Monday, February 18, 2008

From Behind Bars, Part V, On Lunch

Thanks to all for your delicious morsels of feedback on my previous post. You were all very right: girls with eating disorders are indeed people pleasers, and if I’m having fun, and if most of you are enjoying the posts, then who cares? I should do
what I want for me and not for anyone else. I, for one, am tickled with my posts, so I’m going to keep doing them. Besides, if Shannon, who used to be a Rec Therapist at CFC, can laugh at my little roast, then no one else has any place to be upset about it – you don’t see me poking fun at your profession, do you?!

So without further ado, I give you lunch time:

Once a week we had to tolerate a lunch that was called a “Mindful Meal.”
It was really awkward.
For the first ten minutes of the meal, we were not allowed to talk to each other. We were supposed to meditate about our food. I think. I never quite grasped the concept. A dietician would be in the dining room with us, intoning something like,

Feel your hunger. Embrace your hunger. Feel your boobies. Hell, embrace them, if you’d like. This is just a quiet ten minutes to relax, and to have food be your ally, not your enemy.”

After we listened to the appallingly weird meditation-gone-wrong thingy, we were supposed to talk to the dietician about how good we felt, and how much we suddenly and surprisingly loved and wanted to make love to food. Or whatever. This was usually a great time for me to stifle giggles and mouth dirty words to someone across the table from me to see how long I could get away with rule-breaking before a tech gave me the stink eye. I think I once clocked an almost perfect ten minutes of non-meditating during Mindful Meal. Go me.

An average lunch for me on weight gain might consist of something like

- 2 beef burritos the size of my femurs with beans, rice, and cheese in them (yes, TWO!)
- A bowl of raw veggies with a giant swimming pool of Ranch to dip them in that must, of course, be consumed totally
- A side of rice that was T-Rex turd size. Why is this? I’ve already got the equivalent of my body weight of rice in the burritos. Never figured that one out.
- A 12 oz glass of red Koolaid that was so thickly concentrated, it was like drinking sand - yummy
- Two chocolate chip cookies. These were usually both roughly stuffed in my mouth in unison if I was trying particularly hard that meal to avoid getting Boosted and vying to make my thirty minute time limit

And I’d like to say that I made it through the meal with eating every delicious atom on my plate. Sadly, this was usually not the case. I tried. Really, I did. But when you’ve already consumed more calories than Andre the Giant would in an entire day, all by breakfast time, it’s incredibly difficult. Seriously people. I can laugh about all this now, but going though it, wow. Talk about a nightmare. Much crying and bloating and being doubled over in pain was involved. Weight gain’s a bitch, fo sho.

So I’d sit and wait for my Boost. Most of my time would be spent praying my tech was really bad at math and would miraculously miscalculate the amount of Boost I was supposed to be given, and only give me a glass or two as opposed to, oh I don’t know, seventy-seven. I dreamed big while in CFC.

After said Boost is dolefully slurped up, I head back to the Unit to await my doom, for it is time for individual therapy. Doom indeed.

But first I argue with the nurse for awhile because I’m in the mood to be naughty and don’t want to take my afternoon meds, or maybe I curl up and cry because my tummy hurts so much, and I’m frantic about the food baby I’m carrying, but most likely I just try to laugh it off and forget about it. I wasn’t one to mope. I usually reserved that for after therapy.

Doom doom doom.

5 comments:

KC said...

oh my gosh, they had the most concentrated juice in the world! I would mix it with water in my mouth and never got caught. you gotta break some rules, right? oh, therapy doom, I can't wait. ps I lurve birds :)

KC said...

hope my comment about ednos didn't make you think I don't like your little satires, cos I adore them

Shannon said...

I love how youre going too continue talking about your experience! Sometimes you just gotta laugh at yourself to make it not seem as serious.

Also, one time, I googled "ED" just to see what came up, and apparently that is the Acronym for Erectile Disfunction. Whooda thunk?

Emily said...

I like to hear your stories about CFC. :) And yeah... I don't miss weight gain meals either. No matter where I was, there was always so much food, both at Rogers and in the hospital. And talk about pain... ouch. My poor tummy hurts just thinking about it!

Cammy said...

The thirty minute time limit seems insane, even a "normal" person would have a hard time getting that much down in half an hour. I ate very slowly even pre-ED, I can't imagine how bad the stomach aches were from the forced speed-eating!