OVERCOMING A ONGOING BATTLE OF ANOREXIA WITH GOD.

21st of July 2023 entry.

📝21/07/2023.

I hate fullness.

Despise fullness.

This day I felt too full that my mood was ruined.

I felt so sad just because I felt full.

The cause of this was me waking up late. CAMHS warned me to wake up early in order to have breakfast therefore, I can manage to have 3 meals a day as before my ed I'd always had 2 meals a day due to me waking up 1pm (lunch time). I obviously didn't listen to this command as It sounded dumb to me to wake up early just to eat. I also didn't have a morning belly anyway. Therefore, I didn't see the importance of breakfast despite me fainting once because of the very fact of me not having it; I should have known by then that breakfast is really important as in the morning our body lacks energy as it burnt most of it to help us sleep. In addition, dinner to morning is the longest time we go without eating. 

Linking back, I woke up very late. I got a bit of thrill as I thought it was a good excuse not to have 3 meals as I've slept over the typical breakfast time however, I was wrong as my mum had texted me to still have 3 meals despite me oversleeping. I literally cried as I knew it was so late and I couldn't fit in 3 meals unless I had like 3 hour gaps between meals which seemed too close together to me. Not even the mention the snacks. I knew I never got hunger ques and felt full constantly so I was so worried for the day ahead before it even started.

That was my first mistake; expecting a bad day. Therefore, my day was bad. It's all about thinking  positively. Instead of telling myself, 'I can't do it', I should have told myself, 'get up, go have breakfast, you can do anything you put your heart into'. In reality, I stayed on my bed for even longer overthinking, contemplating and sopping. This was obviously very dumb as the more I soaked in bed, the more I was pushing back my first meal making it harder for myself.

What made me even more frustrated was when I finally got up, I felt so full from the previous day still. I hadn't eaten since dinner but I still felt like I just had dinner. It was so annoying how my belly never settled. It made me question if my stomach has shrunk too much.

I got so emotional, I screamed moaning about how I passionately didn't want to do the meal plan. When I got so upset I forgot all the benefits of the meal plan; I felt the meal plan pushed me to eat as It gave me some sort of permission and comfort. It's being prescribed to eat; it reduces guilt as eating felt mandatory.

However, because I was so dreaded I started thinking negatively about the meal plan. My thoughts were like:

If I didn't have the meal plan I wouldn't need to wake up early to eat. 

I'd be able to sleep longer.

I wouldn't feel like I need to know the calories on everything in order to meet the requirement of the meal plan.

I wouldn't care too much about time gaps as I wouldn't even need to spread out 3 meals.

I wouldn't have so much anxiety.

I would have more freedom.

But in reality without  the meal plan, would I really eat?

I felt the meal plan was too stressful and punishing as I felt too full after completing it. I hated how my belly felt like an overload of helium in a balloon. I just wanted my belly to settle. I convinced myself that I am overeating even though my meal plan wasn't even close to the required calorie amount (2000).

If you hate the meal plan as much as I did, remember how it gives us permission to eat when we feel we can't. It makes us eat more calories so when we are off it, we would be comfortable eating a lot of calories as we see nothing bad happened to us when we were on the meal plan. We are exposed to calories so our fear of it can disappear. I now see the huge benefit the meal plan gives. I am talking in present as when I am writing this on the 18th of November, I am still on it but 5 stages up-eating almost  double the amount I was complaining about on the 18th of July. I haven't gained that much weight since then but my stomach is way more used to food that if I ate what I ate back then, I'd probably be hungry. It's funny, what once made me overly full would now make me hungry. It's funny how I feared eating calories but now I've done it, I still look the same.

Now, I have learnt fullness shouldn't be as dreadful as we make it. Instead, we should be glad when we're full as it is better than starving. We should be grateful we have food to fill us u; God has  provided us with food that others can't even access. Our mindset should think if we are full. it means we are making up for the times we were ravenous and ignored it; we should know the more full we get the more we're refeeding ourselves in order to get our health back. Fullness doesn't mean we overate at all. We need to remember out stomachs have shrunk so we are obviously not going to be used to eating more than we did. It's no reason to be guilty at all. It's not a bad thing.

Most importantly, the feeling will pass.