Friday 21 October 2011

Turn Around

A fabulous 200cal total for breakfast and lunch plus a 620cal burn at the gym and then.....oh a 1000cal binge which resulted in a painful purge (west indian hot pepper sauce was consumed...) and guess what?  A huge sense of control...how fucking tragic.  I was so good for so long but that smug little devil in the back of my mind is back saying 'fuck you fat, I'm going to spew my guts out until only bile remains'...Well back into insanity I guess.  I can restrict to about 800cals normally but there's that satisfaction knowing that if you purge that last bit you ate then it's more likely you'll weigh less the next day...I thought I was over this nightmare?!  I didn't want to become another girl spiralling into the abyss, I swore to myself I wouldn't go back to that teenage angst, well honestly I don't have that self-hatred that I used to have but the mia certainly hasn't buried her head in the sand.  The last time I felt truely good about my appearance was when I was 15 and chubby, I'm now 42lbs lighter and feeling fat.  Why should I moan when I only have myself to blame? I don't want to be this obsessed forever but I know that me not ever caring would equal a sudden weight gain, on the other hand exercising & still watching what I eat would equal me now - forever on the brink of another purge. 

I don't like sharing this with you girls, in fact I feel positively wretched that I'm even admitting it.  I don't want to be human, I don't want to be weak.  I constantly tell myself I will achieve my goals and I never let myself doubt that so why should I put doubt into those following me?  Argh.  I will be perfection, I will rise up and take all!...lol, inner ramblings really shouldn't be made public, it only serves to remind me that I have the ability to be utterly delusional.  Well I hate moaning because I hate moaners, although I actually am the agony aunt of my friends... scratch that, it's not that I hate moaners, I suppose with both my brother and my mother having depression growing up I just got sick of everything being so bloody grey and miserable, if you want it - seize it!  Don't just sit there and wallow....obviously depression is an illness but my exposure to it never made me sympathetic, it took away my childhood and made me grow up too fast...I don't ever remember being as immature as all other friends of my age, I could only act immature by getting ridiculously drunk, and even then I was the one holding back everyone else's hair and calling their mothers to come get them or telling them to expect their sons or daughters home paraletic in a paid for taxi.  I suppose I appreciate not letting all of my dignity go, but now when I do get to cut loose I get told off by my bf the next day for being an embarrassment... so it seems I never will get that window back where I could be immature and get away with it. 

So to make up for my mischevious purge I have already done 200 jumping jacks and a range of strengthening exercises from crunches to squats to press ups.  This will probably continue until the bf returns home from his works drinks at midnight.  I will not and cannot gain, I have to lose, I will lose, losing will be my middle name and a roaring stomach will be my best friend.  And now I sound psychotic.  Brilliant.  I wish I could write sensibly and be rational and objective...but hey I'm not in that place right now, my focus will be a 98lb frame and a 1st overall for my 2nd year. Not kidding, THIS IS IT...(ha how many times has that been said on here?!).

Love to you all from Bertha Mason/Antoinette Cosway (well someone who probably resembles her anyway),
xxx

Wednesday 12 October 2011

Busy Bee

Well my past 10 days have been non-stop.  When I'm not in class or in the library I'm studying at home, at the gym, at dance class or out at socials so basically I haven't really seen my boyfriend even though I live with him.  Despite my busy bee schedule and regular exercise I've only managed to go down 1lb, so hurrah I'm back at 109lbs but my body is resisting the shift big time.  I'm so busy though that I'm probs only completing my food diary about 3 days out of 7.  Also I was really good at cutting fat consumption down but that meant that my carb and sodium intake went up which actually made me gain a little so I found when I let my fat intake go up that both my carb and sodium intake went drastically down which then prompted me to lose that precious 1lb.  Maybe the 1lb was purely water retention from my sodium intake?  Well I'm not a dietitician or nutritionist so I don't have a clue.  All I know is that my eating is slightly irratic, the only constant I have is breakfast which is either a protein shake (if going to the gym) or some instant oats (which are great for filling you up).  Sometimes I'll have three 'meals' a day and others - like today - I'll only get in a breakfast and a supper.  Basically on a Wednesday I have classes and workshops straight through 11am-4pm so my lunch today was two cans of coke zero that I'd managed to pack in my bag this morning.  You may think it's great but the consequence is that I had to miss my dance class because a) I was too tired to go and b) I had joint pain which had set in and I couldn't go and buy any ibuprofen until I'd finished for the afternoon.   So now my brain is slow and fried and I'm struggling to concentrate on my translation work for tomorrow, plus I have a whole play to read and notes to prepare for our workshopping (free translation) of certain scenes...I love the modules I'm doing, they're soooooo interesting and really get the creative juices flowing but I wish there were more hours in a day. 

There's a girl on my course who has lost soooooo much weight from last year, she is anorexic I'm pretty sure, I mean she's tiiiiiny now and out at a social she started talking to me about how she overdid the gym last year and she's quit it this year because it was a problem and I literally cut her off and started talking about myself and then moved onto another subject...like I knew she was about to admit her problem but I just couldn't let her do it because in a way I want(ed) to be like her, to have the willpower to just not eat and exercise 24/7 and if she has a problem then I would have a problem and that is NOT ok.  Her size UK4 clothes just hang off her...I know that I wouldn't want to be that small because I'm too vain and if I got to that point my face would be emaciated and I simply couldn't have that, plus I have a tendency for bad skin so if I wasn't getting my Vit A then I would look pretty dire.  But I reeeeally want to make it down to a size UK4, I'm just into size UK6 (bottoms - that's how I measure my size because my top half has always been petite but with big elephant legs) so I reckon another 7lbs and I'll be into US size 0 territory.  I don't know what it is but other girls who look the same size as me tend to weigh about 5-7lbs less, I mean my boyfriend's step-mother is the same height as me and a size up in clothing but she weighs 104lbs...my mother always told me her side of the family had 'heavy bones' but I just thought it was an old wives' tale used as an excuse for being fat, anybody  know anything about bone density?

It's my mum's birthday this weekend so I'm off to visit la familia outside of London...Since I am expected to stay for the whole weekend I will have to pack all the work I need to do for Monday and Tuesday (Monday is super busy and I'm out and about until 9pm what with my extra curricular stuff so not much chance of getting work done then) and lug it up there, my Spanish-English dictionary is a bit hefty...

Anyway enough of complaining, I'm sooooo excited about this year, all my modules are fandabadosie and I'm planning my year abroad - currently looking at Medellín in Colombia as it has some private Universities that I could go to and because they're not the competitive state ones it means there's not much of a problem when you fail to turn up for a few classes and happen to go work and travel a bit during term time...hmm sounds tempting. 

Lots of love from a severely disordered girl
xx

Wednesday 5 October 2011

Kick Start

Hey everyone,

Here's another apology for being a 3rd-rate blogger, I've just been so busy getting everything ready for Uni, working full time and then entertaining people who were staying.  I'm now into my 3rd day of Uni and have kick started myself back into a promising gym routine.  I'm doing an hour 4 days a week at the gym of pure hardcore cardio and now I've joined the gospel choir dance group (2hours a week) and Ballet (1hour a week) so I should be getting 7 hours of exercise a week which is quite good.  I also have 3 extra hours of language lessons on a Monday and various Hispanic Society commitments throughout the Semester so I'm becoming one busy busy lady.  I kind of kicked back last year and got slobbish but I believe keeping busy makes me think I have no time to do work and therefore makes me very efficient when it comes to studying (i.e. studying every spare moment I have).  It also makes me more social as I appreciate time off and actually make the effort to go out and meet up with folk.

I won't lie, I haven't done so well weight-wise.  I am still 110lbs but I was up to 112lbs again which scared me shitless and brought about my subsequent return to 110.  I've recently found out about my general stomach and gut problems, well I've had them for years but only just had a diagnosis.  I have a hiatus hernia which is when the stomach protrudes through the diaphragm, so it's like a normal hernia but just in a different area, I basically have to stop eating acidic things and be on medication for the rest of my life, if I still don't get an improvement I can go in for surgery but I'd rather avoid that - getting spliced open is not my idea of a solution... I also had some blood tests done for allergy testing and I've found out that I do indeed have a wheat allergy which was a relief but I also found out I'm allergic to egg whites, peanuts, hazelnuts, almonds and sesame seeds...as you can imagine I was slightly miffed about this outcome.  Now my reactions are not massive, I just getting stomach pains, gas, diarrhoea and a general sense of nausea after eating these things so I could in theory go on eating them but just with great discomfort.  I have now been off all of these things for a whole week and I have to admit I feel fantastic, it's sickening to think I can never have peanut butter again or Nutella but I just have to live with it.  I thought my biggest hurdle would be the egg whites but actually I've found that nuts are literally in fucking everything, I feel sorry for people with full-blown nut allergies because it's horrific the amount of stuff you can't eat - this is mainly because of factories not separating lines that handle nuts.  Obviously if the actual foodstuff only says that the product was made in a factory handling nuts then I still eat it because I know my allergy is only small.  Although I was shocked to see how much chocolate contains nuts, not just traces but actual nuts as ingredients...it was depressing.  I have 'moderate' allergies to wheat and hazelnuts and then 'low' allergies to everything else but it's just going to make New Year in Austria this year very interesting because everything Christmas-ie there contains nuts or wheat...luckily I can still have the gluhwein, at least I think nutmeg is still safe, and jagertee is definitely allowed.  I'm now trying to find recipes for lentils and pulses in order to get some kind of fibre as I'm currently surviving on Fybogel to keep me regular and not backed up like a balooned whale. 

Avoiding all of the above is nigh on impossible and has made it highly embarrassing visiting restaurants this past week as it has then limited my choices to about one meal on the entire menu, which is great for me in terms of controlling weight but I feel self-conscious that I'm being too picky.  Also if it turns out that I can only eat one choice which I don't actually like then I become the annoying fussy eater, and believe me although I have issues I am not a fussy eater...I find myself cursing those people on Come Dine With Me who hate everything that's put in front of them - I'm like "why on earth did you go on a cooking programme if you don't like food?!".  I love food and I'm sure I always will but I just control the quantity - as they say it's quality not quantity.  Speaking of which, this new tapas bar around the corner from me is increíble!  It's immensely social, you just stand around and chat and drink with friends while you select small dishes for you all to tuck into and nibble at, the atmosphere is just superb but it is packed everyday of the week even at lunchtime so you have to pick your moment.  Basically it is the most authentic tapas environment I've experienced in the UK, it reminds me a lot of being in Valencia but in all honesty I can't really comment on the tapas scene as I've never been to Sevilla which is THE place for tapas.

Anyhoos I better dash, I've got a chunk of reading for tomorrow plus ballet this evening so I'll say chau for now. 

Saludos de Londres,
Abrazitos
xx