Rejecting e.d. temptations & giving up control

This week we had company... my friends had lost a ton of weight..and they told us how they did it...I admit I am jealous.

I'd love to drop 20+lbs in a month.. I have done it. i know it can happen. I also know I'd be in my size 6 jeans if I did. I have about 3 pairs of size 6, and only 1 pair in whatever size I wear right now.. it's tempting I admit.

However how they did it, I do not agree with.. many of my friends are on the hcg diet. I have done so much research into that diet, If you go to the dr. and get actual hormone injections, it's totally messing with the body. If you get the homeopathic hcg, it's basically nothing.

The key to losing the weight is the 500 calorie a day diet. My friends were amazed that they did not feel hunger and attributed it to the "hcg" I however know as someone who restricts, it only takes a couple days for the sense of hunger to go away. When I am not eating, I do not feel hunger either.

When they asked me how I lost my weight this year.. I held back telling them how I actually have been struggling off and on with restricting my food. It's been a little over a year and I have lost about 25lbs.. I am not currently losing much of anything at the moment.. I have maintained my weight pretty much for months now. for me this is a healthy decision. Sure I'd love to drop my weight but I am working on not restricting, so whatever comes off, comes off at a snail slow pace.

The last couple days my jealousy has been bad. I am also a little obsessed with the size of my calves, sometimes my thighs. however I found a site that will rate you against others in America., technically this can be dangerous, but for me it's helpful. I have discovered even though I feel huge, I am not huge, I am smaller than the average woman. supposedly. who knows if that is accurate though. But it tells me "Your calves are smaller than 55.11% of the women in the nation and 0.7 inches smaller than the average female". My perception is flawed.

I have had many lessons this week.. Jealousy is one of them, I admit it...even though it's not solved, I can recognize it and work on it when situations come up.

Another lesson is totally trusting that God is in control of situations and letting him be in control. Giving up the control of the situation was hard. But I finally did it. My hamster Gracie went missing on Wed night. she was not upstairs at all, so it looks like she had been gone since possible the middle of the night early wed. morning. I usually check on her in the morning when I wake up but I had no memory of doing that. Around 8pm I was wondering why she was not up yet.. so I checked on her.. and she was not in her cage. The cage looked untouched, but the door to her potty which opens from the outside for cleaning was not latched. I spent hours looking for her upstairs. We found not one dropping downstairs so we figured she was upstairs. I searched for her for about 24 hours with a 2 hour nap. I searched upstairs and downstairs in every room. I did not find her. I was ready to give up hope.. I just totally gave God this situation and went upstairs and ate dinner Thursday night. I took 1 bite, When my mother came into my room and told me she heard scratching in my grandmother's room downstairs. The more we spoke the louder it got.Smart girl was trying to make herself known to us. We moved the bed out and Gracie was there and finally safe. She was very thin, dehydrated and weak. we figured she was missing for about 30+ hours give or take. it's been a rough couple days for her but she's finally recovering and gaining her weight and strength back.

Binging, boundaries and finding balance

Certain people in my life trigger me to over eat. I do not eat thousands of calories in one sitting, but I do eat until my stomach is very uncomfortable. Then I feel guilty about eating.

The guilt is horrible..I feel guilty for eating when I am not hungry. I feel guilty for letting this person get to me. I should just cut off all contact with them. I feel trapped, cutting off all contact will affect everyone in my family.

I need to set some boundaries.. I do not know how. If I say do not post on my facebook, or start chat with me.. it will cause problems. When they do these things I feel backed into a corner. It's easier for me to just let them walk all over me and delete posts and messages later.

I decided to spend some time on the finding balance site tonight, I should have done this when the triggers came instead of heading to the kitchen. There's an video on emotional eating. I have always claimed I am not an emotional eater.. but I do eat when triggered. Finding balance has a great resource section with articles and videos.. videos are my favorite. I ended up watching the video on emotional eating and sadly I have to admit once again binging tonight was due to emotions that were triggered earlier today on facebook by someone whom I have no boundaries set. I should have sat back and just waited til my emotions were scaled down to a 4 or so before even leaving my room. but no I left the room when it was at a 9/10 and ended up in the kitchen eating food my body did not need to have.

I am thankful tomorrow is a new day and I hope to get back on track in a more healthy way.

Thankful the things I am learning from Finding Balance and Jena Morrow are convicting

Some days I hate being called out on the carpet for my behaviors, other days I appreciate it. This conviction some days is really needed.

This week has been a crazy week, I had been busy last weekend painting and letting God speak to my heart while listening to Jena Morrow and Constance Rhodes on the issues of perfectionism and eating disorders.

However, one issues remains, and that is self injury. Self injury had been a part of my life heavily about 6 years ago. I had started when I was about 8-9 years old. In talking with a friend, she pretty much had told me that I was self injuring because I could not speak about how I was feeling.

The last week or so I have been back into the old mindset of self injury. A scratch here and there..to me seemed harmless enough.. however. I decided to sit and hang on the finding balance site last night and watch some videos in their resource section, originally it was going to be about food issues, which turned into watching the videos on self injury. This morning however, I am feeling the same "called on the carpet" feeling that i feel when I am actively engaged in eating disorder behaviors. It's easy to slip back into the old patterns and behaviors.

I have not been actively engaged in any eating disorder behaviors or thinking this week. I am thankful I can see myself for who I am, and not see myself as severely obese when I look in the mirror. I was standing on the ladder when I caught my reflection in the mirror of the spare bedroom last weekend while painting. Seeing myself for who I really am is amazing, usually I do not see that when i look in the mirror.

This week has been a good week pretty much, I have been busy with living my life, enjoying my time with my grandmother. One of the things that was very convicting to me last weekend as God spoke to my heart while listening to Jena Morrow, while in the middle of painting the hallway, also while standing on the top step of the same ladder. Was when Jena said "without faith it's impossible to please God" and how the way to please God is to trust him.. I just stopped painting and listened, then she said "There's a day coming when we'll see very clearly that we've been trusting in somebody who's very very real" My grandmother showed signs of her body shutting down on Thursday. I went into a "I feel out of control" period of time..until I remembered that God is in control of everything. I then went to the store.. when I came home my grandmother had improved.

This conviction some days is easy to get me to change my behaviors, some days not so easy. However I am thankful for it regardless.

Refusing to fall back into obsessions

I love my good days. I feel like I am getting my life back, however I have my bad days which sometimes are overwhelming to me. This past weekend I was asked to help paint because we were getting carpet installed. It was a family project and I worked all weekend. Time was running short Sunday evening, and we needed the painting done by Monday morning. I decided to tackle the paint job while everyone was asleep, uninterrupted I worked and finished the project at 5am and then went to bed. When I awoke I was sore and very tired.

Throughout the day, I noticed my calves were the most sore part of my body, most likely from hours of climbing the step stools and ladders. This soreness triggered me to start looking at my calves, this in turned triggered me into obsessing about other parts of my body. Of course my perception is flawed so I am not seeing things how they really are.

It is amazing at how fast things can change and what triggers an obsession. I have been doing very well lately and I refuse to fall back into this trap.

A reflection of the last 9 months with Finding Balance

I have been very hyper the last few days telling everyone what God has been doing in my life this year. I have seen myself in a little over a year go from someone who was headed down a dark path of eating disorder behaviors to someone who's living life once again. This experiencing life as I used to before 4 years ago is exciting. I am happy, I am really enjoying doing what I used to, sculpting and sewing and wearing girly clothes!

A year ago January I ended a 4 month period of severe overeating and went directly into restricting, however I didn't see it that way. I was eating healthy foods but very little of it and ate only a certain amount. the weight started dropping.. Because I had just come out of overeating time, I would sneak in foods I felt were bad and feel guilty for eating them.

By Easter I had lost quite a bit of weight and then my mother did the unspeakable, she gave me candy starting with a box of marshmallow bunnies, which is a trigger food for me I have since learned. I got a ton of candy on Easter Sunday and by Monday it was all gone. I had eaten it all, this put me in a period of binging again. I did not eat a large amount but it was more than my petite frame needed. this went on until the second week of may.

In June I got a book called Hollow :an unpolished tale by Jena Morrow.. and through Jena I found out about Finding Balance, which has been a blessing to my life.

Since the Middle of June, I have been visiting the Finding Balance website. The video section is my favorite. I am a very one on one kind of learner so the videos having a one on one feel to it, It's easy to understand, and is like having someone personally teaching you what you need to know.. which is perfect for me, since this is how I learn best.

Summer was pretty good.I spent all summer on the finding balance site just learning. I did have some trouble eating, but I would watch a video and eat, as if I had my own eating coach right there. It was very encouraging to be able to have a resource that I did not have 6 years ago.

By late august when my grandmother changed hospices, I relapsed into the obsession to lose weight and worked very hard to get out of it. This relapse lasted a month and actually caused some physical problems. my health was not as good until last month. I felt tired, it messed up my period similar to 6 years ago when I was not eating, thankfully though eating well, and vitamins my health is completely restored to where is had been.

I survived the Holidays. I was thankful to have the finding balance website available, It was a hard time for me, as I was a little depressed about it being my grandma's last holiday with us. On Christmas eve, she woke up and was able to enjoy our family Christmas with us.

The new year brought a lot of stress for me, I got very obsessed with losing weight again for the impending funeral. I have a dress that doesn't fit anymore.. I have decided to buy a new dress for the funeral, whenever that is and not stress about it.

February came and brought some good changes to my life. As my health improved, so did my emotions. I have seen God speak to my heart on different issues such as jealousy, perfectionism, how I perceive myself. He's restored my ability to sculpt and be creative. For the first time in 4+ years I am enjoying creating and sculpting.

I have seen myself trade in my eating disorder behaviors and obsessions for the life I once lived. Compared to this time last year, my life has made a 180 turn around. I can't say everyday is perfect but I am able to get through the hard days a lot easier.

I am still hanging on the Finding balance website. I am really enjoying the new site. The new blog format is so easy to read, I love the videos are there for when I need them. However I no longer depend on videos to eat. I can just eat on my own. I have been dealing with a lot of triggers but for the past week or so, the video "know your triggers" has been very helpful. It's not that I am not going to have triggers, I just need to react to them differently than I have in the past.

When eating disorders take away your life

The past few weeks I have been exchanging eating disorder behaviors for my life.. I want it back. It's hard with the stress of my grandmother's illness, watching her waste away both mentally and physically is traumatic. My home is filled with triggers. How I react to these triggers is something I am learning to deal with. It's not perfect, some days I am overwhelmed by them, some days I can overcome them.

Regardless of what's going on here at home, I have been choosing not to let my triggers and behaviors rule my life. I have been successfully putting those behaviors on the shelf and exchanging them for my art supplies. I have been an artist my whole life, however it's been taken/given up the past 4 years due to my inability to focus on what I need to be doing, my inability to cope with the stress around me and my perfectionism getting in the way. I feel the last 4-5 years of my life have been stolen from me.

Today I listened to a couple of interviews by Jena Morrow. I had downloaded them last June and had put them in a folder that I do not keep any music or podcast in, so they got lost and forgotten. It was a nice surprise to find.

One thing that Jena said that totally stood out is this "You cannot have both life and an eating disorder, they are mutually exclusive" This is the truth, It's something that God has been showing me, but not in that wording. It's just that I have not been able to live my life at all.

I have been learning that when I am engaged in my behaviors, that's all I am doing all day everyday. I have no time for my life. My day is spent focused on losing weight, calculating my calories, exercise, etc. On the days I exchange the behaviors and thoughts for my real life, I have time to sculpt, sew as well as everything else I do not do when I am knee/waist deep in eating disorder behaviors.

So when I heard Jena say what she did, I was reminded of what I have learned about when you say yes to one thing, you say no to another. Over and over I have made this choice, I unknowingly say yes to the wrong thing, and no to what I should have done, then regret it later.

6 years ago, my eating disorder was the only way I could cope with my life.. however now 6 years later, I am thankful I have something else to hold on to and have other choices I can make.