Habits

Old habits die hard: a situation I am finding myself in quite frequently lately. It’s weird how your eating disorder can still creep into your life during recovery, even if you feel like you’re doing well. Overall, I am. I have been completing almost all of my meal plan every day and am trying to stay less stressed about my lack of job situation. I had 3 interviews this week, so I can’t be that bad a candidate. It’s just frustrating. But when I met with my dietician this week, she told me to be cautious.

There seems to be this cloud in the recovery process. Sometimes, people can sit on it and think, “Look at this, I’m 100% in recovery. Nothing can go wrong. I’m great where I’m at and I’m never coming down.” Then, they fall from the sky and hit the ground hard.

I don’t consider myself fully up on this cloud. While I feel like I am doing better than I have been in previous months, I know I’m far from recovered, as pointed out by my dietician. One of my biggest behaviors was counting and measuring. I had a set point that I would reach every day and not allow myself to go over. If I went over, I would be filled with this self-loathing and overwhelming guilt. This pattern seems to have transitioned with me into recovery.

When I first entered recovery, I didn’t want to know my counts for my meal plan, because I felt it would be too triggering, especially when I was still on a weight restoration plan. But when we got to an idea of what might be maintenance, I was having difficulty reaching my full portions for some meals. So, I asked to know so I would have that goal. While this has helped me actually reach my restored weight and maintain it, which is still strange and slightly uncomfortable to say, it has also become a modified behavior. I now know the counts of most of the meals I eat in a month and always strive for the lower end of the calorie range. If I go outside the range for that snack/meal, I will apply to excess to the next eating period. While I am getting my appropriate meal plan in, this is a dangerous behavior.

I am able to see that this is not the healthiest way to keep track of my meal plan; however, it is nice to have that numerical validation that yes, I did actually do a full day like I was supposed to. That’s exactly the problem though: numerical validation.

When I was sick, that numerical validation is what kept me there. There was a number that defined every day. Whether it be caloric intake, weight, size, whatever, my life was ruled by them. Now, while I might not be looking at unhealthy numbers, it’s still that control. I am still controlling my intake. I still get uncomfortable by that number on the scale or the size of my jeans. Numbers continue to be my world, even though it is for a better life.

Now, I find myself this place of being stuck between a rock and a hard place. While counting ensures that I get my full meal plan in, it always makes me use some form of behaviors, which will ultimately affect my recovery. So, what do I do?

My dietician is forcing me to pick things that I don’t know the counts for at least once a day, which is proving to be more difficult than it sounds. I know counts for almost every food I eat on a somewhat regular basis. It’s also just overwhelming to think about not knowing how much is going into my body, which is just a sign of how much further I have to go in this recovery process.

The body moves faster than the mind, but it’s a matter of keeping the body healthy while the mind heals that will ultimately impact how well I can stay in recovery. If I allow my mind to stay in this unhealthy state, it will lead to my body becoming unhealthy again. So, by keeping my body in as best a place as I can and with time, patience, and hard work, I know my mind will catch up.