I am writing to myself I guess, because I don't really know how to reach out to others with ED.
Right this second I am at work, trying to wrap my mind around not binging. I am in the obsession, and it is, to say the least, uncomfortable.
I feel anxious and deprived, worried and a little pissed. Why can't I stop the fucking wanting?
This morning I awoke at 4:45am, and ate two bananas with reduced fat chunky peanut butter. Then I made my big bowl of oatmeal with blueberries and raisins and splenda and ate that along with a large cup of coffee. So too filling. I am instantly miserable.
It is a new day. The sun is shining, and I am abstinant for my 4th day. I know that the obsession to eat will pass. I know it. But it is damn uncomfortable. I threw out the peanut butter. I threw out the peanuts from yesterday. I am willing to wait, to breathe, to let the compulsion ease out of my tight muscles and joints.
So I went to an FA (Food Addicts Anonymous) meeting on Wednesday night. It was a very strange and amazing experience. The woman who spoke was an attractive, slim woman with a very calm demeanor. Her story was about recovering from the disease of food addiction, and her recovery around all of her food issue. I am so used to making deals with my disease, bargaining with it as though I could assuage my WANT without letting go of my drug. She gave me hope in a very real way about living without the obsession and fear that active overeating or bulimia brings. The program as outlined by her was super strict: call in every weighed and measured morsel, and say not just what, but when you will eat it. Call people from out of the area several times a month. Join a group that works the steps, and do that with them. That actually sounds like a kick-ass idea to me.
I am not ready to be that hard-core. I have been living a life of free-for-all eating and no accountability, and the idea that I could go from that to calling in a weighed and measured food plan is terrifying.
I abstain, mostly, from sugar and white flour. There may be a little sugar in my coffee, and I definitely eat fruit. But that is it. I cannot afford to eat things that are too desert-y. Last night, on day 3, I attempted to eat a frozen yogurt that had half sugar yogurt in it. I am not saying that it was this that caused my compulsion, but the compulsion came, that is certain. I came home and ate several handfuls of peanuts with raisins, and a couple of chips.
Then woke at 4:45 to eat the biggest breakfast I have had in years without barfing it up.
So I dressed feeling enormous and vaguely anxious. I sure hope that all of my misery with puking is not going to be replaced with misery with obesity and binging.
The 12 steps are not exclusive to drugs: I am powerless over my food thoughts, and definitely over my eating once I pick up. I need to come to believe and rely on a power greater than myself to restore me to sanity, and I need to turn my will and my life over to this power.
Sounds creepy and cultlike, doesn't it?
Oh well, cult of abstinance beats a cult of misery and death.
I'm out.
Fabu