AtypicallyRecovering

Photo- stock photo/royalty free

I’ve logged my food every day for 1575 days (4.32 years). Every. Damn. Day. A lot of that is the nature of restrictive eating disorders, but I also have diabetes and chronic kidney disease (among other things), so I have to know carbs for my insulin dose, and need to be sure I’m getting enough, but not too much, protein for the CKD. I hate having to know the “numbers”. I’ve made some progress with calories, but still spaz if I go over xxxx per day (I’m still below ultimate ‘maintenance’ calories). Everything is looked at repeatedly. If I change up what I plan to eat for the day, I have to redo the whole thing- which is nuts. I have to cut back on something if I’ve had something unplanned.

Most people just eat what they want, and move on. My head dictates what is and isn’t OK, and that needs to stop- but it’s been something I’ve done either online, or going back to high school when dinosaurs roamed the earth, with a notebook and pen. Prior to that my mom was the gatekeeper of my food intake from the age of 6-7 years old.

My goal for the new year is to use a blood sugar and food logbook, and just get the necessary info (blood sugar, carbs, insulin dose, protein, and sodium), and not focus so much on the calories, or the “numbers” for each meal or day. I also know I need to at least do a little check mark for every 250ml of fluids I consume, so I know I’m getting enough. My sense of thirst isn’t reliable. I’m hoping that will minimize the need to track so much, and get me ‘out of my head’ around food- at least one step at a time.

I also need to be sure I get enough sodium in me, so my blood pressure is high enough to prevent poor perfusion to any of my organs, but especially my kidneys. It’s because of decades of under-eating and restricting that my kidneys got damaged (stage 3b of 5- with 5 being dialysis). I’ve been in stage 4 twice with acute renal failure, and since I am not going to do dialysis if it gets to that point, it’s SO important to do what I can to avoid more damage. My nephrologist told me to be sure to include enough sodium. Please don’t change anything that YOUR doctor told you to do based on what i’m writing about my experience.

I have the logbooks and nutrition counter books ready to go. Between now and then, I’m working on having something unplanned every few days, and trying not to rearrange all of the food for the day after eating it. The amount of time spent focused on food is asinine. I know that. There’s no denial- just discouragement and feeling overwhelmed. When I try to order delivery food, it can take 3-4 hours to find something ‘acceptable’ and often by then, the restaurant is closed.

When I started restricting on my own in high school (when the forced restriction by my mom ended- though she paid for any diet foods I wanted when I’d enter into contests with church/high school friends), I only paid attention to calories. Not a lot was emphasized about the type of calories back then. That was easier. It was still obsessive, but I wasn’t so honed in on the macros.

I was severely restricting, and nobody at home was concerned in the least, even when I dumped 14 pounds in 2 weeks on the “Mayo Clinic Diet” that had nothing to do with the Mayo Clinic, or health. It was a ketogenic diet, which I don’t like. If they work for others, that’s for them to decide. I don’t believe cutting out entire food groups is healthy, at least for me. Eating a henhouse full of eggs, and a grove of grapefruit wasn’t pleasant- but to me, it felt like I was being ‘good’ and ‘acceptable’.

I want to get to the point where I no longer feel a need to know more than just carbs and protein because I must know those to stay as healthy as I’m likely going to get. It sucks that I can’t just ‘not know’ them. I’m tired of tracking and planning everything, and I’m terrified of giving it up. It’s a fine line between health-focused awareness and obsessively toxic focus on nutritional information. But it’s what I feel is necessary.

I won’t get well if everything about the “numbers” remains as it is now. And at the same time, it feels like my only life raft in a vast ocean. But I need to start swimming, and not just floating with the waves.