Is this perimenopause? Every month around the time my period is due to start, I feel incredibly exhausted. I feel as though I took a sleeping pill and can barely keep my eyes open. For the past few months I've also experienced a few days in a row of migraine headaches. Oh, the joy of being female. I'm at work today (another long stretch...day 7 of 13 in a row) and I feel as though I could just crawl under my desk and sleep.
Yoga this week was great. Wow -- I can't believe something so calm can make me so overheated. My knee wasn't sore even after exercising yesterday, but today it is. I did share my past injury with my teacher, but she really just said not to do anything that hurts. It doesn't hurt at the time of the class, just gets sore later. I'll miss the next two weeks due to R's school concert and our vacation to WDW. I hope I don't feel completely lost when I return.
Last night I hosted six of my coworkers for a potluck. It was the first time most of them had ever been to my house and it was really odd showing them around. I've never been to most of their houses and I couldn't help wondering what they thought. I ate WAY too much and went to bed feeling really uncomfortable. I have to (again) face the fact that even though I haven't been bingeing for the past six weeks, I have NOT been eating intuitively. I've been grazing throughout the day when I'm not hungry, and just eating whatever I felt like eating. I haven't been overeating at meals (except for last night), but I've been snacking on too many nuts and carbs like Fiber One Honey Clusters and milk or whole wheat bread and peanut butter. Yes, it sounds healthy, but too many calories = tight clothing no matter how healthy the excess calories are.
I weighed myself this morning. I haven't gotten on the scale for a really long time -- since October maybe? Wow. I weighed 178.6. Wow. I am almost up to my highest weight ever (182 when I was a freshman in college). I can't imagine what I'd weigh if I didn't exercise so much. I happened upon a book called Binge No More by Joy Nash and was perusing it over the past few days. One thing she says is that intuitive eating is all well and good, but telling a person with BED that you should eat whenever you're hungry isn't very useful. That works well for someone who has had a chronic dieting problem, but not for someone with a chronic eating problem. She thinks the first step in recovery is to eat three planned meals and two snacks, and limit your eating to those times. Don't limit WHAT you eat for now, but eat only at your planned times, and place a time limit on those times (30 minutes for a meal, for example). That prevents you from grazing all day long or constantly having to ask yourself "Am I really hungry?". You also keep a sheet with what you ate, what time you ate, your feelings and activity at the time, and whether or not it turned into a binge.
I was REALLY unhappy when I was skinny. I was happy with the way I looked, but I was miserable about the fact that I overexercised and constantly thought about food. I am also REALLY unhappy right now. Yes, I'm unhappy with my weight, but I still constantly think about food. I'm going to start working on the suggestions in Nash's book today. I have resisted keeping any kind of food sheet because I equated it with my days of constant hunger. However, if I know that I'm only going to eat my planned meals and snacks, I think it will feel less intrusive.
We switched insurance this year and I found a psychology office that participates in our insurance and has a woman who treats BED. I'm going to call Monday and see if I need some sort of referral or if I can just make an appointment. It's time I sought out some help from a professional.
Postpartum Mental Health Risk Factors
1 year ago
2 comments:
Hiya,
I hope you get an appointment with the psychologist. I'm going to look into my insurance to see if there's any way I can do that too. It's really brave of you to acknowledge you want help.
I've read that about BED too, well done for finding ways to make eating intuitively realistic for you. It's great to experiment, I really hope it's helpful for you.
A
xx
Having to go back to structured eating (3 meals 2 snacks) because of the blood sugar issues I'm having I am finding, like I did before, that it takes a lot of the emotion out of eating for me. Doesn't mean I don't think about food a lot, but it cuts out the emotional eating and obviously the grazing. I hope that it works for you too.
When I used to do yoga I found I was a little sore here and there the first few weeks but that it went away after that, unless we did something really different. Try being real conscious of how hard you are pushing yourself to "get into position" and maybe pull back a little or go for the modified pose. You can get all the benefits of yoga from a modified stretch or position, so don't feel that you're not doing it right or anything like that. And watch any competitive feelings, both with others and with yourself. Yoga can be such a wonderful practice, but if you're not careful you can really hurt yourself. I really miss it but have been afraid to go back to a class because of my back. It's easier for me to stay less competitive on my own. Maybe I'll give some easy stretches a try.
I always so appreciate your honesty in writing this blog. It helps me (and I'm sure others) to be more honest with myself.
Hugs, Michele
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