WEEK 1
My week in review
While I technically began the recovery process about 2 weeks ago, this is the first week that I consistently stuck to a formal meal plan. Therefore, I’ve decided to call this week 1. After much reading, my parents and I came to an agreement on the Minnie Maud plan. Basically, I follow the same schedule each day:
8 am - breakfast
10:30 am - morning snack
12:30 pm - lunch
3 pm - afternoon snack
6 pm - dinner
9 pm - night snack
On top of this routine, I eat a minimum of 3000 calories a day and remain as sedentary as possible. This was a very difficult adjustment to make. I had not been eating anywhere near that much the previous week, and the jump to 3000 calories a day was both mentally and physically taxing. I stopped walking every morning, which I hated because walking always makes me feel calm and centered - plus, I always come up with the most creative ideas when walking. Mentally, the caloric intake seems a horrifyingly high number for someone that had grown used to consuming less than 800 calories a day. The first few days typically culminated in a crying meltdown after my night snack - we learned quickly not to put any food that’s too challenging at the end of the day. I was lucky enough to have never suffered from bulimia, but there have been many times in the last week that I have felt tempted to make myself sick. For this reason, my parents now keep an eye on me for an hour after each meal. While I have gotten (somewhat) used to the number of calories as the week has gone on, I still have had to fight off the urge to go and compulsively exercise and/or purge pretty much every day. I’m hoping that once my body is able to monitor things a little better I’ll start feeling hungry before at least some of my meals/snacks. I think it’s only adding to my stress to constantly have to force myself to eat. That constant fullness only amplifies the ED-type thoughts about being greedy and disgusting. It’s easy to think that all of that food is unnecessary when I feel nauseous every time I finish eating.
Day 3 of this week marked the first time that I made it through an entire day without having a food-related crying meltdown, which I was actually very happy about. Unfortunately, things took a turn as the next day marked the first time that I heard what is not-so-affectionately nicknamed “Lizard Brain voice”. I’ve seen many people refer to this phenomenon - I think most refer to it simply as their “ED voice”. Whatever you call it, I was extremely glad to hear that this was a normal occurance. Basically, Lizard Brain voice is a voice that pops into my head (typically when I’m eating) that sits and hurls endless streams of harmful, negative comments at me. It’s a very clear voice. My voice, to be specific. And the harder that I fight against my ED, the louder the voice becomes. Last night (the 1 week mark of MM) was the worst night yet. The voice started this loud, relentless mantra of “you are fat, disgusting, and worthless. Fat, disgusting and worthless. Fat, disgusting, and worthless.” I couldn’t focus on anything that was going on around me. I felt like I couldn’t even access the logical part of my mind. Lizard Brain was completely in control - something which was rather terrifying to experience and required quite a bit of Mommy therapy to get past.
When Lizard Brain isn’t just endlessly repeating the same horrible phrases to me over and over, it is sparring with the logical side of my brain. It pulls triggering, alarming arguments on me which, despite the fact that they are are incredibly nonsensical, I have a hard time arguing with. The thing that’s been causing me the most trouble this week is it telling me that I haven’t earned recovery. Or even the right to say that I am in recovery. I was lucky enough to have a loving family that stepped in during the early stages of this illness, so I never got very sick. I really only restricted severely for about 2 months, and even then it was not as strict as most others. My lowest BMI was probably about 17. The issue with this, however, is that it’s given Lizard Brain something to attach to and use against me. “You never even got under 100 pounds. You still ate 3 meals a day. If you were strong, you would have gotten thinner. If you had any self control, you would have kept it a secret. You should have starved. You deserve to starve. You’re unworthy of food. You didn’t even have an eating disorder. You’re a fake and a liar when you say you’re in recovery. You fail everything that you do - even having an eating disorder. If you had any self control you’d find a way to keep from eating.” Ahh, Lizard Brain. So illogical, but so hard to ignore. I’ve been reading a lot of blogs, watching a lot of TV, doing a lot of Sudoku, and talking to a lot of people to keep it at bay. So far, there doesn’t seem to be any particular way to make it believe any logic that I have to offer. Distraction is the only effective silencing method.
The other unfortunate thing that has become prevalent in the last week is body dysmorphia. I didn’t really think I would have to deal with this as it hasn’t been a large problem in the past, but it has come to the forefront as of late. It's difficult to tell what is just my ability to notice really minute differences in my appearance and what is just dysmorphia talking, but I can see a huge difference in my body since I’ve started the refeeding process. Some of the issue is just the bloating (my god, the bloating), which will go away with time. But I’ve been really struggling with the fact that I really don’t think that I look particularly thin or need to gain any more weight. Actually, I feel as though I already look exactly like I did pre-ED. Logically, I recognize that my doctor would probably disagree and that it’s most likely impossible to gain 20 pounds in 2 weeks. But it’s troublesome nonetheless. I worry for the future and hope that I can continue to force myself to eat the large quantities of food that I’m currently consuming.
Random insights & revelations
My biggest insight yet took place on the 3rd day of this week. I’m not quite sure what caused it, but I had the sudden realization that I honestly have wasted so much time with this ED. It may seem like a really stupid and obvious thing to say, but it was a big deal to me. I've done nothing but waste valuable time that I could have spent being creative, having fun, making friends, reading books, and truly living life. Instead, I have achieved nothing but a damaged body and a broken mental state. All this for the dream of being "healthy" and "thin". And now I'm doing nothing but waste more time (and the time of those around me) on this recovery process. I can't undo the past, but I can make this process as fast as humanly possible by committing myself 100% to making a full recovery. I am never doing this again. It's time to move forward with my life. That’s not to say that everything has been easy since I made that realization, but I do think that it was really important to have that breakthrough moment.
In the last day or two, I’ve had a few revelations regarding triggers that I had not previously recognized. One of them is the number of triggering memories that I have surrounding violin. In general, it is a very perfection-driven, judgmental world. That is not new information. The thing that I have realized is that my teachers expressed a multitude of comments about my appearance that I think were harmful, especially when I was in the midst of my restriction. I remember one particular instance that took place only a few weeks after I had started dieting. I was in a lesson and my teacher was adjusting my bowarm. He asked me if I had been working out recently because I was “starting to lose all that extra stuff here” - this said as he tugged on my forearm. This particular instance was not a big deal at all, but I do remember feeling caught off guard. I had never had any body image issues with my arms, and I didn’t think that a few weeks of exercise could make a noticeable difference. There were several times that this teacher said similar things. I remember him saying something about my shorts being very tight and making “those thighs look squished”. I don’t think that he meant anything by it, and I recognize that I was have never actually been overweight. Either way, I think that there is something to be said about adult men making comments about young girl’s bodies. That’s an issue for another day, but it is one worth discussing.
The more harmful and triggering comments all happened when I was at camp this year. I went to a 5-week long, intense orchestra camp for the second time this summer. A camp which, most unfortunately, happened to overlap with the peak of my restriction and weight loss. Almost all of my friends from last year returned, as did the entirety of the faculty. All of these people had not seen me for a year, which lead to quite the onslaught of comments about the fact that I had lost around 15 pounds since I last saw them. (Why do people think that they have the right to comment on others’ bodies?) I had a couple of people ask me if I would be their “fitness mentor” because they thought I looked so much better. I had multiple people tell me I looked much better and that I should “keep up whatever you’re doing”. Friends would hug me or grab my arms and say that I’m “tiny” and “like a bird” and their “body goals”. As camp went on and I lost more and more weight, the number of comments only increased. I can’t enumerate the number of times that people commented on my cheekbones and collarbones. One girl grabbed my forearm and told me that I was “only a few pounds away” from being able to wrap my hand around it. A particular asshole-y guy told me bluntly that I look much better this year, now that I’m “not so fat anymore”. My private teacher there told me that I look much “classier” than I did that last year and affectionately nicknamed me “little ballerina” - not because I had ever had any ballet experience in the slightest, but because he thought I had the “airy figure of a ballerina”. All of these instances may not directly involve violin, but since my entire life revolved around violin during this camp, it is difficult to separate those two things in my mind.
Besides, the entire time that I was at the peak of my restriction, I was playing violin 5-6 hours a day. Mornings were my favorite part of the day because I would go to breakfast, have a 3 hour rehearsal, and then go straight to lunch. During these rehearsals, I thought constantly about food. How many calories I “saved” at breakfast, how I could get away with the fewest amount of calories at lunch, how many bites of food I would “save” at the end of lunch, all of the different combinations of salad that I could make, ways that I could ensure that I was eating less than my friends. It became a twisted game of math that made it near impossible to think about the violin in my hands. I counted down the minutes until the next mealtime would start. Some days, I would get coffee (and bone-chilling cold of the 70 degree room) in the morning to try to keep my hunger at bay during rehearsals. This often backfired, however, as the utter lack of food in my system meant that the caffeine from the coffee put me into a jittery state of (extremely energetic) food-obsessed overdrive. My daydreams were constant, hazy, and filled with chocolate. It’s only looking at this in retrospect that I can see it should come as no surprise that I have grown this odd resentment towards my instrument. It was the thing constantly standing in between me and my next meal. I was too busy starving to be passionate about it, and yet I was forced to play it constantly.
Side note: another revelation worth being listed is the one that I had as I wrote out this post. That revelation is that I may really have anorexia. Try to keep your heads from exploding, Mom and Dad - this is probably some important part of the recovery process. Regardless, it’s the first time that I’ve really felt able to look at myself with an outsider’s perspective. I’ve kind of gone along with what everyone else has been saying as far as recovery goes, but I guess I’m just now seeing how serious my illness really is. Perhaps I should stop telling myself that my problems are not real.
Blogs & articles that have kept me going
This week, I came across the wonderful Oatmeal and Optimism. She runs one of my favorite instagram accounts and I happened to click on the blog link from her bio on a whim late one night. I am extremely glad I did. Several of her articles have been immensely helpful this week, including:
Not only is it interesting to hear the firsthand account of someone who has done the exact thing I’m in the midst of doing, but also to have some of my (ED driven) fears debunked. I am not going to keep eating like a cow for the rest of my life. One day, I really will be able to follow my hunger cues like a regular person. No, I will not just keep gaining weight forever.
The title is pretty self-explanatory. Plus, her before and after pictures are great.
I have yet to deal with extreme hunger. Actually, at this point at time, it feels as though I will NEVER, EVER get there. Mostly, I feel extraordinarily full all the time. However, this article has a lot of really good points about the importance of challenging yourself to eat junk food, not forcing yourself to stay exactly at that 3000 calorie limit, and reframing your mind to think of your ED as the enemy (NOT food).
I’ve also really enjoyed these articles from other sites:
This was a really good read after the day that I had a minor meltdown about not knowing who I am anymore.
This definitely gave me a lot to think about. I think I’m going to challenge myself to a bit more junk food over the next few days. Hitting the calorie goal every day is a giant step up. I’m proud of myself for that. The problem is that I am still definitely doing so with an ED mindset - i.e., only eating “safe” foods. I have pushed myself to eat some fear foods, but they have all been healthy things. I just need to keep reminding myself that every time I pick the “healthy” option over the “unhealthy” one, that is just another way I am still letting my ED brain dictate my decisions. This week, I’m going to try to pay more attention to what really sounds good, rather than what sounds like the “healthiest” choice.
