I do not want to digest solid food for the next two days. If I do eat solid foods, I must purge. But ideally I will not eat solid foods at all.

So far I've had Diet Pepsi, half a large coffee with 3 milk, and a medium French vanilla cappuccino. So it's not like I haven't had any calories... I'm just not eating "real" food.

I really, honestly feel like I could continue this indefinitely right now. Just... not eat. Or if I do, purge. I've purged at work several times now, and so far nobody's even come into the bathroom when I've done it. I can do it quickly, and silently. So far, nobody at work even suspects anything, because I've made it a habit to go to the bathroom at the end of breaks anyway, so it doesn't look any different to them. My other option is to just leave the store during break, bring my lunch container with some diet soda or something in it, or just say I'm getting Tims, and not even have to purge. There are so many ways around eating, honestly. It's only a matter of which I prefer to do.

It's strange how quickly this got bad. After I had to call the ambulance on [my friend who ODed], it was like all my anxiety just started nagging at me, and I started feeling worse at times than I had been, and I guess it hit me that good spurts in one's life don't last forever... eventually things always start getting shaken up again. And after I realized that, it was easy to just fall back into old habits, old routines. It was easy, so easy, to want to lose weight again, to want to not eat, to want to pursue ED to the fullest.

I guess I'm just fucked up. Whatever.

BMed from the lax last night, and woke up to 115.2 :D :D. I am so glad the weight "gain" wasn't actually real weight. I also now have some assurances that what I'm doing is working, which pleases me, as hopefully I can keep this routine, or something similar, going for quite awhile. My work pants don't quite fit yet, but they're not hideously tight like they were several weeks ago, so I'm decently pleased with my progress. Just gotta keep it going. Ya know.

Watching movies and/or reading tonight... I bought 30 blank DVDs and jewel cases within the last week or so, and have been using my Internet-less computer to burn off some movies. As it happens, so far they've all been children's or Disney movies . A few of them were duds, so I've had to burn them off again, but whatever :/. So far I've burned and watched Pokemon: The First Movie, Finding Nemo, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, and now I'm watching Beauty and the Beast. Am currently burning off Matilda... hopefully that will be done very soon after I finish watching Beauty and the Beast. :)

Love you all!!

I was 116.6 today... I so faaat :(. I have no idea how it's even possible for me to have gained ANYthing on what I'm eating. Maybe it's water/poo weight? I guess we'll see once the laxatives I took an hour or 2 ago take effect... ought to be either sometime during the night or early in the day tomorrow. I can't wait to get flushed out. I feel fat as fucking hell, what with the gain, and the shit I ate today, and all the b/ping, and all the rest of it. Ugh. I'm so sick of being a FATASS. :/

Nothing else to really report. Just fat fat fat fat fat.

Keep forgetting to weigh myself... meh. My intake yesterday was "good", by which I mean I didn't keep in too much food... under 1000 cals, I think/hope. I did purge three times, though :/. Ah well.

Today I have so far had a veggie ciabatta sandwich from Mega Wraps, which was only $3.99 and REALLY good. I'd estimate that at about 500 cals (huge bread, cheese, mayo, blah blah). I plan to have a Luna bar (180) for break at work, and that's all I want to keep in today. Chances are decent that I'll end up b/ping tonight, but whatever. I don't care anymore. If that's the only way I can stick to losing weight, that's what I'm going to have to do. All I care about, food-wise, right now is whether I'm losing weight. The rest of it can get shot to hell, and it really doesn't matter to me, sadly.

I just want to be thin again. Thin thin thin.

In other news, R is coming to my house Monday morning (I hope) to install my Internet and cable ^_^. I'm getting a digital cable box for my living room, and just regular cable in my bedroom. The whole thing, taxes in, is going to cost me about $71 a month, according to the R guy. So it's pretty good, actually. About the same as I would have paid with the student rate thing, even though it's not technically any sort of student rate, but rather a "bundle". Whatever. As long as it works, I don't care. Heh.

Oh, yes, and I should probably mention that I went to the psychiatrist today. The appointment itself was fine -- meds are the same -- but I mentioned that I have a lot of really random bruises on my body, and asked him if maybe the prescriptions I'm on could be doing it. He didn't think so, and apparently I don't take enough ibuprofen that it should thin my blood enough to account for the bruises, so he wrote me a slip for some basic bloodwork (CBC, iron, B12, thyroid, and some clotting factor thing) and told me I should make an appointment with my GP, as apparently she can do more extensive platelet testing. It seems most likely that I'm anemic, but then again I've thought in the past that I might be anemic, only to have my hemoglobin, iron, and B12 all come out fine. The other most likely possibility is that something is wrong with my platelet count, and if that's the case any number of things could be wrong. I'm really hoping it's nothing... but I guess I'll find out. o.o

Peace out.

I have been eating waaay too much these last several days. I was down to 115.8, but with my luck I'm up again from all the stupid eating I've done. I should probably weigh myself tomorrow to check on it.

Moved into my new two-bedroom apartment on Sunday. It's lovely and spacious, and I have a whole basement (three rooms) on top of a regular apartment upstairs. It's RIGHT across the road from the university, and as such is close to bus routes to basically anywhere in the city, and the area itself is lovely -- nice properties, lots of trees, etc. AND my rent is basically the same as it used to be, except that cable isn't included anymore. Oh well. I plan to call R within the next couple of days and begin the process for getting cable and wireless Internet installed, as they have a student deal... $59.98 a month for both.

My hand is cramped (am on my phone to write this) so I must be off. Love you all. <3

Was 116.8 yesterday, which makes for a total of 0.6 lbs lost in 6 days. I guess it could be worse... I could have gained, or even maintained. But it's still not all that great. I should be losing more. Maybe I will, if I can actually stick to my diet.

One major wrench in my plans is going to be work. Some days I take my food, and that's fine; I know how many cals is in it, I'm comfortable with eating it, etc. I can make it look pretty normal (sandwich, a side, and some diet soda). Nobody at work would have any idea that I've eaten like 600 cals that day. However, when I don't bring supper, and I get a veggie burger or whatnot, I always seem to have a side with it, and if we don't have salad (like we didn't one day, and I thought we didn't yesterday) it gets dicey, because then I want fries, which are like 260 cals just for a small, not including the ketchup. And since the burger itself is like 400-450 cals... well, it's just too much for one meal. Yet I HAVE to have the side. It's stupid, I know, but mentally I can't get around it at this point. So I'm going to have to bring my lunch more often, or go somewhere else on days I don't bring anything, like maybe to Tims. The low-fat blueberry muffin is only 290, so that and a coffee or diet soda would be okay for break. Hopefully we won't be out of salads on certain days, so it won't be a problem to just get the salad for my side instead (comes to about 100 cals including dressing).

That way what happened yesterday won't happen again. Yesterday I ended up having the fries with the burger, then thinking about how many cals I'd eaten in total that day, which was DEFINITELY too much, and then I ended up purging in the employee washrooms. Luckily there are only two stalls, and generally it's pretty private, or people leave quickly... but still. I would really rather not be purging at work. Especially since the bathrooms are so disgusting there.

This is the sort of planning that always goes into restriction for me. I think about and weigh all possible food options for every meal and/or "snack". I plan things like "Okay, only coffee for 'breakfast', normal-looking break (but it should only be 300-400 calories max if you can help it, and no onion rings, no larger fries, no ice cream, no anything higher cal as a side), then don't eat when you get home, or if you do make it a b/p so you don't absorb much, if anything". I dunno. It seems normal to me when in restriction mode, but I know it's not "normal". Not like I care either way. I kind of hate that I have to do it (or at least I really hated it at first; I'm getting used to it now), but I have to do it, so I'm just going to have to suck it up and deal with it. You know?

Dum dum dum.

Still at 117.2. Of course. I didn't really expect to lose any weight on my intake lately, and I didn't. At least I didn't gain, I guess. Stupid antibiotics. Oh well... today is the last day for them, and only because I missed one yesterday. I'll take that now, since I've just had some cereal, and then the rest of the day is UP TO ME. Finally.

I want:
110 lbs or less
800 cals a day, max (I still have to work, etc)
B/ping if necessary to ward off extra eating

Wb, ED. It's a good thing I didn't actually think you'd gone away for real, otherwise I might be disappointed right now.

Or maybe recovery is not possible. Or, rather, it is only possible when I maintain within xxx and xxx lbs, and if I go too close to xxx lbs I HAVE to restrict and lose the weight again, especially if I've gotten there through comfort eating / general gluttony instead of gaining weight in a healthy way. Since I can't seem to stick to healthy weight loss -- not that I'm sure this would even be applicable in my case, because even now my weight is still within the low end of normal -- I have to do it the disordered way.

I just can't let this shit go. Mostly because of what happens when I do let it go. I comfort eat -- I gain weight -- I freak out -- and then restrictive ED gets triggered all over again. And I simply don't see a way of ending this cycle in a healthy way without going back to some sort of treatment, which I have absolutely NO intentions of doing (and no time for anyway). So... ED is how it's going to have to be.

It's not really okay, yet at the same time it is. It's okay because I finally came to an acceptance, a couple of months ago, that someday this might kill me. And I do mean acceptance -- all the rebellion, anger, despair, desperately running around trying to fix it, all that has gone away and been replaced with calm. One might even call it peace. I've done basically everything I can think of to try and fix this, short of ripping open my soul and once again falling into an immense psychological/psychiatric breakdown, and it just hasn't worked. The long and short of it is that I NEED the ED to function even semi-normally, and if I don't have it, I really will fall headlong into yet another horrific breakdown, because that seems to be how my mental fucked-up-ness plays out. And I just can't deal with the breakdowns anymore. If I have to die of one or the other someday, let it be ED, please. Because, on the whole, the suffering with ED is honestly much, much less. I would rather deal with bulimia and restriction than live with constant suicidality and soul agony.

I just wanted to say that I am NOT relapsing anymore; in fact, I am doing quite well. I'm too tired to write in any detail right now, but I didn't want to let those posts below stand alone without any correction.

Recovery IS possible.

109.6 lbs today. Pleased that I've lost a little over 5 lbs in two weeks; but at the same time it doesn't feel like enough. I want to be in the double digits like NOW. You know?

I got a full-time job at FFP*; I started that on the 12th. I don't mind it, because a) I'm a vegetarian, so I don't eat most of that shit anyway; b) because it's in a mall, I can eat, or not eat, whatever the hell I want on my breaks and nobody notices; c) since I'm not trained in the kitchen I don't work in the kitchen, meaning that most of the food smells are far away from me, meaning I'm not really super tempted to eat the food most of the time. Plus it takes half an hour for the bus to get to the mall after a typical shift, meaning that if I did order food to bring home and b/p on, it'd be 50 minutes before I even got it home. Meaning that I don't buy it, because I don't want to eat it before I get somewhere I can purge, but after 50 minutes it's gonna be cold as fuck anyway, and reheated fast food = gross. So that temptation disappears as well.

The ED clinic has been calling me for the last few days, since I haven't gone to meal support in two weeks. I have tried to call them a couple of times, but got no answer. I may have to resort to leaving a message on their machine about how I don't want to come back; I would have rathered tell my care coordinator on the phone, but so far my work schedule seems to make me miss all her calls, and I have to tell them at some point soon. I'll go in for my dietician appointment on Wednesday if they want me to, but if they don't, I don't really care. I certainly don't intend to retake their EDI or whatever. I haven't decided yet whether I'll let them refer me to an OP dietician. On the one hand, I have no intention of following a meal plan; on the other, maybe somebody ED-knowledgeable should be at least monitoring my basic health. Of course, at some point I'd want the health monitoring stopped, too, more than likely, so there's probably no point at all. Maybe I could let them refer me and then decide later. Whatever.

To me, this is just... it, you know? I've tried so hard to get over my issues, to learn how to actually live, and I can't seem to do it. There's too much mental shit still holding me back, still making me feel, making me know, that what I am is not right within this world, this society. I just can't deal with it, or the mental torture of everything, anymore. So I have no intentions of stopping this, or of trying to stay healthy indefinitely. I just want this to continue until it comes to whatever conclusion it's going to reach.


*Fast food place

I am relapsing. I am relapsing, and I don't care.

115 lbs.

So over the last day or two something... I dunno, shifted in my head somehow. I'm not entirely sure if it's the med increase working or not, but I do know that I feel much more restful, less self-destructive, and more like I can actually enjoy things in life. I actually feel like being social and doing things sometimes, which is a far cry from the last many weeks, when all I wanted to do was hide out in my place and be alone. My guess is that it's the med, but, like I said, I'm not sure. It's a good change, though. I guess I feel more like "myself" again.

What does scare me is how something changing in my physical brain can bring alllll this other shit out again. It's startling how quickly and easily I fall back into it all again once my head shifts. Makes me realize afresh that there is a part of this that I really can't just "fix myself" or pull myself out of -- I seem to really need the meds. Which is both frightening and relieving at the same time. Frightening because I could easily slip back down at any time -- but relieving because the medication can and does truly help. I certainly know what side of the med debate I fall under now.

I have been, truly, just acting on how I felt. And I felt very apathetic and hopeless and nihilistic and all the rest of it. I enjoyed nothing the way I used to; I wanted to seclude myself; I felt I needed and deserved every bit of self-destruction. And it still feels appropriate for me to have acted on things the way I did, even though to a "logical" or "well" person none of it would have made any sense. The only reason I'm not as self-destructive as I was is simply because I feel different. I did not change my mindset, or do any CBT type stuff on myself. I simply feel different. Which I guess is how I've always seen getting better, anyway -- you try to get better because you feel better, not the other way around. No one could possibly have talked me out of that mood/mode I was in, but the med has been able to help where no words could possibly have helped. I simply felt the way I felt, and that was the end of the story for me. You know?

Anyway, it's a bit better now, so I guess no one needs to worry, or whatever. Not that I was ever particularly worried about it myself; but I guess you don't worry when you're apathetic.

Extremely triggery in multiple ways

I am extremely self-destructive right now, and have been for the last few weeks. I'm not drinking any hydrating liquids, am restricting myself to non-nutritious foods, and am taking a goodly amount of Ex Lax every day, meaning I'm basically on the pot all the fucking time. I am cutting as well, although I don't exactly do it every day... but I do it on purpose to make ugly, jagged wounds that will leave ugly, jagged scars.

I think about suicide... a lot. I have been researching methods, trying to find something as quick and painless as possible, but so far haven't come up with any that I can easily get my hands on. I DO have other methods, but those would likely involve a great deal of time and/or pain. I'm on the fence about killing myself, still. There are moments when I REALLY REALLY want to, but more when I essentially have a death wish, but can't do anything to actively bring it about. The only thing I've got right now is this whole trying-to-lower-my-electrolytes shit.

I just keep sitting here silently wishing, begging, to die. I wish over and over again that my potassium will go low enough that I'll have a heart attack, or stop breathing in my sleep from muscle weakness. I'd be more okay with that than some other ways of dying right now. At least it would take me by surprise -- I wouldn't realize I was dying till the last second, so I wouldn't have time to dwell on it. Dwelling on it is what makes me ambivalent. I guess, in a way, I'm trying to cheat my own mind.

I am depressed, I guess. That much has been established. My psychiatrist has already increased my Effexor to 112.5, but so far I basically see no change in my apathy, or my self-destruction. I see him again in a little over a week. I can only imagine he'll want to bring me up to 150, since my head is so completely fucked right now. I don't have any idea what else he could or would do. At this point, honestly, I hardly even care.

I just want this stupid life to be over with...

I suppose I really ought to post some past updates that I wrote on my forum, but I think today's entry there will make sense even without a lot of recent background. I may post older entries later, though.


So I recently decided to go vegan, or at least as vegan as is humanly possible. Just in case anybody doesn't know, vegan means that I will not be eating meat, dairy, eggs, or other animal products such as honey, gelatin, whey, casein, etc. I decided to become vegan about a week ago, after reading horrible quotes from people who worked in slaughterhouses, and then seeing a video about factory farms on GoVeg.com. That was enough to start me off; but I've also done a lot of interesting reading about the health benefits of being vegan since then, which simply serves to reaffirm something I decided to do because of ethics. And to answer the obvious question... no, it has nothing to do with ED. Even at the worst of my restrictive episodes I was never even vegetarian, let alone vegan. To be honest, I always thought it was silly to go veg as a way to restrict. I liked meat, and still do, really. I just can't pay people to treat animals like shit and/or slaughter them anymore. That's all.

I've found a lot of interesting/good vegan substitutes, though. I already ate and liked veggie burgers and veggie dogs; I've now also got stuff like vegan meat substitutes, nayonaise (a vegan spread that is like Miracle Whip), soy milk (although I plan to try rice and almond milk as well), soy yogurt, etc. The only thing I really haven't liked was the soy yogurt, and even that might be palatable if I eat it with All Bran or something. I hope so, as I don't want to have wasted my money on it.

The funny thing is that I'm actually eating a lot more healthfully now that I'm doing the vegan thing. Aside from even protein worries, which are really bogus (especially when you consider how much soy I'll probably be eating), there are concerns that vegan diets can sometimes lack in stuff like calcium, vitamin B-12, etc. Yesterday I got well over 100% of my daily RDA of vitamin B-12, though, because my vegan meats and soy milk are fortified with it. As for calcium, well, honestly, I never even got enough calcium as an omnivore, so I'll probably get about the same amount as a vegan. On the other hand, I saw a really interesting video about how animal proteins leech calcium from your bones, so even if you get the RDA for calcium every day, if you eat meat you can basically drain it all out again. So there's a decent chance that the calcium I do get now will actually stick with me, so I'll probably actually get more of it into my bones now.

I can't go 100% vegan everywhere -- meal support only does vegetarianism, although they do offer soy milk in place of regular milk, which I will take advantage of. Total veganism is also hard when eating at a friend's place, or going to restaurants, but I am going to do my very best to go as vegan as possible in such circumstances. Minimally I can avoid meat as well as overt dairy and eggs, although I may end up having to eat products that contain milk or eggs as an ingredient. It is going to be an interesting journey, and I will have to figure it out as I go along... and I am certain to make plenty of mistakes (I have already). But that doesn't mean I'm not going to do my very very best at all times.

On the ED front, I started the nutrition education group on Monday and am due to start art therapy in another couple of weeks. Nutrition ed involves nutrition-related goals, which is... interesting. My goal for this week was to "mechanically eat" breakfast, lunch, & dinner without purging any of it. I did manage that yesterday. We'll see how I do today, and in the days to follow. My other goal is to actually get a "real" meal plan from my dietician, which I technically should have, but I've been bad and been refusing to follow a formal meal plan for weeks now. I can't honestly say I will follow anything she gives me now, either. But maybe it would be better to have a guideline, at least, even if I don't follow it strictly. I dunno. We'll see.

That's about all in the ED/food life of me. Still eating, still probably maintaining this grossdisgusting weight I'm at, but trying to do things a little healthier, and not buying binge food, etc. I guess it could be a lot worse.

So let's see... what's been going on? Groups are starting to wind down at the ED clinic. I missed the last two sessions of the body image group, anyway, but that ended last Monday; the wellness group's final session was last Tuesday. Emotions group is still going on every Wednesday until the 21st. Meal support is indefinite... as long as I'm still at the clinic in some capacity, I will need to continue to go to that every week. How long I keep attending meal support depends on if I want to continue to see a dietician at the program (in which case I'd do meal support), or if I'd rather be referred to a separate outpatient dietician (in which case meal support would end).

To be honest, I'm not sure what I want to do yet. I fear going without the support of the ED clinic, yet I'm getting a bit tired of being in treatment. In general, too, not just as it relates to the ED-specific treatment. My therapist and I have more or less come to a standstill, as I, in essence, get angry when we get into anything deeper, and just really really don't want to get into any of it. It has felt for the last several weeks like it was just making things worse to sit in her office, and not actually helping in any way.

And by this I don't mean that I'm unwilling to do the painful work. I mean that it feels worse to be there in a non-productive way. If it was actually me working through any significant issues, I would see the point in staying. But I'm not, and to be honest I can't think of any issues I haven't already talked about with her. Most of the work I have to do now (I think) is learn to live with the hand in life that I've been dealt, and try to see things more positively. Which a) I CAN do somewhat on my own now, and b) I don't think my T can help me with anyway, because that's not the kind of therapy she does. She's psychodynamic, not CBT/DBT/whatever. And I feel like most of the work I have left to do really is more CBT-esque.

Everybody's got shit in their lives, but not everybody needs to see a therapist, or do treatment programs. My ED is not completely gone, maybe, but it honestly is miles better than it was 6 months ago. And right now I am not willing to give up bulimia, and the only point in staying at the ED clinic would be to give up bulimia, so it's hard for me to see any point in staying much longer. I'm eating, and at a normal weight, and I know how to eat healthily, and yadda yadda yadda. I am not suicidal; I rarely cut; my depression and dysthymia are both much better; my anxiety is (mostly) under control. So why do I need to talk about "deeper" issues that only serve to upset and destabilize me? It seems like I am far more stable, and able to function in my life, when I am working on trying to feel more positive about things, instead of diving into things that upset me, and feeling so upset that I can't see anything positive anymore.

So... I am decreasing sessions with my T, to once every two weeks. I am only going to the ED clinic once a week, aside from dietician appointments. I'm scared, as I said, but I also feel like it's time. Time to try it on my own, and see what happens. I mean, it's not like I don't know where the supports are, or how to access them again if I need to. And it's not like I'd be quitting anything altogether, either. I just need... space. I need a break. And so I am going to try and take as much of a break as I can take.