Saturday, October 30, 2010

Allergic Reaction to ED

Today I had what I believe was an allergic reaction caused by my ED.

Here's how it started....

We went to the gym, after not going for about a week.  I felt kind of down on myself and chubby.  I decided that it would be a great idea to get on the scale for the first time since, like, July; just to prove to myself that the weight gain was in my head.

Well, it wasn't.  114 stared right back at me.

Fuck.

I started freaking out.  I wasn't prepared for that number.  It was about 3 more pounds than I was hoping for.

I freak out.
I freak out.

I get on the elliptical.
I'm freaking out.

I call J over to talk with me while I'm on the elliptical.  I tell him I'm flipping out.  I'm almost hyperventilating.  My heart is beating fast.  There is a lump in my throat.  I feel like I'm about to burst into tears.
We talk for 10 minutes about how weight is just a number, and 114 is nothing, and my weight shouldn't dictate my self-worth, etc.

I think I'm ok, and I get on the treadmill.  I do my normal work-out of walking at a very fast pace at the highest incline, and my legs start to itch.

They itch so much.  They itch so much.  My legs are burning.  


MY LEGS ARE ON FIRE!


I scratch my legs, but the itch gets worse.  Finally, I went off the treadmill, went to the locker room, and put generic locker-room lotion on them.  They burned even more.  

I put my own lotion on them.  Better.  But not by much.

I catch my reflection in the mirror.  I look bigger.  I know I look bigger.  Jesus.  I'm getting fat.

I start freaking out again.  My legs itch.  My legs itch so bad.  I still have 40 minutes of my work out left.  But I can't stay.  There's no way I can get through this burning itch and work out.

I tell J we have to leave because I can't work out anymore.  We come home and I take a benadryl.

I feel numb.  I'm freezing.  I'm wrapped up in a blanket.  J is trying to have normal conversation with me, and I just can't.  I'm trying to understand.  I'm trying to not think of anything.

Could my freaking out have caused an allergic reaction within my body?

I don't know.

Friday, October 29, 2010

Murder Mystery & The Corpse Bride

We went to a Murder Mystery tonight at a castle!  Yes, a castle.

It was fantastic!

As promised, here are picture of me as.......... The Corpse Bride!














Happy Halloween!

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Hoooooooooooooooowlloween...O_O

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays.  I love the fantastical decorations, the candy, the pumpkins, and especially the costumes.  (Yes, I'm 26 and still get giddy about dressing up!)

Every year I have my costume planned well ahead of time; sometimes I'll even wear two costumes per year.  And it's hardly ever something that I buy at the store.  I like to make my Halloween costumes the old fashioned way... putting together pieces that come right out of my closet! (Sometimes given a boost with a few odds and ends bought from a costume shop)

But, with all of the things that were going on this year I didn't really think about my costume at all.  I wasn't even sure if we were going to do anything for it.  But, J found this fantastic event for us to go to on Halloween weekend: a Monster Bash themed Murder Mystery at a castle!

We even get to dress up!

I had to scramble to come up with ideas, and was contemplating a few possible outfits.  But, tonight, I randomly came up with another costume idea, and this one really takes the cake!

Here are some pictures of my Halloween costumes throughout the last few years.  I will put up a teaser of this year's Halloween costume at the end!  (To be revealed in full after Halloween)

Halloween 2007::Witch

Halloween 2008::Minnie Mouse

Halloween 2008::Santa's Helper

Halloween 2009::Morticia Addams

Halloween 2009::Doll



***************
Drum roll please..... part of my Halloween 2010 costume.
What, oh what, could I possibly be?!?!

What are your plans for Halloween this year?



Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Baby Steps to the door, baby steps to the elevator, baby steps to Recovery...



The title of this post is a play on a quote from Bill Murray's "What About Bob?" movie.
If you don't know what I'm referring to, hop in your car, go to the video store, rent it, watch it, and be prepared to roll on the floor laughing!

It's about Bob, played by Bill Murray, who has very intense OCD.  He opens doorknobs with napkins; is afraid of water, riding the elevator, and basically of everything.  He begins seeing a psychiatrist to work on his OCD, and the psychiatrist tells him that he has to take baby steps in his recovery process.  That it's a work in progress and he should do it little by little.  That every little step is an accomplishment.  In the process Bill ends up driving the psychiatrist mad, but not before causing mass amounts of hilarity!

So, what does this have to do with me?  Well, I'm a little like Bill.  I'm a bit obsessive, I have OCD tendencies, I'm trying to recover from a disorder, and I need to do it in baby steps.

Yesterday I had an odd sort of eating day.  I ate breakfast as usual.  I wasn't really hungry by lunch time, so I decided to just snack on some cereal.  An hour later I decided to eat a couple of oranges.  And a little bit after that I was craving chocolate, so I ate a 150-cal Skinny Cow chocolate ice cream cone.  By that point, I knew that I had consumed about 350 calories in my make-shift lunch, but I hadn't eaten anything substantial.  I started worrying about 'what if I get hungry in a couple of hours?  I don't want to eat even more food (calories) !'  My mind started racing.  But, I thought, it's okay because I'm not hungry really at all right now, and I can probably hold off until dinner.  We were planning on having cheeseburgers with beans and salad, and I wanted to not feel guilty eating a delicious meal.

Well, what really ended up happening was that I did get insanely hungry about two hours after I had the ice cream cone.  And, we still had two hours until dinner.  I was so hungry that I wanted to gnaw my own arm off.  I waited a bit.  Still hungry.  I drank some hot tea.  Still hungry.  But, I just couldn't bring myself to eat anything else before dinner.  I wanted to feel guilt free when I had dinner, and I knew that eating before dinner would take that feeling away from me.

I know that I shouldn't feel guilty eating food, and that I should eat when I'm hungry.  But, I'm still trying to balance out watching my calories, and eating what I want (not restricting certain foods).  Baby steps here, people...

The concept of eating throughly confuses me sometimes.  Every nutrition/health expert that you talk to tells you that you should count your calories.  And really, counting your calories helps you have control over what you consume.  But, every ED recovery expert tells you to stop counting your calories.

I guess I'm still trying to figure out a median between these two schools of thought.  I count my calories for breakfast and lunch, and for dinner I try not to worry about the calories; I just stop eating when I'm full.  I just can't let myself do that for breakfast and lunch.  I feel like I would eat double the amount of food that I eat now if I let myself eat how I wanted all day.  And that scares me.


However, on a positive note: I did let myself have another dessert after dinner last night, and it was pretty guilt-free!  I had one of those Jell-O chocolate mousse things.  I figured that the one cup of chocolate mousse wasn't going to make my ass suddenly expand infinitely.  And I really wanted chocolate, so I ate it. :)

So, Anybody else have these issues?  


How do you feel about it?


What do you do about it, if anything?

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Autumn, Yoga, and other things

Hi everyone!  (I have given myself the right to use exclamation points again after my depressing second to last post-- haha)

Hope your Tuesday is going great.  It's really beginning to feel like Autumn, and I for one, love it.  This is my beloved season. One of my favorite activities to do in the Fall is to go to a cider mill, pick out pumpkins, eat fresh donuts, drink hot cider, and take pictures in the beautiful scenery.


Since moving to this new city, we are trying to figure our way around everything and find fun things to do. The cider mill seemed like a great idea.  When we got there we did everything that we loved (above).  It was so much fun!!  But, on the downside, the doughnuts sucked.  They were pretty subpar and we were disappointed.  But, I did buy a bunch of really cute gourds that I'm going to use as a centerpiece for our dining room table.




Onto other things, J and I are going to join this amazing gym that we checked out last week.  The one I previously blogged about that I was checking out by myself sucked.  It was really expensive and very non-impressive.  This new gym though, is AWESOME.  

It is huge, and it has great cardio and strength training equipment.  All the cardio machines have TVs on them (Love!), it's full of people of a variety of age ranges-- our age, younger, and older.  So it doesn't feel like a geriatric gym (the other one did, I shit you not).  And it has a lot of different classes from kickboxing, to zumba, to yoga.  It also has other activities like hand-ball/racquetball/pools/etc...  

Basically, it's the perfect gym for us.  It is a bit on the pricy side, but we will both use it enough that it will be worth it.  In fact, we got a 1 week free trial last Thursday, and we've already gone 4 times.

We actually tried yoga yesterday.  It was an eye-opening experience.  I haven't tried a yoga class since I was in my teens.  I absolutely loved it.  It was 60 minutes of clumsily going through a variety of motions named after a myriad of animals.  But, it was really fun, very stretch-ful (I know that's not a word), and it was different than anything else in my workout routine.  

I'm going to add at least one day of yoga a week onto my regimen because I didn't realize how tight my muscles were!

Anyway, this post went on for longer than expected.  But, one last thing-- I started drawing again yesterday.  Drawing is the one thing that I always enjoy, and am good at.  It's something that adds to my self-confidence.  And to see the finished product that I made is pure joy.   My favorite subjects to draw are people, although I am also partial to body parts (hands, that sort of thing).  I'm making a large black and white drawing of a picture of J and I from our wedding.  If it's good enough, we might use it as artwork in our living room (which we're severely lacking).

I am so excited!

Oh, and I just want to say, that recovery is a bitch.  It's the scariest, fastest, roller coaster I've ever been on.  But I know deep down that all of the ups and down will be worth it in the end.

Lots of Love for you all :)

Monday, October 18, 2010

Update on yesterday's "Woe is Me" post. It's happy :) Yay!

Hey all :)

Thank you so much for listening to me rant yesterday.  After I got done writing the post, J called me on his way home, and I just broke down crying.  Once he got home we talked.


He listened to me talk for a long time.  I told him about all of my feelings of disgust, and the fact that sometimes I want to crawl out of my own skin because of how uncomfortable I feel with my body.  I told him that I am so sick of feeling this way (feeling like I look fat and the fighting with myself that I talked about), and I am so tired of comparing my self-worth to the way I look, or how 'skinny' I feel.  But, I also told him that I know that I'm not fat, in the way that most people would regard fat.  So not only do I feel guilty that I'm berating myself with negative thoughts, but, I also feel guilty that there are people out there that are bigger than me, in a physical sense, who would look at me and think that I'm nuts to think that I could be fat.

So, basically, I'm living in this world of pure guilt.  Guilt about getting healthy and not looking like a 12 year old girl, guilt about feeling guilty for not looking that way (because I'm a 26 year old adult, dammit!), and guilt for the way other people would feel if they could read my crazy ED thoughts.

J told me that I need to stop dealing myself so much guilt.  Which, I know I do.  We also talked about how when I'm busier, I seem to be happier with myself.  Because I don't have the two hours when I'm getting ready to do anything to stare in the mirror and pick at myself and my body.  So, I'm going to try to keep myself busy.

He then made a very poignant statement.  He said that my self-worth should be rooted in the fact that I am a wife to a very loving husband, that I have friends and family who love me, that I am a Master's candidate finishing up my thesis, that I have two cats who adore me, and on and on.  It shouldn't be rooted in how thin I feel or look.

That right there is really how I should be looking at myself.  What an amazing piece of advice.

Haha, J is basically like my counselor. =P

Additionally, we are going to join this awesome gym that we found in the area.  It's HUGE, the machines are fantastic, it has tons of classes, and pools, and other cool things to do.  It's a bit on the pricy side.  But, it's worth it for all of the activities that it offers.  Plus, both of us love going to the gym and being active and healthy.  So, it's a great choice for us.  In fact, we went together to work out on Thursday and Friday, and went separately yesterday.  And today, we're going to try out a yoga class!

I'm really excited for the yoga class!!  Maybe it'll help me chill the eff out.  Haha.

:)

Sunday, October 17, 2010

My ED thoughts are killing me.

I haven't posted in a little while.  I was sick for a bit, and then I was busy.

For the past couple of weeks my ED thoughts have been wreaking havoc on my brain.  I literally battle with my thoughts every time I look in the mirror.  I have to convince myself to put clothes on everyday and do stuff.  And I have to talk myself into the fact that my 'fatness' is in my brain.

I know this is a part of recovery.  But, it's so fucking hard.  I'm so sick of dealing with myself.  Of arguing with myself.   I feel schizophrenic.  Or I feel like I have multiple personality disorder.  And that there are two of me constantly fighting fighting fighting.

I'm just so tired.  I'm exhausted of fighting with myself. I'm so tired of trying to explain to J what is going on with me and why I feel like shit about myself.

It's as if I need to stop looking in any mirrors.  Because every time I do,  all I can think of is how I've gained weight and how those jeans fit differently before.  How I have face pudge, and my stomach is protruding, but it didn't before.

I would never wish this fucked-uped-ness on anybody.

And I'm so scared to get on a scale.

I'm just so exhausted of this.

Sorry.  Just have been feeling down for a while.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

The Gym Dilemma


A gym can be a very interesting place.  Just saying the word 'gym' can cause an instantaneous rush of emotions in most people.  A large majority of people absolutely hate the gym.  But then there are the group of people that absolutely love it, and wouldn't know what to do without a gym to go to.

I used to be COMPLETELY in the former group.  I used to even brag about how I never went to the gym because I absolutely despised structured work-outs, yet I was still thin.  Yay.  Well, what most people didn't know was that I had an eating disorder.  And the reason that I hated doing physical activity and going to the gym was because I didn't have the energy to go for a run, or lift weights, or get on an elliptical. I was spending all the little energy that I had on not eating.  Not healthy.  I know that now.

My true Recovery Journey started last January, and it went hand-in-hand with my beginning to go to the gym.  Well, that's not completely true.  After I went through the "I can't take this anymore!  I'm going to recover.", I bought Jillian Michael's 30-Day Shred DVD.  Because in my mind, I knew that by eating more, I was bound to gain weight.  And this DVD promised to make me lose weight.  So, it seemed perfect for me... I'd eat more and still tone and lose weight.  By golly, I'd struck gold!


However; that's not exactly how things turned out (Thank God =D ).  I got bored with the 30-Day Shred  after two weeks of doing it almost every day.  And I got so sick of hopping around in my room all by myself, and having this Lady Beast yelling at me to give her 10 more push-ups only to tell me that she was kidding, she wants another ten.  Damn you!!

So, I decided to take a chance and join a gym.  I had done this a couple of times before-- paid the fees only to go twice.  But, I said what the hey, I'll try it again.

And so began The Gym Adventures of Yasi.  Now, let me tell you, the gym that I went to was the my university gym.  And this baby was AWESOME.  And over the last ten months I fell in love with it over and over again.  It was a place to unwind, to tone up, to let my mind roam, and to people watch.  I sure loved the people watching!

I won't really get into this in this post, but, joining that gym was probably one of the biggest aids in my recovery process.  It helped me be O.K. with eating more, because I knew that I was using that energy at the gym and making my body healthy.

So, what's my dilemma?  Well, we moved a ways away from the city that we were living in, so I can't go to my beloved gym anymore.  What's more is that our apartment complex has a gym.  Albeit, a very small gym with not a lot of equipment.  It has a few bike machines, a few ellipticals, and a few treadmills, and a really really really crappy 'weight lifting machine'.  This lifting machine is so old that when I do my legwork on it, I swear it's dislocating my muscles.  And it only has two "leg" functions.  So, I can only work two of my muscle groups.

My workouts usually consist of 10-15 minutes on the elliptical, then 20-25 minutes of walking on the highest incline at 4.3 mph on the treadmill, and then 30-40 minutes of ab-work/mat-work and the leg machines.  Well, now that I don't have my wide array of leg machines, I'm having to come up with new exercises to make up for the machines using my own body weight, or an exercise ball.  All of which is O.K., I guess.

But, the real kicker is that there's never anyone in the gym.  It's depressing!  It's like:  me, myself, and I, for over an hour.  It sucks.  And there are only three TVs, that you're not allowed to change the channels on.  Oh, and they don't turn on the closed-captioning.  At my old gym, I got spoiled with having a TV on each of the cardio machines.  So, I could make a 30 minute cardio session go by in the time that it took me to watch one episode of whatever I could find.

If you can't tell already, I'm gymsick for my old gym!  Why don't I join a new gym?  Well, I might.  I talked to J about it a couple of days ago.  The truth is, since we have a gym in the complex, I feel guilty paying to go to another gym.  Because most of the machines that I need are right here.  But, I don't ever get excited to go to the gym anymore.  It feels like a chore.  I have to literally talk myself into going.  And it's so hard because I'll know I'm going into a blocked off room, all by myself, to use crappy machines.

Boo.  So, after talking to J about it, I'm going to check out a gym today just to see if I like it.  And then we will be discussing the financial aspect of it.

So, tell me:


1.  If you were in my position what would you do?  Stick with the complex gym or find a better gym and pay the extra money?


2.  Do you love going to the gym?  If not, what's your favorite work-out routine?


Have a happy Wednesday!



Saturday, October 2, 2010

The Joys of Cooking

In the past two weeks I have developed a passion for cooking that would give Betty Crocker a run for her money.

I've baked cookies, cooked various Persian dishes and pasta dishes, and I even cooked a butternut squash soup and shrimp dinner last night- from SCRATCH!

I don't know why this chef light has been ignited within me, but I like it!  Since I lived alone and battled with ED, I'd never really been one to make big meals that take time to prepare.  I almost always gravitated toward meals that were easy and fast and low in calories-- and unfulfilling, most of the time!

However; since J and I have gotten married, I feel this urge to prepare a nice dinner for our little family.  I actually *want* to cook, and it's really fun.  Yes, I still think of the nutritional value of what I'm cooking.  But I have broken out of the whole "I'll have 1 serving of pasta with 2 spoonfuls of pasta sauce because that's roughly 300 calories".  

With the stuff I'm cooking, I can't really count the calories--because I don't know them.  And it's so wonderfully freeing.  I can cook for the sheer love of making that specific meal and knowing that J and I will share it together.  I can cook because it's fun to create something from scratch and present it to someone with a "Ta-Da!  Look what I made!  It's from scratch.".  

It's as if concocting delicious meals has been a part of my therapy.  Food therapy.  I like it.  

And the amount of pride that I have when presenting these meals to J (and to myself, haha).  It's as if I'm birthing a baby-- "It's so beautiful!", "Uh-huh, I created that!",  "I have never been more proud!"

It's a bit ridiculous, really.  But, hey, whatever butters your bread, right? ;)

Here's a pic of me baking J's favorite cookies: Peanut butter chocolate chip.  They were crazy delicious and were gone in 2 days!  Hehe.






P.S.  I highly recommend cooking a 'winter squash soup'.  It's honestly one of the healthiest, most delicious, and comforting soups I've ever had!  And it's pretty easy =)