Great Ending for Another Tuesday!

Today passed with much rapidity! It was a non-stop kind of day for the vast majority of it. This morning I woke up and made a breakfast that left me feeling more than satisfied. I had a big bowl of oatmeal topped with berries, an egg and veggie scramble and a chai latte. Once I finished breakfast I got my clothes set out to take to the Y before I went to the barn to meet everyone for the final vaccinations. There was a thick layer of ice completely covering Old Blue so I had to wait a few minutes before the ice scraper could serve its purpose. It was freezing out at the barn! I tried to keep my hands in my pockets as much as possible to keep them warm, so no barn picture today 😦 When I got home I quickly got changed for the gym and then my mom and I were off to Durham! I decided to do my work out on the treadmill again and I did a total of 5 miles. I worked up a huge sweat! We hit the showers and then headed to Whole Foods for lunch. We had to hurry through our lunch so that I could make it to Dr. Chung in time. I was having a follow up with him, but mostly I just talked to a med student doing her rotation. Dr. Chung was sick so he didn’t want to spend much time in the room talking haha. He said everything was good though! I think my parents were a little disappointed that they didn’t get to speak to him, but I don’t think there is anything that would cause them to worry. My next follow up appointment isn’t for another 7 weeks!

After my appointment with Dr. Chung I drove to my appointment with Lori. Since I still had time to kill I had my yogurt that I didn’t get to have at lunch since I ran out of time. I also worked on some of my assignments that I had for Lori. My appointment with Lori went really well! I started off by sharing my homework where I made a list of all the things I fear about dating. We then discussed that for a good amount of time. She pushed me to think about what advice those fears would give me and I learned that if I listened to the advice I would feel I needed to change my appearance to make up for any of my other flaws. Or the other advice would be that I just stay single forever. We covered a lot of ground and I feel like I have a whole new outlook on the process of dating. I made a few connections to how my eating disorder acted like a “boyfriend” without actually being one. Eduardo was a real smooth talker and made me feel like I was happy and that my relationship with him was the only one I needed. A lot of people picture their ED being a monster, but often time ED can be a real 007. ED would compliment on the lost weight, telling me I looked great and that I didn’t need anyone else because I had him and what more did I need? As long as I listened to his rules about restricting I was in the perfect relationship. So Lori and I then talked about Psychological Flexibility, which is part of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. One of the values or goals with that is to reduce the urge to listen to the rigid rules that are unhealthy. Another one is to recognize a thought as a thought and move on (“have a thought but done buy it”). I feel like my denying myself of that suave voice in my head, I have succeeded in gaining health and I have realized that relationships with actual people are part of living a happy and fulfilled life.

My session with Lori actually ran late, so I had to rush off to Josh’s house to meet him and Justin for dinner out. On the way I had a larabar for my snack. I got there probably 25 minutes late, but thankfully they were very understanding! I got to choose the place and so I decided on Pompieri Pizza. It is the sister restaurant to Bull City Burgers and it was awesome! I love the downtown location! So there is only one size of pizza but they have specialty pizzas and build your own. I built my own! The coolest part: they don’t slice it for you, but they gift you scissors (or kitchen shears?) to cut a piece off.(Justin in action) I have never had pizza like that before! I thought it was a neat place. It is located in an old firehouse. Oh, another interesting thing. They have fishtanks inside and then above the tanks they grown their own basil for the fresh basil featured on the pizzas! Dinner was great. We ended up sitting there for ages just talking before we decided to stop by Tyler’s work. He works at a funeral home and he actually gave us all a tour of the place. It was different, but educational. I learned a lot about the funeral business haha. After our pit stop at Tyler’s work we went back to Josh’s and watched The Naked Gun. That movie is so funny, mostly because it is incredibly stupid! It provided us with lots of laughs though so it did its job haha. While we were watching the movie I had a clementine that Josh offered me. I was proud of myself for quickly accepting food that I had not planned for!

When I got home I talked to my dad for a few minutes before having a little trail mix for my snack. Now I think I am going to go try and get some sleep! I have my appointment with Mary in the morning and then I have work for the rest of the day! Hope your day was good!