Last Post Of The Year!

I should start thinking about how this year was, shouldn’t I? The good and the bad, what I accomplished and what I didn’t, etc.

So, here I am, with my little last post of the year.

What can I really say? 2015 was basically for me a year of lots changes. Some of them were definitely good, and some others, only time will tell. But I started my treatment this year and I’d say that’s what characterized it.

On January 1st 2015 I had two main goals in mind: to stop bingeing and losing weight. I remember I was celebrating with my friends while I thought about those two things.

My obsession with food and body-image had taken control of my life, they were almost the only things I thought about. I wanted to be thinner, I want to restrict my food, and of course I’d have massive binges after that. So it was an awful vicious cycle.

I wasn’t really happy with the career I was studying, I liked it but I couldn’t really see myself working as an anthropologist, and also my mind was all over the place, on getting better, on losing weight, on bingeing. My head was everywhere… everywhere but my studies.

So I got to a point in which I had to take a decision: I would pause my studies so I could decide what I wanted to work on in the future. And I was going to start a treatment for my eating disorder. Those were big changes but I knew I couldn’t keep going the way I was. I was trapped in a vicious cycle that I didn’t know how to break. More than something I wanted to do, it was a need.

I left university, with all the consequences that decision brought (I stopped seeing my friends that often, I started spending a lot more of the time by myself), I started studying to take the test to enter University in case I wanted to apply to another career and I found professional help.

In the beginning it was hard. The treatment scared me from many points of view. I had to follow a meal plan that I thought was “too caloric” and I was starting to take antidepressants and other pills for the first time. I also was afraid that my decision of leaving university wasn’t a good one and I felt pretty lonely.

But as the months passed I started feeling calmer, I started to discover that I wanted to study something related with health and I stopped bingeing. It seemed that the decision of pausing my studies and giving myself some time was a good one.

 

Today, the 31st of december, 2015 I have been 239 days binge-free, that’s about 8 months. As a consequence of that I lost 19,8 pounds. Curiously I achieved the two big goals I had at the beginning of this year when they stopped being my focus in life. I accomplished that when I focused on recovering.

I will never be able to spend time with my friends from university as I used to do, not even if I return to my old career. But thanks to that decision I have now a mental health, that while is not perfect, is much better than the one I had before. Maybe what I chose to study now is too hard and stressing, or worse, I may not like it when I start the course. But that’s what I want to try now and the truth is that I’m pretty excited.

Maybe “I didn’t do anything” related to my studies this year, but I did a lot for myself.

—

So my goals for 2016 are…

• Working hard at university: I’m going to start studying a new career and now that my mind is a lot more focused than it used to be, I want to find a method to study that works for me so I can learn as much as possible.
• Exercising more: I always, always have this as a goal and I rarely manage to make it. This time I really want to become more active because of the benefits it will bring to my health. So as I said in a previous post I want to join a gym to start working out constantly.
• Accepting my body the it is: Though I’m much better than I used to be, comparing myself to others and criticizing myself too much are two things that keep bothering me a lot. I’d like to overcome that this new year, so I can accept my body the way it is at last.
• Strengthening my self-esteem: This is something I really want to accomplish on this new year, although I’m not really sure how I’m going to do it yet I will focus a lot on it. I want to read books and make a little collection with the things I think work the best to get a stronger self-esteem.
• Being more organized: This may not have a lot to do with the things I last wrote but I really, really want to be more organized in all senses. With my studies, with my stuff, etc. A tidy room helps me having a good mood, so I want it to become an unbreakable habit (also that will help me having a prettier room).

So these are my goals for the next year, I really hope I can achieve them. I think it is possible 🙂

I hope you all have a happy new year, that you have fun and that you can start 2016 with all the good vibes.

See you on the other side,

Pol