Again, ED is on vacation from the blog right now. This time not because he isn't screaming loudly in my head urging me to act on behaviors, but because I don't have the energy to counter his thoughts and instead am trying to distract myself. Don't worry, he will be back soon.
I did want to share an interesting experience today that happened when I let ED sit on the sideline. It all began when me and my dad decided to go bowling. Usually the whole time I am concentrated on how many calories I'm burning, but today that wasn't the case. I just wanted to enjoy the time with my dad as I knew I would be moving back to my mom's house later that night. We were having so much fun and I got a lot of spares and strikes the second game....then the third game rolled around.
I started off the game only knocking down 3 pins and my head went crazy. It told me I couldn't make any spares and the self-defeat and self-hate fired up. Every time I went up to bowl I would bowl a great first ball, just enjoying the time and not having any pressure on me to knock down a certain pin. It would be great and then I would have an easy spare left, but I would miss. Not because I wasn't capable, but because as soon as I went up to bowl I would think of all the things I shouldn't do and with that as my focus, I would do all of those things I shouldn't do and miss the spare. As I progressively got more down on myself, I began to not even be able to roll the first ball as my mind was filled with thoughts of how I was a failure and was going to miss the pins and what would happen, I would miss.
So how does this apply to recovery? Well, it's pretty much the struggle I am going through now. I get so caught up in what I can't do any more. Don't measure or worry about the weight of the food, don't be afraid of fat, don't cut back portions, don't overexercise that I freak out and end up either intensely desiring to do those things or giving in and doing them. But the days when I focus instead on what to do like eat all you pretzels, or measure this with a cup, or eat the whole bagel, or try to get fats to this minimum...I do so much better. My mind thinks of what I am doing (and true still freaks out about it) but it doesn't yearn to do the old things because those aren't the focus.
There is also the whole thing I have where I take it one meal at a time now....or at least I am working on it. Had I not let the last frame, or the thought of how many frames I had left to go get to me, I wouldn't have had so much pressure to perform and would have done better. Same thing with meals. When I focus on how I slipped up or even how I did good and got all my portions at an earlier meal/snack I begin to stress about the one I am sitting at. Then if I think about how I have to do such and such for a later meal/snack I also freak out at the current one. I get so overwhelemed at this point thinking of all the food I have to eat in a day that it becomes overload and I just give up on the portions. I worry what will happen if I get portions at everything, instead of just worrying about the one meal ahead of me. Then instead of getting a strike when it comes to recovery and knocking down all the pin-head ED thoughts, I get a gutter ball and give up on my future. But the meals I sit at and just think about that one moment, that one meal, I do amazing. I tell myself I just have to get through that one meal and eat all my portions. With that goal in mind and without the thoughts of the other food for the day or other mistakes I've made, I push through. Sometimes it takes an hour, but I get through.
There is also the self-defeating tendencies I have. I concentrate so much on all the things that could go wrong in my recovery or all the ways I have/will fail, that I keep myself from trying to recover. I worry that I will balloon because I will lose all control over my weight. I worry that I will relapse again. I worry that these medical complication I am having will be permanant. I worry people will think I'm fat when I get to my healthy weight. I worry I will always have issues with food and never have freedom from all the negative thoughts. I worry I will get used to eating all these calories and won't be able to stop and maintain. I worry I will only be able to eat 1200 cals to maintain when my body is so used to getting above 2000. All these worries fill my head that when I step up to perform at my meals, much like when I went to go bowl, I can't even find the energy to give it my best shot and end up in the gutter.
The last game of bowling, after making all these realizations, I said to heck with it.....I just want to have fun. What happened? My game improved drastically. In fact my score doubled. Wasn't as good as my 2nd game, but it was good and I was sore. That brought up another interesting thing. As I started to get tired, my dad told me just to move my mark (the place where you aim) to adapt to the soreness in my arm that was causing my balls to drift right. But I wanted to force my body to do as well as it had before. I wanted it to just get better and work the same as before. Instead of adapting and giving my body a break, I wanted to force it to do as I wanted. I laughed when I realized I was doing this. Is this not what I do all the time? When my body wasn't being fed I still told it it had to workout...even still when I am sore from work I will push it to do yoga. It is saying give me a break, but I want my way and want to push it to do things I want. An eating disorder is the very essence of forcing our bodies to do what they don't want. We force our bodies to be a shape they aren't by not giving them the nutrients or getting rid of the nutrients or shoving down too much nutrients. These are all forcing our bodies to handle something they can't. But our body can't handle this. We need to adjust what we do and let our bodies cope.
Same in recovery. Sometimes our minds seem to get healthier than our bodies or the other way around. For example, I feel I could handle cycling and not do it compulsively, but my health and weight can't allow for that now so I can't force my body to do that. Then there are the days my body just seems so ready to be fully recovered it wants to eat whatever and do whatever exercises it wants, but again I am not ready for that. My mind isn't ready to be pushed that far and so I have to adjust my aim and do a little yoga or challenge myself with a new fear food, something my body can take.
But, alas. I want my recovery to be like that last game. I want to say to heck with it and not let my past "frames" (ie attempts at recovery, meals, etc) influence how I do now. I just want to let go and experience life. I want to get ready for my throw...get ready to bowl the ball of recovery at the pins of my ED thoughts with a clear mind. Just focusing on that one moment, one throw, one breath. As the ball goes down the lane I will let go and let God. I won't worry about what it will do to my weight, body, or later meals. I will just concentrate on the moment. On the thrill of the game. Then I know I will get my strike and you know what, if I don't, there's always the possibility of a spare :)
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