Plodding Along And Hitting A Plateau

Guess it happens to the best of us really. No matter how well we seem to be doing, at some point the progress begins to level off and you find yourself stuck at a point where you can't seem to move the digits on the scale for all your efforts. It's something that happens to anyone who attempts a diet of any kind – the human body is programmed to hold onto any body fat we take on board, for dear life and hates giving it up – but it seems especially prevalent in those of us who follow VLCDs (Very Low Calorie Diets).

I know that the trick to getting the body back on track, is by shaking up the intake a little here and there so that it doesn't think that it's in starvation mode. I need to up the calorie intake to a maximum of 1000 a day for a while, then maybe go up to 1200 for a couple of days, then down to 800 for a couple of days, back to 1000 and then down to 700, before returning to the 500 cals a day intake. I also need to make sure that for one day a week I do have a 'cheat day' with lots more calories than normal, just to keep the body and brain confused enough to allow my metabolism to burn off the excess fat and allow me to lose weight. 

I also need to quit purging too. I know how that can just fuck up the body and force it to stop losing weight from time to time. I know you'd think that if you puked up everything you ate that it would mean you would lose weight due to the lack of calories being consumed. But if there's anything a seasoned dieter knows, it's that 1 + 1 doesn't always equal 2. The human body isn't a precise machine that always runs exactly the way you want it to, and sometimes it just does exactly the fucking opposite to what you're expecting. Hence sometimes, puking up your food isn't any guarantee that you're going to lose weight. 

I just feel so blah at the moment. Trundling along, trying to eat as little as possible, eating crap in small amounts, throwing up the huge amounts of crap I binge on, not drinking enough water (only because it's so cold at the moment that all the water that comes out of the tap is freezing and hurts all my sensitive teeth!) and waiting for the increase in anti-depressant medication I have been prescribed to kick in and hopefully help pull me out of the mire of depression I have been suffering lately. I know that most of my moods are down to the depression and it's still something the doctor and I are working together on finding what works.; but it's frustrating. I need for my mood to be in a good place in order for me to be able to approach dieting and weight loss in a positive light; but I need to have the weight loss and dieting thing in check in order for me to feel positive about it. It's a Catch 22 situation really. 

But plod on I must. My head feels just so totally overwhelmed by all the various problems I have going on on right now. There's the dieting, the purging, the depression, the anxiety and the drug addiction. I know that deep down the answer to it all would be to seek some kind of professional help and work through the root cause which is bound to be responsible for all of them, but the reality is, I'm just not ready to go opening any huge cans of psychological worms anytime soon. I don't have the energy to deal with it all and I know I'd only be doing myself more harm than good, If I tried to throw myself into something I'm not fully mentally ready for. It would overwhelm me further, make me feel pressured and distract me from all of the other things I have on my mind at the moment.

On a plus note, I have been in regular contact with a fellow blogger and friend, Ruby Tuesday who is currently in treatment for her own eating disorder issues at the moment. She's been in treatment for about three or four weeks now and she's been going though the mill a bit recently; but I sent her a little 'survival package' to help cheer her up a couple of weeks ago, and she finally received it a couple of days ago. Why it takes so long for an item to get to Ireland I don't know, but it seems to have gotten there at precisely the right time, to put a bit of a smile on her face. It was only a couple of books to read, a new purple journal and some purple pens (I know that purple is one of her favourite colours!) but I wanted to send her something that would allow her to tap into her creative side a bit and hopefully do some writing to help process what's going on inside her head. 

It's weird because this is someone who I have never before met, but whom I got to know as part of this whole blogosphere of contacts. We're the same age and have shared some similar life experiences, which perhaps makes us more likely to have struck up a friendship, but I was really surprised at how much I felt as though I'd gained a real friend, just from visiting each other's blogs every day. As it is now, we text and email and now write a bit, but I really miss reading her posts on here every day. Obviously I'm glad that she took the scary step of signing herself into treatment and is now getting the best help she needs, but part of me wishes that she was back out on the outside and easier to stay in regular contact with. Because she was the first person, whose words made sense to me when I read them. I actually felt a huge sigh of relief when I got to know her because it meant that I wasn't alone, wasn't mad, and wasn't a lone old hag in a sea of much younger Blogger contributors!!

I did ask her if she fancied writing a guest post for this blog whilst she's in hospital, so that she could still let her regular readers hear how she's doing and whatnot. She said she'd definitely like to do that, so hopefully, in the near future, I will have something I can type up and share with all of you who know her, to help keep you all updated with how things are going for her. Watch this space!

Other than that. Life holds little of interest for me right now. The internal battles of mental health, inside my head seem to take up a lot of time with thinking and postulating and worrying and wondering....it kind of paralyses me from being able to actually DO anything with my days. I find it hard to read, hard to write, hard to concentrate and just generally hard to do anything other than vegetate, watch television and curl up on the sofa with my other half. I have been thinking about entering some online fiction writing competitions to give me something to do and focus on, but I'm not sure if I have the mental energy or capacity to concentrate on writing anything at the moment. Which is a real shame, because I love to write and I have promised myself time and again, that I will make a concerted effort to start entering these competitions. But, as with everything else in my life, it all just seems like far too much of an effort to deal with right now and I end up putting it on the back-burner permanently and forgetting all about it. 

I sound pathetic don't I? But that's what happens when mental health issues get stuck in your head. They take up all the space that you would normally use for other cognitive processes or creative endeavours, leaving you more like an automaton than a real human being. It's all you can do to get through the day unscathed. Achieving anything else just doesn't seem possible. My mind is filled with anxieties. Anxiety about my weight, about food, about calories, about purging, about not purging, about codeine, about running out of it, about being discovered, about having to admit to having a problem, about wondering why my other half is with me, about whether or not I've locked all the doors at night, about whether or not everyone is staring at me when I leave the house, about whether I'll have a panic attack if go out at all....urgh....it's as if I'm constantly plagued by thoughts that drive me insane. Meh. I hate being mental....it's so exhausting!

Anyways, that's pretty much all I have to say for today. Tomorrow I begin to switch things up a little bit with the calorie amounts to try and jump start that bollocksed metabolism of mine. Perhaps a little Ana Boot Camp Diet is in order!

Wish me luck!

x