Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Self-doubt plagued me again today. Is this how it's going to be like, that I would need constant daily motivation to get off my diet and eradicate my fallible notion of being skinny? I riffled through some health magazines and all that at the library today, and it's like, I'm just about the same physique as those models in there! So what's wrong with that? Okay, maybe they're taller than I am, but shape-wise, we're about the same. So if they're in these health magazines, shouldn't they then be the model of perfection; shouldn't we strive to achieve that kind of body? With my diet, I look like them. What if I'm without it? Will I become fat again?


Dad was on my case again last evening. I was working on my homework, and I could feel his stare burning on my skin. Finally he said, "I feel scared when I look at you. I don't know what happened to you, or what you've done to yourself, but you're so skinny you look like those girls who throw up after every meal."


Oh wouldn't you like to know, dad.


Then he shook his head and said, "What do you eat in school? - Do you eat?"


"Yeah, I DO eat."


"I know you do - but what DO you eat?"


"Oh, you know, the usual, mixed veg rice, noodles...."


Anyway, had range training today. Blah. I was so wiped out - and I don't know why - and my body was aching all over (lunges and side-bridge during gym were absolute killers!) - my thighs, my shoulders, my arms.... Couldn't muster much strength to make my balls go maximum distance. Had to rest just after an hour. What a loser.


I had a cheese-stick and ham bun from Breadtalk for breakfast this morning, and lunch was a plate of wanton noodles dry. Felt supremely guilty after that, even though I was starving before I ate the noodles. Shouldn't have taken in so much carbo. But it's okay, since I think I burnt it off with my run in the gym afterwards.


Am pretty pleased with my timing (14.05mins for 2.4km at 10km/h, and 17mins for 2.8km, followed by a cool-down brisk-walk of 0.6km at 6.5km/h). Yep. Another 18-hole game tomorrow. Hope I play well. Am going to play in M'sia with daddy next Monday. The rest of them came back (I didn't go on Tuesday) completely shacked. None of us felt up to playing today.


Btw, who's free to watch Enchanted or Hero? James Marsden is HAWT; even Jas said so :)


Stuff I'm dying to eat:

1. Braised duck rice.

2. Pizza.

3. Curry puff.

4. Chicken teriyaki don.

5. Hokkien mee.

6. Char kway teow.

7. Chicken briyani from SAJC.


If I could care less about weight and fats and calories and all that crap, I'd inhale all this.


Too bad I care. I care too much, people say.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Another statement that rocked me:

Anorexia - you'll be dead before you're thin enough.
Bought Eagles' new album, btw, Long Road Out of Eden :)


Ate rice just now (fist-sized portion, albeit, but still - it's a start, isn't it?) with veg and meat (I'm okay with meat, it's proteins; it's carbs that I'm shunning).


Plus, I ate 3 Ferrero Rochers. After a year or so without having tasted it. It was so good I swear my mouth was having a
Just visited this website about anorexic people. Kinda disturbed by the images I've seen. The girls were really stripped down to just BONES. Hip bones and shoulder blades and skin sagging on their skeletal system.


And I'm even more disturbed by the fact that I'm experiencing some of the symptoms already (constant feeling of cold, constipation, lack of energy sometimes which makes me really cranky, lying about what I eat, compulsive exercising, restricting myself certain foods, reducing the amount of food I eat, preoccupation with calories).


And then I looked at myself properly in the mirror. I realised that my body seems to have shrunk in size. (Anorexics risk becoming shorter or more dimunitive in size; even after they're cured of this disorder, they might never grow back to their original size.)


DO I REALLY HAVE ANOREXIA?


Anorexic people are said to deny they have a problem, but if I don't see myself being an anorexic, does that mean I'm not one - or does that merely mean that I'm blind to the fact?


Sometimes, I feel guilty when I eat, like I'm not expending enough to be eating so much, so why the hell am I stuffing my fat face with food? That's what goes through my head. That's why I make sure I exercise enough to burn off all the energy I've taken in, sometimes more.


IS THAT THE WRONG WAY TO LIVE?


You can see my veins running along my arms now, and my wrist bone is protruding even more. But though my upper body may seem a little emaciated, my thighs look great. I think I'm one of those bottom-heavy people, who look fine from waist-up, but not so waist-down, with my chunky thighs (it doesn't help that I'm bow-legged too) and all that.


But my thighs were chunky in secondary school because I kept eating and didn't really exercise much right? Now that I'm exercising regularly enough, does that make it okay to eat like how I did in secondary school?


I suppose this whole anorexia crap (if that's really what it is) is more of to show those people who said I was fat how UN-fat I can be. My second aunt commented on how I was growing fatter when I was in secondary four, and so did my dad's friend (his best friend's wife who's from Dalian, China). It's like I sorta want them to feel sorry for ever saying I was fat. Now that I'm skinnier than them, they'll have to shut up - right?


But I enjoy being skinny and light. When I run, I have an extra spring. Less load to carry, you could say. And my face looks slimmer, you can see the cheekbones better because of the slight hollows beneath it. It's just the fatigue that I don't quite enjoy sometimes. I sometimes feel so weak I can't even walk. And then I get really cranky and people around me - usually my dad - get affected. And then everyone's in a bad mood.


But. I'm not as crazy as those girls. I've got control. I can control myself, my diet - can't I? I won't allow myself to become like them.


On that website, the web-creator (who was anorexic before and is now cured of it, but sometimes still has 'relapses', or so she calls them) made a couple of statements that made me think hard about this situation and whether I really want it for myself. The first one is "People like people who like themselves', and another one's 'You can never be skinny ENOUGH," which is true. I was 49-50kg in secondary school and 1.64m (BMI: 18.6). Then I came into JC, and started this whole weight-conscious thing in February, when I took up running with Jasmine and Chooyan. My weight dropped to my initial dream of '48kg forever'. And then in June, when I started my diet proper, my weight became 47, then I aimed for 45 and reached it, now it's 43 (with my height as 1.65m, my BMI's become 15.8). It's a never-ending cycle of creating loftier goals and struggling to attain them. It's true that I should always set goals for myself (A's are getting more difficult to get these days in JC), and it really gives me tremendous satisfaction when I get what I worked for.


BUT WHEN IS ENOUGH? WHEN SHOULD I STOP?


How do you know when is enough? If you can go further, why not?


My mind's a battleground, bloodbath between the thoughts that plague me. I guess that was obvious from all that rambling I'm making. I'm like contradicting myself all over the place, arguing with the pro- and anti-ana (ana is short for anorexic) part of me.


Sometimes, I recognise that I have a SLIGHT problem - with my weight, my appearance, my self-esteem, my struggle to please everyone, my being affected by the slightest comment about my imperfection. But sometimes, I want to deny it. Because that would mean another shortcoming that I've acquired.


I eat, but I feel guilty. I only feel less guilty when I've hit the gym and pushed my body to exertion, or feel the burn in my thighs after I've swam 10 laps nonstop or cycled for fifteen minutes, or the ache in my abdomen after I done my situps.