As if it mattered

I need an ana friend to text, someone to talk to when all I can think about is ed-related things. Like someone I could tell when I'm worried my roommate could hear me purging, or when I'm proud of myself for staying under my goal intake. comment if you'd like to, or message me somehow.

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Finally had that appointment with the therapist. She was nice, but it still feels really weird to pay for someone to talk to. I don't think I like the idea of therapy, but I won't quit it yet. If I quit it now it would seem like I wasn't trying.

So may people know about my issues. All the roommates, my friends David, Matt, Sara, and probably a bunch of people I don't even realize. Everyone has such a huge mouth, including me. As if life is complicated enough and we don't already have enough to talk about without adding the drama of an eating disorder.

It's been weeks since a day when I didn't purge or didn't eat under 800 calories. My weight dropped 9 pounds in 4 days when I did the GM, I was briefly at 135, then went back up to 139, and now I'm going down again. Today I woke up to 137.5.  I'm going home to Pennsylvania today, flying in the evening. Then it's four days of family time, but I hope there's enough exercise and noise and distraction that I'll be under 136 when I arrive back. Under 135 is the dream, but I don't want to disappoint myself.

Last night was another big discussion with my roommate. I just started crying to her, I don't know what possessed me to tell her anything. The more I tell her, the more she worries. She cried because I cried, then we were both in her blankets whispering about life. I love her so much, and I wish my problem would go away so it wouldn't be her problem anymore. But I don't want to get better, I just want to lose weight.

meandering

I read in a few books about this behavior of bulimics. They wander the city, looking for the food that will satisfy them. They eat and eat, purging everything. They have to wander around because they are too embarrassed for anyone too see them eating too much in any one place. I do that. I do that all the time. I did it today, I think I spent over $40 today on food that ended up in the toilet. Such a colossal waste.

Tomorrow I have my appointment with a therapist. I've been waiting for this appointment for weeks, the woman seems very nice. I think if it weren't tomorrow I might burst. Someone besides me and this blog needs to know about this hell inside my head. I spent all day slightly worried that I might start crying and blabbing to a stranger on the street.

In the same area I have my current job I'm applying to a few different restaurants. I have an interview tomorrow at one of them and I'm waiting to hear back from the others. I also have a phone interview tomorrow with a news company that might pay me to actually use my skills in journalism. wahoo!

My face looks ridiculously round and fat, especially when I'm wearing lots winter gear.

I need a little help

When someone even brings up the idea of food, I start to get nervous. My life this week surprisingly and quickly dissolved into a full-bodied obsession with food and the lack of it.

I starved sunday to thursday, eating under 2,000 calories spread over all five days. Then yesterday and today I had two massive binges. I spent a large number of hours eating and throwing up, my throat is raw and burned. My stomach hurts, my head is aching, I feel like total shit. But it's like it wasn't me who did it. I was on autopilot, just a rational little robot inhaling food and vomiting it back out again. If I keep purging this often, (today I lost count at 4 times) it's going to start to show. A little blood actually came out an hour ago, I think maybe I scratched my tonsils with my finger nail. And my face is puffy, blood vessels in my face are broken, my hands always smell faintly of vomit.

This isn't what I want. I don't want to choose between eating nothing and everything. I don't want to rip myself to shreds. I just lost control, and I'm not sure how I'm going to get it back before these food problems destroy my life.

Today, I remember sitting and eating something, I don't know what, and crying alone in the dark. I was all alone in the house, no one could stop me from eating everything and from retching violently hour after hour. I was crying and wishing that someone would walk in, that somebody will come and save me. But I don't really think anyone will be able to save me. I have to do it myself, and I'm too pathetic to accomplish that task.

blizzard day

I can't sleep anymore. Every morning since I began this diet I wake up still thinking about frightening dreams, stomach grumbling, eyes hurting, legs weak. And to make it worse my weight went up since yesterday morning. I feel crushed, but I know I deserve this.

jan.1 intake:
b- 2 bananas, 1c strawberries, black tea (256)
l- 1 fruit leather (45)
d- "cauliflower pizza" (314)
s- 2 fl oz. red wine, 2 clementines (120)

Using the excuse of "feeling sick" doesn't work if you use it too often. I was "sick" on NYE, and I know my roommate would ask questions if I tried to use it again. She was excited about cooking dinner and eating all together last night, so I relented. We made "cauliflower pizza," I put another handful of mozzarella cheese, a 1/4c of pizza sauce, and 5 turkey pepperonis on mine. It was surprisingly low-calorie, but it wasn't allowed on the GM diet plan. yesterday was supposed to be bananas, milk, and vegetable soup. I could only rationalize the total change in plan by taking a two hour walk in the freezing cold on Carson Beach on the south shore. (I'd never been there before, I can't wait to go back in the summer.)

But this morning I weighed more than yesterday morning so I know that I was wrong to stray from the plan. I ate over 700 calories, double what I ate in the first two days. As a fix, I ate nothing today, just water and black tea. I'm head-spinning hungry, I'm wondering when my will is going to break and the binge will happen.

Clearly with today's fast, I'm not on the GM diet today. It was supposed to be beef and tomatoes, but I don't like either of those foods. So tomorrow I'm going to have brown rice sushi and fruit, and maybe a salad or something if I end up going out to eat with my roommate's parents like we planned a while ago.

This is so sad. I can't keep focusing all my energy on what I eat. It's so self-defeating. No one is ever happy if all they can think about is finding their own happiness. When you shift focus away from yourself and onto doing things for others, that's where happiness lies. But selfishness is my downfall, and right now this desire for self-perfection is a fire in me.

auld lang syne

Happy New Year my dear readers!! I'm so glad it's an even numbered year again, though 2013 was very good to me. I don't really want to list accomplishments or summarize anything, but I'd be happy if I had another year like this one. I want to keep moving forward, to keep gaining the things I want and leaving behind the things I don't need in my life. 

Today marks the 4th day of the GM diet. Yesterday was a really hard day. I woke up at 6am because my heart was racing and my stomach hurt. I got up and my legs were shaking, I got scared of what might happen so I ate an apple and a clementine. I immediately felt nauseous, but I thought it would pass. About 15 minutes late I had to leap out of bed to try to make it to the trashcan, but everything ended up on the floor.

What's funny is that I make myself throw up often, but when it happens naturally it hurts way more. My throat hurts less but everything else feels like an acid burn. The rest of the day I ate 6 clementines (210) and a whole jar of peaches in white grape juice (400) which is somehow the most calories I've eaten in three days.

The shaking hands and hazy thoughts have been worth it if you look at just the scale. I weighed 144 on the morning of day 1, 138.5 on the mornings of the two days after that, and this morning I weighed 135. One of my benchmark weights is 136, which is the high end of the "normal" bmi range for my height (5'2). It's sad that I'm still aiming to be normal after all these years of struggling. I should have made it to the bottom end of that range by now.

normal bmi range: 18.5-24.9

136 lbs- 24.9

101lbs- 18.5

I have this 35 pound ideal range I need to be within medically. But emotionally I want to be the weight that makes me feel light and pretty and worth wanting. I don't know what that is yet, but I'm going to keep dieting and burning calories until I find it. I wish that my weight didn't determine my worth, but it does. It plays into almost every part of my life- getting hired, keeping a job, finding a boyfriend, making new friends, being liked. Fat people have a hard time doing anything worthwhile in a world like this.

And now I'll make that list of New Year's resolutions:

-to be 121 by my 21st birthday

-go on a roadtrip

-travel out of the country

-make a film/radio piece I'm proud of

-get a killer internship or job prospect

-listen to more live music

-volunteer

-spend less money on silly things

-call my grandparents more often

on the second day

b- 1/2 large potato with salt and rosemary (130)
d- soup: vegetable broth, celery, carrots, mushrooms (75)
s- fruit leather (45 cal), 2 cinnamon mints (10)

Day 2- GM diet

Today I was supposed to eat a baked potato for breakfast. But potatoes taste too starchy alone, so I only ended up eating half of it. Just before I had breakfast I weighed in, and shockingly I lost 5.5 pounds since I weighed yesterday morning. I was 144 and this morning I was 138.5. I know that's not real weight lost, it's just water or bloating or something, but it was cool to see the number drop so drastically like that. Tomorrow's weight will probably go up, today's was a little unrealistic.

Most of the day was spent in bed with a guy I met online a few months back. We've done this before and I really like him, but really only as a friend who I also have sex with. Actually, it's mostly about the sex. We have things to talk about, but we're both far more interested in the physical part of things. But as I was getting ready to say goodbye, he suggested we "do something besides lie in bed all day," by which I think he means "go on a real date." That and he whispered into my ear "I love you" while we were having sex, which I hope is just one of those things guys say when they're about to finish. As the adage goes, only time will tell.

I was really hungry by the time I left him and took the train home at 5. I ate the potato around 9am, and then had my dinner around 6:30. My one slip-up today (vegetable day) was the fruit leather. It's technically not allowed, but I don't really feel badly about it because it was one of the only things I ate today. As usual, I also had around 3 cups of tea and another pint of water as mandated by the diet.

Tomorrow is New Year's Eve, and we're hosting a party. I really hope I don't get bullied into having champagne or anything- no alcohol allowed. And tomorrow is the day my roommate comes home. I rearranged all the furniture in our room yesterday and I hope she likes it. Personally, I think it's great, but it would suck if she didn't like it as much. Once she gets back I'm going to ask her to help me pick out curtains for the windows.

GM day 1

Today was the first day of the GM diet. Somehow, I made it from 7:30 when I woke up this morning to now on only 300 calories worth of fruit, and I didn't binge or throw up anything.

b- 1/2c rasperries

l- cantaloupe strawberry smoothie

d- grapefruit

s- 2 clementines

I also had around 4 cups of tea and probably another pint of water. I'm really proud of myself for making it through day 1 without any mistakes. Hopefully I can make it through tomorrow, which is vegetable day, un-tempted by carbs. The one weird thing is that tomorrow's breakfast is a baked potato, which definitely isn't a normal breakfast food.

As an added challenge, I'm also taking a tolerance break from smoking this week. I want to start the new year off right. New Year's Eve will be pretty hard, this diet plan doesn't allow for any alcohol and my roommates and I are hosting a NYE party. They've all been talking about champagne and which foods they want to make. That will be day 3, and I'll be allowed both fruits and vegetables. But I think by then I'll be craving carbs and rich foods like crazy and it will be really really hard not to give in to the party atmosphere and consume the things I normally do.

I really want to do this perfectly. I want to prove to myself that I can do this- just 1 week of total self-control. And if everything goes as it should, I'll hopefully lose a few pounds, too. The website says 10-17, but I think this was designed for fat old people, so I probably will lose 2-5. But even a small loss like that would be a step in the right direction.

On my birthday I set the goal to be 121 by my 21st, but I'd really like to be at that goal before it's time to start wearing summer dresses and shorts. As of this morning I weigh 144, and I don't think 23 pounds is too drastic. People have lost that much weight in a week on the Biggest Loser. 2014 will be a thinner year, I know it will be.