Tag Archives: binge eating

Getting Back On Track (or Another Continuation Of A Monthly Challenge)

For September, I challenged myself to get back on track. I’ve done a lot of variations of this challenge since the pandemic started. It’s been hard to get back to good habits when my world is not the way I’m used to. It’s hard to have a schedule when you don’t have things to schedule around. I tried to find a way to get things to feel a bit more stable, but I kept struggling.

And just like every other attempt at this challenge, I feel like I made some progress but I didn’t fully succeed. But I do feel like I made more moves forward than I have before, and that’s something I’m proud of. I think it did help that I had 3 things that I really focused on and I had some clear ideas of what I wanted to do. I focused on my sleep, my workouts, and my food.

For my sleep, I’m not quite back to my regular sleep schedule. But I’m getting closer. I am still staying up a bit later than I would like to, especially when I know I could sleep in if I wanted to the next day. I’m really trying to get back to my regular schedule where I don’t sleep in. There’s really nothing happening now that I need to stay up for. I just don’t go to bed on time. I’ve been getting much better at getting in bed before midnight (I want to get it closer to being in bed by 11:30 or maybe a little earlier). And while I do read in bed before I go to sleep, as long as I’m in bed by that time I usually do ok with my sleep. I had occasional nights where I was up until 1 or 2, and I felt really miserable the next day. I think that I just need to keep working toward going to bed earlier and I’ll be back to my schedule soon.

My workouts also are feeling a bit more on track. I’m having setbacks and my bad weeks are really tough on me. But having weights really has helped me feel like my workouts are closer to what I used to do when I went to the classes in person. I’m feeling sore, which is a good feeling to me (I still can’t believe I like feeling sore) and I know that I’m getting some of my strength back. I’ve been lucky that I haven’t struggled to keep up with my workout schedule because that would have been really hard to fix. But having half-ass workouts has been a bit of a struggle too and I feel much better about how my workouts are going after this past month.

Getting my food back on track was harder for me. This is something that is so hard for me even in normal times. But doing it during a pandemic when I’ve had so many setbacks is even harder. But I still had some good things happen. I’ve been more mindful of what I already have when I make my grocery list. I try to limit how often I get groceries delivered. I’ve tried to not order in as much from different restaurants because I know I always have something I could eat at home when I do that (it just might not be as tasty or what I’m craving).

And getting my food back on track fits in with my challenge for this month. I want to work on finding some more easy and lazy recipes this month. By easy and lazy recipes, I mean things I can put together with almost no effort and with things that I either usually have in my house or have ingredients that are easy to get. I don’t have a lot of these recipes right now in my life. I would say making a turkey burger or veggie burger and steaming veggies is one of them. Another is roasting some potatoes and onions and then putting an egg on top of it (sometimes I add cheese too). Those are super easy for me to make and I don’t have to think too much about it when I’m making them. I also have minimal clean up when I make them.

I know having more recipes like those will help me continue to make progress with getting my food back on track. I don’t think I will ever be someone who wants to cook every night (although that is a challenge I’m considering), but I’d love to cook from scratch a majority of the time. If I eat a frozen dinner once or twice a week and have things I made the other nights, I would consider that a huge step forward. But in order for me to have that happen, I know I need to find more lazy recipes. That’s the only way I can see that idea sustainable.

Hopefully, I’ll find some great recipes that I will want to make over and over again. And if I don’t, I’m still hoping that this challenge makes me cook more and gets me to a better place with my food. The only way I see myself failing this challenge is to not try. And I know that is possible, but I’m really hoping I don’t allow myself to do that.

Another Isolated Therapy Session (or My Anxiety Is Normal)

Yesterday, I had my regular appointment with my therapist. Like my appointments often are, it was another virtual appointment. I’m always grateful that I can have my appointments over the phone or video chat because it saves me the drive (and the cost for parking). And nowadays, it’s pretty much a requirement to have virtual appointments to be safe. I have other doctor appointments that I need to do soon that cannot be virtual, so having one where I feel safe at home is really nice.

The main point of these appointments is to confirm my medication is ok and to make sure I’m doing alright. At my last appointment, we added a new medication but I stopped taking that already. It was something I started right when the pandemic started and my anxiety was getting really bad. I even started to notice some of my OCD tendencies were coming back. I don’t know if the medication was the only reason why I had those, but it was a variable that I could easily take out. My OCD seems to have gone back to where it was before, but my anxiety is still higher than normal. But in these times, I think being a little extra anxious is normal.

And after I confirmed with my therapist that my medication is still a good dosage and that I’m doing ok, I did mention that I’m a little anxious but I also understand that it’s normal. There was a post I’ve seen on social media a few times that says something like “I feel like I hallucinated the pandemic. I’m staying home, scared of getting sick, and taking precautions. And other people are just out there living their lives like normal.” And that’s really how I feel. Combining that idea and the idea that I’m alone on my own little planet with nobody around me is the best way to explain what isolation has felt like for me. I know that I’m doing the right thing and making small sacrifices will pay off in the long run, but it’s not easy when I’m in the middle of it.

But just like before, my therapist completely understood how I am feeling and reassured me that this is normal. I know that there are options for medications that I could take to make these feelings go away, but I’m really not feeling like trying medications right now. The last medication was stopped because I couldn’t be sure what was causing the side effects. I feel like trying something new would do the same. Maybe I would feel better, but I also won’t know when I could come off the medication because the world isn’t making me anxious and not the medication. I know right now I can work through these feelings. If anything changes, I can reach out and get help. But for now, I know that I’m not to the point where I need more help to be ok. I have been in that place before and am able to recognize if I get there again.

Just like so many of my recent appointments with my therapist, this was an easy one and it confirmed that I’m doing the right things for myself right now. I know that my eating disorder is a bit harder to deal with right now and I’m really working hard at that, but I also am going a bit easy on myself because I am going through something that none of us have ever experienced in our lifetimes. I can’t expect to have normal reactions in an abnormal situation.

I hope that by the time I have my next appointment, things will be starting to get better in the world. I will still be grateful to have a virtual appointment, but I would love it if I could feel like I have a bit more control and power over what I can do each day. I want to get back to the routine that I had been working on and helped to keep me on track. I have no clue if that will be possible by my next appointment. I keep hoping that something will change in this country so we can get the pandemic more under control and that will be a huge step forward. But for now, I just have to keep doing what I know will be keeping me safe, and working through the feelings being isolated brings up.

Doing A Health Check-In On Myself (or Seeing Where I’m Slipping)

I think it’s a pretty common thing right not to be struggling. We are going through a pandemic and life is so uncertain. People are scared of getting sick or being a carrier and getting someone they love sick. They are lonely at home or if they live with others unable to take time for themselves. Our routines are completely different and it’s hard to figure out a sense of normalcy. Almost everyone I know (at least in the US where the pandemic is still hitting us hard) is struggling with food or weight. I don’t know anyone who says they are doing just as great as they were before.

Struggling sucks. Even when you know that you aren’t alone in the struggle, it doesn’t necessarily make you feel better. And I know that I’m struggling right now. There’s no question about it. I’ve written about different struggles I’ve been having and I think that having an outlet to write about it has helped. But it hasn’t made it go away.

I want to say that I am ok and nobody should worry about me. I’m safe, I’m healthy, and I’m going to be ok. I am not worried about myself or if I’ll be ok because I know I will be. I just sometimes struggle randomly or my brain doesn’t want to remember that this time is temporary and eventually it will be done.

But even though I’m ok, that doesn’t mean I’m ok every day. I don’t believe that I have depression, but I know I have symptoms of being depressed. I am not enjoying some of the things that I know make me happy. There have been days that I wished I could just sleep away the day and thought maybe somehow the next day would be more interesting (even though my days don’t have much variety). I deal with loneliness a lot. The lack of physical contact or touch with others is a big struggle. I crave some of my normal life back and that’s just not possible.

I am working on being more social with friends and family in ways that I can be safely social. But even when I’ve had weeks where I was talking to someone on the phone or had a Zoom hang out almost every day, I still feel lonely. Being alone in my house isn’t easy. If I lived somewhere bigger, I might have asked a friend if they wanted to stay with me during this time so we didn’t have to be alone. But that’s not exactly an option for me right now. And I don’t know if seeing a friend from a distance is going to be enough for me. I know it helps because it has given me a boost when I have done it. But I also wonder if I won’t get the same boost now as I did before because I’m struggling more.

And I know my physical health is struggling too. This time is exceptionally hard for anyone with an eating disorder. I know I’ve gained weight in the past few months. Some of it is possibly stress-related, but I also know that I haven’t been eating the way that I should and my workouts aren’t as hard as they normally are. So it would make sense that I would gain weight. But I hate it. I feel really uncomfortable in my body right now. I want to get my weight back to where it was. I would prefer to work on losing weight again, but just to get back to where I was in March would be so nice. I’m trying to do the right things to get myself back on track, but then I slip up. This feels so much harder than any other time with my eating disorder and I wish I could figure out what I need to do to start getting back to the old me.

I remember seeing something on social media about how we shouldn’t be comparing ourselves now to ourselves before the pandemic started. We aren’t the same people that we were before. We are dealing with things that we never have had to go through. We are trying to live our lives through a pandemic and it’s a mix of normal life and everything being crazy. Struggling right now is normal. And it’s also normal to reach out for help. I have reached out to my therapist to make sure that I shouldn’t be worried about how I’m struggling. And I’ve been told that I’m doing ok, but if I feel like I need some help then we can discuss medication. I don’t want to go that route yet (just because of how often I deal with side effects), but I’m glad it is an option I can explore if I feel like I need it.

Hopefully writing this all down is going to help me feel a bit better about things. I can tell that it does feel like a bit of the weight holding me down has been lifted. I don’t know if this post will help me find a way back to the old me or a way to get back on track, but right now all I want to get to is to feel like I’m not struggling as much. It’s a small goal, but it would make me feel so much better.

Another Thing I’m Learning In Isolation (or Eating Disorder Issues)

There are so many things that I’m learning about myself and about the world right now. Yes, there are so many sad stories happening and I have friends who have lost loved ones. But I also have never heard of so many stories about how people are helping each other and coming together. I have learned that I’m much more of an extrovert than I thought (I thought I was an introvert until this). We haven’t been doing this for that long and I expect us to have to do this for a while, so I’m sure there will be so many other things I will learn about myself and about others.

But I have also come across issues that I never thought about before that are only happening because of being in isolation. And the biggest ones for me have been with my struggle to recover from my eating disorder. First, my workouts have been so good for me with feeling better about myself. But now, I’m not able to do my workouts the way that I have gotten used to. I’m not able to work out as hard and I’m missing a lot of cardio (I’m working on fixing that, but it’s not easy). Having something that felt like it was helping removed from my life has been hard. I don’t know if I was struggling this way before joining Orangetheory because I didn’t know what I was missing. I don’t know how to get the same feeling I get in class when I don’t have others around me supporting me and pushing me. But it’s something that I have accepted would be difficult to deal with so I’m working on it.

But the biggest challenge or struggle with my eating disorder has been about food (which is usually my issue). I am not used to having this much food in my house. I don’t like it because it makes me uncomfortable. But I know I have to do things this way because I need to limit how often I go to the store. And I’m not keeping foods in my house that I usually keep because I have to find more shelf-stable things or some of the things that I like to have aren’t available or easy to find right now. If I’m craving something, I can’t always find it. And I can’t have a binge of the foods I have in my house because I need that to eat for the rest of the week.

I’m also almost feeling food insecure because of those issues. I know that I’m not actually dealing with food insecurity and that’s a real and serious issue, but that’s the best way I can describe it. I know I have food and I would be fine if I couldn’t get more for a week or two. I wouldn’t be eating anything fabulous, but I have things like pancake mix and ramen that I could have. But I don’t have things that are as familiar to me and I don’t know when I’ll be able to get those again. Going to the grocery store has been stressful, but I have been able to avoid it for the past few weeks. I’ve had both grocery delivery and a friend help me, so it’s been easier now that I haven’t had to deal with going to the store myself. I’m not feeling anxiety by the lines or by being frustrated that I can’t get the things on my list. But I’m also feeling a bit out of control when I don’t see immediately what will be something that can be purchased. It’s a weird situation where I don’t know if I can win.

I’ve seen several articles and heard some podcasts that discuss these issues and say how this is a difficult time for anyone who has had or currently has an eating disorder. Even people in recovery are finding this a challenge and knowing that has made me feel a bit better about my struggles. I’m not alone by any means in this and that is reassuring. There haven’t been a lot of suggestions on how to work through this yet because this isn’t something that people have experience with. The main thing I have heard over and over again is that people need to be gentle with themselves and know that there may be setbacks right now. And that is ok because we are dealing with something that nobody has ever been through before. If right now my recovery takes a bit of a pause, that doesn’t mean I have ruined everything that I have worked for. I can get back to what I was doing before. And maybe I will start to pick up some skills that I can use to help me soon. I don’t know yet, but I am trying to stay optimistic.

I’m sure there will be other things that come up in the coming weeks and months that will be challenges and struggles that I wasn’t expecting. Even when things start getting better, I know that they won’t be just like they were before. We all will need to ease back into normal so we can feel comfortable with not being isolated anymore. But just because things won’t go back to the way they were before immediately doesn’t mean that they will be worse. I hope that I can find a way to make things better for me in the future. And if I can’t, I will just have to keep reminding myself that this time is temporary and any issues I have with my recovery are temporary as well.

Some More Virtual Therapy (or Trying Another Medication)

I’ve been doing my appointments with my therapist virtually for a while. It’s been a great setup for me because I don’t have to deal with driving in traffic or paying for parking. I know there are some rules about my therapist needing to see me every so often, but I believe that the video chat appointments fill that requirement.

But with all the issues with COVID-19, I was even more grateful for being able to do my appointment at home. I don’t want to be around people when I don’t need to. And it turns out that they have been converting all the in-person appointments to virtual ones, so even if I had a regular appointment originally scheduled I would have had a virtual one.

Most of my therapy appointments are about checking in with how I feel on my medications. It’s not as much about talking things out as it used to be (or as some people think therapy is all about). I’m not saying those things aren’t valuable or what therapy should be about, it’s just not what my current appointments are about. I’ve done a ton of talking things out, now we are working through finding a solution.

I’ve been doing pretty ok with Vyvanse for a long time, but lately, I’ve noticed it not taking the edge off the same way it used to. It’s something that I’ve become more aware of and I’ve been tracking it knowing I could discuss it at this appointment. And I did bring that up to my therapist this time. I said that I didn’t know if my body was getting used to the dosage but that I didn’t necessarily want to increase it. And she agreed with me because I am toward the top dosage that has been studied. There are people taking double what I take, but that’s not recommended nor are there a lot of things known about the long-term effects of doing that.

So my therapist recommended that I should consider trying adding another medication to my plan. I’m definitely open to doing that, but I also am hesitant about that. The last time I added a new medication, it didn’t go well. But I also know that I’ve added medications several times with no issues so I can’t just think about the rare times that it wasn’t so good. And we did go over some of the medications that I’ve taken before and how I reacted to them.

There have been a few studies about different medications that people take for anxiety or depression that can help with getting into recovery from an eating disorder. I have taken some of these medications with no success or causing some bad side effects. So those were immediately removed from consideration. What I will be adding will be a different medication that is also a mood stabilizer. The idea of taking a mood stabilizer is that it can increase patience and reduce impulsive behavior. Both of those things could be good in multiple aspects of my life, but it makes a lot of sense with my eating disorder. So I agreed to try out this medication to see if it helps.

I’m going to starting taking a half dose for a week before moving on to the full dose my therapist wants me to be on. And after 2 months, I’ll be doing another virtual appointment to check in and see if it’s helping me. Of course, if I have bad side effects as I did on the last medication, I can message her and we will create a plan for me to go off of it. But I’m trying to stay positive and hope for the best. I want there to be no bad side effects and only the positive side effects that I want to help me.

This medication isn’t as strong as the last one I tried so it might take a while for me to see any results or side effects. That’s why my appointment is set for 2 months from now. Most people don’t notice a change for almost a month, so that gives me a month to see any changes and a month to decide if I like those changes. I’m not thinking that this is going to be a miracle medication and make everything better, but anything that helps would be so amazing.

Another Attempt At A Reset (or Feeling Sick Got Me Into A Bad Routine)

When I was feeling sick from antibiotics, I dealt with a lot of random symptoms. Many of them were similar to what I deal with each month with pain and nausea, but they weren’t being resolved by the things I usually do to feel better. I was also dealing with other symptoms that made me just feel awful.

I was able to work and go to my workouts, but that’s about all I could do. I was exhausted because I was waking up constantly at night. I wasn’t eating well because I went from not being hungry to feeling so hungry and nothing seemed to be what I wanted. And I wasn’t drinking enough water (which is a rare issue for me to have since I tend to overhydrate) because for some reason drinking water was making me feel very full and my stomach was hurting.

I’m not proud of what I was doing while I was feeling sick because they really weren’t the best choices for me. The sleep issue was one that I couldn’t help too much, even though I probably could have tried to go to bed earlier so I would have maybe gotten a bit more sleep. But whatever sleep I would have gotten would have been interrupted, no matter how early I went to bed. That’s been a bit easier to get back to my normal routine than getting my eating back has been.

I didn’t do anything as bad as I have done in the past with binge episodes, but they weren’t good either. I was making bad choices constantly and I’m paying for it now. I don’t feel like myself and I just feel like I’m recovering from poor nutrition choices and I’m not feeling better. Fortunately, this is just a general uneasy feeling and not a sick feeling like the week before.

I was finally done with antibiotics over the weekend and I started working back toward what I know I need to be doing. But it hasn’t been easy to do, just like every other time I try to have better habits. And I’ve done this attempt so many times in the past and I know how frustrating it can be for me. But I have to do it because there really isn’t another choice for me.

I’m trying to get back to some basics with food. As much as I want to learn how to cook a lot of good options for myself, I also know that having too many options can be a bad thing for me. I need to be a bit more regimented in what I keep in my house and what I might each for each meal. It’s not the most fun thing to do or super interesting, but it’s a way to reset myself before I focus on adding more things back in. And I’ve been wanting to do the autoimmune protocol diet for a while so I might not be adding things back in once I do reset things for myself. But that’s not something I’m focusing on right now.

Right now, it’s about making sure I’m getting some good food into my body every day, even if that’s not all I eat all the time. And I need to get back to drinking more water on a regular schedule so I can stay hydrated but make sure I don’t start overhydrating myself again. I’m not too focused on eating on a regular schedule since that is a much bigger struggle for me that I don’t need to worry about right now. But I do need to make sure that I eat enough so I don’t have horrible cravings.

As things are so often in my life, it’s a huge balancing act to figure out the right combination of foods and schedule so that I’m not swinging too far one way or another. And while weight loss isn’t the point for me right now with trying to reset myself, I know it will be a result of my efforts because the poor choices I was making last week did make me gain weight.

Hopefully, in a week or so I will be back to a slightly more normal situation and I can focus on improving it more from that point. But I need to get back to my normal first before I make more changes. I’ve made the mistake of trying to do too much at one time with fixing my eating and I have seen it backfire. So I’m going to go slowly this time and hopefully I can prevent the issues I’ve had in the past. But if nothing else, I just want to be back to my normal and reset myself so I’m not feeling like I went so far back to old habits and I’m stuck there.

Another Quick Therapy Appointment (or Video Appointments Make Things Easy)

When I had my last therapy appointment, I was put on a new medication that would hopefully help me with recovering from my eating disorder. The plan was that I would try the medication for 6 weeks with increasing the dose each week and then I would have an appointment with my therapist to discuss how things were going and see if the dosage was correct.

But things didn’t turn out that way. I tried the medication for about a month before the side effects just became too much for me to handle. I really was hoping I could keep going, but it was affecting my life too much and the benefits weren’t worth it. I emailed my therapist to let her know I wanted to stop the medication and we worked out a plan for me to ease off of it. I’ve been lucky and the side effects I was experiencing went away very quickly. I haven’t been dealing with vertigo or numbness for a while now. And I don’t know if my period is going to be affected again this cycle, but at least it should be normal again soon.

Even though I stopped the medication already, I kept my appointment with my therapist. I figured that it would be good to keep it in case she wanted to talk to me more about stopping the medication and see if I was ok. And since it was a video appointment, it was easy to keep it and not have to worry about if the appointment wouldn’t be worth my time. I figured it would end up being a fast check-in and I was doing work at home while I was waiting for my therapist to get online.

And as expected, it was a quick check-in. She wanted to confirm that I was off the medication and that I was doing better. I think she was relieved that most of the side effects went away almost immediately. Unfortunately, the medication is very strong and a lot of people have reactions like I did. But it was worth trying it to see if it would help. We had no way to know how I would react until I tried, and now we do. And it did make me feel a bit better to find out that so many people have side effects. Even though I don’t feel like a failure for having them, I still felt better knowing that it was so common and not one of my medical weirdo moments.

Going over the medication was the main reason for the appointment, and we didn’t have much to discuss since I was off of it. She did want to check in with me to make sure that I’m doing ok emotionally and with everything else, and I was honest that I’ve been exhausted and dealing with a lot lately. But nothing that seems unmanageable or that I needed extra help with. It’s mainly something for me to be aware of and make sure that I take care of myself. I think my therapist was understanding with everything going on in my life and she was ok with me having a few extra things to deal with as long as I was handling them.

The last thing we went over was how I’m doing on Vyvanse. I know that she typically doesn’t prescribe it to patients and she’s following the protocol that my last therapist had. But I appreciate that she understands why I’m on it and wants to make sure that we don’t have to adjust anything. She did mention that we could increase my dosage, but I don’t want to do that right now. I feel like it’s a good amount for me and I do feel it helps. And I don’t want to increase until I feel like I do need more to get the help that I’m used to.

And that was pretty much it for my therapy check-in. We did set up my next appointment for 6 months from now and it will be another video appointment. Because my appointments are mainly medication check-ins, I don’t have to go as often as I used to. And every 6 months is pretty standard now for making sure I’m still doing ok and I don’t need anything to change. And of course, if something changes in my life and I need to go in sooner, I know I can make another appointment and go in person. But for now, I continue to be grateful for video appointments because they are so easy for me to do. And considering this appointment ended up only being about 5 minutes, it was nice to not have to drive 30 minutes there and back to do it.

Guess Stopping The Medication Was The Right Choice (or Maybe I Should Have Read More Into The Side Effects)

I wrote last week about how I was stopping the new medication that I was on for my eating disorder. I was a little disappointed to be stopping it because I wanted to see if it was going to work, but I was just not happy with the side effects that I was having and they were starting to affect my life more than I was ok with. At first, they didn’t seem that bad. But they started to get worse and the benefits I was seeing weren’t worth the issues I was having.

I’ve been slowly decreasing my dosage and it will still be another week before I’m off it completely. And technically the medication can be in my system for another 6 weeks so there is a chance I will still experience some of the side effects for a while once I am done. The thing that bothered me the most and got me to want to stop was the vertigo. And fortunately, that has pretty much stopped. I still have a few moments of vertigo, but they are mild and brief. It’s nothing like what I experienced a week ago when I wasn’t able to sit without falling over. I have a feeling the pins and needles feeling in my hands and feet will take a long time to go away. But that is more of an annoyance to me than an issue so I’m ok with that taking longer.

I did do a lot of research before starting this medication and I was aware of a lot of the side effects. Of course, there are hundreds of potential side effects with any medications so I try to just look at the big ones that people have and not the little random ones. But I guess I should know better than that because I have a history of being the person who gets the one in a million side effects. But I also know that reading all of the random things can be scary and I don’t want to freak myself out before starting something.

I mentioned in my workout recap post that my workouts were not that great last week because I was dealing with horrible nausea again. I also mentioned that I expected that it was going to be an easier week for me because it was supposed to be the week that I got my period so things would be getting better. But I didn’t have my period that week. I knew I wasn’t pregnant and I knew I was under a ton of stress so I didn’t worry too much about it. But when my stress level went down and I still didn’t have my period, I started to worry a little bit since I usually am not late. For some reason, I was looking at the side effects of this medication and happened to see that one of the random and rare things can be irregular or changes with menstrual cycles. And I knew that there was a good chance that the medication was the cause of this.

Irregular cycles could be a good thing if I could guarantee that I would have fewer cycles a year, but it could also make PMS or periods longer (like what I dealt with recently with two weeks of PMS). I don’t want to risk having longer PMS or periods for the off-chance that I will have fewer cycles a year. I want to keep my cycles regular so I know when to expect things and to be able to plan things out. I can’t do anything now since I’m working at coming off the medication now, but I’m so glad I’m doing that because I don’t want to have to deal with this any longer. It’s a side effect I wish I knew about because I might not have taken the risk with taking it knowing how bad things already are for me.

I know that this isn’t my therapist’s fault. She warned me about the major side effects and gave me information on the other side effects. I probably should have been a better advocate for myself and looked into the side effects before taking it, even if that meant going down the rabbit hole and looking at the one in a million ones. I was just so excited to see if this medication was going to work and I didn’t want to look into the problems. But now I’m dealing with the issues with it and I’m just hoping that it’s out of my system soon.

I guess I just have to be grateful that I did decide to stop the medication last week so I already started working on decreasing the dosage so that I am almost done. I didn’t let the idea of success cloud my head and make me ignore the pain I was in. And now I just have to work through this and hopefully, I’ll be back to my normal self again soon.

Almost Giving It A Full Try (or Ending Things Early)

When I had my appointment with my therapist, one of the things that we talked about was a new medication that I was going to start. The medication was being prescribed off-label for me. Normally, it’s for headaches and sometimes for seizures. But it has also been found to have some side effects that work as benefits for people. Specifically, it has been found to cause people to lose weight and lose their appetite. So if I had those side effects, it would be a very successful medication for me.

It is a strong medication and there was no way to know how my body would react. So I had to do a very slow dosage increase over 4 weeks. The plan was that I was going to try this medication for 6 weeks and then I was going to have a phone check-in with my therapist to discuss how I feel and see if I liked how things were going and if the dosage seemed right. 6 weeks seemed like a good trial period to me and I was excited to see how it went.

Immediately, I noticed side effects that were not the ones I wanted. I noticed tingling and numbness in my hands and feet. For some reason, this was bothering me the most when I was rowing in my workouts. It got worse as I increased the dosage but then got better. So I was thinking that maybe I got over the hump of getting used to this medication.

I didn’t talk about any other side effects from this medication other than the tingling feeling because that was the only one that really affected me a lot in my day to day life. But I did have other things that I noticed and I wasn’t sure if they were side effects or not. I was trying to think maybe they were just feelings of stress or being tired because I am dealing with both of those a lot right now. And I wanted this medication to work. While it’s not suppressing my appetite the way I was thinking it would, I am losing some weight. I’m not the incredible shrinking woman, but I am down about 12 pounds in a month which is pretty impressive considering I don’t think I’ve made a huge difference in my food.

But I have realized these other little side effects can’t be ignored anymore. Yesterday, I had the worse bout of vertigo that I could remember. It was terrifying. I was holding to the ground to try to stay still. I couldn’t sit up without falling over. It started when I was sleeping. I woke up and the room was spinning. I tried to sit up and I couldn’t do that. The next thing I knew, I fell out of bed and was on the ground and couldn’t get my head up. I finally was able to get back to bed and sleep some more, but the entire morning I was dealing with vertigo (including in my workout which also was while I was nauseous).

The vertigo got a bit better in the afternoon, but I was still having moments when the room felt like it was spinning around me. I know that anything could have caused this, but I need to take variables out of my life. I already have had other weird issues with this new medication and I don’t want to be paranoid that anything wrong with me is caused by this medication. Right now, that’s the thought I have any time something seems off and I just want to get that variable out.

But because the medication is so strong, I can’t just stop it. I emailed my doctor and we came up with an ease off plan. Fortunately, I can ease off it quicker than I got up to this dose. But I will need to be working on it for 2 weeks before I can stop completely. I don’t know if my side effects will lessen as I lower the dose since most of them started even at the lowest dose, but it would be nice if they were a little easier on me. And I don’t know if when I am off the medication if they side effects will end right away or if they will linger.

I’m a bit disappointed that I didn’t get to give the medication the full 6 weeks that I was planning on, but at the same time, I have to prioritize my health and how I feel. And I just don’t feel right and I don’t think it’s going to get better. It really has only been getting worse and I don’t know if I want to give it more time to try to get better. Maybe if I sucked it up a few more weeks I would be over a hump, but I don’t know if I want to suffer through a few weeks. But I am glad that at least I tried and know I know that it’s just not the right thing for me so I can move on and keep trying other options.

Finishing Up Brain Over Binge (or This Really Feels More Like Just The First Part)

While the Brain Over Binge course that I was doing online technically ended last week, I didn’t get a chance to finish things with the course until this week. My life has been busy (as I have mentioned over and over lately on here) and I didn’t want to rush through the lessons just to finish on time. I wanted to be able to focus on the lessons and do them properly even if that meant I had to do them on my own time. Fortunately, the course didn’t close access right away so I was able to do that. We actually have online access for another several months, plus all the lessons are downloadable so I have all the handouts and audio files saved for forever.

Every time I try something new, I try to not get my hopes up. I know that nothing is going to be the instant fix I dream of, but it’s hard not to hope that maybe something will somehow be that for me. I want something to just click in my brain and change everything for me. I know that that is unrealistic, but there are rare cases where that happens and I’d love to be one of those. I feel like I’m already a medical oddity so why not be one in the positive sense too.

But as I expected, this wasn’t the miracle I dreamed of. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t helpful. I did find the online course very helpful for me. There were a lot of lessons that were things I have learned in other classes I’ve taken or that I’ve heard in group therapy settings, but it is always good to hear it again because everyone has a way of putting things a little bit differently. And sometimes you need to hear something more than once before it really connects with you.

And sometimes even with something being something you have heard multiple times, you hear a new reason that makes more sense and it helps you understand why you need to do it. And the biggest lesson I got out of the course was a repeat lesson that had a new explanation for me. And that was having a meal plan and a stocked kitchen with “safe” foods. For me, safe foods don’t mean healthy foods. It just means foods that I know I can eat or that I can prepare and will be satisfied with. A majority of it is healthy food, but some of it is not as healthy because I want to have snacks in my house ready to eat so I don’t feel like I need to go out and buy food and then possibly buy more than I need.

Along with having a stocked kitchen is being more aware of trying to stay on a food schedule. And this is something I struggle with. I hate to force myself to eat when I’m not hungry. And I’m rarely hungry in the morning so I don’t like to eat breakfast most of the time. But I know I need to so I get in a better place so that I’m eating a bit more balanced throughout the day and don’t get too hungry later in the day. I’ve been experimenting more with breakfast options and not caring if they are what most people would eat or if they are what others would consider a full meal. Even eating an apple is better than nothing.

While there were lots of other little lessons I learned over the past 9 weeks, I think working on my eating schedule and how I stock my kitchen was the biggest one and that made me think that I want to do the course again so I can see what other lessons I will pick up since that won’t be what I focus on. I don’t want to do the course again immediately since I want to have a bit of time to work on this first, but the benefit of having everything saved on my computer means it will be there for me when I’m ready for it. Maybe this is something I do twice a year? Not sure what the right schedule is for me just yet, but it is definitely something I will be repeating.

I’m so glad that I made this investment in myself. It wasn’t the most expensive thing, but anything extra is a lot when I don’t have a lot of money. But I’m worth the expense and I got something great out of it. And I can’t wait to see what I get out of it the next time I take the course (and the time after that, and the time after that, and so on).