There I was, Wednesday morning, preparing to hit the dreaded Day Four of eating in a surplus. If you’ve read my recent The Knee Sleeves post, you’ll know that for the last several months I haven’t managed to sustain a consistent surplus beyond three days.
Day Four has become mythical. Suspicious. Cursed.
I started the morning clearing out my wardrobe, putting out of sight the clothes that no longer fit me. I was dedicated. Determined. Mildly feral with resolve. I didn’t feel amazing – but mornings are never when I feel the most human (Quetiapine hangover is real). Still, I powered through.
Eventually I thought: if I’m making an effort with food again, I should probably, you know… eat. And then all hell broke loose. Severe reflux. Nausea. Digestive noises of doom. Cramps. A sudden and overwhelming urge to lie down on a cold floor.
OH NO. Not today. Not again.
What followed over the next few days looked very much like gastritis. And the culprit? It had to have been the iron I’d started taking.
Oh, the IRON-y.
Anti-Ironwoman
I started taking iron again just over a week ago. I take it every other day.
I’d been diagnosed with anaemia near the end of last year and was taking supplements consistently. Then I got depressed. And when I get depressed, “maintenance of life” becomes optional. I ran out. I couldn’t face remembering to take them every day. I didn’t see the point. You know – general depression reasons.
Over the next few months, the anaemia symptoms crept back in – Paler than usual. Very dark circles. Sore tongue. Cracks at the corners of my mouth. Breathlessness. The kind of fatigue that feels crushing.
So I thought: well, being anaemic isn’t exactly going to help my depression, is it? I forced myself to buy iron tablets again. They weren’t the same ones I’d used before, but I told myself it would be fine. It was NOT fine.
The side effects escalated each time I took one. The first tablet gave me acid reflux that lasted over 24 hours. The second: severe abdominal bloating, sternum pain, and reflux again. This continued until Tuesday night, I took another one, optimistically assuming my body would “get used to it.” Instead, by Wednesday morning, my stomach had shut down all operations.
It was being sick after eating on Wednesday that triggered the memory: WAIT. I remember feeling like I was going to be sick the night before. I’d panicked because I’d already taken my meds, and being sick with Quetiapine fully in your system is a truly DIRE experience. 0/10. Do not recommend.
Thankfully, I’d crashed out. Quetiapine even deleted the memory for me. Efficient, if nothing else.
The Gastritis
Wednesday was horrible. Every movement worsened the nausea. Even sips of water felt like a hostile act. I was exhausted from running back and forth to the bathroom. I barely ate anything.
Thursday, Friday, and now Saturday have been slightly less dramatic, but only slightly. Each day has improved by millimetres.
I stopped taking the iron immediately. But my stomach is still not right.
I have hardly any hunger. I only know I’m hungry because my mood drops or I feel weak. I get full ridiculously fast – from small amounts. (Alien to me. I barely ever feel full like ever). The bloating is painful and relentless. It lasts until I go to bed. That sternum pain is still there, just dulled.
I’ve made an effort to eat a little more each day, but I’m not even hitting maintenance, let alone a surplus. And that part hurts too.
Because it feels like every time I consciously try to move toward something better – eating more consistently, taking care of my health – my body throws me three steps backwards.
This isn’t the first time and it probably wont be the last.
Covid and the Surplus
Before I got Covid last October (I think it was October – memory is unreliable at best, it’s on my blog somewhere), I was in a surplus. I was gaining weight slowly but consistently. Nothing dramatic. Just steady progress. Then Covid hit. I lost weight while I was ill and wiped out the few months of progress I’d made. And when I recovered from Covid… I never really went back.
I’ve been stuck ever since.
This recent attempt at a surplus was my way of finally moving forward again. Being ill always triggers Corrupted Copilot (my ED). It whispers, “Just stay here. Don’t go back.” And sometimes that whisper is loud and tempting.
Throughout the twelve years of recovery, every time I got ill and lost weight, I had to do a mini recovery afterwards. Not a full relapse – but hard enough. Corrupted Copilot starts by suggesting I simply maintain the lower weight. Then it nudges: “Maybe go a bit further. Get further away from that number. Stay in deficit. It feels safer.”
Eventually, I always fought my way out of these lapses but I dreaded getting ill because I knew I’d have to fight again. Being ill reminds both me and Corrupted Copilot what restriction feels like.
If I’m honest – painfully honest – there’s something about that feeling that still hooks me. Experiencing it unintentionally, because I’m sick and can’t eat properly, reintroduces it. And once you’ve felt it again, even if you didn’t choose it, it’s hard to surrender it. I won’t go into detail because it would sound like advocacy, and it absolutely isn’t. I’m fully aware restriction nearly killed me more than once. But the pull is real.
So here I am again. I have to wait until my stomach settles. Then I have to get back to where I was on Tuesday. And only then can I attempt the surplus I’d just started. And I’m so so tired. I’m tired of my body accidentally proving Corrupted Copilot “right.”
“See? You try a surplus and something bad happens.”
It can start to feel like my body is on its side. If it’s not gastritis, it’s challenging a fear food and then getting a blood sugar spike that suddenly becomes “evidence” I should avoid it for health reasons. How am I supposed to do mental health work when my body feels like it’s sabotaging me at the same time?
Maybe this is just the lower mood talking because I’m currently unwell. But I am exhausted by the repeated pattern of taking ten steps forward and being forced ten steps back.
A step counter would count ten steps in any direction.
Recovery only counts them forward – and erases them when you go back.
Oh the IRON-y
When my son saw how ill I was, he said, “Oh the IRON-y. Get it? IRON-y. Because iron tablets.” I did laugh. He isn’t wrong. I then pretended I was going to take full credit for his IRON-y joke on my blog, so this little paragraph is for him.
The IRON-y is also not lost on me that this all decided to unfold during Eating Disorder Awareness Week. The timing is almost theatrical.
Since clearing out my wardrobe on Tuesday, I haven’t moved much. I did manage – with my son’s help – to go to Lidl yesterday to get more food. It absolutely drained me. Even now, too much movement makes the nausea flare.
But what I have had is time to think. I’ve decided that as soon as I’m better, I’m going to do things. Not in a dramatic reinvention way. Just in a stubborn, practical, coping way.
I’m going to power through the eating and while doing that, I’m going to play The Long Dark and focus on surviving blizzards that are at least fictional. I’m going to make a bow for my newest Jellycat pigeon and I’m going to clear out my flat.
Because honestly, between this and the depressive episode, it’s chaotic. Not biohazard-level “How Clean Is Your House” chaos – but the kind that comes from doing the absolute bare minimum for months just to keep things technically functioning.
Most importantly I am really bored of all this and I need to do something as soon as I can. I’m bored of being ill. Bored of feeling stalled. Bored of letting Corrupted Copilot narrate my life.
The fact that cleaning sounds exciting right now is either a sign of recovery or absolute rock bottom. I’m choosing to interpret it as recovery.
Absurd Universe 