It's Been a While

My bad...


I've been so busy with school it's insane. Fortunately Mother Nature was kind enough to bless me with a snow day which has been a catch up day for me. One of the things to catch up on is this!


So as I mentioned I'm swamped with school. Between studying, practicing and trying to find time to eat it's been wild. It's good and bad at the same time. On one hand since I'm so exhausted all the time, making meal plans slips my mind often. Then I sleep in and forget to pack anything for the day which leads me to have to buy food on campus which is expensive, annoying, unhealthy (sometimes) and never consistent. One day they have some things and other days they're out, so planning is almost impossible -_- In that sense it's bad and rather stressful.


On the other hand, I've managed to keep busy enough where ED can't enter my mind as often as he does because I'm simply worrying or panicking about something to do with school and my upcoming recital. As much as it sucks to be so anxious about school, it's nice to have a sort-of-break from ED for a while. Don't get me wrong, the little shit still manages to follow me around, but I at least get a break for a couple hours here and there


The Recital...


Was supposed to be today, but we are in the middle of a blizzard here in the east coast so it was cancelled. For my solo piece I am playing the most difficult piece I have ever learned here at Acadia. Needless to say I am nervous as all hell. The snow day was a bit of a blessing as I think another couple of days to get it under my fingers was much needed. I will be taking full advantage of this over the next week and a bit.


That said, since I'm on campus for 10 plus hours a day I don't remember to make meal plans, and I keep sleeping in because this year is definitely catching up to me. As a result I end up rolling out of bed and running to school without lunch.. or maybe an apple or something I can grab from the fridge quickly, which is not enough for a 10 hour day. I then need to go to the SUB and get something to eat which has consisted of a wide variety of foods including fried foods (EEEK!), veggies, sandwiches and various other to-go foods.

Even eating veggies can make me feel awful. It might be because convenience foods and such I had always associated as being unhealthy. Realistically speaking they are unhealthy for your wallet, but not necessarily your health depending on what you get - and veggies are definitely not bad for your health!


Sometimes when I wear certain shirts I feel bad or walk by a mirror and feel disgusted. Then ED goes "Oh my god those fries you had yesterday did that!!!!". I fight back the tears and think "ED SHUT UP! I don't have time for your shit my recital is in a week!!"


Usually that can buy me a couple of hours of class time or practice time. I am so nervous for this recital but I'm excited for it as well. This will be the first recital I have performed in that I am completely healthy and happy (basically). ED is not the biggest part of my life and I'm not frail and tired and dreading this recital. I will be healthy and happy and ready to show all of my friends the hard work that I've put in to learn this piece. That's what I keep thinking when ED started yelling at me. I just keep reminding myself why I am doing this; why I went and ate food that I wasn't entirely OK with. It's all because of school and health.


I probably won't be blogging regularly over the next couple of weeks because of the recital coming up, but I will do my best. There will definitely be a post about the recital though, I promise :)

Till next time,


Steph

Point For Me

So as I mentioned in previous posts I have been going to the gym with my good friend. And as I also mentioned, my phone is broken. This became a problem again, as my friend couldn't make it and I didn't get the memo in time which was totally fine, but after the week I had I definitely had an interesting time.


Ed got really pumped. "YES! Now you can work off all the extra calories you that you couldn't when you were sick!" "You need to keep on top of it this time, no more excuses like 'I am too sick', you fat lard"


When I went to the gym while I was engaging in various disordered behaviours a couple years back, I never listened to music because I didn't have an iPod, so I got to listen to ED. To be brutally honest, that's not the best soundtrack to be listening to. Like at all. I didn't mind at the time because I didn't have much interest in music at all then. I know, the music major didn't care about music?!? Sad but true.


Now normally when I go to the gym on my own I listen to music. This is good for a number of reasons;

• I can tune the world out and get in the zone. I just work out and listen to music in my own little world which is good to escape to every once in a while. Plus exercising is only fun with music, honestly if I don't have music I don't want to exercise at all
• I can turn up the music when ED started talking to me. This way I can just focus on the music, not his annoying voice
• It keeps me distracted from how self conscious I am when I'm there by myself. As I also mentioned in a previous post I always feel so envious of the other people at the gym and how confident they look. When I look at them, I can hear ED saying "you will never be as skinny as that girl!" Music is definitely an appropriate distraction because not only does it give me something else to think about, once I go into my own little world it's like that girl doesn't even exist anymore

I could hear EDs voice echoing throughout my head when I realised that Ally would not be joining me for this gym trip. As I got changed into my gym clothes (which are actually leggings and a sweater that I used to wear all the time and sneakers...not running shoes, sneakers. I'm too cheap for that fitness gear) I could still hear the little prick. When I stepped into the gym he got louder; "Look at all these people in actual exercise clothes with proper running shoes, what the hell are you doing here?!!?" "You could at least TRY to hide your flab and bulges, honestly it's sad"


And then I smiled and thought 'cue the music!' I put my ear buds in, and turned on my iPod and to my surprise it said "plug into a power source" on the screen...
I thought, ok well I came all this way, maybe I could try without music for today? I stepped on the elliptical and not even 5 minutes later I was like "Oh my god this is so boring!!!!"
Just as I was about to turn off the elliptical ED was like "Are you insane!? You haven't even started sweating yet! How are you supposed to burn off all that fat, you lazy piece of shit!!??"


I stayed on for another couple of minutes and then I stopped. When I turned the elliptical off I really thought hard to myself. I really had to concentrate to drown out EDs voice, but I managed to long enough to think - will I enjoy myself today? Am I doing this to lose weight, or have fun? Am I here because I want to be or because ED wants me to be?


The answer was pretty clear, so I got off the elliptical and gathered my things to go and change and head home. ED was furious, but I was on cloud nine. I made a conscious decision for myself and my well being, and I was not about to turn around and head back to the gym. If it wasn't going to be fun, I wasn't interested. I got home and made dinner, finished up for the day and went to bed. I definitely felt guilt and some despair but that was just ED being a bitch about it, and he can whine all he wants.


I would say that I gained a point in this all out war in my head. This is the first time in a while, and it feels great :)


These things are possible, I promise. It may take a while, but you can get there :)


Until next time,


Stephanie

Caught a Cold :(

This is very annoying. I don't have time for this. I have two weeks until my recital, three-ish until my jury and then exams. Needless to say I'm stressing out right now, and it's not looking like that is going to go away until I get healthy again. I have stayed home from school today and am going to have to again tomorrow. Being a generally anxious person to begin with, this is not calming as I never miss class. I have also now skipped the gym today and will have to tomorrow. These things combined gave ED a whole frikin novel to shout out to me..


I am always paranoid when I miss class even if it is for truly legitimate reasons like today and tomorrow. You would honestly think I committed a heinous crime or something. I keep thinking that I'm going to fail all of my courses that I miss that day. I keep thinking "but what if the prof goes over something really important today?" or "what if they get test questions from what they go over today?"


That said, the fact that there are two weeks before my recital scares the bloody hell out of me. The piece that my teacher and I have been working on is the most difficult one we've worked on yet, and although it is a beautiful piece that I'm excited to play; I'm also terrified because I haven't learned all of it yet! I mean, we don't have that much more to learn, just a couple more lines. We'll go over that on Wednesday and it will be fine, but that's still cutting it a little close for my liking. This time last term I had already learned my piece I was going to do for my jury (we didn't have a recital) and knew it inside out and backwards. I'm still learning this one. I'm freaking out.

ED is loving it. "You can't do it!" "It was too hard for you anyway, you didn't have a chance" "Have fun choking on stage and making an ass of yourself!" Every time I think of the recital I can hear his annoying voice whisper and sometimes yell in my ear. "Just give up and go home, you're just going to embarrass yourself" Pair that with my exams coming up next month and it's a guilt/fear cocktail.


Now to add to all of that lovely bubbly atmosphere there's the part where I've skipped two days of the gym. This is EDs favorite part. "You fat ass, you are eating more and exercising less??!!" "Have fun watching your ass grow, you're disgusting" "Your ass won't be able to fit into your dress pants for your recital! You'll be exploding out of your blouse!!"


These have been fun to listen to. Really great.


There have been a couple of times I just stayed in bed and didn't want to get up. I'm sick so I needed the rest, but not that way. Stress is only going to make the cold worse and make it last longer. This is why I have been turning back to some of my therapy exercises. I need to keep challenging these thoughts if I'm ever going to gain control over them. I have been challenging them and coming up with alternative, more realistic and logical ways of thinking about this situation.

• Realistically speaking, my profs may very well get a couple of test questions from a lecture or class that day. But they wouldn't base the ENTIRE test/mid term on that one day - I'm pretty sure I'm not going to fail my classes if I miss one day.
• That said, if my teacher didn't think I could play the piece well, he wouldn't have given it to me to learn. He just wouldn't have.
• The recital isn't a fashion show, it's s student recital. It's a chance for the studio to show everyone what we've been working on this year, not how much weight we've gained/lost. Worse case scenario I grow out of my recital clothes and have to buy new ones - shopping trip!!!
• My body needs the extra nutrients to fight off this cold. It's using all of the extra energy, not storing it as fat. If I didn't eat more, the cold wouldn't go away, simple as that. Even if I'm storing some of it as fat, it isn't the end of the world - I still won't by any means become obese

Now, coming up with these took a lot of thought. I didn't just think of them and everything is happy again. They are recurring and definitely still intense at times, even after thinking of alternative thoughts and even writing them down. But I just need to keep thinking of my logical responses to my disordered thoughts. It will take some time, a lot of tears, and no less determination than before but I will keep working at it. I will be healthy and strong, even if i need to take a couple of days off to get there.


I will be posting soon some tips and tricks that I've learned to combat the bad days, and I think some other posts about how you can help someone in this situation. I might also post some links to helpful sites and resources. All in good time though. I am hoping to make this as informational as I possibly can. One of the most frustrating things about an eating disorder is the lack of knowledge that everyone (including the sufferer) has about the illness, so the more information I can give, the better!

See you soon,

Steph :)

My Dilemma

...I've come across a dilemma. Earlier this year I had gotten my food intake up enough so that I was healthy and able to focus. Everything started changing and I felt so much better, it was like night and day. Then I had my mini relapse/large hiccup type thing and fell off the band wagon and noticed a difference. I recently started working on getting my intake back up to normal and at the same time establishing a healthy relationship with exercise. What I didn't realise was that since I was working out and using more energy, that means that I now have to be taking in more energy than before to be able to exercise safely. This never occurred to me before and is becoming more and more apparent every day.


When I started exercising I felt wonderful. I had energy and I was having fun. I started adopting a more positive outlook and a much more energetic attitude. But after the first week I started finding that I was tired all the time and unable to focus on anything. I am absolutely exhausted, and am falling asleep in class - something that I had gotten out of the habit of when I started eating well again. I am getting head rushes when I stand up and find I'm constantly cold. At first when I was freezing all the time I assumed it was just the weird Canadian weather, but when all of the other symptoms started up again a the same time I knew something was wrong. I took a look at my food intake which had been pretty good (for the most part), and looked at my sleeping habits which have also been much worse in the past (again, with only a few exceptions). I was really confused as to why this was happening. Then one day in my nutrition class my prof said something about needing more food when you exercise a lot... which makes sense anyway. It was like a light bulb moment!


At first I was so excited; now that I know what's up, I can fix it! And then I realised that this means actually eating more food. This is the dilemma...


Of course when I realised this, EDs voice got really loud. Like really loud. I got to hear his wonderful thoughts and opinions like..."You're supposed to stuff your face even more than you already are?!?!", "Oh now you've done it, now you're going to gain even MORE weight!", "What if you didn't have more? it could be our little secret..", "You can't have more fat ass, you're not allowed!!", "Are you nuts?? This is your chance to fix the damage you've done!" ...to name a few.


Through the day I can hear "You know, if you don't have lunch you won't have to worry about burning off both lunch AND breakfast at the gym later.", "You just worked off all that food from today, why ruin a good workout by eating supper??" and "Well if you must stuff your face, only have vegetables; they won't add too much to your ass and you won't look so pathetic."


It got even worse when I kept getting shitty marks back. Since I was losing control of school ED used that for ammo as well.. "Just stick to losing weight, at least you're good at that", "Bitch wake up! you can't hide behind your learning disability, you're actually just a dumbass. Why are you in school?", "You will never be good at anything without me! Why can't you get it through your stupid head!?!". It really just creates a domino effect every time something goes wrong in my recovery. When I start having issues I feel bad about it, and then it usually effects some aspect of my life which makes me feel even worse. So I try and fix one aspect of my life and some other aspects fall by the wayside as a result. It's just a vicious circle.


It gets so exhausting, honestly... if I could spend one day outside of my head I would be the happiest person on earth...


Anyway, so when I started falling asleep in class, and slipping on my guitar practicing/progress, and losing interest in school in general I got pissed. This was one thing that ED took from me before - the two things I love the most; music and school. I won't let it happen again. Just no.


It's going to be a long and hard road, but I need to keep going no matter what. I just keep thinking "Fit, Strong, HEALTHY!". If I need to eat more to achieve that, than so be it. Bring on the carbs!




Until next time,


Steph

Exercising On My Own

So I was going to meet my friend at the gym the other day and because my phone is broken, I didn't see her text that she couldn't make it. I had been waiting outside the gym where we usually meet up and after a while I assumed that she wasn't coming, so I decided that I would try and go on my own. It was an odd feeling, because I haven't gone to the gym by myself since I was sick. I didn't really know what to expect, but I wanted to give it a try.


When I first stepped in the gym I could remember being a frail, tired, sick girl who hated that she "had" to be there. I remembered looking around at all the fit, strong beautiful people that I envied, feeling like I could never look like them or be as confident as them, or look as good as they did while wearing shorts/tank top/leggings, ect. I remember feeling like the black sheep in the room; the odd one out. I could feel the stares and hear their thoughts; “why is this awkward girl here?”, “she looks so lost, she should probably leave”, “do you even know how to use this equipment?” I’m sure they didn’t even notice me, but it always felt like they did..



When I stepped on the elliptical I remembered looking at the screen where it said how many calories you were burning off and I remembered watching it desperately to see that number go up. I remember looking at the heart monitor on the other side of the screen and seeing it go red, seeing that I was over-exerting myself and not caring. All that mattered was that I was burning calories, burning fat, "fixing" myself. I remembered being in so much pain but refusing to stop, refusing to give up.



I looked up and saw the tread mill, and the exercise bike and remembered my hour and a half workout; tread mill, bike and elliptical. I remembered knowing that once I got through that hour and a half torture I would get to go home for a couple of hours and then head back and do it again later that day; no excuses, at LEAST twice a day. Every day.



I remember wanting, hoping to pass out in the gym. Then at least someone would find out and be able to help me escape this prison that I was residing in. I also remember ED being angry at me for having the nerve to think like that; he knew what was best, so how dare I disagree!!? He wouldn’t let that happen. It was a love - hate relationship...


I would be lying if I said that these weren't painful memories. To be honest, ED was screaming at me the whole time; "Your friend doesn't have to know just how much exercise you get.. or that you were even here, it will be our little secret!" "Now you can work off the extra food you've eaten! No one has to know!". I saw the "calories burned" on the screen and kept looking at it. I could feel ED creeping into my head again.


I wasn't going to let him win. Not this time. I had my ipod with me and cranked some tunes to drown out his annoying voice. I kept repeating to myself "Fit, Strong, HEALTHY" over and over again. I thought about all of my new role models who are strong and healthy. I thought about everything that I've accomplished and everything I want to accomplish still. When my body got tired, I listened to the cues and stopped exercising. I have to respect to my body, because I certainly haven't in the past.


I was so proud of myself. I haven't been able to stand up to ED like that in a long time, and it was such a wonderful feeling. Things are looking up, and I couldn't be happier. I will keep moving forward, no matter what!


See you later :)


Stephanie