super-romance-honeymoon island

"I sometimes believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!" 

Weight: indeterminate. AKA I am too scared to weigh myself because for the past 3 days I've been like, not restricting on any level. And I've been revolutionising myself and my habits. I banned myself from checking that fucking stupid dating site. Can't handle it. Was driving me mad. 

I've decided that I just have to take things at face value. If it walks/talks/looks like a duck then it's a fucking duck. Couldn't really go through life being that suspicious, it was killing me. If he ends up being a fucker, then I will find out when I find out instead of denying myself good times for potentially no reason at all. 

But now that I am back at work and settled back into my routine, I am setting up a new routine for myself to lose weight:

Breakfast: cup of black coffee

Lunch: fat free yoghurt, piece of fruit, salad

Dinner: difficult to set food item, but my calorie limit will be 300cal. I will fill up with tea and coke/sprite zero if I still feel hungry. 

I'm hoping that the above diet will be 600calories a day max. 800cal a day if I have a bad day. 

On top of that, I will go to the gym every day except for days when I am working till 10pm. At the gym I will do weights, because I want to build a bit of muscle to bring up my basal metabolic rate and to stop myself breaking down muscle if my body swings into starvation mode. Then I will run for 30mins, do 2km on a rowing machine and 20mins on an elliptical.

The above workout should hopefully be around 400cal. So I'm hoping that my net intake every day will be around 300-500cal. 

Let's see if I can't lose weight with that! 

Now my motivation at this point is online dating guy. And something that happened on our last date. Warning, at this point I will launch into incredibly flowery prose, I am about to give Mills and Boon a run for their money. In a very roundabout way, I will eventually come to the point! But if you don't want to read it, you can probably skip the first couple of paragraphs. 

He texts me as he's driving back from being away for a week. "Hey, what are you up to this weekend? Want to spend some time with me?" After our last date when we had dinner, walked around in each others arms and kissed, I didn't really know what to expect but I said yes. After all, I didn't have anything planned. 

"Shall we take the ferry out to the Island? We can check out the wineries."

I have never been one to say no to wineries! So we arranged a time to meet at the ferry terminal. By the time I arrive he's already got out tickets. He's also got a bag with togs, towels, sunscreen, water, maps, you name it, he's got it. And I just stood there, dumbfounded. Well I'd brought my visa card and my phone. Felt like I was not at all prepared. When we arrived I made a beeline for the surf shop. 

This can drag out a bit so I shall be brief. We had lunch at a restaurant by the beach, sipping cocktails. We then went and lay down at the beach. He pulled me into his arms and we just lay there, giggling to ourselves. Then he tilts my chin up and kisses me and after making out for a good while I feel like omg, when did I become queen of PDA. After wondering around hand in hand, we end up at a vineyard where we sipped a very nice pinot noir under the shade of an olive tree. It's the same story again, we are lying on the grass, and he pulls me down on top of him and we just lie there talking bullshit and making out. We must have been there for hours. Lying in the shade, looking up at the clouds, he was aimlessly tracing random shapes on my shoulder with his finger. 

At the beach I squeeze into my bikini. My boobs look great, but that's about it. And I feel like a wobbly blob as I walk towards the water. The wind is picking up the waves are HUGE but I can't wait to get in the water to hide all my flab. When I get in the water I realise how strong the waves actually are. I can't stand up by myself so I hang onto him to keep myself upright. He holds onto my hand and pulls me into his chest and wraps his arms around me and we kiss as the waves break around us. Then, to my horror, he picks me up. He's swinging me around and kissing me before I can protest. "You don't weigh much at all!" and he continues to carry me deeper into the sea. 

We have fish and chips and wine by the beach and as we walk back to the ferry, he stops me in the middle of the road several times for kisses. And at the beach by the ferry terminal, we lie down in each other's arms and watch the sun go down. There is a jazz band playing at the bar a while away and the music wafts down to us. When it is dark he starts to kiss me, he's pulling me very close, squeezing me tightly, things are getting a bit hot and heavy and he groans when he sees the ferry arrive. 

I can't really stop thinking about him. I don't know what to think anymore. I think what I need to do is just pretend that I am definitely the only girl that he is seeing. And just enjoy what his happening. I feel like I'm somewhat scarred from wearing that bikini. I would definitely feel much more secure in our relationship if I looked thinner. But since I like him so much I am going to use him as motivation. 

Every time I eat, I am going to picture myself in that bikini, all that fat poking out. And how bad I felt when he saw me. And then I will tell myself that I can't eat. I can't possibly eat when I still look like this in a bikini. 

Maybe if I'm thin, he'll want me. Maybe if I'm thin, he'll like me as much as I like him. 

aaaaaaand I'm back. And fat as a whale.

"If I could change, I would. Take back the pain, I would. Retrace every wrong move that I made, I would."

Hello ladies. It's me, I'm back. 

I know there has been a VERY long and unintended absence this time. I've missed you all dearly, very dearly. But I stay away on purpose and now I'm crawling back on bended knee, hoping you will welcome back with your open arms. I've been trying to catch up on your blogs, but wow, there is so much!

Let me explain that hodge-podge paragraph. 

I stayed away because I thought that while I was eating, I might as well try to kick the whole eating disorder thing. For a while I did. But now the old habits are creeping back and now I'm fat as a whale and I have a whole lotta work to do. 

First things first. The hot cop is history. 

Let me put it this way. If I can find time in my 80hour working week for him, and for him to be too busy to see me in his 40hour week then something is very wrong. And he gave me a whole lot of excuses that made me realise he's not over his ex, he's in love with her and needs to go to the other side of the world to rediscover himself to get over her. He couldn't stop talking about her. Yes, I miss him. Yes, I'm petrified I will never find anyone. Yes, I knew for a while it was never going to work. But it still feels very hollow. 

And for the past few months I have been solidly plugging that emptiness with food galore. 

I fit none of my old clothes. I'm at my heaviest weight. I feel like a piece of shit. 

The next thing is that I have moved out of home. And funnily enough, it is not helping my diet. I am going out and eating out so much. But I have told my flatmate that I am going on a liquid fast of undetermined length. She's not opposed to it, is not going to make me eat, and so hopefully this will kickstart things in a big way. 

I can't look at myself in the mirror anymore. I just can't do it. There aren't enough words to describe how much I hate the way I have behaved, and continue to behave. 

I feel insecure. I am convinced that I will not find another guy. Which bothers me more than it should. I mean, up until I met the hot cop, I was convinced I was going to be forever alone and had accepted it. But it's like since I actually had a snippet of what it was like to be with someone, I somehow can't go back to that acceptance. 

I'm 24 now girls. I'm so so so so so not young anymore. I haven't met anyone, and I'm pretty sure I just need to get used to that. I certainly won't meet anyone at this weight. 

Ahhhhh fuck. How did I get to this, seriously, how. These should be the best years of my life but everything fucking sucks. 

And now I've reached the point where I need to be happy with something in my life, and the easiest thing is my weight. Like, I have so much extra fat, it shouldn't take too much to start to shift it. I need to do something. I can't stand being this miserable. 

I sincerely hope you've been keeping better than me babes. 

Day 9: another brick in the wall

"Threw you the obvious and you flew with it on your back."

To be honest, I had suspected her all along. I can smell Ana's stench from a mile away. I know just what she's like. I wanted to do nothing more than to leap out from behind the curtains around the bed, point my finger at her and shout "I know all of this is Ana, don't you keep telling me it's something else!" 

Nobody else knew what was going on, not until the episodes started to coincide with meals and with certain foods. But I knew. I knew all along. I knew exactly what I wanted to say to her. 

You may think she's gone but she's always with you. You may have gone to an inpatient unit, you may not have restricted for years, you may think you've left that side of you in the distant past but you have not. I know her tricks, I know where she hides, I know when she likes to come out and play. You may be able to fool your mother, you may be able to fool all the other doctors but you cannot fool me. I may be fat, I may be binge eating, but she's in my head every second of every day and I see her in you too. 

So I talked and talked and talked. I talked to her every day, I talked to her in lots of different ways. And she fought me and fought me until one day she just got it. She got it. She saw what Ana was doing, the weird ways that she was coming out, and now she's all better again. But that made me think. Do we ever shake her off? 

Sorry for being so fatalistic/nihilistic today. Sometimes I feel like we are all the same, all just another brick in the wall, the big, big wall that is ED and that is all we will ever be. 

Sometimes I think all my patients that are annoying and demanding and frustrating are just bricks in a wall that I keep running into. That's how I feel about my job sometimes. I have to get up in the morning, every morning and keep running into the same wall. 

Run, hit, bleed and binge. That's the cycle I'm in. I don't know what to do anymore. I'm so stuck. I'm stuck professionally, I'm stuck personally and I'm so stuck with my ever increasing weight. 

I want to die every time I see Mark because he's just so perfect. And now, to add insult to injury, there is a surgeon who makes me all hot and bothered as well. I don't even know what his name is. But I want to just jump on him. Dammit. I need a break from life. A permanent break from life. 

do you know this house is falling apart

"We've got no money but we've got hearts."

All my hard earned progress, each pound fought for, all in vain. Stupid, stupid doctors. Stupid doctors. 

For the past 3 weeks my house here in England has turned into a recovery unit. A recovery unit with one patient. Me. It sucks. I'm back to where I started. Right back to where I started. All that exercise and restricting, for nothing. It's all back on. This is what happens when you live with doctors. 

You can't hide anything. You can't run away. They don't listen to any of my excuses, we all know we've heard them before from those conniving anorexics in our inpatient psychiatric units. 

I don't know what to do. They are strangers to me. Poor students, poor students with no money. Poor medical students who are forcing me to eat. I have absolutely no food in the house. It's one of my ways of restricting. If there is no food, I can't eat. And I'm generally too lazy to go out and buy food when I'm starving. 

But that's no barrier, they give me their food. Well, he does anyway. He cooks for me, caesar salad with chicken, pasta with prawn and whiskey and cream sauce, baked potato with tuna. Out of his own pocket he is buying each pound I put on. And I can't say no. When someone that good looking cooks a meal that smells so good it makes me salivate as I sit, defeated at the kitchen table, and puts it down in front of me as he sits opposite, eating his own portion and watching me eat. 

There are no weigh ins at this house, thankfully. But they can see the weight going on. I can see the weight going on. He might only see me for dinner, but he makes damn sure there are enough calories in it for me to put on weight.

After dinner, he breaks out the chocolate, or ice cream, or both. It doesn't matter when I come home. He's there, waiting, with dinner and dessert. 

Part of me hates him to the very core. Part of me is torn because he is after all one of the best looking guys I have ever seen and I want to make him happy. What the fuck is happening to me. 

But there is still one fact that I can hold onto. 2 and a half more weeks of this and I'll be gone, away from him, half a world away from him. And then, just you watch. 

o-b-e-s-i-t-y

Under cover of night I put a pearl in the ground. Where did you go? Not so far. Please don't go, not too far. 

You don't mean that, say you're sorry. You don't mean that, I'll make you sorry.

He leans back in his swivel chair, that permanent jeer plastered on his face. The earring glitters as he turns and points at me. I give an answer and he moves onto the student next to me. The correct answer is the sentence that he is thinking in his head and it's a waiting game to see who he points at and it's a matter of time before one of us gets the answer and this is when the game begins again. 

I'm not really listening. I know all I need to know about population health and so his words flow over me without making any impact at all yet the tension that he generates keeps me rooted to my seat and facing him with eager eyes. He's talking about BMI and how different races have different amounts of fat free mass. It's not news to me, and I'm still barely listening. 

"And it may sound harsh, but if you are Asian and you have a BMI of 21, then you're probably obese." 

Now I'm listening! And my heart feels like it's been kicked in the testicles. Based on that premise, I'm Asian, I have a BMI of 21.7, therefore I must be clearly obese. That is the only conclusion that can be drawn. 

I'm surprised. It's not something I expected to hear. And immediately, I know that he is right, so right and so wrong at the same time. All my years of teaching seems to reel in my head. I know that he is referencing children's BMI ranges, I know that for Asian adults, a BMI of 23 is what constitutes being overweight. I know all this, I know, I know, I know. 

But at the same time, I've just been labelled obese and it's not something that I can shake. I'm obese. I'm obese. I'm obese. Each repetition of the phrase echos a beat of my heart, thudding, faster and faster, panic rising, breaths becoming shallow, mind racing. I'm obese. I am. I am. I am. 

There are 2 voices that take over then. One is the professor. He tells me that I'm not fat, I'm not obese. That my BMI is perfectly normal, and that it is nothing to worry about. But this time his voice is so quiet, like he is talking to me from inside a sealed box. I've been trying to contact him for 2 weeks now with no reply. His hold on me loosens. 

The second voice is a friend. She tells me that I have to face the truth. I have to acknowledge my obesity. "So what, you're obese. So do something about it you lump." So do something about it. There is a rising anger within me. Why would someone say that to me? Why? I'll prove them all wrong. I'll get myself thin. I'll make them sorry they ever called me obese.