Four Years Later, I Still Love Pizza

For the three of you who read this blog (Hi Mom, Mom-In-Law, and Spencer!), you know that I'm not shy about mental health. In fact, I love being a voice for it. I love that people reach out to me after posts and share their stories and tell me I've helped them to feel less alone. If documenting my story and journey can help someone, then it's worth letting everyone into my private thoughts.

I haven't shared much about my journey with my eating disorder in a while. To be honest, recovery is a longggggg road. I can't tell you how many times I've told my therapist in frustration, "I've been working on this for four years now! Why aren't I recovered?!" 

At the beginning of this year, I started much more intense treatment. I have a primary care doctor who I see every three months to check my blood/levels, a nutritionist I see every week to every-other week (depending how I am doing) and a therapist I have just recently switched from seeing once a week to once every-other week. I see my psychiatrist about once a month, as well, as we manage all my medications. 

It's a lot. My husband can't even keep up with all my appointments. He will often come home "so wait....which doctor did you see today? Okay, and thats your.......therapist?" At least he tries, though. 

My nutritionist and therapist have teamed up against me and have taken away my scale. At first, they just challenged me to go from weighing myself multiple times a day to one time every other day. Easy! Just kidding, I broke that rule within two weeks. It appears I can't be trusted with the scale. So they took it away (or, well, Spencer hid it). I get weighed at every nutritionist appointment and she gives me an overview of what's going on. A couple weeks ago, I had gained two pound. The week after that I had gained another pound. I didn't even know what the starting weight was. I started to panic. When Spencer went out of town last weekend I started hunting for the scale. Let me just say the man better not try to hide anything else from me, because I'll find it simply because I'll be searching for the scale (sorry I messed up your drawers, babe). I eventually found it, weighed myself and sighed relieved. I felt like I had gained 10lbs at that point. I had gained .5 since the last time I had weighed myself. I was on track. It was okay. (I did tell Spencer I found the scale and he has hidden it again). 

When I went back to therapy after this debacle, my therapist asked me probing questions, like she does. She loves for me to come up with the answers myself. She asked why I found myself in such a tailspin and I told her because I had no idea how I was doing without it. Was I on track? Was I falling off the wagon like before? What if I was rapidly gaining?! 

We talked more about this, and it came down to what it always comes down to for me. Failure. Perfectionism is the root of all the evil in my head - which is likely a coping mechanism I created to battle my ADHD at some point. 

My jerk-of-a-brain believes I am a failure if I am not perfect. Perfection means the "right" weight, the "right" hair, being a "good mom", a "good wife", a "good employee", and a "good friend/daughter/sister/etc". That number on the scale is a report card. That number is a tangible thing that can tell me "how" I am doing in my pursuit to perfection. Without that number, I don't know where I stand. 

When I say these things out loud, I understand how ridiculous they sound. My kid is fed, clothed, bathed, happy, and loved. My husband still loves me and desires me. My bosses constantly tell me how much they appreciate me and my work. But for some reason, that number is the biggest indicator for me. 

What's worse? There's no "perfect" number in my head. I look back at pictures of myself when I thought I was "fat" and I have no idea what I was thinking. I remember when I moved to NC the first time I visited home (6 months after moving) I had dropped a solid 15-20lbs by eating 1 cup of special K, 1/2 cup milk, and 1 banana for the majority of my meals. My dad asked me if I was okay. I was so pleased with myself because my bones were sticking out of my body, and people were noticing. But the number on the scale was still in a "healthy" range for my height according to the BMI calculator. I was still a size 6 so I wasn't unhealthy. In fact, I wanted more. 

My therapist and I talked more. I said I have noticed myself loading pictures on social media more trying to get validation through "likes" (Eva pictures aside, I don't need all your likes to tell me she's the best, I already know this). I have been harder on my husband, too. A little needier for attention. Super fun for him to have a needy wife on top of a needy toddler. Lucky guy! 

My therapist asked me, "What if you didn't need a number, or external validation? What if how you felt about yourself came entirely from yourself" I snickered, "Wow! What a thought!" Translation: "yeah, okay lady, sure." She assured me it's possible and every day I don't step on the scale I'm a little closer. 

It still amazes me that not everyone has a brain that betrays them like I do. Everyone has a critical voice, I know that. Most women aren't really happy with how they look, I know that too. What I didn't know is that not everyone pinches their body several times a day (I have to track any "body checks", and its well into the double digits every day). I didn't know that not everyone steps on their scale multiple times a day. I honest to god did not realize that not everyone let's what the number on the scale says determine their mood for the day. 

So, that's where I am at. No miracle cure here. But I am another week clean of my scale, so hey, there's progress. I am about to meet with my nutritionist here in 30 minutes, and I don't think I am even going to ask her about my weight because all it will do is feed this more. I know how bummed I am when I only lose one pound, so why do I freak out over gaining only one pound? I need to break up with the scale for now. Probably forever. 

There's your update, for those of you wondering and/or those of you feeling the same way. I'm not fixed, those voices are still up there. I still have to do reality checks all the time. I am literally doing a workbook on self esteem. I am re-learning the basics most of us mastered back in elementary school. 

But at least I'm trying. I'm fighting hard every day to reverse 25+ years of torture I've put myself through.....because I don't want my daughter to end up on a therapists couch for the same thing (if she's going to a therapist it better be for something other than what her mother did to her as a child). It's a journey, but small changes add up to big changes and I know I'll get there, even if it is slowly.