Not a decent day but lessons learned

Before I even begin to learn from the food... let me share with you some happy things from today:

1) I tutored a 6 y.o. who hates school today. Every time I tutor her, she writes on the white board "I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this." Today, she wrote, "I hate this but I kind of like it sometimes." (I feel like that's a bit of progress!)

2) The 4 y.o. non-native English Speaker who I'm supposed to teach English to/teach to read wrote 3 words today for the first time on his own (without Tracing).This is evidence of his rising confidence levels... he feels like he can trust himself to be able to write words without copying over my original. He wrote "cat" and "line" and "white."

3) Funny dialogue:
SIX Y.O.: I think your'e a mom.
ME: Oh yeah? Why?
SIX Y.O.: Because you're wearing a dress (I was actually wearing a skirt but whatever)
ME: Hm. I can understand that reasoning. I'm not a mom though.
SIX Y.O.: Why not?
ME: Well, I'm not even married.
SIX Y.O.: You're not married?
ME: Nope
SIX Y.O.: Why not?
ME: Well, because I don't know who I want to marry (now at this point the six y.o. is turing into my therapist haha)
SIX Y.O.: So you have no one to live with?
ME: I live by myself.
SIX Y.O.: Why don't you just get married so you don't have to be alone?
ME: Um, well, some day I might get married.
SIX Y.O.: You'll get married later?
ME: Maybe.
SIX Y.O.: ARe you a kid?
ME: Nope.
SIX Y.O. How old are you?
ME: How old do you think I am. (I'm 24).
SIX Y.O.: 55?
ME: nope
SIX Y.O.: 65?
ME: nope.
SIX Y.O.: 35?
ME: nope.
(this goes on for a while....)
ME: I'm 24.
SIX Y.O.: So you're a teenager!
ME: Nope. Teenage years end at 19.
SIX Y.O.: So you're a grown up.
ME: Yup
SIX Y.O.: Then why aren't you married?

4) Remember the boss who I though hated me? He was really nice and friendly with me today and yesterday. Maybe he's just one of those people that takes a while to open up and warm up to people.... maybe he's shy and I interpreted that as cold? Anyway, I feel better about that relationship now.

kay, on to food....

THIS WAS NOT A DECENT DAY, but that's okay. I'll try again tomorrow. But I did learn things from this day. One thing I'm noticing is that, when I "mess up" with food, it affects me significantly less than it used to - as in I'm not full of complete shame and self hatred. I guess, as Jane would put it, self esteem and other parts of my identity are growing stronger and, thus, I'm not totally taken down when the food part of me fails to meet expectation. This process is what Jane calls "growing out of your eating disorder."

So, most important things I learned from today:
1) Very important to eat breakfast in the morning. Today, I delayed breakfast until 12:30. This just set me up. It caused lunch to be at 4:15pm. I was very hungry for lunch, thus the lunch was far bigger than my normal lunches. This threw off dinner in terms of timing, in terms of "should I eat given how much I ate for lunch? and in terms of hunger levels (I wasn't as hungry for dinner)..... and dinner never happen (but plenty of snacking did instead). However, had I just had breakfast upon waking up, I feel like a lot of these other problems would have been solved.


Even though today wasn't a decent day, there were good things about today:
1) I didn't hate myself or feel like I was going into shut down mode for overeating
2) I chose foods based off craving and not based of calorie. This led me to eat a totally risky lunch (which, ultimately, I didn't handle that well seeing as it messed up the rest of my day, but at least I tried it and chose it in the first place.)
3) There was zero calorie counting (for a while after lunch I felt like I HAD to go look up the calories ASAP. But, I waited it out, and the urge passed and I never ended up counting calories for the whole day. Disordered that the urge even existed? Yes. Good that I didn't act on it? Yes.)
4) Tracy had told me that if I started to feel fat or started to beat myself up or anything like that to just say to myself and my brain, "Nope, we're not goin' there right now. We're not going to go there." Tracy told me I do have a choice to continue to wallow in the thoughts or to just put my mind elsewwhere and continue to not go there. I took that advice today, and several times throughout the evening, I said, "Nope, not going to go there." That phrase seemed to work well.
5) I did listen to hunger and I did respect fullness
6) I did recognize that I didn't eat enough yesterday and, perhaps my extreme hunger before lunch today was just hunger left over from yesterday.

There were also things I'd like to change:
1) Disordered thoughts did definitely exist today (all of them occuring during and after lunch). Most of these thoughts, I never acted and on and didn't take seriously - that's a plus, and that's what I need to do in order to eventually quiet all these thoughts. The only disordered thought I actually gave any time of day to was "Should I eat dinner?" (And, you can see, as a result of paying attention to that thought, the rest of the day was not good).
2) I would like to have had breakfast earlier so that my meal timings were not so off.
3) I would like to have had three meals.
4) I would like to have been more present and less anxious while eating lunch. In fact, now I kind of want to try eating this lunch again so that I can have a better experience with it. I seriously only ever have had bad experiences with this particular food. I know I am thisclose to having a normal experience with this food. I can't wait until I crave it again. I want to try again. I can do it next time!
5) I'd prefer not to eat like this. I'd prefer not to eat an entire chipotle burrito. I'd prefer to eat breakfast earlier than I did, lunch earlier than I did. And i'd prefer to eat differnet portion sizes at each sitting.
6) I am starting to feel like I'm being too liberal with myself. I'd be a little more comfortable if I could just cut back a little. But that can't be my aim, and I won't act on it. I'll stay focused on no compensating and on 3 meals comprised of things I want. I'm just acknowledging that, int he back of my mind, I am wondering if I should cut back, I am getting a little tempted to purposely restrict.... but I have no intention of acting on this. I just think it's important that I even recognize that that quiet voice is there. Take away the secret of hte quiet voice and I take away its power.

I'm hesitant to write the food down here, but I will. In the back of my mind, I'm hoping that me writing this craziness of food - in all honesty - in all its huge quantity - someone else who might have had a similar eating-type day will realize they're not alone. Also, I'm thinking that maybe, for whatever reason, knowing that me, a person with a history of food restriction, can also really overdo it... and yet can move on (because I will move on tomorrow)... mabye that will help somehow...

So, in the spirit of total transparency, here's the food:

B: packet of oatmeal

L: Entire chipotle burrito with rice, black beans, chicken, corn salsa, tomato salsa, and guacamole

Thoughts about lunch:
-Good that I picked what I wanted. I craved chipotle. I could have gone to the supermarket or to subway ((both of which were next door) so that I could get something less in calories. But I went with my craving.
-Did make me feel more anxious that I have been feeling lately, but I was activeily dealing with it. I dealt with it by just telling myself it was okay.
-Eating it did make me think some disordered thoughts, none of which I took seriously. The only one I considered seriously was "should I eat dinner?"
-As a result of anxiety, I did feel the need to count calories. I was sure that I would go home and look up calories on Chipotle's website. I just HAD to. I was aware that I hadn't felt this way about calories in a long time. I think I felt a stronger urge to count calories because I had more anxiety with this meal. Anyway, by the time I got home, I no longer felt the urge to count calories. See, I'm on the computer now, writing this, and not going to look the Chipotle calories up.
-Did have the thought "this would be okay to eat if I had run 9 miles but I haven't even run this morning..."
-But also had helpful, constructive thoughts like "just choose not to engage with these more disordered thoughts."
-Basically, I was too invested in not being derailed and disordered, thtat I knew I wouldn't engage in the disordered thoughts. I felt stronger than the ghouths, able to not engage in them or dwell on them.
-So, bottom line: I had more thoughts and anxiety than normal, but I separated from them and chose to move on.

Snack: during my shift at the for yo store, I had: a spoonful of reese cup topping, SEVERAL samples of fro yo (I wasn't even hungry but my throat hurts and my lymphnode things are visibily swollen and the fro yo just felt so nice on my throat. the cold temps felt good!)... it was literally probably like a total of 8 oz of fro yo in sample cups. I also had 4 huge spoonfuls of ice cream and it totaled to about 4 oz of ice cream (1/2 cup). I know this because I put the 4 spoonfuls in the 4 oz cup.

Snack when I got home:two whole wheat pita (why? I'm realy not sure. PErhaps b/c I was in a snacky mood. But not really. Perhaps because it felt relaxing? Perhaps because it felt good to swallow scratchy toasted pita. I don't know but it wasn't necessary.

(really, if I owned chips or crackers right now, I'd have had my hand in the bag. That's what I really wanted. the closest thing I owned was pita bread.... that's where the pita bread snackcame in)

I'm not mad at myself about today, but I am ready to learn for it. I'll aim to eat how I want to be eating tomorrow - in a healthy rhythm.