Recovery Relapse

I have not written for quite some time.  Truth is, I'm partially ashamed of recovery.  And I suppose that's the state of being in which I currently find myself.  I have relapsed into recovery once more.  Yet, there is a part of me that gobbles up health like the food I once denied.  Health is happy.  However, there is always this smear of nostalgia that taints the glossy layer of my now rosy cheeks and crimson lips.  I open my closet doors tentatively as though I am opening a tomb, gently remove the double zero pants from their hangers, and cradle them like corpses.  I lay them on my bed like burial shrouds, and one by one I slide my legs into them.  They catch on my thighs, others on my hips.  So I stand in front of the mirror, remembering how they once pooled around my ass, and I cry.  I clutch them like I would a lover, mourn for them like I would a friend.  It is this anger and this overwhelming sense of loss that washes over me.  I hate feeling as though all the time I spent and the hard work I invested, all the pounds I shed and people I pushed away, was all for nothing.  It is a profound sense of failure, of having lost something you worked so hard to earn and rightfully deserved.  I have watched the scale creep up week by week and have felt my flesh catch in lovers' hands.  It is a sensory acknowledgment of a battle that for the past several months I've been winning.  It is a strange thing recovery....  It as though you're waiting for some acolade in the form of a medal?  Trophy?  Fuck, I guess a simple pin would do, that would bestow some distinguishment, mark you apart from the rest.  That there would be some reward for all that time spent bobbing up and down exercising in your living room at 4 o'clock in the morning, or spewing food forth from cold, wet fingers, or feeling unsteady on your feet.  At the very least, you expect to be granted the gift of some amazing self-control.  But all that is left are the comments which remind you how average you really are and how you failed to succeed at being something other than normal, "you look fuller," "you look healthy,"  "you don't look like a skeleton anymore!"  It is as though I have suffered the death of something internal and there is nothing for which to memoralize it.  Only the pants draping in my closet.  Like the death of a loved one, life goes on.  People forget or either fail to remember.  But I am still very much affected.  I birthed the disease and watched it grow.  I raised it like a child and celebrated its milestones.  And then I killed it like an avenger.  And now a guilty prisoner, I try and atone for my sins.  I sit here and remember the crime of gluttinous starvation and wonder with embarrassed amazement how I was able to get so far.  A feeling of pride swells in your gut when you think of your disease and how well you managed to hone it.  A feeling of ownership and even a feeling of  incredulousness.  However, there is now also a sense of bitter sadness that one could hate herself so much to purposefully impart such cruelty on her physical and emotional integrity.  That one could be so lost on a misson of self-destruction that you forget what it means to live.  I am ashamed because I feel as though I failed at something for which the only true measure of success is death.  I am ashamed because I feel as though I am an outcast to a prestigous private club to which I was once a beloved and devoted member. Recovery is an interesting dichotomy because I yearn for something I once believed I didn't have.  I yearn for the bones my eyes never saw.  When you are sick, you fail to register just how incredibly sick you really are.  It is only in health that you are able to look back with sheer wonder upon that which, at the time, you saw as never being quite sick enough.  Where is the irony that only when I've gained have I suffered the unshakable feeling that a part of me is missing?  Associated with recovery is also the feeling of fear.  Fear that you'll never be "skinny" again...fear that you will be.  Fear that there will never be a sense of satisfaction with one's physical self or that the voices cackling in your head of diet and weight will never shut up. I try and discern why I fell through the looking glass to begin with...why I chose to jump head-first into the abyss of nothingness.  I suppose there are many reasons...some beyond my recognition and some very blatant to my consciousness.  But it is not the why I crave...although it peaks my analytical sense of curiosity.  It is the how I lust for.  It is the high of the how I am forever chasing.  I try and allow the compliments and praise of loved ones to be my high, the laughter of friends at my corny jokes which lay dormant for so long, the whispers of my lover's words which rustle the sheets which lay starched and cold for so many months.  I try and cherish the warmth, colors, and contours of this woman's body as I lay my head on my pillow at night, and sometimes I am successful.  Sometimes I believe that I am okay.  But sometimes is not all the time, and it is that vacancy which haunts the corner of my bedroom where my mirror is perched.  It is that vacancy which haunts the scale awaiting me in the early mornings of dawn.  It is that vacancy which beckons me back and which simultaneously advances me forward.

"Two Months or 20 Pounds, No Matter What"

It's been about a month, a little over, since I last wrote.  If you want to know the truth, I've been so utterly embarrased to write.  Over the course of the past month, each week begins with resolve and determination and ends in defeat.  Each week begins with a new meal plan to follow that quickly gets discarded and replaced for another.  The cycle has ensued now for many weeks and each week I am fatter than the one previous.  I am weighing in at 110 pounds, up from 96....cringe.  I feel as though I've let myself down and my followers.  It is pathetic...I haven't weighed this much since last summer.  I think I got so caught up in being perfect by following whatever new meal plan I created and so discouraged when I failed and didn't adhere to it, that those feelings of defeatism led to hopelesness and me just eating and eating and eating.  I don't know what has happened to me.  And I'm sorry...to myself and to you.  What a farce I am.  A pathetic, hopeless farce.
Each week has followed the same routine for me.  Monday and Tuesday I eat completely healthy and stick to around 500 calories or under.  I lose weight, I feel good.  Wednesday hits and starvation kicks in and the incessant thoughts about food.  So I go over my caloric limit for the day, but still only consume "safe" foods.  Then Thursday hits and I've gained a little weight as a result of going over my caloric limit the day before and I get the hopeless, fuck it all mentality, go to the store, buy binge foods and binge Thursday.  Then I still have left over food in the house and I polish it off Friday.  Then Saturday and Sunday the weekend hits and I'm lonely and bored and so I go out and binge and binge and binge some more.  Sometimes I vomit, sometimes I don't.  Then I am so disgusted in myself that I avow the next week will be different, but then it starts all over again.  I can't resist the urges to binge anymore, and I can't resist the incessant thoughts of food running through my head.  The only way to stop it is to indulge and feed the voice to shut it up, to pacify it.  But then it begins roaring again even louder or another voice kicks in, the voice that tells me what a fat gluttinous slob I am.
I need to realize that no matter what I do or what food plan I create and resolve to follow, the cravings and incessant thoughts about food will never stop.  I must choose to stop giving in and listening.  I think I set myself these ridiculously high expectations to follow and when I can't be perfect at them and meet them flawlessly, I get so depressed and disapointed in myself that I use food as comfort and it's a horrible cycle.  I must ease up on myself a bit and I think success will follow in a weird sort of way. 
I am so glad it is a new month because I feel as though this can be a fresh start for me, and I mean it this time.  I have no other choice.  My "plan," if you will, is this...
Monday through Friday I can eat whatever combination of "safe" foods I want (eliminates the pressure of sticking to a strict meal plan) as long as I don't exceed 500 calories.  Typically, I tend to skip breakfast anyway and eat the same fat free cottage cucumber wrap for lunch with carrot sticks and mustard for a snack.  So all that really changes is dinner which is usually soup or steamed vegetables, etc.  If the cravings set in, I've decided that rather than binge eat, I will binge drink.  If I replace food with wine and drink until I pass out, it's at least better than ingesting all that food and all those excess calories.  The weekends are still tricky for me, but I think I will either drink to avoid bingeing or allow myself fat free frozen yogurt and/or fat free cereal.  Those are really the things I crave anyway.  I've also eased up on exercise.  Rather than doing DVDs and/or going to the gym, I think I will start doing calisthentics in my room at night like jumping jacks, squats, lunges, and crunches.  I will also allow myself "cheats" like if I go home and my parents have made dinner or if my sister wants to go for sushi or salads.  I just have to make smart choices and not over eat.  That's what I really need to focus on more than anything...the bingeing and not doing it.
This morning, I consumed a cup of Quaker squares cereal with skim milk, black coffee, a bannana, and some nuts.  I think I'm going to try to avoid eating for the rest of the day or strictly eat something healthy later on.  Also, I have a doctor's appointment this Friday and I am petrified for the weigh in.  I have to lose weight before then!  I figure I won't eat all day Friday leading up to my appointment.  Anyway, I figure if I can follow this plan through until the end of the month, I can get back down to about 100 and then my goal is to be around 90-95 by New Years.  Two months or 20 pounds, no matter what!
Another motivating factor for me is that wasting all my money on food on top of paying rent and for gas and my bills has put me into debt.  My mom was kind enought to pay off the last of a loan I had taken out, and for that alone I CANNOT binge.  How can I be so selfish to put myself back into debt by spending money I don't have on disgusting food?  No way.  That right there in and of itself is motivation me to stop wasting money on junk.  Besides, I am so fucking sick of the grocery store and eating, I don't care if I ever do either ever again.  I'm feeling confident I can really succeed this time.  I'm not feeling guilty about breakfast this morning...I just have to be careful the rest of the day.  And I feel pretty confident about this week.  I didn't have work this Monday, so Tuesday will be like Monday and Wednesday like Tuesday which I'm always perfect on anyway.  And I have that doctor's appointment Friday which will motivate me to be good Thursday and Friday.  And then this weekend I am going home and I REFUSE to binge.  I'll eat healthy dinners my mom prepares and that's about it.  Believe in me...someone please believe in me.

Death by Consumption

     I am hopeless.  Utterly pathetic.  I starved and shat my way down to 101.3 pounds from 105.5 last night.  I was doing so good.  That is until I got out of bed and laid down in front of the television to watch a movie.  I had the inclination I should not have gotten out of bed.  That I should have just gone to sleep.  I made myself a bowl of popcorn.  Told myself I'd done so good, that it was a Saturday night, I was watching a movie, there's only 45 calories in popcorn, I hadn't eaten all day, and that I was 101.  I could easily lose another pound or two by Monday morning if I didn't eat again tomorrow.  But the popcorn turned into a lollipop turned into a creamsicle turned into a piece of cheese turned into me driving to McDonalds for a McFlurry (the icecream machines were down...my sign to turn around and go home but I didn't).  I ended up at Wendy's buying an Oreo parfait which turned into CVS buying cookies and candy bars and ding dongs and bingeing again and eating more laxatives.  I can't take this anymore.  I refuse to eat a stitch tomorrow or Monday.  I just can't.  I must fast at least two days and shit as much as I can.  I will start my new eating plan on Tuesday.  There's no way I'm going to be 96.9 pounds by Wednesday now.  But I'm hoping by the end of this week at least.  I am such a greedy slob.  I wasn't even hungry.  I didn't even want to binge.  Why do I keep doing it then?  What the fuck is wrong with me?  I am so scared I am losing what little self-control I had left.  I threw away everything in the trash, even if I had just bought it and didn't finish eating it.  I threw away all the take-out menus in my house.  I must avoid driving to restaurants, fast food chains, and 24-hour mini-marts.  I've done everything I know how to do to ensure this doesn't keep happening.  Not keeping trigger foods in the house, throwing away take-out menus.  I'm weighing in at 104.3.  I figure hopefully I can get back down to 101.3 again by tomorrow night.  Then maybe 99-100 by Tuesday morning.  I just don't know what to say anymore, what to think or do.  I am so disgusted in myself.  I feel the fat, see it.  I'm disgusted I even swallow all that sugar and junk, that I allow it into my body.  I cannot wait until Monday so I can get back to work and start a fresh week.  That's my problem, as soon as I fuck up I feel as though the week is already blown and I might as well just keep going.  That's why I'm hoping if I can just fast at least tomorrow and hopefully Monday as well (depending on how I feel at work), that I can start a fresh week this week and be off to a good start and not mess up, and hopefully that will prevent me from doing this again.  I can't do this anymore.  I need to embrace the hunger, the anorexia.  I must bid farewell to this slovenly greed.  That is what's killing me. 

The Girl Who Cried Food

     How do I even begin to describe this week?  As you all know, last weekend I created an elaborate Excel spreadsheet documenting the list of "safe" foods I was allowed to consume over the course of the next couple of months and all of their nutritional information.  I made a promise to myself that I would only eat foods from this list, that I would only consume 300 calories a day, that I would eat all "natural" foods and not stray from these six pre-designed meal plans I spent so much time devising.  I promised myself I'd work out twice a day.  I promised myself I would not fuck up.  And as you know, I was doing great at the start of the week.
     Sunday I fasted.  I felt I needed a "cleanse" day after my three day bout of bulimia ranging from Thursday to Saturday.  Monday I consumed 188 calories and worked out twice.  Tuesday, 250 calories or thereabouts and exercised twice.  Come Wednesday morning I was down to 96.9 pounds on the scale from the 101.2 I was weighing in at after my binge/purge episodes.  I felt on top of the world.  To date, that is my lowest weigh-in number.  That is now my number to beat.  Except come Wednesday, my body was also starving.  I can't remember if I exercised in the morning, I was so goddamn tired.  But I made it through the day at work (barely).  I was so tired towards the end of the day I could barely stand.  And of course when everyone left for home and their awaiting hot dinners, I consumed some nuts/trail mix and had a chew/spit episode with my colleague's candy stash.  I felt like such a fuck up and was freaking out about the excess calories and fat grams I had just ingested.  Nuts were not on my list of safe foods and here I was fucking up again, straying from my diet, already breaking the rules.  I was contemplating whether or not to go straight home or go to the gym as I was feeling extremely depressed, tired, groggy, dizzy, hungry, weak, and the dregs of manic starvation and exhaustion were starting to creep through my veins.  I opted for the gym.  The elliptical to be exact.  I figured if I could just do a half an hour I could be partially satisfied I at least burned off the foods I consumed before the nuts and could burn off the nuts during my morning exercise session the following day.
     I weighed in on the gym scale when I got there.  It's the kind of scale at doctors' offices.  I put the main weight on the 100 mark and the smaller weight on 0.  The balance echoed a dull hollow thunk as it hit the metal bar below it.  I had to adjust the main weight to 50 pounds and adjust the smaller weight on the top within the 40 pound range.  I was officially weighing in within the doube-digits.  A woman was waiting behind me to weigh her child, perhaps six years of age.  I remember her whispering something under her breath when I stepped off and she realized the scale was adjusted for the weigh-in of a child.  She didn't have to move the lever to fifty...it was already there.  I changed and hopped on the elliptical.  I realized people at the gym were staring at me.  I'm kind of used to this by now and still occasionally deny that it has anything to do whatsoever with my weight or physical appearance.  I managed to get through a half hour on the machine and burn 200 calories.  Then everything started spinning and my hands were shaking and my knees wobbling and I thought, my God, just make it to the stationary bike so you can sit down and rest while you burn your last one hundred.  I managed to make it to the bike, turn the machine on, pedal two rotations, and then said, "I can't fucking do this."  My legs felt like bricks.  Like literal stumps of lead.  I couldn't push the pedals on the bike.  I could barely walk to the locker room.  I managed to make it into the women's locker room breathing like I'd just run a fucking marathon or something.  I realized I had left the key to the lock that was securing my locker in one of the machine's cubby holes in the gym.  "Fuck!" I shouted and fielded women's nasty glances.  People don't understand the massive amounts of energy you must mentally and physically will your body to produce for you to do the simplest of tasks when you're starving.  To have to walk back down the hall felt like torture.  I got the key, grabbed my shit, caught my reflection in the mirror on the way out of the locker room:  dark circles around my eyes, pale as a ghost, a long, worn expression on my face, thin (I guess).  As I was walking out of the gym with a pained look on my face and still breathing like a hog, a woman took one look at me, nudged her husband, and started whispering to him and staring at me.  Everyone else was staring too though so I figured I must have looked like I was about to pass out, and boy did I feel like I was going to.  I managed to drive home (thank God), stumbled into my kitchen, and poured myself a tiny bowl of cereal consisting of blueberries, skim milk, and Quaker oat squares with a touch of brown sugar.  I promised myself if I'd only have a little tiny bowl to boost my energy, everything would be okay.  But one tiny bowl turned into another medium-sized bowl which turned into another large-sized bowl, and pretty soon I was bingeing on all the cereal I had in my apartment.  I was freezing cold and shivering at this point also.  So...get the visual here...I am sitting, first in my kitchen and then when I mustered up enough energy to haul my ass to the couch in the living room, wrapped in my winter pea coat shivering, shoveling heaping spoonfuls of cereal into my parched mouth, rocking back and forth with my gaze fixated straight through the Family Guy episode on tv.  (Let me break here for a moment and mention the irony of the universe and my connection to it.  The episode was the one where the town of Quahog suffers from a nuclear blast and there isn't any food anywhere and everyone is starving and all they do the whole show is try and find food and talk about how much it sucks to be starving.  I find it ironic this episode was on when I myself was starving and scrounging for food.  I also remember the irony of my fortune cookie in that sushi restaurant I went to before my ex and I broke up...my word to learn was refrigerator and my fortune read, "Keep your mouth shut."  I also find it ironic that the notebook I designated as my food diary says "FAT BOOK" in big chunky letters across the back.  I did not see this when I bought the book nor when I designated it as my food diary.  I didn't notice this until weeks later when I had already started recording my daily food intake.)  I then realized I would have to purge all that cereal.  I was still so cold, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and stand under the hot water of the shower while I vomited down the drain (plus I think the couple who live in the apartment below me can hear me gagging and wretching if there isn't a sound filter).  I discovered that cereal is really easy to purge.  All that milk consumed with it ensures you already have a lot of liquids in your tummy and that the cereal is already mushed up nice and good.  So I heaved out bowl after bowl of cereal and milk and blueberries onto my shower floor and prodded it down the drain.  I immediately felt better, less bloated, and was still only 98.9 on the scale the following morning and swore I'd start anew. 
     However, Thursday, I binged again.  And Friday.  Thursday, I managed to make it through work again (barely my energy levels were SO low).  I stopped into the faculty lounge to pee before my commute home but got distrated by a birthday cake sitting out on the table and cut myself a huge piece, and stuck it in my lunch bag "for later."  I never peed.  Waited until I got on the highway, then had a chew/spit episode with this ginormous piece of chocolate fudge cake.  Because some of it had possibly seeped in and I ingested calories anyway, I then stopped at the grocery store, McDonald's, and Dunkin Donuts a few miles away from my apartment.  Funny thing is, I kind of didn't even really want to.  I kept telling myself, "just go home and go to sleep.  You're going to regret this."  But instead, I got a Debbie's coffee cake at the market along with a cookies n' cream hershey bar, loaf of banana nut bread, two flavors of icecream, and bag of candy corn.  Stopped at Dunk's and got a sugary latte, some cream cheese, and a danish.  Then Mcdonald's, two cheeseburgers and a medium fry.  In my embarraassment and haste to not be seen in the parking lot (God forbid anyone was acknowledging my human act of neediness and weakness and saw that I was in fact the fat slob I try so hard to cover up and starve away), I drove straight over the fucking curb dividing the parking lanes and thought for sure I had popped all of my car's tires and ruined the undercarriage of my car.  Everyone now WAS staring at me of course, and one asshole gave me a cocky thumbs-up.  I was fucking humiliated and dreadfully worried about my car.  I raced home, pulled into my driveway convinced my car was sitting much lower and was lop-sided, buried my head in my hands, and cried.  I just sat there with the rain streaking down my windshield and pounding on my car's roof sobbing into my hands like a blubbering baby.  Bags and bags of food and wrappers littered my car.  I kept thinking how I didn't want to do this anymore.  That I COULDN'T do this anymore.  Wasting my money.  Ruining and trashing my car (there was chocolate fudge from my sticky fingers all over everything in addition to dried, crusted sugar frosting that accompanied my cinna-stix last weekend).  I was scared to go inside.  I wasn't hungry.  I didn't want to binge.  I felt extremely alone and scared and pathetic, and I didn't want to purge.
     I laid out all the food on my kitchen table and knew I was out of control.  I ate everything, tried to purge.  But I was too tired and too emotional.  I called a good friend of mine instead and sobbed to him over the phone.  "I'm fucking out of control," I whined.  "You need help," he said.  I told him how everyone at work can't stand to be around me, that no one talks to me anymore.  I told him how everyone stares at me no matter where I go, and I feel so othered.  If I'm going to look at this from a psychological standpoint, I binged Thursday not because of starvation (like I did on Wednesday) but because I was feeling anxious and I was feeling lonely as fuck.  I was feeling so ostracized at work by my colleagues and friends and so I turned to food as a comfort.  I could fill and satiate the emptiness I was emotionally feeling physically with food.  Except it didn't work, and I only felt like more of a pathetic loser.  I ate three laxatives and told myself I wouldn't eat for the next three days to make up for not purging.  I was 101.2 pounds on scale Friday morning...exactly back where I fucking started at the beginning of the week.  I debated getting a coffee with skim milk (could I really consider that a fast?).  Decided I would in fact get the coffee and that I would even go so far as to brave walking INSIDE the coffee shop so I could prove to myself how strong and controlled I was by resisting all of that temptation.  Exept the line was so long that it gave me TOO much time to stand there contemplating the rows of muffins and I ended up buying the coffee and two muffins to boot.  Got to work, ate the muffins with cream cheese and then in the faculty lounge found PLATTERS of brownies and cookies.  PLATTERS.  I grabbed a huge plate of sweets and started cramming them into my mouth until a colleague of mine came into my room to find me and give me a brochure on the confidential employee assistance program we have.  I was so embarrassed.  "Sorry I'm just being a pig right now," I sheepishly muttered.  She said, "please honey."  She sat down and me with my big mouth started crying again and told her I wasn't even supposed to eat today and I purposely went inside the shop to prove to myself how much control I had and look at me!  I told her how my anorexia is now spiraling into bulimia.  I told her I'm sad for myself and feel out of control.  I told her I feel like everyone at work hates me.  I told her how sometimes at night I feel like I'm dying my chest is so tight and my heart fluttering and my stomach in so much pain and my breathing haggard.  I told her sometimes I wonder if I'm not just better off dead because sometimes I think it would HAVE to be better than this.  That I would finally be able to find some sense of peace in my life.  I SHOULD NOT have said that.  Some things are better left unsaid, let me tell you.
     The next hour I was in and out of the bathroom burning up and feeling the writhing effects of the laxatives.  The next hour I was being called down to my boss' office.  Uhoh.  I walked in smiling and chipper, asking if everything was alright.  My boss sat down, clearly nervous, and said, "We're all very worried about you."  I, playing dumb, "My gosh, whyyyy?" I wheedled.  Fucking charade was OVER.  My co-worker told my managers what I'd said and what I've been doing and that she was scared I was suicidal and/or was planning on hurting myself and we needed to get me some help.  I told my boss I shouldn't have said that, that the comment was misconstrued, that I had no purposeful intent of harming myself.  I told her I just push myself too hard at times and get overwhelmed and that I'm just tired and need a rest.  She said my job performance is not the issue, she in fact said everyone knows what a wonderful worker I am and that I should not worry about that as they are not worried about that.  Instead, they are worried about me the individual because I have so much potential and I'm such a good person and they don't want to see me struggling or end up in the hospital (or dead).  She said they couldn't live with that guilt and want to help in any way they can.  I, of course, start crying again and saying how embarrassed I am and I feel like I have this big neon sign that's flashing FUCKED UP across my forehead for everyone to see.  She said no one was judging me and not everyone knew but yes, that people had approached them and expressed their concern for me and my health and my behavior and they too were aware of some things but just didn't know what to say or how.  She said my weight loss has become quite noticeable and I'm worrying people.  I said I didn't think I looked like a concern which in turn made her look more concerned, and she said if I don't get help something's gonna crack.  She said I'm going to pass out or get dizzy (I almost burst out laughing here and told her I'm dizzy all the time but decided against it).  She said I'm wreaking damage on my body and my health and pretty soon something is going to snap and all the things around me, my job included, are going to start suffering as well.  The sick part of me thinks as long as everyone else thinks I'm "working through my issues" and seeing a therapist, they'll think someone else is worrying about me and keeping tabs on me so they won't have to.  So in a way, I'm kind of relieved.  She walked me to the psychologist's office, and I spoke with her for a bit.  I have an appointment to meet with her Tuesday afternoon so we can figure out a "game plan" for me moving forward.  I wanted to say my game plan was to work on the bulimia and become a better anorectic but again, I thought of the "some things better left unsaid" rule. 
     I then ate an entire bag of goldfish at my desk and binged when I got home on Taco Bell, Olive Garden, 7-11 and mini=marts treats and candies.  I purged once and took 6 more laxatives and now I'm weighing in at 104.4 and feel like a DISGUSTING cow and a big PHONY.  I mean here everyone is concerned about me having this eating disorder and worried that I'm not eating when in fact, I can't STOP eating.  A part of me thinks everyone, myself included, is over reacting and that I'm fine.  I just need to get the binge eating under control.  If I didn't have that than I really would be fine.  Because I don't think I have a problem when I'm restricting.  I'm strong and powerful and very much in control...just health conscious.  It's when I'm waving my credit card around like a fucking flag and shoveling food into my face to either throw it up, explosively shit it out, or fast my stomach flat again that I think I might have a problem.  But even then, I'm eating so what's the big deal, really?  A part of me is secretly relieved that I got called out 'cause now I feel like the cat's officially out of the bag and I don't have to feel so tense around people anymore.  I'm also relieved I'm going to have an official go-to person to talk to.  I think that's what kills me half the time.  I am a blabbermouth and I NEED to be able to talk to someone once in awhile.  I can't to my colleagues anymore.  My family can't know the true extent of this.  And I have no more friends.  So that leaves me this blog which during the week I don't have the energy to write on and none of you ever say anything anyway, so I'm not sure if anyone's even reading what I write to begin with.
     Anywho, I have a new plan.  (P.S. I just weighed in at 103.5.  Down exactly two pounds from last night.)  I am planning on fasting today and tomorrow.  So Saturday and Sunday I do not eat.  I figure this will partially make up for all the calories I consumed over the course of the past few days.  I will also take laxatives each day (I already took some Thursday night and felt the effects Friday morning and took some again last night where I felt effects around 4am this morning.  I recently took three more and will take more again tonight heading into tomorrow.)  I may purchase diurectics and take those the beginning of next week as well depending on what the scale says Monday morning after my two day fast and laxative attack.  I then devised a new meal plan for myself.  I'm realizing that allowing myself various meal plans is way too much choice for me.  It's too complicated to have to figure out what I'm in the mood for and then what if I make the wrong choice?  So I came up with a 300 calorie meal plan that I will eat Monday through Friday.  Yes, I do have other foods in my house, so I figure Saturday will be my "free" day.  Meaning, I can have a baked potato or yogurt or my fat free cottage cheese/cucumber wraps or soup or chicken and chow-mein.  In other words, any of the "spare" things I have lying around my house as long as it's still within the 300 calorie range and healthy.  Sunday is still my fast/cleanse day and weekends (Friday and Satuday nights) are still devoted to laxatives too so I can flush out what I consumed throughout the week.  I'm going to wait until Friday night rather than Thursday night to take them though so I don't feel sick at work on Friday.  It really sucks being sick like that at work.  Like really sucks.  I'm going to aim to try my best to work out twice a day still: strength training in the morning and cardio in the evenings.  However, I'm going to try and ease up on myself a bit if I'm becoming overly hungry, tired, and weak especially as the week progresses.  I'll see how this week goes with the exercise, but I may have to devise a plan for that as well like rotating every other day with strength traning calisthenics and gym cardio.  So I'm still getting both kinds of exercise but rotating the schedule of when I do them and only working out once a day.  The less you eat, the harder it becomes to work out more than once.  I really wish that fucking bitch of a social worker I talked to at that eating disorders hospital didn't stress that question so much.  It makes me feel awful having to say I only work out ONCE a day (God forbid) if I ease down on my exercise regiments.  I figure that just might help me a little bit with feeling so hungry and weak and tired.  We'll see.
     Anyway, Monday through Friday will go like this:
Breakfast-
1.  Large coffee with skim milk and splenda
2.  13 medium sized strawberries
Lunch-
1.  3 cups of spinach
2.  1/2 cup grilled chicken
3.  Mustard for dressing
4.  Diet soda
Dinner-
1.  Popcorn with salt and spray butter
2.  Raw pepper with mustard
Snack/Dessert-
1.  Sugar free jello or a sugar free popsicle
Equates to exactly 300 calories and eliminates fat and sugar for the most part.  I figure I have a fruit in there, a carbohydrate with the popcorn, some veggies, protein, and a dairy with the milk in my coffee.  Pickles, diet soda, coffee, and tea are obviously fair game as those don't have any calories.  I've made a serious promise (I know I say this every week but seriously) to let go of the binge eating and the bulimia.  I figure if I am EXTREMELY hungry I can also have some trail mix to give me a boost from a natural food/fat or cereal because it's low fat and easy to purge.  But those are my ONLY two cheat foods and cereal is the only thing I'm allowed to binge and purge on.  My goal is to be back around 100-101 by Monday morning like I was last week and to be 96.9 by Wednesday like I was last week.  I wanted to be 95 by the end of this month which leaves me exactly seven days....sigh.  I don't know if I can do it.  I figure if I can at least be 95 by the end of the first week in October and then it is my goal to be 92.  That's like my long-term goal for now, 92, and 95 will be my short-term goal.  I just have to stop creating more work for myself and realize that if I really need more food, I can have another bag of popcorn or a fat free cottage cheese wrap or some broth but that I MUST avoid fatty, processed foods and that I CANNOT under any circumstances go inside a Dunkin Donuts.  I also have to avoid the faculty lounge as much as possible.  I have to reason with myself that even a chew/spit episode makes me feel like I fucked up which triggers a binge for me because I feel as though I already ruined everything.  So I simply CANNOT touch these foods.  I can't chew them and spit them out, I can't hoard them, I simply don't have the self-control to be around them.  I try to remind myself that Thanksgiving will be so much better if I'm feeling thin and won't have to suffer the guilt.  That I can eat stuffing and cranberry sauce and turkey and gravy and greenbean casserole and rolls with butter and apple cider and pie and cookies, etc.  That I have something to work towards.  I also bought a pack of cigarettes and am going to start smoking again.  I figure for the car rides home when I'm anxious and stressed and tired and hungry and pissed and when the mania starts to kick in.  Rather than buying food and bingeing, I'll save money by buying the cigarettes and just smoke and smoke and smoke all the way home and all through the night if I have to.  The chewing gum wracks up calories (it's five calories per stick) and only makes me hungry.  I also realize that when I'm feeling extremely tired, I binge.  So if I can just lie in bed and relax or go for a walk instead, it will help.  Maybe I should chalk up these past few weeks as a learning experience where I'm reflecting on my patterns and behaviors and devising a strategy that is going to work for me.  I figure this first month back to work has been stressful and has been a trial/error period for me.  So now that it's almost the start of a new month, if I can just get back to 96.9 and go from there, it'll all be okay.  So there we have it folks.  I feel so fat and heavy and bloated and sick and like I have a huge double chin.  I really truly mean that October is going to be a fresh start for me and I'll get even lower than 96.9.  I mean it was easy to starve over the summer, I didn't have shit to do.  And this was my first month back to work, so I had to figure out what's doable for myself.  Now that I know what will work for me and what my traps are, I'll be a success!  Do I sound like the boy who cried wolf or the girl who cried food?

Surprise!

     Woke up this Monday morning weighing in at 100.7 pounds on scale.  Did a circuit training DVD at 4am.  Tried on three different outfits before I settled on a high-waisted, knee length black pencil skirt with black heels and stockings, a black silk cami tucked in and patterned with retro, multi-colored squares, a black cardigan, my hair down and wavy and bobby-pinned on one side, and a pink bracelet to match the pink patterns on my shirt plus a watch.  Too bad I missed the memo it was dress-down day at work.  Boo.  I still looked cute!  A colleague of mine asked me the other day, "Have you recycled any clothes yet?"  Meaning, have I reworn something I'd previously worn before since returning to work.  Nope.  Did I mention I'm somewhat of a shopaholic and am obsessed with my appearance the more weight I lose?  Hey, what can I say, sometimes it's nice to treat yourself to a new outfit instead of food, especially once you've lost weight and need a new outfit to prove it.  Although I still thought my butt looked incredibly big in my skirt today.
     Settled on packing a lavash wrap with half a cup of fat free cottage cheese and half a cup of sliced cucumber, two diet sodas, and a sugar free jello for lunch.  Took three fat burners/diet pills this morning after my work out, made myself a cup of vanilla caramel tea (0 calories), and headed off to work.  Did I mention I absolutely love the Fall?  It is hands-down my favorite season.  I live for the Fall.  The foilage.  The crisp, burnt colors of Autumn.  The sharp air.  I even whipped my pea-coat out this morning!  I love stockings and the click-click-click sound of my heels against pavement.  I like fashionable scarves and Autumn coats.  I love the steam issuing forth from my coffee cup between my pinched fingers.  I love pumpkins and the flavors of Fall.  I love hayrides and scarecrows and scary movies and the blanket of eerie fog that settles over the highway on my way to work in the mornings.  I love Halloween (it's the only time it's acceptable to dig morbidness and death and pig out on candy...I mean who wouldn't?).  I love Thanksgiving and apple cider and stuffing and cranberry sauce and pie.  I love Jack-0-Lanterns and skeletons (of course).  I love maroon marigolds and candles.  I love fresh notebooks and new beginnings.  I can't explain it, but the Fall enriches my soul.
     Anyway, I had tea in the morning.  Then a couple hours later made myself a vanilla biscotti flavored black coffee with two splends (0 calories).  At lunch, only consumed half my wrap with a diet soda.  Come late afternoon, consumed the other half of my wrap and another diet soda which put me at around 188 calories.  Oh, did I mention that the first thing I saw when I walked into the staff lounge this morning was a GINORMOUS chocolate and strawberry birthday cake coated with chocolate frosting and those flat kind of sprinkles as well as a whole tub of chocolate chip muffins and cinammon buns?  Sigh.  I don't understand why the universe keeps testing me.  Either that or conspiring against me.  And I don't understand why people feel the need to share their fatty sugared covered temptations with others.  It's like people need the silent acknowledgement that other people are getting larger right along with them so they don't feel so bad or something.  I managed to go the entire day without even so much as a taste...even made it through lunch with the cake right in front of my face and everyone cutting themselves huge pieces and offering me some.  Even denied my colleague's offerings of sandwiches, plums, and snacks across the table.  I notice that come late afternoon and evening is the hardest for me.  Before I left work, I will admit, I loaded a napkin with a cinammon bun, chocolate chip muffin, and a slice of cake and crept into the bathroom where I chewed and spit out each item.  I felt kind of guilty about this and the ten pieces of cereal I ate last night during my fast day.  However, I immediately went to the gym after work where I did the stationary bike for 45 minutes and burned 300 calories and then walked on the treadmill (I was starting to get cramps and couldn't run) for 20 minutes and burned another 75.  I figured the 375 cancelled out the 188 calorie wrap I ate, any calories that may have got in from the chew/spit episode this afternoon, and the calories consumed due to the bites of dry cereal last night.  I also exercised this morning and burned calories throughout the day.  I also peed like a racehorse all goddamn day.  I don't know what it was!  Every five minutes I was running to the bathroom to urinate.  It's as if the laxatives finally hit me but in the opposite way.  It's as though I took diuretics or something.  It was great though because I felt like my body was flushing out so much water weight and sodium retention and was cleansing my system of built up toxins as my urine was pure and clear!
     When I came home from the gym (and urinated again!) I weighed in at....wait for it...98.7!!!  I am so fucking excited as I was expecting my weight loss to go wayyyy slower.  I'm still a tad nervous to trust it entirely.  However, I already plan on starting up on the fat burners again, continuining to drink lots and lots of fluids, and am going to repeat the meal plan I ate today again tomorrow (I sware those cottage cheese/cucumber wraps work wonders!).  Did I also mention I put the jello back in the fridge?  I feel like I've done really well today and have tried to keep my stress/anxiety levels to a minimum which I think has also helped with weight loss.  Although it's funny because I think my butt looks huge and I have a ring of fat around my midruff I didn't have a week ago.  Maybe it's just in my head, who knows?  I am aiming to be 95 pounds by the end of September.  That gives me two weeks.  If I can remain dilligent and do as good as I did today, I know I can get there!  I'm settling down on my couch with a delicious scented candle ablaze, a warm, decaf in my hands and a comfy set of pjs.  Ahhh...I'm actually feeling pretty good today (despite my sore throat!). 
     One more thing I thought I'd share today is that I definitely notice that my bulimia is triggered (not only by severe starvation to the point where it becomes unbearable and I MUST eat) but also by stress/anxiety.  Take Friday for instance.  I was already half-way home and had looked forward to attending the Greek festival all week.  Yet as soon as one thing went wrong (my credit card was declined and would not let me purchase gas.  I later learned the entire Visa company was offline and this had nothing to do with me personally although it was still pretty fucking embarrassing), I totally cracked and all I wanted to do was to get home and binge/purge.  It's like when everything is going wrong and the world around me is chaos, I binge and purge.  But when I try to remain calm and maintain a sense of control and order, I am much more aware and in control of my eating.  In fact, it feels kind of good to experience those beloved hunger pains and stabs of emptiness.  And it definitely feels good to 98.7 on scale!  Let's hope it'll keep on keeping up...and by that I mean going down!

Sunday's Shadow

Last night I weighed in at 105.5 after completing my three-day session of bingeing and purging...and bingeing.  This morning I weighed in at 101.8 after a night's sleep and expelling some of that binge with the help of my laxatives.  I took two more ex-lax's last night because the five dulcolax tablets I took Friday night weren't seeming to have much of an effect.  Therefore, I've gained around two pounds as a result of my weekend's binge fest (up from 99.5).  I am trying not to panic about this as I know that if I stick to my rules and new-laid plan, I will lose that weight within the week.  I find it is typically easy to lose weight gained due to bingeing over a short period of time.  Hopefully this rings true for me in this circumstance as well.  I've realized that I am just so sick of this cycle and that if I did not gain weight by bingeing and had to concentrate on losing the weight gained, then I wouldn't keep back tracking and would be making more progress.  Basically, I'm sick of bingeing.  I feel as though the food controls me when I do and that I am subject to something else's demands.  Anorexia makes me feel as though I am in control and have the power to resist and avoid food whereas the bingeing makes me feel like a prisoner with no control or strength.
     So far today I have had two cups of tea (0 calories).  I did not exercise today (nor did I Friday or Saturday) but figure I will start up again tomorrow and today will simply be my cleanse day.  I have been quite dizzy all day but think it is most likely a result of an electrolyte imbalance due to purging and the laxatives.  I am also very tired.  I will go to bed early tonight.  Tomorrow, I am going to only drink tea and/or black coffee until lunch where I will consume a low carb lavash wrap with half a cup of fat free cottage cheese and cucumber slices.  It may be a smart idea for me to eat half at lunch and save the other half for later.  I am also allowed a sugar free jello.  That will equate to three hundred calories.  I am going to do a circuit training DVD tomorrow morning and go to the gym after work to fit in some cardio (I figure the bike allows me to sit down while still manages to make me sweat, is a great work out for my thighs, and burns around 300 calories for 60 minutes worth). 
     I forced myself to shower and shave today and pluck my eyebrows and get a manicure and buy some styling spray for my hair so I don't look like such a wreck when I return to work tomorrow.  I'm considering cutting my hair but it's so long and I've spent so long growing it out that the thought makes me a little sad.  I think I'll work with it for now and maybe get it styled soon, add some layers or trim up my side bang.  I notice that I invest much more consideration into my overall appearance such as clothes/outfits, hair, nails, etc. when I go out or go to work.  Even though I apparently still manage to look like a haggard, worn heap of a mess.  It's like this disease makes me paranoid about appearing ugly or fat and so I try to choose outfits that will flatter my figure.  It especially makes you more paranoid when you know that people are "watching" you 24/7.  It makes you want to actually give them a reason to stare, as I feel like my face looks so bloated from bingeing and I just feel huge.  It's been nice to feel somewhat empty and dizzy today, like I'm gaining some control back and am purifying myself after my disgusting bout of bulimia.  Anorexia is difficult and it takes time to work yourself into the frenzy the disease demands, but I have to remind myself how hard I've worked and how far I've come and how close I am and not give in to the temptations of the flesh.  I hope to be about 95 by the end of October if I can manage to truly go the rest of this month and next keeping to my strict diet plan.  It is my immediate goal to be back where I was before my binge (99.5) by the end of this week.  I am trying to give myself manageable goals so I don't get discouraged and binge.  If I do better than that, great!  But if I don't...I'm going to start panicking.  Oh my Sunday shadow...my worry and my wish.

Homeward Bound

I can’t quite remember the last time I wrote.  I haven’t had Internet access in quite some time and have been so busy with work that I haven’t had an opportunity to write nor to check my last posting.  So I’ll start with what I can remember….

I am officially back to work and one of my worst fears has come true.  I was so nervous to return to work coming off of summer vacation because I feared that I would begin eating again.  My job takes an incredible amount of physical, mental, and emotional exertion.  It requires me to constantly move around, appear enthusiastic, remain focused, and expend an exorbitant amount of energy on processing and synthesizing information.  Now, this could work to my advantage considering the number of hours I spend awake burning a shit ton of calories.  However, when you lack self-control and start eating a shit ton of calories, the two sort of cancel each other out. 

Now, the week I returned for professional development, I was still managing to do pretty well.  I didn’t eat at all during the mornings, only ate a few bites of measly salad in the afternoons, and was sticking to my fat free cottage cheese and cucumber sandwiches on lavash bread.  I had a couple of slips during the hurricane when I was still dating my boyfriend where I binged on a box of Milano cookies and cheese and crackers (purged), ate a sushi dinner, and consumed that bowl of Ramen noodle soup.  I believe I was weighing in around that time at about 99-101 pounds.  I also remember managing to get down to about 97.4 the day before my other binge of donuts, Bertucci’s, and Friendly’s before my visit to the eating disorders hospital at which point I was weighing in at around 98.6 after my laxative spurt.  Slowly but surely I creeped back up to 99.5 where I have remained for at least the past two weeks.  (I managed to weigh in at 99.0 pounds one day, but that didn’t last very long.)  So, as you can see, I have been doing pitiful.  I have been yo-yoing and my body has finally settled on gaining weight and hasn’t budged an inch backward. 

I did have quite the interesting experience last weekend, however, when I returned home to visit my family which made me feel proud in a sick way that I must have done something right at some point in this twisted mess of a situation to warrant what happened next.  I didn’t eat anything the entire day (minus a coffee and a handful of nuts and a bite of my sister’s bagel) as my mother was preparing an “end of summer” barbeque for us later.  I was incredibly tired (due to waking up at 4am every day that week for work), bloated from my period (which only lasted two days), was constipated (I can’t dump anymore without the aid of laxatives), and felt like a fat cow.  I spent the day walking around, touring Newport with my sister in the heat on no food which made me even more lethargic and the bones in my lower back were beginning to ache in excruciating pain.  I don’t know why that happens, but anytime I fail to ingest a substantial number of calories for some time, the bones in my lower back/hip region and my knee joints begin to ache.  When we made it back to my parents’ place for dinner, I allowed myself to eat…and eat…and eat.  I started cramming trail mix, party mix, oatmeal raisin cookies with icing from the bakery, oreo cookies, ice cream, goldfish, and crackers into my mouth whilst waiting for the mouth-watering ribs, potato salad, corn on the cob, and focaccia bread to finish cooking.  By the time I had finished dinner, I was so full that my stomach was disgustingly distended and I felt like I was going to be sick.  I also became ridiculously tired.  I notice that after I binge, my blood sugar levels (normally low) skyrocket through the roof and I crash and burn.  Rather than giving me a boost of energy, my body spends whatever little stored energy it has on raising my glucose levels and processing what has become a foreign entity to my blood stream that after this is all over, I pass out.  I dragged myself up to my childhood bedroom, lied down, and thought I was going to die.  My heart was racing, I started to feel nauseous, and my stomach felt like it was literally about to burst open.  It was the worst feeling.  My entire body was squirming from the inside out and all I wanted to do was either die and get it the hell over with or throw-up.  I heard one of my parents walk to the bottom of the stairs, listen.  I know they were determining whether I had snuck away to the bathroom and whether I was throwing up.  I think they suspect I might, but as I was not in the bathroom and no retching sounds were issuing from my bedroom, they walked away content that I was simply resting.  I ended up passing out until I was woken up by my sister…dessert was ready.  I managed to haul myself out of bed, eat a s’more, and returned to bed at 8pm.  I ate three laxatives before bed, woke up at around 1am, and snuck downstairs to binge again (even though I was still full and feeling nauseous and wasn’t even hungry).  I ate a huge bowl of cornflakes cereal with honey and raisins, a piece of cinnamon raisin bread toasted with butter, a toaster strudel, some more Oreos with milk, more ice cream with whipped cream, and a bunch of other things I probably just can’t remember.  Went to bed feeling disgustingly full again and promising myself I would fast on Sunday.  Woke up five hours later…the laxatives were taking hold.  I snuck downstairs again and relieved myself on the toilet, stomach writhing.  I felt awfully sick and knew it was simply a matter of waiting for the laxatives to fully take effect until I would feel better and could return to bed.  So I laid a towel down on the ground and proceeded to catch some zzz’s on the bathroom floor until my next dumping spell.  I remembered hearing that if you lie on your left side, it helps your body digest and relieve itself of constipation and gas.  So to speed up the process, I lay on my left side, and right away a terrible wave of nausea washed over me and I began vomiting, and I mean vomiting, into the toilet.  Mouthfuls of undigested food was spewing forth from my wretched mouth.  Granted, I felt better after it was all done, but I got to admit…it was scary.  I realized for the first time that I couldn’t binge eat anymore.  Not like I’ve always had.  My body couldn’t take it anymore.  My stomach was too shrunken and my body couldn’t digest all that food.  So it only had one option, throw it back up.  As usually I make myself vomit after I’ve eaten a good amount of food like that but couldn’t self-induce it due to my circumstances and location, my body took it upon itself to do it for me. 

Two hours later, I found myself in my mother’s bed, crying that I was sick and did not feel good.  I ended up leaping up from bed thirty minutes later as my body went into its second spell of hideous vomiting.  Secretly, I was relieved that my body was tossing back the feast and would not be digesting all of those hundreds of calories I’d consumed and was proud in a fucked up sort of way that my body was literally going into shock as a result of all that consumption.  It proved to me that my body must literally be starving as a “normal” meal was foreign to it.  It could not digest food anymore and simply did not know what else to do but to get rid of it.  At the same time though, I felt like hell, was morbidly embarrassed, and knew I was in deep shit.  I mean, it’s not every day your child comes home looking rail thin, pale, and rickety, gorges herself, and spends the entire next day explosively vomiting and shitting into the latrine while wearing pink flannel pajama bottoms patterned with puppies and dog bone biscuits (I am 24 and no longer live at home by the way).  I was freezing to the bone, shivering, shaking, was pale as a ghost, terribly exhausted with dark circles under my eyes, and knew I was scaring the hell out of my parents.  As I keeled over the toilet bowl, I heard my mother run downstairs and begin whispering hurriedly to my father…”not well,” “sick,” “eating disorder,” “this is serious,” “doctor’s appointment,” "needs to move back home," were some of the words and phrases I caught.  My parents know for sure now that I have an eating disorder, although they are still unaware of its full extent.

Sunday morning when I finally hauled myself out of bed and showered, my mother forced me to eat breakfast consisting of French toast and fruit salad.  Monday, it was back to work.  I have been trying to survive throughout the work week on 200-300 calories.  I’ll just say that I am doing horribly.  I went grocery shopping and bought a bunch of foods other than my usual selections, and although they consisted mostly of vegetables, it was way too much variety for me.  I find it much simpler to eat the same things every day.  It ensures you’re consuming the same amount of calories and reduces the amount of stress and anxiety over what to eat and pack for lunch.  I have been “picking” and “biting” foods after my daily caloric allotment has been consumed, have been eating half of one of my colleague’s sandwiches at lunch, and have been snacking far too frequently.  I’ve also been having too many chew/spit episodes, especially at work which scares the hell out of me.  I need to control myself.  God forbid anyone ever walked in and saw me.  Or God forbid they walked in when my mouth was crammed with food and I’d be forced to swallow.  Anyway, if I step back and am honest with myself, all that chewing and spitting and snacking and eating others’ leftovers is accounting for hundreds and hundreds of excess calories per week.  No wonder I’m not losing any weight. 

And low and behold, I binged this weekend.  Thursday I left work after eating a shit ton of chex mix, candy bars, and trail mix, stopped at Dunkin Donuts, got a coffee roll, muffin, and munchkins with a sugary latte, stopped at McDonalds and got a Big Mac with fries, stopped at the grocery store and got nacho chips with dip, cookie dough, whipped cream, ice cream, Celeste pizza, goldfish, trail mix, cookies, cereal…I mean you name it, I got it.  I binged and purged and then forced myself to stay at the gym for two hours where I burned 500 calories.  I went from 99.5 to 102.7.  I took three laxatives and felt them during the first half of the next day at work, managed to get down to 101.2 (this morning 101).  Then, I was supposed to go to the Greek festival with my family Friday night, but in my bulimic stage of this disorder, food is a drug to me and I am an addict.  All I wanted to do was get home, polish off the rest of my binge foods in privacy, and purge.  So I did, but not without stopping at Dunks again, buying another sugary coffee, a bacon, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwich on a plain bagel, candied chex mix, and a bag of candy corn.  I ate all that and the rest of my binge foods from the previous night, purged, ate five laxatives, and passed out.  This morning, avowing I would fast today and tomorrow before returning to work on Monday, I yet again fucked up.  Binged on Reese’s cups, candy bars, cinnamon pretzel sticks from Annie’s with sugared frosting, a chicken Panini with pasta salad and potato chips, a piece of pumpkin bread with cream cheese and pumpkin latte from Starbucks, a pumpkin muffin from Dunks, a large white hot chocolate, a small hot apple cider, a cheese danish, a chicken pot pie, lollipops, and puked.  All I can fucking smell and taste is throw up.  I feel like my entire apartment reeks of throw up although it’s immaculate.  Maybe it’s just in my head.  My throat is raw and I’ve developed a cold from cramming my sticky, unwashed fingers down the back of my throat in haste.  I no longer sleep anymore, and I am a disgusting, fat cow. 

So, after all of my past couple of weeks’ snacking and frenzied, crazed chewing and spitting and bingeing and purging, I have a new plan.  Not to eat. 

Today is Saturday.  It is 3:30.  I have already binged on an exorbitant amount of food and purged.  I feel tired and disgusting.  I am waiting for the five laxatives I ate last night to take hold.  My throat is raw and swollen and infected and it hurts.  I am sick, physically and mentally.  Today has already been blown.  This week has been blown.  Last week was blown.  I am in the low hundreds on the scale (which feels huge to me as I am used to being less), I am bloated and flabby, I have not exercised in two days, and I am fucking determined.

I have fucked up long enough.  Besides, if I’m honest with myself, I really hate bulimia.  It sucks.  The panic, the crazed, frenzied anxiety over finding food, as much food as possible, shoving it into your face as quickly as possible, and then having to throw it all back up amidst tears and cursing your own human weakness.  It’s all quite pathetic really.  Starving might be really hard and might suck just as bad, but at least it’s much more controlled and neat.  And at least it yields positive results.  All bulimia gets you is an empty wallet and a smelly apartment.  Oh, and fat.  I went to the grocery store today and my plan is this….

On days I wake up hungry or have early classes and need energy, I will eat cereal with skim milk and blueberries.  I bought these Quaker oat squares and Kashi autumn harvest shredded wheat stuff.  That way, it’s substantial and a tad sugary whilst a tad nutritious and will fill me up.  It also puts me at around 300 calories which means that on days I eat the cereal, I will drink lots of diet soda and water for the rest of the day and be done.  If I am incredibly hungry, I may have a raw pepper with some mustard and black coffee and/or tea but that is it! 

On days I have afternoon classes and need energy or am simply not hungry in the morning, I will eat a low carb lavash wrap with fat free cottage cheese and cucumber.  On these days or days where I am craving sugar and a “treat,” I bought tootsie roll lollipops.  Hopefully, this will be enough sugar to boost my energy and focus levels and curb my ravishing desire for sweets and a binge. 

I will fast on Saturdays and Sundays.

I will work out twice a day (strength training/exercise DVD in morning  and cardio consisting of stationary bike riding and/or walking/jogging on treadmill in the evenings). 

For days and/or nights where I am particularly hungry or am bored with my wrap lunches, I will consume a bag of popcorn for lunch and a latte for breakfast.  This will ensure that I am staying within my caloric limit each and every day, that I still have little doses of sugar like in the lollipops or the cereal to avoid bingeing, and won’t feel “deprived.”  I mean, obviously what I’ve been doing hasn’t been working so it’s time to switch things up.  I am going to try and keep the cereal days to a minimum though…maybe twice a week.  There’s still a lot of carbs in cereal.  Plus, it's hard to face the rest of the day knowing you've already consumed your daily allotment and have nothing to look forward to.

I’m considering going back on my Zoloft and maybe this will help eliminate the manic stress and anxiety that starvation causes.  I also notice that when I’m feeling stressed due to work, I binge as binge eating disorder was my original disease.  So anything that gives me a more controlled edge will help alleviate these binge cycles (as well as incorporating the lollipops and popcorn with salt and zero calorie spray butter, lattes, and cereal).  That way, I’ll feel like I’m eating and won’t feel so deprived whilst managing to stay within my caloric allotment, still manage to consume a low calorie, low fat, low carb diet, and exercise twice daily.

....

Well, I just made a list of all the "safe" foods I am allowing myself and made an Excel spreadsheet document listing all of the nutritional information of each food including calories, carbs, sugar, protein, fiber, sodium, and fat grams.  I then created five different meal plans which all equate to 300 calories per day and are all low fat, low carb, low sugar meal plans.  They also vary in when the food will be consumed.  For example, some days consist of a breakfast meal plan, other days a lunch meal plan, and other day a grazing meal plan where small portions of healthy things are allowed to be consumed at various points of hunger throughout the day.  I can't tell you how good and in control this makes me feel.  I am printing it out and taping it to my fridge.  That way I know exactly the same sets of foods I am allowed to consume and the exact combinations of these foods which will yield the exact caloric amount I am allowed per day.  In addition, each of the meal plans consists of a variety of carbs, proteins, fruits, veggies, and dairies (not all food categories are consumed per meal plan).  It feels so fucking good to have a plan.  My goal is starting tomorrow (Sunday) I will cleanse my system by fasting, exercising (a cardio and upper body strength training regiment), and hopefully those laxatives will kick in come tomorrow (I am considering taking a couple more tonight...).  Thursday through today (Saturday) I have binged and purged everyday.  But my purging has been in no way sufficient enough to account for all of the fat and calories I have consumed and allowed to stay in and not going to the gym.  Sigh.  Anyway, I'm definitely feeling ridiculously fat and SEE it in my pudgy face and stomach.  So tomorrow, fast.  Then my plan is to stick with my diet plan (300 calories per day Monday through Friday based off of my pre-planned meal plans), fast on the weekends (no food Saturday or Sunday), exercise twice a day consisting of both strength training and cardio allowing myself one rest day per week (probably Sunday), and take laxatives to avoid bloat, gas, water/sodium retention, and constipation.  I am going to remain dilligent to this plan until Thanksgiving where I will celebrate my achievements with a wholesome Thanksgiving feast and visit home.  That is exactly two months of being a "good" anorectic.  If I truly stick to this, I know for a fact I will lose at least ten pounds and will finally be around 90 pounds.  I know this will work wonders if I can keep my mind sharp and my mouth closed.  Now, I know this is not going to be easy.  This is a difficult plan and schedule to follow.  It will certainly take some getting used to and the temptations will be hideous.  However, I figure if I can use this as my outlet and write and express when the times are tough, keep myself busy, and try to avoid temptation (like bringing a book to work and reading through my lunch break in the library for instance), then I can keep myself busy, focused, distracted, calm, and on-task.  I can do this and know that I have to if I want to see and feel the change in myself.  I've been doing horribly and I'm getting bored and tired and frustrated with it.  The only one standing in my way is me and this plan is fool-proof.  If I want this bad enough, it can be mine.  I just have to step out of my own goddamn way.  But in a fucked up way, I'm excited! 
Binge eating makes you renew the cycle of starvvation with newfound determination because you remind yourself how disgusting you are and how disgusting you feel once you've eaten and crave to feel the purity and super-human self-control that comes with emptiness and the anorexia.

At work, people are quite concerned about me and I heard through the grapevine that a few colleagues of mine have taken it upon themselves to go to my boss about me without my knowledge or permission and express concern that I am visibly and clearly sick.  I also notice that people talk to me, look at me, and treat me different.  Even strangers stare at me while I walk by.  Everyone says I look skeletal, bony, and anorexic.  I think I look fat, pudgy, and horrendously normal and average.  Sometimes I might catch my reflection and see the sunken, hollow cheeks, the face that looks haggard and pale and worn, the way my face is all eyes and mouth and teeth which look like odd dimensions that don't quite fit right, I see the bones sticking out of my shoulders and back and chest, the atrophied breasts, and the veins that bulge from my abdomen, arms, and hands.  I see the dark circles, the mossy teeth, the gap between my legs, the hollows on the sides of my buttocks and hips.  I see these things but for a moment, but then the images that were concave become convex, and it is lost.

It pisses me off more than anything, this misconstrued notion people have that we "eating disordered folk" just don't eat.  How naive can they be?  Everytime I eat something, people at work stop and stare at me and what I'm eating or comment on it or ask about it.  I secretly think they're taking notes for themselves.  ;-)  It also aggravates me when my mom tells me to just knock it off and cut it out, that I have the control and power.  I'm just getting really sick of the looks and the comments and the ignorance surrounding this disease.  And all I want to do is to be alone with it.  For the first time in my life, I could care less about men and relationships.  In fact, the mere thought of being intimate with any man makes me want to vomit.  All the touching and exchange of bodies and eating that is involved with relationships.  The lack of privacy and devotion of time and self to another.  I am in no way capable in my state of living at present to devote myself to another human being, and I love that I don't want to.  It's fucking liberating!  My eating disorder has become my friend and my lover, my constant companion.  And even though sometimes I hate it and wish it would just fuck off, other times I love it.  It makes me feel never alone, makes me feel powerful, makes me feel special.  Like any relationship, I suppose it's a love/hate one.  All the friends I did have I've lost because of this and I am learning to isolate myself more and more from other people.  They don't want to hear about it anymore and I don't want to talk about it anymore because I feel like a phony considering how much I've eaten over the course of the past three days.  And the eating disorder makes me not care about such losses, I don't cry anymore over spilled milk (no pun intended).  My parents want me to move back home so they can feed me and monitor me, my colleagues want me to move closer to work and them so they can keep an eye on me on the weekends, etc.  But my apartment enables me and at this point, I am not ready to live around or with anyone.  My eating disorder and I are quite comfortable here and already take up too much space as is....  And so tonight I dine and tomorrow I fast and then I starve for the next two months until Thanksgiving.  Happy Fall everyone!  Here's to hoping my weight falls just as fast as this season has come upon us.  Cheers!

Plateau

So, I have come to the realization that I have reached the much dreaded plateau.  My weight loss has utterly stalled and, in fact, keeps creeping up inch by inch.  However, I am remaining optimistic that my new weight loss plan will work.  I just really have to remain dilligent and focused and not give up, lose motivation, or become content with maintaining.  My body is becoming used to the workouts that I am doing and has gained quite a substantial amount of muscle mass.  Therefore, it really is imperative that I step up my workout intensity.  I will continue to do my 4am workouts in the morning consisting of my exercise DVDs, however, must add some high intensity cardio in the evenings such as elliptical, jogging, biking, etc.  Tomorrow, I am doing a circuit training DVD in the morning as well a plyometrics DVD in the afternoon with my girlfriends.  If I focus and work out hard, this will shock and surprise my system and help kick start my metabolism.  From here on out, I am brining work out clothes in my car to work with me each day so I can stop at the gym before coming home and squeeze in an extra half hour to 45 minute burst of cardio.  In addition, even though I feel like my body is becoming used to the caloric intake I've been consuming and may potentially be in "starvation mode," therefore clinging to extra fat cells, etc., I feel as though if I remain strong and push through with the amping up of my work out regimes, I will continue to lose and see results.  I am going to throw my body a curve ball by allowing myself to veer off of my diet one day a week.  This will drastically increase my caloric intake for the day, then I will fast the following day, and then continue forth with the 2-33 calorie a day rule five days out of the seven day week.  Therefore, my body will still have some roller coaster spins calorie wise.  Also, I must make it a point to get more rest.  My weight loss has slowed because I am retaining stress and anxiety and not getting enough rest.  I purchased Tylenol PM today which will help ensure I get 7-8 hours of sleep nightly.  Also, I fear my recent intake of apples.  I think they are far too many calories, grams of sugar, and carbohydrates.  I am going to try to avoid them or eat only small ones from here on out.  I must also up my protein intake.  Therefore, tomorrow I will have a low sodium rice cake with sugar free jam and tea for breakfast, some low fat turkey deli meat with mushrooms and mustard for lunch, pack some salmon/tuna with fat free cottage cheese or peas or squash.  Therefore, I will start eating mainly vegetables and protein (fish, chicken, low fat deli meats) and my only carbs will come from popcorn, low sodium cakes, and low carb lavash wraps (plus the veggies).  I'm ditching the apples/fruit and my only dairy source after my yogurt is gone will come from fat free cottage cheese.  This has to work!!!

New Rules

I've been trying to fall asleep for the past four hours.  However, I cannot until I get my new set of rules down on (electronic) paper.

I am still only going to consume 2-300 calories per day Monday through Friday.

I still must consume only what I provide for myself.

Once I eat through my most recent set of purchased groceries, I will only consume the same set of things per day for the week.  For example, the first week of the month, I will only consume the same set of foods Monday through Friday.  Then the second week of the month, I will only consume the same set of foods Monday through Friday.  So on and so forth.  This will eliminate the spoiling of perishables as they waste away in my fridge and allow me to avoid the anxiety and confusion about what to pack for lunch each day.

I am only going to consume one thing per meal.  For example, an apple counts for breakfast.  A yogurt counts for lunch.  A bag of popcorn counts for dinner, etc.  The only time I will "double up" on food items is when I eat cottage cheese which I will accompany with cucumber or six slices of turkey which I can have either with mushrooms or artichoke hearts.  I will also try not to double up on a food group in any one given day.  For example, if I have a bread product for breakfast such as a rice cake, I must have either a dairy, fruit, or vegetable for lunch.  If I have a fruit for breakfast, I can have a bread product or dairy for lunch, etc.

I am going to start exercising twice daily.  An exercise DVD in the morning and jog on the treadmill at the gym for a half hour in the evenings.

Saturdays will be my binge/purge day where I allow myself a treat.  I am going to try to keep binge days to one food group (i.e. breakfast foods such as muffins and pancakes, sweets such as cheesecake, icecream, or cookies, "meals", or chip/snack items.

Sunday will be my "fast" day.  Therefore, I will make up for my Saturday binge and take laxatives Saturday night and shit my brains out Sunday to atone for my missteps and cleanse for the upcoming week.

To review....

Monday through Friday one food item per meal from a different food group which must equate to 2-300 calories.

Strength training routine in morning and cardio in evenings.

Saturday is binge/purge day.

Sunday is laxative/fast/cleansing day.

Now I can relax and rest easy. 

I am weighing in at 100.2 pounds tonight although this morning I was 97.7.  I think my scale is broken because I use it too often.  I'm not sure.  This weekend I did pretty good...Saturday no food.  Sunday a mushroom, a bite of a lavash wrap, pinch of cabbage, and today two skinny sugar-free lattes and a grilled chicken greek salad (I caved).  I think the fasting this weekend totally messed with my metabolism and has made me gain weight.  My weight loss has stalled and I am retaining everything, including water which has swelled my extremities.  I am so looking forward to beginning this week and sticking fast to my new rules.  This will surely hold me accountable, alleviate stress and anxiety, allow me to plan ahead, avoid deprivation, and lose weight.  My goal is to be 95 by the end of this week.  Wish me luck.

Oh, and no more coffee in the morning.  Only tea if I so desire something.  :)

Fasting...Faster!

As promised, I have taken three diet pills daily for the past two days and will continue to take them daily henceforth.  Saturday I jogged, today I did a Bob Harper DVD in my living room, and tomorrow I am going to do a Billy Blanks DVD.  I have given these exercises as much effort as I can muster.  I will admit that exercising daily is getting increasingly harder to do.  Maybe this is a result of my low energy levels from fasting over the course of the past couple of days and vomiting and shitting my brains out the days prior. Yesterday I fasted.  Consumed half a cup of black coffee, half a cup of tea, half a diet soda, and two pickles amounting to a whopping zero calories.  Dropped from 101.4 the night of my final binge to 98.6 pounds.  Problem is, I can't seem to get below this.  My weight is stagnant.   This is highly unusual as I drop anywhere from half a pound to a pound daily on average.  I am getting concerned.  However, I also notice that, ironically, you tend to drop less weight and at a slower pace when you are fasting.  It is as though your metabolism slows down and puts a halt to weight loss as a result of your body's starvation.  Therefore, I find that if you eat, even if it's two hundred calories a day, your body will lose weight faster and at a more constant rate as opposed to the periods of time when you are fasting.  However, I must punish myself for my binge.  Purging and overdoing it on the laxatives is no longer a reasonable enough punishment.  Fasting makes it an even worse penance for my sins, and I must make the punishments so horrid that I will try to avoid bingeing as much as possible as a result.  If there is no pain in the punishment, why avoid the undesireable behavior?  Today, I consumed two pickles (0 calories), a cup of tea (0 calories), and caved and ate one tablespoon of fat free cottage cheese, a mushroom with mustard, half of a half of a slice of turkey, a pinch of dried cabbage, and a bite of a lavash wrap.  This probably amounted to a total of around twenty calories, but I can't be sure.  I also crammed a bunch of sugar free cookies into my mouth but spit them out.  Therefore, I didn't do as good today, but I still consider myself to be doing pretty fucking good if I do say so myself.  Tomorrow, I will allow myself a coffee from Starbucks (I will look up nutritional information in advance so as to make a smart choice and plan ahead), no food.  That will basically be a three day fast minus my pickings and the coffee.  But I figure the coffee is still a liquid at least and doesn't count for food per se.

I will start up on 200 calories a day beginning on Tuesday and again, avoid any food that does not come out of my kitchen and my lunch bag.  I am hoping this jump from fasting to two hundred calories a day will jump start my metabolism and I will finally be able to kick this horrendous 98.6 into oblivion.  I feel disgustingly fat and think I look it as well.  Sigh.

As much as I loate and detest bingeing, I can't help planning my next one.  Below are all the foods I would like to consume at present:

1.  Girl Scout cookies.  Especially those chocolate coconut ones and the chocolate peanut butter ones.

2.  Cheesecake Factory cheesecake (any flavor)

3.  Any type of Chex mix or party trail mix.  (The chocolate/powdered sugar Chex mix served cold is to die for.)

4.  Chocolate chip pancakes and/or French toast slathered in butter and syrup.

5.  Toast loaded with butter and jam.

6.  Hot chocolate with whipped cream.

7.  Any type of Keebler Elf cookie.

8.  Celeste pizza.

9.  A Greek salad with grilled chicken, lots of feta, full fat dressing, and a pita pocket.

10.  Clam chowder in a bread bowl.

11.  Nachos loaded with cheese, guacamole, sour cream, salsa, black olives, jalapenos, and grilled chicken (maybe chili).

12.  Clam cakes with tartar sauce.

13.  Fried dough with powdered sugar.  Doughy not crunchy.

14.  Icecream of any flavor or a mixed Blizzard from Friendly's or Mcdonalds.

15.  McDonald's french fries and cheeseburgers.

16.  Pasta.

17.  Chicken Caesar salad.

18.  Stuffed mushrooms.

19.  Spinach artichoke dip with the multi colored tortilla chips.

20.  A pumpkin flavored muffin.

21.  A mudslide from Friday's.

22.  Baklavah.

23.  Spinach pies.

24.  Lamb with Greek rice.

Did I mention the Greek festival is coming up (not next weekend but the weekend after).  That gives me this week and next week to do as good as possible so I can enjoy myself at the festival and eat without purging (as I will be with my family and won't have an opportunity to do so).  I figure if I can make it through these next couple of weeks and do as good as possible, allow myself a normal meal at the Greek festival (this is all I will eat all day), and then go another two weeks, I will allow myself to go to Joe's restaurant and get the clam chowder in a bread bowl, with nachos, crab cakes, a pasta dinner, a caesar salad, and run to the Cheesecake for some more appetizers, cheesecake, and then hit up the grocery store from some chex mix and sweets.  I of course will purge after this and start the cycle anew.  My goal is to be 95 pounds by the end of this week.  I am nervous I will not get there because my weight loss has been so slow.  I am so pissed at myself I slipped on Thursday and Friday seeing as I was 97.4.  I could have allowed myself a nice treat on my birthday and still managed to be low.  I am such a weak, fat cow.  I am burning up right now and am not sure why.  God this sucks.

New Beginnings & Birthday Revelations

So, I'm feeling good today.  Even though I'm weighing in at 99.6 pounds, which is exactly 2.2 pounds heavier than I was two days ago, I am remaining optimistic.  Something I noticed this morning which I'm sure a psychotherapist would jump all over is that my eating disorder vascillates between both Ana and Mia.  (That's not the interesting part.)  I am primarily Ana, severely restricting my caloric intake.  However, I notice that the Mia part of me kicks in once I lose a substantial amount of weight and reach the lowest I've been up to that point.  Then, I get so hungry that I will binge and then either purge, abuse laxatives, take diet pills, or exercise vigorously (although I'm having trouble doing that lately because every five minutes I'm running to the lavatory to relieve myself as a result of taking ten laxatives over the course of the past couple of days).  Anyway, I'm remaining optimistic because I realize that this is my body's pattern.  I will lose steadily, restrict, and reach an all-time low, then I will binge and gain anywhere from 2-5 pounds.  Then I will restrict again and start the cycle anew and lose even more and reach a new all time low.  Therefore, being 99.6 now, I can anticipate that over the course of the next week, I will plummet even lower than the 97.4 pounds I was the other day.  The interesting part of all of this that I was referring to earlier, is that when I am in the Mia state of my disorder, my home environment reflects my chaotic state.  My apartment will be messy with things everywhere and nothing is pristine or orderly or where it should be.  It as though my physical environment reflects the tossing back up of my feasting.  However, when I reinstate my Ana way of thinking, I start by cleaning.  For example, this morning the first thing I did was clean my entire apartment.  Vaccuum, sweep, run the dishwasher (with only five dishes in it), clean my bathroom, dust, hang up and put away my clothes, make my bed, windex, etc.  The point is that my outward environment is reflective of my inward state of mind and which pendulum of my eating disorder I happen to be swinging toward.  The fact that my physical environment is ordered and clean and pristine and controlled once more is making me feel happy and back in control.  If only I can exercise!  Maybe a little later, but for now, my stomach is still upset.  Sigh.

P.S.  Happy Birthday to Me!  :)

Rules of Remorse

I feel utterly weak and at a loss of control.  After getting down to 97.4 pounds on scale, I am back to weighing in at 100.4.  I suppose I did fairly well over the course of the week to wheedle another few pounds off of my frame.  However, yesterday was just awful.  After work, I went out with a few colleagues of mine and got a couple of vodka and tonics.  As I was sitting at our table, getting more buzzed by the minute, and watching the endless array of hands digging into the never-ending popcorn bowl, I started to get...hungry.  And I mean, really hungry.  I couldn't concentrate on what anyone was saying or contribute to the conversation.  All I kept thinking was FOOD, EAT, HUNGRY, BINGE.  It was this little obsessive thought that progressively grew into a screaming roar inside my head and full-fledged anxiety coursing through my veins.  I knew before I even left the restaurant that I would binge and purge that evening.

After trying to compose myself and pay my fare of the check and say my goodbyes to my friends, I got into my car, immediately whipped my GPS out of the console, and did a search for all neighboring restaurants in the area.  Now, we as ourselves, if I was hungry, why didn't I simply order a wholesome salad or even be a little daring and get a dinner plate at the restaurant I was already at while drinking and socializing with the girls.  I can't explain it really, but when I get that craving to EAT, to allow myself the luxury of consuming whatever I want and however much of it I want, it needs to be a ritual that is done in private or else I can't fully enjoy it.  If I ordered a meal and consumed it in front of everyone at a normal pace and couldn't rush home to the porcelain goddess after, in a strange way, it wouldn't have counted.  It wouldn't have lulled the voice or the anxiety or the hunger.  I managed to make it an hour back into my home-city.  Again, it took all the will-power I had to not stop at a restaurant local to where I worked.  I was gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white, speeding like a bat out of hell down the highway, praying for people to get the fuck out of my way.  Didn't anyone understand what it felt like to be trapped inside a bubble of starvation?  MOVE!  The reason I didn't stop at a neighboring restaurant was because I wanted to have the comfort of throwing up in my own bathroom and I didn't want to bump into anyone I may have recognized from work.

Finally, when I was ten or fifteen minutes or so away from my apartment and I literally could not wait a second longer, I flew into a Dunkin Donuts.  Now, another reason I wanted to make it home before I binged was because I really wanted to weigh myself before I ate.  I needed to know where my weight was currently and where it would be after I binged and how much I could drop after purging.  The need to weigh myself daily, multiple times a day, has become a compulsive anxiety and obsession for me.  I usually weigh myself around three times before I leave for work in the morning and immediately after urinating when I get home from work.  Anything that impedes my ability to do this (i.e. staying out over night at a friend's or lovers, going out after work with friends or colleagues, traveling, etc.) have become things that I am slowly weeding out of my life and isolating myself from.  It fucks with my routine, my ritual, and that I just can't have.

Anyway, back to Dunkin' Donuts.  I purchased a half of a dozen donuts of varying flavors, rushed to my car, ripped open the box, and started taking bites of every flavor donut I had purchased.  The fuckers were stale.  Didn't stop me from sampling all the flavors (some more than once), but it did prevent me from eating all of them whole.  I probably consumed two to three donuts with the smatterings of bites that I had consumed.  Then, I drove to the grocery store.  I wasn't even craving sweets which is highly unusual for me.  Typically during a binge/purge episode, I will gravitate towards desserts, cookies, brownies, candies, cakes, you name it.  This time, I wanted FOOD.  I wanted a meal.  I wanted salt and crunch and chips and snacks and FOOD.  Trouble was, I couldn't figure out what it is I wanted to eat.  All I knew was that I was so starving it was as though another force had taken over my consciousness, and I kid you not.  I call this the survival instinct.  When your body is so starving that something deep within you takes over, and it is as though you are one of those little puppets with all the zillions of strings attached to it and someone or something else is tugging on those strings.  Forcing you into restaurants and stores, forcing you to eat.  I knew I was starving, yet I couldn't think of what to eat.  It's like my mind was a total fucking blank.  Like I had forgot what there even was to eat in the world.  I knew I wanted food but what was food exactly?  I also notice that when your body is literally eating itself, you become manic.  Nothing else in the world matters but getting your hands on food and shoving it into your face.  Your safety, others' safety, your general appearance, others' perceptions of you, nothing matters.  You know people are staring at you funny, you know you're mumbling to yourself and your eyes are rapidly moving from shelf to shelf in every aisle of the supermarket, you know you're scratching your arms and tearing away at your fingernails.  You know you're swerving all over the road as you're driving because you're paying attention to what local food places are passing you by rather than whether the light is red or green.  The only voice you hear is GO!  You are short with  people, unfriendly, but nothing matters.  One track mind, mania, starvation says FIND FOOD...NOW!  Except, again, as I was pacing through the supermarket, I couldn't think of what I wanted to eat.  The normal foods that would have practically jumped of their own volition into my shopping basket stayed statuesque on their shelves.  I didn't want pastries or danishes or cookies or brownies or cakes or chips.  So I left. 

Then I went home, whipped off my clothes, and weighed myself.  97.6 lbs.  I had gone up .2 pounds from that morning's weigh in due to the alcohol and donuts alone.  I then decided I wanted nachos.  So I got in the car and I drove.  Friendly's came to mind so I went there.  Whipped into a parking spot, asked for a table for one.  I always feel like the biggest jackass dining out alone.  Patrons and staff look at you all funny and pathetic like.  Some just feel bad for the poor lonely girl eating all by herself, others look fondly at a girl who has that much self-confidence to brave a restaurant alone, and others know exactly what you're doing there.  They look at you with "the look."  The look that says..."uhuh, a skinny girl in a flurried panic, ordering large quantities of food, and bolting out the door as soon as the check is paid for.  Uhuh, I know what you're doing."  Fuckers.

So, to my dismay, they didn't have any nachos on the menu.  But at this point I was so damn tired and so damn hungry that I just couldn't wait any longer.  I didn't have the stamina to cart myself all over town on an empty tank of gas looking for the perfect array of tortilla chips, cheese, salsa, guacamole, sour cream, black olives, jalapenos, and chicken.  IS IT REALLY THAT HARD PEOPLE?!  So I ordered a grilled cheese sandwich, french fries, and two scoops of butternut icecream with whipped cream, nuts, chocolate sprinkles, and caramel.  Before I even finished the meal, the guilt set in.  With every motion my arm made from the plate up to my mouth again, I thought, "You weak, fat, pathetic, ugly, disgusting, loser.  You are a bitch with no self-control or discipline.  Here you are, gone and ruined it again."  I skirted out the door holding back a flood of tears, ran into CVS in desperate search of IPECEAC.  The pharmacist, amid panicked looks, told me the FDA had removed it from the shelves, deeming it unsafe.  I grabbed a pack of laxatives, ate five in the car ride home, and flew up my stairs to my bathroom.  I was nervous I'd throw up the laxatives I just ate, but said fuck it.  There was no way I was letting that food stay down.

I weighed in at 99 and commenced puking my guts out into my toilet.  My eyes were extremely bloodshot and watery, my face was puffy, I was shaking and crying in between heaves.  My fingers were covered in chunks of vomit which was also smeared across my chest and all over my toilet bowl, and when I examined the content of my night's binge, there were swirls of bright red blood mixed into the colorless contents of bile and french fries, and bread, and cheese.  I threw up unti I just couldn't anymore.  Still 99 lbs.

I felt so disgusted and depressed with myself in that moment that I felt like just dying.  I crawled into my bed in a pitch black room and lay there and cried, and cried, and cried.  I cursed my own weakness.  My own phoniness.  And then I remembered I had the appointment at the eating disorders hospital the following morning.  My throat was in excrutiating pain and raw.  I didn't know if all the blood I had tossed up was due to my fingernails cutting up the back of my throat or whether I had gone so hard and applied so much pressure that I had torn or ruptured something.  I didn't care either way.  All I could think was that I was going to be heavy when they weighed me in the next day.  Heavier than what I would have been if I had just held off.  They would see me and see my weight and laugh me out the door.  I was so embarrassed.  Not only that, but my birthday is Saturday and I was planning on allowing myself a treat that day and now I couldn't.  I fell asleep in a swirl of smeared make-up all over my puffy, red eyes, a raw and hoarse throat, a disgusting taste of stale vomit in my mouth, and a haze of guilt, depression, and embarrassment at my own perpetuated failure.

Woke up in the morning tired as all hell, tried to reschedule my appointment but couldn't, and my stomach was starting to feel the effects of the laxatives I had ate the following evening.  I managed to hoist my fat ass out of bed, wash the make-up off my eyes, brush the vomit from my teeth and tongue, shit out what the laxatives had already pushed to the rim, throw on a pair of clothes, and weigh myself.  98.1 pounds.  I had gone up exactly half a pound.  I drove into the hospital, shit my brains out in the nearest restroom I could find as soon as I walked through the door, and found where I was looking for.  You'd think people would be more mindful of putting the office for the "weight-loss surgery center" across the hall from the "eating disorder unit."  Again, fuckers.

I got my blood drawn, tried several attempts to donate as much of my cloudy urine as I could (after being forced to chug ice cold water until I thought I'd spew it all over the woman's shoes), filled out a questionnaire to which my responses were all 6's...the highest level of disordered behavior and thinking the chart would allow you to circle, and was whisked off by a social worker to have a chat.  I ended up chatting so much, you could tell the woman couldn't wait for me to get the fuck out of her office.  I blabbed my life away to her amidst some tears and fielded her pitied expressions and occasional looks of annoyance.  She didn't really say much, not only because I wouldn't shut up, but because she said there wasn't much for her to say.  There is a part of me that is quite aware what I am doing is not healthy or normal and that I certainly have what she referred to as "disorderd thinking."  However, I also told her I am quite in tune with the fact that I am not currently committed to health or treatment or getting better and know I will get much worse before I throw myself wholeheartedly into getting better.  She seemed concerned and disapointed by this, but what could she do?  So she gave me a couple names of some therapists up my way, wished me luck, and carted me off to the next room where my blood pressure was taken (normal), my weight taken (the woman would not show me or tell me what it was despite my urgings), filled out some insurance paperwork, denied the snacks and gatorade she tried to force upon me, and listened to the nurse rattle off her past employment history.  I was starting to get dizzy and was so hungry and had to shit some more that I didn't really understand what she was saying.  Oh, and did I mention that as the social worker was telling me about my treatment options, all I could think of was food and what I had eaten the night prior and what I would do to lose the weight?  The most enjoyable part of the whole experience was getting the opportunity to chit-chat with a fourty-year-old anorexic in the waiting room whose mother kept shooting me death glares as we giggled like school girls about wanting to check the nutritional info. of all the snacks in the waiting room and pouring ourselves cup after cup of black coffee and smoking cigarettes and saying how we wanted the obsessive thoughts and behaviors to go away but how we did not want to lose weight.  She talked about the divorce she was going through, and I told her of my boyfriend dumping me days prior.  We got along really well and she kept looking at her mom shouting, "see mom, there ARE other people who think the way I do!"  And, "You speak my language!"  The professionals never told me I had a problem, never that they were concerned.  I didn't need them to after that.  The anorexic in the waiting room told me indirectly that I was disordered.  It's funny because we first met when I went up to the food counter to pour myself a cup of black coffee and started handling all of the snacks.  Picking them up, examining nutrition labels, putting them down.  I heard a scoff behind me and thought it was the anorexic laughing at me.  I thought she thought I was actually going to eat them and was scoffing at my level of weakness.  When I sat back down, however, she engaged me in a conversation by saying, "they thought I was weird for doing the same exact thing you just did."  "Pardon?" I asked.  "Looking at all the labels on the snack tray," she said.  "I did the same thing and everyone here thought I was a loony toon."  We were friends after that.

I left feeling incredibly annoyed that I had gone and wasted my time there for nothing.  I knew I wasn't going to enter myself into treatment, but I was at least hoping a medical professional would tell me, "look honey, you're fucked."  I got nothin'.  I did learn that if I ever do need to take a leave of absence from work, it is illegal to fire me for that, and I also learned that my stay in an inpatient hospital would be unlimited and my insurance would not max out after a set number of weeks.  Good to know for future reference.  As I drove home, I started feeling awful that the social worker asked me quizzically three or four times, "you only work out once a day?"  Driving home, I started to berate myself for being such a weak bitch as to not work out more often and harder and wondered if that was weird.  Maybe that's why she didn't think I was fucked enough.  I only work out once a day and don't chug coffee from dawn to dusk.  And so, that officially ended my attempt to seek treatment and/or help for my current situation.  Every avenue down which I have ventured has found me in a barren and desolate landscape without a helping hand or a further path towards salvation down which to turn.  I've reached out.  I've tried.  I've gotten nothing in return for this.  I'm done.

So I went home, crawled into bed, slept for a few, woke up and shit out the rest of the laxatives, and weighed in at 98.1.  Boo.  After tossing and turning in bed again, I started to get more cravings to eat.  Thus I found myself once more, after throwing up my stomach lining and shitting my guts out all night and morning into the toilet bowl, sitting by myself at an Italian restaurant scarfing bread and oil and butter and creamy pasta off which I could literally smell the fat wafting up through and burning my nasal passages.  After this, I went to another restaurant, scoffed down some popcorn and two mudslides.  Then ate three more laxatives, and bought a pack of smokes.

I was smoking up to half a pack a day when I quit cold turkey two months ago.  Fuck it.  I tried to throw up.  Couldn't.  And am now a plump 100.4 pounds.  My one line of reasoning here is that the voice inside my head is finally silent.  I have no more cravings.  No more thoughts of food.  No more feelings of deprivation.  And instead I feel a newfound sense of determination and vigor and below are the new rules I have made for myself which are in effect starting tomorrow...my birthday:

1.  I am going to fast for the next three days I have off of work (Saturday, Sunday, and Monday).  This means that I will not be able to see anyone or go out for my birthday so as to avoid temptation.

2.  I am going to do a cardio DVD tomorrow morning in addition to going running as a double incentive for today's guilty pleasures and in replacement of throwing up.

3.  I will also exercise Sunday and Monday and everyday throughout the course of next week minus one day.  I must give these exercises my full devotion.  No slacking!

4.  Starting tomorrow, I am beginning taking three diet pills/fat burners daily regardless of work and how shaky they make me feel.

5.  When purchasing coffee the mornings I work, I will no longer order it with skim milk.  All coffee will be drunk black with splenda in order to avoid the excess calories the milk puts into my diet and the extra pounds it puts onto my frame.  (If coffee on top of fat burners are a bad combo, I will drink tea instead, no milk).

6.  I will purchase Keurig coffee and bring a mug to work.  I will brew and drink black coffee throughout the day if I am feeling particularly hungry or low energy.  Else I will chug diet soda which I will bring with me to school each and every day.

7.  I am going to start recording my daily food and caloric intake in a notebook as as to see and have a record of what I am putting into my mouth, how often, and at how many calories.

8.  I will only eat 200 calories a day.

9.  I will only eat the foods I pack in my lunch box and take with me to work.  Thus, I will not be allowed to eat the smatterings of food people offer me, excess food lying around in the teacher's room to sample, nothing from the vending machines, and no food from restaurants.

10.  The calories I consume during the day must be consumed during the time I am at work only.  Once I leave work, I will not be allowed to eat.

11.  I will begin smoking cigarettes and chewing gum and/or chugging diet soda as meal replacements after I leave work.  Thus, if I am anxious or hungry on the car ride home or when I arrive home, I will smoke and chug and chew and work rather than eat.  Or I will go for a jog.  Anything to alleviate anxiety, keep my mouth and hands busy, and avoid the temptations of the refrigerator and eating.

12.  I will be in bed by 9pm the absolute latest.  Thus, by the time I get home from work, I really won't have that much time to be awake and idle.  And I will get a good night's rest to ensure my energy is there for my daily 4am work outs and that I am getting enough sleep which will help me to stay energized, keep my metabolic rate high and burning calories, and LOSE WEIGHT.

13.  I will not binge or eat anything I myself do not prepare (i.e. no restaurant food) for at least two weeks. 

14.  I will no longer discuss food or anything pertaining to it with anyone or attempt to seek treatment.  Everyone is over exaggerating and I am too fat to warrant such help or concern.

15.  I will avoid going out for drinks after work with the girls.  A.  because I am no longer allowed to consumer alcoholic beverages (it has calories and makes you put your guard down enough to feel hungry and okay eating) and B.  because I usually eat when I do or binge after I leave.

16.  I am going to isolate myself from others over the course of the next couple of weeks at least (no dates, no going out with friends, no celebrating my birthday, no outings, etc. so as not to be exposed to or be tempted by food).  This includes avoiding the ex boyfriend if he contacts me or attempts to see me (which I doubt.)  (Refer to above rules)

17.  I will be 92 pounds by the end of September.  That is approximately eight pounds in four weeks which is approximately two pounds per week.  By the end of October, I must be nearing 84.