July 22nd - Ready To Make Some Changes

Hey everyone, I know it has been a little longer between posts than my previous ones but since being back from vacation it has been difficult to get back into the swing of things.  That being said, things on the migraine front have been pretty much business as usual having about as frequent as before I saw my specialist, however I have noticed they are not getting as intense.  This I have been thankful so that I could be more functional around the house and whatnot.  Today is when I increase my Topamax dose so we will see over the next week if I continue to notice some improvement.

I would have to say that there have been more developments on the binge eating side of things than the migraine side.  After getting back from vacation, and in preparation for my appointment with my therapist at the eating disorder clinic; I reflected on how my eating habits were throughout all last week.  What I came to realize is that while most days we had eggs with bacon in them and I probably about at least 2 servings worth, my eating throughout the rest of the day was much more subdued.  There were definitely points throughout the day where I had urges to want to binge.  However, those binges only last for about 3-4 small little "100 calorie" size snack bags of fruit snacks or crackers until I felt way to full to eat anything else.  This I was definitely excited for and took as another small little victory.  I also noticed that when most of my binges occurred on vacation was when high stress situations occurred around family issues while we were at the cabin and I had access to my stash of food.  These situations were certainly nothing major but I could just start feeling my anxiety climbing and thats when I felt the urge to eat a ton of food.  Then when my appointment came yesterday with my therapist, aside from reviewing how my week on vacation went, we also discussed the recommendations of my headache specialist to cutout caffeine entirely as well as artificial sweeteners (ex. aspartame) to hopefully reduce triggers.  To try and head in this direction, we decided on a gameplan of allowing myself 4 20oz bottles of pop throughout the day (or equivalent).  After two weeks, I would reduce this amount by 1 bottle and keep doing this every two weeks to try and slowly wean off the caffeine and hopefully avoid feeling restricted.

Overall, I think I am definitely headed on the right track to recovery and will get both my binge eating and migraines under control and lead a healthy lifestyle into the future.

To close this blog off, I will leave a tip primarily directed to those who are struggling with eating disorders or would like to keep in touch mentally with their eating habits.  I have found an app (I have an iPhone but there may be same version on Android as well) called "Rise Up".  This app will allow you to log your meals for the day in a much broader fashion than most "meal log apps".  Rise Up has you log basically a description of what you ate (4 bowls of cinnamon toast crunch) and then where and when you ate it and how were you feeling around that time.  This has helped both me and my eating disorder team see the patterns both in my binges and my eating throughout the day to try and better manage my meal intakes to give me a more balanced nutrient and portion intake throughout the day.  Overall a very good app.

Thanks again everyone for the support.