Deleting "My Fitness Pal"

Saturday, I took a big step towards real EDNOS recovery:  I deleted my My Fitness Pal accounts.  

My Fitness Pal is a great site for people who want to log their food and exercise for whatever reasons, including weight loss and fitness goals.  But for people who have major issues with food and body image, including a history of disordered eating, it can be a scary place that feeds into an addiction.

I had created several accounts over the years, including a couple that I had forgotten about.  I have gone back to MFP time and time again, between bouts of binge eating and bouts of recovery (intuitive eating).  I always went back.  I will try really hard to not go back this time, because I feel that counting calories is not for me anymore.  

I started with my oldest account, VeganGal84.

Then I moved on to other accounts I had made but hadn't used very much, including one that I made especially for this blog.

Next, I moved on to my most recently abandoned account, BuffyEat2Live.

Finally, I deleted my active account, after saying a final good bye to my friends.  Earlier in the week, I had made sure to give my email address and social media information to them, so that we can stay in touch outside of MFP.

my final "food journal" entry - beautifully blank

I don't know if I can fully express how scary this step was for me.  People who don't have ED histories may not understand why anyone would devote a blog post to deleting accounts from a calorie counting website.  But I know that most of you guys will get it, because you know me pretty well by now.

MFP's "are you sure???" warning message

Anyway, that's all done.  Now it's time for me to find a better balance in my eating WITHOUT the calorie counting.  Because I have been overeating a lot lately.  And I've also been eating nothing but junk food.

So for now, for health's sake, I am going to focus on adding healthy produce back into my diet.  Fruit with breakfast, raw veggies with lunch, and cooked veggies with dinner.  No "rules" about junk food, because I don't want diet mentality to sneak in; I just want to eat vegetables and fruits again.

What scary steps towards health and/or recovery have you taken?

Goodbye, calorie counting websites

I am working towards full recovery from my EDNOS. 

What does this mean for me?

Basically, I want a life that is centered around living, not around food+body+exercise thoughts.  In order to accomplish this, I'm taking steps towards it.

The first step was realizing that calorie counting and food planning/logging in general no longer seemed important to me.  One day, I realized that it had been several days since I had logged my food, and I was okay with it.

Also in this first step was realizing that I am not okay with exercising to eat more.  When I start a regular exercise routine again (hopefully soon), it will be because my leg and ankle are feeling better.  It will be to get my left leg back to normal.  And then, hopefully, it will be to train for a marathon.  But it won't be because I ate Pop Tarts this morning, or because I want to eat pizza tonight.

The second step was realizing that I cannot follow steps towards recovery anymore.  This entire process needs to be day by day, and intuitive.  Why?  Because every time that I have assigned steps to myself, I ended up failing, and giving up, and going back to what I know (dieting, tracking calories, exercising to burn calories, body hate, etc.).

One thing has become clear to me though:  I need to step completely away from all of those calorie-counting and dieting websites.

I am going to step away from those sites, which will hopefully help to discourage me from going back to my safety net of food logging.

If there was a site that allowed me to track my food but not any macronutrients, I would probably sign up, just to keep that security blanket for a bit longer, while I sort though my emotional eating issues.  Like a food log that tracked feelings instead of calories. 

A place to recover from emotional eating habits, and from disordered eating in general.  Perhaps I have just found a need and should start creating a site like this?  Hmmmm...  Or maybe I should start to keep a real paper journal again, with real feelings written down, along with an emotional eating journal for as long as I need one.

Anyway, I'm going to start by removing all of the links anywhere on this blog that are about anything "diet-y".  The next step will be to deactivate my multiple My Fitness Pal accounts (which is deserving of its own blog post, in my opinion, because that will be a huge step for me).  I'm planning to deactivate my MFP accounts (I have at least three) on Saturday.

I am also going to stop following any diet pages on Facebook (as myself.   I won't unfollow anyone as my blog page, because I hardly use FB exclusively from the page).  I will continue to follow the people who don't trigger me, but if your page makes me want to hop back on the diet bandwagon, then I'm sorry but we have to part ways for now.  I love you, I get it, and I am not saying that your page is bad or that you are doing anything wrong.  I'm just saying that I need to fully recover from my EDNOS and seeing posts about calorie burning exercise challenges and how only organic food is food, is not helpful to me right now.

Sorry for no pictures, but I'm posting from work (slow morning, thank goodness.  Monday and yesterday were CRAZY).  I may come back in here later and add some pics. 

Taking a My Fitness Pal Break...

I remember a time when I was hooked on the Weight Watchers message boards.  I spent hours a day on there, getting tips, talking with "friends" (and a couple of actual friends), giving advice, and reading posts about anything and everything.

I realized that it wasn't healthy to spend so much time on a site, especially once I drifted away from Weight Watchers yet again.  But instead of quitting altogether, I found a new addiction:  My Fitness Pal.

Don't get me wrong, now, I love MFP. 

It's a fantastic tool for weight loss and calorie counting. Also, the friends that I made on there have really helped to get me through some difficult times, including this entire past year.  They helped me with my grief and validated my emotions when I felt especially crazy.  I am more honest and revealing on my MFP page than I am with anyone in "real life".  They know the REAL me. 

...But. 

But, I was spending way too much time on there.  It has become an addiction, just like the Weight Watchers boards were. 

Because I don't want to feed ANY of my addictions, I am taking a break from MFP.  It will not be a permanent one, because like I said, I have made some true friends on there, and they have helped me so much.  I want to continue to be there for them as well, and MFP is a great forum to do that.

I am once again taking the plunge into intuitive eating.  This time, I am going to be truly kind to myself, and will be focusing on it from a different perspective, incorporating ideas from several different successful intuitive eaters and taking baby steps. 

In order to do this, I need to eliminate the temptation to track calories.  This is another reason that I am stepping away from MFP.  It is too tempting to track my food when I am on a site that is meant for... tracking food. 

I don't want to focus on weight loss or calories right now, and that is MFP's main purpose. 

The main reason that I am stepping away from tracking is that I truly believe that it is the next step for my EDNOS recovery, as well as eliminating emotional eating as much as possible. 

One IE tip that is helping me today is to ask myself every time I eat:  "Would I still want to eat this if I were not allowed to watch TV / play on the internet / read while eating it?"  If the answer is "yes" then I must be truly hungry.  And sometimes I do step away and eat without the distractions, but most of the time I am still eating with some distractions.  Baby steps and self-love.  I will get there.

One of my goals is to enjoy biking for the
sake of biking, not for the calories burned. 

One final reason that I'm stepping away from MFP for a bit is the LSAT!!!  I have fallen behind in my studying, and the most important test that I will ever take (until the bar, I suppose...) is only five weeks away!!!  Yikes.

Also, if you guys want to read more about intuitive eating from another blogger's perspective, you should check out my friend Marie's blog The Dancing Paralegal.  She has recently taken the IE plunge, too, and is doing really great.

Have you ever been addicted to a website? 

If so, how did you get over it?

I'm a rebel.

There is something that I really want to share with you guys, and yet part of me is really reluctant to do so. 

And the crazy part is, it's something good.

Crazier still is that it's relevant to this blog.

There's a reason that I'm reluctant to tell you guys.  The reason is that I'm scared of my own rebellion.

I'm a rebel against my own success.

Here's the dirt:  I'm doing really well with my eating and exercise.  I feel GREAT about those things right now.  I feel 100% in control, and that I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing.  On top of that, I'm seeing results!!!

My pants got bigger!

Why was that so hard for me?!

Here's why:  Every time I blog about how well I'm doing, I end up almost immediately doing terribly.

I don't know exactly why that is, but it's something that needs to stop.

Because I shouldn't only blog about food and eating when I'm doing terribly with those things.  I shouldn't only blog about food and eating when I'm trapped in some absurd diet and/or EDNOS mentality.  I shouldn't only blog about food and eating when I'm feeling like crap about it all.

I need to blog when things are good.  And blogging about the good times needs to be a positive experience instead of something for me to rebel against.

For whatever reason, when I tell the world how well I'm doing, I rebel against that.  Like now that you all know that things are groovy, I might as well let myself go a bit.  Does that make any sense?  Are any of you rebels like me?

Anyway, I'm just here to tell you that as far as diet and exercise go, I'm doing REALLY well right now.

And I feel like I may have finally (GULP) let go of my disordered eating thoughts.

I should probably repeat that last part:  I may have let go of my disordered eating thoughts!!!

I'm not saying that they are gone for good (fingers crossed, though) but I'm saying that right now, those thoughts are dead.

Yes, I'm tracking my calories on My Fitness Pal.  No, I'm not cooking every day, or eating healthy every meal, or binge-eating every night.

I'm not obsessing about the calories, or the quality of my food.  I'm tracking just because it feel like the right thing to do right now.

Stopping to smell the roses...

It's just like my exercise.  I'm not doing it just to burn calories anymore, and that is why I'm enjoying it more. Maybe because I'm tracking my calories in a non-obsessive way, I'm enjoying it more.

I'm not anyone's judge, not even my own.

My food intake doesn't define me.  

I can eat 2300 calories one day and 1300 the next, and feel equally satisfied with my choices both days.  And I'm fine with that.

I have a bag of Baked Cheetos in my cabinet, and a bag of Hershey's Bliss dark chocolate hearts in my freezer, and I don't even care.  I can eat them when I want to.  Or not.

Food is NOT constantly on my mind.  Neither is exercise.  

I'm eating WHATEVER I want, including ridiculously healthy meals and some meals that most would consider to be just giant snacks.

I'm exercising 5 days a week(-ish), three of those being run days, and I'm loving how strong my legs and lungs are getting.

most recent run!

I'm tracking it all on My Fitness Pal in a non-judgmental way.

And I'm getting stronger.  And smaller.  And happier.

Wow...

Some thoughts about the last 5 months...

As you all know, I'm less than 10 pounds from reaching my goal weight (assuming, of course, that I don't adjust it AGAIN, in which case I'm probably even closer).

Another thing that you probably know about me:  I reached a goal weight of 144 pounds several weeks ago, and tried out Intuitive Eating as a method to maintain that loss... only to gain back 9 pounds in 6 weeks.  Back up to 153...

And I have ZERO regrets about that.  It was a learning experience.  I learned that although I may really want to be an Intuitive Eater, I'm just not ready for that yet.  Maybe within a couple of years, I'll try again.  But for now, and for the foreseeable future, I need to track my food if I'm going to even maintain my weight.  That thought does not depress me, it empowers me.  I'm thrilled that I know what I need to do, and I'm also pretty happy that I'm not alone in this.  Many people need to keep on tracking their food to maintain and to lose weight. 

I just looked back at a weight tracking chart of mine, to see exactly when I crossed the threshold from "Overweight" to "Healthy/Normal Weight" and it was on February 12 of this year.  That is when I weighed in at 153.4.  My original goal weight was 135, so when I got to this normal weight milestone, I thought that I still had about 20 pounds left to lose, and probably assumed that I would keep on losing about a pound a week and would weigh about 135-ish by NOW.

This weight-loss thing has definately been a huge learning experience for me.  I never thought that I would be okay with basically maintaining for 5 months while trying to lose the last few pounds.  But I actually am okay with it.  No big deal.  I'm happy with my body and I'm happy with my life, and losing the last few pounds has just not been the number one priority in my world, and THAT IS AWESOME for me, since there have been scary times in my past when thoughts about my body and my weight literally ruled my world.

Now that I've found My Fitness Pal and am back to full-time tracking, I'm not worried that I'll keep on maintaining.  I'm sure that I'll get to my goal weight of 140, and then I'm sure that I'll be able to maintain at my goal range of 138-142. 

I've been on MFP for 1 month, and have lost 4.4 pounds.  I'm back to my 1 pound a week average.  Does that mean that I'll lose the last 8.6 in the next 8.6 weeks?  Who knows.  It's a journey, and I'm pretty happy with how it's going.  Here's a picture of my MFP tracker.  And yes, those are Alyssa Milano's abs that I'm using as motivation, bwahaha!  It's mostly a joke, since I have a completely different body type from her.
 
 

Where are you on your weight loss journey? 

Still losing, maintaining, happy with your progress?

My 1300 Calorie Day!

Okay, you guys...  I did it.  Or rather, I'm about to finish up anyway!  I have one more snack planned for the evening, and after that, I will have finished my first 1310 calorie day.

Why 1310?  Because My Fitness Pal has that as my set "net calories" intake.  And today is a day of rest, so I did not earn any exercise calories to add to that total.  So...  I thought that I would try this out again.  I tried to do this the last two weeks on my DOR, but ended up going over both times.

This week, I figured "It's just one day.  Why not try to see  if I can really do it?"  And so...  I am. 

For some of you, this may seem like a good amount of calories.  But for me, it's NOT.  On a day that I eat pretty much what I want to eat and feel GREAT, I eat about 2000 calories.  Since I'm trying to lose a pound a week, I've cut that down to 1500-1800 typically, and though I'm not eating everything that I'd naturally love to eat, I'm not uncomfortable. 

But... 1310?  Why don't you just shoot me and get it over with.  That's not food, that's air.

I'm only joking!  It hasn't actually been that bad.   I thought that since some of you may be like me and have no clue how one would survive off of such a trivial amount of food, I would share my day of eats with you! 

I started off taking pictures, but then after lunch, I forgot about that plan.  So I will show you the first few things that I ate, followed by mere descriptions.

Okay, here goes. 

8:15am- Luna Bar (180)
8:30am- Unpeel banana.  See one big bruise...  Throw banana away. (0)
9:30am- almonds (75)
10:30am- Craisins (100)

1:00pm- salad with spinach, shredded carrots, cherry tomatoes, vinegar, EVOO (103)

      Boca burger on sandwich thin (condiments not counted)- 200

2:00pm- another sandwich thin + some grapes (134)

5:30pm- beans and rice with veggies and EVOO (312)

in a few minutes- sandwich thin with some peanut butter (176)


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So... I did it.  BUT, I don't know if I ever want to do it again.  Today was not a fun food day.  Also- I don't know if you noticed or not, but I ate 3 sandwich thins in one day.  Plus some other processed stuff disguising as health food, like that Luna Bar.

I'm not sure if I will do this again next week, but it is nice to know that I CAN. 

Back to my regularly scheduled high-calorie meals tomorrow!

If you want to see my food diary, join My Fitness Pal and friend me, I share my food diary with my friends.  I'm VeganGal84 over there!  :-) 

Thanks for reading, and I hope that you are all having wonderful days!
Oh, and... P.S.  I would love to get a few more followers!  I just really want to get to 150 already so that I can do my next giveaway!  So help me out if you want, and share this blog with other people that you know who like to read blogs.  I promise to make the giveaway extra good this time. 

Tasty Thursday! (My Fitness Pal edition)

A day of calorie counting with My Fitness Pal looks pretty similar to a day on Weight Watchers.  However, there are some things that I've noticed that I'm doing differently now in regards to food choices.

1)  I'm snacking less now.  Especially at nighttime.  When I was on WW following the Simply Filling Technique, I had gotten into the habit of eating a bowl of shredded wheat with soy milk most nights, often an overflowing one that I wasn't even that hungry for.  I had convinced myself since shredded wheat and soy milk were Power Foods, that it was perfectly okay.  I would never do that now, unless I was under my calories for the day, which so far has not been a problem!

2)  I'm allowing myself to eat chips and cookies in actual moderation now.  Seriously, since this is my PMS/TOM week, I decided to allow myself an individual baggie of chips and an individual baggie of mini-oreos every day if I want them.  With calorie counting, those things are not that bad.  On WW, it would have meant several PoinstPlus, probably somewhere in the double digits.  And for some reason, for me that meant either "all" (eat an entire giant bag of chips or entire ream of oreos) or "nothing" (don't even LOOK at those foods).  But with calorie-counting, one serving a day is fine.

Okay, here goes:

Breakfast was at 8:30-ish and was amazing!!!  It was 1 cup of oats with 1 cup of almond milk, with 1 tablespoon of peanut butter and 1 tablespoon sugar free maple syrup...  Mmmm, it tasted like pancakes in oatmeal form!

The banana was my planned morning snack, but it had bruises so I couldn't eat it.  I know, but I just seriously cannot eat a badly bruised banana.  Not pictured:  1 ounce of almonds.

Lunch was a fun mix of leftovers in a bowl:  1 cup of barley, 1/2 cup of kidney beans, a bit of canned tomatoes, and some leftover broccoli and cauliflower, all mixed up with 1 teaspoon of EVOO.

My afternoon snack was described above- 1 baggie of mini-oreos and 1 baggie of Lay's potato chips.

Dinner was filling and yummy.  1 cup chickpeas, 1 cup brown rice, 1/2 cup tomatoes, and 1 teaspoon EVOO.

My evening snack was the rest of this cantelope, which was delicious, but definately on its last legs!

Total calories for the day: 
1887 (calories eaten)
- 607 (exercise calories)
= 1280 net calories

Well, I'm off to earn my exercise calories with some The Firm and my bike!  :-)

Did you eat anything especially interesting or delicious today?

I will leave you all with an adorable picture of Rose and Dot. 

Confession: I'm going back to calorie-counting (for now)

Well...  as much as I really wanted to be an Intuitive Eater, I've come to (once again!) accept that I'm just not ready for it.

I gained again.  It's almost too depressing for me to even admit to you how much, after a week of pure IE, but okay- it was 2.2 pounds.  So in the last two weeks of Intuitive Eating, I have managed to regain 5 entire pounds.

I got a new scale, and it said that I was back up to 153!!!!!!!!!!!!  So that's what I'm tracking my weight as now.  A gain of almost 10 pounds since I hit my goal of 144. 

And that is just too scary for me to continue. 

I have to go back to tracking.  I have decided to not go back to Weight Watchers, simply because that's just too diet-y for me right now, and I'd like to do a combination of IE and dieting...  If that's possible!

So I signed up for My Fitness Pal and have been basically doing IE but with tracking for the last few days.

So I'm still listening to my hunger signals and choosing foods that I like (about 80% really ridiculously healthy options, with 20% processed/junk foods right now... yes I'd like to increase the former to 90% at some point) but with limits.

I feel bad about giving up on Intuitive Eating again.  However, for me, it just wasn't working!  A reader of mine, Kate from This is Not  Diet, said something to me that really made me think:  "I think the only way to "eat whatever you want" and not gain weight is if you don't "want" to overeat or eat a lot of junk."

And I do still want to eat junk and I still want to overeat.  I don't know why I still want to do those things, but I do.  So I need the accountabity of calorie-counting for now.  I'm going to give My Fitness Pal three months of commitment, that is my plan.  My birthday is October 7, and according to MFP, I will have reached my weight loss goal by then, and will be working towards maintenance again, which is where I want to be!  :-)

So I hope that you all understand, my dear readers.  I didn't want to give up on IE, but I've just discovered that I am not yet ready to be a true IE-er.  IE just wasn't good for me at this point in my life.

With that in mind, I must remember one of the affirmations from my box of affirmations: 

"Walking away from something that is bad for you is not giving up."

I still 100% believe in Intuitive Eating, and will go back to it eventually, but for now...  I need to work some stuff out.  And part of that journey will include counting calories for the food that I eat and the exercise that I do.  And I'm okay with that.

still on a journey...