Silence is Safer than Speech

I don't know what to say. I don't have words anymore. 

Mum keeps asking why. Why my mood is so low, why I keep breaking down, why everything's just getting harder, why I feel like I'm giving up, but I can't answer. There are no words. 

The dietician asks the same. 

'There's obviously something going on for you that made you drop your intake.'

Silence.

It feels stupid that I can't give a crystal-clear reason for why. It's everything that keeps building and bubbling inside. I think it was PTSD stuff that tipped me over the edge, but I don't want to pin it all on that, and I don't even know how to talk about that. Sometimes it's easier to just stay silent. 

Everything is too much. I can't seem to express much more than that. 

My blood sugars have kept slipping and dipping over the last couple of weeks. Silly as it sounds, I didn't even consider that I'd need to eat more to be able to exercise. Most days, I still eat around 100-105 grams of carb most days, which has always been the 'safe minimum'.

I asked the dietician's advice when I saw her yesterday. She said that since I'm exercising so much, I probably need closer to 150g. My plan for now is to aim for 110-120g of carbs a day, which I can still do for under 600 calories, and go from there. There's no way I can jump straight to 150g, and hopefully it won't need to be quite that high. 

I try to avoid testing my sugars, but I have been this week. It's triggering in a similar way to weighing myself; it gives numerical feedback on how much I've eaten, and impacts how much more I'll eat. If they're 5.0, for example, I obviously don't need to eat for a while. If they're under 4.0, yeah, maybe I should eat a little more. 

Now I've got two weeks without appointments. She asked that I please keep an eye on my blood sugars, that she doesn't want me to end up in the Emergency room. I nearly laughed, saying that's not going to happen. I've worked damn hard for the last two years to keep myself away from hospitals and psychiatrists and everything involved with that, and keeping my sugars stable is a big part of it. I'm not about to let my sugars slip to dangerous lows.

I am trying to rein back the exercise a little, given the impact it has on my sugar levels and therefor my intake. I have to do at least one hour, but I'm trying not to force myself to do extra. If I do anything over an hour, I want it to be because I really want to. I'm finding exercise has become compulsive again, even though I'm not particularly overdoing it. 

This morning I was exhausted, but I pushed through a half hour on the step, telling myself I could stop there and take it easy. Afterwards, the stress kept building and I felt incredibly guilty for doing any less than a full hour. I couldn't leave it there. After some fruit for lunch, I forced myself back on the step, and did a full hour for a total of 90 minutes. And I felt a little better.

I've spent nearly all day trying to put this post together, so I'll leave it here. Thank you to everyone who left comments and support on my last post. It means the world to me to know that there are people who care. Apologies that I just don't have much to say right now. 

xxBella