate eating in front of people, and it's just so easy to be too busy and 'forget'. So I really need to come up with a better strategy for dealing with this one.

do you weigh yourself?

I don't.

And I think I can say this with some degree of certainty now after 8 weeks. Plus I even managed to stop the nurse who was weighing me for my recent ECG from telling me my weight or writing it where I could see it (even though she had *no idea* what I was on about and I could so easily have cheated).

But I still really want to.

I liken it to a smoker who knows they have to give up smoking for their health but still really wants to do it. Ask in them in 6 months (or even 6 years) if they would like to take it up again and I bet 9 out of 10 times the answer is 'yes' - but they don't do it because they know it's not good for them.

So I'm not expecting to be happy about it. I just know I shouldn't.

Mostly because it is not the great stress reliever I thought it was. I thought it was helping me to relax because I knew what I weighed, so I was either 'good' or 'bad' (in which case I needed to 'work harder').

hmmmm

But now that I've stopped I can see that there are far less consequences to everything, which is helpful:

• I am able to eat without worrying what the scales will say
• I can stop exercising without worrying what the scales will say
• I can sleep through the night without having to get up just to check what the scales say

And without the scales having so much to say all the time, there's far more chance for me to hear what I have to say:

• I say I need to eat because my body cannot sustain starvation
• I say I need to eat because I need my mind to function properly
• I say I need to stop exercising at the moment to allow my heart to heal.
• I say I am in charge - not the scales and not ED.

After all, my life is worth more than a number on the scales. I am important in the lives of others and that gives me value which cannot be measured. So even though my jeans didn't fit this morning, and even though I have cried far too much over this fact, I will still not be weighing myself. Will you?

dealing with being hurt

Had my gp appointment this morning. Overall she's very pleased with my progress - especially as I still haven't weighed myself (ahem, that's 5.5 weeks now - OMGosh!). Hello humble brag, much!!!

But it didn't take long for us to stray onto the topic of the fact that I have cancelled my upcoming appointments with K (my councellor). I really like her - she is very lovely. But she really hurt me the last time I was there.

She said what a tragedy it would be for my children if I died.

I know it doesn't sound like such a crime, after all it is true - but unfortunately for K it's not the first time I've been told this, and what I hear when someone says this is "you are a bad mother - you don't love your children enough to choose to get over this"

I know that was not what she said - but I still feel very hurt.

So I decided that I can't afford for anything to upset me that much - the risk of relapse is just too great. Hence my rush to cancel...

Dr C (bless her) did listen to what I was saying, and did understand. But she didn't agree. She did agree that it was okay to let it sit for a few weeks, but then I need to either:

tell K what upset me and that I don't want to talk about it yet, or
tell K what upset me and that I want deal with it right away.

Either way I need to tell her what upset me.

And for a very good reason...

if I can't be hurt and work through it in a safe space, 

how am I going to cope with being hurt in the real world?

That's the real relapse risk.

I like Dr C's style. She has a great way of explaining things so that I understand (although I do have a mental picture of her banging her head against a brick wall most of the time, poor thing - but I am trying :) )

Yoga? is she serious??

Weigh-in day today. 

Dr C gave me 'permission' to continue walking and do (...wait for it...) Yoga!!

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Is she serious??

I have no doubt I will be kicked out for giggling within minutes of being asked to 'ommmm' - it's not going to work!!

But heck, I'll try anything once (but does it have to be Yoga?) - sigh...

Anyway, Dr C didn't give me 'the face' today, which can only mean I've put on weight.

Hmmm.

But we did have a chat about what needs to happen before I can start exercising safely again. She thinks I should be medically stable again within about a month, but that it takes a lot longer to build up muscles than it takes to break them down - so for the sake of my weakened heart (and general body condition) I must not do any running.

Which I do agree with.

She would also like me to consider why I so badly want to exercise. And if it is for stress relief (am I really that transparent) then to think about other (safer) ways to handle that in the meantime. She would like me to only return to exercise when it is for fun and fitness - not for stress relief and weight loss.

I spy another shift in perspective being required. It's just this one has been with me for so long, I don't quite know how to change it...

something I'm proud of

having a bit of a wobbly moment...so am trying to focus on all the positive steps I have taken, and remind myself that my ED is scared of me - which is why it is trying so hard to rob me of my confidence and derail me at this moment.

So here's something I'm really proud of (time for a humble brag!!)

yep, see that gap there between the hamper and the loo?

That's where my scales used to be :-)

I'm proud of that gap everytime I see it.

(oh, and it will be 3 weeks tomorrow since I've weighed myself)

Today might not be a good day, but it's another day closer to recovery...

relapse and choice

Those who know me know that I have just had one of the worst relapses ever. It came off the back of a problem at work and resulted in me very nearly requiring a hospital admission (you know, *not* the voluntary kind). Once I managed to pick myself up and resume eating, however, I decided to add some more tools to my recovery tool-kit. I read a book last week called A Girl Called Tim by June Alexander – I read a review here a little while ago, and since June’s a fellow Melbournian I thought I would have a lookie.

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*Really* interesting read. At first I was worried – she makes constant reference to weights, something I know I find triggering. But to be truthful it didn’t affect me the way I expected. So relentless was her obsession with her weight – she hung so much on the numbers (her happiness, her success, literally everything hung on achieving a particular weight) that it had the opposite effect on me. I could actually see the futility in her constant weighing and obsessing. Me! Seeing logic? Hallelujah! 

So thank you June for a terrific, honest, frightening and cautionary story.

But thank you more because by sharing your story you have provided me with the motivation to make a choice I never thought I could. I have not weighed myself since last Friday. At all.

That’s 8 days

And I was a get-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-to-weigh-myself kinda gal. Yes I find it terrifying – I described it to my gp the other day as ‘worrying that there was something terribly wrong with me but not being able to check’. But I’m hoping that by simply not weighing myself day after day after day it will become more habit and less forced.

Not sure I really trust myself long-term though, I think I might have to chuck out the scales completely, just to be on the safe side!