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judecorpWow. That hasn't happened in a while.
I've been really jittery for the past hour. I met a schoolmate of mine, Jean, for coffee at Stauf's in Grandview this afternoon rather spontaneously, and because it is so hot and I love it, I had a big cup of iced coffee. By the time I got to my car, I was insanely jittery, so much so that I was having a difficult time concentrating and driving. Now, I'm rather susceptible to the effects of caffeine because I don't have much, and it /was/ a large cup of iced coffee, but after an hour of sitting around and not really being able to do anything, I decided I should get off my butt and do some stuff around the house. I almost passed out. It's actually the closest I've come to passing out since the time A. and I went hiking in the summer of 1996. The curtain of fuzziness closed, beginning in my peripheral vision and closing, like a stage curtain, until everything went black. I managed to sit down on the sofa and keep the feeling at bay, and my vision returned. That's when I realized that it was my blood sugar, not the caffeine. I've eaten a peach and my hands aren't shaking anymore. Yay. In a few minutes, I'm going to make food.
At the tail end of my junior year of high school, I had started to become a little pot of angst and misery. I was completely despondent at home. My father's wife had begun, several months before, a period of not speaking to me that would last nearly two years. The up-side was that she couldn't ask me to do extra chores for her. The down-side was that she broke this silence only to berate me, and basically to tell me that she just /knew/ I was a druggie-slut because "it's always the quiet ones." Of course, she also vascillated ~ sometimes I was sleeping with every boy in the universe, and the other times I was a "closet dyke." (Ooops.) So anyway... I spent my formative teenaged years writing bad poetry and assuming that I had the worst life in the world. (Don't we all? *grin*) I also decided to stop eating to see if my family would notice. I consumed between 300 and 800 calories a day for nearly the next two years. I didn't eat breakfast, didn't eat at school, and luckily had a part-time job during dinner hours. Stepmonster didn't cook dinners anyway ~ she liked going to dinner with my father by herself since we were all "old enough to take care of ourselves." It wasn't hard to avoid food.
By the time I left for college, I was weighing just around 130 pounds (and anyone who knows me knows this is amazingly thin for my large bone structure and muscle composition at the time) and could wear a size 7. I grew 2 inches at this time, and was complimented so much it would make anyone![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
pro_ana. I also had completely destroyed my metabolism.
To this day, I don't get hungry like "normal" people. I have body sensations that let me know that I should eat, but I don't feel hungry. If I wasn't self-aware, I could easily not eat for days based on hunger. To this day, I have an insanely slow metabolism. To this day, I have painfully low blood sugar. At ComFest, I got a free diabetes screening. After consuming a funnel cake, a smoothie, a can of soda, and an ice cream cone, my blood sugar was 95. (Average for a 3 hour fast is 80-120. Average for recent eating is 100-160.) Doctors regularly warn me that "at any time" things could shift in the other direction and I can become diabetic. I should eat better. I should eat regularly. Do I? Well, no. Oops again.
So anyway, I haven't fainted since 1996. I was taking erythromycin at the time for an infection (and e-mycin speeds up my metabolism and I have to eat constantly to regulate my blood sugar) and had just eaten an entire box of macaroni and cheese. An hour later, I was on crunchy leaves trying to force a pear into my mouth. There have been a few times when I've felt dizzy or cranky or shaky, but this was the worst by far in six years.
Lessons learned: less caffeine, more good food at regular intervals. Yep. Got it.
So who's coming over for dinner?
I've been really jittery for the past hour. I met a schoolmate of mine, Jean, for coffee at Stauf's in Grandview this afternoon rather spontaneously, and because it is so hot and I love it, I had a big cup of iced coffee. By the time I got to my car, I was insanely jittery, so much so that I was having a difficult time concentrating and driving. Now, I'm rather susceptible to the effects of caffeine because I don't have much, and it /was/ a large cup of iced coffee, but after an hour of sitting around and not really being able to do anything, I decided I should get off my butt and do some stuff around the house. I almost passed out. It's actually the closest I've come to passing out since the time A. and I went hiking in the summer of 1996. The curtain of fuzziness closed, beginning in my peripheral vision and closing, like a stage curtain, until everything went black. I managed to sit down on the sofa and keep the feeling at bay, and my vision returned. That's when I realized that it was my blood sugar, not the caffeine. I've eaten a peach and my hands aren't shaking anymore. Yay. In a few minutes, I'm going to make food.
At the tail end of my junior year of high school, I had started to become a little pot of angst and misery. I was completely despondent at home. My father's wife had begun, several months before, a period of not speaking to me that would last nearly two years. The up-side was that she couldn't ask me to do extra chores for her. The down-side was that she broke this silence only to berate me, and basically to tell me that she just /knew/ I was a druggie-slut because "it's always the quiet ones." Of course, she also vascillated ~ sometimes I was sleeping with every boy in the universe, and the other times I was a "closet dyke." (Ooops.) So anyway... I spent my formative teenaged years writing bad poetry and assuming that I had the worst life in the world. (Don't we all? *grin*) I also decided to stop eating to see if my family would notice. I consumed between 300 and 800 calories a day for nearly the next two years. I didn't eat breakfast, didn't eat at school, and luckily had a part-time job during dinner hours. Stepmonster didn't cook dinners anyway ~ she liked going to dinner with my father by herself since we were all "old enough to take care of ourselves." It wasn't hard to avoid food.
By the time I left for college, I was weighing just around 130 pounds (and anyone who knows me knows this is amazingly thin for my large bone structure and muscle composition at the time) and could wear a size 7. I grew 2 inches at this time, and was complimented so much it would make anyone
pro_ana. I also had completely destroyed my metabolism.To this day, I don't get hungry like "normal" people. I have body sensations that let me know that I should eat, but I don't feel hungry. If I wasn't self-aware, I could easily not eat for days based on hunger. To this day, I have an insanely slow metabolism. To this day, I have painfully low blood sugar. At ComFest, I got a free diabetes screening. After consuming a funnel cake, a smoothie, a can of soda, and an ice cream cone, my blood sugar was 95. (Average for a 3 hour fast is 80-120. Average for recent eating is 100-160.) Doctors regularly warn me that "at any time" things could shift in the other direction and I can become diabetic. I should eat better. I should eat regularly. Do I? Well, no. Oops again.
So anyway, I haven't fainted since 1996. I was taking erythromycin at the time for an infection (and e-mycin speeds up my metabolism and I have to eat constantly to regulate my blood sugar) and had just eaten an entire box of macaroni and cheese. An hour later, I was on crunchy leaves trying to force a pear into my mouth. There have been a few times when I've felt dizzy or cranky or shaky, but this was the worst by far in six years.
Lessons learned: less caffeine, more good food at regular intervals. Yep. Got it.
So who's coming over for dinner?
