Desperate

Damn, I gave in to carbs again. Had two Naan breads (together 250 cals) late in the evening. I just coudn't resist. And although I immediately went for another jog (already jogged 7 km that day, went 40 km on my road bike any hiked 7 km), I gained half a kilo! Even if this is just muscle weight due to the huge amount of sports I am doing since several weeks, I gained! But how in the world can I finally lose weight? I eat very little (only fruits and vegetables), I burn so many calories by jogging and biking, but still I gain! My metab seems to be ok, though. Do I have to eat even less? Do I have to cut down the sport? I am desperate. I must lose 5 kg as fast as possible. But all I do is gain!

Above the plateau again

For fuck's sake - I messed it up again. And this time big time. I am back at my plateau weight. Not that I started eating much more, I "just" messed up my metabolism. Eating nothing but apples might be a good idea for one week, but not for two or more. Restricting does only work when you do it smartly, thus vary your calorie intake and not consume 300 cals every day. You'll lose water weight quickly, but when it's gone, losing stops. And you start even gaining by just eating a little more than your 300 cals. No matter how much sport you do.

So here comes plan b to finally get some progress in this whole effin' story.
1. Mark: Losing weight is not an easy job. Restricting calories "just so" doesn't get you where you wanna be.
2. Vary your calorie intake. Don't overeat, but vary. You don't need a strict plan to follow, just make sure to not eat the same amount of cals everyday, but have a difference from several hundred cals per day.
3. Vary your sports routine. Do not run the same amount of kilometers every day. Do not bike the same amount of calories every day. Do not make the same amount of situps everyday.
4. Stay away from "bad carbs". No bread, no cornflakes, no musli, no potatos and similar things. Get carbs from fruits (apples, for example).
5. Drink as much as you can.

So after a bad binge yesterday (which started of course with carbs - I ate 250ml of beef broth with some noodles and then it went on with a can of tuna, a small bowl of cornflakes, and half a bar of cocolate!), I had an apple and coffee for breakfast to kickstart the metabolism, made my situps, went to work by bike and have my first herbal tea now. I plan a full fruit day today, with even more apples and grapes. So I'll stay below the amount of cals from yesterday. Tomorrow I'll have again apples and grapes, but I'll add some soy products (maybe a yoghurt or something). I'll also run the shorter distance today and will keep the long one for the weekend. I'll plan to stick to a low carb diet over the weekend (cottage cheese with radish and cucumbers for breakfast, salat for lunch), and I hope it will be easy to convince my bf that it's nothing to worry about. Maybe this will finally make me break my plateau again.

Finally!

I broke my plateau! I did it! After four days of apples only and a lot of sport I am at 108 now. I came from 114 when I started on Monday! I am so happy, can't describe it with words. This is surely "my new thing". I didn't even crave anything else during the last days: no carbs, no sweets, no nothing. After the frickin' weekend where I have to eat almost normally again because I'm with my bf all the time, I will a 100% start with apples on Monday again. They will be my food of the week until I finally reached my goal. I lost 6 pounds in such a short time. So I really could make it to get rid off the rest until summer. 18 to go then I am perfect.

I am the fattest person ever

I was so good all the last two weeks. And then comes the weekend and everything gets ruined. I ate like a pig. I binged. I had peanut butter on crisp bread. Not one, not two, not three, but four. I had chocolate. Not one piece, not two, but eight. I had TUCs. I had salami for breakfast. I don't dare to step on the scale. I must have gained every single pound back I lost. If not even more. I was so weak. What a weak fatass I am. What a worthless, uncontrolled piece of shit. I can do nothing right, I do always fail. I must stop being such a weak idiot. I must be strong. I simply MUST get thin, there cannot be any other more important thing.

I start taking RF again. Who cares about the nervous heart rate. I MUST burn fat. Now. I will only eat three apples a day from now on. For at least a weak. A day of failure will result in a day of fasting.

I WILL NOT AGAIN BINGE ON THE WEEKEND.

I WILL NOT BINGE EVER AGAIN.

I MUST GET THIN.

Happy Beginning of the Day

On my way to work (I go by bike everydays, 8 km each way), I stopped at a bread shop because I felt so hungry and was craving bread so much. I bought a sunflower weed wholemeal roll, which has more than 280 calories per piece, I found out at the office browsing the web. So I was strong and gave it to a colleague instead of eating it. I am still hungry, though, but I won't eat so fricking many calories just for a bread roll, for Christ's sake! I am so happy I didn't. Would have felt guilty the whole day. So I am drinking a hot sweet tea (artificial no cal sweetener, of course) with a dash of low fat milk now, had a glass of water with little lemon juice and two more konjac flour capsules (had two when I got up already).

For lunch there will be a mug of pancake soup (39 cals), as a snack half an apple (40 cals) in the afternoon and for dinner some radishs (30), with 75 g cottage cheese (52 cals) and two slices of crispbread (40).

That should do for the day.

Konjac Flour Capsules

Found a great "new" hunger surpressant: konjac flour capsules. 100 capsules cost about 10 Euros and you consume up to 9 per day. So it's not so very cheap, but it's working better than Hoodia, IMHO. These capsules expand big time (up t0 200 %) in your stomach. It becomes a pasty mash in your belly, which is covered with an indigestive shell. So it stays longer in your stomach and makes you longer feel full.

Konjac flour contains protein, no carbs, no sugar, no fat, but a lot of fibre.

I take 3 capsules in the morning, 2 for dinner, 3 in the afternoon and 1 before I go to sleep. Works perfect: Full stomach, no collywobbles. Sometimes you even feel a bit sick due to the huge mass of "stuff" in your belly which additionally keeps you from being hungry. Perfect.

Bad as always

Sunday was, as always, bad. I had chocolate after dinner. Just a tiny bit, but nevertheless. And dinner also was huge. As well as lunch. Only breakfast was ok, but still I ate way too much. And it even didn't make my heart more comfortable. I have troubles with an irregular heartbeat or whatever it is since a few days. And I guess I'm off to the doctor this afternoon. It's very probably related to my "less than 200 cal"-diet of the last week, but still I hope there is another reason for it and that it will be gone soon. I'm slowly getting scared.

But anyway, I am back to basics now. I thought about having 500 cals per day. It will make me lose more slowly, but at least more healthy than having no food at all. I am not sure if I make it, though. I am really afraid of food and it will be difficult to eat generally. I've no plan yet of what to eat, but I thought about a huge green salad in the evening and a soup for lunch. And maybe an apple as a snack in the afternoon. But I am not sure if I can make it.

For the first time

Today I purged for the first time. I binged on chocolate flavoured cornflakes and half a chocolate easter bunny after staying below 200 cals everyday since Sunday. I spit the last two bites of the easter bunny into the garbage can when I recognized - much too late - what I was doing. Then I ran to the toilet and tried to get the rest of it out. With the help of the well known "tools" I finally managed to get all the chocolate out, but it was too late for the chocolate flakes. Some got out, but it was more than an hour ago after I ate them, so I stopped knowing that there's no point any longer in getting rid off them.

I am not happy with what I've done since I am not even a 100% convinced that it prevented my body from absorbing some of these fricking calories. I am totally frustrated and disgusted by myself - that I could fail so much after such a good week and eat a ton of shit, that I purged secretly and almost without any sound while my boyfriend is in the next room, and that I took my ED to a "next step" and thus a place where I've never been before in 15 year of Ana.

Please, don't let it ever happen again...

How could you not...

Two hours ago I had dinner (one slice of bread with yoghurt cheese and a slice of sweet pepper) and was prosecuted with heavy stomach ache soon afterwards.

It's not just my head who refuses to eat.

How can you not hate food in moments like these, when you are convulsed with pain, when everything hurts and it feels like your tummy would be torn apart? How can you not wish for never ever having to eat again?

Getting more and more afraid

After the start of the week with 65 calories I ended it up with 440 yesterday. And I am sad and disgustet about it! While others say (and my ratio, too), that everything below 500 is still very, very little, I am in shock! How could I allow myself to eat that much during the week when I'm actually supposed to eat almost nothing because I will stuff myself with food on the weekend!? How I again ruined the whole week and even the 30 minutes jog yesterday evening will not make my failure undone.

See? This is what I am thinking since I got down to 65. This is what finally has become of me again (!) after finishing IP. I am back where I was a year ago. I am back where I belong. I am no longer forbidding me to eat although I learnt to like the taste of food, I am forbidding me to eat because I am afraid of calories.

I feel unbelievably strong and great and powerful and over-the-top! Now it seems as if I've finally passed this effin' invisible border that kept me from losing weight again, from shaping my body after my ideal of beauty. I've done it. Now it can start again...

65

I planned to stick below 200 cals today and ended up with 65. Had quite a lot of stress at work and there was no time to eat anything at all. So I just had coffee and one of these small Optiwell yoghurt thingys. Got very dizzy on my way home, so I skipped the planned jog, but it's snowing and freezing over here anyway. Would have had a hard time running in the -8 °C cold storm...

Anyway - this was a promising start of the pre-easter-weightloss-phase.

2424288

This is no cryptical number, but my life. Everything circles around these numbers. They specify how much I eat and when I do eat it. 200 cals on Monday, 400 cals on Tuesday, 200 cals on Wednesday, 400 cals on Thursday, 200 cals on Friday, 800 cals on Saturday and Sunday. 800 cals are already a huge challenge and always linked with a big inner struggle, with disgust, horror, and a lot of stress. But I must keep my metabolism high with that, so that it doesn't go into starvation mode and I don't lose anything anymore. And I also do it, because I have a magical weight border I don't want to go below. I am older, wiser and more realistic than I was with 15 or 16: I don't want to have a BMI about 13 anymore.

But in times like these, after an "Easter Binge", the plan mentioned above is suspended. Liquid fasting is what it's all about now. Coffee, low fat milk, maybe a bit of chicken or vegetable broth, maybe an Optiwell drink (42 cals each! Eeeek!) and lots of diet coke to still the craving for sweets.

200 cals max until the end of the week. That should almost undo the ultimate worse case scenerio of this year's Easter. Together with the 2 times a week running and the daily situp routine, of course. Nothing comes from nothing.

Feeling Yourself

The knife on my arm. The gentle pain when it touches my skin, cleaving. When the first tear of red blood grows, then melts away, I can feel its warmth also on my outside. The burning that slowly starts, becomes stronger and ends up being the only sentience at all. It makes me shiver, avaricious, wanting more. That's my lust.

The devil in me

Concerning a debate at mamaVision (about viewing other people and judging them) I started to think about myself and found out: I am mean, arrogant, superficial, cynic, close-minded, and generally not nice when it comes to people and food. I think bad of people who are fat, of people who eat much (IMHO) or just sweets or fast food, of corpulent people who say "I feel good with my body" because I am sure they don't and just pretend to be ok to avoid facing the problem that they actually have to diet, I find it disgusting to have to see fat people in the tube, the bus, on the streets, in the shopping mall. I've got many prejudices such as fat people lack discipline, control, a strong mind, health, and aesthetic sensation. Of course I also belong to these group of people, to the fat ones, so I am also not nice to myself.

I always try to hold back my thoughts (and words!) when I have to talk to a fat person - or see one. Or see someone eating chocolate, or a burger, or french fries. But it's hardly ever possible to not at least think "yuck!".

Am I a mean person now? Am I personally to blame for my distorted mind? If so - am I also personally to blame for not eating? I doubt that someone would attack me because I refuse food. But lots of people attack me because my point of view. Where's the line between "this is the illness" and "this is you"? Don't both examples come from the same source, which is ANA?

Drunkorexia - not for me

First there was diabulimia. Now there is drunkorexia -- another new and buzzworthy term for some not-so-new behavior: self-imposed starvation or bingeing and purging, combined with alcohol abuse. According to this report on The Morning Show, 30% of US women ages 18-23 restrict food calories so they can drink more and not gain weight from their alcohol consumption.

Let me think: One glass of beer would equal my calorie intake of a day. So to be an "drunkorexic" I'd skip all my food and just drink that beer. And would probably end up sunk down in a corner being totally drunk.

For whom does this work? Alcohol has loads of calories - no one, except binge-eaters maybe, would be able to eat anything anymore when they want to drink a white russian, a mojito or a beer in the evening!

Challenges

Today my boss is celebrating his birthday and inviting everybody for lunch. He ordered a million sandwiches and there will be an hour of partying with all colleagues. A challenge I am scared of and which I don't know how to pass yet. Probably I'll take my lunchbreak before and pretend to have eaten already. So I can avoid the bread, which is, as we all know, evil. But I won't be able to skip the toast. And I really don't want to drink a single drop of sparkling wine which has almost 100 cals per serving! As an alternative there will be orange juice which has about half the cals on the same size than the sparkling wine. But also these 50 cals will make my day's intake become awful.

Oh my god, I haven't been so scared of eating for a very long time now. I already freaked out this morning when I found out that we don't order low fat milk for the office any longer. My colleagues were completely irritated by my anger and I felt like I had revealed my food problem in front of everybody now.

I am confused and happy at the same time, though. It's the first obvious incident of getting back to ana after being an "out-of-control-fatass" for almost a year now. Will it be just a short interlude before the next binge or is it really - hopefully - serious?

**edit**
Passed the challenge - successfully! Not even orange juice! And no one even noticed that I did not eat or drink anything. I'm happy and relieved. Looking at the munching mass of people and the disgusting high calorie sandwiches they ate (all white bread, mayonnaise, salami, salmon, butter, etc.) made me actually sick - not hungry myself. I am really getting better now.

News on the Pro-Ana front

In the last days the discussion about pro-ana forums became a hot topic again. Concerning the debate about closing pro-ana related website, news from Israel do now arrive: An agressive campaign to shut down pro-ana blogs has been taking place in the popular Israeli portal "Israblog". There have been numerous online conversation for and against banning of these sites. Ilana, a representative of the Israeli portal, responded to the petition calling to close down blogs that encourage anorexia. Here is a translation of her response:

"Israblog is a network of blogs created to provide every person with the means to express themselves as long as it abides by the country’s laws. Our motto, ‘life is here’, refers to all aspects of life, even the more hurtful sides can be expressed here. Any person can own a blog through our system, even if their self perception is problematic or if their body fat percentage is lower than the norm.

The second, and more important reason, is that we do not believe that erasing blogs will have a positive effect. On the contrary, it may be damaging. We realize that there exist other blogging platforms which erase this type of content, however we strongly believe that if we act in a similar manner, we will simply pass this ‘burning hot potato’ onwards without actually making positive change.

We agree that these blogs are problematic, but they also represent a true call for help. And it is best that this call will be heard here, in Israblog, a place where there are attentive listeners and arms ready to reach out and help, rather than a lonely, underground or extreme space.

One must remember that it is not possible to help someone with eating disorders by shutting her mouth. It is possible to help by providing an opposing voice, anti-anorectic, anti-bolemic.

This is precisely why we contact the psychologist Liran Rogev, from the Shahaf organization, who created the blog winning over eating disorders. In this blog, Liran describes ways to cope with eating disorders from his experience as a professional in the field. He tries to engage in supportive dialogue with those suffering from this complex issue, and suggests alternative methods of dealing.

In addition, we are looking for other ways to integrate other professionals who could consult, advise and support our bloggers. However the greatest force to support and make a difference is in your hands. The best thing about Israblog, which is always heart-warming, is these connections of concern, support and friendship made here between bloggers.

We ask you to sharpen your critique over western culture which idolizes the skinny, and point out these social messages, hidden or visible, which relate a person’s value, especially women, to their looks and weight. You can enter pro-ana blogs and leave comments. Don’t answer simply by saying “c’mon, what are you doing…” or “don’t you know that bones are NOT sexy?!”. Comments of this type cause detachment and anger. Liran posted a list of things to remember when formulating anti-anorectic responses in pro-ana blogs. Amongst all his recommendations, we want to emphasize the last - “try to make a true connection - do not criticize or be judgmental. Otherwise, the pro-ana blogger will only reach out to other people with eating disorders, something that can certainly feed this disorder and lead to a further deterioration in their health”. In other words - be friends, real friends, so that those suffering from eating disorders will not seek out only other pro-ana friends."

What I find interesting about this statement is that it's IMHO the first good one. Not just because it stands for not closing pro ana sites, but it gives some food for thoughts. For non-pro people. When I read the "how-to-deal-with-Anas" and "how-to-deal-not-with-Anas" I feel reminded of blogs like MamaVision (sorry) which criticize pro-ana forums and websites and shows off user avatars on which it says "bones are beautiful" added with scholarly comments telling the audience that bones are even not beautiful and that people who think so have a weird perception of prettiness.

Concerning the issue that about 90% of all pro-anas are teenagers, especially mothers but also everyone who once was teenager (means everyone), must know that talking this way will only result in an act of defiance. At least I would respond that way. So the advice from Ilana to be more careful when talking (directly or in written form) to annorexics is IMHO very wise, important and probably the only helpful and promising one.

Lazy Sunday Thoughts

It came to my mind that I am actually very seldomly talk about "real issues". Like if I had nothing important to say except talking about my failure or success concerning my struggle with food. So most of you might think that I am - like "a good Ana" - just thinking about my intake, calories counting and what to better not eat all day long. But I am not. And I am still. Huh?

Don't count me in as conventionally recovered. I am far away from that. But I found my path. Name it the "wisdom of age", but with being very close to 30 now and having experienced Anorexia since my earliest teenage years, I have a more outré view of the whole thing. Sure, I do panic from time to time when I feel I have eaten too much, sure I am crying after a binge, I am counting calories, I am taking my metab enhancer, I live on diet coke for days, I can't take a look at me in the mirror naked, and sure I am secretly flushing down food the toilet. On the other hand I really do enjoy an evening out with friends, drinking three glasses of a good stout and smoke a billion cigarettes - and don't cry me to sleep afterwards.

I am my own evolution. When I read through some forums I see myself in these desperate 14-year-olds who starve themselves without knowing very much about the consequences of their actions, but I am beyond that without being cured. Still I cannot understand why people would like to get rid off Anorexia. Even in ten months of IP no one could convince me of the benefits. I got so used to it that I can't and don't want to be without it anymore. Ana is a part of me that I really would miss, honestly. Even if it makes me depressed, if I break down and cry, if I hate myself a lot from time to time - it's the path I took and I have to deal with. It's not unbearable; not more unendurable for me than going into the other direction.

Successfully passed

During lunchtime I went to a supermarket to buy lactose free milk for a colleague and coke zero for me. I spent several minutes in front of the crisps rack, touched several packs, checked their calories and thought about eating them because the day would be ruined anyway because we're celebrating our boss's birthday with open sandwiches. But - oh what a lucky surprise! - I stayed strong and didn't eat them. And when I got back to the office the birthday party was cancelled, too! So this Friday can become a good day! When I once stayed strong I'll can do it later again, too! Go - go - get thinner!