Basilton

22 he/they SW 136 CW 102 GW 99

[basiltonsbones]

hiii you can call me Basilton

BLOCK DONT REPORT!! taking away my space to vent won’t magically cure me or make me attempt recovery

pronouns: he/they/she

I’m genderqueer sorta transmasc but more femme style

age: 22 I try not to interact directly w minors but I don’t check blogs before liking or reposting so it’s bound to happen

Stats: 5’5 SW:136 CW:102 GW:99

I’ve been doing this shit off and on since I was twelve

GOALS AND REWARDS:

GW1: 130, buy trans tape

GW2: 125, buy art supplies

GW3: 120, buy a tail

GW4: 115, buy fangs

GW5: 110, buy fake nails/nail polish

GW6: 105, accessories/jewelry shopping

UGW: 99, clothes shopping!

(I kept the incriminates small to help me stay motivated :P)

I’m 100% pro recovery if you’re ready this shit will kill you! Other stuff about me: I’m autistic, I love horses more than life itself, I also love dogs and rabbits and rats and their genetics and breed shows, I love reading, I still live w my parents, I graduated college this spring, I love dnd and ren fairs

if you wanna be friends and are 18+ message me!!

[basiltonsbones]

I can’t stop yapping about food so I made another account for recovery posting

so find me at @basiltonsbliss if you’re curious about my whereabouts

[basiltonsbones]

I have been a bit confused about why I still struggle so much with food when all the things that started this don’t exist anymore. When I was in 7th grade until I graduated I struggled massively with social anxiety, generalized anxiety, depression, and just general poor self worth and body image. I think the combination of the above led to my developing and eating disorder. Then all of that almost completely went away, except for my feelings about food. I would get a bit stressed, or eat a bit too much one day, or try to lose weight “healthily” and suddenly all the same thoughts and feelings would come back. The need to restrict, the anxiety around food, the obsession with the number on the scale. I didn’t really know why because it no longer felt that deep? Like it didn’t feel like I really wanted this or believed this I just suddenly had the urge to starve and had all these emotions and thoughts about food. And sometimes I would give in, like I have for the past few months. The emotions were there, the habits were there, but it’s never felt the way it did in high school. I didn’t really want or believe this, so why was I making myself miserable about food when all the underlying causes had gone away?

I think I’ve figured it out. For six years I trained my brain that under certain circumstances and during certain emotions we restrict food and we feel all these emotions about food. It was real enough then, but eventually it just became habit. My brains neurons got used to firing in certain orders and triggering certain thoughts and feelings under various different stimuli, those pathways got stronger. Like water brains take the path of least resistance, and if they have done something enough times they wear a path into the stone that they will always take unless forced to try a different route. After years of restricting and feeling guilty about food those pathways are really strong and so it’s very easy for my brain to fall back on them even long after the things that caused those pathways to form in the first place are gone.

I don’t know if that makes sense to you, but it does to me. For me, at this time in my life, my relationship with food is not that deep. It’s not that restrictive dieting is what I really truly want, it’s not that there’s some underlying reason I feel the need to starve, it’s not that there’s something wrong with my brain, my brain has just developed a really strong habit of feeling shit about and trying to control food. For me, it’s not that deep.

I feel relieved, because you can retrain your brain with time, it’s just like training any other kind of animal. I think realizing that this isn’t who I am has made me realize that I can stop. That the thoughts and feelings causing me stress and the stress causing me to restrict are nothing more than my brain doing the very thing I taught it to do means that it’s not something intrinsic to me I have to obey. I can resist, I can retrain my brain, and I might be able to recover.

I am going to try to recover.

[basiltonsbones]

I haven’t had alcohol in like a month or something I forgot how good it feels to be tipsy

[basiltonsbones]

I feel like a dog stealing food off the counter every time I eat. It’s stressful, not because I know it’s morally wrong, dogs don’t think like that, but because I know I will be punished if I’m caught. The dog by his owner, me by the relentless guilt. But I can’t stop, the call of a delicious morsel too strong for my animal instincts to overcome. So I eat quickly in a mild state of panic and I can’t really enjoy it fully but I’ll still choose to do it again and again. Because I can’t help myself, because I think maybe this time they won’t catch me, I don’t know.

[basiltonsbones]

Trying to “half recover” or diet healthily to maintain my weight is far more stressful than just restricting.

If I’m in my “losing weight, eating as little as I can, embracing hunger” mindset I can eat under my calorie limit no matter how low it is and even if I’m physically hungry I’m not that mentally hungry, like I feel at peace with myself.

But if I’m trying to maintain at a lower weight or diet “healthily” all that happens is that the amount of calories I get is higher but I’m still technically restricting by trying to eat at/under a certain number or avoiding higher calorie things so I’m mentally/emotionally still reacting to food like I’m restricting super heavily by having constant mental hunger and really strong cravings but because I’m already eating more than I feel I “should” I’m weaker to giving in to those cravings. It’s just like a constant war in my mind and it’s miserable.

I know from past experience if I completely stop restricting I’ll overeat for a few weeks and then I’ll naturally stop and I can eat like a normal person 95% of the time with just a few days of crying about food randomly but when I do that I weigh over 130lbs. So that’s not an option.

[basiltonsbones]

I’m not good enough at restricting to say I have an eating disorder, I’m too stressed and guilty about food and too unwilling to gain weight to recover (and I feel like I can’t recover if I was never disordered to begin with), so being stuck between the two it looks like I am on a normal healthy diet but I can’t do that right either because I’m just fucking miserable about food all the time yo-yoing between eating too much and eating too little.

[basiltonsbones]

weighing myself once a week is driving me crazy but it’s the only time I can weigh myself before eating/drinking

not knowing is killing me

waiting is killing me

is it going to be good news or bad news?

one day I’ll have my own scale

[basiltonsbones]

did I just eat two tablespoons of peanut butter and two tablespoons of Nutella? Yes and I’m not going to log it I’m just going to pretend it didn’t happen and move on with my life because what’s the point it already happened now I’m not going to wallow in misery about it

[basiltonsbones]

I’ve changed my mind I’m taking it out of tomorrow’s calories because I hate myself :)

[basiltonsbones]

did I just eat two tablespoons of peanut butter and two tablespoons of Nutella? Yes and I’m not going to log it I’m just going to pretend it didn’t happen and move on with my life because what’s the point it already happened now I’m not going to wallow in misery about it

[basiltonsbones]

So I think why I feel like I am caught in a weird middle ground of disordered/not disordered is that

I’m not that weird about my body? Like I want to be thin but I don’t have any dysmorphia and I don’t really feel fat and like I’m generally kind of okay with how I look besides some gender dysphoria

I actively try to prevent myself from getting worse despite a small part of me really wanting to, but generally I want to enjoy life and I try not to let myself “get bad”

I don’t believe anything the little disordered demon in my brain says, like I have disordered thoughts but I don’t take it to heart or think it’s true or right

but I cry about food and am very stressed by calories and not knowing calories and I can’t eat over 1200 without freaking out and honestly over 1k is pushing it and I couldn’t gain weight without freaking out about that and if I don’t know how much I weigh or have access to a scale I panic a bit and I can’t eat nuts or seeds or avocados or drinks with calories and I’m afraid of oils and fats and I’ve cried every holiday about how much I ate and all I think about is food these days and I can’t stand others eating less or more healthily than me

so I guess I’m emotionally a bit weird about food, calories, and the number on the scale but I’m not logically/mentally weird about any of it and I don’t let myself get worse

[basiltonsbones]

yesterday I stayed up late crying about

eating a protein bar because I was still hungry after lunch (that I plan to take out of today’s calories)

ordering and eating naan several days ago along with eating 3/4 of the samosa I shared with my mother at an Indian restaurant (all of which fit into my calorie budget)

the four times the last month I’ve overeaten desserts despite only going over maintenance calories one of those times

[basiltonsbones]

I’m going to try to keep eating 1000-1200 calories a day because I’ve been able to exercise and that has felt good and I’ve been able to play with my dog and that’s been amazing and I haven’t felt tired or weak or cranky which is great AND I haven’t overeaten which is amazing

[basiltonsbones]

trying to eat 1000-1200 calories feels simultaneously like it’s not enough (I’m still hungry) and like it’s way to much (demons screaming in my head)

[basiltonsbones]

I didn’t feel full after lunch and thought “a normal person would eat more let’s try that I’ll just take it out of tomorrow’s calories” and now I kind of feel like crying and that’s pretty stupid but that’s life I guess

[basiltonsbones]

so I basically told my family that I had an eating disorder in junior high/high school that I more or less got over in college (all true) and that since last October I have tried to lose weight to get a more androgynous body and due to that I’ve struggled a bit with some of those old thoughts and feelings which is mostly true. I downplayed and avoided some of the more extreme things I’ve done and felt, I think the main thing I wanted to get across was that I don’t currently need help but I am vulnerable to eating disorders so maybe keep an eye on me in case I start slipping. What I hope to gain from this is being able to talk more openly about calories and restrict a bit more openly/not have to lie about food, have a bit of support and be able to talk about some of my Food Feelings, and to have a few people close to me that can make sure I don’t let myself slip too far because I don’t want to let myself fall into a “let’s see how bad I can get” sort of situation, and to dispel some of their current concerns because it isn’t That Bad.

I think it went as well as I could have hoped. They are currently all on a diet of some kind and very conscious of their own weights at the moment so there were a lot of things that they were just like “yeah this seems normal and inevitable when you are dieting” which is both good because it means they’re not going to bother me about it too much but also the little demon in my brain is screaming that he is right and that there’s nothing wrong with me. But also many of the more disordered things I didn’t say or said I wasn’t doing or trying to stop doing. So I don’t know. That being said they were also all very supportive and said that they are there for me and willing to talk and all that. Actually my dad didn’t do that he just talked about how he’s lost fifteen pounds in three weeks lol but he means well he’s just kind of clueless sometimes.

I’m still torn about trying to fix my mental relationship with food and trying to healthilyish maintain where I’m at and wanting to get worse. We shall see what happens I guess.

[basiltonsbones]

you know every mental illness I’ve had I’ve failed at being bad enough to need serious intervention, hospitalization, or long term help but succeeded in making myself utterly miserable (tw for suicidal ideation and sh)

I’m not depressed or anxious anymore but I was passively suicidal for years and I cut myself frequently but never deeply but I also kind of just managed to keep on going on? I got meds and slept on my parents floor for a bit and I had to do online school for a year but like I never felt like I was all that bad. I existed pretty normally. I am thankfully not all that anxious or depressed anymore, I don’t know how that happened lol but it is nice!

I’m also autistic and I got a diagnosis and accommodations in school but also I’ve also been like fine? I get overstimulated and I’ve always been weird and whatever had different struggles due to that but it’s kind just been enough to make my life feel hard but not enough to really be actually disabling? Like I feel like I could probably work some jobs and just be like stressed and overwhelmed but still functional. Maybe I wouldn’t have enough energy to enjoy hobbies but like that wouldn’t be enough to get me on disability.

And with the eating disorder thing I feel like I’m kind of just bad enough to make myself feel stressed and a bit miserable but not actually being any real risk to myself? Like more in the realm of “a bit too emotionally vulnerable to their diet” not “mentally ill, needs help”.

With all of it it’s weird because like on the one hand, I am grateful that it’s not worse. On the other I feel like I’m never “bad enough” to get access to real help. Just like walking the line between sickness and health.