Worth It?

Since I have nothing to do in school now I spent one of my classes watching the documentary Demi Lovato came out with earlier this year about her struggle with self-harm and bulimia. I used to think she didn’t actually have a problem and that it was just another celebrity thing like with Kelly Clarkson, but then as I was watching I realized she really did have a problem. Part of me knew that she really was sick and I also know that she probably still is struggling, she just has to act like everything is all hunky-dory now because she’s back in show business where everyone, at least every woman, has to be a role model.

But that’s not what I’m writing about. While watching it she said something that really hit me. She said she had to realize that she was worth it; that she was worth recovery.

This is something I have never, ever actually done. I always write about how my boyfriend has helped me so much through all of this; that he is my reason to recover, which is completely true. I’m not recovering for me. I know that. I also know that this isn’t going to continue to work if I’m not doing it for me. I keep trying to get “healthy” for me and it keeps ending up in me hovering around where I am now and the number I want to be. It’s not really yo-yo-ing because it’s within the normal weight fluctuation range, but that’s besides the point. I have never thought of myself as being worth it to recover. I always wonder exactly why I am doing this.

For my boyfriend, because it would kill him if I didn’t and he cares about me. Because I love him.

For my mom so that she doesn’t have to keep shelling out an extra $20 in copay and whatever it costs in gas to drive to the center every week, and so she doesn’t have to know how much inpatient care costs.

But for me? Not even close. I don’t do anything for me except lose weight and exercise until I ache for weeks on end. That’s my form of self-harm and I am okay with it because I feel like it is helping me. No pain, no gain, right? I work so hard so that I know I did something, because all my life I’ve been told I can’t do what I want and that I’m no good. I work so hard and push myself past my limits and feel the pain in my stomach because it’s been empty for so long to prove to myself and everyone that I can do something, and that I am worth something. You’re only worth something if you’ve done something.

I know that’s not true. The logical part of my brain knows that’s a lie, but the logical part of my brain isn’t in control right now. It hasn’t been in a long time now.

So I have to focus on myself. I have to consider what makes me worth it. I have to figure out why I need to recover for me because right now all I feel like I want is to lose weight. I’ve got big important things coming up really soon and I don’t feel like I’m worth it unless I weigh X number of pounds. I feel like I’m not going to feel better until I hit that number, regardless of what’s to come in the next two weeks.

Reader Appreciation Award-thing

The wonderful lady over at Recovering Anorexic nominated me for the Reader Appreciation Award. Awards are always fun, and today it is especially appreciated to know I am appreciated because the rest of the people I had to deal with today did not care at all that I was doing their group project for them. Anyway, this wonderful blogger is like an older version of me by like, 6 or 8 years or whatever. We are alike in so many ways it’s astonishing! I remember finding her blog when I first started recovery and had no idea what that meant or how to go about approaching it and I’ve enjoyed getting to know her through her work and reading all of her stories. I guess I’ll move onto the award now!

What much be done: 1. Include the award logo somewhere in your blog. 2. Answer these 10 questions, below, for fun if you want to. 3. Nominate 10 to 12 blogs you enjoy. Or you pick the number. 4. Pay the love forward: Provide your nominee’s link in your post and comment on their blog to let them know they’ve been included and invited to participate. 5. Pay the love back with gratitude and a link to the blogger(s) who nominated you.

The Questions:

1. What is your favorite colour?

Pink, always.

2. What is your favorite animal?

Cats. I love dogs, too, but every time I see a cat walking around a neighborhood I stop whatever I’m doing to shout, “Kitty!” like Dug from UP.

3. What is your favorite non-alcoholic drink?

Well, I can’t drink so I don’t have a favorite alcoholic drink, which makes the wording of this question awkward/irrelevant. I love water, but if I had to pick something special probably a strawberry Freshens smoothie. They sell them on campus at my U. So excited.

4. Do you prefer Facebook or Twitter?

Facebook. I have a Twitter that I use sometimes but I created it for this blog and Facebook is just more fun. You can’t stalk people as effectively on Twitter.

5. What is your favorite pattern?

Definitely not paisley. What the heck is that?

6. Do you prefer giving or getting presents?

I do enjoy getting presents. Who doesn’t? I don’t like all the anxiety involved in figuring out something to get people. Even people I’m really close with I have no idea what to get for them. But I do enjoy it when I know I’ve gotten them something they will really like.

7. What is your favorite number?

15. 15 was a good year for me. A lot of nice things happened. And it’s a nice number.

8. What is your favorite day of the week?

Who doesn’t love Friday?

9. What is your favorite flower?

I’ve never thought about having a favorite flower. I love the roses and tulips that grow in our “garden” but as for a favorite I don’t really know. I remember liking carnations a lot as a kid.

10. What’s your passion?

Writing, dancing, pilates, other than sitting on the computer for an entire day doing nothing and being lazy in my PJs.

Nomination time! The following are blogs I have enjoyed for a really long time.

1. What I Meant 2 Say This woman is absolutely hilarious and I love reading all of her stories. She always makes me laugh and I hear she is looking for more followers to meet some goal of some kind.

2. Health Freak College Girl I don’t remember when I started reading her blog, but she always amazes me with all of the races she does. She has kicked some butt in recovery and is just awesome. I wish I could have her drive.

3. Almost Veg Girlie I love reading this girl’s posts. She is awesome and has taken some huge strides in her recovery. She is incredible and always has delicious treats to stare at and make you wish your computer screen would let you take food out of it.

4. Kabocha Fashionista has made some awesome strides in overcoming her ED and has gotten to an amazing point in her life. Her posts are always very interesting and filled with awesome recaps of her weekends and such.

5. This Fit Chick back when she was blogging at Moves ‘n’ Munchies we got to know each other a little bit and she often wrote about her own recovery, but received a lot of ridicule and criticism and cyber-bullying which caused her to change her blog to what it is now. But it’s still awesome and no matter where she blogs she’ll always be a strong and wonderful young lady!

I obviously need to read more blogs, but these are 5 of my faves, along with Recovering Anorexic, but I don’t think I can nominate her for the award again.

Coping with Change: the End of my Senior Year (part 2)

Things haven’t gotten much easier. I still have trouble with food and weight, especially with Prom this Friday. While I’m sure everyone will agree that I look good in my dress, especially my boyfriend, I know I will be the only one who doesn’t agree, even if I manage to lose 20 pounds between now and then (which I won’t) I won’t be happy with how I look in it. But that’s just me and I’m insane. So I am doing an all-out cardio-cray-cray week until Friday and then we’ll see what happens with my exercise routine from there.

Something that does make eating easier is making it fun. I’ve been eating the same things for breakfast and lunch for months and it’s time for a break. I haven’t changed up my lunch yet because I don’t really have anything else to take to school other than a peanut butter sandwich (no veggies, no wraps, no ice packs to keep anything cool) but my breakfasts, especially on weekends, have been awesome!

The first one I make always looks super weird whenever I make pancakes. I think I need to heat the pan longer or something.

I had already eaten one of them before taking the picture, but you get the idea. I’m more of a sweet breakfast kind of girl, so even though this was super good for me, I didn’t feel satisfied even though I was full. I need my sweet breakfast foods I guess.

I have 8 days of school left, one more presentation, an award ceremony to preform at (yes, I can sing), Prom, a job interview, yearbook distribution, and of course, graduation. Yearbooks came in this week, a week earlier than we expected and those boxes are heavy! One of them bruised my arm and they left my arms sore for about a day, which made me feel lame since I’ve been working on my arm strength. I felt like I shouldn’t have any problems, but I did, so that bothered me. I guess I gotta start lifting weights. I can’t wait to go to college and use the gym they have there. I feel like I’m gonna live there, honestly.

Everything is still overwhelming, but I have exciting news! Remember that novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo in November? I finally got around to editing it and now it’s about to be published! Not by a real publishing company with a contract and all that good stuff, but it will be listed on amazon.com and amazon.uk for a list price of $7.50! I can actually make money off of something I wrote! You have no idea how excited that makes me. Not just the money aspect, because that’s not what my writing is about, but the pure fact that I am going to have my writing published and not just on a word document on my computer or printed in weird format on computer paper! It’s going to be printed and bound with the cover I made and my name on the front. The words inside it will be my words and you have no idea how excited this makes me. It’s something positive in my life (because graduating and never going back to my terrible high school isn’t positive *sarcasm*)! I don’t know why I waited so long to edit it.

So yes, I would like to drop a few pounds, and I can’t wait for this year to be over, but there are some positives in my life. Not only am I publishing my book (EEE!!!) but I have an adorable cat that purrs every time I pet her. I have an amazing mother that is always there for me and can bash my dad’s girlfriends with me. I have a wonderful, incredible, magnificent boyfriend. I have wonderful friends at school that can always make me laugh. I may hate myself right now, but I do have nice things to distract me.

Coping with Change: the End of my Senior Year

I have 2 presentations left and that is all that I have left to do in school. But I still have to wake up at 6am and go there until 2:30pm and sit and do nothing since I don’t present until Friday and Tuesday. What am I going to do after that? What I’m doing now: nothing.

At the same time I am applying to work at any place that has openings and hoping I’ll get one. I have an interview in two weeks that I am really nervous about but I know it’ll go well.

I move in to my new dorm, and I don’t even know which one it is, in 4 months (I think, I might be counting wrong), I go to orientation and register for classes in July, I’m graduating in 17 days, and hopefully starting a new job in like 25 days. I have gone from these changes being months away to weeks and even days away. I have 11 days of school left. Then I work. Then I go to college and work some more while taking a full course load because I am not paying $22,000 for less than 18 credits a quarter.

I used to look forward to college. Even just months ago when I was fed up about high school not challenging me I was looking forward to college, but now I just wish I could go back to being a little girl, pre-preschool age, when I was living in Helena, Montana with my mom and dad, back when he still loved me, and all I had to worry about what finding Pooh bear in a little hide-and-seek book thing and pulling all of the books off of my dad’s bookshelf.

Those are just some of the changes I have to look forward to, as well. There are more. The list is endless, and I am not dealing with it well at all. I have watched myself for the past 6 weeks change from someone who was starting to like my body to someone who wishes it would shrink into nothing. I try not to eat while I’m at school, at least nothing other than my sandwich when just a while ago I was trying to pack more food because I get hungry every two hours now. It failed today because my friend made bread and brought cinnamon rolls so I ate a good amount of that, and then hated myself for it. I wanted to purge it but I didn’t have a hair tie. And I also hate throwing up.

I want to lose weight and I’m in a weird place where I know that I need to eat and want to eat, so I get mad at myself because I want to lose weight but my desire to eat in the moment overrules the long term. I want to be nothing. I want to be able to go 12 hours between meals like I used to, especially since I won’t be able to afford 3 meals a day in college when right now I eat 5. I have wanted to stop my 4 week Pilates challenge and replace it entirely with cardio and have even started making the transition so that I can burn more fat and lose more weight.

There is also exciting family drama happening that goes back to what I went through when I was a kid which is even more triggering. I hate the weight I am at right now. I want it to go away. I want to be thin again. It’s the only thing that I know I can do, and I hate myself right now for not doing it. I may or may not be able to get a job. I am most likely not able to pay for college and who knows if I’ll be able to succeed there? All the other changes happening? Who knows if they’ll go well at all? Getting thin and being thin is all I know and all I can succeed in. Being thin is all of my worth.

This is bad. It’s the worst it has ever been. Most times when I “relapse” I am able to snap out of it pretty quickly, but now I just feel completely worthless.

Reflection

My boyfriend and I watched Mulan today before he went back to college and the whole movie just made me think. Mulan and Beauty and the Beast were probably my favorite two Disney animated movies growing up, and Mulan is definitely in my top 5 favorite Disney animated films today, but I remember living with my grandma after my parents first separated and walking up and down the stairs from my bedroom to the living room with my pink heart umbrella singing “Honor to us All” and “Reflection”. I remember singing “Belle.”

And I remember wishing I could be pretty.

I am not blaming Disney’s portrayal of women at all. I am not blaming the media. I am confident that I would have wished this and that my eating disorder would have become full blown by the time I was in high school whether today’s media existed or not. I know this because I wished I could be pretty not only like Belle and Jasmine and Ariel and strong like Mulan, but I wished I could be pretty like my cousin H. She is only 2 years older than me and we were best friends back then and I wished I could be as beautiful as her.

We have recently revived my old baby videos and my mom and boyfriend insist that I was absolutely adorable. We have millions of photos from when I was younger and everyone that sees them tell me I was beautiful. When my mom took me to work one day as a baby one of her co-workers said, “I know babies are always cute, but yours is just gorgeous!”

So I guess it’s pretty universal that people think I look pretty, but even at 4 and 5 I couldn’t see it, which is why I’m not surprised that I developed my eating disorder. I’m not some poor rich white girl (because I’m not rich or white) who grew up thinking so highly of herself and then all of a sudden stops eating. It doesn’t work that way. I strongly believe I was born predisposed to this and I think that is a perfect example of why. I grew up idolizing the women around me on television and in person. Princess Aurora of Sleeping Beauty was who I wanted to look like even though she is just a cartoon drawn in a beautiful artistic style. Teenage girls I saw in the mall were beautiful and I could only hope that when I grew up I could look that good.

I still struggle with body image. For a few weeks I’ll love how I look. I will look at my body and think, “Wow, I actually look pretty good,” and then something will change and when I look in the mirror I wish it would break so I wouldn’t have to look at myself anymore. And my first instinct when that happens is to starve myself and do some high intensity interval training followed by a ten mile jog. Maybe someday I will be okay with how I look. Maybe someday I will be able to be perfect.

I guess that’s why I’ve been searching for this whole time: some form of perfection, along with some many other things.

When will my reflection show who I am inside?

Because I’m tired of being sick of my physical appearance.

Escape

I have 15 days of school left as of today. I guess 14 if you count Senior Skip Day, and maybe 13 if you don’t count the last day since it’s only half a day that we’re required to be there and then we can go home.  It is also 25 days until my trip to Disneyland with my boyfriend. It’s 4 months until I move in to college. 4 months from now I’ll be at college, actually, just waiting for classes to start. And as exciting as this all is, I am scared to death. My childhood is officially over in 23 days. What the heck happened?

I was a weird kid. I didn’t care about getting older because for some odd reason I understood that it was going to be very soon and that my childhood was only there for a limited amount of time. In all honesty I am terrified of getting older. I don’t want to grow old and start falling apart. Some “professionals” claim that eating disorders are developed out of a fear of growing up. They say that the reason for not eating is so they stay skinny enough to not look like a woman. Having no extra weight means no boobs and no period. It means staying young, even though doing that greatly ages the body. Maybe that was part of why my anorexia came to the surface, but I don’t know if I’ll ever know for certain if that’s true.

When I was in middle school, particularly in 8th grade with high school looming over me, I wished that Never Land was real and that I could fly away to it and live with Peter Pan and the Lost Boys and Tinker Bell and never grow up.

I think part of why I exercise so much (other than my obvious exercise addiction) and am so focused on Clean Eating and eating less animal matter has to do with the fact that those things are proven to slow down the signs of aging and keep the body running smoother into old age. I’ll admit, I have a real problem. It’s not wrong to want to be healthy, but it’s probably a problem when you want to be as healthy as I do because you’re terrified of not being healthy and gaining weight. I’m thankful I can’t have kids because there is no way I would ever be able to deal with being pregnant. My appetite is already freaking me out because of how frequently I have to eat now with all of the exercise I do. There is no way I could eat for two even if I could have kids.

So yes, I am terrified of growing old along with gaining weight, which brings me to my point I guess. Graduation is upon me, along with looking for a job. Last year’s job hunt did not prove successful but that was okay. I didn’t have college to pay for yet. This year, if I don’t get a job I am potentially not going to college this fall and trying to get a job during the school year so I could go next fall. I have to worry about how I’m going to pay for stuff all of a sudden. It’s not something my mom is going to worry about. I have to pay for college. I have to find a way to pay for college. I will sell everything I own to go to college, but then the trouble is finding people who will buy what I own. So for now I’m applying every place that I can, and hoping that I get hired.

25 days until my trip to Disneyland. Disneyland is the one place on Earth that I can go to and be completely happy. When I’m in Disneyland all I worry about is how long the lines are and whether or not Indiana Jones is working today. I can completely forget everything that is going on in the outside world. The wars don’t matter. The 2012 election isn’t happening as far as I’m concerned. College, whatever. A job? I’m in Disneyland, why the heck would I need one? Unfortunately, you cannot live in Disneyland, I checked, unless you are a cat that will catch mice for them (I hope I am reincarnated as a cat in Anaheim, California and I will live in Disneyland). I am so looking forward to my trip, I think I’m really going to need it. It is an escape and I am so glad that it exists and that I am going pretty much a day after graduation. For 3 days I will be able to escape being a grown up, and oh, what a smack in the face it’s going to be when I come home and the real world is waiting for me.

Maybe I’ll stay up tonight and stare at the sky. I will find the Second Star to the Right if it kills me. Anyone have any pixie dust?

The Final Countdown

My AP Literature test was on Thursday and it was the fastest 3 hours of my life. It was fairly easy but I have to wait until July to find out my score, which is annoying but I know I did pretty well and will receive college credit for it.

Now that it’s over, though, I have senioritis really bad. I am ready to just be done and never go back. I mean, I’ve had senioritis since I was a sophomore when they started messing up my schedule and doing random stupid stuff that affected me. My district is apparently notorious for having their students be guinea pigs and I am tired of it. I wanted a solid education not some test crap. I am really excited for college so that I can finally learn something. I often think it would be better if we had to do general education until we knew what we wanted to do with our lives at which point we could go and use all of our school time to prepare and train for that instead of covering a wide rang of stuff. I took a second English class in my sophomore year on top of the required Sophomore English instead of taking Pre Calculus because I am pretty sure an English major will not need Calculus. I figure if I can add, subtract, multiply, and divide I will be okay in life.

I’m getting off subject.

I only 1 project left in AP Lit now and no more essays thank goodness! I just have to sit and analyze Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in Senior English, but no more essays there either. I wrote my last one after the AP test on Thursday. 4 essays in one day, that was intense! I have a presentation in Current World Problems, and I have to finish the Senior Slideshow for our Senior Awards Night next month and an awesome self-portrait project in AP Art since we submitted our portfolios for that on Wednesday. I pretty much only have 3 more graded things out of all that and they’re all very easy.

My senior year is coming to a close finally. I have been waiting for this since Prom last year. Oh! I forgot about Prom. That’s coming up too and I finally got my dress this week thanks to a friend and her sister who lent it to me. It’s beautiful and I can’t wait to wear it! I graduate in less than a month. That is awfully scary. Actually, a month from now I will be in Disneyland with my boyfriend. We have been planning that trip since sophomore year and it’s finally here! Goodness, it’s exciting! I have 18 days of school left and 30 days until Disneyland, and it’s finally sunny and nice here! I couldn’t be happier, honestly. Things are finally starting to look up. I still need to find a job but right now I’m too happy to care too much about that. I’m going to graduate and never have to go back to that school ever in my life (I am NOT going to reunions) and everything in my future is looking like a wonderful dream. I know it’s not going to be perfect, but there will be some wonderfully nice parts in it.

Goodbye Senior Year, I do not think I will miss you! 18 more days? I can do that.

Denial & My Experience with Family Care

When I was first diagnosed my mother was very upset about the whole thing. She sat in the car and cried then took me out to lunch. After that I went on vacation to my grandparents’ house and talked to my Omi about it.

“You don’t look that skinny,” she said when she found out.

From that moment on I never believed that I had an eating disorder. No matter how obvious the signs were it wasn’t true. I wasn’t that skinny. In fact, I could lose some more weight! Omi had said I wasn’t that skinny which means I can lose more weight and it’ll be okay.

I knew that wasn’t true, but that part of my mind wasn’t really paying attention or was very strong. Eventually, whether I believed it or not, I had to gain weight and get healthy again. Sometimes I still don’t believe I actually have an eating disorder and that people are just crazy thinking I ever had one. I know this isn’t true. I know I have an eating disorder. I still freak out if I go over 1200 calories a day even though I need to because of my exercise. I go crazy if I don’t exercise, my automatic thought being I’m going to gain a million pounds and end up one of the rest of the American population that is overweight and die young because of all of the crap you can get just by being overweight. I know that missing one day won’t do that, but the voice in my head hasn’t seemed to figure that out yet. Even though I never looked emaciated I still have an eating disorder, and I supposed I should consider myself lucky not getting that malnourished. I did lose my period. I never developed lanugo. I am absolutely terrified of gaining weight. I think I’m afraid of that more than I’m afraid of giant spiders. So yes, I  do have an eating disorder, even though I may not believe it sometimes.

I do have a reminder, though. Every time I bring up something related to my transition into a healthier lifestyle my mom looks at me and says, “Do you think you’re slipping?” And when I tell her no she doesn’t believe me and grills me even more. I haven’t lost weight, but I am under where she wants me to be. She has never understood my eating disorder, which I understand because it is scary. I can’t imagine having to deal with a child having an eating disorder. I would probably shy away from the whole thing, too, but even so, she is my mom and you would think she would make a little bit of an effort to understand it. I don’t like talking to her about food or exercise. I have said it before and I will say it again, my boyfriend has been the one and only person that has helped me through this and I can’t be more grateful for his help.

For a lot of people their family can be their biggest support, for me not so much, and I am okay with that because even though it is annoying that my mom won’t try to understand what I’m going through, I still have had a wonderful man in my life to help me through all of this.

Why am I so Hungry?

I started exercising again on Monday and jumped right into the 4 week pilates challenge I had started a week before I got sick, and going from 3 weeks of doing nothing after literally 4 years (I have not given myself a rest day in 4 years. I have little marks on all my calendars to prove it) to going right into the intensity I was in before (I gave myself the weekend to work up to it, I promise) I am all of a sudden crazy hungry all the time now! I think that in those 4 years my body got used to doing an intense amount of work on about 1200 calories a day (in the past year, before it was <800 calories a day), but now that I have taken a break and gone back into it my body is telling me to EAT MORE, and I have to admit that is really frightening. I do about an hour of pilates a day now, 5 days a week and normally consume between 900 and 1400 calories a day but I am hungry all the time! Between breakfast and lunch my stomach is making so much noise people around me can hear it. I have snacks but I swear that my stomach attacks it as soon as I swallow it, breaks it down in a matter of seconds, and then is back to growling.

I feel like that woman in the picture. I want to eat all the time and I can’t buy more food at school because it’s disgusting for one and I never bring any money with me to school.

I also am terrified of going over my calorie intake which I will today because I’ve already had 1200 and I still have to eat dinner, and that really bothers me. I do not want to eat any more food but my mom will kill me if I don’t eat. She has never understood my eating disorder or attempted to understand, and my switching to a healthy lifestyle bothers her. I don’t think she’ll ever understand that either so I don’t talk about it around her. But I’m going to have to eat dinner tonight even though I think it is clear by my calorie intake today that I do not need to eat any more. It just really bothers me that I am finally able to get back into exercising and now I want to eat more. So I’m going to try and keep it below 1200 tomorrow, maybe below 1000 to make up for whatever my total ends up being today.

But I want to ask you all if you have any good meal or snack ideas for me? Preferably healthy snacks and ones that will fill me up for a long time. Snacks that are also easy to take to school. I have no fridge access or ice pack or cooler to take with me.  Breakfast especially since I get hungry about an hour after breakfast and I eat breakfast 6 and lunch isn’t until 12.

So, any good breakfasts or snacks? My lunches are really boring too, so any suggestions for that would be nice!

Does increasing your intake ever freak you out?

“I Looked ‘Anorexic’”

Just like when people use "starving" incorrectly, I also get mad when people use the term “anorexic” incorrectly. Someone whom I am acquaintances with was describing their childhood years to a friend today. They were very poor when they were little and didn’t get to eat a lot because of lack of money and food.

“I looked seriously anorexic,” they said.

And I corrected them but they didn’t hear me. “You looked really skinny.”

It is just like with “starving”. We know what the word means, but we don’t use it correctly. I myself have never said “I looked ‘anorexic’” even when I was really skinny. The problem with saying that phrase or even using that word in that context is that “anorexic” is not a look. The media has painted as something negative. Not that it is positive, but when people think “anorexic” they think skin and bones, literally. They think of someone that looks like a walking skeleton; someone who is seriously malnourished, which is what they are. Anorexia just might be the cause of their malnourishment.

Anorexic is not a look, it is a mental disorder, which is why it bothers me so much when people say, “I look anorexic,” or, “she’s so skinny she looks anorexic,” or, “I bet they’re anorexic, look how thin they are!” Some people are very thin naturally. Some people are thin because they actually worked for it. And some people are thin because of the mental disorder Anorexia Nervosa. I was skinny when I was diagnosed. I was so underweight my period had disappeared (unfortunately damaging my reproductive system. Children are not likely in my future) and I was too thin to support myself anymore. But I still didn’t think I looked “anorexic”. I probably didn’t look malnourished, or maybe I did. I still suffer from body dysmorphia so I don’t know, nor will I ever.

Also, an eating disorder looks different on every one. It rarely ever looks exactly the same, both physically and in mental effects, even though a fear of weight and food and fat is generally in all that suffer from one. So you can’t look “anorexic”, but you can look skinny and malnourished.

In other news, I have gotten back into exercising and seriously should have done it sooner. Since I started on Saturday with little things and got back into it on Monday starting a 5 week Fit for Prom/Summer challenge I have gotten better faster than I got over those 3 weeks when I sat and did nothing. It’s odd, but the more I exercise, even while sick, the better I feel. This is always true, no matter if it is a simple cold or, apparently, the end stages of walking pneumonia.

What are your thoughts on the subject?