Tag Archives: self help

Day 8: Swept Away By Support

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Hi everyone,

I just need to start this entry by saying how speechless I am by all the unconditional love and support I have received from family, friends and even strangers during the past day.  To be honest, exposing my biggest secret (my eating disorder) to pretty much the entire world was scary enough as is. But when I made the choice to commit to myself, and everyone else who will follow this blog, that I will not weigh myself and be scale free for an entire year, it took things to a new level of scary.  But saying that, I know that I can do this now.  Because of your guys’ support and love, I know I can do this, and I will.

At first I thought I will give myself a few goals of where I want to be by next Jan 21, 2014, the official one year date of me being scale free.  But as I sit here and think about it, I find it impossible to do that because that year feels so far away, I don’t even know how to make it to that point.  All I do know is this: I need to make it through today.  So, for that reason, I am not going to set some specific goal for myself of where I want to be a year from now after being scale free, which is a weird feeling since I am always the kind of person to set extremely high goals for myself (sometimes that are unattainable) and do anything I can do reach them. This time around, I am going to make the goal to just get through this year; to get from point A to point B and God willing have the strength to be healthy while doing it.

Also, I feel I should let you guys know that not only did I make the decision to be scale free for an entire year, but I gave my scale to E (my therapist), so it is not even in my house.  Part of me feels like that is a relief and part of me, like right now, feels sad about it.

My scale was like my God-it was my number and it was what I defined myself by for that day. If it was low enough, I would be happy and proud but at the same time I would be ashamed because I knew the unhealthy things I had to do to get to that number. If it was high enough, I would be sad and angry and would punish myself by starving the rest of the day to fix it-but no matter what that number was, weather it was good or bad, it was a fact.

Today, I step into the world of the unknown, and that is scary.

I do not know what I weigh today.  I do not know the “damage” that I have done in the past 8 days of not weighing myself.  I have no number to tell me that I have eaten too much or that I have gone too far.  The only thing I have is myself-and that is the scariest thing of all.

I have never been in a place in my life other than right now, where I have not been able to trust myself.  I don’t trust what I see when I look in the mirror, I don’t trust my body when it tells me that it needs food or water, and I don’t completely yet  trust myself to be healthy.  But I am hoping this gets easier every day.

Right now, I can feel my skinny jeans pushing into the little tummy I now have and it does not feel good, but it is happening and I just have to go with it.  It is times like these, where I truly believe (whether it is true or not, I do not know) that my jeans and shirt are fitting significantly tighter on me and I need to find a way to stop it-but I know I can’t because that would mean letting this eating disorder take my life, and I am not going to let that happen.  I will win this.

So even though in this moment I feel uncomfortable in my own skin, and unsure of  myself, I know that I can truly look forward into my future and I can see that these hard moments are the moments that are going to make up a new life for me-a life full of freedom and a life free of this eating disorder.

I am going to finish this blog entry and take a second to realize, that yes, I feel not so great today about the way my clothes fit and I feel a little antsy and frustrated that I don’t know what I weigh, but I started my day by being Shira, not by being some number on the scale-and to that I can close my eyes and tell myself: hello life.

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Day 7: Body Soreness

Posted in Recovery by

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!