Moving on...

The last six months have flown by and have created many happy memories along the way. Starting a 'real' job and living on my own in London has presented with many challenges to overcome, but I have become stronger, learned to take care of myself, and learnt to feel comfortable with my own company and my body, although this is still a work in progress. I've also learnt to adjust my expectations – it's a sad but true fact what woman feels entirely happy with there own body? But I feel that I have been able to place it lower down my list of priorities.

My body does not define who I am. Who I am is so much more than that – I am a nurse, a Christian, perfectionist, sensitive, kind and thoughtful, with a puerile sense of humour! I have weaknesses – I am impatient, prone to melancholy, have a low tolerance to stress and I'm a perfectionist (this comes under both as it is both a curse and a blesing!). I know this sounds like a dating add but it is a fact that we all have strengths and weaknesses, things we are good at, and things we need to work on. This is what defines us – not the shape or size of your body, but the things that make me 'Me' – these are the things that last and what ultimately matters.

I am about to embrace a new change which I'm sure will bring different challenges. I am moving house – not too far – but moving in with a old friend. Living on my own has been an experience I won't take back, but now it's time to move on.

I'm hoping to blog about the upcoming move and will provide photos of my new and exciting place! I also have a new recipe to share with you, I don't want to veer away from the topic of food completely, but I think it reflects my current state of mind that food is now lower down down my list of priorites.

Watch this space!

The final hurdle

I can't believe it's only four months since I wrote that last post, I feel like so much has changed.

It seems sometime in the last few months I crossed the final hurdle to full recovery. This apparently went hand in hand with me decided to quit smoking – the final step in making the decision to treat my body with some respect and discovering that I deserve to be healthy and happy.

So after going away on an Alpha weekend with my church and receiving prayer for complete and total healing from my self loathing, I woke up the next day and realised I was so loved that it was time to really love myself. I quit smoking and removed all the final traces of Anorexia that were still hanging over me – I have never felt better.

Even those around me have noticed. This is what I want to be noticed for - for being the happy, healthy glowing Hannah who shines with the love of Jesus and the joy of the Holy Spirit. I no longer need to be the sick Hannah – starving, cutting, overdosing and trying to self destruct with a pathological need to be cared for. This is the hugest realisation of my journey so far, throughout my rocky teenage years and slightly unstable mental health.

I have finally grown up and realised I don't need to be sick to be loved – In fact life is so much brighter with health.

And now after all those years of taking... it's time for me to give back...

Trying to make sense

I've spent the last week trying to make sense of my feelings. It's hard when on the surface it's because I "feel fat" but as they say 'fat' isn't a feeling. So what is it that is causing me to feel this way?

This week has been hard. Work has been overwhelming me with what I feel is too much responsibility too soon and my concentration has been shot which has caused me to make mistakes in my work, only minor ones with minimal consequences, but my perfectionist attitude towards certain things has been making me beat myself up.

Thought pattern: I did x wrong - I'm a terrible nurse - I'm a terrible person - I can't do anything right - I can be good at starving myself - if I lose weight things won't feel so bad - if I lose weight things won't hurt so much.

Irrational I know - to a sane person this chain of thought makes little or no sense. To me however, it makes perfect sense - at the time.

Thought modification:  Everone makes mistakes every now and then - I will learn and do better next time - I do plenty of other things right - last time I starved myself I could no longer work at all - I nearly never made it to being a nurse at all - I was never good enough - never thin enough - if I hadn't chosen to recover I would be dead.

These are things I have to remind myself every day, the thoughts I have to drum into my head to keep going through every hurdle, every meal time, every grocery shopping trip. But I do keep going and for every hurdle I cross the further I am from that miserable empty life of weakness, pain, numbness and isolation that Anorexia brought me.

Loss and Mourning

I said I didn't want this blog to be purely about food, it was supposed to encompass my whole life trying to live healthily and happily. So in that vain I'm not going to write about what I've eaten recently. I hope to write some posts later on ethical, environmetal and animal friendly products that I have found but not today.

Today I'm going to try and explain a few things.

I'm going to be honest and say I'm struggling. Things aren't bad by any stretch of the imagination but I still some way to go with changing my mindset around food, bosy image and self worth. I still spend far too much time thinking about food and what I 'can' and 'can't' eat and that's one of the reasons I want to move away slightly fom the topic.

Recovering from an eating disorder is a long and rocky process, no one changes overnight. I've come so far and broken many bad habits and destructive thought patterns bu there are still some aspects I struggle to shake. I've recently gained a little weight and still let the scales determine mood and self worth, admittedly no where to the extent that I have done in the past but I still put far too much value on the numbers that I read in the morning.

Today the numbers were bad. They through me into a panic. Today I have been in mourning for Anorexia. I really miss it. How can I miss something that made me so thoroughly miserable? That could have killed me? I don't have a sane and rational answer to that, all I know is I miss the feeling of seeing the numbers on the scale go down each morning, the high it gave me knowing I hadn't eaten that day and the feeling that I was 'special' I wasn't dependent on food like everyone else, I could live without it. Of course I couldn't, obviously I was deluded. But every day I have to remind myself of that.

I also miss the feeling of being taken care of, the feeling of being fragile while at the same time being strong and independent. I know this doesn't make any sense - but it made sense to me at the time. I know now that I felt so lonely and needy that I starved myself to prove I didn't need anything which resulted in me needing more than ever. And I think these thoughts have resurfaced today after experiencing a suuden and overwhelming feeling of homesickness and loneliness.

To put it plainly I'm still  in mourning. I haven't reached the point where I can see only bad in Anorexia and sometimes I desperately miss it. But I know I can never go back, that part of my life is dead and gone, but for now I will continue to mourne.

As time flies by...

I wish I could write more often but sadly it doesn't seem to happen.
I will have some more thoughts on veganism and the ethics of modern farming later as I am currently reading Jonathan Safran Foer's book Eating Animals, so watch this space!

For now I'll just post some pics of what I've been eating over the last few weeks. Some of the pics aren't great (Im still practising!).

 

This was a yummy meal sized salad I had one evening that I smothered in vegan mayo, nutritional yeast and chopped almonds for extra crunch - I love yummy salads, just can't get enough!

I've also recently made a few discoveries of my own one being these pumpking and ginger rice noodles that I added to my classic tofu and veggie stir fry. They have very different texture to the most common rice noodles that you get in the supermarket - more cewy and spaghetti like. I really enjoyed them but they're not cheap at £1.89 a pack (three servings) I will be enjoying them occasionally though.

 Stir frying the veggies - I like to get as many coulours as possible in there!

I enjoyed this stir fry with homemade teriyaki and ginger sauce. The ingredients aren't cheapbut if you compare it to a bought premade sauce works out much more economical. Plus there are no added nasties or preservatives.

And my final note - Green Smoothies...

So I've been reading all over the place about the health benefits of green smoothies. I really struggle to get in my greens sometimes with working shifts. I also have very little appetite at 5.30am when I need to have breakfast so thought a smoothies might be the way to go. I'm still experimenting though and have yet to find one that works well. Pictured about is one I made from a ready to mix powder and wasn't too bad, however I wanted to try and get in some proper fresh greens. This morning I made a smoothie with vanilla vegan protein powder and a couple of big handfuls of kale and baby spinach. Seriously wrong... as much as I desperately want to enjoy this due to the health benefits I really couldn't stomach it :-( - I think next time I'll try and add a whole lot of fruit to balance out the veggies and will keep you updated on my experimentation!

Now I have to go and get ready for work - its Sunday morning... sigh.

Veganism and Faith

So this is bad – I broke my new years plan to blog regularly, but work is just taking up so much time. It's been hard getting used to working full time again after such a long break but I already feel like I've been working there for years. Staffing levels on the ward have been all over the place with no one making sure we have enough nurses on shift to run the ward safely so my rota seems to change all the time, ending up with me yesterday having to stay on for a 14.5 hour shift! So I got home shoveled in some soya yoghurt and marmalade granola and slept like a log – and on the plus side I have now gained an extra day off this week from doing so much overtime :).

I had planned to write a bit on my thoughts on veganism. Veganism is an idea I have been flirting with for a while now and I do try and eat a diet very low in animal products although I haven't managed yet to make a complete commitment. I have been doing lots of research around the topic and considering whether becoming completely vegan is also in conflict with my Christian faith - many people argue that God gave us animals for food as in Genesis God says:

“Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as 

I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything” 

(Genesis 9:3 NIV). 

However earlier on in the book of Genesis the Lord says: 

“I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth

and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.” 

(Genesis 1:29 NIV). 

This earlier command was made before the fall suggesting that in God's perfect plan for mankind we were to eat a purely plant based diet and humans only began eating animal flesh once sin had entered the world.

Of course there were many other things that happened after the fall that I would not consider sinful, for example wearing clothes, so I don't believe that it is sinful to eat animals as such but I also do not think that eating a vegan diet is in conflict with being a Christian. 

My main concern is the way I which animals are farmed and treated within society today. I have a huge amount of information on this subject, admittedly much of it is from vegan society publications and therefore obviously a little biased. So at this point I'm not going to comment as I still need to spend some time gathering the facts. Of course we all aware however that the majority of meat that we eat in the western world does come from animals that have had an extremely unnatural life, living in cramped, dirty and painful conditions until the day they are slaughtered. But as I said I will write more on this when I have gathered a wider range of evidence.

For now I will share some more of the meals I have eaten in the last few weeks. Unfortunately due to working shifts my eating pattern is somewhat erratic, I thought this would be very hard for me and was worried that not getting regular meals may trigger old eating disorderd thoughts. So far though I seem to be coping well and am able respond to my hunger and eat when I can, which is a very big step for me on the recovery ladder! 

When I am on late shifts I start work at 1pm and then am unlikely to be able to eat a lot more for the rest of the day so I have learnt to try and stock up before I leave. I had been wanting to try a tofu scramble for a while now andthe first one I tried was so delicious that it seems to have now become my staple 'pre late shift brunch' served with some oat cakes or toasted genius bread. This particular version of tofu scramble was knocked together with some onions, mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes and of course a generous helping of turmeric and organic tamari soya sauce:

I also recenly discovered some delicious vegan tofu sausages which made a nice quick meal with some mashed sweet potato and left over kale and brussels sprouts:

And finally - my favourite dish of the week. After a long shift and home and hungry I was craving a sweet snack. I seemed to have very few ingredients but came up with these:

Which along with a banana I managed to convert into a sliced banana with warm chocolate and peanut butter sauce:

An awesome and delicious discovery I will definately be making again!

Continuing as I mean to go on...

I fear I may have bitten off slightly more than I can chew taking on this blog when life is so hectic. I started my new job as a Regstered Mental Health Nurse just this week and whilst I am enjoying I immensly and relishing the new challenges it is also extremely draining both physically and emotionally. At the same time I am also settling back into life living alone and continuing to fight off the eating disorder demons that have very sneaky ways of trying to play with my mind. I have however been able to fend them off so far.

I am also determined not to let my newfound hobby fall to the wayside and so would like to end (and begin) the years of 2010/11 sharing with you some of the meals I have rustled up for myself this week.

As I have said it has been very busy and I have had little time to plan and think about what I am going to eat in advance. Therefore most of my meals so far have been concoctions of whatever I happen to have in my kitchen. So far this week I have enjoyed :

Curried chickpeas and kale...

 Stir Fried Tofu and Kale...

Rounding up the year with one of my favourites...

Green Curry

All of these were of course prepared from my own secret recipes ;) and I hope to be able to share these with you as soon as I have another spare moment.

For now a very Happy New Year and may 2011 bring many blessings!