New and Improved Bee's Diary on SW

Ok, after last week's weigh in, things haven't been so brilliant. I gained 1lb which, all things considered, wasn't too bad really. I was ok for the next few days, eating healthily, but went away for a long weekend with friends and what can I say, I went a little bit mad :( Had a wonderful time but must say that I'm now fretting over the potential damage I may have done. I came home yesterday and made a fresh start of it straight away, it's terrible how these deeply ingrained habits just crop back up again and now I'm struggling big time with craving all sorts of food that would be quite damaging to me.
I'm now all focused on my next goal which is to be well into the 11s by the end of the year, I'm going home to visit my family mid January and I wan't to be a stone lighter by then. It's doable, even with lots of meals out that I have planned until then.
Let's just hope that after sticking to SW for the next few days it will become second nature again and I will have less of a battle with these hideous cravings.
 
Weigh in last night....2.5lb off again. So glad! It means my holiday pound has come off and another 1.5lb, I'm really chuffed because I now just hit that half stone mark at 12st7lb, one more lb and I am actually closer to 11st than 12st, very much looking forward to that feeling.
I'm beginning to believe that I might actually get there. To my ultimate goal. I have attempted it so often and in so many ways and this seems the most comfortable, sustainable way of doing it. And I might actually get to my personal challenge I set myself for this year, by 31 December I could be another 10lb lighter...firmly in the 11st bracket. I can't even begin to imagine that, I haven't been there in so long, I think I might cry.
 
Right, I've really neglected my diary, probably because I don't get many visitors :D but it is really helpful to just offload so I'll be doing that more from now on. I had a really terribly bingey weekend and couldn't snap out of it, I would start every day fresh and end up eating all the wrong things and in terrible quantities. the wake up call was something rather pleasant. I had ordered a dress online in an ambitious size 16 (at my heaviest I was in a 22) and when I tried it on, it was a perfect fit! And I mean perfect. I nearly cried. And it really made me snap out of this cycle of starting a new day and ending up regretting so many food choices at the end of it. I thought how much I had already achieved, I'm only 4lb away from a 3st loss. I'm not going to throw that away.
So since then I have had three good days again on SW and I'm positive again about my weight loss journey. Yes it may be slow but however slow it is, it's all in the right direction and looking back now I cannot imagine what it would be like being 15 plus stone again! So I'm telling myself that I have come a long way already and what a waste it would be to not recognise this achievement, I'm going to allow myself to be motivated by my own success :)

I hope everyone out there is still keeping at it, moments of weakness are no proof that you are not strong, you're human.
 
Hi Bee. Just catching up. Hope you're still motivated. I haven't been doing anything much dietwise but am restarting wxante on 1st January in preparation to flying to Istanbul on 31st January for a week.
 
Hi Bee,

I'm back. Life went a bit wrong but I'm trying to pull it back together. You were sounding positive three weeks ago, I hope you still are. I'm going to have a new start with a totally new identity, will let you know when I have - want to copy and re-read my old diaries first, don't want to risking them. MX
 
Hey Micci!!

I haven't been on here in absolute ages, I have thought of you and hope you are still in a good mind set for a re-start, how are you feeling now? I hope you haven't changed diaries and I have missed it!

I've neglected this forum and those I have been writing with rather shamefully. I have more or less stuck with SW, have had a week off here and there which resulted in me maintaining rather than losing. But I'm ok with that. For the last fortnight, I've been well and truly back in the saddle and have also taken up extra exercise and it's already worked wonders! I am now 1lb away from a three stone loss since I started SW last May and I am very very pleased indeed.

Must update my statistics now :) And of course my goals, although they remain the same, they have slightly shifted because I have been slower than expected.
 
So at last week's weigh in I only lost 0.5lb, I was a bit gutted because it meant that I am 0.5lb away from my 3st loss! I have had a major battle with the old hormones this week, I'm due now and it takes all my energy not to throw myself off the wagon. I have definitely eaten a lot more but all SW friendly so hopefully that will have kept my weight in check.
Also, I have carried on my exercise regime, I now do something more or less every day, even if it's just a 15 minute Pilates routine or a quick abs workout but it all helps to make me feel altogether more energetic.
I'm not going to my weigh in tonight as I'm going to a friend's leaving do but have no intention of eating anything there, I'm going to see my friend and that's it.
So I'm planning on another week of clean eating, lots of exercise, lots and lots of water and I will push past that 3 stone mark next week :)
 
Soooo, good news! I had my weigh in last night, I didn't go last week because of illness so I had two weeks' worth of loss :) and I lost 6.5lb! I'm so chuffed, that means I have not only gone past the 3 stone mark, but I'm in the next stone bracket now. I haven't been in the 11s in such a long time, I honestly can't even remember when it was. So this is very special and a bit emotional too.
 
Hi! You've been doing rather well haven't you? Well done!
 
So, at the WI last night, I came in at 11st4lb so I'm 1lb away from a 4 stone loss. For the first time ever I think I have less to lose than I have already lost. If that makes sense. I have always had such a vast amount of weight to shift so I'd lose a stone or maybe two and then stop. With the bulk of the weight still there. Now I've got "just" over 3 stone to lose to reach target but for me that doesn't seem that much of a hurdle now. Seems within reach. :)
 
Chuffing amazing. Well done you!
 
BeeBeeSee said:
So, at the WI last night, I came in at 11st4lb so I'm 1lb away from a 4 stone loss. For the first time ever I think I have less to lose than I have already lost. If that makes sense. I have always had such a vast amount of weight to shift so I'd lose a stone or maybe two and then stop. With the bulk of the weight still there. Now I've got "just" over 3 stone to lose to reach target but for me that doesn't seem that much of a hurdle now. Seems within reach. :)
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Pfffft, I come back, and you've disappeared. This was a week ago, how are you now?
 
Hey, so sorry for my disappearing act. Things have been tough for me lately and I sort of go off the radar every once in a while. A few things have happened over the last few months that have left me reeling and for the first time in my life I'm really struggling emotionally, it seems to have acted as a catalyst and now I have started grieving for my dad who died nearly four years ago.
I have good days and some really dark and difficult ones and they seem to alternate so I find it hard to keep a steady diary on here but I really should. Foodwise I have been managing alright, if anything this whole roller coaster I'm on has sent me into an exercise and sports obsession and I can barely cope if I can't do a workout or go for a long walk every day. The thing that is a bit more alarming is that my eating disorder has once again raised its ugly head. I find that on particularly difficult days I will binge and then vomit or when it's really really bad, even healthy food will make me feel incredibly guilty and it hits me with such force then that I cannot see clearly. No matter how much I'm telling myself that my body needs taking care of in that moment I just think anything I eat will make me gain weight. Anything at all, even things like vegetables.

Over the last few days I have found it hard to realise that I have actually lost what I have lost, I cannot see it when I look at myself. My clothes are telling me that I have lost a lot and I'm now more or less in a size 14 but I can't physically see it. It's a hard place to be in and I've been back to see my therapist which is helping me a lot.

This is a rather ranty desperate post, I have not had a good day today but I know that there will be good days again and that things will pick up. On a positive note, at my last weigh in I was 11st1lb which means I have now lost 4st2lb.
 
Oh dear. I started reading your post, and thinking, who is supporting you in this? AFAIK you live alone? So I was really really pleased to read at the end you have gone back to your therapist.

No need for apologies for leaving the site when things get bad, I know I do, when it all seems so awful that losing weight is the last thing on my mind and thinking about weight loss adds to the stress levels so I just avoid all the places I previously found supportive.

Keeping some sort of journal is good, it means you can look back and see there really have been some successes, and that there have been bad times you have got past.

Your body must have changed a lot, it does happen that people have a distorted body image. As you know of course. Are you dealing with this specifically in therapy, or is it more generally focused? The grieving is the most gut wrenching thing, I've had my fair share over the years now and can really empathise. All I can say is that the pain does lessen, it sounds like you are now being hit by emotions you managed to avoid somehow at the time? I feel for you, I really do. I had that a bit when my baby died. I was so determined to think of it as a spiritual experience, a painful but valuable learning experience, that I think I didn't do all the grieving I needed to at the time. Sure, I woke up crying every day and felt my world had ended but after a few months I went on a co-counselling course and learned techniques to shift my mind away from something. I don't think using these techniques helped in the long run. The people running the course did not imply I should use them like that, I don't blame them, and they are useful skills to have anyway.

Thanks for coming back to update, it was brave if you didn't want to be here. A thought about the way you cannot see your loss. Have you old photos you can compare your present body with? Have you still got any of your old clothes that you could put on and see how loose they are on you? Would you believe any of that information?

Congratulations on having come so far, to be so close to being 10 stone something is just so flipping impressive. Well done you. And ... do do all you need to do to get in a better place XXX
 
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Hey Micci,

thank you so much for your helpful post, it really did calm me a lot. At the last weigh in this Monday gone I was 11st exactly which I was a bit disappointed about because I have been doing ridiculous amounts of exercise. But then again, I have had a couple of binges and although I made myself sick a few times, you never really get rid of it all. I shouldn't really write this all down here, but I think there might be some who can identify with it.
I almost panic and worry more about my weight now than I did at my heaviest, simply because it's been a lot of hard work getting here and people have started to comment, a lot! And it's almost like the spotlight is on me now and I don't like it very much.

My therapy is dealing quite specifically with the eating disorder and also with how it all interlinks with my grieving. I don't live on my own, I live with a friend who is aware of my emotional struggles at the moment and has been very supportive, but doesn't know about the eating disorder. Having had it since my childhood, I have become rather good at hiding things.

What I'm really hoping to achieve is some sort of inner peace with myself, whatever my size may be. I saw a picture of myself a friend had taken a couple of weeks back and I actually thought there was something wrong with my eyes because I did see how much thinner I was. But I'm not quite able to believe that it is truly me. I have that photo on my phone and have found it quite helpful to look at it from time to time over the last few days.

I've been trying to do a lot of good for myself, I go for long walks and take time out for myself. I'm going home to visit my family week after next, it was quite a spontaneous thing and I must admit I rarely crave seeing my mum but it's been a really strong yearning to see her and so I'm going over there soon. My mind rarely rests on something not related to my diet and my size and how very undesirable I find myself which has been quite crippling as I feel very strongly about a good friend of mine and in my mind there is no hope in hell that he would find me remotely attractive. So I'm making things rather difficult for myself it seems.

But I will have a read of that article you sent a link to, I hope you're getting on alright, I haven't really kept up with your thread because I have found this all rather consuming but it is a tad selfish so I need to snap out of that and care a little more about others.

Thank you for taking the time to write me such a nice, helpful reply.
 
Don't worry about me, I'm fine. As I said to the psychologist who comes here to see my son, from my point of view things really are looking up. Not according to my OH, but he's a pessimistic and negative old so and so.

In the future you too will be in a better place, and look back on this and be grateful and happy you have moved on from this. Nothing is static, our moods and feelings included, we go up and we have down times too.

I don't know much about your life, but it feels full of stress which is going to get anyone down. I remember you moving a while back, that is very stressful. The shock of delayed grief is awful. But with grieving, it does go in stages. It's never a 'ho ho, I'm not bothered by my loss' situation, but the joy does return to life and you can look back on your memories without it always hurting. My father died a few years back now, my brother and I are now at the stage were we can tell each other stories of his awful driving and laugh, and remember nice things. Feeling loss and happiness at having had the experience all at the same time. We're not there yet with our mother who died last year, but we will be. If this does not happen for you you need specific professional help with this too, but don't worry yet, it's a process.

That makes sense, feeling you are in the spotlight now people are noticing how you have changed. I expect you'll have come across the notion that at some level we benefit from making choices that lead to us being fat. I discovered some time ago that my own fatness gave me a feeling of solidity and strength. Having realised that I found other ways I could be strong without being large. Other people talk about avoiding sexual attention by hiding behind their fatness, loads of other variants of how our fat serves us. If your are dealing with your ED with a professional, I expect this is something you'd have looked at already.

May I say about that photograph you have on your phone 'THIS IS YOU, IN YOUR NEW HEALTHY AND SLIM BODY' Yes, I am shouting, you might not hear me otherwise. I've not been in quite the same position as yourself, but I do remember wearing size 14s with them getting loose and it all seemed quite marvelous and strange. We hold an image of what out body is like, and when we change so much it is hard to change our mental image of ourselves. Heavens, it does get to the stage when people don't recognise us. There was a Woodcraft Folk camp I went to every year with the children. The year I had lost a lot of weight some people acted very strangely when I went up to talk to them. Later I discovered that they didn't realise it was me. I always though my head was too big when my body shrunk. I do actually have quite normal proportions but that is how I saw myself. there are a couple of threads on Minimins somewhere, where people discuss how long it took for their mental image to catch up with their changed body.

That's very awkward about your friend. I'm sorry, and hope you can find a resolution you can live with. I'm also sorry you perceive yourself as undesirable. Actually, I doubt that. Not knowing what you look like, all I can say there are some very odd looking couples about who have a good relationship with each other. Er, not suggesting you are odd, and will only get an odd partner ... I'm struggling here .... but an inner sense of our own worth, and a kindly nature go far. You are a good and valuable person, please believe me, and believe in yourself.

It is good you are doing things that benefit you, and I hope your visit with your mother goes well.
 
Hi Micci,

thank you very much for your post. I have decided that I'm going to allow myself this time of feeling low, going with it, taking each day as it comes. Something someone once said about their chronic health issues really stuck with me and I remembered it today. This lady said on the matter of coping with her illness that on her best day she doesn't do everything she can and on her worst she doesn't stay in bed. And at the time I didn't really get it but I have often remembered it in the years since I have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia and have had to cope with phases of sometimes very intense physical pain and exhaustion.

I guess the same principle should apply to times of emotional troughs like where I am finding myself at the moment. Because I cannot say that I feel low every single day, rather than I'm under a bit of a cloud at the moment and sometimes the sun manages to break through and sometimes it doesn't. But I found that if I cram everything in on one of my good days, I barely sleep and the next day is a washout, physically and emotionally. On the other hand, I want to make sure that on my bad days I still do something enjoyable and/or productive, even if it isn't much.

My mental vision of myself and my body definitely hasn't caught up yet with reality and I saw myself in a mirror yesterday and was actually convinced there was something wrong with the mirror, that it really stretched me. It's so weird. How I can see something and still think it's a lie. But I'm sure I'll catch up eventually.

I saw my therapist again on the weekend and we discussed both the ED issues I'm facing at the moment as well as the grief and we also discussed the problem with my friend. And I actually came away from it quite uplifted. Although I'm seriously lacking belief in my own worth, I realised during the discussion that I was already pre-empting a rejection based on a very negative view I have of myself. Although I cannot control his feelings towards me, I certainly can learn to influence how I think about myself and a potential rejection is then someone else's choice, for their own reasons, and not my own.

Right now, I'm really trying not to work everything out and fix everything and get "back to normal", whatever that is. It is a bit like when you really crave food from an ED/addiction point of view. There are different coping mechanisms, sometimes it helps to find a distraction. But actually what I have found more helpful is what my therapist called "riding the wave", actually experiencing the craving, the unsettledness of it, the emotional, psychological pain. And feel it wane eventually. Because it does. And it can be quite an empowering experience. I wonder how I can apply this to my current situation. To allow myself to feel the pain of the situation and not glossing it over with anything. But knowing that it will pass.
 
Hi Bee, good to hear from you again. Your post sounds decidedly positive, your quote about handling a chronic pain/illness and applying those same techniques to emotional health as well make a lot of sense. And, I'm sorry, but I did laugh a bit at your notion that the mirror had something wrong with it. But yeah, I can see the logic, thinking of the mirrors that are designed to deliberately distort the image. Ooooh, those are horrible, for anyone who has gone through times of loating their body, seeing it distorted to another level of grotesqueness is unfun in a big way.

Thanks for the reminder about the 'riding the wave' way of dealing with cravings. I had forgotten that. I think that might help me, I know about distraction and tbh, when I'm in the grip of disordered thinking I don't want to be distracted or taken away, a tiny voice in my head says 'Micci, you could stop if you want, you could try this' and a much louder voice says 'Eff off, I don't want to hear you, silly little voice'.

Last week I was rejoicing that my way of eating and thinking had become so much more healthy, I was explaining to my daughter how my twisted logic leads me to cramming so much food into myself that it hurts, and then eating more to try and heal the pain and how pleased I was to have changed. Then half an hourr later I had flipped back into that mindset and was forcing food and more food into myself. It took three days to get over that and now it's gone. Totally gone, it's been stressful here with my son's MH issues - anxiety that has him in a frozen ball unable to get out of bed and face the world - and binging hasn't entered my mind. Except in the way that when I have had a sore tooth I tend to probe the sore area to check it really is OK now.

I think my own healing, and probably this works for others too, is that there are longer and longer periods of healthy thinking and eventually the bad/twisted thinking fades away totally. I'm thinking all sorts of emotional healing, and body image and negative self thoughts. Grieving of course well, we have longer and longer periods of feeling happy and content in our daily lives but that intense feeling of missing a person, well it can still hit for the rest of our lives I guess. And understanding sadness and despair makes us stronger people with more depth to our characters and more compassion. Unless it turns us sour and bitter I suppose but that does seem to be the minority.

Wishing you well for the coming week.
 
Right, so I'm back...and it's been a roller coaster of a week. Lovely to see some of my family, struggle with the rest of them. And my negative body image and where it all began with ED is all linked back to my family and childhood and inevitably when i come home I am always overwhelmed by the urge to binge. So I spent the bank holiday weekend eating everything systematically I could possibly eat and sadly I have slipped back into my bulimic pattern and I am now suitably unwell from the torture I have put my body through. So much for positive body image. It's amazing in a really sad way how a few days of old addictive behaviour put me back in a head space where everything is unchanged. I'm still grossly overweight. Unwanted. Despised by myself. I know that a few days of clean eating will also bring my head back to normal. But it's so hard to see clearly when you're right down in that pit. I compare it to jumping into the sea from a great height (I love those cliff jumps, bit of an adrenaline junkie). The deeper the water, the darker it is of course and when you enter the water from a fair height, you go in so deep that for a brief moment you lose orientation and don't know where the water surface is. That is how I feel every time I have been through a bad ED episode especially when I have been doing well with my eating/general looking after myself. It's like you are betrayed by yourself, after a period of trust that you do mean well and look after your body and mind, you turn on yourself like a traitor. I can't describe it any other way, as drastic as it may sound. And it's no wonder then that I struggle to trust other people and the sincerity of their affection. But as I said, a few days of being kinder to myself and I will start to feel better again.
 
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