Best foot forward....

It's challenge time! This week I am heading off to the Lake District with the aim of covering 50 miles and 24 mountains in four days. Along the way, I will be staying at the YHAs at Langdale, Helvellyn, Keswick and Borrowdale, and also with my lovely extended family in Windermere. My route is based on a walk featured in the YHA's magazine, The Wanderer (see photo below).

It should give me a good indication of whether I have a chance of completing the 80-mile White Peak Way in August. But it will also push me out of my comfort zone in other ways. Will I be able to cope with going so long without any intensive sessions at the gym? Will I be able to stand up to the inevitable gales and freezing temperatures of exposed summits? And what about that dreaded subject - the food.

My route may feature oodles of Wainwrights, but it doesn't pass by many shops! It may be that I will have to eat foods which I normally avoid. I can only pack what I can carry so will have to be strategic and include some high-calorie options. Given that I am still a little off from my target, I have to be sure that, not only do I maintain weight, but I actually put some on as well. This may be difficult as I have no idea how many calories I will use. To me, walking just doesn't compare with blasting through an hour's spin or cardio HIIT session. But ask me after the first 20 miles and I may have changed my mind!

It would be quite an achievement though, if I could just arrive at the next hostel, after a glorious day on the fells, and happily choose something off the menu like a normal person. No worrying about rich sauces, no asking to go "potatoless", no hiding the pudding menu before I can see it and be "tempted". I know I used to be able to do this when I was a child...but it's been far, far too long.

Fingers crossed for good weather! I will let you know how I managed when I return - I'm off to the land of no WIFI!

A milestone at last! (so why can't I be happy?!)

Every time I go to work, I board a tram bound for a place called (rather romantically I think!) as "Halfway". And now I have finally arrived there myself.

I am past halfway towards my target weight for getting back onto my PhD course! And given that I initially spent a lot of time going backwards at first, it becomes even more of an achievement. I am already feeling the benefits: at my last weight-training session, I was able to move up to a heavier weight for three of my exercises and I have been hitting higher speeds on the spin bikes too. Even outside the gym, I generally feel more powerful, more present and more alive.

So it's excellent news! Why then am I not dancing on air? Instead, why has my mood been so wretched for the past few weeks? I don't like to use the word "depression" as I feel this term gets bandied about too easily - there is a real distinction between clinical depression and "feeling a bit down". But when you feel so overwhelmed with sadness that you literally stop dead in the middle of the street and burst into tears, then something is clearly wrong. It embarrasses me when I get upset in front of others (and I thank the three strangers who kindly escorted me home), but I am so tired and drained and worn out all the time that I simply cannot hold it all in any more. Just one of the many, many things 'Anna' has robbed me of is a stiff upper lip!

I've also been having a bit of a body crises. My stomach still gives me grief at times, becoming so bloated and filled with gas that I wish I could take a knife and rip it out of my chest. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it - although perhaps that tin of rice pudding was a bad idea.... I oscillate between getting fired up about the latest natural remedy - probiotics? turmeric? sauerkraut? - and just feeling resigned to being plagued by it for life.

It makes me feel fat, ugly and grossly distorted. Everywhere I go, I see people who are thinner than me and the gym seems to be populated by lithe figures with gazelle legs. Surely all these people weigh less than me?! So why are they able to go to university and do all they want to do and I can't? Surely it can't be true? Is it all in my head? I don't know anymore - I can't tell what's real and what's fiction - what is truth and what is a lie whispered by 'Anna'.

I'm sorry to end on such a miserable note. But I promise a more upbeat post soon, when I will be outlining my challenge for next week. Five whole days away from the gym: instead, I will be in the Lake District for my training walk for the big trek in August. Just hoping I haven't bitten off more than I can chew...

Thanks for reading, enjoy the rest of this week!

Bumps in the journey

Since the 'epiphany moment' of my last post, I'm afraid things haven't continued quite as smoothly as you might have hoped. At first things looked promising - I made a real effort to increase my calorie load and I did manage to gain some weight. And rather than planning and calorie-counting all my meals in advance, it was wonderful to do this intuitively by listening to the rhythms of my appetite and adding more when my body gave me hunger. Frustratingly, this never seems to follow any logical pattern: at times when I really ought to be hungry, I'm often not and at other times I eat a good meal only to feel even more hungry afterwards!

But then I pushed things too far by introducing foods which I know my stomach struggles to handle. Either a bowl of cereal or a pack of spicy mushrooms put my stomach out of sorts and I felt sick, miserable and bloated for days. Eating was the last thing I felt I should do and my calorie intake slipped a bit. So it looks as though curries and Wheatabix may forever be off my shopping list....

Finding out just how much a pound or two weighs in the Victorian kitchen at Charlecote Park

Fortunately it had mostly cleared up by the time I travelled back to the West Midlands on Thursday to spend the weekend with my parents. But this started disastrously when, stupefied with fatigue from sleep deprivation, I struggled to choose a meal from the Chinese takeaway menu. This really upset my parents, especially my Dad, as they saw this as proof that nothing had changed: I was still the awkward, anorexic daughter who couldn't eat a normal meal with her family. In this fraught exchange, I realised how scared they were that my positive words were only that: words and no more. I can't really blame them, after all they have watched me 'start a new chapter of my life' many times before only for me to relapse again. Quite understandably, they carry real doubt that I will succeed and make it back to my PhD on time. 

Things could have gone downhill from here, but I managed to turn it around. At least our altercation made me realise that there was NO WAY I could do any exercise at home without racking the tension up sky high. So my workout gear stayed in my bag and I didn't even set the alarm. In fact, the weekend felt horrifically lazy given the gently nature of the activities we did together; a trip the cinema, wandering round a National Trust Property, visiting neighbours. I did have some guilty thoughts ('Oh gosh, right now I would be at circuits class!') but remembering the disbelief on my parent's faces spurred me on. Even when I cheered my Dad on in the local Fun Run and was confronted with the sight of hundreds of runners, I managed to keep myself from joining in!

Apparently this is a family tradition...my Dad used to come to Henley Ice Parlour as a boy

Altogether the visit could have been better, but it could have been a lot lot worse. I wish I could stop my family, and all those who are good enough to care about me, from worrying overnight but I know there is only one way I can do this. I have to keep pressing on no matter how I feel: only when I reach my target will I have earned the right to rest. 

And time is getting critical now. Time to press on.

A new body and a new mind...

Everything is different now.

For those of you who read this blog regularly (big thank you! ), this may very well be the post that you have been waiting for, 

I finally feel ready to change, ready to walk away from anoreixa and into a different life. Ready to let go and trust my body and love it for what it is, or what it is meant to be.

A lot of things have been leading up to this moment. All the people praying and hoping for me, the growing realisation that my choices do affect and hurt others, the internal gathering of everything I have read, every word of advice, every encouragement from all the people who have cared enough to get in touch.... But the crunch point came when I stepped on the scales yesterday morning.

Despite eating 'gargantuan' amounts for the past week, I hadn't gained anything.

In fact, according to my therapist, I had actually lost a little weight. In that moment, my PhD seemed to take a huge step even further away from me and something just snapped. Suddenly, counting calories just didn't seem important any more. But starting to live in a way that doesn't make those I love worry about me did. I don't want this any more. There will be no more weighing, checking food labels, measuring out, fretting. No more attitude of "Dear body you can have this many calories and no more for I must dictate control". I want to eat like I used to do as a child - intuitively, listening and responding to my body's needs. From now on, I will only use my scales when I bake cakes.

But of course, for the time being, it is still important for me to monitor my intake, if I am going to reach my target. Which begs the question: why did I lose weight? However, I'm pretty sure I have the answer to this one. All I have lost is water weight. From all the stories of recovery I have come across online, this is to be expected and it is a positive stage in recovery, one which precedes real gains. My distended stomach and bloated legs were not just in my imagination. Even before I weighed myself, I had noticed that I was noticeably leaner.

Pushing them out!

And I love it. I LOVE my new body - I feel so much more powerful and alive. I feel like I have a presence of my own again rather than being just a shadow. I am now addicted to feeling POWERFUL instead of hungry. And I am already feeling the benefits - I used to have to do press ups on my knees, but now I am on my toes. At my weights session this evening, I was able to push out more repetitions on the higher weights. It doesn't take me so long to get home from the tram stop - I pick up my feet instead of dragging them. I am determined that this is only the beginning of better things to come.

But don't get me wrong - it won't be plain sailing. 'Anna' still has a home in my mind, until I can evict her for good and clean up her mess. Meanwhile, I have a deadline to meet and I am not even halfway.

It looks as though it will be a fight to the finish, but at least my body and I are now on the same side.

Thank you for reading! :)