I am so very ready to be done with this activity monitor business. The tape holding it to my skin is getting itchy and its a pain in the butt jostling all the wires around every time I change clothes or use the bathroom. I know I’m griping and I only have about 3 hours of its company left but, hey, were supposed to be honest with ourselves here.
Today marks the 3rd day of the 2200 calorie regimine. It also brings with it the onset of my first daily Ensure Plus shake. People keep asking me how I’m doing with the new additions to my menu, whether I’m anxious or might perceive any problems with them, but right now I don’t. Not yet. I try and leave the answer confident but open-ended. Right now I am still hungry between meals which makes acceptance of all of this that much easier. So long as I can continue to not let my mind wander into the zone of food analization I think I will be okay.
In the past, although I always have liked their milk-shakey taste, Ensure drinks have been a source of apprehension for me. Mostly this is due to their presence in my life being a sign of a major change underfoot. Through time and association that is just the weight they have come to hold with me. I do my best to keep a positive attitude through this because my acceptance and continued determination depend on it. I count myself lucky for the ease at which I have had staying in that frame of mind so far but, as much as I would hope, I can’t say for sure that things will continue this way. I suspect there will come a time, as the additions continue, when I’ll be full all the time…but I’m choosing to deal with it as it happens.
For me its been easier to take things as they come both in dealing with anxiety and also with placing trust in the onset of events. When I look to the future, in terms of being able to uphold the lifestyle I am learning here, I don’t know for sure what is going to happen. Its easier for me though to stay determined and upbeat as long as I remember that, although the possibility for just about anything is there, I don’t have to deal with the mights and coulds of it all right now.
So today, yea I’ve got the addition of the first Ensure, but if it helps quell my hunger between breakfast and lunch, then bring it on!
Sockhop 
i love reading your blog. haha i found it by quite the random means of facebook, er, stalking, but i have been in the treatment center you are in and can relate to so much of what you are describing. i admire your positive attitude (though of course i have to encourage you to indeed let yourself be honest and feel the feelings, though, because if you don’t reach out for help when you need it, you are doing yourself a disservice).
ahaha, i also did the activity study and i can tell you 2 things:
1) yes, it WAS soooo f-ing annoying to carry that thing around, hahaha 😉
2) like you described the theory, i can personally attest to the fact that ohmygod i was sooo hyperactive when i was underweight as opposed to when i was at a healthy weight! even basic stupid things like leg shaking stopped when my weight got higher! i even had this really almost eerily-evident-that-its-neurobiological effect of having been a bad bad patient and exercising in my room up to a certain weight % and then lo and behold, that compulsion (That was totally driven by anxiety/OCD that i have anyway), completely vanished, almost perfectly in tangent with a certain anumber of pounds gained. it was so strange to witness that change in myself.
another thing that i remember vividly is the hunger and how, while i HATED the ensures because they made me nauseated, i did get used to them. but more striking was how i (and everyone else, it seemed) got used to the quantity of food, even on the maximum allotment. and then when we were used to that weight-gain plan, we were all like ‘oh shit this is scary we are used to eating XXXX what does this mean how will we cope on the outside’ blah blah blah. (though i never figured that one out because i ended up freaking out early on in my stay and discharging myself against medical advice….. but hopefully you can stick it out to reap the end and longterm benefits.)
i look forward to reading more of what you have to say!! take care and stay strong =)