Closer to Fine

FitLife by Slawa

I have four more months of normal eating under my belt. Though I am still walking a tightrope. Instead of a binge-eating safety net available to catch me, I can see a starvation one below. I have mentioned my time of under eating in other posts. I thought I would explain it further now.

It began with my wanting to get healthy about seven or eight years ago, when I was living in a one bedroom apartment Arlington, VA with Mikey. I thought I would make some little changes to get healthier, rather than tackling yet another all or nothing diet. I started by working out ten to fifteen minutes a day. After a few months, I found myself wanting to work out more. So I did. After another few months, I thought I would like to change my diet. All of the above were good steps to positive changes. There was a problem with my plan, though. I was on lithium at the time to treat my bipolar disorder. A person on lithium cannot simply change his/her diet willy-nilly because of the way the kidneys process the medication. I won’t pretend that I totally understand this. What I do understand is that the kidneys take in the lithium as if it is a salt. If the person taking lithium changes his/her salt intake (by lowering or increasing it), the kidneys may take in too much lithium, causing lithium toxicity, which can be fatal.

Being Diagnosed

Body Image by Carrie Lynn Unger

I have long identified myself as bipolar.  Being bipolar has shaped so much of who I am and what I do that I can’t help but identify myself as such.  I understand that bipolar disorder is a mental illness, but rarely think of it as a totally bad thing and this way of thinking has helped me to feel secure in myself to an extent.  Now that I have been diagnosed as having an eating disorder (so says the lab slip that my new psychiatrist give me), I feel somewhat less secure.  I am relieved to know what my years of yo-yo dieting and disordered eating means, excited and ready to tackle the worst of it and overwhelmed in general.  I wonder what having a diagnosed eating disorder will mean for me as a person who has embraced her mental illness.