[MuddyBoots]

For a couple of my meals I've taken a picture of the "meal" (sometimes it's actually meal-worthy food but crazy small portions and sometimes it's literally a cut up pickle and hot sauce), and after eating captioned it with what I had to do before, during, and after to handle eating. I was thinking of doing this for the harder days, and showing my therapist and maybe that will help her connect the dots and maybe she'll think "ay, maybe lunch shouldn't make someone think about ways they can die for a few hours a day most days because holy fk this is ridiculous."

For a second I thought maybe it's a bad idea because it'll be kind of a reinforcer, but realized the behaviors are already there, I'm just capturing them with a picture and narrative to make sure she sees what is genuinely happening.

Thoughts?

[Blueberrybook]

Have just flat out told your treatment team, "I don't eat above X cal per week?" or "I only eat X cal per day?" I suppose if they can't get the picture, then you just have to show what you've eaten in a day, but I don't know do you think documenting your meals as such is a good idea because then you will always look back on your ED meals and feel guilty when they are no longer the norm or if you eat more than that? Pretty much, you are in a position where I'm starting to wonder if you might not have a goal to get worse just to get ED treatment? It sounds like you are already in a very bad spot, and I'd hate for you to do even more damage to yourself just to have to get treatment. I hope whatever happens, you are able to stop skirting the truth with your treatment team because in some posts you have said your CM (or whatever MH professional) will ask if you're eating and you will just say yes and leave it at that instead of saying most days you don't eat or if you do you don't eat more than X per day. And they'd know X is bad.

When do you see your CM again?

[MuddyBoots]

I see my case manager on Mondays and therapist on Fridays. Thing is most days I do eat, and I do tell them when I just don't consume any food at all, and every time they ask how I've been eating I'll say "shyttily," and I've even shown my pdoc my calorie totals before I first stopped counting.

Yesterday, saw my CM in the late afternoon, after I told her I was eating poorly, she asked what I had today and I told her half an apple and a spoonful of hummus and then we just talked about all the different flavors of hummus for like 10 minutes. She showed up early and I had my food log open literally right in front of where she sat on the table the past 4 days fitting on this one sheet of a 4x6 memo pad, totals of calories and everything, and she's going on about how she's going to fill out a voucher for me to get a bike from the city for a reduced fee.

My therapist SAID she doesn't press food questions or discuss it much because she thinks I'm afraid to be honest because I'll be hospitalized so won't be until I need to be hospitalized, but I'm more afraid she won't help me before I pass out in the woods somewhere because when I'm at that point I won't be honest.

But I'm thinking like on the extra hard days when I'm already unable to not obsess I'll just journal before meal thoughts and the calculations, take a picture of what I made/take a picture of what's left before I throw it out or put it away for leftovers, write all the stupid shyt I do during the meal (like count the ratio of bites:sips, get up to clean something real quick, spend 4 minutes finding "the perfect song for this meal," etc.) and write after thoughts and shyt. Maybe if I can show them and give them a narration of what I am doing and thinking they will finally get that I need more help, but going to the hospital is NOT going to help unless I am in dire need of medical treatment too, which I don't really think I am right now especially when I research criteria for inpatient eating disorder treatment. I found two websites that give similar but slightly different criteria, and of the whole two lists I meet one criteria of them for only one of the lists which is the % of IBW and that's barely. The other lists a lower percentage and I'm in between the two. Vitals always normal when they check them, don't have the electrolyte imbalance symptoms I was having before, maybe occasionally I question if I'm hypoglycemic, but not anywhere to the extreme it was after they had me in the ER psych hold dungeon for a few days and I wouldn't eat at all out of guilt for hitting the guard and was probably using a lot of energy crying, pacing, and hurting myself.

I kinda wonder if when I tell them what I've eaten if they think I'm lying for attention or something and think "no way she's eating that little, she is walking fine, talking fine, etc."
Except they don't know that for me normal people walking pace is a crawl, not talking like someone who just smoked crack is not my baseline, etc. I've always been INCREDIBLY hyperactive to the point I've been told hypomania is essentially my baseline, but now I look like most people's baseline which to me is just slow and boring and I feel stupid. Except I don't look stupid because I mention I read a 600 page book in the past week and finally finished unit 6 in my calc lessons but only got purple (purple being proficient or mastered, orange being familiar, red being "made an attempt") in 33/34 lessons and only 24 of those ended up being "master-level." But, I mean, the book is fking Harry Potter people were reading that shyt in 3rd grade and I was a math major before I dropped out, so, yeah, that isn't really my par.

I told my CM I'm not volunteering or dog walking because "some days I feel like I'm going to pass out coming back from getting meds (which is a 10-15 minute walk). I'm not going to sign up to be relied on to walk to the bus station (which I mean, I could see it from here if there weren't buildings in the way), then do the 15-20 minute walk from the stop to the shelter, walk dogs/clean cages/feed and give everyone water/train puppies for 2 hours, walk back to the bus stop, and then walk back from the station home." She just said that was understandable.

I literally told them I bought a type of alcohol that was half the price of the vodka I usually get (because it was half the price of the vodka I usually get) and then dumped it after getting only slightly buzzed off it and then realizing what I drank in calories was more than I eat in a day--more than I eat in 3-4 days usually.

I think they just like the malnourished me that doesn't have the energy to be so fking annoying and argumentative 24/7.

[MuddyBoots]

I ended up doing the before eating pic/what was leftover pic & narration thing with dinner last night. It didn't feel triggering at all. It actually felt kinda good to get it out of my head and on paper and it really validated to myself that "it's a little more than a little fked that [what pathetic meal I had that would be probably a mid-day low cal snack to most people] felt like too much."

There's a lot of outdoor dining on one of the streets I walk down regularly and a lot of pizza places in the area, and I'm just putting it together that people are eating these extravagant (or at least high cal in the case of pizza places) meals some of them maybe even weekly while I'm looking at the pics from last night like "damn, I do have an eating disorder and it is NOT mild."

[Victoria'smom]

I made just a single picture of my day one time on a small paper plate. So she could see and really understand. She kept my little project I believe it's still in my file there.