It's once again time for your weekly Sunday Smorgasbord, where I trawl the web for the latest in ED-related news, research, and more so you don't have to.

Webinar on the important relationship between PCOS and eating disorders.

Poetry and letters from eating disorder patients.

I Cheated on My Husband...With Food (a woman's struggle with binge eating disorder).

People With Eating Disorders Come in All Shapes and Sizes.

Dispelling Common Eating Disorder Myths.

Religious Orthodoxy Does Not Protect Against Disordered Eating and Eating Disorders. I'm still trying to figure out why people would think that it would.

Eating Disorders: Through The Looking Glass.

Displeased with eating disorder photos.

Enhanced Striatal Dopamine Release During Food Stimulation in Binge Eating Disorder.

BDNF helps regulate energy metabolism and feeding behavior.

No body is perfect: The significance of habitual negative thinking about appearance for body dissatisfaction, eating disorder propensity, self-esteem and snacking.

Medical complications of bulimia nervosa and their treatments.

This video my mom sent me was too lovely not to share.

Last night, I was finishing up a really complicated story on aging (and lack thereof) in animals.  I had a lot of information to incorporate, and interviews to listen to.  Considering that it was one of my longer pieces as well, and it's not difficult to call this story rather challenging.  If I had to produce this story while in grad school, or even when I was first starting out, I think I would have had a complete meltdown.

But I've been freelancing for a solid 6 months now, and so I've learned a lot about who to write, how to assemble information, how to create a story line.  Yes, this latest piece was the most challenging of pretty much any that I had worked on, but I also had a lot of experience to call upon to get the piece done.

I think the first draft actually turned out well.  I had no meltdowns--not even a small one.  Frustration and grumbling at the computer, yes.  But I didn't freak out.  I took a deep breath and told myself "I've done this before, and this story isn't that different. I can do this."

I'm guessing my skill as a writer has improved as I've done it as a career, but it wasn't some massive skill acquisition that got me through this story.  It was experience.  I've done this before and I can do it again.


It's the point I keep working towards in recovery.  Recovery doesn't get easier because you get "better" at it.  It doesn't get better through some sort of magical, mysterious process.  It gets better from experience.  Pushing through the bad feelings and eating anyway is an experience you can call upon later.  There's a sense of satisfaction in getting through something difficult and knowing that you can manage it again.

I could call upon experience while writing because I had done it, day in and day out, for months and years.  I knew what it took.  I knew how to break it down into smaller, more manageable steps.  It's a sense of...confidence.

That confidence is powerful.  No, that confidence didn't get my story written, but it helped push me through.

And so it goes with recovery.  It's learning small things that work, learning how to use those things in a variety of situations.  It's figuring out how to put everything together.  It's knowing that you can.

The story hasn't appeared online yet--that will have to wait for Monday or Tuesday when I finish the editing process.  Nor is my recovery complete.  But I am working to gain experience, skills, and confidence to get me through.

Recovery is tiring.  Exhausting, really.  Between ED stuff, and my job, and trying to juggle everything else, I'm really just drained.

I'm trying hard not to resent my recovery--and the time and energy and money it consumes--but I'm not always successful.  It's hard, in the day-to-day slog of meal-snack-meal-snack-meal-snack, to take pride in my accomplishments (I ate! On my own! With no one watching!).  I resent that I have to eat.  I resent that it takes so damn much effort.  I resent grocery shopping and dishes.  I resent people who get to buy smaller-sized clothes and brag about it.

Yep.  That positive around here.

It's frustrating.  I want to be "over it," like a cold or the flu.  I want to put my illness behind me.  I want to look at a menu without first identifying the lowest-calorie, lowest-fat items.  I want--heaven help me!--to have a stinking clue what size I actually am.

I know the solution isn't "give up," but rather "keep going."  A nap helps provide perspective. So do kittens and friends.  For that matter, blogging about it helps.  Letting these feelings fester isn't good.  I know my support team doesn't like hearing that sometimes I want to pull a three-year-old-style temper tantrum and just say "Screw recovery!!!!"  But pretending that everything is all happy and shiny and unicorns pooping rainbows doesn't help, either.

I have been working hard to stay on the right path. Have I always been successful?  Well, no.  Not always.  Despite having many moments when I'm bloody well sick of anything related to recovery, I have to take a deep breath and ask myself: what are your other options?

I think about this.  Mostly, I don't like the other options and I know it.  In the quiet of the night, as I let the slow thud of my heartbeat lull me to sleep, I forgive myself for such heretical thoughts.  I think: tomorrow is another day.  Tomorrow I will get up and fight the good fight all over again.

And then I do.

Yesterday was the start of National Eating Disorders Awareness Week--the flurry of news stories and blog posts and tweeted statistics is pretty hard to miss if you're hooked in to the ED community.  The stories are all over the place, not just in quality, but also in message.  I started to think about NEDAW not from the perspective of a person with an eating disorder, but to try and think about it as someone who didn't know a thing about EDs.

It's once again time for your weekly Sunday Smorgasbord, where I trawl the web for the latest in ED-related news, research, and more, so you don't have to.

{{Today marks the start of eating disorder awareness week, which has a lot to do with many of today's selections.}}

My name’s Ilona, and I’m an Anorexic.

Read the early galleys of Aimee Liu's new book Restoring Our Bodies, Reclaiming Our Lives. You do have to register to read, but it's free!

High risk of lifetime history of suicide attempts among CYP2D6 ultrarapid metabolizers with eating disorders.

Victorious Tantrum.

Comparison of DSM-IV versus proposed DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for eating disorders: Reduction of eating disorder not otherwise specified and validity.

C and M ED Productions have a host of new videos on their YouTube site, most notably a series on motivational interviewing done especially for Janet Treasure. Thanks to C and M for spectacular work on these!

Compulsive exercise: The role of personality, psychological morbidity, and disordered eating.

Eating disorders and disordered eating by The California Report. I listened to a bit of the audio and have downloaded it for my iPod.

Personality pathology in purging disorder and bulimia nervosa.

In the United States, eating disorders are more common than Alzheimer’s disease.

Click to view the three winning ED Public Service Announcements by recovering student filmmakers.

Eating disorder treatments fail many.

How does weight discrimination affect your health?

What really causes "runner's high"? Getting away from the endorphin illusion.

Eating Disorder Symptomatology in Normal-Weight vs. Obese Individuals With Binge Eating Disorder.

For Actresses, Is a Big Appetite Part of the Show?

Obesity, alexithymia and psychopathology: A case-control study.

Translating the Pain of Eating Disorders into Art.

Eating Disorders Coalition Launches Campaign For “Holding Insurance Companies Accountable".

Earlier this week, Pepsico announced a makeover for its Diet Pepsi.  The problem wasn't the taste of the soda, or the colors of the can.  No, the problem was the shape of the can.  Now, instead of being short and squat just like all of the other soda cans, Diet Pepsi is going to be tall and sleek and skinny.  And, so the ad campaign would like us to think, we can be too if only we chug cans of Diet Pepsi.

I find the whole thing offensive and annoying.  Yes, yes, I know the big wigs on Madison Avenue would like us all to think that thin is better, but um, can you guys be a little more creative with your message?

Not surprisingly, eating disorder groups have been up in arms about the can and the message that it sends.  In one article, a NEDA spokesperson said that the ad campaign was "thoughtless and irresponsible."  In a more in-depth interview with the Wall Street Journal, NEDA CEO Lynn Grefe said:

“I could care less about the shape of the can,” Lynn Grefe, head of NEDA, tells the Health Blog. “They could make it doughnut-shaped for all I care.”


It’s the Diet Pepsi media campaign that’s the problem, she says. The campaign celebrates being skinny and suggests that strong, confident women must be so. That the Skinny Can campaign is being paired with Fashion Week, an event put on by an industry that has had to address eating disorders among its model ranks, is particularly problematic, says Grefe.


This campaign won’t cause anyone to develop an eating disorder, but could trigger someone who is already vulnerable to negative body-image issues to start dieting or become more extreme in their dieting, which could eventually lead to disordered eating, says Grefe.


...And recent evidence shows that hospitalizations for eating disorders are on the rise, calling attention to the messages that are being perpetuated about thinness and dieting. “It is exactly that kind of thinking that has truly caused the increase in people feeling bad about themselves,” says Grefe.

But there's quite a leap in logic there.  No one's quite sure what is causing the increase in eating disorder hospitalizations.  It's likely that EDs are on the rise in younger adolescents, yes.  At the same time, most young people feel bad about themselves in some respect or another.  Yet very few develop eating disorders.

All of Grefe's statements were technically correct.  Yet I'm not convinced of the direct link between skinny can --> body image issues --> eating disorder.  I had body image issues my whole life, yet I only developed anorexia after I was depressed and thought that eating better and exercising more would make me feel better. Okay, yes, I wanted to lose 5 pounds, but that wasn't the real motivator.  Nor do I know that my body image issues wouldn't have been there in a non-diet-oriented culture.  More and more studies are linking body image disorders with deficits in neurological functioning.

These efforts sound good on paper, and I don't think protesting the skinny can is bad in and of itself.  Like I said, it's rather obnoxious.  Frankly, if I'm going to buy one of your products, I'd like to be respected a bit lot more.  I'm just not sure about the fact that so many people take for granted that there must be a connection between skinny things (jeans, cans, models) and eating disorders.  I do think that these messages are definitely a part of the cultural milieu in which eating disorders exist.  But eating disorders have existed long before the advent of Size Zero supermodels and (apparently) Size Zero diet soda cans.  I'm guessing that if all of this skinny model nonsense went away, another cultural issue would fill the void and be used as a scapegoat for eating disorders.

This "prevention" work sounds good. It's hard to oppose it and not sound like some sort of misogynistic skeleton-lover. It's not that I like these images, approve of them, or even think they're healthy. They're not. I'm just wishing more people would question the connection between these messed-up ads and their impact on eating disorders.

In the end, Laura said it best:

Somewhere in here, in the headlong and well-intentioned efforts, is also a confusion of ideas: disordered eating and eating disorder; and body image distress and Body Dysmorphic Disorder. There is an assumption that preventing body image distress will prevent BDD, and that preventing disordered eating will prevent eating disorders. That assumption needs to be questioned as well: do we really know that these are true? If so, how strong is the effect? One kid in 20? One in 1,000? One in 100,000? Not that one in a million isn't a good thing, but is that where our efforts should go? Or is preventing eating disorders the only reason for these efforts?

I just started reading Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene tonight.  It's considered a science writing classic, yet I still hadn't read the book.  It was either checked out of the library, or I forgot to look for it, or I could only find the super-duper deluxe anniversary edition at the bookstore.  But I stumbled across it at the library a week or two ago, and so I eagerly checked it out.

The idea of the book (if I can boil it down to a sentence or two after reading the first three chapters) is that plants and animals and microbes are really just genes' way of making more genes.  I haven't read enough of the book to know whether or not I totally believe it, but the book's thesis isn't really the point.  One of Dawkins' comments was that

A body is the genes' way of preserving genes unaltered.

Or, in non-Oxford University PhD speak, a body is the genes' way of making more genes.

As part of my eating disorder treatment, I learned a lot about how people viewed women's bodies over time.  They were objects or trophies.  Something to be subdued.  Something to be ignored.  Something to be feared.  And we discussed how we viewed our own bodies.  In my case, it was something to be conquered and tamed. Literally mind over matter.  I wanted to not need sleep or food or water or any of that.

It is one view of the body.  A skewed and not all that healthy one, granted, but it's a view.  Many of my therapists in treatment told me that I should think about what my body does rather than how it looks.  That my body should be my temple.  That I should love my body.

Mostly, I'm ambivalent about my body.  It does most of what it needs to.  It is what it is and I generally don't think about it too much.  No, I don't like how I look but whatever.

This quote struck me because it was such a different way of looking at a body.  Not wondering whether it was larger or smaller than me.  Or exercised more.  Or whatever.  Just that a body was what our genes used to make more genes.

The simple practicality of that statement--whether you agree with it or not, and as I said, I haven't finished the book, so I'm not going to say--was really eye-opening for me.  A body is functional.  Maybe the key to body acceptance is to stop making it so damn complicated.

Although I did see Dr. H this afternoon--Keurig time!!--and she did share a wonderful metaphor with me, I can't remember exactly what she said.  One of my friends I chatted with online the other night did, however, have a great analogy.

We were talking about how recovery could be so painfully obvious at times.  I know I need to eat.  This isn't a mystery.  I know I need to eat regularly, too.  But the interesting thing is that recovery isn't as straightforward as "just" eating.  I wish I could sit down to my daily three meals and two snacks each day with no chatter in my head and with no internal resistance.  It has gotten easier, yes.  Recovery remains a fight.

Emily said that her therapist told her that the difficulties are a lot like the difference between knowing how to drive and still needing GPS.  Knowing how to eat properly, knowing how to follow a meal plan (if that's what you do), knowing you need to eat is one thing.  Actually figuring out how to live a healthy life without an eating disorder is something else entirely.

I can drive a car.  Maybe not with any sort of special talent, but I know how to drive.  But if you told me I needed to drive to San Francisco, I would need to use my GPS--or at least a map.  The problem isn't that I don't know how to drive there (make sure the car has gas, push firmly on the long skinny pedal, ta da!), the problem is figuring out how to get there.  Knowing how to drive doesn't mean you don't need GPS.

So it goes with recovery.  Knowing what I need to do in order to get better doesn't mean that I don't need directions in how to get there.  Telling someone with an eating disorder to eat is like telling someone who is lost to drive.  Obviously eating and driving are part of the solution.  But there also needs to be more of a how-to involved.  Everyone takes their own path, just like some people avoid highways and others avoid bridges and tunnels.

Needing a recovery GPS--getting lost, realizing where you want to be but not having a damn clue how to get there--is pretty normal.  Most people have a GPS in their car or on their phone.  It doesn't replace learning how to drive, but many have found that little bit of extra guidance crucial.

I generally don't like making broad, sweeping statements about recovery.  Recovery ends up being about different things to different people, and we each have our own road to travel on the way to wellness.

But (and there's always a but) some people just get it so damn right that I think maybe broad, sweeping statements really aren't all that bad.

A mom on Around the Dinner Table posted this in response to learning about another person's relapsing daughter:

Whatever medication and therapies are offered your d, you can play an active part yourself in

• teaching her that she has an illness where she will always be vulnerable to going down this path under stress
• helping her to understand this, but teaching her that she must never choose this path in response to stress
• helping her to create a future with possibilities beyond the pain she is feeling just now
• reminding her how much she is loved (which I know you do all the time)

Yes, this.  If you could strip recovery down to the bone (I'm pretty sure that pun was unintentional), clear away all the extras and figure out just the basics, this would be it.  Much of the hard work of recovery is in learning our own vulnerabilities and demons.  Not just learning what they are, but what makes them come out of the locked closets in which we place them, and how to shoo them back in.

It's been tremendously humbling to begin to accept that I will never be invulnerable to anorexia, not completely.  But now that I'm learning to accept this, I can focus my energies on clearing out the wreckage from my eating disorder.

It's once again time for your weekly Sunday Smorgasbord, where I trawl the web for the latest in ED-related news, research, and more so you don't have to.

A case series describing the successful, innovative five-day intensive family therapy program at UCSD.

Treatment of chronic anorexia nervosa: a 4-year follow-up of adult patients treated in an acute inpatient setting.

Diet drinks--even those in "skinny" cans--won't help you lose weight. Just sayin'. It's crass and tacky, although I don't think it has crap to do with eating disorders.

Hello, I Am Fat. Lindy West writes "Shame is a tool of oppression, not change."

Why you don't need to weigh yourself everyday. The title says "how to stop weighing yourself everyday," but there really weren't any tips for how to stop the Scale Dance. {{Shut up, you've done it too.}}

10 Things Eating Disorder Recovery Taught Me (NOT related to food & weight).

Reluctance to Recover in Anorexia Nervosa.

Two Lessons Everyone Should Learn About Eating Disorders.

Educational and support intervention to help families assist in the recovery of relatives with eating disorders.

Great film by Becky Henry on kicking ED out of your life.

Purging disorder: Psychopathology and treatment outcomes.

Discrimination and EDNOS: One Woman’s Story.

The effect of pre-exposure and recovery type on activity-based anorexia in rats.

Interview with Dr. Lock about Brain Activity and eating disorders.

The average human eats 100 trillion genes a day.

How Food Heals.

Family-Based Obesity Program for Kids Has Lasting Benefits, says study.

Between the move and everything else that is going on in my life, I feel like I am juggling about 10 million balls, trying desperately to keep them all up in the air at the same time.  And I suppose not just keep them up in the air but keep track of where each ball is at any point in time.

If this were actual juggling instead of metaphorical, I'd be screwed.  My coordination is essentially nil.

Despite the metaphorical nature of my juggling, it is nonetheless exhausting.  I want to blog many nights, but I'm either too tired to actually put my thoughts into coherent sentences or too tired even to form thoughts, period.  I think back to my college days, when I lived on four hours of sleep and turbo-charged black coffee.  I was miserable and depressed, but I can't help but get jealous at the old Carrie who got so much done.  And then I feel lazy in comparison.

Considering I was neither mentally healthy (the OCD rituals were much of what kept me awake when I wanted to drop) nor do I really miss being that 18, 19, 20-year-old Carrie, I don't know why I haul out that old yardstick.  But I do.

One of the many topics I've been working on in therapy, from the first time I ever saw a psychologist over 10 years ago now, is "being gentle with myself."  Basically, it means sleeping when I'm tired, eating when I'm hungry, and so on.  As much as I know that not pushing myself to write in the wee hours of the morning is a victory, I still feel insanely guilty when I do lay my head upon my pillow.  As if the Forces of Lazy have somehow won a massive victory.

The years of abuse from the anorexia combined with the inexorable forces of aging have played no small role. My body simply won't let me push it that hard.  It falls asleep standing up.  It finds a way to sneak in a nap.

I took a power nap for about 30 minutes this afternoon, and I know I should be popping the champagne or something, but it makes me feel squeamish and guilty.  Sort of like when I eat something and it's not actually meal or snacktime.  My body doesn't follow a clock exactly, blah blah blah.  Logically, I get it.  But emotionally?  It's a whole different story.

I think it comes down to one word: should.  I shouldn't be hungry, I shouldn't be tired.  I have these internal rules about "appropriate" times to eat and sleep.  Feeling hungry or tired at "inappropriate" times really messes with my head.  I do love traveling, but the experience is often jarring for the first day or two, largely because my body clock is often thrown out of whack.  I do well with schedules.  I can become way the hell too attached to these schedules, yes.  But I also need them, probably more than most people.  Free time scares the hell out of me because I have no idea what I should be doing.  I've gotten okay with "me" time--reading, watching TV, crocheting, farting around in the kitchen.  All of these are fine.  But a block of time that I don't know what to do with?  Total freak out.

So I'm blogging about how I'm so damn tired I can't seem to work up the energy to blog, and here I've written a novel.  Figures.

I'm also falling asleep at the computer, so I'm going to call it a night.

In yesterday's post, I shared Dr. H's metaphor about how stress is like coffee and my coping skills are like a coffee cup.  You can have lots of stress and be perfectly fine if you have enough coping skills.  Alternately, you can be royally screwed if you have the coping skills of an espresso cup and half of a normal cup of coffee (which, for me, is like a standard cup.  I have BIG mugs, kids. Okay, wait, that sounds dirty...).

The key to coping with stress is either decreasing your stress/coffee or increasing your coping skills and coffee cup.  Today's tip day is going to focus on how to improve your stress coping skills (ie, making a bigger coffee cup).

1. Find a hobby.  It sounds cheesy, but even lame-sounding hobbies can be a stress reliever.  So you like collecting stamps.  Or latch-hook rugs.  Or ant farms.  It doesn't matter what it is, but having an outside interest can often be a sort of pressure release valve.  Things like crochet and House re-runs and playing the piano might not be the most exciting of hobbies, but when I'm stressed, working on my afghan for a few minutes can be tremendously relaxing.  It also helps me remember that whatever I'm stressing about isn't the entire world.

2. Make a list.  Of your potential coping skills, that is.  What makes you feel better?  Write these things down so that when you're freaking out you don't actually have to retrieve that information from the deep, dark depths of your brainpan.

3. Act like a kid.  I don't mean throw a temper tantrum in the middle of the grocery store--although I have wanted to on more than one occasion!  What I mean is try to remember what you liked to do as a child, and try to re-create that when you're stressed.  I still have a bunny puppet that I got as a baby (his name is Bozzlie) and no, he doesn't cure my stress, but he does bring a smile to my face.  This also explains why I usually have bubbles somewhere.

4. Prioritize.  Part of the problem I have when stressed is that everything seems equally important.  This is where I get into trouble because it's very easy to misjudge what desperately needs to get done and what is the proverbial icing on the cake (make mine cream cheese).  My criteria is "How bad will it be if this doesn't get done? Will it majorly inconvenience anyone else?  How many people will be seriously pissed or even notice?"  Buying cookies to take to your book club instead of making them from scratch doesn't mark you as a bad person.  Most people are like "OMG COOKIES!!!!1!"

5. Delegate.  This is probably my Achilles heel.  I suck at delegating, mostly because I don't really trust anyone else to do the job "right."  It's essentially an open invitation for people to treat you as a doormat.  Even if it wasn't, there will come a time when you have to face the grim inevitability that you can't do it all.  It might mean asking your significant other to cook dinner for a change (or at least pick up some take out).  Or asking someone at work to help you with a project.  It's not a skill that comes naturally to me, but when you're really in a bind, it can be a lifesaver.

6. Positive self-talk.  Often what helps me is not telling myself that it's all going to be okay because, hey, you never know.  What helps me is to remind myself that whatever happens, I can figure out how to handle it.  This usually calms me down because I can start to let myself stop worrying about the outcome and start trying to figure out the solution.

Today was therapy, which meant another metaphor from Dr. H.  And--it really must be mentioned--another bonding session with her Keurig.

We got talking about stress, and she encouraged me to visualize my stress as a liquid filling a cup.  Some of her other patients like to imagine a rain gauge.  Others prefer teacups.  It's not so much the amount of stress (rain, tea, whatever) that causes a mess.  It's when your coping strategies (cup, etc) aren't large enough to hold all the stress.

I told Dr. H that my stress coping skills were like a cup, all right, but it's a coffee cup. {{I would never join the Tea Party for any number of ideological reasons, but I also seriously object to their choice of beverages. Latte Party, here I come!}}  This is especially interesting because I have the really bad habit of overfilling my coffee cup.  For some reason, despite decades of practice and thousands of cups poured, I always underestimate how much room I need to leave for milk.  To add the right amount of milk, I usually end up filling the stupid cup to the brim.  It makes transferring the cup to the microwave or to my mouth a somewhat difficult task.  Coffee stains are inevitable.

Most of the time, if I'm careful, the coffee doesn't spill much.  Of course, I can't just walk into the next room with my coffee cup. I have to carry it ever so carefully so that the coffee doesn't slosh around too much.  It's probably some of the closest I come to living on the edge.  It takes effort and concentration, but usually I manage just fine.

So it goes with stress.  Ideally, we'd have more ways of coping with stress than we do stress.  We don't need a lot more--an espresso shot in a Trenta Starbucks cup is a bit of overkill--but we also need to be able to feel that we have a handle on things.  That the stress isn't going to slosh over with one careless flick of the wrist.  I generally tend to keep my stress cup filled to the brim.  Major incidents are rare enough, but that filled-to-the-brim stress makes life much harder than it really needs to be.

Basically, you have two choices when there's a mismatch in how much stress/coffee is in your life and the size of your mug.  What I talked about with Dr. H was that you can either try and figure out how to decrease the amount of coffee in your cup, or you can find a bigger cup.  This means that you need to figure out how to decrease stress and/or increase coping skills.

The next two days are going to be Tip Day posts--the first on tips to decrease stress, and the second on how to increase coping skills.

When I don't want to deal with something--ED or otherwise--I tend to avoid it.  I must confess that it is, occasionally, effective.  Sometimes people need to let their tempers cool off, and sometimes rebooting the computer really does fix everything.

Most of the time, it doesn't end up like this.

Usually, the scenario goes something like this:

Make a small mistake.  Feel embarrassed.  Avoid dealing with small mistake.  Small mistake festers into a big mistake.  Avoid dealing with that, too.  And so it goes until I spiral into a masterly cycle of self-hatred and despair.  In the midst of this self-hatred and despair, I never really deal with the actual problem: my avoidance.  Instead, I tell myself that the real problem is that I'm lazy, stupid, and a bad person.

Aside from the verbal self-flagellation, the litany of reasons I suck gives me an out.  Bad people do bad things.  Ergo, I have no real reason to push myself to stop.

It happens with the ED stuff (embarrassment at a small slip -> don't tell treatment team -> I'm a failure -> small slip becomes a big slip), and it happens in real life.  I never really listened to criticism and helpful feedback because in my mind, anything less than perfect was just an example of how crap a person I am.  I didn't listen because there really wasn't much point.

So I avoided even more.  Pulled away, hid from view--even when admitting my difficulties would have made the situation so much simpler.

An example: I was late on a deadline this past weekend.  Part of it was the chaos of moving, yes, but once I realized I was overdue, I resisted buckling down and attacking my job.  Plainly, I was mortified at my mistake.  I can be a space cadet at times, but generally I can keep things put together.  By going back to my work, I would have to admit to myself that I wasn't perfect, that I had royally screwed up.  So I put it off.  It was the weekend, and it wouldn't have mattered much anyway.

There was an element of truth to that.  But if I was being honest with myself--
If I cut the bullshit and really admitted to myself what was going on--
I was avoiding dealing with the problem.

A simple email to my editor saying "Oops, totally forgot in the moving chaos, I'll get something to you by Monday morning," would have essentially fixed everything.  Sending that email would mean I had to admit something was wrong.

I didn't want that.

I wanted to pretend it was all okay.

That wasn't okay.

The ED was a way for me to avoid so much of the crap that was going on in my life.  I didn't actually have to deal with it because I was focused instead on exercise, food, and weight.  When I was into the anorexia, I mentally checked out of life.  I didn't intend for that to happen, not really, but it fit my profile of dealing with things.

Avoid.
Ignore.
Smile through the tears.

Neither my reluctance to send an email nor the anorexia-driven avoidance really ever solved any problems.  I could pretend for a while.  Pretend that everything was fine, that it was no big deal, that I could manage everything.

This weekend reminded me that I couldn't.  My editor asked me to kindly send her an email when I was going to be late.  To be honest, I earned that. 

But this screw up allowed me to see another of anorexia's accidental functions.  I could connect the dots and see the patterns.  Avoidance.  I started to see the consequences, for once.

So I stepped out of that self-hate spiral and told myself: the only way to solve this problem is to get to work.  Not punish yourself with more exercise or less food or some other misadventure. I didn't need punishing, I needed to sit down and finish what I had started.

And so I did.

It's once again time for your weekly Sunday Smorgasbord, where I trawl the web for the latest in ED-related news, research, and more so you don't have to.

Discovering the Truth Beneath My Eating Disorder: The Perfect Storm of Anorexia

Very interesting research summary on the link between sleep deprivation, weight loss, glucose levels, appetite, and cardiac issues. I'm posting this in part to remind myself of the importance of a good night's sleep, and the fact that no amount of caffeine can equal a rested brain.

Wonderful post on taking the plunge and being "constantly and openly brave" at No Such Thing as Never.

The Dana brain poetry contest is now accepting entries.

Manhattan riots over body-snatching. Don't worry. It happened in 1788. {{I feel oddly compelled to include at least one random, non-ED related item in my smorgasbords.}}

Why dropping the "New Years Diet" may be one of the BEST decisions you make.

Break the pattern and win - you are more than an eating disorder.

How to eat in front of other people. You have to register to receive the actual instructions, but Michelle is super cool and it's totally worth it.

FEAST coffee breaks. Connect with other parents of eating disordered children for support and warm, caffeinated beverages.

Brain Activity May Hold Key to Therapy for Eating Disorders.

If the words "skinny jeans" aren't enough to make you cringe, then this should be: they've been linked to nerve problems.

ED's infomercial. Be sure to read the small print.

Monkey See, Monkey Don't: Learning from Others' Mistakes.

The Perception Gap: An Explanation for Why People Maintain Irrational Fears.

New study finds Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to be the most effective treatment for Bulimia.

Interesting article on orthorexia and fad diets focusing on "detox cleanses" to "purify" the body.

Eating Disorders: Why Ambivalence Keeps Your Child Stuck. "Ambivalence" was, for me, a code word for "fear" of relinquishing the ED rituals.

Binge eating disorder is the most common.

Well, I'm moved.  No other blog post can capture the insanity and hilarity of moving with animals better than this one from my new favorite blog Hyperbole and a Half:

Dogs don't understand basic concepts like moving

I can tell you from personal experience that cats don't either.

My brain has stopped working, so instead, I took a cue from Hyperbole and instead drew some pictures of Aria (keep in mind I nearly flunked art class in elementary school).

Here is Aria's beautiful face, meowing her sweet little head off:

Regular blogging will resume tomorrow.

So Dr. H (and her fantabulous Keurig!) loves metaphors.  Yet another reason we get along really well.  We were discussing my upcoming move, and she said:

"Your parents have really been like your training wheels, providing extra support and stability for you. And this move is kind of like taking off those training wheels. It's both scary and exciting."

It's 100% true.

I didn't have my dad take the training wheels off my bike until just before my 8th birthday.  He took them off once before, when I was about 5 or 6.  I remember starting to coast down our steep-ish driveway, gradually picking up speed on my training wheel-free bike.  I went to try and brake at the bottom, and I couldn't.  The brakes work, I just panicked.  And so I kept on coasting down the lawn and finally into the swing set.

I survived this escapade with only a few bruises, but I also had my dad put my training wheels back on my bike.  It was too soon, I was too scared, and I just couldn't do it.

It took until my friends were always racing around on their bikes to push me into taking those damn training wheels off.  As it turns out, my biking skills were just fine.  It was my confidence that needed some nudging.

And now, too, that is the case.  I know how to eat.  I'm not an idiot.  I do, however, have trouble believing that I can do it, that I can get better.  I'm not trying to convince myself that everything is fine, and I have nothing to worry about.  It's just that my self-doubts have often gotten the better of me in the past.  Maybe I did need those literal training wheels for several extra years.  I know I definitely needed these more metaphorical training wheels for the past 1.5+ years.

I also know that keeping these training wheels on for longer isn't going to make me any more ready to strike out on my own.  You can't really learn how to ride a bike until you take off those training wheels. 

There are safeguards, certainly.  I'm not moving to the moon.  I have a plan, I have a therapist, I have a lot on the line.  I'm motivated.  It's exciting and terrifying, all at once.