The Transition
After being discharged from the hospital, I found myself in this weird limbo. Exercise and school were my life and I wasn't supposed to exercise and it was summer break, so no school. I did have two part time jobs- one at an ice cream shop and the other at a bakery- but for someone who likes to have my day fully scheduled, there was still a lot of unaccounted time.
I tried to take up some new hobbies; the ones that landed well (initially) were: pottery, weeding, picking up trash, and flower and berry picking. For most of that summer I would say that I did okay. Nothing I would endorse or advertise as successful/effective recovery strategies, but I initially balanced the limbo fine.
I attended the appointments I was supposed to with a supposed nutritionist, generic counselor and misinformed PCP. For the most part they did what you would expect someone to do in their roles, but it was paired with triggering statements that countered any help they tried to provide. What was triggering? They all looked at me with judgement. I did not feel like I could go to any of them and be honest about things like what I had eaten, the thoughts spiraling around in my head, or my fear of being fat. The few times I tried to trust them, I got responses like "well just eat more", "alright step up on the scale", "you're not doing what you're supposed to. do you want to go back to the hospital?"
I knew that I needed to eat. After being in the hospital and having to get all those needles, I wanted to stay as far away from that as I could. The way I saw it, though, was that I needed to make sure I was eating enough calories to balance out the ones I had burned while exercising. I did not think about the fact that in order to build muscle, I actually needed to eat more than I was burning. I also did not process the fact that I needed to eat consistently and every 3-4 hours so that my body knew it no longer needed to be in starvation/survival mode. Finally, you could not have made a convincing enough argument at the time that rest would not make me fat.
So, I was trying to do better by myself, but was still very misinformed and not seeking out professional advice because of the likelihood of judgement, fear of being told I couldn't exercise, and an overarching lack of trust.
I came to rely on my common-sense and took specialist guidelines as loose suggestions. This is how it looked in practice...
Breakfast was the only part of the meal plan I followed practically without altering. I would get up each morning and after taking a short 20 minute walk would eat the protein smoothie the dietician told me to eat and I would add different types of Cheerios to make it more like an acai bowl. It was strange to eat something before 9 a.m. I hadn't done that since junior year of high school.
Next, like I mentioned previously, the dietician told me not to exercise. Even if you don't know me, I bet you could have guessed I did not follow that "strong recommendation". However, I did use it as a loose suggestion- I cut physical activity way back. Typically, the 'main exercise' I would do each day was something with my mom; we would either go for a hike, walk, or bike ride. Of course, as time went on, there would be more and more exceptions to this, but it did initially start this way!*
Now, the remainder of the meal plan was subject to my common-sense alterations. Since I had customized my breakfast with the Cheerio add-on and it was filling, my logic, which I will use interchangeably with 'the voice'** said that I did not need to do lunch or the afternoon snack the way that the dietician had written out.
What I was supposed to do:
Lunch: sandwich or veggie burger on a bun with cheese and a side of vegetables with butter (or add avocado to the sandwich/burger)
Afternoon snack: apples with peanut butter or crackers with cottage cheese or nuts with pretzels
What I did most days:
Lunch: veggie burger with two thin slices of cheese on top (no bun) and mixed vegetables on the side (no butter)
Afternoon snack: a carrot or nothing
Do you notice any problems? It's okay if you don't- I ignored them anyway. For reference, the key problems: no carb, greatly reduced fat intake, still very aware of caloric intake, too large of gaps between meals
I didn't actually implement anything that looked similar to the original dietician's plan until I started meeting with a dietician of my choosing a year and a half ago.
Dinnertime was different. By this point in the day I was pretty hungry and my brain was tired.
What I was supposed to do:
Dinner: a carb with butter (sweet potato or salt potatoes or rice), some type of vegetable, and 25 grams of protein (my choice) - I was still vegetarian initially, but slowly incorporated chicken and turkey back in
Dessert (yes she did say to have it!): a bowl of ice cream (with rainbow sprinkles, of course)
What I did instead:
Dinner: some type of vegetable, 25 grams of protein
Snacks: popcorn with pretzels and goldfish or whales (iykyk)
Dessert: 1-2 bowls of vanilla frozen yogurt usually with cookie dough and at least 4 cookies and rainbow sprinkles
You might notice that the key problems still existed at dinnertime - elimination of carb and fat and hyper awareness of calories. However, it manifested a lot differently than earlier in the day because my body and brain were craving carbs. Lucky for it, I had been mentally keeping track of my activity and food intake and knew that I had a large caloric gap that I needed to fill to show all the specialists that I was fine. The voice told me that because I loved dessert, and ate a lot of it, that I needed to cut out the other carbs in the day to be balanced and to avoid getting fat. Ridiculous? Maybe, but I listened. And the more I listened, the louder it got. Gotta keep it happy now, I guess? It's clearly not going away.
Congratulations self, you and your logic have successfully gone through the transition and have arrived at recovery exercise-induced bulimia.
~Another day, another slay~
Lydia
*'current me' notes/realizations will be in italics from now on
**this refers to the eating disorder (ED) voice
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