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.

=)