Tag Archives: recovery

Day 21: Getting My Meal Plan

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Hello everyone,

After I woke up this morning feeling sore again, I had to go to the nutritionist to get my meal plan.

Did I want to go get a meal plan after feeling so physically uncomfortable ? No I did not.

To be honest, I really thought I did extremely well this week by increasing my calories on my own. I was actually considering canceling my appointment. But knowing no one on my health team or support team would support that decision, I went.

I was shocked to learn that despite my drastic calorie increase, my weight was the same today that it was last week (even though I do not know what that number is). It truly is mind boggling to me because when I look in the mirror I see a completely different and bigger person than I saw a week ago.

But that leaves me with the harsh realization that my so called healthy meal plan is most likely not that healthy.

So here I am one hour later with a meal plan that what the nutritionist considers restrictive is very very overwhelming for me.

I will be honest and say right now I mentally don’t know how I’ll be able to keep to this plan of constant eating but I know I’ll have to find a way.

I am going to take my black and white personality and put all of my effort and energy into trying my best to trust my health team and to just do what this plan says.

Ed is already telling me to throw the plan away. He’s already telling me that it will ruin what I’ve worked so hard for. But that is ok. I will continue to fight Ed today just like I have been .

So on that note, hello to a new day of fighting , hello to my new meal plan, and lastly, “hello life.”

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Day 11: A New Kind Of Friday

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Hello everyone,

I am so proud to tell you all that I was able to successfully go through with the back weigh yesterday and not turn around to see the number.  I feel like I have just over come the first of many challenges that I will be facing on this journey and I have you all, my incredible family, friends and supporters to thank for it.  From the bottom of my heart, thank you all so much for your love and encouragement.

On that note, I am happy to say that today is a new kind of Friday for me. I know that statement might not make a lot of sense, so let me explain what I mean.

When I was still weighing myself, Friday was considered my ultimate weigh in day.  I would starve all week to prepare for Friday.  In other words, Friday was my judgement day.

Depending on what that scale said on Friday, I would either have a great day or a horrible day. It would tell me if I let myself go out to dinner with my boyfriend on Saturday or not.  It would predict my entire weekend for that matter.  That number would determine what I would eat that night at Shabbat dinner with my family and exactly how little or how much.  Sometimes it would even be the deciding factor if I would even go to dinner at all.

And this preparation for Friday would last all week, but Thursdays were particularly intense.  Thursdays would be the day that I would restrict calories and my fluid intake the most.  Thursdays were also the one night a week that I would see my grandma for dinner . Because of Friday,  my grandma and I would only eat at one restaurant only; the restaurant that I could get a salad with only lettuce, tomato, and  cucumber with no dressing.  Even on the days that even I was so sick of this restaurant, and I am sure my grandma was too, she continued to go for me because that’s what I was comfortable with.  I let my eating disorder take control of my one night a week with my grandma and it pains me to think how selfish of me that was. I never want to let that happen again.

But yesterday I had a totally different Thursday night experience because I knew I did not have to weigh myself this morning–the beginning of many weigh-less Fridays.

I was actually able to take my 3 younger brothers out to dinner and even frozen yogurt.  Not only that, but I was even able to eat the same food with them at dinner that they were eating- something that would never have happened before I started my path to recovery. And even though the voice of my eating disorder was extremely loud in my head, I found the strength to silence it just for those few minutes when we were eating together.

Last night was made up of tiny moments of freedom from my eating disorder – and I hope to hold onto those moments as long as I can and use them for strength and encouragement during times of weakness.

The fact that I was actually able to eat on a Thursday and then wake up this morning and not weigh myself marks the official beginning of a new kind of Friday for me, and I have to say, it feels pretty damn good.

Last night after we got home,  the four of us just sat on the couch and watched tv together.  As we were watching tv,  I found myself literally just starring at the faces of my younger brothers.  I was starring at the most beautiful, innocent and loving faces in the world–and at that exact moment last night,  I remember genuinely thinking to myself, “hello life.”

Day 7: Body Soreness

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If this is your first visit to my blog,let me start by saying that you should read the “about me” page before this post, so this entry makes sense.

Although this is my first documented post about my one year without a scale, I am already 7 days into it.  I was talking with my therapist, and for our purposes for this blog, we will call her E.  I was telling E about my idea for this blog and how documenting my journey of a year without a scale might be  a cool idea and that I would make a final decision by Friday.  When E asked me why I was going to wait until Friday, I really could not give her an answer.  So world, here I am.  I have officially made the commitment for be scale free for an entire 365 days and my documentation starts here.

The firs thing that I need to say is that I am going to be completely and utterly honest on this blog.  There will be nothing that is sugar coated, nothing that is fake, and I cannot assure you that everything you read will be happy or positive, but I can promise you that it will be the truth.

So I am just going to dive right in.  Today I feel horrible.  I woke up with my entire body feeling sore all over.  This happens to me every time i basically eat any amount of substantial calories. My entire stomach and chest feel like they have bruises every where.  I have accounted this feeling to to0 much sodium intake the day before, but I am still not sure if that totally makes sense.  If this has ever happened to anyone else out there in the world,  I would love to know so I can see that I am not the only one.

For me, the biggest challenge of my day so far has been being able to be kind to myself and eat and drink properly when I feel this soreness every time I move.  It’s like a constant reminder of the pizza, wine, cake and chocolate I ate last night-the results of  having one glass of wine too many.

This is where this blog comes in.  I know that I have two choices today.  Choice one, which is to sit at home, forget about school and my boyfriend’s mom’s birthday and sit all day drinking only tea and coffee and obsessing over how huge I feel I have become in the past 7 days, or I can be proactive, write this blog ,focus on school and not let this eating disorder take over my life for yet another God damn day.

While choice one is by far the easiest choice above all, it would be letting my eating disorder win me over and on a day like today where I am celebrating a milestone,( one week of being scale free), I am not going to let that happen.  So choice 2 it is.

I am not sure how I am going to get through today, I am not sure how many times I might cry or cringe when I walk past a mirror, but one thing is certain; I will get through it and I will wake up tomorrow and my life will go on past this uncomfortable body soreness and obsessive negative thinking.  It will, it will, it will.

And in my weakest moments, like right now, where I can feel my tummy growling for food and I know I need to go eat lunch, I will remind myself of one thing: saying good bye to my scale means saying hello to a new life.

So I will end this first entry how I am going to end every single entry for the next 358 days, by saying this simple and yet very true statement: Hello life!