In the beginning, food made me fat.

Much, much later, lack of it made me weak.

Now, eating too much of it makes me throw up.
Not eating enough of it makes me eat too much of it, which as we already know makes me throw up.
Throwing up tastes terrible, makes my throat raw and itchy, and makes me crave electrolye balancers, which makes me eat.

Fucking annoying substance, food.
Someone needs to put a ban on it, or something.
It's driving me fucking crazy.
CRAZY CRAZY CAULIFLOWER. *runs around screaming and flailing arms*

Interesting quiz...

Your Body Image is 68% Unhealthy, 32% Healthy

Your negative body image is borderline serious. It could turn into an eating disorder or psychological problem. Perhaps you're just having a bad day. But maybe you need to think about getting help for your problem.

How's Your Body Image?

I got my hair cut yesterday, and when I weighed in today I had lost a pound from the day before. Score! :D. I really like the cut, too. I got about four inches chopped off, so it now just rests against my shoulders, and has a little bit of layering. Much better than the long, unkempt-looking mess of before.

I'm going to have me some Kamut Puffs now. Au revoir.

Right now ED is making me feel powerful. More calm. More in control. Less anxious; less emotional.

Warning: Purging and cutting TRIGGERS AHEAD. Read at your own risk!!!

I was really hungry as well as feeling weak, after hardly eating today (I was busy and didn't want to get up to get my planned food), so about half an hour ago I went upstairs and poured two HUGE bowls of Multigrain Cheerios with milk. Probably took me ten minutes to eat, tops. I then sat with it for a few minutes -- but then I realized that, since I'd satiated the craving, I no longer wanted the food in me. So to the bathroom I did go to purge. I got the majority of it up (though not all) and almost immediately felt so much better, about everything.

For me, purging can be such an emotional release. Fill yourself up -- stuff yourself to the brim -- feel your stomach full and heavy against you -- and then step into the bathroom and wash it all away. Walk out feeling cleansed. Walk out feeling like you've gotten some soul grime scrubbed from your pores. Feel like a better person -- a happier person, a more capable person, a more fulfilled person. That's what I get sometimes from purging. Sometimes it's robotic, but more often I wash away a good deal of passion and anxiety along with the food. Bulimic behaviors are truly the behaviors of someone who feels. Anoretic things -- restricting, compulsive exercise -- are a denial of feeling, to me. And for awhile I really liked that. But now, sometimes -- I feel. And so sometimes I have to get rid of how I feel.

I have the urge to cut, too, tonight. I have an almost never used, small utility knife that I favored the last time I did it. It would be such satisfaction to run it slowly across my upper arms -- see the blood well and then bead, maybe slide down my skin -- dab it with toilet paper, press in hard for several seconds to stop the bleeding. Feel the pain of the mattress against my newly injured skin when I lie down afterwards. Wake up the next morning with blood inside my shirt, maybe small bits on the pillow. Feel satisfied. Refreshed. New.

This is really why it's so hard to give up my self-destructive behaviors. They're so cathartic, sometimes; other times they're emotionally repressive, another thing I often strive for. These two benefits seem priceless to me, and I treasure them dearly. How can I possibly decide to give them up and then drop them just like that? I can't. It's completely impossible. Until I start to fix things in my head, I'll never be able to stop either of them for good, 100%. And, funny enough, that doesn't really scare me at all. I just keep thinking, "If something really bad happens, the hospital is always there." I mean, it's true. Twenty-minute drive away. Faster if I for some reason needed an ambulance. So I'm not really worried for my safety at all.

But should I be? Really?

I don't believe you.

And I won't let you take away the only tools I have to cope with life. I simply cannot.

This is some thinspo I uploaded to Yahoo today:

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cauliflower_000/album?.dir=/f7a2re2

Feel free to save whatever you like. They're public domain photos, after all. ^_^

Enjoy!!

Attempting to recover even a tiny bit from ED is like being bounced up and down against your will on a see-saw. You know, like when the other person is heavier than you, and if he or she wants you to stay up in the air they can? And you just have to beg and plead to be allowed down until they give in? But then you try, after a few see-saws, to keep THEM up there. And sometimes you even succeed. And you feel a sort of triumph. I got back at the person who tortured me. The eating disorder that tortured me.

But we continue our see-saw game. Up and down, up and down, up and down. When will it end, and who will be stuck at the top so long that he/she falls off, and one is triumphant? I don't know the answer to either of those questions, and I'm pretty sure it will take me a long time to find out.

I wish this stuff could be fixed quickly. :/

I decided on some new rules for myself yesterday. Pretty simple, actually.

Max cals per day: 500
Max fat per day: 15g
Max carbs per day: 50g

I am hoping this will help me somewhat in getting past this plateau... it's really irking me that I've ceased to lose. I mean, with this kind of restriction, I have to start losing again SOMEtime, right?? By all reason and logic????

Well, I finally figured out why I'm not losing weight -- I'm eating too many carbs. I ate 96 grams of carbs yesterday. Ugh!

So now I'm trying to figure out a good carb max to set. 50g? 60g? I'm thinking 50g would probably be adequate, but I'm not sure. I know Atkins starts with a 20g carb max, but moves to 40-60g somewhere along the line.

For now I'm going to say 50g. We'll see if I can't start losing some more weight in a few days with that. :)

I've been doing a lot of thinking, and I've decided a few things about what I'm going to do with this journal.

1. I won't be posting daily weigh-ins here anymore. I may or may not update when I reach goal weight(s); depends on how I feel when I get there.
2. I may not write here every day. I plan to write only when I really want to, and only then when I think it's relevant. This is something I should have done long ago -- and, well, now I'm doing it.


In other news, I never thought I'd be so glad to move my bowels in my life. I'm very glad that they're not so seriously backed up that I'd have to see a doctor about it...

Well, you'll all be happy to know that I'm raising my daily calorie limit back to 500. My usual 200-300 calories isn't enough to keep me from feeling physically awful anymore.

I feel that some of you on my [LJ] list either don't think I have a real eating disorder, or I could very easily recover right now and just won't. I do not honestly believe that either of these are true. If I give the impression here that I think this is some sort of wonderful game I play that I could put away any time I like, then I'm truly sorry, because I do not believe that this is the case. I don't get into most of my emotional stuff here, but suffice it to say that I do have plenty of psychological issues, not the least of which is this eating disorder. This particular ED is new to me, it's true; however, self-destruction is not a bit new to me, and my ED to me seems like just a different method of self-destruction. Yet another terrible coping mechanism that I've come to depend on.

Because, yes, I'm dependent on it now. Within the first few months or so I could have let this go easily, although I wouldn't have. But now... well, I've tried to start letting this go probably half a dozen times or more, and nothing has worked. And I honestly feel like everybody's got darts in their hand, aimed at me and ready to fire anytime I talk about physical complications, because I "should have more sense" or something. I "shouldn't be hurting [my]self". I "could die from this, you know!" You think I don't fucking know that? You think it doesn't keep me up at night? Plus, comments like that don't want to make me recover any more -- actually, they just want to make me cry, because it clearly indicates that even now nobody understands. I would have thought that having [an LJ] friends list full of eating disordered people would mean that they'd be understanding, but I guess I was wrong.

I feel like I'm sinking further and further down, and not even the people who know what it's like will talk to me while I drown. And that makes me feel hurt.

Daily weigh-in: 113.8. Well, at least it's not 114 point something... lol.

Concerning bowels (don't read if you're squeamish)

I'm going to have to take some laxatives today and get stuff moving in there :/. I haven't had a bowel movement in, literally, weeks, and when I press in on my stomach lying down, I can feel the poop way too far up my large intestine. I've been trying to make it happen on my own, but it's clearly not going to work. I hate hate HATE laxatives, but if they're the only thing gonna keep me from the doctor/hospital, I've got to take them, I guess... *sigh*.

Apparently even fasting for one day is now too much for me to handle. I am quite weak, and my blood pressure is very low. In a little bit I'm going to have to get some food -- I'm honestly afraid of passing out or something.

This is really ridiculous, though. I can't even fast now?? God. Stupid weak pathetic body. It's no wonder that I'm depriving you of sustenance.

Edit: Wow... a really sudden dizziness just hit me for a few seconds. It was like someone slapping me in the back of the head. I'm definitely going to eat something higher calorie than an apple now...

Daily weigh-in: 114. *mumbles something about a stupid PLATEAU*

Once again, I feel like absolutely no one in this world gives a fuck about whether I am happy or miserable, whether I improve or disintegrate, or whether I live or die. Which I suppose I ought to be glad for, since I am on the miserable, disintegrating track, and it's heading slowly but surely for death.

Maybe I'll be glad to die if and when I ever get there. I doubt my useless fucking life is worth trying to live through anyway.

Recovery???

I'm busy trying to convince myself that I needed to eat that peanut butter sandwich and drink that milk, because I had antibiotics to take that have to be taken after a meal. It IS true, but I didn't have to eat something so calorie-laden. On the other hand... my therapist kinda convinced me into recovery mode before I left my session today, so I went home determined to eat something "normal". I enjoyed it, and I am now satiated, etc, and the pills aren't making me nauseous or anything, but... !!!

I'm still torn about recovery. On the one hand, it's stupid to starve myself because a) I want attention, and b) I want to get revenge on my mother. It's not so stupid to starve myself because I hate myself; but maybe if I put the energy into at least trying to like myself, instead of into restricting/fasting/whatever, I'd do better than if I starved myself. I can't even honestly say I'm scared of food anymore. Well, okay, I am scared of some food. I won't go near junk food or fast food anymore, and I don't care if that never changes. That shit is bad for you anyway. However, I'm also still scared of meat and of high-carb things like bagels, muffins, pasta, etc. Even though what I ate today was higher calorie than I would usually have consumed at this point in the day, the things I ate were still all "acceptable" foods, even the peanut butter. I don't know what's going to happen if and when I try to eat an unacceptable food.

On the other hand, I'd still love to see bones. I'd still feel accomplishment in the scale going down, in my body getting smaller. I'd love to have my periods halted and to stop having so many woman's curves. And I still hate myself. I feel like I deserve every side effect of starvation. I deserve organ damage, osteoporosis, hair loss, lanugo -- everything. I would even deserve death if it came to that point.

But then I start thinking, "Couldn't I do something better with my time than try to starve myself?" I really want to go back to school in a few weeks, and be able to finish the semester and get decent grades. How can I do that if I am constantly losing weight and depriving my brain of the nutrients and energy it needs to think? But the other side of my mind tells me that being at school will make it easier to restrict, and if I need to study I can just drink something caffeinated or eat something small for energy. Plus, no one can force me into treatment, so no matter how much weight I lose I could probably still finish the semester. I doubt it's going to come off now as quickly as it used to, anyway, since my body's in starvation mode and my BMR is lower now because of my lower weight.

Do you see my dilemma here?? God. I can't believe I'm stupid enough to let an eating disorder take over my brain. I can't believe I'm stupid enough to let my therapist push me into trying to recover when I had made up my mind not to. Where does this go? Where does this end, and how, and why? I don't know. Don't know don't know don't know.

The worst of it is... if I can't get a handle on this, my therapist may or may not stop working with me. And if she does stop working with me, there's just no way I'm going to be able to handle it. I'll have another one of my lovely borderline breakdowns, and that's when I will, with 100% certainty, starve and starve and starve. I don't see how she can do this to me, but at the same time I sort of understand where she's coming from. She just doesn't know what to work on now that I don't want ED as a solid focus. I want to work on emotional stuff, but she's afraid I'll freak out. Well, I'll freak out even more if she leaves me!!!

I'm frustrated and terrified and... gah. Too much shit in my head. I think I'm starting to dissociate a little. I can't take having everything in my head for too long -- I never could. So I guess it's a good thing I wrote this, because at least now I'll remember it.