Tag Archives: binge eating

In Person Therapy (or Changing Some Things Up)

Posted on July 25, 2019 | 1 comment

It’s been a while since I’ve gone to see my therapist in person. I’ve had phone check-ins and video chat check-ins since my last in-person appointment and those have been great options. But some rules require that every so often I do have to go to an in-person appointment so that is what I had this week. I’m not sure if it’s a general rule or because one of my medications is a controlled substance, but either way, I was fine with going in.

I had a feeling going into the appointment that it would be a very easy one. With my new therapist, most of the appointment is about my medication and making sure that I am still doing ok with it. We have discussed my mental health from time to time, but we have agreed that my eating disorder is something much bigger than what can be figured out in talk therapy. I’m not holding onto something from my past or using it as a weapon, it’s just something that I have and my goal is to get into recovery. And hopefully, that recovery is soon.

The first part of the appointment was to discuss my dosage of Vyvanse and how I’ve been doing on it. I think I’m at the right dose right now and when I don’t take it on the rare occasion that it happens, I can feel a difference. I still wish it could do more than it does for me, but I also understand that the benefits that I wish it would have are not realistic. It’s not a miracle drug, but it is such a helpful tool for me. And I am so grateful that I am on it because I do know it’s helping.

I also brought up how I am doing the Brain Over Binge online course. My therapist is familiar with the book, but not the online course so I was telling her a little bit about it and what lessons I’ve been learning (which I’ll share on here another time). I think she was proud of me for taking a step beyond what she and I have discussed and she mentioned that she might start recommending the course to other patients of hers that cannot or don’t want to go to weekly classes that are offered through my insurance (I don’t want to do those classes as I have done a very similar thing before and it wasn’t the right thing for me).

The last thing that was discussed at my appointment was a new medication that my doctor mentioned to me when we had our last check-in. I was hesitant at the time because I like to have time to do some research about any new medication I start and make sure I am familiar with the side effects and what I can expect out of it. The medication is called Topamax and it is usually prescribed for seizures or migraine headaches. But there have been some studies that show that it can help with binge eating disorder.

The first way that Topamax can help can be with weight loss. The medication has the side effect of making people lose weight, so that can be a good thing for someone like me. It’s not a miracle cure and will make me drop weight without any effort, but it hopefully can help make any weight loss progress I am making on my own a bit easier and faster. Even though weight loss isn’t the main focus for me right now, I can’t deny that when I lose weight I gain confidence in my eating disorder battle and it helps me continue to try harder. So to know that this could help makes me hopeful.

The medication has also shown to help with controlling impulses which also can relate to eating disorders. This isn’t as common as weight loss, but any possible help I can get is a good thing and I encourage.

Because this is a new medication for me and we have no clue what the proper dosage will be to possibly help me, I will be doing a slow process over the next month or so with increasing the dose as well as changing when I take it. For now. I just take one pill at bedtime and I started on Tuesday night. I am hyperaware right now of anything I feel because I know it can be an unwanted side effect of the Topamax. I’m a bit paranoid too, but I’m just trying to stay alert and aware of how I feel and making notes when I feel anything that seems a bit off. So far, the only thing I experienced was a brief period of a bit of tingling in my hands/arms, but because that only happened once it might be a random thing and not from the medication. I’ll just have to wait and see.

My therapy appointment was so easy and simple this time. I’m sure it sounds like not much happened, but that’s kind of where I am with therapy now. It’s much more about medication management than anything else. And now I have a new medication that gives me some hope that it will help. Maybe that combined with everything else that I’ve been doing will be enough to help tip the scales (no pun intended) in my favor. All I can do is try and hope.

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Default ThumbnailA Good Therapy Check In (or Focus On The Good) Default ThumbnailMoving Forward With Therapy (or Educating Myself) Default ThumbnailAnother Therapy Check In (or Someone Sees Progress) Default ThumbnailA Super Easy Therapy Appointment (or Just Doing A Check-In) Default ThumbnailSome More Virtual Therapy (or Trying Another Medication) Default ThumbnailAnother Quick Therapy Appointment (or Video Appointments Make Things Easy)

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I’ve Been Slacking (or I Need An Easy Challenge This Month)

Posted on July 2, 2019 | Comments Off on I’ve Been Slacking (or I Need An Easy Challenge This Month)

I think it’s clear that I’m not exactly as enthusiastic about my monthly challenges as I was when I started. It’s been harder to find challenges to do and I’ve been failing at them more often. I think it’s because I have done so many of these, but I should be able to find something that motivates me again. But right now, that’s not happening.

Last month, I wanted to work on digital organizing to maximize what I could do with my various tech devices. I picked this challenge because it seemed easy enough and it was something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I know that I don’t use my phone or iPad as much as I could and I wanted to see what new things I could do that would make my life so much better. I was excited to see what would happen.

And then I didn’t really do it at all. I did a little bit of organizing when I downloaded a few new apps. I made sure I put them in the folders I wanted them in and when I was looking in those folders I did delete some old apps. But the goal was to do so much more than that and I just didn’t do it.

I did have some things last month that made it tough on me. I had a lot of work I had to do and it took more time than expected. When I thought I might be able to do some of the organizing between customers at work, I had to use that time for other work. I’m not upset about that because work does take priority. But I guess I just thought I would have the time and when I didn’t I wondered what happened. The days were flying by and I couldn’t believe how little free time I had.

But even though I didn’t do the organizing that I was planning on doing, I did use my iPad more than I have in the recent past. I have been trying to use it more often to do some work-related things when I don’t have to be sitting at my computer. And that is more often than I thought in the past.

Because of my lack of enthusiasm for these challenges and how lost I have felt a bit with getting them done, I wanted to make things easier on me by using a challenge that I technically already have been doing.

For July, I wanted to make sure I am following the Brain Over Binge online course every day. I’m in the 3rd week of the course and I have struggled to keep up a bit because of the time issues I’ve been having. But I want to devote this month to catching up on what I missed and making sure I do the lessons every day as they come out. I want to also work on some of the extra work that can be done with the course that I haven’t been doing.

I know that this is a bit of a cheat for my monthly challenge, but because I have already fallen a bit behind I don’t want to add something else to my plate. I want to give myself the ability to focus on this because it is important to me. I don’t know if it will work to help get me into recovery, but I won’t know if it will unless I try and follow the class. So that’s exactly what I plan to do this month.

The class does go until August, so I will be doing this challenge beyond July. But I want to have the good habits built up this month so the last 2 weeks of the class are easy to complete. I know that if I put my focus on this, I will be able to catch up and get all the work done. And being able to accomplish that will mean so much to me so I want to put a lot of effort into it.

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Another Online Class (or I Just Have To Keep Trying)

Posted on June 19, 2019 | Comments Off on Another Online Class (or I Just Have To Keep Trying)

For a very long time, I have tried to find a way to recover from my eating disorder. I’ve tried lots of different things and nothing has been the fix I have been looking for. But as I have tried more and more, I’ve also realized that there is a chance that nothing will be the perfect solution and I have to probably use multiple tools and skills to get into recovery.

Most things I have tried have benefitted me at least a little. Or even if I found no benefit, I have learned that they aren’t the right thing for me and I don’t have to worry to keep trying it. Sometimes, thinking something might work can be stressful and it’s nice to know that it won’t so I don’t have to waste any brain space on it. And some of the things that I didn’t find super beneficial at first have connected with me at another time and they are helping.

Right now, I’ve got a few things that have been helping me. Those include the medications that I’m taking, the therapy that I do, and some of the books and research that I have continued to read. With my medication, it’s been an interesting journey with having to change things up to figure out the right dosage. I think what I’m taking now is a good dose and I do feel it helps. And there is a chance that I will be adding another medication soon which should help more. But that decision will come in the next month or so. Therapy was much more helpful in the beginning when I was still trying to figure things out. Now that I have a lot of the answers I have been looking for, therapy is a good check-in, but it’s not as mind-blowing as it was before. I don’t have a lot of huge realizations in therapy, but I do hope that I might have some from time to time as I continue to grow.

And the books I have read about recovery have been one of the more helpful things because it has made me feel less alone in this entire thing. Eating disorders can be isolating and I feel like binge eating was even more isolating because it wasn’t understood to be an eating disorder until recently. I have found some online communities that have helped, but I think the books and research I do have made me feel less alone than those communities.

One of the first books I read that connected to me was “Brain Over Binge”. Many people raved about the book and said it helped them recover when nothing else did. I went into reading the book hoping it would do the same for me. While it didn’t, it did bring a lot of insight into my eating disorder and helped me think very differently about it. I read the book a while ago and knew I wanted to read it again, but then I heard about the online course that the author of the book was doing.

I knew she had done other online courses before, but I never really looked too much into it. I knew it was out of my budget at the time so I didn’t focus on what it offered or what it was about. But for some reason, this time I really wanted to see what the course was about and really put some thought into if I could find a way to afford it since I know that finding a way to recover is priceless (as cheesy as that sounds).

Because of some of the changes that were made to the course, it was much cheaper this time than it was before. Its still something that I had to budget for and find where I could not spend money so I could pay for it, but I knew I had to go for it. This is worth it for me to try and I didn’t want to skip an opportunity just because of money.

The course is 8 weeks long and it just started this week. The entire thing is online and there are assignments Monday-Friday. Some of the assignments are worksheets or journal prompts and some are listening to different types of audio coaching. Everything can be downloaded so I can keep the resources forever. I am making sure I download everything because I want to have access to them whenever I need them. I don’t know if this course will connect with me right now, so I want to have the ability to try again later if I need to.

I’ve only done a few lessons so far, but I am enjoying them. Even though a lot of the information is the same I got from reading the book, they are presented in a different way and it feels different. I’m trying to not have too much pressure with myself to make this course be the thing that gets me to a place of recovery, but I do have a lot of optimism that it will help at least a little and maybe more than anything else I have tried before.

Like I said, I have realized that recovery is going to require multiple tools and skills and every time I add another one it can only be a good thing. Of course I want this to work perfectly and be everything I need, but I am looking at it as another option and tool I can use when it feels right. And if I can have a tool or skill to use for anything that may come my way, that’s going to help me win this battle no matter what.

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Default ThumbnailAnother Monthly Challenge Down (or July and August Challenges) Default ThumbnailMore Eating Disorder Research (or Reading About HDE) Default ThumbnailKeeping My Emotions In Check (or You Are Not Your Brain) Default ThumbnailFinding A Community (or Online Motivation) Default ThumbnailFinding Some More Control (or How Medical Stuff and Dating Stuff Are Alike) Default ThumbnailAnother Therapy Check In (or Someone Sees Progress)

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Mental Health Month (or Better Late Than Never)

Posted on May 31, 2019 | Comments Off on Mental Health Month (or Better Late Than Never)

May is Mental Health Month. And yes, I’m aware that today is the last day of May so it’s pretty much over. But I wasn’t sure if I wanted to write about it or not. And I realized that my indecision about it was probably a sign that I did need to write something. I’m getting it in just before it’s too late, but that’s ok. I’m still getting it done.

I’ve written about mental health on here a lot. I’ve written about my various struggles as well as the struggles of people in my life. For so long, mental health was something that wasn’t shared openly. If people were struggling, they didn’t share it because they didn’t want to be judged. Now, while there still is some stigma it is getting so much better. People know they aren’t alone in their struggles and there is no shame in asking or getting help. If someone is going to treat you badly for working on yourself, then they are the bad one and not you.

I’ve been lucky that I haven’t really had people who have treated me badly for my mental health struggles. I know that some of them have confused friends and family and I still have to explain myself. I would say my eating disorder is the thing most misunderstood or questioned in my life and I understand that. Binge eating disorder is a relatively new eating disorder when it comes to being a real diagnosis and not everyone understands that it is not just wanting to eat. I usually don’t want to eat when I have a binge episode.

The other mental health thing of mine that seems to be misunderstood is my OCD. I don’t have it the way that most people imagine it to be. I think people think of OCD as rituals or cleaning techniques. I know some people also think it has to do with personal hygiene such as washing your hands endlessly or needing to use certain products to feel ok. For me, my OCD is mainly about having things look right to me. There’s not an easy way to explain it, but I will see something that looks off and I can’t focus until I fix it. It’s not always something crooked or dirty. If my pens look like they are not in a good order for me, I have to fix it. If there is a plate of fries and there’s one that doesn’t look right, I can’t stop thinking about it until it has been eaten (which isn’t easy to make happen if it’s on someone else’s plate). I’ve had some people claim I couldn’t have OCD because I don’t act like what they expected. It’s not upsetting to me anymore that someone questions my mental health issues. It’s a little annoying and I usually feel like I have to explain how it works for me. It’s a bit of education for them and a bit of reassurance for me that I am heard and hopefully understood.

Lately, I have wondered if I’ve been struggling with mental health because I’ve been dealing with a lot of mood related things that I usually don’t go through. I’ve been much easier to upset and anger and I haven’t been holding my emotions back. But I’ve realized that these are probably not struggles as much as progress. I have been working on standing up for myself more and I think that makes things more emotional. If someone is treating me a way I know I shouldn’t be treated, I don’t let it slide anymore. I call them out and that can get me upset. That’s not a sign of a struggle. Allowing myself to let my emotions out is a good thing and can feel very cathartic at times.

I know that I am incredibly lucky when it comes to mental health. I have insurance that covers medication and doctor appointments and I have a diagnosis. That is a lot more than many people have. And I have been working on this for a while and have seen so many steps forward. I have some people in my life still at the beginning of things and they worry it will never get better or that things will turn around. But I know that for them it will get better and they will see the other side of things. I know it’s hard to believe that when you are in a dark or difficult place, but hopefully they will see things from another perspective soon.

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National Eating Disorder Awareness Week (or Not Talking About It Is Part Of The Problem)

Posted on February 28, 2019 | Comments Off on National Eating Disorder Awareness Week (or Not Talking About It Is Part Of The Problem)

This week is National Eating Disorder Awareness Week. I know the week is almost over, but I decided to write something about this. I wasn’t going to originally, but I realized that even though I am pretty open about my eating disorder it would be wrong not to write about this week.

I don’t know exactly when my eating disorder started, but I honestly feel like I’ve had it my entire life. I remember binge episodes when I was a kid, I just didn’t know that they were anything other than me liking food. I’ve had issues with food as long as I can remember. I used to just think that it was a willpower issue or that I was weak and not able to control myself. It doesn’t help that there was very little information about binge eating disorder when I was growing up and I couldn’t really just go online to research about it. I was very educated in anorexia and bulimia and I knew that I didn’t have either of those. I recognized signs of my issues in bulimia and I actually was frustrated with myself that I couldn’t be strong enough to find a way to get rid of the food I ate.

My eating disorder wasn’t officially diagnosed until I was in my 20’s, but I already knew I had a binge eating disorder before that. I needed the official diagnosis for medical purposes, but it was just a technicality. I already knew what I had and I knew that it wasn’t just about me liking food or being fat. I had an eating disorder and I shouldn’t consider myself weak because of it.

There isn’t a lot of information yet about genetics and eating disorders. I have seen studies that show that people can have a tendency toward an eating disorder because of how they were raised, but I honestly feel like it is a genetic thing for me. If it was about how I was raised, then I don’t think it would have started so early for me. But even if it’s genetic, that doesn’t mean I can’t conquer it one day. There are people with a genetic marker for addiction and they are able to get sober. The difficulty for me is that I cannot be totally sober from food since I still have to eat to live.

These are all things I’ve written about on here before. I was terrified the first time I posted about having an eating disorder because I hadn’t been open about it with many people. I didn’t know what people would think about me once they knew I had an eating disorder. Obviously they knew I struggled with weight, but not everyone struggling with weight has an eating disorder. But I was relieved to discover that once I was open about it I was getting support from my friends. Some of my friends shared with me about their struggles with food or said they had a loved one with a binge eating disorder and didn’t know it had a name.

Being open and honest has been the best thing for me. I have gotten so much support and love from the people in my life and I don’t have to feel like I need to cover up for anything. When I am having a bad day, I can tell a friend about it. When I am out to eat and have obsessive thoughts about food, I don’t have to hide it and I can talk through the thoughts with the person I’m with. While I have been working toward recovery in many different ways, the one that I feel has made the biggest difference is not feeling alone. Finding other people going through the same thing as well as having friends who know what is happening makes me feel like this battle is not just me against the world.

So when I was debating whether or not to write about National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, I realized that not writing about it would possibly prevent someone else not feeling alone. While I have written about this multiple times, maybe this is the first post that someone else is reading. Or it could be toward the top of the search results when they are searching for something. I want to allow opportunities for someone to know that this is not their fault and they can get help.

If you are battling an eating disorder of any type or have someone in your life batting one, this does not have to be a solo battle. There are so many ways to get help and support and not being alone in this seems to bring the most success. You don’t have to be strong on your own to get over this. Allow yourself to accept help and know that the more people you have on your side supporting you the better off you will be.

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It’s Been A Weird Food Week (or Trying Not To Think Too Much About This)

Posted on February 20, 2019 | Comments Off on It’s Been A Weird Food Week (or Trying Not To Think Too Much About This)

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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Another Virtual Doctor Appointment (or Planning Some Next Steps)

Posted on February 7, 2019 | Comments Off on Another Virtual Doctor Appointment (or Planning Some Next Steps)

Things have changed a few times for me since I started back in therapy. With my old therapist, my appointments started much more frequent but eventually went to twice a year. But those appointments were always in person and that’s what I expected them to be. When I got my new therapist, she offered the option to do virtual appointments. I’ve done a phone appointment with her before and that worked really well for me. I’m not doing therapy now to figure out what’s wrong and how to fix it. I know what my issues are and I know the steps I need to take. It’s more about implementing those ideas now. My appointments are check-ins that are almost exclusively about my medication.

When I did my last appointment over the phone, my therapist let me know that at least once a year she has to be able to see me for an appointment. That can mean a regular in person appointment, but it can also be a video chat appointment. We both agreed that a video appointment would be best as it’s easiest and we knew the check-in wasn’t anything too serious.

I’m very happy with these alternative appointment options. First, it seems like those appointments are free (I know the phone one was, and I haven’t gotten a bill or anything for the video one) which is nice considering the regular appointments are about $80. I also get to save money on parking because there are no good free parking options by the office so I have to pay to use their parking lot. And these appointments are much faster for me since I don’t have to drive over there and wait for my appointment time.

This video chat appointment was my first time using the Kaiser video system. I was planning on using it on my computer, however the versions of different web browsers I have are too good for the system (I was shocked that the web browsers had to be 2 versions older than what I use). But I was able to use the video chat through the Kaiser app on my phone. It felt a bit like a Skype call when I was looking at the screen getting things set up.

I was logged in and ready to go 10 minutes before my appointment, so I set my phone down next to me and did some work while I waited for my therapist to log in. I figured it wouldn’t be right at my appointment time, but it was only a few minutes after which is much better than most in-person appointments are.

As expected, the check-in was pretty basic. She asked me if I was doing ok on my current dosage, which I am. I shared some issues I have been having such as sometimes taking it a bit too late if I’m having a lazy morning (I’m working on not doing that and if I have a lazy morning at least get up to take my meds early). I also shared how I think taking both pills in the morning is helping my anxiety because I’m not worried about remembering to take my dose in the middle of the day. I’m much happier with all my medication in the morning and I find that it is working just as well as it was when I was splitting them up. It’s still not a miracle medication and I do struggle from time to time, but that’s normal and expected.

I think my therapist was pretty happy with everything I was saying. I know that she doesn’t usually prescribe Vyvanse because she hasn’t seen a lot of success with it, and I know that I really am not a success story yet. I wish that my weight was down more than it is right now and I know that she was expecting that too. So she brought up the idea of adding other medications that might help with both weight loss and mental health.

I would love to be on something that would make me lose weight. But I am also hesitant to add anything else to my routine that is a mood stabilizer. I am having the least amount of anxiety and panic in my life that I can remember and I don’t want to mess that up. I know that my anxiety should have gotten worse, but for some reason it got better for me. And I don’t know what adding another medication may do to that.

I told my therapist exactly that and explained that I really don’t know if I want to try anything new. She really thinks it would be beneficial for me, but she agrees that if I’m not feeling on board with the idea that we shouldn’t do it now. But she gave me the name of the medication so I can do some research on my own and I can go into my next appointment with her understanding more about the medication so we can talk about it more. I know that some of my hesitation was not knowing anything about the medication and wondering about it, so having time to do some research will probably help. And I’m guessing if she still feels like it would benefit me when I see her again, that I’ll agree to go on it.

But for now, everything is staying the same with my plan. I am not changing any medication and I need to keep working on what I’ve been working on. I haven’t made all the changes I should have, but I am trying to get there and that’s the path I need to keep going down. And most likely in 6 months when I have my next appointment, there will be some changes made. But at least I know what is coming up and I can prepare for it.

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Default ThumbnailIn Person Therapy (or Changing Some Things Up) Default ThumbnailBack To Back Doctor Days (or At Least This Was A Virtual Appointment) Default ThumbnailFollowing My Doctor’s Instructions (or Days Off From Vyvanse) Default ThumbnailA Super Easy Therapy Appointment (or Just Doing A Check-In) Default ThumbnailAn Easy Therapist Check-In (or Virtual Appointments Make Things Easier) Default ThumbnailSome More Virtual Therapy (or Trying Another Medication)

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An Almost End Of The Year Review (or Looking Back At My Goals)

Posted on December 28, 2018 | 1 comment

I know there are still a few more days left in the year, but I wanted to get my end of the year recap done before the new year started. I feel like it’s a nice transition to have a clean break from year to year and I didn’t necessarily want to spend the beginning of the new year going through the past. So I figured with a few days left I would have a good idea on where I would stand with my goals by the end of the year.

My first goal I had this year was to do 199 Orangetheory workouts. That one I accomplished and I’ll finish out the year with a few more! I should be at 206 workouts by the last day of the year unless something happens that prevents me from going to one of my planned workouts. But even if I didn’t go for those classes, I will still be ahead of the goal! I did 4 workouts a week almost every week which made it easy to make it to over 199. I thought I’d have more 3 workout weeks over the year but I didn’t have that many. I tried to look back at my schedule and I don’t think I had any 5 workout weeks (I could be wrong) which is what I thought I’d need to do a few times to make sure I made it to my goal. I’m so glad that this goal ended up being relatively easy to accomplish since it seemed like one that would be tough for me.

And I’m lucky that first goal was easy for me to accomplish because it ended up being the only goal I really did accomplish that I had set for myself. I don’t want to make excuses for myself, but for some of these goals I didn’t meet there is a reason. But I still need to hold myself accountable for why I didn’t do what I was hoping to do.

The next 2 goals I had are somewhat related. I wanted to find a 5K race to do and I wanted to get a new PR on my mile time. Neither of those happened and if I’m being totally honest I really don’t care too much that they didn’t happen. Doing 5K races was a big part of my life for a long time, but that was also a while ago. I didn’t have Orangetheory when I did a bunch of races every year and I think having a regular workout has made me not feel as motivated to find races. I had a few races that I kept doing, but once they stopped having races each year I didn’t try to find a replacement. And with wanting to get a new mile PR time, I really thought I’d be able to do much more running this year than I have been able to do. This is due to multiple factors like getting sick, my hormonal nausea, and other things that have prevented me from using the treadmill as much as I wanted to do. Getting a new mile PR used to be so important to me and a sign of my progress, but I’ve had to learn new ways to measure my progress and the mile time has lost some of the importance it used to have.

The next goal I failed on is one that I feel like I have the most excuses for. I had a number in my head that I wanted to get my debt below. I was making real progress toward this for the first part of the year and I was so excited about it. But then I didn’t have as many hours with one of my jobs as I thought I would have and then that job wasn’t able to offer me a new contract like we expected. Being down one job meant that I didn’t have the money to put toward paying my credit card that I used to and I had to start using my credit card for more things than I would have liked to. Losing a job and using my credit card to pay for regular expenses is how I got into debt. I’m trying to stop this before it gets as bad as it did before (and I’ll have more on that in my 2019 goals), but it did increase how much I owed on the card. It’s unfortunate, but it’s my reality. I wasn’t expecting to lose a job and I don’t make enough money right now to really have savings to cover a job loss. I know this is bad and I want to fix this, but for now I have to just focus on finding a new job so I can get back to paying down my debt.

And my last goal I had for 2018 was to keep doing what I’ve been doing with my eating disorder recovery. While I wouldn’t say I necessarily failed at accomplishing this, but it didn’t go the way I planned it would. I did keep doing what I was doing and I’ve found new things that do work for me and I’ve dropped things that I found weren’t working for me anymore. I had the hope that I would feel like I made more progress by this point, but I also know that recovery is a weird journey and it’s not always easy to judge progress.

Even though I really only accomplished one of my goals I set for the year, I don’t see that necessarily as a bad thing. Instead, I feel like I had a minor failure to plan with my goals which is a newer issue for me. I think I need to allow myself to alter and change my goals throughout the year. If I had that as the plan, I would have switched out my running related goals before the year was half over to something else that was fitness related. Maybe I would have had a goal to be able to use a certain weight for an exercise or I would have changed it to a goal on the rower or bike. But I felt like my goals were set for the year and I didn’t want to alter them. That is something I will be changing as well as adding to my monthly challenge planning reminder to look back at my goals for the year to see what steps I need to make and if there are any changes that should happen.

It’s so funny to think about how happy I am to have goals I failed at because it has given me a lot of insight into myself and how I can make the next year even better. And I’ve got some interesting goals in mind for 2019 that I’ll be sharing next week that have been inspired by me not reaching my goals. Sometimes you need a setback to help you think clearly and I think that’s exactly what I had this year.

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Default ThumbnailMy 2017 Goals (or I Know This Year Will Be Amazing!) Default ThumbnailMy 2016 Goals (or I’ve Got Some Big Ideas This Year) Default Thumbnail2020 Goals (New Year, Not All New Goals) Default ThumbnailReflecting Back On 2017 (Kind Of Reaching My Goals) Default ThumbnailWhat I Plan To Do This Year (or 2015 Goals) Default Thumbnail2014 Goals (or Hoping To Get More Goals Done This Year)

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Having To Defend Myself (or My Eating Disorder Isn’t Taken Seriously By Others)

Posted on November 29, 2018 | Comments Off on Having To Defend Myself (or My Eating Disorder Isn’t Taken Seriously By Others)

My eating disorder is still a big part of my life. I don’t think about it as often as I used to, but it’s still a major factor in multiple aspects of my life. I’m so grateful that I’m on medication that does help make things easier to manage at times, but it’s not a cure. But I do still have to do a lot of work on my own and it’s not easy. I struggle most days at least for a part of the day and there are days where I struggle the entire day. I often wish that this wasn’t how my life had to be, but it is the way it is and I can’t change it about myself. I feel very certain that I was genetically disposed to have an eating disorder and all I can do is work on managing it and trying to get into recovery.

I’m very open about having an eating disorder (possibly too open at times), but I find that being open is helpful to me. I don’t have to hide something about myself and when I try to explain things that my eating disorder affects it’s much easier than just speaking around it. One thing that is easier to explain is why I look the way I do when I workout 4 days a week.

If I didn’t have an eating disorder, I’m sure that I would look amazing. I don’t know if I’d be as thin and muscular as I’d like to be, but I would be in normal sized clothing and nobody would question me if I worked out or have other people in my workout class who don’t know me treat me like it was my first class ever and come congratulate me on starting to work on my health. I know that I’m much stronger than I look and I’m probably in better cardiovascular health than people who are naturally thin and don’t work out, I just don’t look like that.

And I’ve had people question me about if I really work out or if my workouts are worth it lately. Whenever I go to the doctor they do the intake questions which includes if I work out. I always say I do 4 days a week at Orangetheory and the person doing my intake usually looks shocked and tells me they are proud of me. I hate being talked down to like that, but it’s not worth me saying anything back. They don’t know me and I don’t need to explain myself because it will just happen again the next time.

But more recently I had someone who I know well ask me if my workouts were worth it because I look like I had gained weight (I haven’t, but maybe I look like I have?). They didn’t question if I was working out, but they questioned if I was wasting my time and money on something that they felt was not worth it for me.

I was speechless when that happened and I could only mumble that it’s hard to show progress when I still am battling my eating disorder and quickly changed the subject. I really couldn’t think of anything to say or a good comeback and just wanted to move past that discussion. I knew that if I had to hear them dismiss my workouts or effort any longer that I would probably start crying and I didn’t want to deal with it.

But the more I think about it, the more that conversation angers me. Beyond it just being rude, it’s disrespectful and if I was in a worse mental state it could be harmful to me. If I wasn’t feeling so good about my workouts, maybe hearing from someone else that I am wasting my time would make me stop working out because it isn’t making me lose weight right now. I might have a binge episode because I felt like all my work wasn’t worth it. Fortunately, I didn’t have either of those reactions and I almost used it as motivation to just keep trucking along.

I know that binge eating disorder isn’t as well understood as other eating disorders, but that doesn’t give anyone who knows I have an eating disorder an excuse to downplay the seriousness of it. Imagine if I was someone with anorexia and was trying to get into recovery but was still very thin and unhealthy looking. And if the person who talked to me said that clearly I was still sick looking so working on eating food is a waste of my time and effort. I don’t think anyone would ever say that to someone battling anorexia, but binge eating disorder isn’t taken as seriously by many people. They see it as a lack of self-control, lack of willpower, or just being lazy. And that’s not the case at all.

I think if this was all about willpower that I would probably have already gotten into recovery and this wouldn’t be anything I would need to worry about. But there are so many factors that make this so tough to get over and it’s not just eating less and eating healthier. Whenever I have a binge episode, it’s not something I want to do. And I always regret it immediately. Sometimes that regret happens in the middle of an episode so I can stop myself, but sometimes it’s not until it’s over and it’s too late to make it less severe.

I know that I can’t expect others to change how they treat me and that when people treat me and my eating disorder with this lack of respect that it has nothing to do with me and everything to do with them. But it does still hurt because I work so hard every day to get into recovery. I hate having my efforts being dismissed like this and I have to remind myself that they don’t know my life or my situation. I’m just grateful that I am surrounded by so many people who treat me the way I should be treated and they have helped me realize that I am working hard. They show me that they are proud of me and I use that when I am feeling down. I’m lucky that most of the people in my life are people who work to help me and it’s only a few people who seem to want to bring me down.

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A Super Easy Therapy Appointment (or Just Doing A Check-In)

Posted on August 8, 2018 | Comments Off on A Super Easy Therapy Appointment (or Just Doing A Check-In)

It’s been a while since I’ve seen my new therapist. I actually have only had 1 in-person appointment with her when she started treating me. A month after that appointment I had a phone call appointment with her to check-in about my new medication dosage and to discuss any issues. After my phone call, I was supposed to have a video chat with her for my next appointment, but I had to change that. The time I originally set up for that was no longer a time I could be at my computer and when I called in to reschedule I was only given the options to do an in-office appointment or another phone call. I figured it was easier to do a phone call so I went with that.

My call with my therapist was this week and I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect out of it. Since my other phone appointment was more about checking in with the medication, we didn’t discuss much else beyond that. And I’m used to my appointments with my other therapist where medication wasn’t really something we discussed beyond that I was doing ok. I was much more used to discussing everything else in life and getting homework. This new therapist is still new to me and I don’t feel like I know her as well as I knew my old therapist, so I just was trying to stay open-minded and keep plenty of time open for this new phone call.

The first thing my therapist asked me about on the call was how I was doing on my medication. I told her how the adjustment period was much longer than expected but that I was feeling pretty normal now. I do still feel like it is helping me although I wish it helped even more. But I realize that it is just an aid to help in binge eating and not a cure so I still have to do work on my own. But even knowing that, it would be amazing if it was a cure and it would fix everything for me.

After letting her know that I’m doing ok and I think that this is a good dosage for me, my therapist let me know that she was a bit hesitant about things because in her experience most patients don’t have positive results or feel like it helps enough. She kept me on it before because I was on it from my last therapist and just wanted to do what she felt would be an appropriate dosage to have me really see if it helps. I don’t know if she was expecting me to say it’s not helping or I’m not happy, but I’m glad that it does work for me and that she is willing to work with me on things.

We really didn’t discuss too much outside of the medication or my eating disorder. We didn’t discuss any new or old stresses in my life, but I honestly feel like I have been dealing with them in better and healthier ways than I have in the past. Even with the bad things that have happened lately I feel a bit more calm and rational when dealing with them. Or if I don’t feel rational and calm, I’m not as rash to act on them and I usually let it sit until I can deal with them in a better way. I know my medication has nothing to do with this, but it still is a positive change in my life that I’m happy with.

My call with my therapist was very brief and I was surprised by that. I’m sure if I had more to talk about with her I could have had a longer call, but I didn’t feel like that was necessary. I discussed the few things I needed to with her and she feels comfortable with keeping me on my medication and at the dosage I’m at right now. She ordered my next refill for when I need it and will approve the refill after that (those refills will get me through the next 6 months). It’s what I wanted out of the appointment and I’m glad it was very simple to get that.

My next appointment with her will be in 6 months. Because that will be a year after the last time she saw me, it has to be either an in-person appointment or a video chat. It was easier to schedule the video chat, plus it saves me the drive and the parking costs, so I’ll be doing the video chat I was supposed to do this time. That will be my first video chat with my therapist so just like with this call I honestly don’t know what to expect out of it. I’m not worried about what will happen or think that she will think anything is wrong with me, but it’s still a bit of an unknown.

But for now, I’m just happy I got this super quick check-in done and it went well. I wanted to make sure she felt ok with me continuing with my plan and that’s exactly what I got out of it. I know that I’ve done a lot of work on myself outside of therapy and I don’t feel like it’s stuff I need to go into super detail about with my therapist because it is going well. But it’s good to know that I do have someone I trust and feel is really looking out of me if I did need more than what I am getting now or if things take a turn that I’m not ok with.

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