Two Birds

"Two birds on a wire.

One tries to fly away and the other
Watches him close from that wire
He says he wants to as well
But he is a liar."
-Regina Spektor, Two Birds

I'm the liar.

So often I drive myself crazy with cabin fever. I confine myself to the house. I've gone up to a week or more without leaving the house. Literally.

Why don't I just go do something? See someone? I have no idea. It would "trow off the day." It would somehow make yesterday different than tomorrow. Um...like that's a bad thing???

I love spontaneity but I am horrible at it. I really have to have it forced on me and I will usually enjoy myself.

This morning I read Maya's latest blog and I am so so so so happy that I did. Here is why:

As I sat down with my post-dinner hot tea and my laptop to write up my blog my cell phone rings. It's my BFF. She's leaving her house soon to get me. We are going to see our two best guy friends. My first instinct was: "it's kinda late." or "Now?" (it was 7:30...yeah...late, Kittie. Reaaalll late.) Instead I took some advice. Let something unplanned happen. I said okay, I'll put on some makeup and we can go.

I feel like this right now:
That smile doesn't come from just anything. People, that is a real smile. The kind that's so real it's borderline unattractive but it feels so damned good you just don't care.
There is one step I didn't take but I'm really not beating myself up over it. They bought a gallon of ice cream and the four of them sat on a bench and ate it. I didn't. But I don't feel bad other than it made me stand out. Luckily, "it's not vegan." worked just fine. But I did come home to the microwaved Zbar that I was craving (and that cup of hot tea.)

Let's rewind all the way back to this morning. (Seems like days ago.)

I had an Ezekiel cinnamon raisin English muffin...
...with sunflower seed butter...
...and my home made blueberry jam.
I love these English muffins. I hadn't had an English muffin in...years...because of the white flour but these are so good.

I am on a craving stomping roll....I've been craving scrambled eggs lately. The texture mostly which is odd for me because I usually hate the texture..?
So for lunch I made myself an egg white/spinach/tomato/jicama hash wrap.
Yes, I said jicama hash. I cooked it up in a pan with some onion and sweet pepper. I had extra on the side with diced cantaloupe.
This afternoon I did more organizing and took a short power nap....sound like any other day I've had recently....like yesterday? Sheesh, Kittie.
Afterward I had a Cookies n' Cream Luna bar...
...with cantaloupe and strawberries.
I always like a shot of the naked bar... ;)

Dinner was leftovers. I roasted up some romaine hearts to go with the celery for scooping.
I also cooked up some diced sweet potato in a skillet with onion, salt, pepper. cumin, garlic powder, cinnamon, and paprika. Very curry-like which is luckily what I was going for.

Crave Days

Sorry for my absence. I had a very busy Saturday filled with shopping with my mom and meeting up with my BFF. Just BFF. She's the tip-top but she's been gone all summer until now.

This morning I made some more ugly pancakes:
These were oat bran based pancakes. I really thought they weren't going to flip but you just have to be patient. They flipped perfectly. Sometimes Kittie gets too curious. It makes her impatient.
They satisfied my craving for the texture of oats and what has become my weekly pancake meal.
I ate these as my post bike ride meal because I know that it's best not to eat before workouts but it's what I do everyday. Today I ate some dates pre-workout. If I notice a difference in energy, I'll switch but today I was a little woozy afterward.

I wasn't horribly hungry at noon and I figured it was probably because I wasn't excited about anything. I hadn't restocked on groceries since returning home and so I went to the grocery store.

I have been craving salsa, tortillas, the crunch of chips and cereal so I bought all those things except the chips.

I got home and made a sandwich
Spicy hummus, tomatillo sauce, picante sauce, tomato, onion, romaine, sweet peppers.
I ate it with some peaches and a little salad with basically all of what was on the thin except for hummus.
After doing some chores, organizing, and taking a short nap I made a snack.
This was the perfect snack. Perfect. It can't be improved....well, Greek yogurt would improve it but it's "cheap yogurt" week. I go back and forth to save money.
Vanilla yogurt, cantaloupe, and cinnamon puffins.
(After my snack I did something....pretty amazing, really. Well, I wanted more Puffins but...I already measured and ate my serving. I took a few minutes and decided to see if just satisfying my craving (was possible without binging and) would make me forget about it. I ate four or five puffins. Straight. From. The. Box. Then I closed it, put it away, and was satisfied. This gives me hope that at some point I can stop measuring and trust myself with bags of food again.)

I almost didn't photograph my dinner because when i was making it I started shaking. I couldn't control my hands. I have no idea why. It was so bad that when I tried to take the seal off a container of onion powder I shook and spilled some on the counter.

But then my little brother wasn't stopping his video game quickly enough and so I photographed to forget about the shaking. Well, I couldn't forget but at least it distracted me.
Vegan sloppy Joe innards, green beans with sauteed onion and garlic, roasted celery and a sweet pepper for sloppy Joe scooping.

*Sigh of Relief*

Thank you girls so much for being supportive!
Yesterday ended up being much more difficult than I had expected. As I hit publish I was shaking and I couldn't breathe for about five minutes before finally calming myself down. I was nervous all day.

Yesterday was a hard day in the way of my mentality as well. I was just off. I had some oatmeal at Starbucks and managed to scrounge up a sandwich for lunch but by dinner I was starving. I wanted vegetables. I hadn't had any and I needed them. I wanted a salad so we went out.
I looked at the menu. Every salad has chicken on it. They don't really have other vegetables on them...not enough to make a salad at least. So when the server comes I ask if they can make a garden salad. I have had to ask this question countless times. I've never gotten a blank stare followed by a "No." before yesterday.

She suggests I get the Chef salad without meat or cheese. You wanna know what's on it normally? Grilled chicken, bacon, ham, shredded cheese, boiled egg, tomato, olives, and iceberg lettuce. I don't want to upset anyone. I say sure.
It comes, I take a bite of lettuce. There's something odd...familiar...what is that? SHIT! WHAT THE FUCK?! It's BACON. I taste BACON. I investigate. Half my salad is warm and greasy. Why? They put bacon on it then took it off. There are small pieces of bacon that fell through in the lettuce.

I cried.
-I cried because my mind was already somewhere else.
-I cried because restaurants overwhelm me in the first place because I don't have my measuring cups and nutrition facts.
-I cried because I hate being "the vegetarian" that causes problems.
-I cried because that bacon was thrown away and that animal died. Because of me, that flesh was taken for no reason.

I got another one. I ate my plate of iceberg, dodging the tomatoes that tasted like soap and the olives that had no flavor at all. Was I hungry? It didn't even matter. That was hell.

But this morning I was hungry. I rummaged up what I could find for my last morning.
I made this.
I ate it.
I was still hungry.
I hit the road and got a coffee.
This was my lunch.
It was delicious but I was hungry.

I ate this as a snack when I got home.
I was hungry.
I drank some water. Maybe you're just thirsty.
Still starving. Watching the clock. When is dinner? Now? Now?

(Jicama, celery, tomatoes, okra, carrots, sweet potato, orange bell pepper, and onion.)

I ate 2.5 cups of roasted vegetables, a whole wheat muffin/roll, and half a veggie patty. Giant amounts of food.

I was still starving.
I ate a peach.
I'm still hungry.
I'm guzzling water.
Still hungry.
Very frustrated with myself right now.

*Gulp*

Disclaimer: This is a long, heavyhearted post. May be a trigger.

This is my 50th post (yay) and I am tired of being vague. I started this blog to keep me busy over the summer but the community has turned into so much more for me. I will be continuing the blog through my school year that begins in a month.

I can't believe I'm doing this....alright then. Well, I'm sitting in a Starbucks...about to post the most telling secrets of myself...also, I'm posting from IE rather than my usual Firefox because the damned wifi is being a dick. I'm slightly frusterated. Luckily most of this was already typed up and edited. (Edited to death.)

Okay, I've spent a very long time thinking of whether or not I should bring a certain aspect of myself to the blog. There is a side of me that I'm sure is obvious to some of you but I certainly don't come out and say it. I've battled the idea of including it in the blog for a very long time. As a matter of fact, I've been working on this post for about a week (or more.)

Ultimately, this is a food blog and it is my food blog. That means that what I discuss is what I eat, cook, or bake. I've been changing lately and it's affecting my eating, therefore I feel it's time.

I don't want an entire page on this to be sitting there at the top of my blog forever so even though it's long, I'm making it a post not a page.

There are lots of reasons I haven't gone here before:
1. People I know (roommate, dad, friends) know about this blog
2. Fear of judgment
3. Fear of influencing or triggering others
4. Before this year I never addressed it.
5. Lastly, I don't believe it myself.

This post is painful but I've never laid it out like this. I have never told the whole story...why did I pick a blog as the time and place to do it? I don't know, it feels right.

I have decided that I want this to be known in my blog because I have to sugar coat things and when I don't they seem sort of random. Let's just jump right in.

I have struggled with disordered eating since I was 10 years old. I stopped eating meat and lunch at school, never ate breakfast, and narrowed it down to half of dinner. No one knew. No one noticed. I went back and forth between restricting and binging so no significant weight loss was noted. Through adolescence I lost weight slowly so it looked like a healthy weight loss but my mind wasn't healthy.

I found the online community of pro ED sites. Now pro ED does not mean "hey, you should have an eating disorder" it means that people with eating disorders can continue in their state while talking to others who aren't fighting it either. As you can imagine this only increased my tendencies.

I was the worst my sophomore year of high school. My father heard me purging one night and there was an organized intervention that I talked my way out of. (Saying "Oh, you know. I'm bipolar so I'm impulsive." to a shrink is apparently a good enough reason to say you aren't bulimic.)

My body was very sick. I was weak and tired constantly. Walking down the hallway would take the breath out of me. I shook and found it difficult to control my muscles for small tasks. My sight would go black when I stood up. I was dizzy and as you can see my skin sort of had a gross sallowness and I always had circles under my eyes. Even though all these things were happening, I was not underweight because I ate enough not to be. To me, not underweight meant not sick.

During my senior year of high school I went through a horrible roller coaster of traumatic events. I started off strong. During the early fall I was the happiest and probably the healthiest I had ever been.
My skin was less dull and I could actually put a real smile on but then I noticed slight weight gain and I went to what I knew best.

In the late fall and winter I slowly made myself incredibly ill. I was happy because of a certain situation I was in. I felt supported and accepted for once. I had a healthier mindset than I did during times before so I did not feel like anything was wrong.
This picture was taken in December of my Senior year. At this point my body was just coasting. I can see that now but at the time it felt right. My hair was falling out and frizzing, my nails started to split, my gums bled and were swollen, my skin began to have a greyish tinge, and my hormones were insanely out of whack. In this photo I hadn't had a period in six months and if you can see, I was actually developing some...."whiskers." (Yes, this picture is extremely shameful and embarrassing.) I also started retaining water in my face and getting swollen.

I was so struck by my ailments this time that I was able to correct some of them but not without complete shame at the prospect.

Fast forward to last winter. I had been in a somewhat healthy mindset but then I gained weight during my first semester in college and couldn't figure out why. I wasn't binging, I was eating lunch and dinner, not many snacks. I guess it was the cafeteria food but I wanted to fix it. Just fix it, that's fine, right?
December of last year, the biggest I have ever been in my life. I wasn't overweight but I felt like a monster. I was so ashamed of myself I wouldn't go out. I still wasn't healthy because my eating was sporadic.

I started working out three days a week and eating tons of vegetables. Then I went to five days a week and salads, just being healthy. Then I noticed weight loss and BAM! It was back. Oh, she* was there whispering in my ear every damned second of the day. I had to speed it up. More weight loss! More! It was all I could think of once again.
*It helps me to personify 'her,' I don't mean to be weird.

200 calories a day, cardio workout for at least 1.5 hours, 7 days a week. I revolved my weekends around the gym hours but I wasn't going anywhere anyways. She doesn't like you to have other friends. Pride came with a stomach burning with hunger and a head dizzy from too much cardio.

That wasn't enough, oh no. One night, alone in my dorm room, and old friend came to visit. She's even worse because she allows you to feel "guiltless." I was sitting in the dark with the glow of some reality TV show flickering in the corner. I was starving, I just wanted to TASTE. A diet of celery, iceberg lettuce, fat free cottage cheese and cucumbers isn't exactly foodie-friendly. I needed food so badly I was shaking. I knew it was there. It had been there for weeks, probably months. My mom had brought it to me. A "care" package. A bag of Doritos and home made cookies. I leapt to the stash. Sobbing, I downed them in a matter of minutes but not without structure. I knew a liter of water was required to get it back up. That was when I went back to the pro ED message boards. I never left my dorm room for anything but class or the gym. I surrounded myself with it.
March 2010 Status: 200 calories a day, 2 hours cardio, 7 days a week. Six binges and purges a day.

Let's go to this past Easter. I purged three times in one hour. I took the five hour drive back to campus and upon arriving ate an entire grocery bag of Easter candy, a sandwich, and half a bag of pretzels that I did not keep down. Later that night I was in the hospital. Why? Really, really horrible UTI and panic attack. My bad panic attacks go down like this: so dizzy I can't stand, so painful I cry, I can't breathe and entire body tingles and hurts, my vision blurs, goes dark, and has little light specks and I puke when I stand. These happen only when there is the perfect combination of anxiety, little food, and laying on my back. Well, I was out for a few days. I was so dizzy that I couldn't get up. I didn't eat but a cup of soup in two days. Keep in mind I hadn't kept anything down before that.

You'd think this would be a wake up call, huh? It wasn't.
I had plus dollars to use up and could only use them on campus. Let the binging begin. I bought junk and ate and ate and ate until it hurt and then let it all go. Guilt was beginning to creep into me at all times.

Soon, I was back home for summer and one afternoon after a binge I was crouched on the floor in the bathroom when I hear the garage door. Dad's home. The panic of knowing you have to make a choice between having food in your stomach and someone possibly knowing what you're doing is so painful. She had such a strong hold on me that I kept at it. I know that he knew. He did what we do: ignore it.

But that was my wake up call. It was about a week after I started this blog. I knew I had to stop doing that to myself. I could hurt him. I had previously tried to stop but it is not an easy task. Such restraint is required. Well, somewhere I found the strength. I stopped that....but I have another friend hanging around.

I count my calories. I started this so I would stop rapidly losing weight, so I could gain some control over what I ate. To make myself eat more. It morphed. It's an obsession now. I'm here, eating about 850 calories a day. A week ago I found out that under 1,000 a day constitutes as Anorexia. Well then...that's a word I've never associated myself with....nope. I'm not. I can't be. I'm not skinny enough.

Here's a fact Kittie: you're underweight now. You've lost over 50 pounds since February. Your best friend's step dad, your old youth minister, saw you for the first time in six months and asked if you had an eating disorder. Your best friend said you looked like you were underweight. Your dad said you were a twig. Your ob/gyn informed you that you will feel your ribs when doing a self breast exam because there isn't enough tissue there. You're tearing up now because one of you knows the truth and the other can't see it. She says: "You aren't underweight enough."

Yeah bitch, well I get bruises in the night because my ribs crush my skin. I actually woke up this morning with a cry of pain because my hip bone pinched a nerve. I literally need a new wardrobe because even my clothes from sophomore year fall off of me. Clothes I bought a month ago fall off. I need to fight you and I will.

Current:

I don't know where I am right now but I know that this community has helped me go from 200 calories to 850 and want to go to 2,000. This community has replaced my pro ED boards completely. I haven't gone back in moths. I'm not letting it consume me.

I want all of you to know that this blog is so much more to me than it may seem. It isn't just something to keep me busy like I thought it would be. I want to see food in a healthy way. I want to eat it without crying or punishing myself.

A huge reason that calorie counting has become so important to me is because I fear that if I don't, I'll binge. There is this feeling that I cannot describe that comes upon me during a binge. It takes all of my mind away and gorging is all that it feels but there is no guilt because it knows that it won't stay down. A binge is always followed by a purge. This is why I measure and eat pre-packaged bars. To stop the monster.

Wow....well, there it is.
I feel naked.

This does not at all mean that the blog is taking a turn in any manner. I'm keeping the blog up just as it has been going but now I'm not lying. I have a genuine interest in health but I'm not fully there quite yet.

I hate that I'm preparing for hater comments...but I am so if it's what you've got, give it.

Baby's got a Brand new Ring

..of the nose variety:
Awh shit yeah! Septum! The needle went in like buttah ;)
Oh, and check out my teapot necklace. I got it when I got the bow. LOVE.
With the bangz. The old nose ring is now sportin' a little purple rhinestone stud.

Alright, alright. Enough about me let's talk about food. Well, when I'm on the road I tend to get a bit creative with my eats. I have this thing where I really like to still eat "my food" which is annoying if I haven't brought said food. So what do I do? I bring it. This was my lunch yesterday:
It starred two secret ingredients:
Mr. Honey Bear... ...and Hot sauce.

There was also spinach, the last piece of baked tofu, salt, pepper, and cucumber on it. I love spicy/sweet. Mmmm.

After I got my septum stabbed we went out for sushi. I adore sushi. I think it's the nori. If you don't remember, I eat nori straight.
Sorry for the bad picture of my cucumber roll I blame ambiance. I had a picture of my miso soup as well but it was horrible and there was a bowl of edamame. I had a few pods.

This morning I tried another of the Nature's Path Hot Oatmeal packs.
Apple cinnamon had more "apple" than maple nut did nuts.
I am now sipping on that bowl of coffee while blogging/reading blogs.

Have a great Wednesday bloggies!

New Things

I eat a lot of the same things if you haven't noticed. I push myself to mix it up but then I just get worn out and miss my staples too damned much. Well, I recently have had a few new things that did not leave me feeling unsatisfied.

Yesterday I was driving for an awfully long time and bust out a new bar to try. Granted, I do have a different bar almost every day, but this is only my second Odwalla bar and is my first fruity Odwalla bar.

(Why yes, I did photograph this while driving on the interstate. What you don't see: The Big Gulp full of Diet Coke that I poisoned myself with.)

Wow. Um. New favorite. I loved this one so much. It reminded me of those filled Nutri-grain bars that I used to eat from my lunch box as a child. The dried fruit was just right and it didn't have the protein-y taste that the chocolate one did. I like it with chocolate, not with fruity.

And this morning I bust out some Nature's Path hot oatmeal. I haven't had oatmeal from a pack in quite some time. I liked it. I think it works well for traveling when you may not have a big 'ol can of rolled oats on hand.
However, this was the only nut in the Maple Nut flavor:
Yep....that was it. I have a feeling that I got lucky even getting one...but I had a Sun Butter dollop to make up for it.

I had this "bowl" of full caf coffee on the side (x3 :/ [Apparently Kittie feels like breaking the rules lately.])
"Wait...that mug looks familiar....hold up is that the same table?? But how?!"

Don't ask me. I take what I can get.

Another new thing I'm loving:
This freaking bow.
Look how cute it is. That is all.

Square.

...I may be a square but at least I can bake?
Figgy muffins (scroll down for recipe.)

So last night after I posted about how adventuresome I was I got a phone call. It was My BGFF he wanted to hang out. It was 10:15....bedtime. Panic.

"No...I need to sleep."
"Sleep when you're dead."
"I can't. What about tomorrow?"
"I have to work then, we'll go to Taco Bell and eat. You'll forget about sleep."

(Oh dear God, no! Eating at this hour?! Eating Taco Bell at this hour?)
"I'm sorry, I really wouldn't be any fun, I'm too tired. Next week?"

And now we have plans for Friday. There was a sigh of relief...then something else. I felt guilty for it. I felt like a square and not in a good way.

That's what new days are for, right? Well, I started mine off right:
Apple pie pancakes...
...topped with nuked cinnamon apples and apple sauce mixed with maple syrup.

Apple Pie Pancakes:

• 1/3 c Whole Wheat Flour
• 1/2 t baking powder
• Cinnamon
• 1 egg white
• 1/2 med sized apple, diced
• 1 T raisins
  
• 1 t Vanilla
• Sweetener
• 1/4 c + 1 T water

Mix the first six ingredients until combined and then add remaining ingredients.
Cook on a griddle or in a non stick pan.
Right after breakfast I wanted to bake and I had some figs to use up so I concocted this little beauty:
They are sweet and moist with little figgy seeds sprinkled all in the muffins.

For 12 Fig Muffins:

• 3/4 c Whole Wheat flour
• 1 T baking powder
• 1/2 t baking soda
• 1/8 t salt
• 1 c mashed figs (I used the food processor)
• 1/3 c packed brown sugar
• 1/4 c unsweetened apple sauce
• 2 egg whites
• 1/2 t vanilla
• 1/8 t nutmeg
• 1/8 t ground cloves
• 1 t cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. Mix dry and wet ingredients separately.
3. Add wet to dry.
4. Spoon into 12 greased muffin tins.
5. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

I had this acorn squash for dinner.
Before roasting I sprinkled the squash with curry powder. Try it out. It was really good. The sweetness from the squash pairs nicely with the savory/ sweet of the curry.