(Mixed) Easter Blessings...

I hope you have had a very Happy Easter. It's a shame that it seems these days to be less of a religious celebration and more of an excuse for the supermarkets to throw chocolate eggs in our faces, but at least it retains a focus on quality time spent with family.

As such, I made the trip home to see my parents and brother. We didn't get up to anything exciting but shared some happy moments....but there were also inevitable times of tension.Questions starting with "If you can't go back to the PhD..." were aired frequently. I can't blame my parents for doubting that I will make it : after all, saying that I know what I am doing, then following it up with "No roast potatoes for me please" or "I'm just going to use the lounge for some Cardio HIIT training if that's OK?" doesn't really cut it, does it? And then there is my compulsion to adhere to my rigid routines (one of the hallmarks of Anorexia), both in eating and otherwise, which puts me on edge every time I am transplanted from my insular lifestyle. I am so used to being independent and able to dictate my days as I wish that it is always hard for me to be back at home.

However towards the end of my stay, I found the upset to my regimes and the feeling of being under scrutiny less grating and was able to give "family time" the sacred value it deserves...although this then made it difficult to say goodbye !

The sun shone! Enjoying a (calorie counted) treat in the garden

Over Easter I managed to carry on, more or less, with the plan I outlined in my last post. And today's weigh-in showed a "slight increase"! BUT it is not nearly going on fast enough. Meanwhile, I received some very sound advice from a lady who writes possibly the best blog on anorexia, saying that I would need a minimum of 750 calories on top of a maintenance diet (no exercise) to have a chance of making my target in time. I am starting to feel at breaking point, and this, combined with the help from my therapist this morning, has given me the confidence to change my diet plan again.
For now, exercise will still be part of it - agh! I can see you slapping your head at that! But please hear my reasons -
1. Exercise helps me to feel hungry and does make me feel better afterwards.
2. I hope to be active all my life so exercise should be a holistic part of my recovery. During my last relapse, I did have an extended time away from the gym and was then utterly clueless about how to adapt my diet when I started to work out again. Which may be why I am here now...
3.I have to train for Offa's Dyke somehow!

Be assured though that a lot more will be going in on the days I do work out. So much so, that I don't think my stomach will cope with EATING it all and I may have to go the way of liquid supplements / milkshakes. Any suggestions welcome!

Besides this, I am still exhausted from the Big Bang Fair and it was a real trial dragging my case home from the station and I had to keep stopping embarrassingly often. So my other focus at the moment is on getting more sleep and rest. I am finally starting to see the truth in my family's urges to stop taking on more commitments. I also need to work on getting to bed earlier. I do find it hard to shift my patterns forward, especially my meals - the "anorexic voice" tells me that I should only eat when I reach the required level of hunger. So it was liberating to be forced to eat dinner earlier to fit in with my parents over Easter. Now I need to carry on the habit!

Hopefully the next post will report a more refreshed and heavier me....we'll see. Thanks for reading!

Drained to exhaustion...but now it's time to start fighting

I am thoroughly Big Banged Out. Anyone who has experience with small children knows how exhausting they are but multiply that by 70,000….amazingly, I made it through to the other side of the nation's largest Science and Technology fair for young people. But what have the repercussions been?

As I mentioned in my last post, I set myself the challenge of not exercising during my stint of volunteering at the Big Bang Fair, partly because I would have to get up ridiculously early to do it, and also because I knew the work it self would be demanding. After all, you have to walk miles just to get into the NEC, never mind what goes on inside! Nevertheless, separated from my beloved spin bikes, I had expected my weight to creep up a little.

Oh the irony! Teaching people about the science of flavour perception

But there was little chance of this. Each day, I worked almost flat out from 9.30-4.00 pm, barely looking up for four hours at a time as I fought to keep up with the endless queues of children. “Lunch” was a snatched salad and a herbal tea – barely 200 calories if that. All my carefully packed snacks languished in my bag as my usual hunger cues became buried under an onslaught of adrenaline. In one sense, it was truly wonderful to become so utterly absorbed that I forgot food, forgot hunger and became briefly free from intrusive thoughts of sugary snacks or guilt about what I had consumed that day. From the view of personal fulfilment, it was a deeply rewarding experience: there is nothing quite as magical as inspiring young children with something you are passionate about! But from a personal health point of view, it was a disaster zone which should have been roped off with red tape.

Releasing a party popper in slow motion in the BBC Tent

When I returned to Sheffield on Sunday, I was so exhausted that the last stretch to my flat seemed to take forever. Several times I literally stopped dead in the street, staring blankly at my feet until I could persuade them to move again.

So I couldn’t be too surprised to see that there had been no change on the scales this morning.

Learning open heart surgery in the Live Operating Theatre

Which means that, although my only desire is to sleep, sleep, sleep - I must pick myself up and start the real challenge. I have scarcely more than two months to save my PhD. Whilst I stayed with my parents during my time at the BBF, we had several hard talks together and I was forcibly confronted with the fact that I am a continual source of worry for them, and will be until things are drastically different. I realise now that all my “plans” and “changes” so far have been based on the “rules” for healthy people. But now I know that when you are recovering from an eating disorder, all the rules go out of the window. It is no longer a case of any calories going in being used mainly for basal metabolism and any additional physical activity. On the contrary, the body is in a severe deficit with a backlog of repairs to address. I don’t know how much damage, if any, I have on the inside which is preventing me from putting on weight. But as my diet so far hasn’t worked, I have to presume that there is some.

After trawling the internet, I came across some calorie figures. One young lady described how she put on a pound a week on 2,500 calories a day, with no exercise. So for starters, I have to make sure that I am eating that amount every day at least. If I want to carry on exercising, then I will have to eat more on those days to compensate.

Who knew what you could build from newspaper?!

I start this new plan today. It will be tough: this morning I “indulged” in a spin class so I have a bit of a deficit to make up. But the push has to turn to a shove now. It’s the only way I can start to break the grip of this vile and fickle illness. And if this plan still doesn’t work….then I will have to be more drastic still and tear up my gym membership card!

I’ll let you know how this week goes…thanks for sharing it with me.

I will be writing a blog post about my Big Bang Fair experience for my other blog, Science as a Destiny if you are interested!

Banging Around back in Birmingham...

Why do I leave things to the last minute? I hate the feeling of being on an express train hurtling ever faster through the days, with the constant mantra playing through my mind Time Running Out, Time Running Out....

I now have less than two and a half months to put on a stone to make my target weight or I will lose my PhD.

Those words look so frightening... you must wonder why I don't simply GET A MOVE ON ALREADY!!! 

Please understand that back in October, I had NO idea how hard this would be or how long it would take. After all,the pervasive message in society is that it is all too easy to put on weight and that we could all do with losing a few pounds. I feel that anyone would put on weight with the amount I am eating - it's so much volume, I seem to do nothing but eat! But then there are three points which I have come to realise through family, friends and the incredible Internet community:

1. A lot of what I eat is just water and cellulose

2. I do not know how much of a backlog my body has of internal repairs to address before it can put on fat deposits.

3. Even the diet I eat now might be 'restrictive' for the exercise schedule I keep up.

With anorexia, the rules for weight gain go out of the window. All the 'wisdom' I had followed before was based on healthy people, who can say with reasonable accuracy "If I add in 500 extra calories each day on top of my normal diet, I can expect to gain half a pound a week,etc'. But in this condition, the rules go out of the window. I have seen the oft quoted figure that anorexics need 3,000 calories a day to even START gaining weight...and that is with NO EXERCISE WHATSOEVER.

Yesterday, I checked my weight again. STILL no change. 

Something in me is starting to snap. I have felt very depressed at work recently, hating myself for letting this vile, vicious little voice of negativity keep me from doing what I want, doing what I love. WHY do I listen to it??! It does not want me to be happy, it does not wish me well - it mocks me, keeping me in a job washing test tubes and cleaning up bacteria when I could be doing my own research! WHY am I so naive to think that anything good can come out of this??

Will I give up exercise? Will I chuck in another 500 calories? I have to do SOMETHING and soon...

But for this week, I am back at my parents house whilst I volunteer for the Big Bang Science Fair at the NEC. Normally, I would have got up extra early to fit in a cardio HIIT workout before a full day of work giving science demonstrations to endless kids with manic energy. But yesterday's result gave me the imepus to give myself a blanket ban on exercise during this visit. After all, the work itself is exhausting!

I need to take a serious think about what BIG change I will make when I go back to sheffield though. And it HAS TO BE DONE. Or I need to stop telling people that I am halfway through a PhD. 

Phew, one day in and I am already exhausted. But then, I have fitted countless pacemakers today....yes,the organs are real but don't worry - they are from pigs, not people!

Thanks for reading

A update on The Walk...

They do say that time passes more quickly as you get older, but spring has really caught me unawares this year so I am a little behind in planning my big challenge for the summer. But after confronting   some stark realities, I have made a difficult decision.

At 268 miles, with some of the toughest ascent in the country, I think the Penine Way may be a bit more than I can realistically take on. Besides this, the sheer length of the route would make logistics very tricky ( especially as I almost certainly wouldn't be strong enough to carry any camping gear), but the key factor for me is the weather. Whilst I don't mind ( and even expect!) a bit of rain during the British Summer, it's the wind that does it for me. My last walking weekend away ended in diasaster when we attempted a ramble in a howling gale. I literally couldn't stand up against it, and managed only ten paces at a time before being blown over into the heather. In the end, a strong gentleman had to take me by the arm and escort me most of the way home. As many parts of the Penine Way are exposed and remote, high winds would likely be quite an issue at times. Clearly, I have to get some more ballast first! As such, I won't be attempting the Penine Way this summer. But I haven't given up on my dream to walk it one day; hopefully it will be a splendid way to reconnect with the real world again after writing my thesis!

So, it's going to be Offa's Dyke instead, a 177 mile route that roughly follows the English-Welsh border. It may be a considerable drop in distance, but it still packs in 28000 foot of ascent, roughly the height of Everest. I will be starting a page soon detailing my planned stages and I have an exciting training walk lined up in the Lake District in May/June so will be posting on that soon, if only so you can avoid your holiday on the same week as it's bound to rain!

But I would like to extend an invitation now to all of you who have had the care and compassion to follow this blog to join me in walking any of the sections of the trail. If you fancy a day's ramble in the glorious  English-Welsh countryside, it would be wonderful to have your company. I'm prepared to go it alone, but I have learnt that recovery is a journey that may start with yourself, but that will ultimately involve so many people. 

Maybe in a year or two...

Meanwhile, I had a bit of worrying news last week....according to my last blood test, my blood glucose levels were abnormally low at 1.8 ( normally, it should be at least 4) . And yet I hadn't even fasted, having eaten my usual breakfast. At first I dismissed this, thinking it was a mistake but then I began to wonder....perhaps those little things that have been nagging me for a while now - feeling a bit nauseous sometimes in the mornings, my heart fluttering a bit if I get up too suddenly, feeling so tired at times that I just slump against the wall at the bottom of the stairs- perhaps these weren't simply due to lack of sleep after all. It has unnerved me as one of the conditions for my return to my PhD is that my bloods are stable. M suggested it may be because I eat a lot of fruit, and fructose can cause a spike in insulin levels. It's something I'm going to have to keep an eye on. Fingers crossed the next test will be clear.

I hope you are enjoying a restful weekend, ready for the week ahead. Thank you for reading.

This CAN'T go on....

Another rollercoaster week, flickering past with both happy highs and terrible lows...

First up - today's weight check. I was confident that I would see some progress - there had to be, with all this food I'm eating! But the scales had only moved imperceptibly, perhaps not at all. I thought I had seen a slight increase but at the clinic today my weight measurement was recorded the same as my last visit - two weeks ago. After chucking in a "colossal" amount of extra fuel....no real change.

So the problem has to be the exercise. And I find it so so hard to break the gym habit. I can manage one full day's rest a week but have struggled to make it two. The trouble is, I rationalise that "weight training isn't as hard as cardio so my weight training session counts as a rest really...". It may not even come down to a case of how much I do or don't do exactly. As I have come to believe, intense exercise puts the body into a state of "stress", as it cannot differentiate between a fierce workout in the gym and being chased by a lion. If I constantly subject my body to this treatment, without building in adequate time for recovery, how can I expect it to relax enough to start investing in laying down reserves of fat and muscle again?

It was easier to cope with when I just blindly obeyed the voice that compelled me to march to the gym every day. But now that I am aware of time running out, part of me is starting to fight it. Monday evenings are the worst - I come back from a long day at work, tired, exhausted and yearning for sleep but no, to the gym I must go for "a few weights and a bit of cardio" - and this was meant to be my rest day! I usually end up sobbing on the floor of the changing rooms until I finally give in, so spent that all I can do is go through the motions on the machines until I can finally go home, embarrassed and feeling utterly degraded.

I am fed up with feeling how pointless and futile my life is - how pointless and futile I, MYSELF, have made it. I am now at the point where I cannot even IMAGINE how it is to be free from incessantly worrying about food and whether calories in = calories out. I go to the gym and work out just so I can eat, but I don't even enjoy food anymore. I feel as though I am just putting food in my mouth for the sake of it. There is no taste anymore. Even the ice cream cone I had for supper last night (calorie counted of course!) just tasted of cardboard mush.

Last weekend, I went to see the film "He named me Malala" about the Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot by the Taliban for demanding that girls be allowed to go to school. Her courageous story put me to shame. I was seized with such a yearning to live for a cause bigger than me, to be able to selflessly dedicate my life to a cause as she has done. Oh, how can I live with myself , I with everything handed to me on a plate, in this land of opportunities - and who have retreated into a self-absorbed world of consumption?

But I still hope that my diet plan WILL have an effect in time - after all, I don't know what, if any, internal organ damage needs to be addressed before any fat deposits can go on. If there is no change come next week though, I need to make myself uncomfortable. I keep telling myself that I might feel bad for missing a gym session but I will feel a whole lot worse if I lose my PhD! In the meantime, I am going to arrange a system with the instructors at the gym so that I check in and out with them each time. That way, they can make sure I can't be tempted to keep adding more things to my workout sessions: I do what I tell them in advance I will do, then LEAVE.

Phew! With all that, I will have to post my update on the walk later on this week. But I will leave you with this picture, which I found last time I went home. I drew it during my last relapse as a reminder of those darkest nights when I would lie in bed, bone pressing on bone, yearning to sink into the oblivion of blissful sleep but knowing I would wake up with aches all over from where the mattress pressed into my frame.

I can't go there again. I WON'T.

Truth, lies, progress and...cake

Aside from one meltdown in the gym,the time since my last post has been pretty positive. It's been one week today since I introduced my 'improved diet' and when I checked my weight this morning, the scales had crept up a little...so I am finally making progress in the RIGHT direction! But I can't fool myself into thinking that everything will just follow on naturally from here, I need to keep my eye on the clock to make sure I arrive at the target on time. I only have three months left and, as the countdown shows, time is ticking away...

And how have I been coping with the changes? I have generally been managing my bigger breakfasts and lunches, even though I feel it is a lot of food - and more nutrient dense than my usual bowls of 'rabbit food'- fruit and salad. But I won't be continuing with the 'post workout recovery drinks" for purely practical reasons. At the end of the day, I have to make sure any changes are ones that I can manage over the long term and it's quite a faff to prepare these from scratch each time, as I don't have enough fridge space to keep ready made ones. Then there's the fact that I usually exercise either just before breakfast or dinner so don't feel much like a milky drink then anyway! 

A big achievement though, has been to stop calorie counting my 'after lunch treat' and base this simply on portion size, just like I used to do, rather than poring over the nutritional information on the packet with a calculator. It is so lovely to be a bit more relaxed around this 'daily indulgence' as it opens the door to spontaneity.  For instance, I've been fortunate to have one or two events on this week ( see my other blog for details-  http://scienceasadestiny.blogspot.co.uk) and it was so lovely to simply be able to help myself to one of the little brownies on the lunchtime buffet, without worrying that I couldn't work out exactly how many calories were within that gorgeously fudge interior. And it meant I could make a cake! I haven't baked anything for a long time and had forgotten how much I enjoy the creativity of putting different ingredients together. Not quite MasterChef standard but that's not really the point is it?!

A pastry-free version of Bakewell Tart - and with strawberries instead of jam! 

On the other hand, so far I haven't cut down much on the cardio but I have a long overdue session booked in with M to get my focus back on swapping some of the spinning for building myself up with the weights.

I've also been trying to get a handle on my thoughts and have been going through the CBT notes from my last relapse. When I was in Church in Sunday, it suddenly struck me that this whole illness, despite being primarily manifest to outsiders as a physical disease, has all been caused by my listening to lies inside my head. And that is not so very different to those who struggle and suffer with any addiction - gambling, spending, pornography. We listen to a voice that tells us these things will make us feel valued or better or more able to cope with things - that they will ease some part of our suffering and feelings of inadequacy. But even if they do, it is only for a short while and at their heart, they are all false: promises built on lies.

It reminded me of when Jesus was tempted by Satan, the 'Father of Lies', in the desert and how he confronted his deceit by standing on the truth: It is written...It's time I started to do the same, and base my life and actions on truths that will not change rather than false promises. In that moment , I prayed for peace and suddenly felt a blissful serenity, where I was free from worry and anxiety and negative compulsions. Since then of course, the world and its worries have returned but I have felt generally more peaceful over the past few days.

So it has been a positive month so far, apart from having to make a difficult decision. But I will save that for the next post. I hope March so far has been kind to you too.