My Life is This

My life is this: I wake up in my childhood bedroom after (not) sleeping all night.  Wait until I hear my mom leave for work, go downstairs, gulp a cup of coffee, and head out for a run.  Sweat a lot.  Shower, dress, breakfast, jump in the car and speed to work.  I'm still always late.  It was more important to fit the run in.  Not that anyone cares when I show up - I am interning at a nonprofit that clearly has no clue what to do with interns.  So, I sit in my windowless cubicle and stare at my computer screen and debate whether or not to eat my snack.  Then lunch.  Then snack.

I make approximately six trips to the bathroom - partly because I have a freakishly small bladder, partly because I also make six trips to the water fountain, and partly because I can't sit still in my chair for more than twenty minutes at a time.

By four p.m. I'm so bored I want to rip my hair out.  Thirty minutes to go.  At four-thirty on the dot, I bolt.  Speed home, change, head to the gym.  Pound the treadmill, bike, sweat, another quick shower at home, dinner, collapse.  Snap at my mother.  Debate snack.  Eat it.  Collapse.

No, I am not supposed to be working out twice a day, but it is one of the unexpected snags that has cropped up in my recovery.  I've always been active - I played pretty much every sport at some point growing up, and got really into cross country and track during high school.  Since then, I have been a self-proclaimed Runner with a capital R.  I had to stop in December because my doctor scared me about my heart and my bones.  I've only just recently taken it up again (with permission!) in the past couple of months and I'm already hooked.  Totally addicted. I am definitely seeing how it can become a trigger for me, as I think a lot of people with EDs find.

So, the solution would be to stop, right?  Or at least come clean to my parents or my treatment team about how much exercise I'm doing, before it starts eating away at my mind again?  Ha.  Even though I know that I should be easing into exercise, it has been hard to rationalize that when I feel the need to "make up" for the past few months.  (Note: I KNOW this is irrational and disordered and completely unhealthy.  I am not advocating this type of thinking or behavior.  I really wish that I had been able to follow my nutritionist's advice on exercise because I do feel trapped in my routines now and it is definitely a setback I did not anticipate.)

Also, it is hard to justify cutting back the exercise when I am eating plenty and basically maintaining an okay weight.  I am JUST weight-restored...sort of.  Technically, according to my nutritionist, I am still a few pounds below "healthy" BUT I am in my range (albeit scraping the bottom, apparently, and bouncing in and out from week to week) and for now, that's good enough for me.  So it is really hard to convince myself that if I suddenly cut out the running, my weight wouldn't shoot up.

So this is my summer - okay food and weight, sucky job, insane running that keeps me sane - but there's still a whole lot of summer left to go.