day off # 3 - effectively dealing with urges to restrict

• I told the group yesterday in Weekend Planning Group that my goal for this weekend was primarily to not count (and recount) calories. I was successful at this today! That is huge for me.

• What is up with these SUPER STRONG urges to restrict yesterday afternoon/evening and today?! For real?! I'm not gaining weight. I'm not too full. So what in the world?! Why am I wanting to restrict in a hard core way? If there's one thing I've learned about emotions from all of this therapy, though, it's that you don't always have to understand the origin of something in order to effectively deal with it. I can manage anxiety and anger without knowing why I'm anxious or mad. So, I thought to myself, I can manage urges to restrict without understanding why I have them.

• Even though I ate all the program food and my afternoon snack and a (too small) dinner and an evening snack and didn't exercise yesterday, I still woke up today majorly lacking energy. I'm not kidding - the same amount of food that used to make me full is starting to make me really hungry. I feel like I'm eating and still being hungry. I told the RD this and I'm afraid she'll up my meal plan - but maybe that's what I need.... Anyway, Despite that, I sooooooooooooo almost skipped breakfast. I was sooooooo irrationally compelled to not eat. I wasn't feeling deep hunger - just a lot of low energy and spaciness. But, I thought back to My Worst Eating Disordered Day essay that I ahd to write for my program therapist - and I thought about how, in that essay, I had concluded that it's REALLY important that I eat my meals. And I don't want to deal with this eating disorder forever. I don't want tl always wake up to the question of "should I eat today?" And, in that essay, I convinced myself that the only way to get over this is to eat. I realized I have a lot of good, rational reasons to eat breakfast and not a single good, rational reason to not eat it. Plus, I was totally aware that my mind was in the future and that was palying a big role in my breakfast skippage. I was thinking "I need hunger in order to eat lunch, so I should not eat now b/c eating would take away my hunger." (Yes, I tend to easily forget that hunger comes back - several times a day...) I also went back to the list of coping mechanism to fight urges that I had made with the dietitians. I grounded myself in the EVIDENCE (so far, eating when I didn't want to eat has worked out REALLY WELL. Eating makes me feel more alert. Eating doesn't make me fat. Eating keeps my body in a rhythm. You can even eat when you're not starving and your body still won't get fat and you will still get hungry again later). And I grounded myself in my history (every eating disordered phase started out with me non-chalantly skipping a meal... do I want to risk that again? Especially when I have all this evidence to support the idea that eating is not dangerous?) And I stayed grounded in the physical (I may not feel stomach hunger - but there is some reason that I was kinda loopy, weak, spacy this morning. There's some reason why, when I was walking around getting dressed, my vision started to go black and i had to sit on my bed to restabalize myself..... these may be signs of hunger. The other physical evidence I have is this : eating is not making me fat. eating is making me energetic.) And I stayed grounded in the NOW - THE PRESENT (If I wasn't thinking about lunch, would I be avoiding breakfast? Probably not. So, that means if I stay grounded in the present, I should eat bfast). The weird thing about eating disorders is that you can know all of this... and yet, you still just... don't eat. You still just feel so compelled to not eat. You do things that make no sense - even to you. But something in me just told myself that I don't have to WANT to eat breakfast, but I do have to EAT IT. Something in me knew that it is just THAT IMPORTANT ... that I REALLY HAVE TO JUST EAT. So, I just auto-piloted my way to the kitchen. I set the intention: enjoy the taste. And I ate it. I didn't count calories. I ate it and enjoyed the taste. And you know what? I felt better afterwards! I woke up! My brain worked a bit better! I didn't feel guilty. I am SURE it is the right thing to do. It brought me back to the world of the healthy and sane. I'm soooo happy with myself that I ate breakfast. The bfast was a little too small (1/2 a thick slice of farmer's market whole wheat bread with a spoonful of PB and 1/2 a peach - I gave the other half of the peach to my dog....) ... so, the next step would be to actually eat the entire meal plan bfast.... but this is pretty good for my 3rd day out of program - there's actually a bfast and i didn't cal count it.