TRIGGER WARNING: DISORDERED EATING TALK, DEPRESSION, ANXIETY

Sat here at 4.45 in the morning, feeling like an utter failure. This evening, the toilet situation got worse – much worse. It was literally ten minutes after having a shake, I was on the toilet for nearly half an hour feeling like I was just pouring out everything I had consumed. Immodium doesn’t seem to be stopping it although I have taken another one after this latest bout. Stripes made me some diaoralyte with water flavourings to try to ensure that I don’t get dehydrated, but I was getting light headed on the toilet, swaying when I tried to stand up and struggling to walk.

I’ve been struggling ever since the video meeting on Friday where they explained we could do two shakes and a 300 calorie meal, and I guess I was worried that I was just trying to ‘talk’ myself into not sticking it out with the shakes and eating something.

Stripes was the voice of reason and I had a piece of white fish and some steamed vegetables – well within the 300 calories allowed and all on the allowable list. So why do I feel like such a failure? Because I’d made it through the awful first few days, was heading into my second week, and now I have to eat? This morning reaching 100 lbs off by surgery date seemed well within my reach but now I wonder if I’m going to lose any weight at all?

If I’m going to have to do this two shakes and a meal thing, should I do the Ozempic jab? Even just to get through the first week? It sounds ridiculous – I have been getting by on 600 calories a day, but now I’m panicking that if I have the smallest, allowed meal, that I’m a failure and they’re going to refuse to do the surgery?

I’m scared that people are going to judge me. Like, Marmee wouldn’t mean to, but I can hear her voice asking if I couldn’t have just gone to sleep and made it through until tomorrow? Like wondering if anyone finds out that I am eating one meal per day, are they going to think that I’m sabotaging myself and the surgery? I was scared to say something on the video chat about the issues partly because I didn’t want to raise a red flag on myself. What if this makes them reconsider the surgery? What if they say that I need to do longer on the pre-op diet, or more investigations are needed? What if, even sticking to their two shakes and a meal thing I don’t reach the medical goal?

I’m frozen in place, wondering if I should get on the scales to see if I’ve put on weight with the meal I ate. Frozen, because of all the disordered eating thoughts that I’ve ever had, this one hit me over the head with a 2x4. How bad do my thoughts have to be, that I’m feeling guilty because I ate some allowed solid food (the emphasis is for my benefit) and haven’t had 13th or 14th incident in a 24 hour period? That I could even think about not eating something and just going to sleep and hoping that tomorrow I feel better, because that’s messed up. If one of the girls said something like that to me, I would obviously be concerned.

Maybe because I’ve been feeling contemplative since the video meeting, but I’ve found myself listening to my thoughts and thinking ‘if that was your friend, would you talk to them like that?’ Would I be calling them a failure for doing the right thing for their health, the healthy thing? It wasn’t like I snarfed down a burger and fries – I had a small piece of fish and some steamed vegetables.

I don’t know – my head is all over the place and I just wanted to try to get this OUT before trying to sleep. Maybe tomorrow’s me can figure this out!