Halve my BMI

OK so I was going to write a big rambling post but I think I will just cut to the chase and jump straight in with the idea that things are getting better!

I get so discouraged about this goal because I have tried so hard and been so determined so many times that this was IT, the last time, that I was going to really make it and I still… haven’t. But I think you have to believe that otherwise you’d lose all hope and give up so here I am, believing it again, thinking of myself as partway along a road that goes in only one direction, and looking towards the future.

Food is still a torment, and I still feel very nervous about my capability for eating too much. BUT I have not been binging, it’s been a good couple of weeks now and I can’t remember what my last binge was. I don’t run down to the Whistlestop for big family packs of revels, I don’t buy food at the station on my way home, I’m off the sausage rolls and scotch eggs and chocolate bars. Those things were a daily indulgence just to make it through back in the summer so I am considering this a step forward.

I have made major progress by striking the compromise that I will let myself eat the wrong things if I want them, but not in the wrong amounts. If I want to have a treat or a cake or a high-carb something-or-other I will do, but I’ll only have one portion. Somedays (very rarely) that’s all I eat but in terms of amount of food in (and usually calories consumed) that nets out OK.

The other breakthrough has been down to exercise – I have a way more heightened consciousness of my body and I really think hard about my food choices most of the time, trying to get a balance between what I want, what my body craves, and what I know to be healthy.

And sometimes (about half the time) I am having a breakthrough in the form of the realisation that this is all it takes, and it’s easy, and I can do it on a long term basis. This is a belief-with-training-wheels at the moment, I’ve always always fallen back into binging at some point or other before, but for this to work I have to make it stick on a long-term basis, and mitigate cravings before they become binges. It doesn’t help that I still look like someone who binges, so even though I am way healthier than I was I can’t identify myself as a normal healthy person yet, which is frustrating. All I want is for this to be over, and yet it seems so damn hard sometimes.

Last time I weighed I was at 268, and I still want to get to 140, although 148 would put me in the healthy BMI range and be half where I started. 236 to get out of the 40s and 177 into the 20s. Sooooo far to go still but now that I’ve said this I can look forward to ticking them off, hopefully! I’m just going to aim to weigh myself once a month in 2010 and keep myself accountable with exercise and calories in between.

she says adamantly, and with feeling!

OK so I lost half a stone in November (well ok in the three weeks I was going to the gym) (and actually largely in the last week when I got my eating issues ironed out!)

But whatever, that’s the first month-on-month loss I’ve had this year that wasn’t less than a pound, it’s taken me out of the danger-danger-zone and given me a bit of a buffer, and also it was quick enough to give me back that old feeling of oooh! It’s going down again!

Long way to go to get back to the lowest I was last year and beyond, but I have a plan that seems to (a) work and (b) be stickable-to, so this goal is finally rolling forwards again. Yay!

to a whole other level. I am lurking in carby shadows hiding from the nasty things I think my mind is saying to me and not even brave enough to listen. I should listen, it’s probably not half as bad as I think it is.

Completely unrelatedly, I am seriously considering bribing (I suppose I should say rewarding!) myself on this goal. Like granting myself an extra £10 discretionary spending for each day when I listen to my body and only eat what I need. I’m not the biggest spender – if I particularly want or need something I will buy it but I virtually never grant myself free cash just to treat myself to whatever I want with. Could be fun. And at the ratio of good to poor days I’m having at the moment it’s hardly going to break the bank… Anything that helps me enjoy the process of achieving this goal could be a good thing.

_{and no, still not making any progress on this goal whatsoever :( !!}

• I am always ravenous in the morning, both in terms of actual hunger (it comes, I eat, it goes, it comes back again, in a pretty quick cycle!) and in “perceived” hunger (ooh a piece of cake would be nice right now etc.) and in the afternoon I generally feel full most of the time and less interested in food (probably because I’ve spent the morning eating cake). So I figure I’m going to work with what my body is telling me for now and let myself eat what I feel like (within reason!) in the morning and then expect to not be bothered much about food for the rest of the day (nice balanced nutritious fuel please).
• I’ve been trying to ease up on how much I look forward to mealtimes (mostly to break up the day) by replacing/combining them with scheduled Creative times. Creativity, writing and planning are three things that always bring me joy and make everything alright, so I am trying to set up scheduled times during the day to do them so I have them to look forward to. Well not scheduled exactly, but for instance I’ll aim to at least sit down for 10 minutes before I leave home in the morning to write or do something towards a creative project, even if it’s just updating files or organising things ready for when I get home. I just need food to not be the thing I am looking forward to most every day.

to post here every two or three days, seeing as that’s about as long as my motivation lasts ;)

::runs off to set reminder::

I’ve done enough damage, I’ve made my point. Enough now.

I think mostly it comes down to how damn confused I feel about everything. There are so many people around all the time, doing things I can’t understand. It’s too much to process. And then internally, my mind is so packed, and each time I resolve to do less I just end up gradually, sneakily, taking on more, because I can’t not, and there’s no end to it. And so I eat, because nothing makes sense, nothing feels wholly good any more, everything is constantly being debated and decisions never get made.

I need to just accept that I am this way, I can’t understand everything that goes on around me or control how my life changes. I need to accept that this state of confusion is permanent, and cling on to the very few things I can be reasonably certain about. I need to learn to just float.

OK so I think weirdly I have some kind of addiction to feeling full. When I go for several days feeling hungry (not all the time! but just for a reasonable amount before meals) I seem to sleep a lot worse, am edgy and tetchy and get more of these weird flashbacks. Yesterday I had a bigger lunch – not unhealthy per se but a bit stodgier I guess (and bread, oh how I love bread) – and I didn’t feel hungry all afternoon and evening, I was more relaxed all day and slept so much better, but then of course paid the price this morning. So maybe being hungry is the only thing that works and I need to get used to the slightly scattier version of me that comes with not sleeping so much (have I just been using bread_yummmm my whole life to calm myself down?)

Luckily though I guess hunger is a relative thing that kicks in when you shift your food intake levels but only lasts until you get used to it, so hopefully before long I’ll be able to eat less and sleep more. Eventually.

The other thing is that it is just so stressful being like this, so far away from this thing that I really really want and feeling so powerless about it, something that would make life soooo much more live-able but is at the most optimistic forecast 6 months to a year away, if not much, much longer. I worry about it all the damn time which is crazy – a day is so long when your thoughts are racing and at most you can expect what, 0.5% progress towards the end goal? Argh. ::Whine over::

a long time since I updated this goal, and that’s mainly because there has only been reverse progress, on a pretty massive scale.

Yesterday I received a copy of the letter sent from the EDC to my doctor, and it really drove home to me that I am not losing it, and that I have dealt with this problem more effectively in the past than I am now.

After that I sat down and charted out my weight (on a pretty graph, no less) and then I did two things:
1) I looked back over my journals and tried to correlate life events with significant weight gains – this was shockingly easy to do and very revealing, as the biggest gains directly followed situations which I either should never have been in at all or were very emotionally charged. Goes to show that I use food as a coping mechanism when in relationship distress and also whenever there’s drama (argh!) I take my eye off the ball, get distracted and often don’t even weigh myself for months.
2) I had a look at the rate of gain and clearly saw that it has been much slower this year than it was in the last 4 months of 2008, which makes me think that although I haven’t lost anything yet, things have at least been better since I’ve been with B than they were before. I have gained so little and over such a long period, comparatively, that it wouldn’t take much to just swing it back to a losing rather than gaining situation.

It was very interesting to see all these things coming out of what is basically a numerical analysis (yay spreadsheets!) and knowledge is definitely power – I am not going to be the situations I was in last year again, and the more things stabilise at home the easier it’ll be to deal with the eating disorder. I also loved how a swing of just 5 pounds or so looks really good on the graph ;) so hopefully there’s some fresh motivation to be had there.

Have the most el-masivo update to post, apologies in advance!

• I have grown my hair really long and am taking better care of it so it can stay long and I love it!! It has a character all of its own!
• I have come to a compromise over buying new clothes and not waiting around in clothes that are 2 or 3 sizes too big while I drop the remaining 2 or 3 sizes! I realised how great I felt wearing new things that fit properly and have decided that (within limits of reasonableness) it is worth the expense in the interim to enjoy wearing funky things that make me feel vibrant and bouncy.
• I am eating fairly well on the whole and getting more exercise and that makes me feel active and healthy.
• (and I suppose) since the break-up with K, I am now more aware of attention coming from the male half of the species, which is always good for confidence ;)
• lastly I think I am just enjoying life more, and it shows. I see myself as someone who is doing what they love and is grateful for their lot and – what does it matter what I look like?

So basically I have reached a point where I (allow myself to) feel pretty enough most of the time, and I’m not worried about getting prettier just for the sake of it as being prettier than this just doesn’t interest me. I think this was a big motivation because I felt like the way I looked was actually putting people off, I used to feel so inhumanly ugly and self-conscious and that is gone now, that’s all I care about. If anything these days I feel prettier on the outside than the inside and that is definitely a bigger issue (hence goal no.1).

SO while I was away on holiday I gave myself a good talking-to and realised that it is time to turn my motivation for this goal very firmly in the direction of health. There are lots of other reasons why I don’t want to stall at the weight I’m at forever so I’ve had to make a new pact with myself to try to manage food and exercise in healthier ways, for life, which will hopefully result in me reaching a naturally healthy weight at some point. It just needs to get sorted. My new set of motivations are:

1) I need to do this to be wholly, truly me.
2) I need to do this in order to enable myself to do all the activities I want to do.
3) I don’t want to have a “disorder” any more.
4) This is for the sake of being properly, truly well.

And the strategies are:

1) Every unhealthy thing (substance/volume) that I can manage not to eat is a gift to myself, a chance to become healthier.
2) Learn to eat intuitively, when healthy, and listen to my body about what and how much it needs.
3) Move as much as my body wants to.
4) Continue to deal with all my emotions creatively.

I am writing these out every morning at the moment and it definitely seems to be filtering through to my subconscious – I have been making better choices and have shed my holiday pounds this week. So hopefully this will give me a framework I can continue to work with to get healthier and I will come up with more motivational things as I go along.

the biggest change I want to make in my life.

It does me good to remember that from time to time…