Leila's Journey to Life: Eating

Showing posts with label Eating. Show all posts

Saturday, 23 February 2013

Day 187: Sinner and Saint of my own Food Religion

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to when I am hungry or feel like eating something and open the fridge/cupboard to see what food there is – react to what I want to eat when looking at the amount of calories I have connected to the food wherein I still use this point of calories as a measure of ‘what’s good’ and ‘what’s not good’ – where I will feel like eating something but then consider its ‘high calorie content’ and then stop and go for something which has a low calorie content within thinking that that’s ‘the better choice’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to when I have to make a decision about what I am about to eat and open the fridge, to still from time to time scan all the foods and consider all the information I have attached to each particular food present in the fridge and will weight each one’s data against one another and according to that pick what I eat – wherein that moment I completely ‘forget’ about my human physical body and what I as my physical body feel like eating and rather just follow ‘information’ without my decision based on this information being necessarily what is Best for my body

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to when and as I see the thought come up towards a particular food, where I think that I shouldn’t eat it and that it’s ‘no good for me’ in terms of ‘putting on weight’ but then shove the thought aside in a sense of spitefulness and eat it anyway – go into an experience of guilt and regret when finishing the particular food/sweets where I believe I made a mistake and that I am now a failure

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to see and realise how I have created this experience for myself through a Morality character where because I labelled some foods as ‘good’ and some as ‘bad’ and decided to forgo the good for the bad – that I am now a ‘bad person’ because I ‘broke the rules’ and should not have done that

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to see and realise that in turn I am the creator of this Morality character and had to participate within the labelling of things as right and wrong and good and bad and believing in these values for the Morality Character to exist and thus I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to see and realise that my experience is merely the result of my ideas and beliefs and can thus be changed

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to listen to my body when looking into what to eat but instead follow my Food Religion as all the information I have accumulated over time and sorted by relevance in terms of ‘losing/gaining weight’ – where I will eat both the so called ‘good’ and ‘bad’ things and yet depending on the moment can still find myself experiencing adverse effects due to the foods chosen within only looking at the foods in isolation and not considering my body and what I have already eaten / what is compatible within the moment as I only sought compatibility with the ideas and beliefs in my mind in order for myself as my mind to ‘feel better’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to when I find myself eating a food from the bad/fattening category to start thinking of ways I can make it ‘okay’ within considering what I will and will not eat in the future or consider particular exercises/activities as to ‘make up’ for those ‘extra calories’ where I am “calculating” things in my mind – but where I am actually more playing guesswork within trying to ‘calculate’ and ‘rationalise’ the guilt away for eating what I ate instead of looking at my starting point of eating the food and identifying/tracing the origin/emergence of the guilt and correcting myself

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have created a Religion about Food where I can’t just eat and nourish my body because I have made up all these rules and regulations to which I have to abide if I want to be a ‘good girl’ within the religion – while I at the same time constantly looking for/ scouting for loopholes that I can use to escape the very rules and codes I created for myself within my own religion wherein I am constantly shifting from being a faithful servant to a sinner and get lost in inner-conflict as I can’t make up my mind about what I want

Monday, 28 January 2013

Day 171: Hiding behind Anorexia

This blog is a continuation to:
Day 155: Introduction – Starving Myself
Day 156: Wanting Passion and Purpose in Life
Day 157: Generating an Eating Disorder – The Power of Thought - Part 1
Day 158: Generating an Eating Disorder - The Power of Images - Part 2
Day 159: Generating an Eating Disorder – The Power of Writing – Part 3
Day 160: Eating Disorders and Contradictions
Day 161: Become an Image and be Treated as an Image
Day 162: Eating Disorders and Unforetold Consequences
Day 163: Mistaking Obsession for Passion
Day 164: Eating Disorders as Perfection of Mind Dominance
Day 165: Eating Disorders and Real Self-Perfection
Day 166: From Anorexia to Bulimia

Day 167: The Big Fall

Day 168: Always Just out of Reach

Day 169: Turning my Back on Anorexia, Anorexia turning its Back on Me
Day 170: Starving and Binging - Two Sides of the Same Coin

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to within not having been satisfied with myself and my life, have made the decision to pursue an eating disorder in order to make my life more interesting – where I totally and completely submerge myself into this one point of ‘change’ within being unwilling to look at the actual cause/reason as to why I am unhappy/dissatisfied with my life as what is already here and bring about the necessary corrections

Within that I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to within being unhappy/dissatisfied with my life and how things were going -- to not have looked at all the various dimensions/aspects that my life consists of pinpoint what requires correction and have giving it direction to change – but where instead I created an additional point/later/dimension on top of what was already existent, and submerged myself within this point totally and completely to the point that all other dimensions/aspects of my life are ‘pushed away’ and only this one point as an Eating Disorder exists

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to within not being happy/satisfied with my life and not really wanting to look at the origin/cause/reason of this unhappiness/dissatisfaction – have created a point of distraction/entertainment as an Eating Disorder which I submerged and indulged in to the fullest extent, where every moment of my day was tied to this one point which took dominance in my life as coping mechanism where I could be busy/entertained and feel like I was ‘doing something’ and ‘going somewhere’ while all the while I was really hiding from myself and the points that required direction within my life

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to within having found my life dull and boring to have created the point of Eating Disorder within my life as a way to ‘spice up’ and make my life more ‘exciting’ – believing that this was an innocent point and not considering that my constant and continuous participation within this one point would cause it to start leading a life of its own

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to instead of changing my life and the points I was dissatisfied with, have merely mutated my life within adding an additional dimension/aspect within it to entertain and distract myself whereby my life in essence remained the same but went unnoticed within being completely obsessed and involved in this one point as managing an Eating Disorder

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to within making the decision of taking on an Eating Disorder, have only taken into account the mental/mind aspect of my life/reality, where all I cared about was having particular experiences without for a moment looking at and considering the physical implications of such an undertaking, where I utterly and completely disregarded my human physical body and only cared about having a positive energetic experience within losing weight

When and as I see myself seeking out and looking for a point that I can add to my life in order to bring in new energy charges within being unhappy/dissatisfied with my life or finding it dull/boring – I stop and I breathe – I see and realise that I am not interested in real change but want to go for a ‘quick fix’, where instead of investigating why I am unhappy and dissatisfied with my life and giving those points direction to come to a correction – have gone and looked/created an additional point that I can add/integrate to my already existing life in order to bring in something ‘new’ and suppress my current experience – I see and realise that this is not an actual solution but merely covering up / hiding the problem and making it harder for myself to actually bring about change that I can be satisfied with permanently and so I commit myself to stop, breathe and investigate the nature of me looking for a project/point to add to my life to ‘heighten’ the contrast of my living experience so to speak, and commit myself to identify/investigate the cause/origin that triggered this looking for / creation of an additional dimension within my life within investigating who I am and who I live as now, and to see where I can change things to a point of effectiveness so that I do not have to trap myself within a polarity game of energy where I constantly seek out the good to balance out bad without seeing and understanding how these negative and positive experiences came about in the first place

When and as I see myself go into a movement of ‘maybe I can focus on losing weight again’ – I stop and I breathe, I see and realise that I have gone down this road before which is merely a point of distraction to cover up an inherent feeling of dissatisfaction and disappointment with my life and so I commit myself to identify these points of dissatisfaction/disappointment and map them out so that I can work through them within Self Forgiveness and Self Correction

Friday, 25 January 2013

Day 169: Turning my Back on Anorexia, Anorexia turning its Back on Me

Day 167: The Big Fall

Day 168: Always Just out of Reach

I was looking some more at the point of when I stopped as described in Day 167: The Big Fall -- where I caved in and surrender myself to stuffing myself and after that day 'never looked back' so to speak.

What's interesting within this point is how I always told myself and portrayed this event to myself and others as 'the day I decided to stop'. And this is not actually a correct description of what happened.

What essentially happened was that I gave up, I couldn't do it any longer - I failed. But instead of looking at it that way, I made it seem like I gave up on it, because that made me look like a 'stronger' person. It's like dumping someone before they dump you so you're not seen as the weak one. So that's kind of what happened there.

I mean if I could have - I would have continued. And like I mentioned before, I tried from time to time but the moments were short-lived as I would soon give up again and then tell myself 'Nah, that's not interesting / worth it anymore', where I was the one turning my back on ED while I actually experienced it the other way around. But it was easier to tell myself that it was 'my decision' and to take on an attitude of 'I'm over you' so I didn't have to face the sense of failure and giving up on myself that I experienced.

So me 'turning my back' on participating within an Eating Disorder had been a point of spitefulness instead of letting go and actually changing. And so within that, the Eating Disorder still 'won' because I am still carrying that sense of failure and being without direction within my life, where it's still luring over my shoulder from the shadows, reminding me of what I wasn't able to do.

Wednesday, 23 January 2013

Day 167: The Big Fall

Day 166: From Anorexia to Bulimia

I mentioned in one of my previous blogs that I rather did not want to do the whole puking thing, because it seemed like too much of a hassle.

So now that I was in the position where I felt "forced" to puke, because otherwise I would not be able to move/progress any further -- I found the whole puking thing rather interesting. It was as if I had found a 'loophole' or 'cheat'.

Where I had previously been quite strict with myself in terms of my food intake and not eating anything besides that which would 'give me away' -- I now started indulge in bits and pieces. Because now I could tell myself that 'it's alright - you can just puke it out later again, no harm done'. But after doing some 'little' indulging (like say, one slice of chips, or a taste of something sweet) -- I suddenly had this wave or more like tsunami run over me, where I just broke down and STUFFED myself. I had been starving myself for sooo long and not eating any of the foods I so loved before -- and now with this 'cheat': I just caved in. I ate and I ate and I ate and I did not stop until I was as stuffed as I could be. And then the tears came, and the guilt and the shame and the throwing up. I struggled for a while with that, where I would constantly move from one polarity to another, from total strictness to total stuffedness -- where I would deprive myself from foods for a while and then it would just backfire and BAM binge party.

In a way this was cool to really see how we live in polarity designs, going from one polarity to another like a very bouncy ball.

After having puked so much and it having had an impact on my body where I just couldn't handle puking anymore because of the blood and pain involved, I got really scared and wanted to stop. I figured that since I created this condition through deliberately managing my mind to bring about this type of behaviour -- I could now just reverse it using the same techniques again.

I was pretty confident that I could do this, it made sense that since I created it I could also uncreate it. Then I got in for a surprise, because it was not as easy as I thought. In the beginning of my endeavor (as mentioned in Day 157: Generating an Eating Disorder – The Power of Thoughts - Part 1 ) adapting thoughts typical to eating disorder behaviour was very hard as it wasn't automatic and I had to formulate and bring about each thought very specifically. However, as I had now progressed in time -- the thoughts were no longer 'forced' and had become completely automated. So while I thought that I could just 'quickly reverse it' -- I got faced with quite the opposite. It seemed that no matter how hard I tried, the thoughts, the images, the emotional experiences, the swearing at myself -- all those points I took so long to create and imprint within myself -- just wouldn't stop. They were there all the time, around every corner, within every reaction -- it had become my entire reality. Uh oh - crap...

So it was interesting to see how my 'plan' had actually manifested. All the time and energy invested in managing my mind in a forced way had accumulated in it integrating and becoming me. I was no longer controlling my thoughts, my thoughts were controlling me. I got a bit stressed a this point, because I had expected myself to remain 'in control' and now it was getting clear that I wasn't - how was I going to stop?

Then, at some point when I was at my lowest weight (about 52 kgs at 1.78m) and I had been doing the whole not eating thing for quite a long time, we went on a one week holiday by the coast. This was like one of my biggest fears, because I preferred school-time over holiday as this was the easiest time to avoid being around the watchful eyes of my parents. So now I had to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner with my family every day -- and generally when our family would go on holidays, we'd also eat all the 'extras' -- so now I was eating all of those as well. And I couldn't risk to puke, because the apartment we were in was tiny so everyone would be able to hear me puke and it would be harder to cover up afterwards.

Everyday I would weight myself, and everyday I would see the indicator of the scale go up and up and up. I was in complete despair.

Then one day, we were about to eat mac and cheese for lunch -- and in that moment I just gave up. I had gained so much weight, while I had struggled for such a loooong time to lose it, and now it was back in a matter of DAYS. I just couldn't do it anymore - and then I caved and I caved hard and I stuffed myself and basically went 'fuck it, fuck this shit' and I cried and I cried. And I always remembered that moment as 'my fall'- almost like I was an angel that had fallen from heaven, into disgrace.

I never really understood how much that moment had affected me. Only a year or so ago, I was experiencing myself down, depressed and like a completely failure and I was writing about how I was experiencing myself and I just couldn't get 'where' this was coming from -- and then suddenly it just dawned to me - it was still an outflow of that one moment where I just gave up and crashed, and experienced myself as a huge failure and after that event, I never stopped experiencing that point, it just became 'who I am'. It's like the moment never stopped, it was still busy running.

I still tried once in a while to 'pick up' on it again, to try and start over, but it just didn't work out. So then I turned my back on that part of my life and slowly but surely went 'back to normal'.

Sunday, 13 January 2013

Day 160: Eating Disorders and Contradictions

While I was busy losing weight, I got to a point where I was skinny, but not like 'underweight' skinny. My mom had been observing losing me weight but hadn't said anything so far.

Then one day, she came to me and gave me a hug and went "Oh, just look at you -- so thing and slender - you have achieved what I never could! I am so proud of you!"

My mom had been trying to lose weight and following different diets ever since I could remember. Whenever we would visit our grandparents, her father would always make remarks about her weight and it was obvious that this was affecting her. And whatever she did, even after she'd lose some weight - she'd still look kind of the same.

So as my mom was giving me this compliment, I could hear in her voice and see in her eyes what a big deal this has been for her in her life, which I had noticed before, but hadn't realised the 'depth' of it so to speak. The way she said it and the words she chose - it was all very specific - and in that moment I felt so 'powerful' and 'chuffed' with myself - because I had just achieved in a few months what my mom had tried for most of her life but never succeeded. Within that moment I got a sense of 'superiority', where I felt like I was rising 'above' my mother and within that I found greater motivation to continue what I was doing, to be able to continue to experience this sense of superiority.

So I experienced a nice boost of fuel right then and there -- while at the same time feeling bad/guilty because I felt like I was 'cheating'. In front of my family - which was only dinner - I just ate less, so from their perspective I was just losing weight because I was eating more in moderation, while actually I didn't eat anything at all besides the dinner they saw me eat. It also felt bizarre, because they way I had achieved this 'new figure' -- was not in a healthy manner, yet I was receiving compliments from every direction (not just my mom, that one just stood out). Obviously, the people I got the compliments from did not know the full story, yet it was interesting to see how everyone supported my 'new look' without asking how I did it, where the only point of focus was the 'image' that I had attained without looking/considering what had gone into it to attain this image -- which was in essence not a cool procedure.

After I got this boost, I got even more strict with myself and lost more weight. But now my mother was getting concerned about me, and kind of getting suspicious and agitated. I was confused about this change in attitude, because I was like 'Uh, isn't this what you wanted? You were fine with me losing weight rapidly previously, why is it a problem now all of a sudden?' From my perspective nothing had changed, I had been hard on myself all this time and following unhealthy procedures, now I was just going 'that extra mile' so for me it didn't make sense that what I was doing now was invalid while what I had done previously had apparently been 'valid' -- they were both destructive in nature. I felt like I was receiving 'mixed signals' where it kind of resulted into 'it's okay to abuse yourself to some point but don't go too far with it'.

This was something which I had kind of seen before as a general point within society, but pushing it this far within my own life, it had become more prominent and clear for me to see. This made me reflect on the nature of society and what we accept and allow as 'normal' -- where everyone has got mental disorders to some extent, like everyone experiences feelings and emotions as 'ups' and 'downs' which is considered 'normal' and 'acceptable' -- yet go and take it that 'extra mile' and now you are mentally ill and are labelled being bi-polar.

SO it was kind of sick to see how in general, being dysfunctional is accepted as long as you don't take it too far (which to me seemed unfair) -- probably because if you take it 'too far', the nature of the dysfunction becomes evident which might get people to question the design as for instance going through 'highs and lows' as actually not being 'okay' and 'normal' -- so be dysfunctional, because we don't really want to change our nature, but keep your dysfunction 'in check' and 'under the radar' otherwise we have to actually deal with the problem.

So it was interesting to see the deception of how we live, what we do, what is seen as 'normal' and what is 'abnormal' -- and how we are not consistent in what is deemed 'acceptable' and 'not acceptable'.

Because it's okay to have moods, but then if you have moods at a higher 'intensity' - it's suddenly not okay anymore.
It's fine to have thoughts but it's not fine to have voices in your head. It's okay to fantasize about sex and imagine stuff while you're masturbating, but it's not okay to actually play out your fantasies or go and be a 'peeping tom'.
It's okay to want to look nice but if you use botox you're superficial.
It's okay to have secrets but it's not okay to lie.
It's okay if you can't concentrate from time to time but it's not normal to have ADHD.
It's okay to blend in with your environment but it's not okay to be a 'faker'.
It's okay to circumcise but it's not okay to abuse children.
It's okay to bend the rules but it's not okay to break them.
It's okay to value and respect your culture but it's not okay to be a racist.
It's okay to speak your mind but it's not okay to be mean.
It's okay to be smart but if you're very smart you're a nerd.
It's okay to be lonely but not to be alone
It's okay to be religious but not okay to be in a cult.
It's okay to believe in God but not okay to believe in the Spaghetti Monster
It's okay to want to change the world but not okay to actually do it.
It's okay to celebrate birthdays but it's not okay to be self-centered
It's okay to put down your pet but it's not okay to euthanize people
It's okay to eat animals but not people
It's okay to advertise but not okay to Mind Control
It's okay to 'be yourself' but farting in public is NOT DONE
It's okay to be normal but it's not okay to be ordinary
It's okay to be nice but it's not okay to be an asslicker
It's okay to win but not okay to lose
It's okay to enjoy food but it's not okay to be obese
It's okay to have a system where unemployment is inevitable, but if you're unemployed you're lazy
It's okay to talk to Jesus but not to yourself
It's okay to get someone drunk to get in their pants but it's not okay to rape someone

Saturday, 5 January 2013

Day 158: Generating an Eating Disorder - The Power of Images - Part 2

This blog is a continuation to:
Day 155: Introduction – Starving Myself
Day 156: Wanting Passion and Purpose in Life
Day 157: Generating an Eating Disorder – Part 1

Besides managing my thoughts deliberately to keep myself 'energized' and 'motivated' -- I also used images to further indoctrinate myself with my new 'lifestyle'.

The thoughts helped to some extent to 'keep me going', but it wasn't enough. So next, I started to play with images in various ways. I would become very specific about what I would watch on TV, to make sure that I only or mostly watched shows with lots of skinny people or fashion programmes. This was to everyday, as much as I could, imprint and instill my 'goal' to make sure that I do not stray off my path. I also made sure to go through all the regular and fashion magazines we had, to again imprint those pictures into my mind to keep myself motivated. Whenever I would slack on this 'picture' regime, I would slowly but surely start becoming less 'committed' and sloppy within my routine of doing and not doing things.

So just like with the reading not being 'enough' anymore to keep me going, where I expanded the point into managing my thoughts -- just 'looking' at the pictures had come to a point where it was not giving me the same 'energy dose' to submerge myself into my obsessions. So again, I took it a step further. Instead of 'passively' looking at the images/pictures and taking them in, I decided to 'engage' myself more actively -- I figured this would give me a 'higher return' of energy through 'investing' more effort in it lol. And I turned out to be right. I started a scrap book, where I started pasting in the pictures from the magazines that I liked the most, arranging them all very precisely and meticulously -- giving it as much attention as I could. The cutting, pasting and arranging was giving me some 'extra fuel' to run on, but I was looking for more. So I looked for another way where I could engage myself more within the realm of images: which was drawing.

I started keeping a sketch book aside my scrapbook, where I would draw / copy images and would attempt to draw them to perfection. This was very time-consuming and required a lot of concentration - so this was like the perfect activity to draw energy from, because it had to be PERFECT. I had to get the ratios, the lines, the curves -- everything had to be perfect before I would stop. And then I would go over those lines and curves that I liked again and again (like say the hipbones). The slow and meticulous drawing and correcting, really locked myself into my obsession-mode and worked quite effectively in terms of brainwashing myself.

This was when I learnt the power of putting pencil to paper -- where next, I explored the point of writing.

Pages

Saturday, 23 February 2013

Day 187: Sinner and Saint of my own Food Religion

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Monday, 28 January 2013

Day 171: Hiding behind Anorexia

Friday, 25 January 2013

Day 169: Turning my Back on Anorexia, Anorexia turning its Back on Me

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Wednesday, 23 January 2013

Day 167: The Big Fall

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Sunday, 13 January 2013

Day 160: Eating Disorders and Contradictions

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Saturday, 5 January 2013

Day 158: Generating an Eating Disorder - The Power of Images - Part 2

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