Posted by Racer on November 8, 2005, at 12:58:18
In reply to Eating issues and OCD, posted by Sonya on November 8, 2005, at 11:29:39
It's funny, in a sick sort of a way, because there's so much of the chicken and the egg here -- anorexia particularly of the eating disorders has a lot of OCD aspects to it. In fact, the Oregon Semi-Starvation study showed that the men in the study got to be quite obsessive and complusive during the study. They'd do a lot of the things that 'real' anorexics did, like obsessively clipping recipes, and generally were pretty whacked by the whole thing. So, is your OCD increase the cause or result of the ED? Probably the answer is "yes" -- it's both, too intertwined to figure out which is which.
As for the weight loss, that's also kinda normal -- when you first start eating better, your weight is likely to fluctuate in weird ways. You can eat what seems like your own weight in food, and not gain, then semi-restrict and gain. {shakes head} It's not fun, but the two things you can do to help yourself most are: only weigh yourself once a week, or even once a month; and don't worry too much about weight, but about health. I know, believe me, how hard that is. I'm struggling constantly with that sort of thing, and my N doesn't quite understand when I say that I can't stand being so frightened of my scale. It gets a bit better, though, every week, for me. I hope the same is true of you, too.
And my N doesn't do 'meal plans' per se -- what she did was to give me a little chart, showing how many 'exchanges' of various sorts I should have per day. Like, '9 to 12 starch exchanges,' '3 fruit exchanges,' '3+ veggie exchanges,' etc. That didn't turn out to be enough for me, because I was so deep into my own anorexic/OCD fog that I couldn't cope with that level of choice, so she finally did a 'breakfast: 2 protein, 2 starch, 1 fruit, 1 fat' etc sort of thing. That helped me a lot, and is still what I use, mostly. Although I"m getting a bit better about eating something I think I want, rather than what I think the 'plan' says I should have. Maybe your N could do something like that for you?
I hope taht helps, and good luck.
poster:Racer
thread:576711
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/eating/20051009/msgs/576746.html