Saturday, January 15, 2011

Dialog in my head.

-"Look at you! You fat pig. You ate such a huge snack! What the hell is wrong with you anyways. Why don't you have any control over yourself and your diet anymore?"

- "I am not fat, I am BLOATED. There is a difference you know. And my snack wasn't so huge. It was a large apple, 2 rice crackers with cottage and cream cheese and some chickpeas. The fact that I chose to eat a few teaspoons of cream cheese plain does not make it a binge."

-" It was full fat remember. You didn't know that when you ate it, did you?"

- "No I didn't and guess what - it's ok. I didn't have much fat in my food today anyways, so this should about balance it out."

- "Look at you though. Your stomach looks distended. You must have eaten waaaay too much. "

- "I didn't okay. And even if I did, so what? One day of eating too much will not hurt me. People do it all the time and live to tell the tale. So I'll be ok."

(A few hours later when after some exercise.)

- "Look at your blubbery stomach. You should have worked out for much longer. You aren't fatigued, which means you didn't do enough."

- "You know, I work out because it's healthy to exercise, not because I want to lose weight."

- "Yeah , Yeah. But you do want to tone and gain muscle, right? For that you need to push yourself to the point of exhaustion."

- "I AM tired and I exercised enough. Any more would be obsessive and not because I want to but because you're telling me to. And in case you haven't noticed, I haven't followed your advice in a while."

- "Well, at least don't eat a proper dinner. You ate a HUGE snack remember. Besides you're not even THAT hungry. No one will care or even know if you ate or not."

- "I WILL know. And food is medicine and I need to eat to live. So hungry or not I will eat something substantial. So you might as well leave now, because I'm obviously not going to follow your advice. As a matter of fact I am going to take it a step further and refuse to examine myself in the mirror or even allow myself the time to analyze what you have to say. So shut up and leave me alone!"

This dialog hasn't finished yet, but I am ignoring the rest of it. My life is more then food and weight and exercise. This dialog in my head, although irritating, is harmless. Today is not the best of days, but tomorrow will be better, I know it. All I have to do is continue to make the right choices each moment of each day.

7 comments:

  1. The healthy voice can win over. When I was in treatment- in cognitive group- we had one person be the ED voice while the other was the healthy voice and it helped a lot because as the debate kept going the ED person's reasoning became more and more absurd. You can do this.

    Stay strong!
    xoxo
    -Lisa

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  2. I really dislike those feelings and dialogues, especially the ones about exercise and not feeling tired enough. =\

    Keep focused and keep fighting against those thoughts like you're doing though! I find myself doing the exact same thing and it works very nicely.

    I also like the new page layout; blue is my favorite. ;)

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  3. You're amazing. You are doing so well! Even though some days can seem incredibly dark and difficult you are coming out of them stronger and with a much more open mind. You rock, L!
    xxx

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  4. Thank you so much for your comment. Your support means a lot.

    I love this post! I have very similar discussions with my ED all the time! Luckily as we move toward recovery, we can come up with sounder logic to throw back at the ED!

    Keep fighting! You are incredible! =)

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  5. Good for you for talking back to the ED voice!!! Keep fighting and moving forward- you are so much stronger than ED! <3

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  6. I love how you respond to ED! You hit him on the head and move forward without letting him get an inch of ground. Very inspiring!

    Jess is right, you are SO much stronger than Ed!!

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  7. Wow, I know this dialog all so well! It gets better though--i promise. YOu keep fighting eventually the voice starts to leave us alone =)

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