In Sickness and in Health

Hi there everyone!

So I got a little sick a while ago. It was nothing major, just a very mild stomach bug. In fact, it was so minor that I didn't even vomit, nor have to call in sick for work (although I did come home an hour early one day).  It was basically just 3-4 days of general stomach soreness and nausea. Just enough that I didn't feel like doing anything, thus missing out on an opportunity to do another Halloween nail design and spending a fair amount of time lying down and generally feeling a little grossed out by the thought of food.

In big scheme of things, it was legitimately nothing.

But it really threw me. It affected me much more than it should have. And not just because I really don't deal well with nausea. It really threw me mentally.

Over those 3-4 days, I had a very small breakfast on all of them and had a small lunch one day and a tiny dinner once or twice. Which, is totally normal when you are sick in the stomach and food just seems a little repulsive - it's not nice feeling.

However, those couple of days with very little food broke down a lot of firmly built mental walls in my mind. In case you didn't know, I've recently updated my little bio (it's on the right under my picture) and my Disordered Story page to change my 'recovering' status to one of 'remission'. And let me tell you - I felt great being able to do that. When I made that decision, I really felt like I'd made it. I hadn't had an disordered thought in months and I couldn't actually remember the last time I consciously restricted in any form, whether it by large amounts of exercise or reducing food intake.

But anyway, back to my Mental Barriers.

They were pretty strong and very firm. I was very separated from my eating disorder. I was a free woman.

Source

But then I was eating very small amounts of food for a couple of days. And once again, I'll reiterate - that was not a disordered action, it was due to a stomach bug. It was purely physical. But the effects were mental as well.

I started catching myself thinking how about how nice it was to not to have to be thinking about eating, about how much weight I could lose if I just ate a bit less and how I was silly to be eating more when obviously I could get away with eating less.


And then I was like, 'woah, hold up there mate'. I hadn't had thoughts like that in months and months. And suddenly they were all rushing back. All because of a stomach bug?!

However, my stomach was still protesting quite a bit at this point and food was still repulsing me quite a bit and so it was with mixed feelings I allowed myself to continue to not really eat. On one hand, this was what my disordered side wanted, it was rejoicing! But on the other, more logical and rational hand, I knew that I couldn't let myself slip into bad habits again. But I also knew that I had to listen to my body. And that was firmly telling me 'no food'.

Luckily, it was only 3-4 days of this before my stomach decided it was okay to have food again and stopped making me need to spend large amounts of time lying down.

But by that time, I was happily riding the high of not eating. And I know it's terrible and extremely unhealthy but people that have suffered from eating disorders will know what I'm talking about (I'm assuming so anyway. Maybe it's an individual thing. I don't know. But anyway, it's how I feel). It's a lovely, floaty, weightless feeling. It makes me feel kind of clean, like I'm unsullied by the muck and mud that is food. It's hovering there just on the edge of uncontrollable anxiety, but as long as I stay off the food, I can continue to hover there in that alert, hyper aware state.

It's kind of peaceful, but also not fully so. Imagine that sun is actually a roaring bushfire and that's the sort of peace it gives me. Nice, but with an edge of panic.  Source

It's also really, really unhealthy and that feeling could lead me into an early grave.

So I fought the anxiety and the crazy thoughts and said good-bye to that feeling and started eating more as soon as I started to feel better.

But all of a sudden, it was like I was back at the beginning of recovery. I wanted to eat, I was hungry as hell, but I couldn't. My stomach couldn't take much food. My stomach was full, but my mind (and body) were hungry. Being hungry I could understand. I was in a calorie deficit. I hadn't eaten enough for my body and now I needed to eat more for a little while to make up for it. But I couldn't. It was like my stomach had shrunk back down to a tiny size and I couldn't eat enough. And I'm not talking huge amounts of food either. I'm talking like one piece of toast and I'm stuffed. That's not normal for me. Normal for me is at least two pieces of toast and eggs and some fruit and that's about right for breakfast for me.

It really worried me. And I kept second guessing myself. Was I really not hungry? Or was the disordered part of my brain trying to trick my body into believing that. Was I falling back into disordered habits? Or was I just recovering from an illness. Did I really have an illness? Or was that the disordered part of me again? Was I even a human? Or maybe I was secretly a blue elephant.

All of those questions went through my mind. Well, not the last one....

I swear that I didn't put that question in just so I could use this picture. Source

Looking back, it seems ridiculous that I worried so much of what seems like such a small thing but at the time, it was a very big thing. The fact that it only took two days of low eating to send me back into disordered thoughts scared me more than I would like to admit. There is a reason my Mental Barriers are strong and unyielding (or so I thought).

Luckily, all this coincided with a visit to my therapist and she was able to talk me through this experience and reassure me that no, I was not necessarily slipping back into my eating disorder, that yes, it's very good for you to have picked up on these things and that wanting to keep eating is a very good sign.

As for my magical shrinking stomach, it turns out yes, it had shrunk during the time I was ill. For those that aren't familiar with the shrinking stomach, it's what happens when you eat not enough food for a while and your stomach actually shrinks so you feel full on less food but it's not that great and it means that your body still needs the same amount of food but the stomach is too small to hold it all and end up with this horrific feeling of being busting at the seams but also ravenous. It's very nasty and stressful. So anyway it did shrink while I was sick and it also shrank more than it would have on  regular person because my stomach is a bit more sensitive to changes in food intake because of my restriction in the past.

So basically, it was all an unpleasant experience but as my therapist said 'You noticed the bad thoughts and you did something about them, You kept eating and you kept going because you know that going down the other path is not going to get you anywhere.' And that made me feel proud of myself. I did good. I learned, I coped and I worked with what I had. And that is about the best outcome there could have been, in my opinion.