Dietitian Appointment (trigger warning, no numbers)

I had my appointment with my dietitian last night, and it was really challenging (they're all really challenging, but this one was particularly challenging). I've only seen my new dietitian 3 times, but she really challenges me and is hard on me (but it super nice at the same time), which I need.

I had struggled since the last appointment (typical), and have lost a fair bit of weight (ongoing, but she was pretty concerned about the drop this week). She kept telling me that I could be in a hospital right now. Of course I fought her and told her I'd been at much lower weights and still hadn't been hospitalized. She told me how eating disorders are scary and aren't like other illnesses such as cancer where you may have some anticipation of death occurring. In EDs, your body is resilient, but only up to a point. I've battled my eating disorder for a long time, and have lost weight, gained it back, lost weight, gained it back, etc. She told me how at any point my body could just start shutting down, even if my labs are fine. That I could just have a heart attack.

Part of me knows this, I've known plenty of people in treatment who have died from their ED. And that's not an exaggeration. On one hand, it's scary to think about. My body has been resilient. I've put it through years of damage, but my body has been faithful to me. But she's right, people CAN die from their ED at any point. On one hand, I want that to be scary to me. But it's not. I keep thinking I'm invincible, my body won't shut down on me, it can't. Or who cares? My life is pointless anyways, I'm not making progress, I have no purpose in this world, so why does it matter? I've thought about suicide a lot, but dying from an eating disorder, in a very sick way, is much more appeasing to me than committing suicide. So, so what if it kills me.

I didn't share those thoughts with her (although looking back maybe I should have?), but we did talk a lot about it. She has a caloric goal for me to hit every week (which isn't high given the meal plans I've been on in treatment, but is still scary for me to think about reaching), and I have been able to meet it a couple of times. But there's so much fear and guilt in letting go and giving recovery 100%. I'm scared of gaining weight, yes, but what's even more terrifying is giving up my eating disorder.

She told me if I dropped anymore weight she'd have to put me on supplements. She didn't mean it as a threat, and I didn't take it as one. More like, so what? I'm so conflicted right now in terms of recovery. I want it, but I don't. I'm sure that makes perfect sense to someone struggling with an eating disorder, but sounds pretty confusing if you don't struggle with addiction of some sort. Maybe you get it, I don't know.

On a happy note, today I met my caloric goal. I feel like crap because of it, my ED is screaming loudly at me. But I did something good, I guess. Even though it doesn't feel like it.