Challenges

I've been struggling lately.  A lot has been going on in my life (besides the new baby!) and I've been having a hard time coping with it.  I had to have my gall bladder removed this week because of gall stones that developed while I was pregnant.  That was hard enough to deal with, because I had to go on a non-fat diet.  Great diet plan for someone recovering from an eating disorder, but I had no choice.  It was that, or suffer through attacks that put me in the ER.  I tried to continue to control the gall bladder attacks after my baby was born with the diet, but it turned out to be too difficult for me to do.  And I couldn't really narrow down what was giving me the attacks. So out it came.  But one side effect to not having a gall bladder is that I will now gain weight easier, and have a harder time losing weight if I need to.  I've been in panic mode.  It doesn't help that if I do gain weight, there is a good chance my mom will say something to me.  I've told her not to, that it's not helpful in anyway, but she has a hard time NOT pointing it out when she thinks I'm fat.  She does this very passive-aggressively, and I really don't think she knows how much it hurts me to hear some of her comments, even though I tell her.  She thinks she's being helpful.

Anyway, I've been feeling out of control lately and really struggling to eat during the day, and to eat better at night.  I know I need to stay healthy for my little girl, especially since I'm nursing her.  But it's been hard.  I cried on my husbands shoulder one night because I was so afraid that he wouldn't love me if I got fat (he told me he would).  And I argue with myself over whether to eat a biscuit, or have ice cream, or some other sugary or sweet thing (I have a major sweet tooth, and love white bread).

I have a pretty good idea why I feel out of control, but I can't do anything about it.  Besides that, it's the holidays, which means parties revolving around food, and my family coming to visit.  It's hard, and some days, I just want to crawl into bed and stay there.  Instead, I'm constantly cleaning out the fridge, throwing away food that's probably still good, or fighting to eat something that my rational mind knows isn't going to make me fat.  I've lost my ability to cope any other way.

But I have hope that I'll get past this.  I don't want to do this again, and I'm watching myself.  I always make myself eat the thing that part of me is afraid of, and then I point out to myself that I didn't balloon.  I remind myself that my husband likes the way I look now (after gaining weight) BETTER than he did when he met and married me.  I remind myself that I have to eat, and eat right, so my baby can grow right, and grow strong.  And I remind myself how terrible and even more out of control I felt when I was in the midst of my eating disorder.  I know that I can figure this out and move on.  I just needed to vent about it.  I hope that someone out there reads this and sees that even those well on the recovery path have their bad moments.  It doesn't mean that giving up and going back is the only option.  Because it's not.  And I won't let it be an option at all.