Promoting A New Blog

So I have been working hard on this Friday evening, promoting my new blog Discoveries to Blow Your Mind by submitting it to directories like blogowogo and LazyBlogDirectory.com. I also learned how to discover my RSS feed and atom 1.0 for blogspot/blogger, which I didn't know how to do before.

In short, I have been productive.

My dad read the new blog and gave me rave reviews, but then again, he's a conservative, so if scientific research comes out that supports him (see: New Bigotry: Why Some Scientists are Worried that the Liberal Elite Really are Running America), he'll basically have a party.

Today, I went to work from 7 am to 11am, then I went to class until 4 pm. I ate well throughout the day: I had cereal before leaving for work, then a turkey sandwich with salt and pepper that I made last night, and then an orange for a snack (better work in the Vitamin C, you know!). Dinner was a bit of a flop, though: I had a chocolate chip muffin, 2 rolls, a rib-eye steak, a salad, milk, and a little bit of left over roast beef (okay, that last thing was kind of a 'snack' before dinner because I was starvvinnnggg).

To be honest, I think I was kind of planning on overeating tonight, all day. I knew the boyfriend was going to be out of town visiting his family, and maybe it was just a sort of "Whatever. I'll catch up over the weekend," sort of an attitude. Not sensible at all.

I went running a little while after eating, and then felt slightly better. It kind of reminded me that I want to take care of my body instead of destroying it with an eating disorder.

Tomorrow, busy day:

      - Switch banks (Goodbye, Bank of America, hello, Chase! I'm tired of the fees)
      - Clean room
      - Write another blog entry for www.cleopatronize.blogspot.com
      - Work more on advertising (set up a twitter account, link to youtube, etc.)
    

Valentine's Day Approacheth, Faithful Brethren

   Wazzzzzzup?

    You know, I always say that and I can't remember where it's from. Is it The Office? Or a different comedy? I don't know.

I didn't write yesterday because I was completely exhausted after all my meetings, plus the boyfriend and I were celebrating that one of those meetings went very well and it looks like I'll be working with a well-known and large ($4 billion dollar) company, if all works out. Unfortunately, I spent a large part of the day in traffic, so my back is killing me today.

Anyways, as I was saying, we celebrated last night. My idea of celebrating something is ordering take-out Indian food from Shalimar Cuisine of India to eat while watching a movie. The movie next on AFI's top 100 just happened to be Schindler's List , so in an ironic turn of events, I ended up celebrating my career advancement by watching a heartbreaking but brilliant film about the Holocaust. 


Eating wasn't super great or super terrible yesterday, but I have been having a few more binge urges. The boy-toy actually saved me this evening - I nearly gave in, but as I was heading into the kitchen to grab the chocolate chip muffins purchased for his enjoyment, he asked "Is that on your meal plan?" It isn't, so I sat back down.


Normally, I would tell families not to police their loved ones who have eating disorders, but my boyfriend knows I want him to, and that it keeps me accountable. We have a pretty good communication thing going, so I'm chill with it.


Today, I had cereal for breakfast at work. I worked later than I expected (sooo many excel spreadsheets) and I hadn't brought my lunch with me, so I had a Gogurt and Fiber One bar as a snack, then ate a very late lunch of left-over Lamb Vindaloo and (also left over) roast beef. For dinner, we had grilled turkey paninis with pesto and 6 Italian cheeses.


So, overall, this is a good month: I'm more than half of the way through my menstrual cycle, and this is usually around the time where I begin cramming food into my mouth like a crazy mofo, so this is really an improvement. I also made my lunch to take to work with me tomorrow, so it's good.

I also wrote (what I think) is a really good blog update today about liberal bias in academia. My dad loved it, at least. :)

A Case of the... Tuesdays?

     Today started out well. I actually got an appointment at work, which was great. Unfortunately, I didn't follow my meal plan well, especially at night, and I feel badly about that.

     I had cereal for breakfast, at work. For lunch, I had an apple and then hard-shell tacos at the cafeteria. I think that kind of threw me off, because I don't like eating at the caf - it's hard to eat 'healthy.' By the time we had dinner, it was pretty late, and I overate a little, I think. We had roast beef, salad with kidney beans and corn, and rolls with smart balance. My overeating wasn't terrible, but something to watch out for.

     I don't know if I quite finished everything on my to-do list for today. I did play around instead of writing on my other blog, though, which I shouldn't have done. I need to be more self-disciplined. Tomorrow I have a big appointment for work, so I need to sleep early.

A Case of the Mondays

On the positive side, calling went brilliantly today! I really think I have finally figured it out -- people kept telling me to be myself, but honestly, I think I was afraid to do that in front of the people I was working with. Nevertheless, today I finally did it, and it went great. I really think I'll continue to improve, but I don't want to be too optimistic about it.

I went to the gynecologist today, also. Birth control for terrible cramps. Hooray. Last time I started birth control, I inexplicably collapsed and went to the ER. We'll see how this goes.

As for the to-do list, well, I did the calls, and that was great. I need to read a bit now, just so I can say I did that. I'm also going to finish the assignment for Irish Literature. However, I don't have time to finish the philosophy reading, as I have to get up at 5:30. I unwisely played games with the hunk this afternoon, instead of studying. I need to incorporate more self-discipline and see that this does not happen again.

I followed the meal plan well, but I do think I could eat a bit better. Too much cheese of late is giving me a bit of indigestion (I had the chicken sandwich again for lunch today). Tomorrow will be difficult, because I have nothing to prepare for lunch. 

Tomorrow's to-dos:
              - Call 5 more people, avoiding self-consciousness
              - Take good notes in Irish Literature class
              - Finish poster for Global Tides
              - Email about sent books
              - Follow meal plan

Night falls on the living, the dead, and the working class

  ... Sometimes I feel like the working class falls somewhere in-between the former two categories. :)
   
  So, today went well! I got a lot done - almost everything on my list, in fact. The only thing I didn't do was research for the places to call tomorrow, but that's okay. I did a ton of other things -- I worked a lot on my other blogs (Discoveries to blow your mind and GREchicks), and I read for work, as promised.

   Eating went well, also. For breakfast, I had cheerios and bran flakes, mixed with peanutbutter - a pretty typical meal plan meal. For lunch, I had left over chicken tacos: totally delicious. Dinner was also really good -- grilled chicken pesto sandwiches with mozzarella on sourdough. Mmmm. It sounds like we ordered it from a restaurant, but they were homemade and legitimately great.

    My goals for tomorrow are these:
                          - Make at least 5 calls
                          - Try and make those calls without being self-conscious
                          - Write my response to Playboy of the Western World for Irish literature
                          - Read the next chapter of the philosophy book
                          - Read more of Seven Powers of Questions
                          - Mail the books for Craigslist 

    

  

It's still the weekend

Okay, so, I'm in a little bit of a bad mood right now. I guess it's a good thing that there are new postsecrets tonight, though.

   I don't really want to write for too long, because it's already nearly 10:30 and I want to get up relatively early tomorrow so I can get a lot of work done. I'm trying to increase my productivity, you see. :)

    Meal plan was alright today. I did well, overall, really. I guess I didn't do super great at lunch because I shared a sub sandwich with the male-counterpart and he wanted turkey-bacon-avocado, so I felt like I kind of overdid it on the fats. Plus it was kind of a big sandwich, so I may have had too many carbs. At dinner, I think I did okay, I guess - maybe a little too many carbs, again. We were celebrating our anniversary, and aforementioned x-y chromosomer doesn't know how to cook, so he was 'making dinner for me' as a romantic gesture. It was chicken tacos, quite good, but the chicken wasn't cooked all the way, and we had to keep putting it back in, and so dinner kind of came in stages, which made it more difficult to monitor.

    Anyway, that's about it for today. Tomorrow is going to be productive -- I'll get up early, and I have a pretty good to do list, which is as follows:
           - Finish reading for missed philosophy class (A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will)
           - Finish writing new blog
           - Ad advertising for new blog
           - Read The Economist
           - Continue to upgrade grechicks.com crossover
           - Read The Seven Powers of Questions for work
           - Fix car tire
           - Register car
           - Research work for Monday
           - (Maybe) look for a new job



            

It's the WEEKEND

Hello all!

I just got my highest score ever in Yahtzee (okay, I don't play very much, so 2 Yahtzees in one game is a lot) against the significant other. He got his lowest score ever. Ha! Power to the forces of good and feminine!

Today, eating wise, was pretty good. I had some cereal before going to work, but I have no milk, so I had it with yogurt - not so delicious. Also, I didn't take my Vyvanse until late, and I starve unless I take that with food, so I had to have some more food (a little more cereal) at work. For lunch, I had some more left over spaghetti. I added some mozzarella cheese for protein, because there wasn't a lot of sauce on the stuff left.

Dinner was so good - New York steak, really nice lean stuff, with mushrooms. Then spinach salad with avocado, kidney beans, corn, and Newman's italian dressing. Good stuff. The boyfriend's mother bought a lot of the groceries for me, as a sort of "You cook for my son all the time" gift. This was nice, as I don't have much money.

I'm feeling a bit discouraged about my job, lately. Also, I skipped classes today and slept through the afternoon. I don't know what it is that's making it so hard for me to motivate myself to do things. I feel as though I lack discipline. I think, this weekend, I might devote a little time to looking up some links to developing self-discipline, then linking those here. Maybe I'll do one of those "30 days, 30 goals" type things.

What fun. Oh, hooray.

Anyways, at least I followed the meal plan today. :)

Hello world!

      I slept until 10 am today, right through my alarm -- it's lucky today is my late work day. My boy friend is sitting next to me right now, griping about how "He remembers how I used to love him!" because I'm writing in my blog instead. 

This is so my life, in cartoon.

       I also decided to play a prank on my boss, who catapulted a basketball at my left ear in the office yesterday. He felt pretty bad about that, so this morning before work I did quite the makeup job. Let's just say he was ready to call corporate, confessing he nearly killed the intern, before I told him it was just makeup and I didn't really have a bruise the size of Africa.
  
       My meal plan went well today also. I had breakfast in the morning before going to work, and I brought some left over spaghetti with me. We had some oranges and carrots at the office, so I ate those for my fruit and veggie exchanges, and got my carbs, fat, and protein from the spag. For dinner, the hunk and I went to Sharky's (aforementioned Don Juan loves Sharky's), and we shared the fajita plate. It's hard to follow my meal plane when we eat out, but I feel like that was a pretty good choice, since it has a lot of veggies, and it's easy to moderate the carb/protein ratio.

      Over all, a good day. I feel this blog is helping -- I kind of imagined an "internet friend" who would give me a lecture if I didn't eat according to plan, which helped me this morning, when I really wanted to binge it up for one last day.
  
     This mental internet friend, by the way, is something like Ophelia's sassy gay friend:

Anorexia, anyone?

           This is me. I am in recovery from an eating disorder. When I was 11, I got anorexia, which I had for about 2 years. Then I switched to bulimia and exercise addiction (the parentals weren't too happy with my losing my period as soon as I got it, and the "YOU-WILL-SIT-THERE-UNTIL-YOU-EAT-THAT!!!" power struggles always ended in victory for the forces of maturity as soon as my dad started crying), which lasted until I left for college at 16. I soon existed that it's difficult for hours of elliptical to coexist with hours of chemistry homework, so I said bye-bye to the exercise, too, and settled for binge eating disorder, with an occasional laxative overdose to tide me over.

            I am a tried-and-true treatment believer, by the way. Been there, done that. I have cried for my parents sitting in a room full of strange adults who weigh less than a normal 13 year old, and I have surfed the internet for hours (reading both the "pro-ana" sites and the "You have an addiction to sugar! Never touch the substance of the devil again!" gigs). I have done a lot of other things, too. Really stupid things, a lot of them, but they were done when I was horrifically sad.

            I finally found recovery, at 18. It's weird, sometimes, to think that I had an eating disorder for 7 years and yet considered myself 'mostly better' at about the same time I was legal. It's also weird to tell you that the spring and summer I was in treatment was the first time in my life that I can remember ever being happy.

            Which, by the way, leads me to recommend something: antidepressants. And topamax. And wanting to get better more than anything else in the world. It can work. I promise you, I did not believe it. In-patient therapy was my last attempt before the big "Good bye, world. Smell you later."

            I've been in a great relationship with a great guy for a year now. Out of treatment for almost 2. I have a job, I have dreams, I do things with my day and I legitimately enjoy them, instead of thinking "This is something I can do to waste my time instead of not eating."

           I eat to live now. 2 years ago, I most definitely and absolutely lived to eat, or to avoid eating, depending on my mood.

            Still, sometimes I want to raise a toast and say, "Anorexia, anyone?"

            That's the way I start to feel at a certain time of the month, or at least part of me wants to blame it on hormones. I'll be honest, deep down, I have an idea of hormones as creepy, purple, 12-legged creatures with gigantic beaks just galloping through my body looking for an opportunity to belch out a binge-urge or bulimic moment.

Hormones are kind of like Shelob

    When this happens, I - per usual - decide it's time to return to da meal plan. You know, the one that got me out of a locked treatment facility where you couldn't use the restroom alone, and back into normal life? Yeah, that one.

    So that's the idea behind this blog. I know there are other people out there who know what I mean when I say that "Trying to be happy" or "Just eating" isn't the answer. I want to hear from you. I'm going to blog daily, here, about following my meal plan, as well as about what recovery methods or motivational tricks I find useful. I would love to hear from others who are interested in the same, or who just want to talk about the loneliness of an eating disorder.
 
Because if there is anything I have learned, it's that support from people who know is one of the most powerful things there is.