Several difficult days of eating out

Wow! What a difficult couple days! Matt's parent's are in town, and in an effort to spend as much time with them as possible, we haven't really had much opportunity to be in the kitchen. Before I went to treatment and stopped binging, I ate out at least once a day. Some days it was so bad I'd eat out every meal. Cooking was that impossible for me. But so was tasting the food. I could eat the same thing three meals a day for months at a time. I had no taste. I'm blown away how much all this eating out has effected me. Next time I can't remember making any progress, I'd like to remember this realization. I don't like eating out as much as I used to, and I'm very grateful. Check out the food, and forgive the lack of cooking on a cooking blog (oops!):



Thursday June 9th
Grande iced nonfat chai from starbucks and a banana chocolate chip coffee cake
Panda Express orange chicken, rice and mixed veggies (of which I ate about 1/3-servings are HUGE)
Tomato, chicken and tomato pasta salad, homemade french bread hunk, and a side a grapes (YUM!)
Friday June 10th
Eggs and a bowl of cereal (from the hotel buffet where Matt's parents are staying)
Jimmy Johns italian sub with a bunch of lettuce and meat
Genghis Grill chicken, egg and broccoli bowl

Whew. In the past two days I only cooked one meal. If I would have said that two months ago, I would have probably received an award for spending so much time in the kitchen. But now, I long to be tossing veggies in my beautiful new not non-stick (STICK?) pans.
Here's what was difficult the past couple days- I love chai tea, and starbucks has a great iced version, however, eating coffee cake for breakfast was 100% guilt inducing. I found myself eating really quickly to get it over with. I wanted to make sure no one saw me, a big girl, eating an indulgent breakfast. Lunch was a challenge in so many ways. To understand it, I will need to explain a trigger for someone with an eating disorder, because lunch was trigger city.
A trigger is something that we either see, hear or feel that triggers us to use our eating disorder as a coping mechanism. It's different for everyone. If I see something that makes me want to binge, that's a trigger, for some of my friends seeing people vomit is a huge trigger. For me, comments about what is healthy and what is "good" versus "bad" is a major trigger. I'm 100% an all or nothing personality type. I either will eat everything in the best, lowest fat, healthiest way possible or nothing at all. And if I heaven forbid eat something that is tasty, but does not live up to my rigid standard of "good," then I might as well have ruined the entire day, and I feel the need to punish myself by binging on greasy food until I'm in physical pain.
So now onto lunch. Several comments were made about which place in a mall food court was healthy. Of course to me the answer is none, but I have been working very hard to be flexible. Every choice had the potential to be binge food. Chile's is a restuarant that my amazing dietician, Laura, and I have discussed. I know what to order and I know it's okay. So when the comment "you can't get anything healthy at Chile's" was throw out there by Matt's well meaning mother, ED and I had a little chat.
Ed: Whoa there Coco, hear that? Laura told you that you could eat there. She lied.
C: No Ed, Laura knows what she's talking about. It's her job to help me.
Ed: Remember last week when you weighed in and you only lost 40 pounds? I wanted you to lose 50. 50 is a good number. If you keep listening to Laura, you won't ever lose weight.
C: I know Ed. I wish I lost 50 pounds too, but you are not the answer. (Turn to Matt, and ask for help)
Matt and I ended up eating Panda Express because I had eaten there before and felt comfortable with my ability to eat what I wanted and not be forced to eat it all. His parents both commented about how much they didn't like Panda Express. Logically, I understand that they were expressing their opinion, however, emotionally I felt like I had failed them by making a choice they didn't agree with. They also asked several questions about treatment that I was stumped to answer. I never know how much is too much to share. It seemed like they thought I was in treatment to lose weight. I don't know if they understand what an eating disorder is. Or if they do, maybe they are like so many people out there that think you must be under weight to have an eating disorder. It's true, all the PSAs out there show shrinking girls dying of starvation. And that is definitely Ed. But where is the information about the most common eating disorder in the United States? Binge eating disorder is absolutely an eating disorder and should be recognized as one. But I won't launch into this now. Instead, I wonder how to go about explaining that I have not in fact spent the past 5 months attempting to lose weight. I was saving my life. I was getting over an addiction while slipping into other addictions. This is not the "watch me eat healthy and lose weight" blog. I was really really sick 5 months ago, completely wrapped up in my eating disorder, unable to live a normal life. I wish it was only a matter of losing weight.

Luckily I was able to cook dinner, and I used a recipe my mother gave me. Orzo is amazing. If you haven't tried it, do it! It cooks in 9 minutes, and comes in an adorable little box. I bought tomatoes at Kroger, which was painful. After living with my mother, master of the garden, for 2 months I've been spoiled. The tomatoes weren't bad by any means, but there is 100% a difference between a store bought tomato and a backyard picked tomato. This week I'll be heading here: http://www.dallasfarmersmarket.org/ for my produce needs.
The recipe calls for shredded cooked chicken. Cooking meat is still fairly terrifying for me, and because I was also trying to make dinner pretty quickly, I picked up a rotisserie chicken and had Matt pull apart the breast meat. It worked perfectly and made my job so much easier! We brought the meal to Matt's parents hotel room, and they seemed to enjoy it, which gave me an incredible sense of pride. I love the feeling of cooking something incredible and feeding it to appreciative mouths, including my own! Is there a better reward?

The next day we ate breakfast at the hotel breakfast buffet. If I'm not binging I have a very difficult time trusting food. How were the eggs cooked? Butter? Oil? Are they real eggs, or powder? What about this sausage? How many grams of fat? Oye. It makes my head spin. I had Matt make the decisions for me. The eggs were bland, and I longed for my veggie egg scramble. The cereal was sweet but tasty.

For lunch we ordered sandwiches from Jimmy Johns. I picked out the one I wanted without the help of Ed. When they arrived it was way more than I had expected, but I was hungry and I ate it. It was made on white bread that stuck to the roof my mouth. I am a loyal Subway eater. I love customizing everything down to the yummy 9 grain honey oat bread. Jimmy Johns was good, but once again, the comments evaluating which food is better or worse came up, and the criticism was for subway. I tried to push these comments out of my head and focus on the food, but I really struggled. I ate quickly with no focus on taste or texture.

Dinner was with my best friend Kelly, who shared the Veggie Soup recipe from a few days ago. Kelly knows all about my food issues and struggles with some herself. We decided to go to Genghis Grill, where you get to customize what you want in a stir fry bowl. The conversation was a perfect distraction and eating with someone who isn't triggering really allowed me to focus on all the tastes and the textures of the different veggies and proteins. It was a wonderful meal!

All and all the past two days have taught me a lot. First, my body doesn't not like eating out so much. My brain doesn't function as well, and I definitely don't get the same nutrients as cooking at home. Second, I really do enjoy cooking now. Who knew absence would make my heart grow fonder? Also, I've learned that I really struggle to let outsiders comments go. Not everyone understands what it means to have an eating disorder, and I can't expect anyone to say the right thing at the right time without doing my part and educating my support system.

Matt, I'm very grateful for your support the past couple days. (After lunch one day I sat on a bench crying. I told Matt that I knew the discomfort would pass, but I didn't know how to deal with waiting in the mean time. His response? "Yeah. It sucks. But you can do this." It was the perfect response. Sometimes you need to hear that what you think sucks indeed does suck!) You've helped me realize that I can do more than I think I can. Thanks for believing in me!