Hi everyone,

When I was fully under Ed’s wrath, I had a very specific way of thinking when it came to the way I would eat.  Monday through Thursday, I would restrict, and then on Friday I would let myself eat because I would see my family for dinner.  On Saturday I would restrict again, (to make up for Friday), and then on Sunday I would restrict all day and then pretty much eat anything and everything I wanted for dinner.

Sunday nights were the night my boyfriend and I used to go eat dinner at his parents house, and his mom would make incredible food and always had delicious desserts.  I looked forward to this dinner all week–I even started calling Sunday’s my “fat Sunday’s.”  After every single fat Sunday, I would wake up sore.

Now, even though I am not restricting my calories during the week, I still have that same mentality about the weekends–that when the weekend comes, I can just eat what I want because I know during the week I will starve it all away.  Even though that is not the case anymore, my mind still thinks this way and it is hindering me from making the progress that I would like to make.

For example, yesterday, I pretty much did not even think about the meal plan and just ate whatever I wanted all day long.  At first  I enjoyed it-I enjoyed challenging Ed. And then, I got mad at myself.  And then I got mad that I am mad at myself for enjoying what I love to eat–I got pulled back into that cycle of anger.

This morning, whether it was because I ate too much or if it is because of something that I ate, I woke up with my body feeling sore again.  Whenever my body feels sore, it feels like a  punishment.  I feel like it is my body’s way of punishing me for eating too much.  The fact that I am sore on a Sunday is different for me, since I am used to only being sore on Monday mornings, after my “fat Sundays.”

I feel so weird and even ashamed writing how me, someone who is in recovery for anorexia, a disease where you don’t eat, has my biggest downfalls not when it comes to restricting, but when it comes to actually eating too much.  My downfalls in recovery have been when I eat sweets.  It is not a downfall necessarily because I eat too much of them, it is my downfall because I can’t just let myself enjoy them.  Even when I was at my lowest weight, I still found a way to incorporate sweets into my diet-but then, they were the only thing I ate all day, or I would take laxatives afterwards, so it wasn’t a big deal.

To have to be able to find a way to enjoy my sweets now, without purging, or without restricting afterwards is very hard for me and it is a balance that I am trying to find.

I so badly want to get out of that mentality of starving and then eating whatever I want and thinking I can fix it later, because I can’t now.  I’m not expecting my weekends to be just like my week days, because I do want to go out on the weekends and enjoy myself, I just don’t know the balance yet of how to do that without getting pulled back into the cycle of anger.

Could I go now and look up the calories in every single thing that I ate yesterday?  Yes.  Could I go and body check and try on every small sized pair of jeans in my closet? Yes.  But I will not do that because truthfully, what is the point?  So I get mad at myself all over again and then continue to not treat my body kindly today, either by binging or by restricting? While Ed is telling me that is  a great way to spend my day, the healthy part of me is smarter and more caring about myself than that.

So today is Sunday, and I am going to be kind to myself and I am going to honor myself.  I am not going to have a fat Sunday, and I am not going to beat myself up for not sticking to the meal plan, which in reality, the nutritionist would probably be happy that I ate more than what was on the meal plan anyways.  And even if she would not be happy, I still would not beat myself up over it.

It’s a new day, and while I know that changing my eating disordered mentality will take time, I feel that by viewing today as a normal day back on the meal plan and not as fat Sunday, I am taking a step in the right direction. I will get past this soreness, I will get past this bloated feeling, and I will one day find balance when it comes to food.  And if that takes one month, or even one year, so be it.

Hello to being kind to myself, hello to no more fat Sunday’s, and “hello life.”