Day 3

8PM:

I am so not looking forward to eating right now.  I am eating and feel unsatisfied by it.  I don’t understand why.  I have redistributed the calories so that (other than the 4PM snack barricade that I have to blast through soon), I am not eating a tremendous amount at once.  But yet, I feel unsatisfied; like something is missing here, but I can’t put my finger on it.

Trust issues (or desire for a perfect self-awareness that only a robot can achieve and that’s something I definitely want to avoid) = can I not put my finger on it because…

I miss eating that huge an amount at night?  The buffet was something special and gluttonous, a controlled binge?

I have not eaten meat in a while or much protein in general, and as a result my body is craving something other than carbohydrates?

I am no longer eating at the “hun-ga-ry” stage – the one that makes everything taste better because I’m famished – and so I’m left wanting that drug-free, but equally destructive, high?

With a clear head, I am starting to realize that food restriction has defined me for so long and now I am lost without it?  The darkness that has held on to the eating disorder for many years tricked me into believing it was a friend.  It didn’t just trick my head, but it also tricked my heart.  It is so entrenched in me that without it, things seem “blah”?

From Choosing Raw: “In the last few weeks, I’ve had conversations with several clients (all of whom have suffered from disordered eating in the past) about one particular challenge: the challenge to overcome a fear of losing one’s distinctiveness in the recovery process.

If you’ve never suffered from disordered eating, the essence of the dilemma is this: people who have had long bouts with disordered eating tend to attach tremendous feelings of specialness, uniqueness, and even pride to being underweight and/or capable of inflicting self-harm. Maintaining disordered eating habits becomes a way of experiencing that thing we all want to experience: the sensation of being unique.

It’s no surprise, then, that the vast majority of my clients who are recovering or recently recovered express a tremendous fear of losing what they believe to be the thing that makes them unique: their disordered behaviors and/or low body weights. For years, these men and women have felt—even if they knew it was warped—that being disordered was special. It’s also typical for them to have looked down upon people with normal body weights, or to have secretly felt that normal eating was a mark of weakness, or “giving in.” If they gain weight or get well—if they allow their bodies to become normal once again—aren’t they then doomed to be just like everybody else? What part of their distinctiveness will remain? … This is one of the saddest parts of an eating disorder, I think: its capacity to out shadow any and every other source of satisfaction.

What I didn’t see [during my disordered eating days] was that under eating and obsessing about food and body had been the driving force in my life for so long that I had simply lost touch with my other passions, capacities, and talents. They hadn’t gone anywhere; they were simply waiting for me to take an interest in them again. As I pushed through weight gain and learned to eat healthily, I started to understand that there were many things about me that were remarkable, yet had nothing to do with my body.”

Perhaps it is about ending the day with food, with this celebration of the day, with validation that no matter what happened that day it would end with a feast?

Without so much of a focus on food, my eyes can see and heart can feel the way things are: joys are limited; I am bored, searching for something?

Stomach is full, but I will go to sleep hungry tonight.