Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Cookie Monster!!

This picture really tickled my fancy.  I just HAD to share!   It's from this website:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/p/drawings.html

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

New lifestyle, possibly new perspective

Hi everyone!  Hope your hump day is going fantastically :)

I feel at ease.  I am married to the love of my life.  I have two adorable cats, and an amazing family that is always there for us.  So, what's ED's role in my life right now?

Well, ED is always lurking in the background.  It's always in the back of my mind.  I'm in recovery-- that's what happens.  In fact, I had a ginormous binge eating session this past Saturday.  I knew it was going to come on sooner or later.  With all of the crazy lifestyle changes (getting married, moving to a different city, setting up house, moving in together for the first time, etc...) I knew that there was a possibility that I would have some sort of a huge fight with ED, whether it was anorexia demons or binge eating demons.  Well, J was out of town for the whole weekend, and I just happened to run across the Demon of Binge Eating.  And let me tell you, if was fugly.  It was fuglier than fugly, it was horrendous.  I stuffed myself with anything I could find around the house.  And I cried, and I cried, and I cried some more until 3:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, which is when I fell asleep.

On Sunday, I felt much better.  Well, I felt gross from the bingeing.  But, I felt cleansed of the emotions. And I even woke up thinking, "well, now that that's out of the way, I can resume normal life".

So, why did the binge happen?  I think it was a remnant of my past coping mechanisms-- which focused mainly on the consumption or the restriction of food.  But, you know what else happened?  After Sunday, I have not had any bingeing tendencies, or any restricting tendencies for that matter.  I just resumed living and eating normally as if nothing had happened.

I have to take a moment now and give myself a little pat on the back.  Before starting the path of recovery, if I started on a binge, I kept bingeing for days (the same happened with restricting).  I felt such an immense amount of guilt for consuming too much food that I just kept eating to make the guilty voices inside my head stop yelling "You're a cow!" "What the hell is WRONG with you?!"  "You certainly can't go into public looking like a big fat lard-ass!".

What tends to happen now is that if I eat foods that I consider "bad" (and I know that no food is actually BAD.  Food is food.), then I just improve my eating the next day.  I don't restrict, I don't really punish myself, I just eat well the next day.  *WOW*  Shut the front door!  *I* think like this?!?!?!  When did this happen?!

For most of you who are going through the same journey as me, you know how important it is to quiet  the 'guilty voices'.  Something about not having the wedding on my plate, not having people to impress, and being settled down has quieted those voices- by quite a few decibels!

And no, I am not recovered.  I am in the process of recovery.  I am learning to cope.  If I feel 'fat' or unattractive in one pair of jeans, I  now try to just put on a different pair of jeans, instead of picking my body apart in front of the mirror.

This is good.  This is very good.

=)

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Cutting out ED by shredding your 'skinny' jeans

As a pre-cursor, I want to tell you all that the week of the wedding and during our honeymoon I had very very high body confidence.  I don't know why.  I must've just been REALLY happy, positive, and on top of the world.  Too happy to dwell on ED monsters.  I was eating food, sweets, etc.  On our honeymoon, we shared a dessert every.single.night.  It was absolutely fantastic!

But, I did have good reason to feel good about my body because even the (very busy) week of the wedding I hit the gym up three times.  And on our honeymoon I even went to the gym--twice!

After the honeymoon, we started moving and setting up house, and our eating habits were not the best.  I felt fat, and kinda blah, but I told myself that this is not how I normally eat, so it's OK. But for the last week and a half my eating habits normalized, so I started to feel better about myself.  However, since I've been working on the house, I've been living in PJs.  And who doesn't feel good in their PJs?!

Backtrack to yesterday... I went to the gym.  I felt great!  It was the 2nd time I had been to the gym this week, and since the honeymoon.

Then I went to get dressed to go to the grocery store.  I came up with a really cute outfit in my head, involving skinny jeans.  I grabbed the pieces out of my closet, and tugged the jeans on.  (In reality, I tried on 3 different skinny jeans out of my closet).

And in every single one, I.Felt.HUGE.

Fuck.

I swear these jeans looked fine before the honeymoon.  I couldn't have gained very much weight.  I looked pretty much the same.  And my face looks the same, so I couldn't have gained weight (I get face pudge when I gain).  So I did the only thing that I could do, I put on a long flowy top with the skinny jeans so that I didn't feel like a cow, and I went out the door.  But to my credit, at least I still went out!  There used to be days that I didn't leave the house when I felt fat.

So, today, I tried on the jeans from yesterday.  And I didn't feel fat.  Or big.  Or anything.  I felt like I looked good-  well, in at least two of them.

Brain, what is wrong with you!!!  See, it wasn't the weight, or the mirror, or anything.  It was your fucked up body image!

To be quite honest, I bought all of these jeans around 2-3 years ago.  My body has change immensely.  If they don't fit it's not because I'm fat.  It's because I started working out and I probably gained muscle in my butt.  That's it.  The jeans don't fit how they used to because my body weight has shifted.  Oh fucking well.

So, I did what any girl who hates and agonizes over fitting into a certain pair of jeans would do.  I took the scissors to it, and shredded the mother fucker.  Instant relief overtook my body.  I will never ever have to worry about fitting into those jeans again.  THERE.


=D




Thursday, September 9, 2010

Post wedding *very* small update!!

Hi everyone!!!!!!!!!!!

We have been extremely busy moving in together and with arranging our new home, so I haven't had much time to even go on Blogger.

I'm just posting a quick note here with a few pix to tell you that the wedding was AMAZING and the best day of our lives!!!!  I freaking CROWD SURFED at my own wedding.  Hah!

And our honeymoon in Aruba was, hands down, the most fabulous week ever.

ED issues have very much lessened since the wedding and since being married.  But I will get into this a lot more in coming posts.

Here are just a FEW pictures, as I haven't gotten more than a handful of professional pictures back yet.  Out of respect for J's wishes, I will not post any pictures of him on here.  So, I'm not just being a self-centered bride! =)  I can't wait to get back to posting regularly!!!

P.S.  All but the first photo that I'm posting were taken by Kelly Gillespie, owner of Looking Glass Photography in Michigan.  Kelly's work is absolutely amazing, and she is fantastic to work with!  Her website is:  lookingglassphotography.biz.  The image quality is pretty low here because I don't have the actual .jpeg images yet, I just copied and pasted pictures from where I found them on people's accounts online =P  So, the real stuff is much better!

Enjoy!