Floater's diary

I slept pretty well, woke up once in the middle of the night but got enough hours in. It's so odd that I dressed in front of a mirror and thought I looked pretty nice - but I'm not feeling nice. Everything from my underwear to my eyeglasses to my sweatpants seems to pinch or be crooked, so I should prepare myself for a day consisting mostly of autistic sensory hell.

I've been trying to decide whether I should start to visualize myself in a smaller body. I know that it works for me; but what if I risk another restriction and eventual relapse? I don't need to lose body mass for health, so should I just keep trying to normalize my appetite and hunger signals and focus on getting enough nutrients? Would it help me or harm me to dream of a different body?

These thoughts are really central to all weight loss/management/health approaches if you ask me. And I'm the only one with the answers and maybe I have to sometimes take risks and see where that takes me. For example, right now getting a scale would be a huge risk for me. Because trust me, I can restrict to make those numbers go down while losing muscle mass and muscle tone, and a scale right now would trigger that.

I get flashbacks to last summer when my clothes were hanging loose on my body and I miss that so much. I would stand in front of a mirror and run my fingers under my T-shirt sleeves to just make it real for myself that I've shrunk that much. I still fit in those same clothes, I just fill them out a bit more. Maybe me going to this state of mind and to these thoughts is a warning sign. I don't know... Time will tell.
 
You are right, of course, that you´re the only one who can answer those questions. But for me thinking about these things out loud (or really in silence, since it´s written down) does help to make things clearer in my head. As does reading other people´s musings about the topic.
 
Food diary from 8pm yesterday to 8 pm today:

Bedtime snack: a spoonful of walnuts, 3 Babybel cheeses, a couple of mini snack salamis
Breakfast: instant oatmeal with linseed
Lunch: a meze platter of marinated beans, roasted broccoli, hummus, quinoa dolma and mock chicken
Snack: 3 Babybel cheeses and a handful of mini snack salamis
Snack: a protein drink and 3 dl of grapes

I am currently roasting beets and will try to have those later tonight with some hummus, or maybe make spinach pasta, don't know yet. I've been feeling unpleasantly full the whole day, and really tired too.
 
The feeling of being full/bloated persists, but otherwise I'm decently happy with what I've managed today. Both food-wise and other things. I had occupational therapy/eval today again. The potential therapist called and told me his instructor told him not to have me as his first training patient, which is understandable. Me and my alphabet soup of neuropsychiatric and psychiatric diagnoses is not necessary where one should start working with patients, lol. And on the other hand, I'm quite able to figure out what I need to do by myself, and I have the wonderful ASD assistants to help me make those plans a reality. So I'm fine with this, it was worth a try.

I picked up new bowls and cups from IKEA today. I've noticed before that I have a bigger chance of eating if the meal is visually pleasing and the portion sizes look manageable. Making more food by myself also means more scraps, and having things to store them in (I HATE plastic and how it feels/tastes) is necessary. I should eat again soon, not yet sure what it's going to be. I might walk to the supermarket and get myself some nice fruit, maybe. My grocery delivery arrives tomorrow morning and it's full of "green" foods, so I might even get myself something "orange" tonight. Or maybe I'll eat scraps. I don't know. But whatever I eat is fine as long as I eat.
 
Food diary from 8pm yesterday to 8pm today:

Late dinner: roasted beets with edamame, walnut crumbs and blue cheese crumbs, served cold
Bedtime snack: two dried flatbreads, plain
Breakfast: instant oatmeal with linseed and fig jam
Lunch: 6 plant based nuggets with a side of roasted beets, edamame, walnut crumbs, blue cheese and fresh spinach, served warm
Snack: udon noodles, fresh spinach and edamame, served cold
Dinner: two-egg udon and edamame stir fry with spinach, ginger, lime, and hot sauce

I had to go get the eggs from the supermarket but that just means more steps for today, and I got myself some fresh ginger and lime too. I liked that what I ate today was mostly stuff that can be served hot or cold, and I like the flexibility that gives me. I don't have any fresh fruit until tomorrow, but I'll probably eat more beets before bedtime. My portion sizes have been very small today except for dinner. I'll try to eat something calorie dense before bed if I can. I had terrible "restless feet" last night which for me is usually a sign of running on too little kcals.

Quite happy about today's meals. Lunch was my favourite, and I was super hungry when I was eating it, it was nice.
 
Shame about the therapist but great that you tried. Yay for a delivery of green foods! Roasted beets with blue cheese, nuts, and spinach sound delicious!
 
All of your food sounds delicious & nutritious. Well done on looking after yourself. My husband gets restless feet/legs sometimes. That's worth checking whether it's hunger-related.
 
overlandflyer said:
with a caveat...
if your BMI is greater than 28, i would disagree with you.
if it is greater than 30, i would strongly disagree.
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LOL I'm normal weight And if you check my first post, I have a long history of EDs which is why I don't post numbers here because numbers might kill me.
 
PS sorry if I came across as nippy. Maybe I should add it in my signature to ask people not to assume I'm obese because I almost purged my breakfast after that. But I mean, its normal for people to extend their normal/their life experiences to other people I guess. I just can't understand how a factual statement ("I do not need to lose weight for health") gets interpreted as "this mortally obese person doesn't know that being mortally obese increases their risk of premature death".

Like... I'm on restricted ADHD meds, which suppress my appetite. I get routine blood panels to check how my body deals with the meds and, as the law requires here for restricted "narcotic drugs", they screen me for drugs and alcohol as well. I have assistance in my daily life due to my autism spectrum disorder, I go to therapy, and have a psychiatrist. To assume that I would somehow be able to be obese and not know it while being this enmeshed in the treatment system is kind of hurtful to be honest.

Then again, it's my choice to process my stuff on the interwebs. It does create a vulnerability.
 
Floater- please don’t take one person’s mis interpretation of something you said as a normal reaction or a lack of general empathy & support in the forum. I’m sure I have offended or hurt someone in here over the years, but it was never my intent. We all make mistakes. Stick with us. We’re here to help one another.
 
Cate said:
Floater- please don’t take one person’s mis interpretation of something you said as a normal reaction or a lack of general empathy & support in the forum. I’m sure I have offended or hurt someone in here over the years, but it was never my intent. We all make mistakes. Stick with us. We’re here to help one another.
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You are right. I'm sorry I had such a strong reaction. <3
 
Sometimes we react to one post without looking at the previous thread and it's a bit tone deaf. I'm going to guess Flyer's reaction had something to do with the Health at every Size folks pretending you can be 200 kg and not suffer long-term damage and he just assumed you wouldn't feel targeted if you were indeed a healthy weight. I hope you feel better by now.
 
LaMaria said:
Sometimes we react to one post without looking at the previous thread and it's a bit tone deaf. I'm going to guess Flyer's reaction had something to do with the Health at every Size folks pretending you can be 200 kg and not suffer long-term damage and he just assumed you wouldn't feel targeted if you were indeed a healthy weight. I hope you feel better by now.
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I do, thanks. I agree, that's probably what happened. I made a batch of seitan, turned out OK, a bit bread-y texture wise, but it should turn firmer in the fridge overnight.

The HAES movement is such an interesting beast. I think nowadays it's mostly attracting ED recovery folks but I remember when most HAESers were the way you described them. But it's also dependent on where you live. Finland is getting fatter like every place else, but here the bopo/HAES stuff is mostly people who are overweight but not obese. (Of course, even a very sickly very fat person still deserves to be treated with dignity.)

Seitan recipe, as promised:

The liquid:

1 tablespoon of smooth PB diluted with 2 tablespoons of boiling water
1 teaspoon of garlic and ginger infused oil
a splash of soy sauce
2,5 dl of tomato juice
a pinch of Cajun spice
a pinch of dried garlic powder
a splash of hot sauce

-> mix the liquids together in a mug until smooth

Dry ingredients:

3 dl of gluten flour
1 dl of chickpea flour
1 dl of nutritional yeast

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl, pour in the liquid and mix by hand until the dough forms a ball. The less you mix, the softer the texture, the more you mix, the more "bite" it has. Once a ball is formed, divide the dough into two, roll into a sausage shape and wrap each piece into aluminium foil, twist the ends shut, and bake in the oven at 175 degrees for 1 hour 15 min. (I kept them longer and they got really dry, not that I mind, but...!)

This dough is low in sodium and it has a fairly subtle taste to it, so it can be used for cooking. I originally visioned making seitan salami, but wanted to make a more versatile batch at first, since it's been probably two years since I last made seitan. After baking, I let the sausages rest for a while and then pan-fried a piece, cubed, with potatoes and corn. TASTY and very filling, too.

Sigh, I should probably clean up today, but I feel so lazy... At least I now have four big chunks of seitan sausage sitting on my countertop, cooling and waiting to be refrigerated. The stuff can be frozen too, but it holds 4 days minimum in the fridge. :)
 
That sounds great! I wouldn't have thought to use tomato juice but I can see it working well.
I think it's a pity that HAES seems to have been hijacked a bit. The original goal seems to have been mutual support and reminding folks that people are people worthy of kindness and respect no matter the number on their shirt tag but what I see online now makes it look more like shaming each other when someone mentions having a problem related to their obesity, especially when they try to lose weight in the hope of feeling better. And it's sad, because overweight people DO get treated badly a lot of the time and deserve support. The version of HAES you're familiar with sounds much better so I hope it's just a few online loudmouths giving the movement a bad name
 
LaMaria said:
I think it's a pity that HAES seems to have been hijacked a bit. The original goal seems to have been mutual support and reminding folks that people are people worthy of kindness and respect no matter the number on their shirt tag but what I see online now makes it look more like shaming each other when someone mentions having a problem related to their obesity, especially when they try to lose weight in the hope of feeling better.
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I have seen that type of behavior too, mostly online, and it's nasty. It's not being a traitor to the movement to want to lose weight, for health reasons or not.

I think that the HAES movement is so new that it's still trying to figure out what it should be about. And because we live in a time when health and body size are incredibly moralized, it's understandable in a way that people get so fed up with the mainstream culture that they go off the deep end as a result. I kind of see the bad sort of HAES as just one more bad take on health, like extreme forms of keto or the kind of veganism that's really orthorexia in disguise.

As a disabled and mentally ill person, I think that there isn't such a thing as perfect health really. We age, we deteriorate, it's normal and a part of life. But because nowadays we have metrics for everything, it creates a constant stress about fitting within the healthy range of this and that from GPs in school to the BMI, how many hours we sleep per night, and so on. There's certainly truth to these numbers, but the sum of our health is not just about the numbers, our environment and possibilities and resources and accessibility in life matter as well. In an ideal world this would be the message of HAES. In practice... Well, people can ruin pretty much everything lol. And the movement definitely attracts onlookers who have fetishes about bigger bodies and that creeps me out - not the fault of HAESers, it just goes to show that we aren't too far from the days of fat women being presented in circuses. Trying to navigate a sensible body positivity stance in the middle of all that certainly isn't easy.

A YouTuber called Obese to beast has made quite a lot of critical videos about the extreme side of HAES and I've found them very interesting. Let's see how the movement will evolve or devolve over time.
 
Floater said:
.... I just can't understand how a factual statement ("I do not need to lose weight for health") gets interpreted as "this mortally obese person doesn't know that being mortally obese increases their risk of premature death"....
Click to expand...

if you think that is what i said, you might want to add "reading disorder" to your list of your diagnosed anomalies.
 
Floater said:
A YouTuber called Obese to beast has made quite a lot of critical videos about the extreme side of HAES and I've found them very interesting.
Click to expand...
I love Jo(h?)n! His clickbaity titles really get on my nerves at times though :rotflmao:
 
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