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TW- brief mention of calories
Font size is also not what I wanted, so off to figure that out.
I was looking back at old food logs from about 7 months into “treatment” with my former eating disorder therapist, and was stunned to see that the calorie range was 230-900 calories/day most of the time; 1000 was a BAD day… this was while being told what to eat by the ‘therapist’, who would then tell me I wasn’t eating enough… ??? No wonder my body hung on to every calorie when my dietician told me how to increase calories (she had online access to my food log). During the time when my body was still being starved, my dietician brought up supplements multiple times. Being ‘atypical’, and wanting to lose more weight, I rejected that idea, and my ex-therapist didn’t seem bothered enough to consider them, even when I told her what the dietician had said. I should have listened to the one with the Masters’ degree in nutrition.
Until I started listening to my dietician, mostly because my ex-therapist wasn’t available and didn’t see messages for days to a week at a time, I was still in starvation mode, and my body wasn’t able to start to repair itself. At all. I went into the calorie increase with the mentality of “just get it over with”, and went a bit too fast. I eventually gained back the 65 pounds I’d lost, and was despondent over it. I still have trouble justifying feeding that thing I see in the mirror.
At this time, my ex-therapist was missing in action a lot of the time, and had no idea what I’d been eating for months… as someone who was supposed to be managing my food intake. It took a year to finally get a food list from her after multiple promises of “I’ll send you a food list tomorrow” (witnessed by my dietician when ex-therapist called during an appointment one day and joined in). When I finally got it, it read like something from Weight Watchers- not the current view that there should be NO restriction during recovery from restrictive eating disorders, regardless of weight/body size. There is repair work that needed to be done, not sending me into acute renal failure/acute kidney injury for the 2nd time in roughly 2 years, while being ‘guided’ by said ex-therapist.
There was also the issue with how to measure what I ate. She gave vague spoons of this, or a third mug of that… being diabetic, with kidney disease caused by poor perfusion from malnutrition, and gout, I needed measurements to determine insulin dose and to make sure I didn’t go over protein restrictions. What size spoon? How big is the mug? In the U.S. a mug could be 12 ounces or 20 ounces… I needed standard measurements. That wasn’t about eating disorder ‘behavior’, but for medical safety.
When my hunger cues started to come back, she told me to eat rice cakes and vegetables. Those are incredibly triggering from the bad relapse in 1996, and while I do like vegetables, that wasn’t what my body needed. Everything was stuck in the outdated clinic methods that so many struggled with that is coming out more and more. I thought I was just being too uptight. She was supposed to get me through this stupid disorder, not contribute to it. She also told me about some horrible rye thin cracker things she likes… it was like eating burnt sandpaper sprinkled with bird shit. AND they’re considered diet foods that I wasn’t supposed to eat according to her earlier ‘rules’.
I’ve had an NG (nasogastric tube) in for 4 years, with a 2 month reprieve a few months back. I need to have fluids consistently for kidney function to stay where it is and not get me into the stage where transplant lists are discussed (won’t do that), and with food, it’s hard to get it in some days. I am drinking most of the fluids now, but the tube is there for supplementation when I just can’t cram anything else in with slow stomach emptying (result of eating disorder as well as autonomic nervous system disorder). Most of the time, it’s the minimum that gets in, but I do make an effort to do better than that. I didn’t have a tube before starting to eat more, which still isn’t enough. For most of my life, my calorie intake was 700-900/day. There was a period after a 1986 outpatient program that banned diet sodas when I consumed way too much in the way of caloric fluids (and I gained a lot of weight), but otherwise, food intake has always been restricted from the time I was about 6-7 years old.
So, I’m trying to learn ‘normal’ for the first time (and someone I know sent me a food list for ‘normal’ people), and unlearn the chaos from the last 4 years. There are many days when I just think it’d be better to just get back to my ‘normal abnormal’, and settle where I was for most of my life. I’d eat stuff that wasn’t that great, but in very small portions. I’d also eat healthy stuff, in smaller portions. The idea of just eating what sounds good is something I’d like to do, but don’t think I deserve weighing what I do- and yet I understand metabolic slowdown from restriction. I’m stuck in the space between the trapezes.
I do eat more now than I did in January and February of 2023, but freak out if I go over X calories/day which is still several hundred less than I’m supposed to eat for my age, weight, and activity level (slug). I’m physically limited enough that even walking outside is risky. I have a cart to hang on to when I take out the trash, and a rolling walker for appointments on flooring that isn’t ‘home’. If I decide that I don’t want what I’d planned out, I have to re-do the entire day to compensate for my whims. This is after 3 1/2 years with the ex-therapist, and the last 2-1 /2 years when I was still a patient of NO input from her at all about what I was eating. So much for “I’ll talk you through every bite if I have to”… which wasn’t what I wanted. I just wanted to get to a place where food wasn’t the enemy, and I didn’t resent having to eat it.
My dad was preoccupied with his weight (as was my mom), and I asked him several times when he was just going to enjoy the food he wanted to eat. He had no answer, though did loosen up in his later years. Now, I can’t answer that same question, and I’m not getting any younger.
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