Children...

Yesterday I and my boy had attended our friends’ baby christening. There were lots of food, fun, laughter and children. All of our friends have kids, hoards, and hoards of kids. Which is just awesome for them, and I am not envious one bit.

I must have been injected with a vaccine for baby-fever because kids aren’t in my cards. Yet.

I’ve never really wanted kids since I was little and everyone always said “You’ll change your mind one day.”
Well, I’m 34, my BF is 35 and he feels the same way. I have had people tell me I am selfish for not wanting a child.
Really?!
It pushes my buttons, this little old baby topic. I am not naive enough to say never, god knows what I’ll think tomorrow, let alone years from now. It drives me nuts that people my age assume all women want children.

Apparently not all of us do.

I hate the sad, pitying looks I get from people when I express this view, and the “Life is SO much better” line.

Plus there is that big looming question out there: “What will you do when your 50 and regret NOT having a kid?!”

Well, the fact of the matter is I don’t know what I’ll do as I can’t predict what my feelings will be in 12 years. Can you?

What’s your take on children? Please answer that.

It’s Friday: Time for Sushi and Chanel.

It’s an internal battle right now, about everything. I am really struggling with perfection in a very intense way and it’s not manifesting itself in eating disorder behaviors but it triggers my eating disorder thoughts like crazy!

The days, the weeks, the evens I had been through this week were always celebrated with huge weekend binges, later on binges/purges, as if I was gobbling up all the negativity of the week in one enormous feast of food. 

But I’m a survivor.

I no longer turn to food.

I indulge differently.

This Friday it’s Nicole’s Yoga, the Sushi, Chanel and Vino.

Yesterday I’ve watched the new Chanel fashion show.  Karl presented another collection to dream about. So this evening I dine on my old Chanel book

and sushi.

I feel alive.

What’s your favorite indulgence?

Bikini fear

At the end of October me and my boy are planning to hit the Africa – Egypt and Morocco, I believe. The sun the sea and sandy beaches are the things that we, cold climate country people are looking for in the middle of autumn.

And I’M NOT EXCITED AT ALL.

I fear bikini.

I am repulsed by undressing in front of people.

Even my BF. Ok, not so much in front of him, but still... HATE IT.

I despise to be looked at, examined, judged…

And it doesn’t matter what weight I am.

And again – it matters, because the scale says – EAT! You’re not gaining! You look sick!

Earlier this year while visiting Austria and being 7 months in recovery, eating healthy and enjoying life, I was called anorexic. Damn, it was hurtful. I had never been true anorexic. Well maybe for a couple of months.  And I had never attempted to be one. I truly frowned on looking at the images of the ones who suffer from this awful disease. It is unbearable. Yet I looked like one…

Today I weight the same.

Do you think I would look good in a bikini?..

So that’s only one of things that affect my not so good mood in my not so good week while I’m trying to figure out how to escape out of it.

Today I did Zumba instead of weight lifting.

Had a wonderful salmon salad for lunch.

And after a couple of rice cakes with tuna on top

I’m thinking of what to have for dinner…

nevertheless still fearing the bikini and the coming vocation in the south...

How do you feel in your bikini?

Unperfect

This week is full of chaos.

Being the perfectionist that I am, I still get caught up in the belief that my recovery has to be PERFECT. I think that since I am doing well now and since I am healthier and living a more balanced life, there is no room for error. I think that everyone will be disappointed in me if I have a momentary slip-up, get sad, angry or overwhelmed. That after having the third in a row chaotic day I will scream and cry of despair in wanting to binge and then throw up. So, if I do get stuck in the moment when I’m trying to decide whether to binge, I usually just want to hide – even more now than when I was totally in my eating disorder.

But the reality is that everyone has bad days. Everyone gets overwhelmed and tired and scared. The craving does not mean that I am 100% living my life with my eating disorder again.

At the same time, there is a really fine line. Is it okay to excuse one behavior; like throwing up just this once, because I just choose not to deal with the bad stuff in life? For me, it isn’t. I do not want to deal with these same situations for the rest of my life. Even when I feel as if I can’t deal with life.

I am not perfect, and my journey is not without a few wrong turns.

It’s only 5pm in the afternoon, but I’m opening my wine and having a long wine evening. In peace.

How do you deal with difficult days?

Remembering September III

So after 9 months of recovery, the relapse and my cat still missing – I restarted my journey in prayers not ever go back. Recovery is not all roses at all. It’s difficult. It’s tiring. It makes you cry and laugh or both at the same time. It makes you go deep in to your heart and face your demons, because at the end your ED is not just about the food or being skinny – IT’S WAY BEYOND IT – it’s about your fears and insecurities and pain – so many things you’ve wrapped up in cupcakes, ice-cream or whatever you could find on the hand and shoveled it down your throat to numb yourself from whatever you don’t like feeling – sometimes it’s pain, sometimes it’s boredom, sometimes it’s happiness that are so hard to accept.

In real life you have to deal with those – and there’s no turning into food. And the food itself is an issue – you fear it the most. The food thoughts still haunt you every day. Some days more than the others. You eat. Digest. Fell uncomfortable because the food (the “enemy”) sits in your stomach. You want to throw up after every meal. It’s uncomfortable. You are healing.

But it gets easier. I promise. And this promise is to myself, because I mainly blog for myself. It helps. Writing down things is liberating and it fells amazing.

As for my cat(s).

So Missy was missing for more than a month, when I got a phone call from one of the Russian blue breeders who had read my article in the local newspaper about missing my cat. She had offered me a baby kitten as a gift, because she felt very sorry for my loss. I did not accept it. I did not want any other cat especially the Russian blue which would remind me about my Missy. But my BF insisted on taking him. He though it’ll be good for me. I was very skeptical about the whole thing until I saw our baby-boy and took him into my arms. He was love. We called him Mukas.

It had been a week since Mukas made a home in our hearts and home. One evening I heard my BF calling Missy out loud – I thought he was crazy – we had Mukas now. But he was calling our princess who came back after 50 days of being gone. Missy returned home. I have no words to describe the happiness I felt. And I won’t go into detail of how skinny and trembling she was. The first days of her return all she did was eating and sleeping. The 50 days which she spend god knows where had exhausted her, she was sick and weak. The vet guessed that someone just kept her imprisoned, because the analysis showed that she was fed, though she did not eat much. But she was home. And now she had “a brother”. There were some serious fights the first week, but finally they got along wonderfully and now are inseparable.

The summer was tough. I lost my cat, I had a relapse, I went to Paris and got the other cat, and the old one had returned home. Consequently it’s a WIN. Life is magical no matter what challenges it may bring us every day.

So in honoring September I want to thank YOU for reading my ramblings on life as it is. Not perfect but sincere – just the way I like it.

Nothing Sweet for Me

I admit I eat a very limited diet. I eat a lot of protein and fat. I limit my carbs. If I don’t I’ll binge. If I binge I’ll go crazy and I may purge… this is the worst and I want what’s best for me – there fore I eat SAFE. I can eat rice, but only a few tomatoes, I can have all green vegetables I want, but fruit is a big no no. If I crave sweet things I have my nuts – they are fat and carbs – they are my friends, however I keep them in small bags and never ever buy in bulk even though it’s much cheaper.

I’m happy with my diet but of course sometimes I get bored. So today for my first meal a-ka snack I decided to have one of my BF food bars:

He always encourages me to have them, because they are good, healthy and are prefect for the post workout snack. I examined the label: all natural made from nuts, seeds and dried berries and all natural agave syrup (!!!) but on the whole - all healthy.

So I consumed one.

And it was good. I could really taste nuts and berries, but it was soooooo sweet. After five minutes I craved the other one BIG TIME! I was ready to kill someone to have that bar.

No wonder - I am addicted to sugar so in my case, anything sweet is a drug, and I absolutely get out of control when I have it.

Thus instead of that delicious creation (I’ll never have again) I ate my usual – eggs.

My blood sugar stabilized and I could go one with my deeds.

Is there anything healthy that causes you cravings?

Confessions of the SushiVogue-Girl

Today while shopping for some sushi ingredients I had a small chat with the shop girl and she said that she and her colleague liked me and called me “the sushivogue girl” because I always bought the sushi ingredients and some kind of fashion magazine.

“You’re very skinny” one of them said.

It sounded divine. I fell in love with that girl at that very moment. I wanted her to be my friend and my family forever… my old bulimic self wanted to go on and chat about how healthy I eat in order to stay so slim…

But the real me had replied: “I had an eating disorder.”

Here I’d said it to a complete stranger whom I wanted to be my friend just a few seconds ago. Now she supposed to freak out and think that I am a mutant of some kind. But SHE SMILED and said:

“Hope you are getting better”

And I smiled back “Oh, yes, I AM!”

I left the shop calm and content. And I will go back there – that’s something I could have never done just a year ago - feeling shame and discomfort about others knowing my dishonorable secret.

It was so easy to say it to some strangers. It’s kind of easy to blog about it but I still can’t confess to people I love. I don’t even want to… and this is tearing me apart…

So tonight was a Sushi/Vogue night:

I ate these

and enjoyed them with some of this.

Do/did your love ones know about your problems? How do/did you approach them?