Hard.
One of my friends gave me a little 30 day devotional on my last day of VIOP. I think I might have missed a day or 2, but for the most part, I was pretty consistent. And yesterday I finished the book. That means I’m 31ish days out of treatment! Wahoo!
(Chloe really enjoyed the devotional as well)
I saw my therapist on Thursday and she was looking through my meal logs and she was like, “Brittany! This is the best you’ve ever done after treatment. You should be really proud of yourself.” And I am. But boy is it hard. Like seriously hard.
It’s not that I’m constantly fighting urges to restrict or anything. It’s just that I’m fighting not to give myself the opportunity to slip. Which means meal planning and cooking and stuff. Things I used to hate. I still find meal planning super annoying, but I’ve found that if I don’t do it, I make excuses for myself and find myself slipping pretty quickly. So it’s worth it.
I’m also seeing a dietician weekly. Something I haven’t done in forever. She and I work really tightly to make sure I’m hitting all my exchanges and having appropriate portion sizes and honoring my hunger when I have it. I scribble notes and we make goals and I try my darndest to meet them each week. I’ve found that super helpful.
Another new thing to me is the whole cooking thing. I always thought I hated cooking, but I’ve found I’m actually enjoying it a fair amount. It takes me forever, but I’m liking it so far. I cook twice a week. Once on the weekend and once on Wednesday or Thursday. I try to cook enough to have leftovers for a lunch or 2. My recipes have been hit or miss. Some things my family likes and some things they don’t. But I think it’s a really healthy thing for me to be doing and I feel like I’m contributing to the family and it keeps me out of trouble. Between finding recipes, making grocery lists, and actually cooking, I find myself not so bored.
Another new thing to me is going to a virtual support group. I go one night a week and it’s another thing that has been helpful. I’m not going to say a whole lot about that, though.
So something else that I’ve been working on is night eating. I’ve blogged about it before, but not often, because it’s quite embarrassing. I wake up in the middle of the night 1-3 times and go to the kitchen to get a small snack. Well my dietician talked to my therapist who talked to me and we came up with an obstacle course of sorts.
I usually wear shorts and a t-shirt to bed, so the first order of business was to wear something different so that I’d have to change to leave my room. Then I do some aroma therapy. Then I put on lotion and gloves. Finally, I have bells on my door. Every time I wake up, I have to take off the gloves, do the aroma therapy, put lotion on, and put the gloves back on. Just trying to put as many steps in between waking up and getting a snack as possible. And if I DO get a snack, I have to eat it at the table instead of taking it up to my room.
And guess what? IT’S WORKING!!! The first 2 nights I went through the checklist the first time I woke up and it worked. The second time I woke up, I just said screw it and went and had a snack at the table. Then I told myself if I could do it once, I could do it again. So I just told myself I had to do the checklist every single time. And IT’S WORKING. I just had 7 nights in a row with no night eating. That’s the longest I’ve gone in like 3 years!
During this month I also finished my first full year of full time school since 2005. Yep. Which means I have a little over a year left to go before I get my hands on that degree. I’m sooooooooo close!!
So I’ve been busy. Maybe not running around from place to place or doing all sorts of activities. But mentally and emotionally I’ve never worked harder.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it. But then I just tell myself it has to be. Because the way I was living wasn’t really living and treatment is hell, so this is really my only option if I hope to live a full and purposeful life. And I’m ok with that. I'm ok with hard.
“It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.”