[weight numbers, suicide, brief mention of calorie numbers, eating disorder behaviours]
I continued with the intuitive eating in July but knew I wasn’t making a very good job of it. I was eating emotionally a lot and not stopping eating when full instead eating ‘to completion’, i.e. cleaning my plate. I had a rough plan of weighing myself every month after my period when my weight is at its lowest. This was to assuage my need for cold, hard data about the size of my body, because I find it very hard to tell what size it is, and in an attempt to prevent me regaining the weight I lost.
I weighed myself this week and was 4.8lbs up. I could feel that my abdomen and breasts were bigger but had been hoping that it was in my imagination like last time. I was horrified and felt very out of control. This is what I wrote in my diary at the time:
Weighed myself. 10st 7.6lbs so put on 5lbs in a month. Horrified and devastated. Didn’t think it would be this bad. How have I managed to fuck up so badly? Is it the binging? Had two moderate binges and one large binge plus started to binge but stopped a fourth time. That’s a lot. Is it the reduction in thyroxine? Body was bigger even before I went to visit my family. I hate this. I don’t know what to do. I want to diet. I want to shrink my stomach. I can’t stand this. If I diet then I’ll binge but I am binging anyway. Am I binging because I had the stress of going to visit family and of seeing the psychiatrist? Both of those were intensely stressful, before, during and after. I have to lose weight. I can’t have people see me like this. I’m going to have to diet but I really don’t want to. It’s so unpleasant and uncomfortable. Really the most sensible thing to do would be to kill myself and then I’d be free of all of this. Wouldn’t that be nice. I can’t do this anymore. I am so tired and stretched out.
Compared to what I wrote in my diary at the start of the month:
Weighed myself (yes, again): 10st 2.8lbs. Very good conditions: period finished, gut cooperating, nothing salty to eat yesterday (though not restricting salt either) and haven’t binged for over two weeks. Glycogen stores will be full though. Feel relieved, very happy, lightened. Stood in kitchen and said “I could live like this” and burst into tears. I would be okay living eating like this and at this weight I think. Not overjoyed at the size of my abdomen but I think I could come to terms with it. I think I might be okay.
Very histrionic response to weighing myself and getting a higher number than I wanted! As I’ve said here before, when I was fat I felt fundamentally unsafe due to the way people, strangers and family and friends, treated me. I felt profoundly unacceptable. Going back to that, which is statistically by far the most likely thing to happen to me, frightens me and makes me feel very desperate. Suicidal thoughts, even with some sarcasm, is an extreme reaction.
I was surprised at how unpleasant I found the thought of going back to dieting. I really, genuinely don’t want to. As recommended by the Intuitive Eating book that I am following, I had promised myself that I wouldn’t ever restrict/diet again. But I felt like I had no choice now. My body was just too big and unacceptable. Writing this down makes the situation seem so small and bizarre. How could I believe all these thoughts and just mindlessly follow them? How did a 5lb weight gain become so big? When did I become so dependant on other people’s opinion of my body’s appearance?
I weighed myself again today and was down to 10st 6.2lbs. Somehow that seems more acceptable. It’s more under my threshold of ten and a half stone and 3.4lbs gained in a month doesn’t seem so horrifying. But, and this is the key point: my actual body is exactly the same. This is just laughably ridiculous that I am so affected by these numbers. The bad binge (3000+ calories) I had on Monday evening when I got home from my trip seriously fucked with my mood but these are long-standing patterns of thinking with me. I get overwhelmed so easily by these thoughts. Swept away and lost in them
So what I have decided to do, mulling it over for a few days, is to continue the intuitive eating but to aim to finish eating when feeling just full (6 on the hunger fullness scale), with occasional comfortably full (7), and to really focus on stopping the binge eating. I have been avoiding doing the chapter on emotional eating in the Intuitive Eating Workbook for weeks but will get that done. Would be a good idea to review earlier chapters too. Also, will make more of an effort with being consistent with exercise as have missed a lot in the last few weeks.
I am a little proud of myself that I didn’t slip back into dieting in response (to my overreaction) to my upsetting weigh-in. I had all these extreme thoughts, which, to be fair, I let swirl out of control around my head, but I didn’t actually take any action on them. I think I have been quite measured. I will see what effect my adjustment to intuitive eating has on my weight and whether this is sustainable. Fuck me, is this growth? Maturity? I just feel quiet and calm. Dieting was very emotive for me, which motivated me and drove me onwards, but god, did it hurt when it didn’t go to plan. This intuitive eating is much more about finding peace and just being okay. Sounds boring. It’s actually so lovely I could cry in relief.
Inadequate Clothing 