Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Twigger Warning - In this post I will talk about my eating disorder, just a heads up there. 

Ah, lets take a step back from the trainwreck that is my love life, and I'm going to get real with you. I've fallen back into some restrictive patterns of eating in the last 3 weeks. I have be subsisting on around 1100-1300 calories a day and it fucking well sucks. I have had no energy, and I've not been able to run, or cycle, or do any of the activities I enjoy.

I have relapsed enough to recognize now when I am falling back onto old patterns, and I am beginning to see the things that tend to trigger my relapses.

We had a formative assessment, and I needed/wanted to do well in it (even though the rest of my year likes to play the, "I've done nothing card", no medical student means that - I did do well though, 1st decile). Since GCSE's, I have used restricting food to show how disciplined I am when it comes to my body and therefore my studies (ILLOGICAL, I know) .

I had also noticed some weight gain around my hips and stomach that made me uncomfortable. Any hint of weight gain or bloating send me into a spiralling cycle of guilt and shame about how I could let my body get like this.  A jacket I had bought last spring, when I was very ill, no longer did up and a skirt that had onced bagged around my waist was constricting and awkward to wear. I'm aware that when I bought these clothes, I was quite poorly, yet the fact I no longer can wear them feels like I have lost control of that thinness of myself. That thinness became an outward symbol of my self control and worth. (I felt cleaner when I was boney, willowy and beautiful - I was weak, and could barely finish my longer runs and wasn't sleeping, but hey, you could count my ribs!)

The lowest point for me last year was when I went Summer Ball dress shopping with my Mum. It should have been a happy day of mother-daughter bonding, but my Mum was just very concerned for me and I didn't understand why. It wasn't until I was trying on size 6 dresses in Topshop that hung off me that I may have started to see that I had a problem again.

I have made the conscience decision that I don't want to get to that point again, and I don't want to do that to my family and friends. I have put the ill fitting clothes away, and hopefully my mum can make some money selling them online. Removing them from my wardrobe is not admitting defeat, but it is understanding that those clothes were never meant to fit my body (well not the functioning version of it).

My aim is to get my uptake back to 1800 and reintroduce exercise into my schedule when I feel ready to. I miss the thrill of running and cycling up the final hill back to my flat, and no bloody relapse is going to stop me when I have worked so hard to get here now.