For some, it's hard to lose weight. For me, it's hard to gain weight. Like really hard - both mentally and physically. Eating to restore weight or gain weight has been compared to what it's like to eat when your pregnant. YOU FEEL LIKE YOU ARE EATING CONSTANTLY. (jeez it's time to eat again?!?!) My number one fear when beginning therapy was to gain weight. And then that fear quickly became number two and my meal plan became number one. The dietitians at the Emily Program are trained specifically in eating disorders. They look at how much you weigh, your physical symptoms (hair loss, skin color, body temperature, loss of menstrual cycle, etc.), your level of restriction, level of exercise, and many other factors to determine what your meal plan will include. Each meal plan is taylor-made specifically for each client. My meal plan, like many others, is vastly different than what an eating disorder would consider acceptable. Meal plans include ALL the food groups and there are no "food labels" such as "good food" or "bad food." They consist of breakfast, a morning snack, lunch, an afternoon snack, supper, and a bedtime snack. For someone who has been told by their eating disorder that they either have to skip meals, only eat before or after a certain time, or not eat from one food group or another, this amount of change is super scary. But like my dietician told me, "It took you a long time to lose that weight and it's going to take a long time to restore it." What I specifically like about the first dietician I worked with, is that she didn't ask me to change everything at once. We sat down and made a list of "fears" in one of our first meetings. My list consisted of eating after 6pm, eating fruit after 12pm, eating breaded or fried food, and eating refined carbohydrates just to name a few. There was a long list a specific "fear foods" that I had which ranged from pasta, to fries, to mayo and salad dressing. We then sat together and ranked them from most feared to least feared. Then, week by week, we focused on one fear at a time. Some weeks we would tackle harder tasks and other weeks smaller tasks. There were weeks where I could cross two fears off and there were other weeks where I couldn't cross any fears off. It was and still is a brutal process. I still have a fears that I am trying to cross off that list and I have even added fears to it. My dietician now is the perfect challenger for my eating disorder. She catches my food judgments and eating disorder behaviors before I even realize I am saying or doing them. If there is something I am struggling to put my finger on, she somehow can pick it out and give it the words I can't find. She gave me the meal plan I have now and works with me as I reincorporate eating habits. This is what my meal plan looks like: Each day I write what I eat and total up my tallies. The key to this process is to eventually move away from a meal plan towards intuitive eating. Being obsessive about my new plan is not healthy either. It is not meant to be followed to a T, but rather a rough outline to be flexible around. Somedays I only eat about 70% of my meal plan and other days I eat 110% of it. Right now eating intuitively isn't the right fit for me because I still struggle with hunger queues. In other words, my body doesn't appropriately notify my brain when it needs nutrition. Hunger queues can be growling stomach, moodiness, lack of energy, etc. Don't get me wrong I still get hangry (hungry and angry) now and again, but just not every time. To help with this problem I have alarms set on my phone that will notify me when to at least try and eat something. This way if I am in a hardcore study sesh or preoccupied with something else, I don't skip a meal or snack. Before I set alarms, I would be busy all day and then look at my meal plan at supper and realize how much I was missing. Lastly, if you struggle with an eating disorder check out the app Rise Up. It lets you log your food on your device in a more discrete manner. It is not always feasible to have a paper meal log with you and it can be embarrassing to log in public. This app solved those two problems for me and it even lets you send it to your dietician in a PDF format!
3 Comments
Jordan
8/13/2016 03:06:12 pm
Literally drooling over your food photos....you need to send me some recipes!! 😍
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Tara
8/14/2016 09:44:47 pm
You'd die over that iced coffee!! I will be posting the Cowboy Caviar and the quiche cups soon :)
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Trudy
8/15/2016 05:17:39 am
Tara, you are awesome!!! Keep up the hard work as I know you are doing!!!😊💕😊
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HEY IT'S ME TARA!Thanks so much for coming to check my blog out. I am a recent college graduate who is taking a crack at this blogging thing for the first time. I hope to inspire you to live a more connected and peaceful life with my own experiences. Recent Posts
February 2021
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