A safe place and a trigger

Last night was day 3. Dinner was hard and I barely finished, eating my last bite right as time was called. Right after dinner was art therapy. We start art with a visual check-in. We have 3 minutes to draw how we are feeling. I was overwhelmed from dinner, so I drew a sad, crying face surrounded by a bright pink circle that represented my anxiety that was enveloping me.

The art teacher suggested that for my first night in art therapy I try creating a safe place. A place I could imagine and go back to when I was feeling overwhelmed. I decided to work with colored pencil and chalk pastels and made the above image. I chose fields because I feel calmest when I am out in nature. I chose a solid tree because they make me feel safe to be under. I put a swing on the tree because swinging makes me feel relaxed. I put mountains in the distance because I love to look at the mountains. I didn’t have time to give the sky color, but I like the way my picture turned out. And in the process of making my safe place, much of the sadness, overwhelmingness, and anxiety left me and I was much more calm for the next group.

I’m also taking a college course right now. I’m taking a prerequisite for the nursing course I want to get into: Human Nutrition. This class is fascination, and triggering as hell. One project I’m working on right now is a diet analysis. I have to track my food intake over a number of days using their diet tracker software and it automatically tracks the nutrients I am consuming, including my calories, vitamins, and minerals. I am not supposed to be tracking calories while I’m in treatment, and I find this software very triggering. I find myself wanting to not follow my meal plan because I have to submit my diet analysis to my teacher and I don’t want her to see me eating all this food. I see the calories listed in the breakfast I just ate and I want to go vomit. I really need to talk to my team about how to handle this because it’s been really hard on me.

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Diet Day 4

Last night I bought some spiced apple cider last night. Today is day 4, so I am having 300 calories today. Theoretically.

The cider is 130 calories for a cup. I can have 2 cups for 260 calories, or I can have one cup for 130 calories and a 170 calorie salad. I’m not sure yet which I’ll do.

Diet Day 3

It’s Day 3, so 250 calories. Today for lunch, I’m going to eat a salad. The salad dressing and cheese will bring me right up to 250 calories.

This morning in therapy we did a chain analysis on my restricting. I started crying when we figured out that that I’m restricting because, since I can’t purge right now, the calories scare me and I just can’t handle them right now. I think I cried because of how much calories are scaring me right now. I just can’t do them. It’s too overwhelming. My therapist recognized that and didn’t make me commit to eating more. She did give me skills to use if I felt like I could handle trying to eat. We’ll see. Right now I just can’t.

Planning to succeed

 

Day 2, 200 calories. I found a Luna Bar in my purse that my sister gave me yesterday. It’s 190 calories. That’s my food for today. I’m going to eat half for lunch, half for dinner.

 

***Update***
This is my 600th post!! Crazy!

You burn more calories when you have a fever, I just read

I just read an article that explained the science behind how you burn more calories when you have a fever. I get fevers frequently due to my rheumatoid arthritis. I wish this translated into tangible, visible weight loss.

Anti-eating Face Mask

Wherr do I buy this?? 

Eat This Much

I found this neat site called Eat This Much. You can tell it how many calories you want to eat over how many total meals during the day, and it will give you a meal plan for the day. You can edit what types of foods it will suggest, follow certain diets like vegetarian, paleo, etc, tell it how many (or what percentage) carbs, fats, and proteins you want, and more. It’s really quite a useful site.

There’s only one small problem.

How do I get three-quarters of the egg white and the yolk? I’m also not sure how to measure a quarter of a tablespoon.

How on earth am I supposed to measure 0.17 tablespoon, 0.17 cup, or 0.67 of an egg?

0.13 of everything?

0.04 of a cup? Then you have 0.17 of almost everything else.

I love this site in theory. I really want to be able to use it. However, I can’t find a way to make it give me measurements that make logic.

I thought the strange measurements might have been just because I was requesting an unrealistic amount of calories per day. However, when I switched to the standard 2000 calories, it didn’t help any.

Yes, it wants me to add 0.13 cup of low fat milk to this recipe.

All the emotions

This chart looks like the daily fluctuation of my weight. -__-

Guess who got a new battery for her scale today? That’s right! This girl!

My dad brought it home about 10 minutes ago. Naturally, the first this I did was go weigh myself. I’m up 7 pounds from when I last weighed. This is so frustrating. I’ve cut my workouts back to a healthy 1-2 hours a day, but I don’t eat over 600 calories most days, and often under 400. And yet, I gained 7 pounds. I guess I’ll just have to increase my workouts again.

So, on the one hand I’m really happy to have my scale back, and on the other, I’m so frustrated about gaining so much weight. Also, I purged just now for the first time in about a week after freaking out over a bowl of soup, and my right arm won’t stop shaking. It’s making it hard to type or use my mouse. Plus, it’s just simply annoying.

I started running again. I’ve been going on walks every day, and I found myself missing running. Like, physically, I ached to run. So, this morning, I did.

I can’t run far anymore, I haven’t done it in 6 years. However, I was pleased to just see that I could indeed run. I alternated walking and running for a couple miles and wound my way back home this way. It was exhilarating. How I have missed it! I also have come to appreciate biking more and more lately. When I ran before, I hated cycling, I didn’t own a bike and I didn’t use them at the gym. However, now, I bike every day, and I have noticed the strength in my legs when I run. My lungs still need to catch up, but my legs were just fine! I wish I had discovered this “secret” years earlier.

I, unfortunately, am not getting a lot of school work done. I made the mistake of checking out 13 books from the library. I just want to read all day, and tend to, instead of studying. I really need to get on it. My goal for tomorrow is to actually focus on my school work, at least for a little bit.

I don’t have a problem

This might be getting a little bit excessive. 

354

I had 354 calories in one meal. It’ll be my only meal today so that I can drink tonight. However, i had more calories in this meal than I ate all day yesterday and that freaks me out 

It’s amazing how quickly my mind goes back into freakout mode when I get back into restricting. I think I’ll go purge, I feel sick and so full. I might eliminate my 800 days and tonight. This is just too much.