Challenges, freedom and cucumbers!

Aside

Posted by: lovingmyfaith on: 21/01/2013

In: Anorexia | Recovery
3 Comments

Week 4 and I’m happy to say that even with two challenging dinner times, I’m still on track with 3 meals and 3 snacks a day.

Two big things help me to stay on track when otherwise I might not bother: 1. I made a commitment to God and 2. I know that I have important things to do this year that I need to be well for.

So, those two challenging dinnertimes: …

Last night, I knew ahead of time that it would be awkward. I was out at church from 5:15 until almost 10:30pm. So, my dinner was kind of small and not very dinner-ish. I had taken a snack with me to eat which I had just after I left church about 9:20. Had I known that a sporting match had just finished along the way I chose to drive home, I wouldn’t have driven that way. That added probably twenty minutes to the drive home! I *could* have gotten some McDonalds on the way, which I have done before, but I didn’t feel like it. So, at home at 10:30, too tired to be hungry, I decided it was normal enough to go to bed, had a glass of milk and planned to cook sausages for breakfast, which I did! A hearty breakfast of sausages and fried potato with a cucumber. ~~Is it too weird to have a whole cucumber with ones breakfast? I peeled it, if that makes it any more normal. And I have heaps, they need eating. I bought a whole (little) bucket of them at the fruit and veg shop. I just started some pickling, check it out:

My first time pickling cucumber! Let’s hope it’s yum.

In recovery, it’s really easy to be put off course by disruptions that put meal times out. In the past I would have been in quite a state, stressing about it and generally overwhelmed and getting all negative at myself for getting into such a situation and not managing it perfectly smoothly somehow. I’ve learnt to be a whole lot more relaxed about things. Recovery doesn’t need to be done perfectly. I don’t need to give myself a hard time when things don’t go as well as I’d hoped.

On an epic journey, like recovery from an ED, it’s important to be a bit proud about every achievement, even little ones.

The second difficult dinner I conquered this week was due to an interaction that set me in a really peeved mood for a while. I’ll just summarise that by saying that I’ve encountered too many doctors that think they know what’s what and don’t give you a proper chance to explain so that you feel like you’re on trial. So in that kind of mood, my thoughts often say to not eat and my tummy doesn’t feel like eating either. Thankfully those moods don’t happen all that often now and thankfully, I’ve learnt how to negotiate with myself and talk myself down from such radical stances as: “now I’m not going to eat!”. So, I delayed eating, and then a phonecall delayed me and so it wasn’t until 9pm that I started cooking dinner. I think I’d gotten home from the appointment about 7:30. But, I still had dinner. Chicken, veg and noodles. So, I’m a bit proud of how quickly I dismissed the thoughts of having no dinner. I’m good at that these days. But I have noted that I am prone to delaying. And I’ve marked that as something to work on. I just have to have some firm words with myself, often at breakfast time, eg “stop for breakfast now, the plants can be watered after breakfast” and then thirty seconds later “breakfast next, folding the washing can wait”. I can find all sorts of things to do when I’m delaying!

I care very much for others struggling with anorexia and similar troubles. I know that recovery can seem like a sad joke of a maze, where you keep ending up back where you came from and it seems there’s no way out. The freedom that I have now to eat as well as I am is built upon a whole lot of inner healing. I have a positive regard for myself now, and that helps a whole lot. I have more joy and peace than ever before. I’ve replaced a whole lot of awful core beliefs with the truth, as my loving God has made it known to me, planting it deep in the core of my being. I’ve made God my map and my compass. He guides me and shows me the way in all things. He has transformed me from the inside out and I hardly recognise in my memories the person that I used to be.

God is so much better than I ever thought he’d be. Did you know that God is especially “near to the broken hearted” and that “he saves those who are crushed in spirit”?

live.it.love.it ~ believe for freedom from whatever holds you back. We are more than conquerors through Him! And tell God that you want that freedom, asking Him to guide you to it, believing that He will, even if you can only believe with a tiny bit of yourself, that’s enough.