Re-learning

One would think that I would have learned something by this time about how my body works and about how my brain is connected/disconnected to my body. And yet.

Firstly, I am back (obviously). I was horribly busy, and then our router broke at home so I have to use Nick’s computer, which I don’t like at all, and I just felt like I was spinning my wheels with this whole losing endeavor.

Trinidad was lovely. The ocean was warm and turquoise and I literally floated for hours in it. I wore a bikini the whole time, and felt comfortable in it. I exercised regularly, and ate what I wished to. Lovely.

However, since then I have seen pictures of myself in said bikini . I have returned to lukewarm affections and dreary weather. And in protest I ate unpleasant amounts of foods that I didn’t really want but which were there, and exercised very little. I fell back on several bad habits, and dropped several good ones that I had acquired. I tried to pretend that there was no problem, but in doing so, the problem has magnified itself, and now I am uncomfortably full and feeling sick.

So.

The first thing I did was sign up for this week-loss competition at the gym, which was set to run during the period I was away. I should have seen the warning signs of disordered behavior right then and there. Thinking it started on Monday, Feb. 4th, I ate my face off that Sunday and Monday, trying to cram in all those things that would soon be forbidden. However, the date had been bumped, due instead to start on Mon, Feb. 11th. My eating was sketchy all week, and then I repeated the same behavior on Sunday and Monday (flag number 2). I was better off being at my highest, right? And it would all be water weight, right?

So I weighed in, and my weight was quite high for me. I spent the week eating austere meals, punctuated with a couple of splurges with sugar. I exercised every day and dropped a very acceptable amount of weight. I felt so smug. Especially because I thought the woman running the whole thing was a loon and maybe even kinda dumb. I also realized at this time that everyone there was very low on nutritional-learning curve, and that while they were eating up everything that the woman was saying, I was struggling to bite my tongue because she wasn’t just inane, she was often wrong wrong wrong.

Then I went to Trinidad, and missed my weigh-in. It would be okay, I thought, I’ll come back and will have lost scads of weight and everyone will be shocked and inspired. As I said, I felt fairly peaceful with my body while away, but then on the Sunday as I was returning I started to feel panic about my next-day weigh-in. I restricted my food drastically that day, and on Monday as well. So not only was I exhausted from a red-eye flight home, but I was run-down and STARVING hungry. And I still felt fat. I also wasn’t looking forward to the class, so when Nick started pressuring me to stay, I caved, with the thought in my head that I would just be extra-super skinny for the next weigh-in.

This past week has been a full-fledged return to my old disordered way of eating. I would restrict drastically for a day, but then the evening or the next day I would binge. Meanwhile, I was missing work-outs because I was either tired and hungry, or nauseated and over-full.

All day yesterday in getting ready for my weigh-in I ate almost nothing. I skipped going to the gym at lunch because my head was swimming. And as I got ready for my weigh-in, I realized what I had been doing. I decided to drop out of this competition (although there were only another couple of weeks left anyway), and get my head back in order.

That’s obviously going to take a few tries. Last night, when I ate for the first time that day, I was famished. I ate some homemade baked beans, toast, pasta that Nick made and then scads of Easter treats and dried fruit. I ate until my stomach hurt and I wanted to throw-up. And then today, without really thinking about it, to compensate I brought very little lunch and skipped breakfast. But then when Nick was curt with me, the empty stomach combined with my feelings of rejection opened me up to a mini-binge.

So, I start again. I sit here with a stabbing pain in my belly, and I acknowledge that I have a far way to go to fix my head and my body and all the paths that connect the two.