[Blueberrybook]

@MuddyBoots We'd both be better off deleting our ED playlists, that's for sure. Are you managing to at least maintain your current weight and not keep losing? Remember you do not NEED to get worse before going into ED treatment, in fact, you can do your hardest to try to improve things some. In some ways, I've accepted this ED is going to stay with me probably for the rest of my life, but it definitely doesn't need to stay at its most destructive. Even if I have a lot of ED thoughts, I don't act on them at least, it's progress of a sort. I'd rather not have ED thoughts at all, but at least I'm not dealing with long-term ED complications other than osteopenia. Even if you can't control your thoughts, you can control your actions following those thoughts. It's incredibly uncomfortable, but it's do-able. You don't have to get worse before you get better.

[MuddyBoots]

Originally Posted by Blueberrybook

@MuddyBoots We'd both be better off deleting our ED playlists, that's for sure. Are you managing to at least maintain your current weight and not keep losing? Remember you do not NEED to get worse before going into ED treatment, in fact, you can do your hardest to try to improve things some. In some ways, I've accepted this ED is going to stay with me probably for the rest of my life, but it definitely doesn't need to stay at its most destructive. Even if I have a lot of ED thoughts, I don't act on them at least, it's progress of a sort. I'd rather not have ED thoughts at all, but at least I'm not dealing with long-term ED complications other than osteopenia. Even if you can't control your thoughts, you can control your actions following those thoughts. It's incredibly uncomfortable, but it's do-able. You don't have to get worse before you get better.

I just weighed myself for the first time since last Sunday in the hospital, and the number is technically down, but I could say it’s within regular weight fluctuation limits (and it’s with an old probably not 100% accurate scale).

I see my pdoc tomorrow and will be weighed with a more accurate scale, but I have to walk and they’re predicting rain so I’m probably going to be weighed wet (then be told it’s good I’ve been maintaining since the hospital when my shoes themselves will be like 3lbs haha).

It’s bad, but negative consequences to health have never deterred me from something. (At Cannon mountain: “Always full send, my friend!”) I mean I’m already dealing with stuff near daily from substance abuse, hypersexuality, purging, sui attempts, and other impulsive shyt, but there’s not really a part of my brain that makes me want to fix them that much or avoid causing more issues. I know the physical issues don’t fix the emotional ones, but if I can focus on them more than the nontangible distress they’re certainly an unhealthy distraction.

[Blueberrybook]

Well, take your shoes off, your coat too if you have one on and drop any bag you have and don't water load. The pdoc NEEDS to see the accurate weight.

[Blue_Bird]

Been struggling with boredom eating and binge eating lately. Whenever I’m stressed, anxious, bored or over tired I end up bingeing and it’s usually on very high calorie dessert type stuff.

Trying to have a healthier relationship with food. I go from one extreme to the other. I’m hoping when I have a case manager again they can help me get a referral to a nutritionist/dietician

It’s kind of hard right now to juggle trying to fix other issues and this too at the same time. And I’m very bad at advocating for myself. On my own. So I think having a case manager again is gonna help a lot.

[Blueberrybook]

I'm sorry you're struggling @Blue_Bird. It's hard to advocate for yourself, but if you don't do it, you can be dang sure the system won't do it for you! I hope having a case manager again might ease the burden for you.

I don't as a rule binge eat. Sometimes I boredom eat, but I try to be careful about that, sometimes waiting 5-10 min, see if I'm still hungry after that, then eat one thing (I'm talking about snacking, not meals here) and give it time before eating again. I am actually hungry a lot because I exercise a lot. But I do my best to listen to what my body is telling me. It also helps to have healthy food around if you tend to binge on things like sweets, don't keep them around. Don't deprive yourself either though; that's a fine line to toe. You can't say I'll never eat cookies again or you will feel deprived. It's easier for me if I bake something; I've got my husband and daughter to help me eat it.

[Mountaindewed]

I think it might have been legit the prestiq because I'm just not hungry. I've also had this weird sudden issue with temperture hot food. Yesterday I burned myself on something I made in the microwave and I got so upset I almost hurled it across the room.

But i think its from getting off my med

[Blueberrybook]

@Blue_Bird Are you good about eating 3 meals daily along with a couple of healthy snacks? It's can be hard when you're on your own to be good about eating meals regularly; I was just wondering if that could be an issue with you? Then, if you don't fill up because you skipped a meal, it's more likely to lead to bingeing. I also always try to have healthy foods around to snack on first (in most cases, I'm not perfect).

[Blue_Bird]

Originally Posted by Blueberrybook

@Blue_Bird Are you good about eating 3 meals daily along with a couple of healthy snacks? It's can be hard when you're on your own to be good about eating meals regularly; I was just wondering if that could be an issue with you? Then, if you don't fill up because you skipped a meal, it's more likely to lead to bingeing. I also always try to have healthy foods around to snack on first (in most cases, I'm not perfect).

Yeah I think part of the problem is I don’t have set meals. I kind of eat at random times during the day. And it’s usually not a full well balanced meal. Sometimes I get caught up in whatever I’m doing and forget to eat then I overdo it trying to make up for it when I suddenly feel like I’m shaky and need to eat. I’m hoping to start cooking more and having actual meals Sometimes I struggle to eat anything at all because of the dissociation. So I have protein shakes for those times. Which aren’t ideal at all. But I physically can’t eat when I’m dissociating so I have to have something around because sometimes it can last upwards of half a day. Mainly because if I try to eat whole dissociating I might choke cause it makes it hard to focus and swallow food when I’m floating mentally

I need to start meal prepping more and cooking

[Blueberrybook]

@Blue_Bird You'd be amazed what you can manage to do dissociated. I have driven, cooked, eaten, taken care of a baby and pretty much done everything I needed to do while dissociated, but like I said, I push the panic about it away and put all my thought into focusing on what I am doing in the moment. Though like I said, I've been dissociating since I was a kid, so IDK in that respect, maybe I grew up thinking that was the way I was supposed to feel sometimes and that everyone went through it. It was only once I grew up and started learning more about psychology (in fact, maybe it was my psych course in college) that I realized what was going on. A lot of the time I feel disconnected from myself and my life (as a wife, a mother, the fact I one did give birth to my daughter), often even my own name. It's a crazy thing to have happen to a person. The one time that really got me though, I had completely lost my grip on reality, like I knew what reality was but I still didn't feel in it at all but I wasn't exactly psychotic either. Thankfully, I haven't had that happen again.

I suggest putting your focus into a task at hand when dissociated to see just what you can accomplish while dissociated. Don't do anything dangerous but do something like measure out ingredients for a recipe you can cook in the microwave (if you can't eat while dissociated, you can't, but a lot of eating is automatic, and sometimes for me smelling/tasting food actually helps ground me some). I wouldn't suggest driving or taking care of a baby while dissociated if it can be avoided as yeah, those situations can provoke panic all on their own but working up to cooking and eating may be do-able.

I still dissociate a lot. I don't always write about it in the forum. Yesterday, I had a lot of issues with it off and on except curiously when I was reading. So I pretty much read the whole day.

[Blueberrybook]

I'm still having the overexercise problem. I'm already anxious about next week when I have early 8 AM appts. 3 days out of the week and that will cut into my exercise time. I know I won't gain tons of weight if I exercise less; it's such an irrational fear; I hate it!

[Blueberrybook]

Yesterday I saw my PCP, and she expressed concern over my weight loss since my last appointment 6 months ago and told me to take care not to lose any more. Which I know. I've only just gotten back to the weight I've weighed most of the 20 years I've been seeing her, so I'm not quite sure why it should be a concern. But of course, the ED thoughts were delighted a doctor finally commented on my weight loss

[Blueberrybook]

I bit my lower inner mouth accidentally a couple days ago and then just keep accidentally re-biting it. Now I've got a mouth ulcer and on top of it my mouth is raw. Which is another way of saying it makes it easy to not eat what I need because my mouth just hurts. I wish I had ice cream...sigh. I haven't had ice cream in ages, nothing to do with the ED, more to do with having had to replace my old refrigerator with a new one with a smaller freezer compartment.

[unaluna]

I hate when that happens! You reminded me that I am just recovering from one.

[MuddyBoots]

“Your eating disorder is severe and getting so in the way of your life.”

Thanks, NP, I’ll remember that when I start eating again and STILL manage to have sleepless nights of waiting for a message so I can poke the bear. So I can feed the bear and make it think I’m good, and he can come back for as much as he wants, until he crosses the line, breaks through the backdoor, and I have good reason to shoot it.

Or it just mauls me. Whichever. Not my fault the bear came around the first time.

[Blueberrybook]

Feeling guilty I still have an appetite lately, not that I'm bingeing or anything, eating pretty normally but eh, seems like every other post I read no one has an appetite.

[MuddyBoots]

Yeah, I’m not even reading anything in trigger boxes, food/drink threads, exercise threads, etc. unless the trigger boxes is labeled as or is or obvious through context something I know I can handle (which is nothing food related right now).

I have an appetite especially if I wake up early, and hate it. Right now I’m kibda restricting a few days, maybe a week, binging then purging a few times in a couple days, then repeat. I’m terrified I’m heading back towards a more bulimic presentation (AKA spending a lot of money on food, time at stores, time in the bathroom, and (honestly kind of worst of all) being an upper normal or over-weight)(oh, and passing out a lot more and more unexpectedly and bigger fluctuations in electrolyte levels. Because of course I miss barely being able to get to bed and then having muscle spasms every 30 minutes to an hour until I have a couple sports drinks or pedialyte or something. My fav. Oh and the panic of thinking for a second

Possible trigger: Foods, purging

“I can get mashed potatoes and bread and dark chocolate up” only to realize 20 minutes after the binge and giving a first purging attempt I was too confident and then absolutely hate myself after two hours and barely getting anything up other than maybe 40mLs of blood and something I ate like 6 hours ago. Nope, not the stuff I just had an hour ago, whatever the fk I had earlier, totally forgot about, maybe even wanted to keep that specific food down. Yeah, that comes up, but not the fking potatoes. Fking peanut butter and ANY kind of chocolate will come up before potatoes or bread, do I ever remember that when I really want to binge and involve something with bread or potatoes in that? Nope! Never buying more than one potato at a time for the rest of my life.)

******mit even sedated I can’t stop. You can blame my neighbor, she texted me and I asked her about the noise (all is good, she’s just breaking down some old furniture) and now I kinda want to be a smartass and call my CM incessantly and ask if she really meant we were meeting today, and if she really meant late afternoon, and WHAT she really meant by late afternoon because ******mit I have naps to take and a shower to get myself into. (Then call again and ask if she really meant she was meeting me, or if she’s going to ghost me again, and keep calling until she’s outside the front door because if someone needs managing to keep their shyt together, I can do the managing until they learn out of not being able to bear my lack of confidence in them to keep their shyt together so I can HAVE confidence in them. Or they can’t tolerate it and call me needy or controlling or whatever. Yeah, humans have needs, yeah, I probably have been one of the needier ones whether I wanted to be or not (I really don’t, I hate having needs and I wish I could just not require clothes, food, shelter, meds/treatment for anything, water, whatever.)

Okay, seriously gonna nap then shower now lol. Neighbor has settled.

[MuddyBoots]

Day before I was discharged they took my weight, but said it had to be a “blind weight,” (which was aggravating because literally no hospital or doctor has ever not let me known before, but (TMI) I hadn’t pooped in a week at that point so honestly didn’t even want to see it) yet literally the next day my email was flooded with patient portal updates including the notes with that weight. (Thank God I hadn’t pooped before though. Have a feeling without everything I ate in that week added they would’ve extended the IEA “because I can’t sustain life outside a hospital setting.”)

I love their notes though. One day I guess I was supposed to talk to a nutritionist there, and she wrote a note in the portal, but it just said “wanted to talk to pt today, nursing advised against it for safety.” Medical doc wrote a progress report for when I got there that started off “Samantha looks terrible.” Thanks, Dr. O, by the way, you smell like you put on half a bottle of strong perfume because you haven’t actually showered in a month and want to hide it (why do most IP docs and nurse practitioners wear so much fking perfume or cologne? Idk about you guys, but my school was next to a farm and my aunt I spent time with lived on a dairy farm and had horses, and I’ve grown to appreciate the smell of cow manure on hot humid days a helluva lot more than walking near “make me smell good without having to use basic hygiene” sections in stores.) (So, anyone that wants a date with me, don’t pick up a bottle of perfume/cologne before asking me out, you’ll have better luck improving your smell by spending time around horse, cow, and goat shyt beforehand).

I do have a pdoc appointment today though. Love how it’s always raining when I go these days (I did tell her my shows were soggy last time they weighed me and I wonder if I didn’t say that or specify it was rubbing alcohol instead of the age restricted kind if my skin wouldn’t be more brown and purple than white today).

The hospital changed my diagnosis from “unspecified eating disorder” (actually pretty sure my first hospitalization this year that was under the “history” section too) to anorexia nervosa (feels better than seeing bulimia tbh which is still on my outpatient team’s treatment plan).

[Blueberrybook]

The diagnosis, I know right? Like dying for it to officially fall into the anorexia category? When I was in college, I waited until I knew I would have that anorexia diaganosis before actually seeing a therapist about the ED (the DSM guidelines for anorexia vs. unspecified were quite a bit tighter on the weight side back then as in you had to be below a BMI of 18 and I believe also no period for females for a certain time period, 3 months at least maybe?). And in the end, like an anorexia diagnosis is so glamorous or special or something as opposed to bulimia or ED unspecified?

[MuddyBoots]

Originally Posted by Blueberrybook

The diagnosis, I know right? Like dying for it to officially fall into the anorexia category? When I was in college, I waited until I knew I would have that anorexia diaganosis before actually seeing a therapist about the ED (the DSM guidelines for anorexia vs. unspecified were quite a bit tighter on the weight side back then as in you had to be below a BMI of 18 and I believe also no period for females for a certain time period, 3 months at least maybe?).

Yeah, the classifications for diagnoses of eating disorders are kinda harmful bs. I remember when I was first diagnosed with bulimia and learned there was “anorexia-binge/purge type” and the difference (in my and everyone else in the bulimia-community’s mind) was those with AN-BP were “successful” and we are disgusting failures. So much jealousy from bulimics towards those able to consistently restrict too. I know that AN-R really is a lack of control and desperate attempt to gain it that just makes you less in control in the long run, but when you compare it to being consumed by the impulse to binge, then feeling so awful until you purge, and then feeling “better” for 3 minutes then getting slammed with either being physically fked up if lucky or drowning in lordly shame. And then no one believing or suspecting or taking it seriously that you have an ED because you’re not sickly thin, have become a master of hiding the actual b/p sessions, and other people see you eating more often is just the icing on the cake.

They just should collect all the eating disorders and then specify the behaviors, maybe identify most likely severe health risks based on which behaviors (like right now I’m probably primarily at risk for cardiac stuff from hypokalemia or hypoglycemia (well, when it comes to my body failing due to malnutrition rather than an intentional death—that’s probably even more likely in all honesty) whereas I’m surprised I never needed surgical repair of a MW tear when I was b/p’ing like 20 times a week).

So like, instead of “bulimia-purging type” it could be “eating disorder including binging and compensatory purging- biggest risks are [gastro, cardiac, dental, whatever].”

And with such common BPD and ED comorbidity, I bet a lot of people with an eating disorder have a big problem with black and white thinking and can see anything but “extreme” as a severity specifier and think it’s not an issue because it’s not the worst it could be, probably intentionally getting sicker to feel valid and “prove competency at self-abuse” (or however is a better way if wording that) or see the specifier go from”mild” to “moderate “ and quit trying because now it’s more than “barely a problem” so it’s hopeless. I know it is sooo common (and the treatment providers add to this SIGNIFICANTLY from my experience) to think you’re not sick enough for (really any mental health issue) to be a problem, too. Jesus, when I was like 19 and switched back from struggling with b/p to restricting and overexercising again, my doctor fking congratulated me on losing weight (to he fair he was old and in family medicine and had no clue I ever had any eating disorder behaviors).

And they still use “atypical anorexia” too (we might be behind the majority on that, I don’t know, but one of my diagnoses as an adult was “undifferentiated schizophrenia” and that was supposedly wayyy after they dropped the subtypes) if your BMI is over a certain amount, but you lost a certain amount of weight in a short time using disordered behaviors, and come on, you KNOW a lot of people find out they’re “atypical” and immediately set their next goal weight to whatever it is at exactly the BMI to lose the “atypical.”

[MuddyBoots]

Fighting the urge to give away all the food I have and donating every dollar to my name so I can’t get more.

So fking STUPID! I swear to fking God I’m never going to spend time irl with another human being because they ALWAYS just want to get lunch or insist I have some dumb snack, and if I don’t accept I’m proving I cant eat. But then I do and then I HATE MYSELF for it. No.

Possible trigger:

I’m gonna spray all my food with bleach and then eat or not eat it’s a win-win.

[Blueberrybook]

I'm sorry @MuddyBoots

I'm doing well ED-wise today; I didn't weigh myself for the first day in a long, long time, probably since my last psych hospitalization over a year ago (for bipolar psychosis, not the ED). I still did exercise today, but this week I did pilates 2 days instead of walking in the heat, and I think my body really appreciated that as well even though I found it hard at the time. Food & eating-wise though, I'm pretty solid. I eat enough but don't binge. Mostly it's healthy but sometimes not and I really haven't been obsessing too much over "good" vs. "bad" when it comes to food.

[MuddyBoots]

I actually made a meal plan and hope I don’t lose this one and stick to it.

[unaluna]

Originally Posted by MuddyBoots

I actually made a meal plan and hope I don’t lose this one and stick to it.

On My 600 lb life, this one girl - she was pretty young, maybe 18 or 19? - anyway, she kept LOSING the diet sheets Dr Now gave her. Like 4 or 5 times! Paper or email! And she NEVER said she lost them until her NEXT appointment, when Dr Now would ask her, So did you follow the diet? And she would go, No, i lost it.

Not much really funny on that show, but that was some true shyte there. I am amazed that stuff is actually staying in my head about my eating choices recently. Of course, prices going up helps. One door dash equals a whole grocery shop. Gimme that block of tofu and can of fruit!

[MuddyBoots]

Originally Posted by unaluna

On My 600 lb life, this one girl - she was pretty young, maybe 18 or 19? - anyway, she kept LOSING the diet sheets Dr Now gave her. Like 4 or 5 times! Paper or email! And she NEVER said she lost them until her NEXT appointment, when Dr Now would ask her, So did you follow the diet? And she would go, No, i lost it.

Not much really funny on that show, but that was some true shyte there. I am amazed that stuff is actually staying in my head about my eating choices recently. Of course, prices going up helps. One door dash equals a whole grocery shop. Gimme that block of tofu and can of fruit!

Okay paper I understand being legitimate because I am not with it and get it, but how tf do you “lose” an email? (By deleting it because you don’t want it there).

[unaluna]

Originally Posted by MuddyBoots

Okay paper I understand being legitimate because I am not with it and get it, but how tf do you “lose” an email? (By deleting it because you don’t want it there).

Thats why it was so amazing, right? It was one of those, denial is not just a river in egypt moments. Or, Gen Z will not survive! But. Every. Time. I. Lost. It. You didnt know whether to laugh or cry.

Geez louise i havent eaten beans in a while and i lost my uh immunity?