Don't Forsake me Yet

I FINALLY have internet connection and access to my own computer again. It was too risky any other way.

--- And I have *some* tales to tell---

But I'd feel guilty if I didn't at least attempt to get caught up on my reader's blogs first! So a quick list:

1) Saw 113.2 on the scale today.
2) But, I'm still huge.
3) Moved out of my old apartment, TR into a new one in the city, and me back home with Paula Deen for the next 3 months before I begin my London adventure.
4) Moving totally fucked me up, and I have pictures to prove it, but I've somehow managed to get some little upper arm muscles (in between real muscles and those scary muscles old people have that you're like "PUT YOUR SHIRT BACK ON")... so I need to start doing barbells instead of freeweights
5) I HAVE MISSED EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU SO MUCH AND I'M SO EXCITED TO BE BACK!!!

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My last thing I'm leaving you with is a technical tip, but I don't think I'm triggering anyone because if you're already seeing a psychiatrist or have access to meds than you are already down a path... Wellbutrin+Topamax+Prozac. MIRACLE. I haven't binged ONCE, and I don't even have to count calories except I do because it makes me feel safe. I've tried each one individually and they've been kind of helpful, but like combined, it's almost scary how well it works. It could probably work in a good way for anyone who wants to recover as I was able to eat a few normal days without thinking I was a failure or order extra food to punish myself.

Anyway, I felt guilty keeping these little pills to myself. Prozac is FDA approved to treat bulimia and binge eating, and scientists are developing a weight loss drug that's basically a combination of Wellbutrin+Topamax, so I think my cocktail makes sense.

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Better post later, can't wait to get caught up!!

All my love.
Cheers,
Savory

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

I.Am.Exhausted.

Basically, Wednesday night, I had to fly home so I could help my mom pack up the car and the dog and drive BACK up with them to my apartment on Thursday. Paula (aka Mom) was not in the best of moods.

Wednesday, I fasted throughout the day, and used the money I saved to buy some homeless men lunch and feed a woman and her grandson. It felt good, but a bit pretentious. Continued starving.

Arrived at the airport and my mom wanted to go to the Mall (AUGH! bad place) to get my sister foreign currency for her trip abroad, and of course they wanted to eat at one of the restaurants. But I was good. I figured out a way to order a hamburger (vegetarian) not eat any of it, but not clue them in, and only have a bit of broccoli.

---
Here's some tips:
1) I've discovered something called "Metromint Water" ... it's basically like drinking really watery mouthwash, but drink it anyway, because it will taste like you've just brushed your teeth after EVERY sip. Kills the appetite.
2) Ask if you can order steamed vegetables as a side instead of fries, usually they have them.
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Thursday, I knew my mother would want to get fast food for the road, so I started panicking. But then I realized I didn't have to because someone had brought her grapefruits!!! So I ate a little one, and poured a slimfast shake down the drain to make it look like I had a full meal. So she got something and I could say "Thanks, but I've already eaten."

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Friday, I was a bit bad and kind of splurged when we went to a hamburger place, but I think it's ok because that day at lunch I only picked at a plain salad and pretended to eat the fries one of my friends offered me before tossing them under the table (oops!).

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I feel like there was something I actually wanted to talk about but now my stomach is super angry at me for eating last night so it's fallen out of my head. Churn churn churn. Thankfully, my weight is finally almost down to something manageable again (I think I'm at something like 118 plus or minus 1), and I'm beginning to hate myself less. Though, I do feel deceitful for the things I say to my mother about why I don't want to eat. She's naive. Basically I've just said that I feel really sick to my stomach when I eat breads and dairy, and why can't I just eat protein and fruits and vegetables.

She coo'd at me and did her kind Southern lady talk and said she understands but other people just think that it means I have a problem with food (........ ah tears me apart). But I don't know, lately, I've been thinking to myself, if that's *really* what I want to eat, what makes me happy, a good food day, isn't it only a problem because society has deemed it as such?

If I don't think it's a problem and Paula Deen is fine with it (with all her Southern naivety) then where is the disorder?! There can't be one. Because there's no external judgement, no hiding, no leaving out plates of stupid shit so it looks like I've eaten a giant plate of fried-fatty-grease-gross-mess that other people think I *should* be eating.

Ok. I'm getting too excited. I'm starting to stand on a proverbial soapbox about this. Better get off while I still feel on top.

Cheers, girls! Will read and comment soon, promise!!
Savory

1 Step Forward 2 Steps Back

I hate repeatedly talking about my failures here but that's my life. If I mean to get it under control and maintain an outward facade of perfection, you all get to see all the cracks.

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After yesterday's bad food day, I feel uncomfortably full today (chant our mantra: "I just want to be empty") and there's a gain. But I'm pretty sure I can lose whatever I've gained in a day, and then if I can finally stop this pattern and get back on track and not have on and off days, I'll have continued daily loses.

Here's my new plan:

• Staying away from the scale again.

• When I'm eating, I have to count how many times I am chewing.

• I can only eat at 9:00am, 12:00pm, and 6:00pm. And only if I'm hungry. If I'm never hungry, I fast.

• When I eat, I can only eat 1 fruit or 1 vegetable serving.

• If friends call to hang out, say "No."

• Drink at least 2L of water every day.

• Tell my mother I have a wheat sensitivity.

I feel ok with this. It's just neurotic enough to work. After this starts going, maybe I can trust myself again to do something like 2468 again, but right now that's too many calories.

---

Today, I'm flying home to visit my mother and them I'm driving back up with the car to get my stuff out of my apartment since our lease is up. What am I packing for the plane and my visit home? My fruits and vegetables. They are going to think I'm crazy.

I am. But in my defense, my mother doesn't have anything healthy at home, and if I don't bring anything I'll have to eat nothing which will be suspicious or eat her scary food. So crazy it is.

Cheers!
Savory

Worry From Unexpected Places

Today was not the best food day. I blame this on several things:

1) This was the first real day in more than a month I could finally use laxatives again. Of course I over indulged and had cramps. So I had that "I feel hungry" sensation and felt like if I ate something it would feel better... but of course it didn't.
2) Stupidly, I stepped on the scale, and was disappointed when I didn't see like stars and rainbows or slot machine read outs (I don't know what we expect, no number is ever going to make us happy), so even though I'd stayed away from the scale long enough that I'd lost like 5 pounds, I was mopey.
3) TR was eating in bed next to me all morning, like that was acceptable behavior.

However, I'm ok with this because yesterday I had no appetite and didn't eat anything until I got home at like 8PM and told myself I should probably eat a little something so I wouldn't binge later (hah) and ate a little baby cucumber, which is basically like nothing.

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Yesterday we ran errands and went to the store. I had to make TR help me pick out my foods because I felt so manic and ADD about what I was going to get. But everything's safe:

+ Watermelon, Plums, Grapefruit
+ Corn-on-the-cob, Celery, String beans, Baby cucumbers
+ 3 boxes of lean cuisines under 250cals each for emergencies only
+ 2 packs of TickTacks (I'm allowed five a day as rationed by TR as a treat, they are 1cal each)

---

Today TR as part of my bad food day went out to the little place next to my house to get me my favorite depression lunch while I moped in bed. He comes back and throws the bag at me:

TR: "Oh, while I was there, the owner asked about you" (this is that place where they know our order by heart)
Me: "Yeah?"
TR: "He's worried about you"
Me: "Why?"
TR: "He wanted to know if you're sick or like ill. He said you've lost a lot of weight."
Me: "Really??? I'm not even that thin. And I don't know when he's seen me."
TR: "He sees you all the time walking on the street. We're right next door. And you're too thin. Look at your wrist. Mine is big and strong. Yours is so small I feel like if I tap it, I will break it. Your wrist is so fragile."
Me: "Well, whatever, if I keep feeling depressed and going to his place for lunch, I'll balloon back up and neither of you will have to worry."

Jesus Christ.

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I'm working on a list called "Crazy Things My ED Makes Me Think." Feel free to contribute. My favorites so far are that I'm always touching my collar bones because I'm afraid that one minute they'll just sink into my skin and disappear never to be seen again, and sometimes I hesitate when someone offers me lotion because I wonder if my body will absorb any fat or calories. haha.

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I was going to post a picture of me to show you all what I've been doing this summer but TR said I looked fat, so sorry. But I can't make that kind of first impression.

AWOL

I've lost my phone, and of course it's dead, so I have no idea where it is. I feel completely fractured.

---

The little voice in my head is being SO damn mean. I guess I call her the dominatrix for a reason though. I love it. I know it's me, but it's a part of me that's been absent for about 2 months, so I'm glad... I'm... back.

Anyway, my hair is starting to fall out again, like really noticeably. I was at my best friend's house last night for a BBQ, eating fruit and pushing around the grilled vegetables he made just for me, when I noticed ALL THIS HAIR ON THE PLATE. So I quickly started picking all of it off. Ugh, I keep shedding. I mean, I've always kind of shed, but it hasn't been this bad since my sophomore year when I dropped 20 pounds during the summer when I was depressed and living alone on Slimfast.

My period also has been strangely awol. I've so far attributed this to the fact that I stopped my birth control awhile back and I might just be in shock. But I told both these things to TR and he was like "Hmm... well maybe you should Uh eat some real food other than grapefruit!?" I'm way not at that point. I'm like at a low BMI but it's still normal. It's not like early May where I was legitimately underweight.

So, I dunno. My body is teasing me. All the side effects, with no benefits.

---

I need to start keeping a pad of paper with me. I had this existential blog post written out in my head while I was riding the subway yesterday, and then I forgot what it was about.

Sorry for the boring post. I'm having a boring day ;)

Death at the Hands of An SUV

So I've kind of unintentionally eaten a grapefruit and then fasted for 24 hours. I might do this again, but if I don't feel like fasting for a full 24 hours, I can eat another and not be punished.

I'm staying off the scale. And away from measuring myself. I fear my thunder thighs and numbers, but I know my thunder thighs will maybe go away faster than the numbers and I just won't notice it. I'm kind of a believer in the scale lying.

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I am SUCH a bitch.

At work, I was sitting working with this huge girl whose face kind of permanently looks she is smelling something really bad and thus reacting to it... even when she's smiling. It's a weird sneer.

If she wasn't kind of rude it wouldn't matter that she was so huge. But she is huge. I was thinking about this last night when I couldn't sleep. Her calf is probably the size of my thigh and her upper arm is probably the size of my waist (it's one of those arms where her elbow like disappears under the fat)... I'm not exaggerating, I've seriously stood and eyeballed the difference.

So she was sitting and being prissy and somehow the conversation ended up at the "South Beach Diet" ... and I was like "What exactly *is* this? I've just seen the frozen meals and bars." So she explains it, which to me, it just sounds like a societal accepted eating disorder (lots of rules, really unhealthy, good/bad foods, LOTS of rules, and it will basically make you neurotic if you follow it, which only the hardcore actually will). So I'm like "Wow." And she was like "The first 2 weeks are the hardest." And I'm like "What the fuck are you supposed to eat!? Can you be a vegetarian??" And she's like "Oh yeah, I have a bunch of cookbooks! This diet REALLY works."

Me: "*Deadpan* .................................... really ... ? *furrows brows*" (Followed by an equally bitchy but cheery) "Hmm, I'll have to try that..."

And that is why I'm going to Hell. Or why I'm going to get run over by a GIANT Range Rover.

Cheers,
Savory

Hello There

• I have not abandoned you!

• TR (formerly known as BF) plus work, plus the little girl I've been hanging around with all day every day because her mom has brought her to work and that's become my new job apparently... have provided TOO many distractions for me to get on blogger. I apologize. But it's not a good excuse, because if I was really as obsessive as I was 2 months ago, I would make time, so I promise I will start doing that again.

• So thanks to all the girls who came up with names for BF but I really got a chuckle out of Lulu's suggestion of "DWTR" (Dude With The Ring) and have just shortened it to "The Ring" or TR... I'm shallow ;)
  

• New plan. I still have a bunch of grapefruit from when my mom took me to costco to buy produce in bulk (is there anything more amazing than being surrounded by safe foods?), so because I still have a bunch left and I want to stop eating gross stuff that will keep me fat, I'm on a grapefruit diet! How retro cliche, I know. But that's all I'm going to eat until it runs out, then I'm back on raw foods again. I'm super excited. You should be too. We're getting me back on track. Back to 115, and then down to 110.

• Oh. I got high again, and had another crazy paranoid hallucination trip. I hated it so much I gave my friend's boyfriend the rest of an 1/8 I had just bought and a new bubbler pipe. I WASTE MONEY. This just shows me I should pretend to have a religious awakening so I have a new excuse for shunning drugs and alcohol. The later is empty calories and the former makes you eat things you don't even like.

Ok, off to be a glorified babysitter and construction worker for 9 hours. Promise to read a million blogs when I get home today!