Tag Archives: self love

If I’m Being Honest…

If I’m being honest…I have not been in a good mental place the last few days and need to vent. I feel as if I need to write out the thoughts berating me so that I can make sense of them, figure out what to do in response to them, and/or try to quiet them.

If I’m being honest…I don’t remember the last time (since starting recovery) that I felt so dissatisfied with my body. I hate every photo I see and every angle looks bad in the mirror. I’m at this point where I really feel this want to “clean up” my diet. I want to “tone up”. I want to change the way my body looks. And what’s really annoying is I don’t know how to do that and not have an eating disorder. I don’t know if it’s “okay” to want to do that. When does that stop being called restriction? When does it stop being considered disordered behavior? Clare wrote a good post about this…can I be healthy in recovery? Can I make an effort to “clean up” my eats without falling prey to ED?

If I’m being honest…I am not in a place where I can try to “eat cleaner” without it being about my ED. Because the urge to restrict and deprive myself is seriously stronger right now than it has been in awhile. I’m still trying to learn to be okay with enjoying the food and drinks I love, so cutting back on some of them is going to hinder that journey. I keep seeing people Instagram their #eatclean-worthy meals and their heart rate monitors and their mile upon mile long runs and their brags about ordering water instead of a drink – and I want to do that. I want to get lost in that “look at me I’m so healthy” mindset so I can feel good about myself again. Now I’m not saying that I plan to do this. I’m not saying it is the answer…but I miss that high from looking back on my day and knowing I only ate X and didn’t eat Y.

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Let’s See How Far We’ve Come

Happy Friday readers! I came into work late today due to a family obligation so I’m all confused about what time and day it is. Thankfully the time is afternoon and the day is Friday, so I’d say I’m in business. I wasn’t sure what to blog about today or even if I was going to blog, but I can’t stay away for long so here I am. I noticed a few things last night during the plans I had mentioned in yesterday’s post, so I’d like to share them with you all.

I first headed to J’s Crab Shack in Hartford after the bartender Kim invited me to come have a Manhattan in their new lounge (formerly was a banquet room). While there I found out that not only was Kat running late to the event, but the food there would be “snacks” from Pond House Cafe (who by the way is offering some fun reasonably priced cooking classes this year). I love Pond House food but snacks seemed ominous to me. I knew I needed to eat dinner but making a dinner out of event snacks often means making dinner out of dips, cheeses, and other not-so-light food. Instead of planning to restrict at the event (AKA drinking on an empty stomach), I made the decision to go next door to O’Porto and grab dinner – a healthy dinner I was comfortable with – at the bar.

Greens, shrimp, smoked-salmon-wrapped asparagus, and balsamic vinaigrette.

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Trade Em Up Tuesday

Alex is a big fan of Trade Em Up Tuesday (her post today is living proof) and I have always wanted to participate, but the timing never worked out. Well today it has and I have plenty of little shares, so this post is perfect for just that!

I would trade…the serious Monday doldrums I was in yesterday. I know I said that I allowed myself to enjoy my weekend without too much regret and I did…until Sunday night. I went over to Kat‘s to have dinner and watch the Golden Globes with our friend Carolyn, and ended up drinking way more Cupcake Prosecco and St. Germaine than I’d originally planned. I also ate a TON of baby cabbages (roasted in olive oil and curry powder, a new-to-me roasting ingredient that I’ll surely be using again) which just made me feel so full. Even if I’m full of veggies, that full feeling is hard to deal with and messes with my head. I woke up on Monday feeling dehydrated and bloated, so my clothes felt tight on me. I checked the tag on my shirt and it read XS, so I attempted to comfort myself with the fact that such a small size purchased earlier in my recovery surely may feel smaller on me now, but then my ED started beating me up for trying to make myself feel OK with not fitting into the smallest sizes out there. AGH.

I would not trade…the excellent time I had at Kat’s! Carolyn is hilarious so having her around to watch the awards with us was great. Kat made an amazing dinner (she roasted a lemon and rosemary chicken and gave me a mini tutorial on how to do so; it turned out delicious) and damn, Prosecco and St. Germaine is fantastic. Of course I also got quality time with Kat’s daughter Penelope, and even was able to babysit her for about thirty minutes while Kat and her hubby went on an errand. It meant a lot to me that they trusted me with their little girl and I hope it was the first of many babysitting sessions to come!

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Checking Myself to Wreck Myself

Without the scale, I have latched on to a couple of bad habits to “keep track” of changes in my body. One is psycho-analyzing how my pants fit. The other is body checking.

I’ve been wanting to write a post addressing body checking ever since Sam discussed the topic (almost a year ago!) on her amazing blog (a must-read for anyone interested in eating disorders and recovery). The truth is, though I have gotten better about it, I still body check. My stomach is the area of my body I am most self conscious about, and it is hard to resist the urge to lift up my shirt and look in the mirror during the day just to see what it looks like. I often examine my body from many different angles in the morning when I am getting dressed, and/or in the evening before/after I shower. This sounds like an extremely vain practice and it’s a bit embarrassing to admit, but I do it.

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My 2014 New Year’s Resolution

After you read this post I must insist you go read this funny one from Kaitlin! I am definitely guilty of several things on the list but am also with her on many of them. If the world made a resolution against progress pics and ab Instagrams, I’d be the top supporter!

I don’t usually even make New Year’s resolutions but I just happened to feel inspired to make this one around 12/31, so I’m going to call it a New Year’s resolution. My dad got very upset at first when he heard what my resolution was but hear me out: I want to make more of an effort when it comes to my appearance. Let me explain.

I’m not talking about working out more, eating “cleaner”, etc. I’m talking about blow-drying my hair, putting on eyeliner, and dressing nicely. You may remember my reflections about how much better I felt on a very mentally blah day in Florida – the day I arrived there. I felt tired and large and let my mental blahs translate into feeling like I looked blah – and should stay that way. But if feeling mentally blah makes me think I look blah, why can’t looking awesome make me feel mentally awesome? Why can’t it go both ways? It can!

Before a night out in Florida – I took the time to blow dry my hair and my sis curled it for me!

I encounter plenty of days when I want to wear my glasses, put my hair in a messy bun, and rock yoga pants. Sometimes doing so makes me feel cozy, especially post-gym on the weekend. But other times when I haven’t worked out or when I’m feeling guilty about a previous night out at an event or restaurant, I’m tempted to just retreat into myself and hide in stretchy pants. I don’t feel like trying to make myself look nice because I feel as if I don’t deserve to look nice.

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My Scale Story

I’ve been MIA because I just haven’t felt like blogging much while on vacation in Florida…but I head back to CT today. While I have some things to say/share about my trip, I’m about to head to the airport and don’t have time to write a post today. So here’s a post I wrote on the plane ride down here…

I’ve been meaning to write a post about my scale journey for awhile now, and recently Sarah did one discussing her current relationship with the scale. I wrote a novel comment in response (check out the rest of them…great discussions on this post!) That really made me realize I need to get on writing my post. So here I am, ready to share with you all my relationship with the scale from start to finish…and also what I think it would be like if the scale and I were friends (or frenemies) today.

My first scale wasn’t even mine…it was my junior year roomie’s. But that also happened to be the year I decided to change the way I ate and “tone up”, so it was convenient for me to have a roomie who was also into the same goals. I had a number in my head that I wanted to hit, and quickly it became easy for me to use the number the scale showed me to discount any hard work I’d done at the gym or any healthy meals I’d eaten that day. I could feel excellent about my healthy habits, step on the scale and see a “bad number”, and suddenly all I was thinking about was what I could have done differently to make the number go down.

Start of my junior year, ready to tone up...did I really need to?

Start of my junior year, ready to tone up…did I really need to?

Eventually I got to the point where I was stepping on the scale more than five times a day. I’d use it to purposefully feel bad about myself; stepping on the morning after a night of drinking was my way of punishing myself for the night before. Even right after I’d eaten dinner, I’d step on just because I knew the number would look higher and I’d feel shame. I wanted to associate eating with shame, so that it’d become easier to resist the urge to eat. And not just eat unhealthy food…I mean resist eating in general.

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Thanksgiving 2013: Dining Out

In recent years my family has spent Thanksgiving at the home of our friends, the Gerbers. Unfortunately this year they moved to Texas and we decided instead of finding another group to join or having Thanksgiving at home, we would go out! Obviously this was my idea and of course we selected J. Gilbert’s, my favorite restaurant, as the spot. Thankfully (ha get it?!) we were smart enough to call a couple of months in advance and lock down a 6:30PM reservation for our party of six. We received a call the day before Thanksgiving letting us know that a 4PM slot had become available, and my parents jumped on it. This was not fun for me because the earlier the reservation the more time I was going to have between finishing dinner and going to bed to think about what I’d ate. But I was the only one in that camp, so I had to deal!

The Croswell Fam!

The Croswell Fam!

I felt ridiculously hungover on Thanksgiving morning thanks to the previous evening’s festivities (Jager, never again) but made it to the gym for 30 minutes of StepMill intervals and an upper body workout. I sure am glad I went because I felt a lot better afterward, but man it was torturous during! I rushed home to shower and get cozy with coffee and the Black Friday circulars…a tradition! I felt very tempted to restrict after the gym and just not eat until dinner so that I would ensure I’d have plenty of room for the amount of food I was “bound to consume”. I texted my girl Brittany for support and she gave me the reality check I needed to push forward and fuel my body post-workout.

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Skinny Doesn’t Have To Mean Sick

I alluded to this post in this week’s Marvelous In My Monday. Now, I don’t like the word “skinny” because I think it’s too often used as a stupid label. So I hope this post’s title doesn’t turn anyone off. But it was the first one that came to mind and I couldn’t think of a better alternative. And despite my aversion for the word “skinny”, I have to be honest…it’s what I want to be. The desire to be skinny, stay skinny, get skinny, is in my head for a good chunk of each day. A much larger chunk than I’d like. But since I’m still in recovery, I guess that’s what I have to deal with. I just hope there’s an end point to that.

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I had a really good conversation with my therapist on Friday, during which she brought up an excellent point. I was telling her about last Wednesday night and how I got really full at dinner and almost had to make sure that I felt guilty about it afterwards. Why? So that I wouldn’t “be bad” again. I went through the exact same thing after my trip to Boston (and the restaurant hopping it included) over the weekend. There were actually a few moments on Sunday when I felt like I could easily push the ED thoughts aside and just move on with my day, but as soon as that notion entered my mind I felt a panic. How could I allow myself to feel the self love that I’d need to feel to push the thoughts aside and recognize that I deserve to enjoy life? In my mind that would only mean one thing…weight gain.

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MIMM: Home and Away

The winner of the Ellovi Body Butter giveaway is Mahdi! Congratulations and look for an email from me about getting you your free jar of raw six-ingredient body butter. Remember if you didn’t win you can get 15% off (click here to purchase a jar) by entering offer code “caitplusate”.

I went into the weekend wary of how I would handle my plans to visit my good friend/former neighbor Molly in Boston on Saturday night. I still wasn’t feeling good about myself after Wednesday night’s dinner out and was doing a lot of future-tripping over the guilt I would surely feel after a day and night of restaurant hopping in Beantown. For that reason I made sure to keep Friday night low-key and stayed in my hometown. Of course everything turned out marvelous in the end, as it often does. I’ve got another weekend of excellent memories and moments I’d re-live again in an instant, even if they also came with some not-so-kind thoughts toward myself.

Share your marvelous via Katie’s link-up!

Marvelous are…my tolerant, flexible parents. I was a bit of a mess when I got home Friday night. I’d been sitting in traffic, stewing with too much time to think about our evening dinner plans. We would have to fight that same traffic again to get over to our planned destination (Rizzuto’s in West Hartford) and it didn’t seem worth it. But if we didn’t go there, where would we go? I’d already mentally prepared myself for one restaurant and I know it sounds silly, but I do not handle plan changes well when it comes to food. Hello, control freak. My parents calmed me down when I got home and let me choose a new restaurant destination that I was comfortable with and that also wouldn’t take us on a highway. Speaking of which…

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Five Things Friday: Linking Up!

Check out yesterday’s post to see a review, discount code, and GIVEAWAY for Ellovi Butter, a raw six-ingredient body butter created by my friend from high school!

I’ve done Five Things Friday (or some variation) posts in the past but this is the first one I’ve done since Clare started her link-up! And I have several different things to say today so it’s very appropriate timing. I love these kinds of posts because I don’t have to focus on one topic. I can just bop around and share different news/insights/etc. And what do you know…Clare featured one of my posts in her Five Things Friday today! Thank you Clare!

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1. I got really full on Wednesday night. I felt anxious all day at work because not only did I do a morning (which means shorter than usual) workout, but I had dinner plans with Kat to eat in the Millwright’s Tavern. The staff at Millwright’s have a tendency to spoil me 😉 and I found myself future-tripping all day about whether or not that would happen. Well it did – Chef Tyler sent out some amazing appetizers after we’d ordered our (first) drinks and entrees.

Kale with 6-minute egg, tomatillos, blue cheese, bacon, &sweet onion vinaigrette.

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Meet Caitlin

I’m a 28 year old full-time working girl living in Boston (previously lived in Connecticut). I’m passionate about food/drink, restaurants, self-love, fitness, and the ever-present search for balance. I write about that journey on this blog – I hope you enjoy!

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Design Credit

My header was originally designed by Mai Le and later tweaked by Chris Roggi to match this theme, which he helped me customize. He also moved me over to self-hosting! Both can be contacted through their sites for design & development work!

Disclaimer

I am not an RD and do not have any official training, certifications, or degrees in nutrition or fitness. This blog is a way to write about my life. Any views I express are mine alone, based on what works for me, and should never be taken as medical advice. Always talk to your doctor or a trained professional before starting a new diet or fitness plan. In addition, this blog and its content are in no way affiliated with Kate Gosselin, “Kate Plus 8”, TLC, or any related affiliates.

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