Griff's Gonna Make It

My experience with life, lifting, and Anorexia Nervosa.

[griffs-gonna-make-it]

Dealing With Weight Gain Mentally in Anorexia Recovery

Obviously the biggest and most ambiguous challenge in recovery from a restrictive eating disorder is gaining weight. At the beginning of the weight restoration process you'll be plagued by countless nagging thoughts: "How much weight do I have to gain? Do I have to gain it ALL back? Is 'x' or 'y' enough weight? Will I ever stop gaining weight? Am I going to be obese? I'm going to be obese, right?" It's because weight gain is the one thing that a disordered individual will fear more than any other aspect of life (yes, even more than death, or disease). If you had told me in January of this year that I would even have been even just 120-130 lbs. again, I would have stuck my head in an oven. Seems crazy? Unreasonable? Insane? That's because it is. There's nothing rational going on in a malnourished anorexic's brain. What's the cure for this? Gaining weight. I found that with every pound I added to my frame, it got easier mentally.

I think many recovering anorexics fixate too much on numbers and BMI's (really a meaningless system which doesn't take into account muscle mass, body type, or just the simple fact that we as humans all have different healthy weights) which brings me to another point. BMI 19.0 is not your end game. I'm not fucking kidding. Throw the chart out. Ditch the scale. It's not conducive. The goal isn't to get to a minimum "healthy" weight and continue your disordered behavior from there (doing this will almost undoubtedly result in relapse and repeating the whole fucking process all over again because you will still be trying to restrict your intake to maintain that magic number). The "end game" is to reconstruct a happy a normal life for yourself again. A life that doesn't revolve around restriction, self-hatred, and failing health.

The trick is to not base your identity or self-worth on an arbitrary number. Because after all, that's what is really is. Arbitrary. Meaningless. Horse shit. You get the picture. I wasted over a year of my life weighing myself every day, and letting the number on the scale dictate how the rest of my day was going to be. Too high? I'm worthless and need to work harder. Too low? Hah, no such thing. This mindset will kill ya. I promise.

As I said, although it starts out hard, weight restoration gets easier. Some things that personally help me escape from my inner thoughts are:

-Having conversations with a loved one (i.e. my sister, my girfriend, etc.)

-Restoring old friendships that you may have lost to the isolation of anorexia

-Watching a series on Netflix 

-Writing

-Taking a leisurely walk out in nature

- Playing board/video games

-Setting new, healthy fitness goals and achieving them, slowly but surely

There's no victory in starving yourself down to being the skinniest one in the room, but there IS victory in reclaiming your life for yourself and taking charge.

-Griff

[griffs-gonna-make-it]

Introductions...

Hello Tumblrsphere,

My name is Griffin. I'm 20 years old. I currently attend a community college and hope to transfer in the spring or fall of 2015 to study to become a registered dietician somewhere. The past two years have been some of the craziest of my life. I wanted to start this blog with a focus on a few things:

- My daily super exciting (not srs) activities

-My ongoing recovery from a restrictive eating disorder

-My progress lifting in the gym

-My insights on life

I think that male eating disorders are generally glossed over and not talked about in today's society. Anorexia Nervosa is often looked at as a "teenage girl's disease" (even though it affects a diverse group of people from varying genders, ethnicities, and ages. I want to change that. There needs to be more awareness on the subject. More awareness = more effective treatment, prevention, and recovery. Here's a little bit of backstory:

My poor relationship with food/exercise started in December of 2012. I've been diagnosed with body dysmorphic disorder ("a mental illness that involves belief that one's own appearance is unusually defective, while one's thoughts about it are pervasive and intrusive, although the perceived flaw might be nonexistent.") since age 12 and I guess it finally got the best of me. Unlike some sufferers of eating disorders, I did not come from an overweight background.The heaviest I'd ever even been was only 150 lbs. (at 5'9") in August of 2012. I remember very clearly getting home from the last day of classes before winter break and decided that I would lose 10 lbs. in an effort to improve my fitness (I had no idea how to properly diet or lose weight, but for some reason I had it in my head that I had to "get in shape"). I began doing cardio 3x a week and cleaning up my diet. Unfortunately, what started as an innocent "cleaner eating" regiment began to slowly morph into a string of disordered and ritualized rules regarding food. By summer of 2013 I was doing cardio every other day and had gotten down to 125ish lbs.  At this point, my brain was seriously a mess. After eating a meal, whether it be at home by myself or at a restaurant with family or friends, I would often retreat to a bathroom and pinch my emaciated stomach or legs searching for accumulating body fat. Yes. Very neurotic. When classes started again in August, there was no more denying to myself that I had an eating disorder (though I did push it to the back of my mind. The list of food restriction and cardio rules began to expand (i.e. only eat 3x a day and run on the treadmill everyday. My diet pretty much consisted of a Subway six inch sub and two bowls of cereal everyday.) By Christmas time, others started to really worry about me. I had gotten down to 116 lbs. My aunt actually called me on the phone asking if I was bulimic and I actually had the nerve to call her crazy, although I never did purge anything so I felt like I was justified in telling her that I was fine. At this point, my health seriously began to deteriorate. I took the spring semester off of school because I was really too weak to go. The skin on my face was peeling off, I'd lose clumps of hair in the shower, I had absolutely no sex drive, and all I did besides go to the gym everyday at 5:00 AM was sit in front of the heating vent in my room to keep warm. My social life was dead and I ignored my girlfriend's calls because I didn't even have the energy to hang out with her and I didn't want her to see me like this. I think the only reason it got this far is because I was living by myself in my Mom's house while she was in another state. Finally, I called my Mom and confessed to having a problem. This was the first time I had ever really confronted my eating disorder. There was no more running from it. At 98 lbs. I knew I had to either recover or die. Unfortunately at this point I had no clue how to eat like a normal human being which sounds stupid, but it's true. At first I ate just about everything in site. Massive binges from being hungry for so long. After about 4 days of this, I couldn't take it and told my Mom, who had come home to help me after the admission of my condition, that I wanted to die. On February 28th, 2014, I was committed to a psych ward and discharged after about a week. Then I was set up with a therapist and dietician who both really helped me get a solid foundation as far as my mental status, diet, and exercise. Then I discovered lifting. I had always wanted to get stronger, but strength training and undereating really don't coexist. But finally, I was ready. My lifts were pathetic at first. Not even beginner status (60 lb. bench press). But over the months I'd say I've made quite a bit of progress, and progression is addicting as fuck. Since starting a heavy lifting regiment, I have gained up to about 128 lbs. and am currently bulking up to a goal of about 145-150 (then from there, who knows).

So that's it. You read the into. Thats what this is about. If you'd like to follow my journey, I'll be posting updates here as frequently as possible. Any encouragement is appreciated and will be reciprocated :)

LET'S DO THIS SHIT.

-Griff