Back from NH. Happy July!

Hello everyone! As this is my first post of the month allow me to congratulate you all on making it to July. I feel a certain sense of accomplishment and pride every time another month goes by. Is this depressing?

Despite the date that appears on this post, and even though I'm typing this two days later, the actual words are being written on 6/3/10 at 10:15 p.m., in New Hampshire. I don't have a computer handy, and even if I did I doubt I'd get wireless so I'm scribbling this entry in my sister's composition notebook because it's the only paper I can find.

4th of July weekend at my great aunt's summer house in Sandwich, NH is a tradition since my Dad's parents died years ago. They lived in a neighboring town not far from here- in the most heartbreakingly beauitful house that my dad even designed part of for them. That house is essentially gone now. All of my grandparent's furniture and artwork that they'd collected from traveling all over the world has been auctioned off. The house is being leased to strangers, and now the only time we see the house itself is when we're driving through town on our way to the 4th of July parade every year. BUT ANYWAYS; yesterday I hiked up Mt. Whiteface with my Dad, brother, and Heather. We camped overnight at the top and then woke up at the crack of dawn to journey back down. It was ridiculous and terrifying and I'm not sure if I'll do it again but altogether I think our bravery and sense of adventure is laudable so well done us. I would go into further detail about the adventure (pooping in the woods, hearing scratching and whispering outside our tent in the middle of the night, etc...) but this is a blog primarily about my eating disorder, not my mediocre camping and survival skills.

I told myself that July would be my fresh start month food-wise, that I'd quit bingeing, exercise every day, and limit my daily intake enough to lose all this weight before going back to school in two months. Generally so far so good. No major binges since June 30th, 5 hour trek up a mountain counts as my exersize for the week, but general food intake has been a little larger than I'd like. I've been doing this thing the past few days where I start eating a lot of food, and then stop myself before it turns into a fully fledged binge. Example: Day before yesterday I had a bowl of honey bunches of oats with milk for breakfast and it was so yummy I had three more big bowls. Not exactly enough to qualify as a binge FOR ME, but definitely more than the breakfast on my meal plan. Then today, I felt urgey so I started mindlessly munching on tortilla chips and ate about 5 cookies before thinking to myself, "Hold it, girlfriend. The nearest grocery store is a twenty five minute drive into town and there are five other people in this house who need chips and cookies as well." It felt scary stopping in the middle of what my ED had sort of decided should be a binge. For about ten minutes I was floundering helplessly in the deep end of my anxieties, wishing more than anything I knew how to qualify or define what I'd just done. Mini binge? Momentary lapse of self-control? Normalized big snack in response to physical hunger? It sucked- the not knowing. But after about ten minutes I noticed that I wasn't dying of hunger, nor was my stomach stretching out uncomfortably over my shorts. I felt physically comfortable so I ran with that feeling and carried on with the day. If I'm being 100% honest I restricted quite a fair bit around dinner to make up for it though so we'll award 1 point to the ED for compensating and 1 point to Eliza for white-knuckling it in the grey area.