A Thought is Just That... A Thought

In the beginning of my recovery, recovery cliches used to bounce around in my head to help me stay free from bingeing and purging... Keep it simple, Act yourself into right thinking, Progress not perfection, ODAT, etc. Throughout this process, I've had years when I go to OA meetings and years when I don't. Nonetheless, the program sticks with me.

I always say that eating disorder recovery is a process of harm reduction. Rarely does one stop entirely. And even then, the mental obsession is still busy trying to suck you back into the insanity. So, my current struggle is that I eat exactly how I want all day, but after dinner and my snack I still want more. It isn't that I'm hungry. I just always want more.

So, this week, something I learned in early recovery has been popping into my head... I might want more food, but that doesn't mean I have to act on it. It is just a thought. I'm going to have ED thoughts as a recovering food addict. To expect anything less is to discount the power of this beast.

Anyway, it's comforting to remember that I don't have to act on my thoughts today. I have the ability to CHOOSE.

National Eating Disorders Awareness

Cross-posted from The F-Word

In the spirit of NEDAW, Rachel thought it would be helpful if our posts focused on supporting recovery goals--I completely agree. When thinking about my personal recovery goals, one phrase keeps resonating... be gentle with yourself, this is a process. Being gentle with myself... for nearly my entire life, even in recovery, I have done quite the opposite. Growing up as a dancer, it was ingrained early on to be extra critical of myself, as well as compare my strengths and (most importantly) my deficits to my classmates. With regards to the eating disorder, anyone who has ED knows that it's all about beating one's self up and being unforgiving of anything less than perfection.

Being gentle with myself and realizing that this recovery bit is a process--just as getting into the ED was a process--made me think of the transtheoretical model of change. As a social work grad student, I am fortunate to get to attend seminars, and for the last five weeks, I've been in a Motivational Interviewing seminar. Motivational Interviewing is an evidence-based, client-centered therapeutic intervention for all types of psychopathology (especially addictions), that aims to help clients argue for their own change. MI is based on the transtheoretical model of change, which include six stages: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance, and relapse.

This model of change is so helpful for me as a recovering person, because it recognizes that if you were to draw a line of what the process of recovery looks like on a piece of paper, it isn't one straight line of successes. Rather, it's more like a zigzag, where somedays you may be ready to take action, and other days your back at precontemplation, unable to see that there is actually a problem with certain behaviors or ways of thinking. I came from what is now considered to be a clinically "old school" treatment center, in that recovery is based solely on abstinence--either you are in recovery or you aren't, depending on how well you behave within their prescribed definition of recovery.

Today, I still don't do things perfectly in recovery, but that doesn't mean I'm not in recovery. It means that it is a process and that I need to be gentle with myself. I was engulfed by ED for nearly 17 years, and it just doesn't disappear overnight.

The message for myself, and to you, is to recognize the growth you're making in your recovery and don't be so hard on yourself. It is a process.

Diligence, Diligence, Diligence!

On my last post, I discussed that I was working on reconditioning my mind so that I would stop eating late at night when I'm not hungry. Any type of conditioning, whether it's our body, our thoughts, or our attitudes is hard work, and it takes diligence to break out of old habits.

I know, everyone's probably like, "Duh!". However, I have this bag of bad habits (albeit small) that I wanted to leave in 2009, but, somehow, have now schlepped into the new year. I'm into recycling and all, but I'm almost positive that my mental dysfunction and habits are not biodegradable.

Yesterday, I followed my food plan to the letter, until my girlfriend told me that she was making me dinner. What? Dinner? NO!!!! I just wanted to eat my food. What she was making was healthy and balanced, but I just didn't want to eat it. But I also know that it's good for me to have a certain degree of flexibility, especially when someone is taking the time to make me dinner.

So I ate it, and felt guilty and fat the entire time. That's how my disorder manifests. After, I felt anxious, which, of course, made me want to eat something else. But I didn't. Hallelujah! It was the mental diligence of being honest with myself about what I needed and how I felt that kept me from eating. And it was difficult, because even now, as I love myself much more than I ever have, my natural instinct is too sabotage myself.

So, I guess yesterday was officially Day 1 of reconditioning my mind--for this issue. Progress not perfection, I guess.

This morning I still "feel fat" for eating off of the food plan I had planned for myself. But I know that "fat"isn't a feeling, and even if it was, feelings aren't facts, blah, blah, blah.

I'll let you know how I did for Day 2 tomorrow!

Back in NYC... Day 1 of Mental Reconditioning

Yesterday, I returned from a week-long Christmas vacation in Kansas City and Tampa. After flying on the worst flight of my life, I wasn't sure if I'd ever make it home. The flight was so turbulent that people all around me were puking in barf bags. It was kind of ironic... a bulimic (in recovery) on a plane where everyone else is puking. If that would've happened years ago, I probably would have acted sick, utilizing those bags myself.
Now back in the city, I've decided to conquer another level of the ED--mental reconditioning. I've blogged before about how I feel guilty for not sticking to my food plan, even though I know I don't have to stick to it perfectly. Recovery is, after all, about balance. But I'm just sick of feeling guilty about it. So, I have two choices: 1.)Stop feeling guilty; 2.) Stick to my food plan. Because I don't know how to stop feeling guilty and can't seem to internalize imperfect abstinence, then my only option is to stick to my food plan.
Usually, I stick to my food plan all day, and then at night I'll eat something unplanned. It isn't because I'm hungry. I get anxiety about eating what I planned. Why? I don't think there is any deeply-rooted reason. I think it's just because I'm not practiced in eating only what's on my food plan. My mind is conditioned to eat off of my food plan. I need to condition it to do the opposite.
So, for today, I'm going to try it.

I'll let you know tomorrow how Day 1 went!!

Brittany Murphy Dies... Is Hollywood "Clueless' or Just in Denial???

Cross-Posted from my entry in www.the-f-word.org

I was so busy running around in preparation for Christmas yesterday, that I didn’t even know that actress Brittany Murphy died of “natural causes.” My first reaction is utter shock. For years, tabloids have rumored that the actress has had anorexia, and the fact that she died of a cardiac actress seems to support such rumors. I don’t know if it is because she’s close to my age or if it is because I love her as a comedic actress. In any case, my mentality–which, even in recovery, still vacillates daily between wanting to be unconcerned with weight and wanting to be not-anorexic-but-just-thin-enough (whatever that means)–has just received a huge dose of reality.

Within a few months of moving back to NYC, I accidentally lost quite a bit of weight, because I went from driving everywhere to walking everywhere. It just happened, really. This triggered my anorexic mindset, which has not been present for years. While I like how I look and don’t ever want to look “sick” again, my mind has become obsessed with the possibilities of losing more. What can I say? It takes years in recovery to recover from the ED mindset… at least for me.

My point in mentioning this, and why I am so shocked by Brittany Murphy’s death, is that the ED can kill you (or me) when one least expects it. You’re eating a little less here, exercising a bit more there, and then, oops, you accidentally kill yourself. Honestly, I didn’t mean to send myself into cardiac arrest… I was just trying to fit into my skinny jeans. Now I know, obviously, that there is so much more behind EDs than trying to look good in clothes. But, a notion as innocent as wanting to try to look good in an outfit or feel more comfortable in your own skin can actually be deadly. While my playing around with food is at a manageable or even “normal” degree, if I let it continue, which will eventually shift my behavior to a status of unhealthy and unmanageable, this could potentially happen to me.

Now, we don’t know the specifics of Brittany Murphy’s “death by natural causes”–the ED rumors have not been medically confirmed. We never received confirmation of an ED on rail-thin Michael Jackson either… but that doesn’t mean he, nor Brittany, didn’t have one. I’m not trying to scapegoat Hollywood, but the ridiculous standards that celebrities have to maintain if they want to continue to gain employment is just that–RIDICULOUS. How many more celebs have to die? When is Hollywood, and society, going to learn that public figures and celebrity role models need to start resembling real people, instead of real people trying to fit into these unrealistic and life-threatening ideals? Now, I know that we all make choices; but, at the end of the day, most people want to feel like they fit somewhere in the world. Hollywood anorexic iconography in the human form just doesn’t help and needs to stop.

Achieving Food Plan Perfection...Yeah, Right.

Throughout my ED career, whether it be in the pitfalls of relapse or the upward crawl towards recovery, I've consistently (and constantly) planned the Perfect Food Plan. Daily, I envision that if only I eat this or that and stick to my plan, I'll feel so much better about myself. Logically, perfectionistic logic that is, it makes sense... follow your plan to the letter and you'll feel better--poetic, yes, realistic... not exactly... at least not for this food addict.

I do, however, have some errors in my thinking. First, recovery is supposed to be about balance, finding the grey (and accepting it), no black and white thinking. Easier said than done. "Perfect" doesn't really fit into the category of moderation. Second, I'm still trying to define myself externally, to some extent, whether it be by how well I follow my food plan, or how much I weigh, or the size of my jeans.

While I yearn to follow a food plan so clean that even minuscule crumbs of deviation from it couldn't be picked up under the lens of a food-plan-falsifier investigator's microscope, at the end of the day, I always do something to louse it up... even in recovery. That is what is so frustrating.

Perhaps I'm being too restrictive in my food plan... Perhaps I need to give myself a break... Perhaps I need to think about what makes me so afraid to follow the food plan I devise? Ha-Ha! Yes, I think that is the issue. The easiest answer is control. But what is behind the control???

More next post... gotta go be a social work student!

The Bumpy Road of Recovery

Why is it that every time I work on one part of recovering from the ED, another piece of it tries to seduce me? Of course, the obvious answer is that it's a mental illness... duh. Technicalities aside, why does it have to happen that way? I mean, I work on not bingeing and purging, and all of a sudden I want to restrict. I work on not restricting, and then I want to overexercise. As soon as I make the decision to eat on my food plan, as planned, I get the urge to overeat... just a little... or restrict, just a little. And then the mental cycle starts again, which allows me to never fully be at peace. Throw any level of stress in the mix, and the entire thought train is magnified.

My ED symptoms are like small systems, interacting and taking direction from a larger system in my brain, my personal director of weight management...which takes direction from an even larger system, My Sense of Self. The surface problem is that I'm still choosing to define who I am by external qualities, like what my body looks like and what I achieve. The more deeply-rooted problems are... well, too complex to get into on this post.

The short of it is, at my core, I still feel inadequate. That doesn't mean I don't feel happy, because my life is better than ever. But at the end of the day, when I look at what motivates me, I have an invisible "I", standing for Inadequacy, slapped across my forehead, following my every move.

Throughout my recovery, professionals have told me that as long as I was active in the addiction, it takes the same amount of time to recover. I don't mean "recover" like cured from thinking about and engaging in ED behavior; I mean recovery from the arrested development and the issues that triggered the ED in the first place. I always thought that I would make faster progress... wrong. The complexities, and subsequent mind-fucks (pardon my French), of EDs are baffling.

So, I've been in a cycle of restricting for a couple of months. Not a lot, but enough to lose weight and have people notice. It's strange that I'm in this phase, because I haven't been "here" since before my bulimia started. Like many, prior to bulimia, I restricted... until I got too hungry one day, and decided to start throwing up. Of course, I'm simplifying my double-twisting dive into the abyss of the ED, but you get the point.

What's even stranger, is that I'm not restricting because I think I'm fat, and my goal is not to achieve anorexia. Also, I feel indifferent to the weight loss. I don't exactly get a high from it. On some level, I just really don't care; I know that I look fine and that I don't need to lose weight. Moreover, I want to become an eating disorder specialist some day, sooner than later, and so I don't want to ever become "sick" in that way again.

And yet, I still want to lose weight. What this shows me is that the mental dis-ease of this mental illness still has powerful ammunition, even in recovery.