Schedules

I've been reading some articles on mindfulness to get a handle on my anxiety and general stress, and one I read today mentioned something called "flow".  This concept is when you become so engrossed in whatever you are doing that you lose track of time.

Flow would have scared the ever living crap out of me if I was still in the depths of my ED.  Let me explain why.  While my eating disorder had a lot to do with counting calories in and out and tracking my weight, it had everything else to do with time.

*WARNING: THE FOLLOWING DETAILS MAY BE TRIGGERING*




A typical ED day was like this:  Wake up in the morning and get ready for school, or class, or work.  Breakfast was generally the same time every morning because I had to wake up and be on time for those things just mentioned.  After breakfast, snack time was allowed strictly at 9am.  Not 8:30am, and definitely not later than 9am. Just 9am.  Those were the days I ate a morning snack.  Regardless of having snack or not, lunch was strictly at 11am.  Never 11:30 and certainly heaven forbid if I had to have lunch at noon!  Then, a second snack (again, if it was in the plan) was 2:30pm.  Again, not earlier, and never later.  Dinner was 5pm - sometimes 6pm.  I had some leniency regarding this because it depended on when I got home.  Then I would not eat again until the next morning.  No matter what.

This was the schedule and I was hell bent on sticking to it.

You can imagine what this sort of schedule did to me.  It allowed no room for social plans, mainly because they did not fit in with my schedule.  If I had to attend something social, I would eat at my "regular" times and attend the event with so much anxiety, I barely enjoyed myself.  All I worried about what when I was going to eat, and then what I was going to eat.  Later night social events were the worst.  I remember in high school having dinner with my boyfriend's family.  They ate pretty late and I got so angry from not eating at my time, that I am sure I made a terrible impression on his extended family.  To them, having dinner at 7pm was no big deal - it gave them time to talk among family they hadn't seen in a while.  For me, I thought I was simply going to lose it if I didn't have anything to eat before dinner.  It was a mix of being upset with being off schedule and simply being so hungry that my body was going into ravenous mode.  I'm not sure how I ate that night at my boyfriend's house but I do remember the relief when dinner was ready - finally, I felt some sort of happiness, or what I thought was happiness.  Nothing else mattered right then- food was ready and I could eat it.  I'm sure I binged just out of biology and being so hungry for months.

Eating to a schedule presented a new way for me to achieve victory.  If I started lunch at 11am, not 10:59 am, it meant I was strong.  I held out eating - I had won and that meant I was going to lose more weight, which is all that mattered.  This is why Flow would never be a part of my ED life.  Losing track of time?  Eating off my made up, ridiculously dangerous schedule?  Why, never - that would just make me fat!  To be honest, my ED made me lose all track of what hunger felt like that Flow simply couldn't fit into my ED life.

Today, I was home on a mini vacation day.  I was checking some work email and working on something else important to me.  My husband was home too; being a farmer and it being winter (still!) means he had winter months to get ready for spring, do the taxes, and other business related ventures.  Since we were both home, we had a nice leisurely breakfast at sometime o'clock.  I am not sure when we ate, it was sometime before 10am I think.  It was great - we used leftover Italian bread for toast, home-grown maple breakfast sausage, milk to wash it down.  A good well rounded breakfast for the most part.  After, I sat down in the living room recliner and did the things I set out to do (mostly online stuff) and my husband worked on paperwork.  Around 1pm or so, I noticed I hadn't had lunch and really wasn't that hungry.  Still, I knew it would be a good idea to eat something - I had therapy this evening and knew we would be eating later.  With leftover turkey in our fridge and a new kind of salad dressing I was eager to try (smokey chipotle!), I made myself a small salad and a sweet treat to end the meal.

The point of this is not to detail my eating today.  Again, if you are reading this and find the details triggering, or giving you strange thoughts or sensations, please know this is just a snapshot of today.  Tomorrow I may eat more - it's my birthday after all!  This weekend, I might eat less, or the same.  I don't know, and I'm not going to care.  I am eating and responding to my body.

When I noticed it was 1pm and I was only just a little bit hungry, I thought how great that was.  I wasn't on a schedule that I decided to set based on some "rules" I made up to lose weight and subsequently control my life.  Rather, my body made a schedule.  It said "eat when you're hungry", or "eat if you think you can and it's a good idea to." And so I did, naturally.

What does this have to do with mindfulness and flow?  I was in some sort of flow today.  I was engrossed in my work and project and my hunger only registered when I saw the time.  Perhaps I was more or less hungry than I actually was when looking at the time, but I ate anyways - and I made that choice.  I was not conscious of the time, whereas in my ED, I was always looking at the time.  How awful that a clock dictate my nutrition, my body and my life.

Right now, it's pretty late for dinner and we have not eaten yet.  I was a bit hungry after therapy, so I snacked when I got home.  I also poured myself a glass of wine because we're having fish tonight and it felt like a good choice.  My husband is out feeding our beef cattle and will be home momentarily.  At that point, we will put country music in the house (we live in a log cabin in the woods - cliche?!), and we will cook together.  And the time, nor calories, will matter.  And I can't wait.