Temptations and Wisdom

Well, I am now wisdom-toothless as of Monday morning! The actual surgery went fine, except that anesthesia tends to mess me up BADLY and I woke up after nineteen minutes with my mouth full of bloody gauze and absolutely zero clue where I was or what was happening. Thankfully that passed, and I spent the next two days sleeping it off/popping Vicodin.

The food issue—eek, I underestimated this and am really really really trying hard to keep myself on track. Both of my bottom teeth were impacted, so my jaw is super sore and I still can't really chew anything, plus the painkillers totally wiped my appetite the past couple days. As a result, eating really sucks and I've been WAY in the red in terms of calories. In the irony of ironies, guess what I—weight-restored and 100% pro-recovery and anti-anorexia—have been subsisting on for the past week? You guessed it: BOOST. I had almost two full cases leftover in my closet from last summer, and it's been the easiest thing to get down when I'm confined to a liquid diet and nauseous from drugs.

IT'S BACK

Anyway, of course this is setting off all sorts of triggers and alarm bells in my head. I don't know how many times this has to happen for me to realize that a consistent sufficient healthy diet is absolutely positively always necessary. I cannot casually cut calories, I just can't. This happened about a year ago when I got food poisoning and stopped eating for a couple days—accidentally lost a few pounds and never went back. At least not until a couple months later when R started threatening to put me in the hospital.

So I'm not like relapsing or anything, but the drive to restrict has definitely been nagging at me. I feel myself being super careful about what/when I eat or drink. I tell myself that I should go easy on my stomach, that I've been totally sedentary and therefore don't need as many calories, that I weighed too much to begin with and this is the perfect chance to trim down....etc. etc. etc. Same old crap. That being said, there are several important differences between now and last spring that have me in a much better position. First, I have no desire to lose weight and go backwards. At least not in any rational, intellectual sense. It has taken a lot of hard work and tears to get to where I am right now weight- and intake-wise, and having to go through that all again would be horrible. Second, my brain and body are both way healthier than they were last spring, and I realize that jumping back into the eating disorder would be majorly destructive all around. I've hit rock-bottom over the last year, and I fully blame the anorexia. I just can't go through it again.

And third, I'm proud of myself for having gotten to this weight and maintained it for a few months, even though my body image sucks and I feel yucky about it most of the time. But I'm taking concrete steps to get myself healthy, and I really do think my body is starting to heal.

I've been re-reading this post to keep myself motivated and on track, but the desire to "accidentally" restrict and lose weight is still really powerful. I promised you guys I was done with this stuff, and I swear I am....but this struggle is definitely keeping me humble.