Tag Archives: eating disorder

Feeling So Much Love (or Embarrassed By People Complimenting Me)

On Monday after my workout, I posted the following photo.

Post Workout Selfie

I took it because during my workout I realized that I did a horrible job of taking of my mascara from the night before and thought it was pretty bad that I had mascara smudges and sweat marks on my face. I’m usually much better about removing makeup pre-workout. I was also pretty proud of the workout I had just done, but I’ll share more about that in my Monday post where I recap my workout week.

Right after I shared that picture online, I started to get lot of really sweet comments from friends of mine. Some shared them publicly and some shared them in a private message. But they were all pretty positive and made me feel pretty great.

Then that evening, I shared this photo online.

Bedtime Selfie

I was celebrating having my new mattress in my house. It was a crazy morning having it delivered and the first time I got to lay down on the mattress was at bedtime. It felt like a hotel mattress and I felt so spoiled. So that’s why I shared that picture (also to thank my parents and Grandma for letting me have the mattress). I really didn’t think much about it when I posted it.

Again, I got lots of positive comments on the photos.

I love all the love that I got from everyone, but sometimes I feel like a fraud when people tell me that they are inspired by me or how they are so proud with how well I’ve been doing. I question if I deserve that positivity or if I’m not sharing my true self online (I hate when people only share the good of their lives and not the good, bad, and ugly).

I’m still struggling every day with my eating disorder. In fact, I feel like I’m struggling more than before because I feel like the Vyvanse should be doing more than it is. I wonder if I’m doing something wrong that is making the medication not effective for me. I wonder why I can’t have it work for me the way that the drug tests claim that it worked. Because of this, I’m harder on myself every time that I have an episode.

Sometimes I think that I don’t deserve people to be inspired by me or proud of me. People should be looking up to people who have conquered their struggles, not are in the battle with them.

And I’m sure I’m being too hard on myself. I know that I look up to people who are public with their struggles. But I usually look at them as someone who is done with the struggle, not in the middle of it.

But maybe I do need to look at myself the way that others look at me. I should be proud of myself for working out 3-4 times a week (a lot of people don’t do that), for continuing to battle my eating disorder (and not just give into it), and for just trying to do everything I try to do.

I’m going to work on seeing myself the way that my friends do. Using them as the mirror to see myself in and hopefully not being as hard on myself in the future.

Surviving The Dentist (or Testing My Panic Meds)

Yesterday I had a cleaning at the dentist. For most people, a cleaning isn’t a big deal. But as I’ve said before, I have horrible panic attacks at the dentist due to a bad experience several years ago.

Normally, I take my panic meds and things go as well as they can. I still have issues, even at cleanings. But it’s more manageable and I’m able to move on to my day quickly after leaving the dentist (in the past, I’d need hours to decompress from it and get the stress out of my body). I’ve been taking my panic meds at the dentist for years and it has made such a huge difference.

But now that I’m on Vyvanse, things are very different. Vyvanse is a stimulant and my panic meds are a depressant. Those counterbalance each other out. I’ve been warned to not take any depressant meds while on Vyvanse since it is almost like wasting the Vyvanse for that day. So I’ve been off of my strong painkillers since starting it (since those are depressants). But I could not imagine going to the dentist without my panic meds so I figured that it was in my best interest to take them and hope for the best.

I stood outside of the dentist’s door for minutes while I tried to get my heart rate under control. I have no clue if the racing heart rate was due to the stimulant of Vyvanse of my panic.

Dentist Office

When I finally got inside, I did warn the dental hygienist about the situation. She hasn’t really ever seen how bad it can get because the entire time she’s been my hygienist, I’ve taken my meds before any dental procedures.

It was not an easy cleaning to get through. I was sweating like crazy (thank goodness I was wearing quick-dry workout clothes) and I couldn’t stop shaking. The shaking was so bad that the chair was shaking underneath me. Fortunately, that didn’t affect the cleaning and my hygienist was able to get through things quickly.

She even said that I didn’t seem any worse than I usually do. So that’s reassuring.

There is no question in my mind that the Vyvanse makes my panic meds less effective. I’m sure that the panic meds also make the Vyvanse less effective. But since I don’t think that medication is being that effective to begin with, I didn’t really feel a difference. Knowing that my panic meds are as effective does make me a bit nervous. I’m not as stressed out for known panic situations (like the dentist or flying), but I’m worried how things will be when I have an unexpected and severe panic attack.

I haven’t had a severe panic attack since starting the Vyvanse and I hope that it stays that way. I don’t want to know what it will be like with a severe panic attack. But if one happens, I guess I will just have to get through it.

But at least for now, I know that I can get through the dentist. It isn’t easy, but it’s possible.

Over A Month On Vyvanse (or A Meeting With My Therapist)

I had an appointment with my therapist this week to discuss how I’ve been doing on Vyvanse. Honestly, I went into the appointment thinking that I would probably be stopping the medication.

While almost all the side effects I experienced the first few days have ended (racing heart rate, shaking, intestinal issues), I started to experience some new side effects in the past few weeks. Mainly, losing more hair that usual.

Now, I have no clue if this is due to the medication. I was diagnosed with alopecia when I was 14. Then, I had two pretty large bald spots behind my ears. I did injections and my hair grew back. But every so often I get new bald spots (and usually they grow back on their own). But now, I’m losing my hair on my head all over and there aren’t any visible bald spots. And when I looked up side effects of Vyvanse, hair loss is one. There’s no real way to prove what causes my hair loss (even with it being caused by the alopecia), but if there is something that I am doing in my life that is causing it, I don’t want to keep doing that.

So when I went into the appointment I figured it was the end of my journey with Vyvanse. It hasn’t really been helping with my binge eating episodes. I do experience reduced hunger at times, but it’s not what I was expecting or hoping. I had felt such a great lack of hunger and disinterest in food for the first few days, and now that that feeling is gone I’m a little sad. I wished that that would be how I feel every day.

I went over all of my side effects and concerns with the therapist. We both agreed that increasing the dosage would not be a smart idea. If it did help with the hunger/binge issues it might also make any side effects worse. And it’s really an unknown right now if the Vyvanse is causing the hair loss or if it is the alopecia/stress.

So right now, the plan is to continue the dosage that I’m on right now. As far as not feeling like the medication is effective, my therapist explained that everyone feels that instant “cure” when they start the medication. The receptors in your brain aren’t expecting what the medication does, so it goes into overdrive. But once your brain gets used to it, it feels like it isn’t as effective. But that’s where things can get scary.

Some people will tell their doctors how great they felt right away and then the feeling went away. So some doctors will increase the dosage. The patient will have those few days of awesomeness again and then that will go away. So the dosage is increased again. There is a limit to how much of this medication you can take each day, and you don’t want to get to the maximum dosage if you don’t have to. So the plan is for me to stay on my current dosage for 3 more months and then we will reevaluate. If my doctor feels then that I should have a higher dosage, we will increase it. But for now, he wants to see what happens over the next 90 days. And he and I will meet again after those 90 days to discuss things again.

My therapist also wants me to track how often I’m doing the things that make me happy every day. He feels (and I agree) that the best way to stay on top of my eating disorder is to not try to get rid of the binge episodes but to make sure that I’m doing things that make me happy every day. Eventually, my time will be focused on those happy things and not on bingeing.

I’m going to work on making a chart of my happy things (he wants me to come up with 10) this week and start tracking them either on Sunday or Monday (I’m going to make my chart a calendar so I can look back at each day easily). I’m hoping that if I make an effort every day to include these happy things that I will almost “forget” to binge.

I’m not sure if that will work, but it’s worth a try. And hopefully the next 3 months on Vyvanse will go smoothly and anything that I think might be a side effect will go away soon. But as always, I’m trying to stay positive and hope for the best.

The Good Outweighing The Bad? (or When Will I Get Back On Track?)

I’ve been having a lot of bad foods days lately.

I honestly don’t know why.

I’m stocking my fridge and pantry with a lot of the same things that I was eating during the cleanse and weight loss challenge. But I’ll go out and get “bad” foods if they aren’t in my house. And I always immediately regret the fact that I ate the “bad” foods as soon as it’s done.

This isn’t a boredom thing. It’s just the nature of my eating disorder. I almost go into a trance state when it happens. I sometimes don’t realize that I ate something until I see the empty wrapper or container in front of me. It scares me that I can lose track of time and myself and not realize it.

I have no idea why I did so well while on the cleanse and I’m having a tough time now. It really makes no sense to me. But this is a pattern that I’ve had in the past. When I’m on a food plan that has a specific end goal (like my first hip surgery or the weight loss challenge), I can do ok. But when the goal is a general one, whatever keeps me on the right path goes away.

The one big difference between now and other times when I’ve lost a decent amount of weight is that I’m still continuing with my workouts (and pushing myself more and more). Having my workout consistency is helping me with not gaining all the weight back right away. In the past, the weight came back as fast (if not faster) than I lost it.

I have gained back some. It’s less than half of what I lost, so that’s not too horrible. And my weight has held steady for the past week and a half at the amount I’ve gained back. I’m working really hard at trying to get back down to where I was (and get lower). My clothes aren’t too tight, so I know that the weight I’ve gained could be water weight. Normally when it’s “real” weight, my clothes feel tight immediately.

I’m still trying to focus on the fact that I’m still weighing less now than I was at the beginning of the year. And I’m making steps to be at a weight that I need to get to in order to consider getting my hip surgery.

I’m not sure if I’ll have another bad food moment/day in the near future. I’m really going to try to stay focused on my time and not to let time slip away. I’m continuing to plan out all my meals and hopefully with having it written out early in the day will give me something to focus (while I don’t like the idea of counting down the minutes to my next meal, it might help keep me on track).

This is all just the nature of the beast of this eating disorder. I’m aware that this post might sound odd and rambling, but that’s how it is in my head. I’m trying to focus and put all these things in order but it doesn’t seem to have an order to go to.

1 Week On Vyvanse (or Hoping To Answer Some Questions)

I’ve been on Vyvanse for a week now. Since I’ve been so open about both my eating disorder and being put on this medication, I’ve gotten a lot of questions about it.

First of all, Vyvanse is an ADHD drug that the FDA approved for people with moderate to severe binge eating disorders. I’ve heard for years how ADD and ADHD medications have helped with my type of eating disorder, but the rule with my health insurance is that my prescription coverage doesn’t cover prescriptions that are being used for something that the FDA hasn’t approved it for yet. So while I wanted to try some other options, this is the only one that my insurance will cover.

To get prescribed this medication, first you have to be diagnosed with a binge eating disorder. I was first formally diagnosed with it even before it was a recognized eating disorder by my hospital. Since there really weren’t any treatment options at my hospital (they were going to consider me a non-purging bulimic), I went elsewhere for therapy. This included the RFO program which did have group therapy. I had to be re-diagnosed with a binge eating disorder to get the prescription.

This is not a weight loss drug. I know that those are out there, but I wasn’t looking for that. This medication helps to reduce the number of binge eating episodes that I have. To me, that is way more powerful than a weight loss medication.

And yes, I have felt some side effects. I had a racing heart pretty much the entire first few days. But now, that is gone. I also had issues with shaking hands, but that is also pretty much gone (that sometimes comes back when I work out). Beyond the first two days, almost all the side effects have stopped. The only side effect that I’ve felt every day is a little dizziness for brief amounts of time (maybe less than a minute) a few times a day. It feels very similar to vertigo (which I have so maybe that is what the dizziness issue is).

I’ve had a lot of people ask me how it’s going so far. Well, I’ve been on the medication for a week. And I’m taking less than half of what the dosage usually was for patients with binge eating disorders. I’m even taking less than the recommended starting dosage. I’m not sure why my doctor did it this way, but I will be meeting with him in just about a month to reevaluate (and I’m sure to up my dosage if I’d like to continue taking it). It’s hard to tell how much it’s working right now. I have had moments where I have no appetite, and I know that is something that this is supposed to do. But it has not reduced my binge eating episodes down as much as many of the trials stated it did for those patients. Again, this might be due to the low dosage that I’m on.

My plan going forward is to continue taking the medication and evaluating if a higher dosage would give me better results when I meet with my doctor next month. That’s it. I can’t really do much more than that. I’ve been warned that it can take several months to figure out if a medication is right for me and what dosage I need to be on. I just have to be patient and see.

If you have any questions about Vyvanse (I’m not paid to talk about it, just sharing my experiences with you all), let me know. I’m happy to help answer what I can. It makes me so happy that by me allowing myself to be open and share this with the world that others feel comfortable enough confiding in me. If I get nothing else out of this medication, I will know that I might have helped at least one person be less ashamed about their eating disorder.

Seeing My Heart Rate Spike (or What It’s Like Working Out On The New Medication)

This past week, I got 4 workouts in (finally!). Two of those workouts were before I started the new medication and two of them were after. And those workouts were like night and day!

I was finally back to my normal schedule for workouts, so that made me happy. Monday was fine but Wednesday was a bit tough. My hips were killing me after being positioned so strangely for my x-rays. I don’t remember having so much pain after my last set of x-rays, but I just tried to not focus on the pain and to listen to my body when I might need to take breaks.

Even though on my post on Friday, I didn’t know exactly when I would start the new medication, I actually was able to start on Friday morning (I take the medicine once a day and in the morning only). I’ll go more into how my first week on the new medicine goes towards the end of this week, but it really did change my workouts.

I have no idea if it was a smart thing to do a workout on the first day of a new medication, but I did it and I can’t change that. My heart was racing like crazy all day, even if I was just sitting at my desk. With my heart racing so much, it was almost causing a panic attack as well! But I just tried to take deep breaths and remind myself that an increased heart rate is a very common (and almost expected) side effect of the medication.

I warned my coach on Friday that my heart rate was racing and that I wasn’t sure how I would do in the workout. He told me to just listen to my body and to take any extra breaks that I might need. And I really needed those extra breaks!

I have been struggling a lot lately to get my heart rate up into the orange zone. But when you compare a workout from the beginning of the week to one at the end of the week, you can see how much higher my heart rate was the entire time.

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The top one is from the beginning of the week and the bottom is from the end of the week. And the zones that the app has is different from the zones at Orangetheory, so it doesn’t really show how much time I spent in the orange and red zone (I was there for 33 minutes of a 55 minute workout).

There were a couple of scary moments where my heart was racing so hard that I was getting dizzy and nauseous. That pretty much only happened on the treadmill so when I felt like that I just stepped onto the side rails and caught my breath. I had that feeling once doing floor work, and when that happened I just held onto the wall until the feeling went away (it was gone in about 30 seconds).

The other thing I noticed is that my heart rate is not dropping back to a “normal” rate as quickly as it used to. I expected my normal to be higher, but I thought that all the cardio work that I have done would continue to show (the stronger you are in cardio, the quicker your heart rate goes from a high zone to a regular rate). But I was staying high much longer than before.

I have no idea if the heart rate thing will be a forever thing while I’m on this medication or if it will get better as my body gets used to taking it. I’m taking notes and will be bringing all of these things up with my doctor next month when we discuss how I’m doing on the medicine as well as if I need to increase the dosage.

But while I’m doing all this adjusting to the heart rate changes, I’m more grateful than ever that I have to wear a heart rate monitor at Orangetheory. Even though I would wear a heart rate monitor at SoulCycle, I never looked at what my heart rate was during the class. I mainly used it to track my calorie burn. But now, I’m really paying attention to what my heart rate is doing and trying to make sure that I stay safe in my workouts.

I Am Stronger (or How A Tweet Was An Ah-Ha Moment)

A twitter friend of mine mentioned that they were going to be overhauling their diet and starting to try to get back on track this week. I tweeted my support and told her that if she needed a sounding board or anything, I am here for her. Then she mentioned that she has had issues with food in the past, and then I tweeted something that sounded silly to me at first.

To quote myself: “Eating disorders are a bitch. I just want to prove that I am stronger than it.”

I said it as almost a joke at first. But when I re-read what I wrote, I realized how much that it summed up my feelings about my eating disorder.

This will be a forever battle for me. I know, understand, and accept that. But I’d like to sometimes win that battle.

I know that slip-ups and setbacks are going to happen for the rest of my life. But I’d rather those be rare and “normal” eating be the norm versus the other way around.

I just want to have some wins in my battle. And sadly, those seem to be few and far between.

But I’m working on it. I just got approval from a doctor to take the new medication that is approved for binge eating disorders. I have no idea if this will help me, but the plan is to try the medication for a month and then reevaluate things. There are some side effects that worry me, but I have to try this. If it helps, that would be awesome. If it doesn’t, at least I know I tried it. Any help that I can get in my battle the better.

I wish that motivation could be enough to help me, but sadly it isn’t. And with this new hip surgery dependent on me losing weight, I know I have to do this more than ever. I went through this same thing with my first hip surgery and that is what brought me to doing the UCLA RFO program. While I know that that can get the weight off me, it doesn’t help keep the weight off me (if anything, it makes it worse). So while I’m in the same circumstance as before, I want to do this the right way this time. And since the surgery is not nearly as urgent as the first surgery, I’m allowing myself the time to lose my weight.

I will keep you all updated on how I do on this new medication. Depending on when I have time to pick it up, I might not be able to start taking it until this weekend or possibly even next week (sadly, I cannot pick this up at the 24 hour pharmacy). And even though I will be starting it, the doctor has no idea if the dosage will be correct so even if it works it might take months to start seeing results. I’ve gone through this with my panic meds before, so I know that I need to be patient and maybe this will not be the right medication for me.

But at least I will be finding out if I have a new “weapon” on my side in this battle.

Vacation From Meal Planning (or Finding It Hard To Go Back)

While on my trip, I didn’t worry too much about what I was eating. I knew I’d be drinking a lot more than usual and I didn’t want to stress about counting calories. So I pretty much just entered what I had at breakfast in MyFitnessPal so I wouldn’t lose my record of how many days in a row I’ve tracked my food.

Breakfast was pretty easy. We got a free continental breakfast at the hotel so I had hard-boiled eggs, fruit, and toast. Nothing too crazy. Lunches were pretty sensible as well. I ate more bread type items because I wanted to help soak up some of the alcohol, but the portions were pretty reasonable.

And dinners were more extravagant. We went out for nice dinners the two nights we went out and I got what I wanted without worrying about calories. I had bread at dinner, enjoyed some great pasta one night, and got to enjoy a truly incredible steak (worth the wait!).

We didn’t have dessert any nights and we did some walking each day. So by the end of my trip, while the scale was up a little it wasn’t unreasonable.

My problem has been getting back on track with my food. I have been doing so well for so long, and this week has been extremely difficult for me. I’ve eaten things that I thought I’d be able to avoid and not have as temptations in my house.

I’m not trying to make excuses for myself, but this week was a crazy week. I’m working out at weird times (or at least weird for me), I’m working as second job at night, and I’ve got the film festival I work for this weekend. So I’m not able to eat on the schedule that I’ve been doing in the past. And the stress and tiredness I’ve been dealing with lowers my willpower and doesn’t allow me to make the best choices.

This weekend is going to be pretty bad food-wise. I’m working at the festival both days this weekend from about noon until 11pm. It’s at a bar, so I will be able to order something to eat for a large lunch/dinner meal (I’m thinking about eating a later breakfast and then eating something around 4pm to be it for the day). There are ok choices at the bar, but it’s still going to be food that I didn’t prepare myself. I’m looking at their menu online to try to plan things out the best that I can, knowing that things might get crazy and plans have to be flexible.

But after this weekend, I’m really hoping to get back into the groove that I was in. The big positive I’ve been trying to remind myself is that I’ve only had about a week of slip ups and my weight is still significantly down. I didn’t wait until I gained back all the weight (or all the weight plus some), before realizing that there is a problem and trying to make a change.

Binge Eating In The Media (or More Help Might Be On The Way)

Binge eating has been talked about in the media quite a bit lately. Most of it is surrounding Monica Seles and her story. I’m so impressed that she went public with her story. Binge eating is such a secretive thing and even though there are many people who suffer from it, rarely do people speak out. So more often than not, people think that they are the only one with this problem.

I remember when I posted my post about my binge eating. I think that was probably the hardest post for me to write. I was so scared that people would judge me, hate me, and think I was disgusting after I wrote about it.

But instead, I found more support than I ever could have imagined.

Being “out” with my eating disorder really has been the best thing for me. I think that once I lose more weight, it will be a bit easier for me to be open about it with new people. Right now, I’m still scared that people will judge me and my eating disorder because of my weight (because obviously my eating disorder is what got me to this weight). But besides the fear of being judged, everything else about being open and honest about my eating disorder has been positive.

After reading the story about Monica Seles, I noticed that she was a spokesperson for a pharmaceutical company. I looked more into it and it turns out that the FDA has approved the first medication to treat binge eating disorders. It is currently a medication for ADHD that has expanded what disorders that it can treat.

I’ve been told in the past that going on a medication for ADHD might help me, but my insurance wouldn’t cover it since it was not an approved use of the medication. But now that this medication has FDA approval for use for treating binge eating, there’s a chance that I could take it and have it covered by my insurance.

Yes, there are side effects to this medication and losing weight is not one effects that taking this medication might cause, but it has been proven to bring down the number of binge eating episodes significantly.

While right now, I’m in a great place with food, once I remove some of the restrictions that this cleanse has, I’m scared that I will go back to my old habits. That happened twice after the UCLA RFO diet. And it’s not realistic for me to maintain the restrictions I have on the cleanse long-term.

I’m thinking of trying to get an appointment with my primary care doctor and seeing if they can prescribe this medication for me (or if I’m even eligible, which I feel pretty sure that I am). I don’t want to have to rely on a medication to help me, but any help that I can get would be amazing.

It’s weird to think that when I started to try to get treatment for my eating disorder, they didn’t even properly diagnose me. Even in my medical record right now, it says “eating disorder unspecified”. There wasn’t an option to put binge eating as my diagnosis. And the help that they were trying to give me was for bulimics (because according to the doctors, bulimia was the closest eating disorder to what I have).

But now, not only is it a recognized eating disorder and more people are speaking out about it, there is finally medication that might help. So much has changed since my diagnosis and hopefully all this change means that in the future, nobody will have to wait as long as I did to get a proper diagnosis or the help that they really need.

Finding A Community (or Online Motivation)

For a long time, my weight issues were a solitary thing. Even though clearly people could see that I have an issue with food by looking at me, it wasn’t something that I openly shared.

When I did the RFO diet at UCLA, that changed a bit. I started attending group therapy (instead of solo therapy) and I found people who I could somewhat relate to. But even with my group at RFO, I never fully fit in. I was very much the youngest one there. And almost everyone else had a husband and family to worry about and have to cook for. I, on the other hand, was just me and didn’t have to focus on anyone else in my life eating food on a daily basis.

I’m still in touch with several of the women I met through RFO, but I haven’t been a part of that program for years.

Then, when I started my blog, I realized that sharing my issues was allowing me to be more open with the people I love and I found out how many other people were hiding their issues. It really helped me realize that I’m not alone.

And then this year, I found another community to share and be open with. My Orangetheory family. I never realized how connected I could be to workout friends. At SoulCycle, while I did have friends who came with me to the workout, I never made friends in class (except with a few of the instructors). But at Orangetheory, I’ve not only made friends with the staff and coaches, I have friends that I’ve made in the workout class as well!

It has been so helpful to have someone there to cheer me on on the next treadmill (and save my favorite treadmill for me when I’m not there first). Also, it’s nice to have someone there to chat with before class starts or to vent with when we are in the middle of a tough class.

I never knew how much I needed this support until I had it.

And then this past weekend, I’ve joined what will hopefully be another community to motivate me and support me. I signed up for the Tone It Up plan. I had heard about this plan before and was pretty intrigued. It’s a one-time fee for the plan (and all the updates that they do) plus being a part of their online community. I didn’t have the money for a while, but I got some money for Hanukkah and I spent some of it on this.

There are Facebook groups for this plan and I’ve joined the groups that are local to me. And I put out a message to the other group members that I work out at Orangetheory and would love some more workout friends.

Instantly, everyone in the group made me feel so welcome and many of them are going to work out with me in the coming weeks.

It’s so funny that for so long I thought that I needed (and wanted) to be alone while dealing with all my food issues. But now that I have people who are supporting me along the way, I can’t imagine not having my own personal cheering squad with me every step.