Stuffin’ stuff

The amount of energy that digestion of this quantity of food takes is astounding. After each meal I feel like I have just run a five-miler that I forgot to stretch for before hand. It’s definitely a different kind of tired than the one caffeine withdrawal had induced though. This kind is easier to deal with and almost more comforting in a strange way. I’m sleepy and full but it’s because I’m doing something that I know is good for me. Something I know I need to be doing. I also know that it won’t be like this forever, and that is the thought that most often covers me like a snuggly afghan to keep the anxiety shivers away.

I am up to 2600 today and this, plus my one daily Ensure, is the level I will hover at through the weekend. Its Friday and the rain they have been calling for these past few days has finally broken free of the overcast cloud bellies above the city. The gray day outside is persistent but I find it comforting; it just seems to fit in so nicely with the fullness, tiredness, and generally contemplative mood around here. The sweet vanilla scent of sugar cookies is still lingering in the atmosphere from when we made a fruit pizza in baking group this morning. The things we bake on Friday mornings in the tiny kitchen are later the challenge snack presented at Coffee Klatch.

Mostly Coffee Klatch is to experience conversation, fun, and social behavior where there is optional food present. Generally a game of some sort is played as we sip our cups and chatter. Its a good end of the week afternoon activity and good practice. Isolation and resistance to social settings is a common eating disorder side effect and some of us have given into that so much that we aren’t really sure anymore how to act in public. Its something that you don’t realize you have forgotten until the time you need those basic skills comes up. You have to reassess how to act, what to say, appropriate behaviors, how to eat around others. It’s definitely a strange thing to realize you have let go but it does happen.

The fruit pizza is cooling now and it looks, and smells, delicious. I don’t know if I am gong to have any or not in group because I am already so so full. I don’t have to make that decision for another hour or so though and I know I will at least consider it, which is all they ask of us.

The bottomless pit

It is a truly bizarre array of physical feelings that my slowly waking metabolism is putting me through. After laying dormant for so long it seems to be still blinking its eyes to the light as my body runs the gamut. Right now I am on 1800 calories a day, which is more than double what I have been consuming for at least the last year. Strangely enough though, most of the time, I seem to want more. Of course, right now, I can’t have more because there is a regemine set up here, but it doesn’t stop me from longingly predicting what might next be put on my plate. I’m not always necessarily stomach-growling hungry, per-se, I more just feel an emptiness that spends its time fantasizing about nourishment. In fact, the persistance of this desire even later in the day, when I do already feel physically sated with my abdomen hurting and my intestines cramping up, is one of the oddest sensations I have ever dealt with.

The method behind the madness my body seems to be delving into is one of known success however. Upon arrival we are each started on the 1800 calorie per day diet, no matter what we had been previously consuming, and for the first week we stabilize on that. Then, not so slowly, the additions come. after that week the dawning of the next Monday in line brings with it an additional 400 calories, raising the daily bar to 2200. Then Wednesday, only 2 days later, with another 400 tacked on, and Friday with a third 400. The additions continue on those same days each week until a daily consumption of 3000 is reached and they alternate between the adding of food at meal times and various Ensure shakes wherever they best fit into our individual regemines. All of this is based on the logic research has proven true behind a hyperactive metabolism.

we each need a certain number of calories per day to live and perform basic functions in a successful healthy manner. It varies greatly from person to person as to what that daily need might be but, its safe to say, that any full-grown adult needs at least 1200 and most need more. When a person drops below that required amount for a certain amount of time it will eventually send the body into a starvation survival mode. To conserve what little energy remains in the system our metabolisms go into a kind of hibernation and stay there.

Once they are jostled awake again by the onset of a more natural diet they set to work. With elation they continue to work more, with gusto and fervency, falling into the overactive state and burning more calories than a body would naturally normally need…and here that need is fed. It has to be somewhat gradual because, when anything awakes after a period of deep sleep, a time for adjustment is needed. Almost always, however, in a situation like this, underweight people in the act of refeeding wind up actually losing more weight even on an astounding caloric intake before things start to slowly even out.

As much as I think this is an amazingly good well-organized program I am still a little nervous that, due to this metabolic roller coaster, I may wind up having to stay longer than the planned time in order to gain the weight needed to proceed. It is an ungrounded fear though. All I can do is my best, continue to eat everything they put out in front of me, and keep trusting that they know whats best. My life is litterally in their capable hands.