And Then There was Mal…
Wednesday, Feb 1 2012
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anorexia recovery, consequences, evolutionary diet, fasting, fertility, fitness magazine, food, intermittent fasting, lifting weight, meal plan, mental illness, nutrition, OCD, paleo, paleolithic, primal, recovery, right nutrition, rituals, vegetarian, weight gain, weight lifting, weight loss, workout malpaz
11:48 AM
If anyone still reads my blog, just letting you know I am alive!! What have I been up to?
Well, I have no conquered the world…yet, but I did get a raise. Even better, I get to file my taxes soon and low and behold, I will get close-to-nothing back and probably owe the state, again, while everyone else around me continues buying Doritos, frozen egg rolls and cases of Coke with their food stamps. Oh, and they get free cell phones now too, 200 free minutes. If I could only not feel like I was going to hell for working the system I would do it…but low and behold, I have a conscience.
I am actually at this obnoxious-mind-consuming crossroad in my life. I am recovered from an eating disorder but still living in my head(more often than not), I have a full time job but not moving up anytime soon(no college degree), I have a new car but can barely rub a penny between my ass to make monthly payments on top of student loans, carrying full insurance, rent, bills, cell phone…oh right, and our shitty president is giving everyone free handouts but gas is $3.45/gallon. So I am living but not getting anywhere, eating but not understanding my body and what it actually would flourish on.
Ever read a bunch of foodie blogs of gorgeous chicks and their amazing creations and then think you’re doing everything wrong? I get especially frustrated(with myself) when I read of cardio bunny Gertrude(made up name hah picked one I doubt anyone has…damnit, now I know I just offended someone) eating green smoothies laced with crack-chia-vegemite-proteinpowder-chickpea-walnutbutter…and I ponder if this is real life, and people really put stuff like this together? Her PUFA content should have her dying approximately tomorrow with diabetes and NAFLD. And where’s her beef liver and eggs OMG she’s healthy happy and NOT paleo!??!
And she isn’t lifting 300 lbs 3 times a week heavy ass squatting ass to the ground and throwing herself at the ground only to jump back up and repeat it 100 times!??! Hell, even Beyonce can drink lemon spiked cayenne detox flush drinks and have a baby. I think my pissed off tone behind this is the fact that as I understand it, and as I comprehend it, none of this should be possible because spending 2934534 hours of my life reading about health and nutrition and reading study after study tells me, right there in arial font 12 point BOLD that all this is unhealthy, all of it will cause a fatty liver, diabetes, cancer wtf ever else you want to add to the list.
BUT, and there’s a but… damn if she doesn’t look healthy and damn if she doesn’t seem happy. Is there like this shadow of shit-on-me for someone who recovers from an eating disorder that says you will have lowgrade constant depression for eternity?? To me, it feels like there is. And for all I know it may be self loathing, why don’t I just snap out of it, why don’t I get out of my head, why don’t I ‘just get over it’. Trust me, if I could just do it(no pun) I would. “Oh Mallory, you look so much better, you must be eating well these days”… do not, like ever say this to anyone whether they once looked like an emancipated crack whore or they lived off a feeding tube for 6 months. It’s just stupid.
I am not loving my body, but I cant keep hating it because it seems to function worse when I do. I got some bloodwork showing I have damn near zero inflammation in my body and an almost undetectable c-reactive protein meaning there’s no bad stuff going on. Weeee so she’s healthy(with elevated iron, obviously, no rocket scientist is needed to figure out my meat gorging with no monthly bleeding is gonna lead to elevated iron…) but I surely still am not a socially-acceptable function as I should 26 year old woman. TWENTY-SIX-YEARS-OLD….and I am scared of becoming 30, 40 and still just ‘being her’ just living repeating the same shit day after day after day.
For what it’s worth, the life long consequences of this recovery stuff from something as severe as anorexia nervosa….they blow ass. On top of blowing ass myself usually post meal, my body will forever be in ‘famine mode’….7 years starving yourself and you didn’t die so now you have the rest of your existence to pack on weight with everything you eat, live with muckin-fucked up hormones and blood sugar problems, royally shitty sleeping patterns, and the all around inability to sit with yourself, let alone sit still.
So that I stop wallowing in my own self doubt and self pity I made a list of to do’s for 2012, I know one month late. It took a while for me to get out of my own head to decide what I want to change and a direction to ‘attempt’ to go in. why the hell is change so damned hard? Hardest will be getting away from the web. I swear I develop addictions easier than anyone in the world. I can literally have 50 browser web pages open because I get this rush of reading and information and overload. What the hell is that? I haven’t the slightest clue, but I love it.
Personal
*spend an entire day lying around
*spend an entire day in the kitchen baking(food I will eat)
*travel, randomly, unplanned…especially to New Orleans
*spend 24 hours outside…sun up to sun down
*find a new adrenaline rush(that isn’t mind numbing obsession)
*get more sleep
*master 3×15 chin ups (done, once)
*muscle-up
*take a mineral oil bath once a week with lotsa bubbles, then do girlie things like my nails and a facial
*find a place that is genuinely quiet, and listen
*meditate to the sun rising
*meditate to the sun setting
*run a 10k for a good cause
*go to church more
*get a gun, and be able to kill a m*therf*cker confidently
*volunteer at church
*pay more attention to what is going on in the world
*more spontaneity
*stay off the internet
*express myself instead of hide with a good act
Culinary
*learn to can food- pressure cooker
* master my cast iron dutch oven my momma got me
*master my bone broth
*master a rue(yes, that means flour)
*put together a recipe collage, at least get one started
*make a meal 100% from scratch- seed to ground to harvest to plate with only what I produce
*plant kabocha squash(b/c I am in love…) and pray it grows well here…DONE, just ordered seeds
*start a herb garden(basil….nom)
*find some local farmers for eggs and meat
*stick to eating local(or maybe not)
*go vegetarian for a week, just because I can
*get me some oysters more often, and master shuckin
*actually CATCH a crab on the coast
*use my fishing license
*make a meal based around a Hawaiian Potato(aka Okinawan)
*master roast beef(the seasoning rub)
Oh, and get to drinkin some mixed bevvvverages more often…
And here is how I see my future. No one down here really knows me, I don’t go out, I don’t have many friends outside the work place, yet for some reason I find it hard to hang out with my family as it seems to promote oddly acute amounts of anxiety. Based on that, it surely doesn’t matter whether I am 100lbs or whether I am 170lbs, no one knows me. There isn’t anything ‘to be expected’ so if for the life of me I can figure out how to ‘just be’ I just might have a chance at developing a personality outside health/nutrition before I die….maybe, just a slight possibility. Basically, I am sick of myself. I want a friend whom I can randomly show up at their house unannounced just because, I wanna bake some cookies, listen to music and pour some strawberry daiquiris. I want to spend days in the sun at the pool with my family, grilling out and enjoying the company and food and not spending the time preoccupied in my mind catching up on sleep I didn’t get the night before. And I feel like really, this is all my fault. I don’t do these things. Hell, I tried to quit smoking and it lasted 60 hours, then I text my mom telling her I was going to slit my wrist or commit suicide because the desire to injure myself was obnoxious. All this over nicotine? I literally CRIED for almost 24 hours over a cigarette….it had been YEARS since I cried myself to sleep!
Change is hard for anyone. Change for someone with my mind is epically impossible, or so it seems, but it IS DOWNRIGHT a matter of me changing my routines and habits. I mean if I think about it, I am going to die, we all are, regardless of how we live and what we do. As soon as you’re born, you can guarantee you’re going to die, at some point. I am not the typical EAT EGG WHITE SCRAMBLED WITH SPINACH AND TOFU NUGGETS OR DIE…but I need to get away from EAT GRASSFED BEEF AND YOUR VEGETABLES MUST HAVE BUTTER AND GOD FORBID YOU DON’T EAT 2G/PROTEIN PER POUND OF LBM(or some other obnoxious amount) A DAY AND LIFT HEAVY SHIT 3 X A WEEK AND DO NOT TOUCH CORN/BEANS AND IF YOU EAT FRUIT IT IS IMMEDIATELY BEING TURNED INTO FAT BECAUSE ALL THINGS FRUCTOSE WILL KILL YOU AND ALL THINGS OMEGA 6 KEEL YOU OVER 6 FEET UNDER.
There needs to be balance… I need to find it. No one can find it but me. I idolize 2 bloggers. One is Heather @ Heather Eats Almond Butter. She probably hasn’t the slightest clue who I am, because I do not comment on her blog, but her way of living and the reflection of happiness form her blog, and soon to be 3 kids(congrats if you see this!)…it is the epitome of awesome to me. I envy her. The other is Eden @ Eden Eats Everything. She’s fucking hilarious…I lol everytime I read her blog. Our minds think alike…well maybe not. I am convinced I am the female version of Dexter…a MUST watch show for anyone with a mucked up mind. If I ever remembered to type out the funny shit that boggles my mind I could make people piss their pants. I run into some downright bizarre shit here in the south.
I need to stop obsessing about health and nutrition and seeing so onewaystreet in my thoughts about food and do some more life enjoyment…
Mardis Gras season approaching and starting should be a good place. I want to decorate my 1900 antique-20ft ceiling-rip-off-rental house for mardis gras season…and I have hardcore Baptist/Christian roommates. Baha, should be interesting. One lady at work informs me of my bloodsucking worshipping every mardis gras season…
What to give up for the 40 days and 40 nights…maybe ‘giving a fuck’ is a good place for me to start !
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Hey there,
All I can really say is….I can relate. I never suffered from an eating disorder, but I have had my own host of self-inflicted mind issues concerning food, and truly they are an awful place to be. I am really glad you wrote this post. Although I already know that I am not the only person out there that feels the way that I do, it was nice to read confirmation of it here.
And yeah, I totally hate looking at how happy the women are on vegan juicing sites. But that isn’t supposed to work!!!! THE CAKE IS A FUCKING LIE!!!!!
Good luck with your goals for the year darlin’. 🙂
lol thanks for the comment! not goin vegan anytime soon, and i doubt you are either(ya know, healthy ocd foodies know better…hah but i surely dont mind i just had lots almonds with dreaded PUFAs so according to everyone from ray peat to mark sisson i should be ashamed
I was cleaning out my Google Reader today and when I got down to the Z’s I decided to keep your subscription on the *crossfingers* hope that you’d write again and now….here is your post! Coincidence.
As far as the malaise …. don’t get too set on thinking you’ll always be like this. Give it a few years! You are super young and have a life ahead of you that is yours for the taking. I have read that post-recovery gets better every.single.year because your recovery keeps going….
Hence your realization that in 2012 you need to step away from the food/diet/nutrition fixation and just find that relaxed balance.
Summer’s coming so there will be plenty of time to get out there (literally) and spend dusk to dawn at a beachfront resort (maybe in New Orleans?), sip marguerita’s in a hot bikini with a sexy azz man with a yacht to take you fishing and teach you how to catch a crab. Maybe he will be a player for the Saint’s. And you’ll marry and he’ll pay for you to go back to school before you start making babies and ….
You see? ANYTHING can happen. Change is the only constant.
PS- Your writing makes me laugh a lot (“blowing ass myself” Heehee)
PS- Not that I would know. I still suck at recovery but am learning more every week.
thanks, but i am still not checking your blog or progress for that very reason…i wish you luck
YAY YOU’RE BACK!
I can totally relate to this: “…the life long consequences of this recovery stuff from something as severe as anorexia nervosa….they blow ass.”
Hell yeah, it does! I’m fucking angry that I’ve fucked up my digestive system so much that I can’t eat my favourite fruits, eat ice cream or have a wheat based sandwich without feeling the need to “blow ass” and keel over in agony. It’s not fun. Gotta make the most of life though!
I like your list of things to do in 2012! I think you should tackle the “do nothing all day” one. It’s something that needs to be practised 🙂
xxx
Oh and I just wanted to say that because of you, I am not afraid of red meat, animal fat or saturated fat in general 🙂 Thank you xxx
haha good, its good stuff 🙂
thanks, i may do it this weekend, but will need to do some work via laptop, girls gotta make $$
I still forward to your posts. You are an excellent and creative writer……….most importantly you seek to be well. With that in mind I thought I would pass on a site I recently found. Like you I have hypothalamic amenorrhea which is how I stumbled onto the forum. Lots of interesting stuff with regards to the damage done with eating disorders and more importantly how it can recover.
Thought I would pass it along. I would love to hear what you think because I respect your view based on your knowledge.
p.s. Why have you chosen not to take the plunge with a quick significant weight gain vs. slow and steady? From what I have been studying lately, the gals that gain the weight the quickest and above their BMI seem to resume menstration vs. the slow and steady who don’t seem to respond as well.
I WILL CHECK THAT OUT, thanks. to answer your question… long term results are not short term goals. i have no desire to pack on 20 lbs in a month. its not healthy, just like it wasnt healthy for me to lose 20lbs in a month
never mind, thats a blog/forum based on eating disorders…i have no interest in reading any of it. sorry, not my thing to go around looking at what other ED people do/say/think
I agree……not interested in reading what other folks with ED do/think but the blog is written by Gwen who has over 13 years of experience in the area.
Like I said earlier. I appreciate your opinions.
ok, still not gonna read it- if it helps you then read her stuff.
good for her, theres a gazillion doctors who treat ED patients and have loads of ‘experience’….to make a guess i will say she promotes ‘everything is good in moderation’, eat breakfast, and will go out of her way to ‘convince you’ fats are not harmful… so does that make her a genius? no, b/c i already knew that.
Hey Malpaz,
Got period today! First, time in 10 years……..Can’t believe it! It takes A LOT of work and if my old body was capable of recovering, yours certainly is too!
I’m fucking angry that in order to not be angry enough to rip the arms off of my idiot college students I have to take medication that makes me fat and then I see that bullshit tofu chicken nugget fake bacon made out of egg-white bullshit and I’m like WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU PEOPLE THINKING?
MRPH. Found your blog via paleohacks and this was the first post I saw…my immediate thought? Sing it, sister. I don’t want to have to think about eating — whether it’s eating fake egg-white bacon (I am not lying, that shit exists) or making sure my veggies have butter on them. And odds are, I’ll be thinking about eating for the rest of my life, thank you brain chemistry issues. Grrrrrr.
GRRRRR.
I sympathize.
hahah damn girl, tell us how you really feel! hahah, hope you feel better after the rant i always do 🙂
Heya! I’d seen your blog before and remembered you from MDA. You spoke more sense than 95% of the people on there.
Have to admit, I squeed at your favorite bloggers. I know Eden personally and she’s a lovely person. I’ve never met Heather but I read her blog all the time.
Honestly, happiness and contentment counts for so much as far as health is concerned. I’d never call Heather unhealthy, even if MDAers might scoff. Hell, Kristin Suzanne looks gorgeous and healthy and she’s a raw vegan. And there’s tons of Primal folk who look ripped and brimming with life. I’m not trying to paint health as a fool’s errand — it’s not, of course — but I think there’s nothing productive about obsessing (not that you are…referring more to certain MDAers/vegans/ednos chicks) over every morsel that goes down one’s throat.
exactly! that’s why i admire Heather and her blog 🙂 imma hafta check yours out now haha
Hey Mal,
I’ve been following your blog for about 2 months now. I was anorexic from 2003 until 2008 and got down extremely low- went to an inpatient facilty for four months, then relapsed.These past 3 years I had binge eating disorder and gained 50 pounds from what is healthy for me. Primal eating and your blog has helped me like nothing else could (I already lost 30 pounds healthfully from last year). I am really motivated to accept recovery.
That being said I really hurt a lot of people I love- mainly my dad because of my anorexia (I haven’t seen him in almost 4 years). I am writing him a letter and I wanted to help him see that anorexia is really caused by malnourishment and that once you are nourished by real food, it greatly diminishes. You inspire me.
i was wondering if you could post some recent pictures that I could show him the comparison as proof.?
pictures arent a big part of my blog now, nor my recovery. sorry
I just stumbled across your blog and well quite frankly. I love it. I’m dabbling in the Paleo lifestyle (yet to give up dairy and whey protein but REALLY considering chucking it soon) but starting to love primal eating and also recovering form some crappy ass eating thoughts.Just wanted to let you know I enjoyed this post and will be checking back for more. 🙂 I like someone with an open opinion
haha thanks girl! ill check out your blog when i get a minute!
Hey Mal,
I’ve got no questions or advice. I just wanted to say thanks- I’m a guy and you’ve quantified in print what I often want to scream about obsessive thinking.
Hope you make it to New Orleans and knock some good shit off of your list.
-John
aww thanks!!!!!!!!!!! that means a lot! i got to NOLA for mardis gras madness 😛
wow, all i can say is, you DO have somebody who thinks in a scarily similar way as you, i basically drove myself to depressive breaking point through being information-obsessive about nutrition and disease after my grandad died of cancer and i relapsed into my 14 year battle with anorexia. i am recovering once more, and doing well since finally giving in to taking anti depressants which basically allowed me to stop researching what eating a slice of rye bread would do to insulin or how much fructose is in an apple or how much omega 6 is in sunflower seeds or how phytic acid in oats will rot teeth/cause mineral depletions… bla bla bla right?!!! oh yes, i been there and back and there and back and its been mental acrobatics in my head from the morning i woke up breathless and anxious about how id battle the day and recover WHILE eating all of the ‘right’ things,– recovering but in the ‘right’ way. of course after a brief stint of vegetarian i switched immediately to paleo and then discovered perfect health and dr john briffa and bla bla- the list goes on – doesnt it?! i wanted immunity from disease, i wanted to recover in the most ‘superior’ way-my IBS was worse, and id switch my food, my skin was coming up in rashes- bit i wasnt eating grains, i dropped dairy, suddenly i had no energy except for the mandatory slog fest at the gym- then id slather fat on things just so i could still put on weight and look like i was recovering but mentally i was flailing, i was drowning and couldnt prop up for air for fear of losing scent of whatever it was i was searching for- what i was searching for does not exist- the ‘perfect way’. there is no perfect way, there is no one answer to ultimate health and being disease free and immune from lifes ups and downs. avoiding a slice of cake will probably be a fairly healthy choice if you feel good about it but having the cake one every few weeks will equally be healthy if you feel good about it, because so much in true health is STATE OF MIND- and i only realised this once the anti depressants lifted me into a more lowgrade depression rather than going to kill myself pretty soon only a matter of time debilitating depression, and i started to see things in a more logical perspective or at least i cared less about eating a bit of hummus, and then i challenged myself and all of a sudden i didnt want the hummus because i had had it, nothing had happened and i could have it again because at the end of the day, human bodies are resilient, adaptive and completely genetically different, our hormones our needs our energy levels and our chemistry lets us know what agrees with us and what doesnt, all we have to do is be in tune and listen to our bodies, and sometimes we wont listen and well regret it, but it doesnt mean you cant move on from it. happiness laughter and friendship and family, real life, they are scary but wonderful and its our refusal to deal with those that makes us more tied to our obsessions of making all the wrongs in the world ‘right’ by perfecting our own health. it doesnt work like that, happiness and health is whatever you feel is happy and healthy for you. forget trawling hours through food blogs that advocate only one way of living, for people like us who are obsessive anyway, all we can hope to achieve in life is balance and moderation and escapism from obsession. living to conform to the ‘right’ way of eating may work for many but we have to accept that it wont long term work for us, we do not need to transfer one obsession of not eating to an obsession about what to eat, no more of our lives should be taken up and stolen from us with rights and wrongs with food politics, its just another way of recovering but pacifying anorexia with the safety that we are still adhering to certain sets of rules. its fear of living, and habit of living unhappily this way, that makes it so damn hard to break the cycle. but im pretty sure once we do it will be so liberating that health will improve just through the mind–body connection. its cliche but youll know what to do if you start listening to YOU and not what the you thats read every piece of information thinks you should do… everything in moderation- including moderation itself!
well thanks!!!!! i will write more later but i thought after reading this…what if wordpress screwed up and your comment didnt go through…ahah more later 😛
then u would have saved half hour of your time not reading my essay!!
“I can literally have 50 browser web pages open because I get this rush of reading and information and overload. What the hell is that? I haven’t the slightest clue, but I love it.”
I do this too! I think I’ve found a good answer for it as well.
http://deconstructingyourself.com/downtime-for-the-brain.html
Its about ‘seeking’ behaviour and why its addictive
I’m glad your back posting 🙂
Jesse