(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!