Saturday, December 5, 2009

warning- lots of food/calories/weight talk (sorry)!

ok I am freaking out/not happy at all. If anyone has been reading my blog for awhile do you remember when I was seeing a dietitian last spring and decided to gain some weight so I could be healthier? Well, we decided on a number that was within a healthy range but was not too high and wouldn't freak me out too bad. But it was definitaly THE LIMIT for me as far as how high I wanted to go.

Well

I am now 10 POUNDS higher then that weight!!!!!

SO two possibilities come to mind-

1) That weight was too low to be realistic
or
2) i am a gross! "gross" is putting it mildly. I did not write on here all the really nasty things I have been thinking about myself lately.

And the thing is, I dont really eat that much. And, I go to the gym regularly! So, i saw Dr Sean yesterday and talked with him about it and he thinks it is some of my meds causeing the weight gain. Particularly the seroquel and the risperdal. He said that even if I were eating a lower-than-average number of calories, a number that most people would lose on, my body could still possibly gain. This absolutely horrified me! I hate the feeling that I have no control over my body and could not lose weight even if I chose to!

Since i am stable, Dr. S said he wants to see me in 3 weeks and then if I was still doing well he would discuss tapering down on those meds.

In the meantime I have decided to go on slimfast. Dun dun dun. I know, I know, this kind of goes against everything I am trying to be about! And I am thinking about all of my blog posts about being brave, sticking with recovery, accepting my body, taking care of myself, not giving up, ect. I'm just not feeling brave right now. I am feeling miseable. And, I don't think I am giving up on recovery. I just want to lose the extra weight I gained. That's it.

It was alot easier to be brave and feel positive about recovery back when I was at the "acceptable" healthy weight. I guess maybe I don't have what it takes to be recovered "no matter what". As in, I will stay in recovery even if I get heavy. Maybe I dont have what it takes.

I don't know. Let me know what you think (although please try not to be too scathing :) ).

5 comments:

Cammy said...

Ixnay on the Slimfast, please, check out this headline from yesterday: http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/slim-fast-recalls-millions-shakes-diet-drinks/story?id=9251524

I'm sorry that the meds are pushing your weight higher than you're comfortable with, but remember that this is because of the drug, not because you are gross or are eating too much. If you try to diet it off, you will be robbing your body of vitamins, minerals, etc, and even though many shakes, bars, etc are fortified with those, it's not the same as getting them from food. Please just try to focus on taking care of your body; if you let yourself try to lose weight right now, it could set off a bad cycle that will leave you way more unhappy than just gritting your teeth and dealing with the extra weight until the meds are worked out, at which point I'm sure it will come off with little/no effort...I don't mean to lecture, just care about you and don't want this to turn out badly. I know it sucks to feel like you're not in control of what your body is doing. It is also highly possible that the dietian low-balled your goal weight just as a first stepping stone, or to not scare you off right away.

Take care and please treat yourself kindly,
C.

I Hate to Weight said...

cammy's 100% right, but it's so hard to do.

take great care of yourself.

isn't it weird that everyone else in our lives will love us no matter what we weigh. why can't we think like they do?!

take care of yourself. your mental health is sooo important.

karo said...

Why the heck are you weighing yourself? Has it ever made you happy...truely happy to know what you weigh? Scales are like poison. Whenever I choose to get on one, it always makes me feel inadequate...ALWAYS. I don't know for sure, but based on your blog, I bet weighing yourself makes you feel like crap too. So if you know it makes you feel crappy and that it NEVER actually improves your situation, try to examine why you keep doing it (weighing yourself). What is it doing for you in your life? What role is it playing? Why are you holding on to the ED so tightly? All of us have our ED for a reason...becasue it serves a function. Try to do some deep thinking about why you are holding on to it and see if you can come up with other ways to get your needs met. Losing weight and weighing yourself will NEVER get your needs met. It will only put you in a place in your life that you don't want to be. So why do you keep doing it? It is a hard question to answer, but I think if you can figure it out, you can break free of this crap. Imagine how much freedom you can have if you simply give up the control of your weight and learn to not care about it so much. I think it will surprise you how much happier you can be if you can let it go. I KNOW it is hard, I am going through it too, but I also KNOW that it is possible and that if you can truely give it up and the baggage that goes along with it, you will have the energy, the time, the motivation, the health, and the freedom to actually do something positive with your time on earth rather than spending the short time trying to destroy yourself. I hope this doesn't sound to hard-assed. I just care alot about you and I want to beat up your eating disorder and rescue you from it's disgusting teeth! I love you!

lisalisa said...

miss you Karo!

now.is.now said...

Hey Lisa,

I think Slimfast is better than completely starving yourself, but I would push you and encourage you to keep eating real food. If you get used to Slimfast, it will be psychologically so much harder to eat actual food again later, which will set you back in terms of recovery. It might trigger more frequent bingeing/purging episodes once you go back on real food. REmember when you wrote about taking the boost because you thought you "couldn't handle" real food? Then you realized that was an excuse? Well, I see you doing the same thing now with Slimfast. I do understand it's so hard and it's comforting... but you can achieve good weight management with food, too. Heck, you could even eat the same calories in real food vs. slim fast and have less psychological damage in the long run.

I am sorry the meds are causing unwanted weight gain. Is it unneeded weight gain though? I do want to give you some persepctive just to remind you that, for you, this weight feels WAY too high. But I bet you it is actually probably right in the middle of "normal." When you've lived so much of your life at a low weight, the middle of "normal" feels way too high - but it's not!

Even so, it stinks to feel out of control of your body from the meds. Do you get that what youer' trying to do is feel in control again by going on a "plan" (slimfast). Try to stick it out while the meds adjust. The meds WILL get adjusted and your weight will return to be a weight that reflects your actual eating habits.

You're such a beautiful person - not gross at all. Try to stick it out, realize you are not fat or ugly or disgusting. I really think patience will really pay out in this case.

Also, who knows, maybe you'te at this "too high" weight as an opportunity to learn to love yourself even at this weight (which is probably normal, just higher than YOU want). Think of the psychological opportunities that come with having to learn to accept yourself, like yourself, and then love yourself despite not preferring this weight!

I want to share this story form my life with you, in case it helps: 1.5 years-ish ago, I weighed more than I had ever weighed. I think after I gained with Tracy, and then when I tried to restrict again, but started sleep eating, everything just acted against me (body in weight-gain mode + metabolism problems + etc.) to make me gain weight. The highest weight I ever saw on the scale was only a few pounds shy of technically being overweight according to BMI. My weight stayed like that for a while. I don't know how long. I haven't really weighed myself regularly since. It caused me to have really uneven eating because I never felt allowed to eat because of my weight. It was actually harder for me to eat normally at htat weight than it was when I first started working with Tracy because, at least then, I knew that I could slip and binge and gain weight and STILL be at an acceptable weight. But when you're at the top of your acceptable weight, you just feel like there's no wiggle room at all. Ultimately, I came to see it as an opportunity to learn to like myself EVEN when I couldn't like my body. It was an opportunity to break from the pattern of liking myself only when I was thin. And, ultimately, it WAS a good thing for me. It's probably one of the reasons I've been doing well lately. As for the question: did the weight ever come off? Well, I weighed myself a few times this summer and my weigh was down from that higher weight. I THINK I don't weigh as much as I did that one time anymore (just given clothing sizes, etc.) , but I don't know for sure because I don't weigh myself.

Stick it out... it will be worth it...

xoxo!
Laura