Since I had the procedure last week, I have been on a weird diet. I was prepared that I might be in a lot of pain the day or so after and that I probably wouldn’t want to have to chew food. I wasn’t expecting to have my jaw hurt for so many days as well as have difficulty opening my mouth all the way because of where the stitches are. I haven’t been able to chew food properly since getting the stitches in and I’ve pretty much been on a liquid diet for a week.
I’ve done different forms of liquid diets in the past. I had the medically supervised one I did over 10 years ago when I lost a ton of weight. I’ve occasionally had to do liquid diets when I have different dental issues or when I was sick. I try to have some sense of variety in it, but I’m usually just having different types of smoothies or protein shakes and soup. It’s not the most ideal thing to do, but when it’s not easy to eat solid food it’s what I have to do.
I know there are a bunch of ways I could make a liquid diet unhealthy or how someone could gain weight from it. That’s not usually the case for me. This past week, the first few days were actually a struggle to eat because of the pain I was in. Once my appetite came back, things were a bit easier for me but I was still limited in what I could have. I still was eating pretty much the same thing I was having before and I was trying to be cautious about the quality of what I was eating.
I know that I was not getting enough calories in each day and because of that I lost weight. Losing weight is a good thing for me, but I don’t want to lose weight this way. This is how I lost it when I was on the medically supervised diet and I know it’s not a sustainable lifestyle. Eating how I’ve been eating for the past week isn’t sustainable either. But it’s hard not to be a little optimistic about losing weight this easily and to be swayed that maybe I should do this.
Even though my eating disorder is not about restriction, I do think that all eating disorders are related and that it might be easy to switch from one to another. I don’t want to get into a restrictive mindset and form a different set of bad habits. It’s hard not to want to keep doing this when I see results, but I know that eventually the results won’t keep happening and that I might think I need to restrict even more to keep going. I can see the slippery slope of how things can get really bad and I’m actively thinking about avoiding that.
But on the other hand, I do want to at least maintain the progress I’ve had this past week. I have had other times where I had to be on restricted food for one reason or another and then when I could eat normally again I gained back everything I had lost. I am currently doing one of the Orangetheory Transformation Challenges and while I’m not doing anything too crazy diet-wise I also don’t want to gain weight during this challenge. I always struggle with finding the balance in my food and I know that balance is also finding the middle between this restricted diet and what I normally eat. I wish that my stomach would shrink super easily and it would be difficult to stretch, but I think I’m the opposite.
I am trying to celebrate the weight loss I had while not putting too much thought into how I got them and putting too much on what I did to see the results. I would love if this time is the time that I am able to make the change, but I’m also realistic. I hate that there is a very high chance that I will gain back what I lost and that I will be back to my old diet and have binges again. One day things will click in my head and will change and maybe that’s now. But I’ve also learned enough from this happening multiple times before that I can’t get too down if that doesn’t happen and I can’t be too focused on the results from this weird food week.
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