Two and a Half Years

It has been two and a half years since I graduated out of the hospital for recovery from an eating disorder.  Two and a half years.  Some days it seems as if the time has flown by.  Other days it feels like it has taken a century for me to make it this far.  With all the work I've done to heal myself, two and a half years later, I'm still in recovery.  I no longer restrict myself from eating food but ED still has power over me because even though I don't restrict I've realized recently that my view towards food hasn't really changed much.  I still use food as punishment or reward.  Mostly as a punishment.
I in no way eat a balanced diet of fruit, vegetables, lean proteins, carbs and fats.  Processed food seems to be what I crave nowadays.  Mostly because it's easy and I don't have to expend too much energy into thinking about what I'm eating.  Which in turn actually causes me to over think the negative aspects of what the food I'm eating is doing to my body.

I thought that by not really thinking about what was being put into my body that I would be able to get over being obsessed about food.  Looks like I was wrong.  I'm still inherently obsessed with food. But instead of being obsessed with restricting myself from it I'm obsessed with the next thing I will put into my mouth.  Lately I seem to crave salty, carb rich, fatty foods.  Not that there is anything wrong with eating those types of foods but in no way does a diet rich in those foods create a healthy person.

The catch though, so it seems, is that my mind is still stuck in the idea that if I don't eat these types of foods then I am restricting myself from "normal eating".  Normal eating is my ultimate goal.  I truly want to be able to look at a food and see it as food and base my wanting to eat it from if it is sounds good, not if I should eat it or not.  Sound confusing?  Yeah, it pretty much is.

I'm reading a book by Jenni Schafer called "Goodbye Ed, Hello Me".  It's about reclaiming your life back from an eating disorder and reach the ultimate goal of being recovered, not in recovery. Ms. Schafer states in her book, as long as I keep giving ED power I will still be in recovery.  I'm stuck right now in that weird place of not wanting to give ED power but not knowing how to reclaim my power back.

Like I said, it's been two and a half years since I graduated from the hospital program.  I thought I would be further along in my journey to being fully recovered.  But I'm not.  I'm where I am, which is, I guess, exactly where I am suppose to be in my recovery.  But not for long.  I don't want to be in recovery anymore.  I want to be recovered.

There is so much that I want to do that it is a little scary at times.  I don't necessarily have the energy to do all I want to do right now, because, well, I'm still not fueling my soul in a healthy way.  But I've reached my limit of playing the victim of ED having this power over me.  I think that is the basic point that is frustrating me.  I'm still playing the victim to ED.  I don't want to play the victim anymore.  I want to just play.  I want to explore life without this following me around like a dark stormy cloud.  I want to be able to just live.  Not live with an eating disorder.

It's taken me two and a half years to make it this far.  I wonder where I'll be in two and a half more years?

What defines me? Not a number!

I weighed myself the other day.  It has been two and a half years since I've known the # of what I weigh.  And now that I know that number I don't really know what to make of it.  I've known for quite a while now that I've gained weight since leaving treatment.  I didn't need a scale to tell me that.  I don't need some foreign abstract number to tell me the obvious in life.
Yet, to be honest, when I saw that number I didn't feel sad, I didn't feel hatred towards myself and I didn't immediately fall to pieces.  What I did feel surprised me because I felt indifferent.  I didn't feel nothing, I just didn't really care what the scale said one way or another.  I didn't sit down and automatically start calculating the amount of weight that I've gained, in fact I still haven't and most likely won't.
It is what it is.  Just a number that has nothing to do with who I am as a person.  It has nothing to do with my health and well being.  It has nothing to do with who I am and what I can contribute to society.
Now let me be clear on something.  It's not as if I'm completely happy with how I look.  I think that the world we live in has caused it to be extremely difficult to be happy with yourself.  (But I'll save that conversation for another day.)  I've wanted to start losing weight once I realized I was gaining weight.  Yet all that does is create and inspire the never ending spiral of dieting, bingeing and self hatred.  So, I'm not dieting.  I'm not really exercising. And in the long run I now realize that I'm not doing much in the way of physical self care.  I don't really have the desire to exercise.  I certainly do not have the energy to be all consumed by food, calories and fat grams.
So why did I step on that scale in the first place?  I'm not really sure.  I guess curiosity got the best of me.
My point of this very scrambled post is this;  Who cares what someone weighs?  It does not inform anyone of what their contribution to society is.  It does not dictate who they are.  Caring about someone's weight does nothing but objectify them.  And no one is an object.
It is high time that we stop looking at the surface of what someone looks like but allow ourselves to look deeper and find out who that person is.  I know I'd surely appreciate that.