Books: More Fun Than Body Image Distortion

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It's true.  Much of the time I do.  Books have a really hard time being incorrigible ignoramuses (ignorami?).    I read through a checklist of warning signs for reading addiction one time and realized that I could check off fewer than I'd have feared, but enough to make it a little embarrassing.  In fact, the Harry Potter books were what helped catapult me on my first solid recovery in 2003, and the Sookie Stackhouse books propped up my second one in 2008.

I spent most of this long weekend reading, so I felt pretty calm on Saturday and Sunday, if a little antisocial.  I did make it out to tea with a friend.  (Books and tea. Yes, really.  I am a Victorian mademoiselle.)  This friend is a fellow eating disorder patient/veteran/patient.  There's usually something at once comforting and competitive about eating with others whose food relationships are tetchy for whatever reason.  However, with this particular friend, I tend to mostly feel comfort.  There's no judgment and no overt eyeing of what/how much the other person is eating, and no pressure to eat more, which can be irritating.  It's really a shame we don't have much in common other than our eating struggles.

om nom nom nom nom nom

What with one thing and another, I hadn't had a chance to weigh myself on my own scale since before my doctor's appointment on Wednesday, so when the doctor told me my weight was down, as you know, I figured it was down in relation to the last official weight twelve weeks ago, and not to my actual right-now weight.  Until I stepped on the scale this morning for the first time since last Monday.

Someone asked me recently, while I was in the throes of panic and discomfort over the higher weight my scale had been showing, what happens when I stop weighing myself entirely.

Well, what happens is that I lose weight.  Kind of a lot for one week.  In fact, I'm rather hoping that some of it is just a lack of fluids (though I have not been engaging in purgative behaviors).  Yes, Internet, I stepped on the scale this morning and saw reflected there the lowest weight since I went into treatment in 2003.  Now, part of that has got to be low water weight for one reason or another, but in the end, it's also got to mean that I really haven't gained all that much weight.

And therefore it's got to mean that all the discomfort and the panic?  Even less grounded in reality than I thought they were.  So that's beyond frustrating.

Equally frustrating is that I did not mean to do this.  In fact, I have been actively trying to eat in such a way that I should naturally gain some body mass.  And that's just infuriating.  I've been putting myself through the paces, only to either stay right where I've been, or to backslide.  Not fair, Body Fat Fairy, not fair.

I am going to re-reread An Artificial Night now.  Don't bother me.