Pk’s blog

Break agreements with yourself

Oct 18, 2008
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So, a few weeks ago I was sitting in church, innocently enough and the pastor talked about breaking life long habits. There was far more to it ... but the end result was ..becoming who God created you to be.

The key there was ..breaking any agreement with yourself that you'd made ..

agreements like

I'll only eat dinner

I'll never eat in front of people

I won't eat things that start with ... whatever letter of the day it happens to be

I 'll chew my food so many times

I'll make my food go into squares before I put it into my mouth ..

Odd little habits that post pone the food process ... before going into my mouth that prevent me from eating ...and cause me to become an unhealthy eater ... and have led to the current state of malnutrition.

It's very odd being overweight and malnurished ... but I guess when you've really screwed up, you've REALLY screwed up.

Breaking the agreement with yourself means 'stop beating yourself up for screwing yourself up' ...as well ..and concentrate on getting well ...

You no longer get to beat yourself up ... that is over .. you now have to look at what is right with you, instead of what is wrong with you ...

The reality is .. I'm in a safe place, I've got my needs met ... I'm and I'm at the point of self realization ...and it's time to move past all this ...

I don't need it to cope anymore ... there is nothing in my life that needs me to depend on it ... so there is no reason for it, except for old habits die hard ... and if I don't stop, I'm going to be the only thing dead.

A year ago, I made a contract with my body and I never followed through .. in the meantime....my body has paid a price.

I've got to break the agreement with myself from the past ... of using maladaptive coping skills ... and make new agreements ...so that I can move forward with my plans for the future.

It wouldn't make much sense to get a degree in psychology if I've got a rip roarin eating disorder going on -- on the side lines .. not impossible ..but not very likely.

I can't imagine gettign through the future psych classes with these issues in the forefront of my brain. Developmental psych has been ...um .. 'interesting' enough!

emotions

Oct 1, 2008
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so I left L's office with a list of more emotions than I knew existed. My psych instructor asked us to list 20 and we'd get credit if we got to 5. I had trouble with the 5. Seriously. It was ....thankfully, an extra credit assignment!

I don't get it ..why are emotions so hard for someone like me???

I left her office with a distinct need to purge, which I haven't done in a year, before that 5 years, before that 20 months.

I don't like this...but it's going to be awfully hard to become a psychologist if I don't get through this. It would make all those psychology classes yet to come very difficult if I don't get a handle on it now ....

Irony

Oct 1, 2008
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In 69 minutes I will be sitting in the office of my new therapist. I've consumed the exact calories of what consists of a QT Cappacino at 7:30 am ..and a Special K protein drink, well, part of it. That's 50 calories.

I leave in about 20 minutes to drop my son off at work before I go ... and I'm sitting here with the realization that I SHOULD eat, but no intention of actually putting food to mouth. STUPIDITY 101.

So what am I going to say if she actually asks me "what did you eat today?" um ... drank a coffee?

Gee ma'am, I plan on eating dinner

What bruise? oh that ... I got that fainting Saturday night ... oh, no I don't think it's related to dietary practices (that's been the fight with hubby all week.) Bruise is so obvious she can't miss it. So painful I can't wear pants to cover it ... loverly. Maybe she'll miss it. Not likely, she notices when my eyes shadow when my moods change.

All this after being assigned a genogram for psych class today... OH GOODIE GOODIE GUM DROPS ...

I told my instructor I really don't think I can do my genogram, didn't quite know how to express it to her. My husband said I should have told her a bunch of apes ran through my family tree. Best explination yet!!!

Irony

Oct 1, 2008
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In 69 minutes I will be sitting in the office of my new therapist. I've consumed the exact calories of what consists of a QT Cappacino at 7:30 am ..and a Special K protein drink, well, part of it. That's 50 calories.

I leave in about 20 minutes to drop my son off at work before I go ... and I'm sitting here with the realization that I SHOULD eat, but no intention of actually putting food to mouth. STUPIDITY 101.

So what am I going to say if she actually asks me "what did you eat today?" um ... drank a coffee?

Gee ma'am, I plan on eating dinner

What bruise? oh that ... I got that fainting Saturday night ... oh, no I don't think it's related to dietary practices (that's been the fight with hubby all week.) Bruise is so obvious she can't miss it. So painful I can't wear pants to cover it ... loverly. Maybe she'll miss it. Not likely, she notices when my eyes shadow when my moods change.

All this after being assigned a genogram for psych class today... OH GOODIE GOODIE GUM DROPS ...

I told my instructor I really don't think I can do my genogram, didn't quite know how to express it to her. My husband said I should have told her a bunch of apes ran through my family tree. Best explination yet!!!

Death of an Apple

Sep 30, 2008
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Yikes, didn't catch the title of the video till I went to make this blog. Made me catch my breath. Just a tad.

Purplesque had this video, I'm not sure how it relates to her blog post about making good comments about herself (how sad is that?) but I found it a quite facinating video. I knew that .. I probably SHOULDN'T find it a facinating video ...the mind of the eating disordered person works in really odd ways ...

the video is a simple line drawn apple, pure, simple, and suddenly a worm comes out of no where ...and the apple starts to attack it ..and violently the apple disappears bite by bite until all that's left is the core of the apple.

What *I* saw ... was a simple apple ...line drawn, round, face barely seen in the roundness ... and a worm comes out and attacks the roundness and takes away the unwanted roundness .... bite by bite ... yes, with some violence, but that's ok ...it's removing the shape of the apple ... till all that is left is a skinny core. The fact that the FACE of the apple is gone, is apparent, but that's ok, the apple is now skinny ... and that is the goal.

Accomplish ... pain, self distruction (self injury?) removal of who one is as a person (loss of face) none of it matters as long as the round shape dissappears and thinness is acheived ...as QUICKLY as possible, the violence doesn't matter.

Death of an Apple

food

Sep 28, 2008
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My new eating disorder therapist asked me to write out my 'history with food'. I wasn't quite sure what she was going for. I was allowed to email it to her. This, is what I came up with. Not about to place it on my real blog. I forgot I had this blog ... maybe I'll make this blog about my journey on trying to recover ... and actually making an attept to ...and dealing with the gastroparesis, which the GI doc is attributing to too many years of bulimia. (sigh) So, here is the email I sent her. I have no idea what she'll glean out of it. To me it just looks like a bunch of ramblings. I see her Wednesday at 5.

While I have many clear cut memories from childhood, food and food issues are not among them. Anything involving food is sketchy at best.

Very early on, My step brother Mike, and step sister Linda lived with us. I loved them both dearly. Mike was 10 1/2 years older than me, Linda 9 1/2 years older. My food choices were vastly based on anything Mike and Linda would or would not eat. Linda loved to cook, and I followed them both where ever I could. I can remember eating Linda's meatloaf, still to this day. Mike, had some severe food allergies ... Peanuts and shell fish.

I cannot STAND peanuts, or peanut butter. My family inisists that I don't like it because of Mike ...but I'll eat shell fish so I'm not sure their argument holds water. I do know that all of my early food choices, no, all of my early choices period, were based on Mike and Linda's likes and dislikes. Mike and Linda moved back in with their Mom in MN, when I was 5 after Linda had a traumatic accident. We took Linda to the airport and got to say goodbye to her, but the next morning we got up to a note that Mike had taken off on his bike to go to his mom to be with Linda (LA to MN)

I do remember my favorite food of all time, as a child, being spinach. Some good memories with food all involve my step father (Daddy .. you'll never ever hear me refer to my birth father as Daddy, in any context at any time ..ever) Sunday afternoon while my sister was off with her friends and my mom was either working or napping, Daddy and I would pop popcorn in the big cast iron skillet. Just the two of us would eat it, and make the dog do tricks for her share of the popcorn. I also have another incredible memory involving a meteor shower and popcorn, but that's a whole 'nother tale.

At some point during the week, Star Trek would come on. My mom loved the show, and my Daddy hated it. So he and I would pack up the truck and drive into town. We lived in a small mountain community in California. We'd drive into town, singing songs, telling jokes, and when we got there, we'd go to the Tasty Freeze and get a Chocolate Twist and walk down to the Merced River and skip rocks. When it would get too dark, we'd finally go home. We did this once a week until we moved away from Mariposa when I was in the 8th grade. (1st through 8th grade).

If there were foods that my sister or I did not like, it was ok. There was one rule: we had to taste the food each and every time it was served and then we had to make ourselves something else to eat. The reasoning we were given was : taste buds change as we grow and change ..just because we did not like it before did not mean we would not like it now. We had to make our own because whoever fixed dinner should not have to make more than one meal.

We did HAVE to finish all the food that we took on our plates. (we served ourselves from the food in the middle of the table. We could take small portions and go back for seconds, thirds, fourths ...that didn't matter, but we MUST finish whatever goes onto our plates. If we did not finish our plates we got the 'Starving children in India' speech. It would be a long, drawn out and intense speech. Daddy was a depression era child and wasted food was not an option. I learned early on to take 1/2 portions and go back for seconds. My stubborn sister, whose eyes were bigger than her stomach on many occasions, would take huge portions, then not be able to finish. She, quite frequently was sitting at the table for hours waiting to finish what she'd taken. That happened with me only one time! From then on, I took a small amount and took more if I were still hungry.

At age 13, I moved in with my birth father and step mother, Jeani. While the doctors, both the family doctor at my mom's house and the pediatrician at my birth father's house said that my weight was a little on the light side, my father insisted on saying that I was 'chubby'. I'd been there about 3 weeks when my father sat myself and Jeani down and said that it was completely unacceptable to have someone as chubby and unattractive in his household. I would immediately be going on a diet. I can still remember Jeani's eyes tearing up. I didn't understand why she didn't say anything. She turned to me and said "Well get those fat cheeks off of you in no time" through teary eyes.

For the entire year that I was there, my diet only varied in what I had for dinner. My portions for dinner were roughly one third what my father ate. Carefully measured and weighed. I can remember going to bed hungry, painfully so, almost every night that year. I was told that hunger was imaginary and I was only saying it to get attention.

My diet that year consisted of :

Breakfast : 1 soft boiled egg

1 slice DRY toast

4 oz orange juice

the rest of the family ate

2 soft boiled eggs

2 slices toast with butter and jam

2 slices bacon or sausage

6 or 8 oz juice, not sure of the size the glass

I had to fix everyone's breakfast.

My box lunch consisted of :

1/2 peanut butter and honey sandwich on wheat

1/2 apple

1 small box raisins

My brothers lunch consisted of

1 bologna and cheese sandwich on white bread

pc of fruit of his choice

1 bag of chips of his choice

3 cookies

1 small box of raisins, golden or black his choice.

I also had to pack his lunch.

The hardest thing was ... I HATED peanut butter AND honey (still do). I'd never liked peanut butter or peanuts since my older step brother was allergic to them when he lived with us from when I was 13 months old till I was 5. Did my Dad know this? YES. However, he made me eat it anyway. The only saving grace was, it was on wheat bread, and I couldn't stand white.

There was a part of me that was afraid he'd find out I didn't like white bread and he'd start to make me have the sandwhiches on white bread.

As I've said, my dinner portions were about 1/3 the portion of my fathers. One of the worst memories I have of dinner with them, I went to pick up a chicken leg to eat it with my hands. I got yelled at for not using a knife and fork. (still haven't figured that one out. we'd always used fingers before, my brother was using his fingers right across the table from me) I was made to stand in the corner for 45 minutes till I apologized.

At my father's house, I had to eat everything, even if I didn't like it. There was no tasting, then being able to make myself something else. This caused a problem with certain foods, like canned vegetables. I'd been raised in the mountains, in the country with a 1/2 acre garden. Canned veggies were an anomaly. Jeani would not only use canned veggies, but then over cook the canned veggies again ..and smother them in butter. My taste buds couldn't stomach them. I'd gag as I ate them. I'd be made to sit at the table till I was done. Most of the time I could tolerate it, but with things like peas, or spinach (a former favorite) I just couldn't stand it. 5 or 6 times that year, I'd spent HOURS at the table till my parents finally needed sleep more than they needed to punish me.

After 7th grade, I moved back into my mom's house. The family doctor told my mom that I was more than 10 lbs underweight. Almost 14 years of age, I'd not yet started my period, and he was concerned. Puberty didn't even seem close to being around the corner, and he wondered if nutrition was to blame. I was too short and way too skinny.

We moved out of California to Colorado on October 31, 1978. In Feb, my stepfather would take his own life.

My mom's response to my step dad's dying was to just disappear inside herself. So that she didn't have to make decisions, she bought only chicken and pork chops for meat, and she bought a microwave. I came to relate the ease of the microwave with the loss of my step dad and swore I'd never have one. (didn't, until my son was about 2 or 3).

I needed to fit into a dress for choir, it just didn't fit right. So I went on a diet. It was a dress for a choir event. Everyone else's looked so much better. So I dieted harder .. what I didn't know was mom had bought the dress a size too large. The more I dieted, the worse it looked, the worse it looked, the more I dieted.

It took just a few weeks for the eating disorder to get it's clutches into me. I think the forced diet of 7th grade taught me well how to eat in a restricted fashion. I knew well that I could get away with little food, and eating foods I detested. I knew I could 'punish' myself with food, or without food ... It didn't take but a couple of months to really entrench the eating disorder into my habits.

Peggikaye Eagler