They say honesty is the best policy. So I’m going to be honest. Firstly I have put on 4lbs. Crap. But thats not what I’m being honest about. Before I went on holiday I lost 6lbs in around 4 weeks including a week with a slight weight gain. I was over the moon with this especially as I had done it literally just by counting calories and drinking lots of water. The week before I went on holiday however my brain went a bit wrong. I don’t know if it was finishing school for the holidays that triggered it or the prospect of going on holiday; being in a bikini, spending 24hrs with my boyfriend and all that goes with it. Or was it simply just losing weight? Anyway, whatever it was it happened. I started to skip meals intentionally, ignoring strong hunger pains and rejoicing in being dizzy and light headed. The one meal a day I did eat when my boyfriend was home I cut the portion massively and it became mainly vegetables. I lost a couple more pounds and then I went on holiday where I went back to normal eating. I then cam back off holiday and began to skip meals again but this time I was struggling with it and usually ended up binging massively around 3 in the afternoon. I then got really down and depressed. I call it my dark cloud descending as thats what it feels like, like when you’re up some mountains within the cloud and you can’t see your hand in front of your face. It feels like you’re trapped in a bubble of thick syrup that makes everything really difficult to do. So I kept persisting with trying to keep up the starvation and then failing, then getting more down………
Let me tell you a bit of my history. When I was 14, nearly 15 I had some family crap going on which lead to me moving out of the house I lived in with my mum and step dad and into my old childhood home with my grandma. My choice and to this day I don’t regret it. When it happened though I was left feeling quite rejected by my mum as the reasons for moving out were the poor relationship I had with my step dad, so I felt like my mum had chosen him over me. At my grandma’s I was quite independent as there was only the two of us and she used to work shifts during the day and night. So I basically stopped eating. In the tail end of the time I spent at my mum and step dads I had already started throwing my lunch in the bin but now at my grandma’s I could not eat for days and get away with it as she wasn’t there. I would dirty plates or claim I’d eaten earlier, I started going out running and doing exercises in my bedroom. And I lost weight. At my lowest I got to 7st 7lbs. Not emaciated by any stretch of the imagination but very slim, especially for me.
People noticed my weightloss, I liked it and carried on the regime. I started smoking and drinking a lot, going to the pub 3-5 times a week at 17 and drinking myself stupid. To be honest if it wasn’t for the alcohol I think I probably would have lost so much that my family would have sought medical attention. As it happened, I hid it extremely well and as I said, the alcohol prevented me slipping too far down the slippery slope. I did however start to get ill all the time; sore throats, colds, coughs, stomach upsets, one after the other to the point I was just ill most of the time. I was also really tired and would literally have just enough energy to go to college, work and see to my horse then come home and sleep. Any time I wasn’t doing those things I was sleeping. My grandma started to notice and commented on my diet. This scared me as it was never my intention for people to notice what I was doing, I worked hard at keeping it under cover. After that I struggled to keep it hidden as my grandma kept an eye on my a little more. That was when I started making myslef sick. I tried laxatives too but they didn’t really do anything for me other than make me feel very bloated. I put some weight on which I couldn’t cope with, I was so so so very unhappy and depressed I started to cut myself. Again nothing deep, just enough to cause scabs that I would then pick and pick to the extent that I have been left with a few scars from it. In the end I met a boy, in hindsight not a good one in the long run, but at the time the relationship helped me. I started eating again, I stopped the exercise and i piled on the weight.
The eating issue went to the other extreme but my brain stayed the same and even to this day my brain still craves for that state of mental ‘strength’ to starve myself. The logical part of my brain knows this is not right and doesn’t want to be like that but the illogical part wants to go back to being like that. I suppose that part of my brain is probably ill to a certain extent and I know in my own mind that I would probably benefit from some sort of counselling to sort it out but I can’t afford that at the moment.
To the present moment. The starving isn’t working because I just end up binging. Frankly I don’t really want to do the whole starving thing as I know its unhealthy and not normal. So where does it leave me. Ive been shopping today so the house is full of good wholesome food minus the crappy food I was binging on. I’m going to go back to the start and track my calories again on myfitnesspal and up my water intake again. This worked last time as far as weightloss is concerned and most importanty it doesn’t involve starving or binging.
I WILL DO THIS!
Learning to Love Salad 