As of yesterday – my 32nd birthday, and 12 days shy of six months of This Thing I’m Doing – I have lost 48.5 pounds.
I’m starting to fear for my ability to lose any more. Lately, This Thing I’m Doing has been alternately automatic and extremely fluid, both of which scare me. In the past, automatic and fluid (in that I suddenly eat and drink lots of things I wouldn’t have dreamed of touching before) eventually has led to my undoing. In all the times I’ve lost weight – and I’ve lost a lot of weight a lot of times – I’ve never once gotten to goal. Partly it’s because not thinking (see “automatic”) I think lulls me into thinking I can eat like someone who is naturally thin. And partly it’s because one “fluid” day suddenly becomes two or three or a binge or seven. I fall off the wagon and into a vat of cake – preferably with frosting -- and never surface again.
Next week I’m off to the Cannes film festival, where champagne and ice cream are the major food groups, and the studios woo journalists with lavish lunches (and the company of the cast). This week I have my birthday plus dinner on Saturday with a foodie friend. Last week it was Sunday lunch for my birthday, dinner with the Fig, and office drinks in the middle of the day to toast our old offices (and empty our liquor cabinet) as we moved to the new ones. (The last of which, thanks to the will-knock-you-sideways-in-one-sip-or-less $160 Roberto Cavalli vodka I’d gotten at the launch last year, turned into more drinks at the wine bar, plus a huge plate of cheese. Oh cheese, how I have missed you!) I feel like I am barely hanging on here, and Cannes – although this year I will be thinner there than I’ve been in years past – is never good for my self esteem.
Most worryingly, last night at dinner I felt the overwhelming urge to binge. I’d like to think it was because it was past 9 p.m. before we had dinner, and because I’d already had a couple of drinks, but after dinner and dessert (which I ate anyway, even though it wasn’t the chocolate I would have liked) I wanted to keep eating. I thought briefly about chocolate, and then about hunting around for food after my friend went to bed – I was staying over – but managed to go to bed myself instead.
I’m putting it down in writing that I have to come up with a plan for Cannes, where the hotel doesn’t have a gym and it’s too hot and crowded to take a walk – never mind that I’m exhausted from working 20 to 22 hours a day. Last year Cannes was the end of a two-month diet – I binged the first or second day and couldn’t stop. I’d wake up each day with a food hangover – feeling fat, fearing my dress wouldn’t fit, and feeling like I’d rather crawl under the table than collar celebrities at parties. (Well, the last of those I feel almost all the time, but that’s another story.) Yoga? I’ve done a little yoga on other trips this year and even a little bit of exercise helps me feel more in control. But I’m open to ideas. It was a very wise commenter several months ago – when I wrote about feeling fat in the jeans I’d worked so hard to fit into – who wrote that I should think about where I’d like to be two months on: “Celebrating that your 34s are too big or still feeling fat in them or worse, not able to get them on any more.”
It’s two months and two days since I wrote that post, and the jeans – which I’m wearing today -- are rather roomy. (Even my sister, who is not known for compliments, suggested I needed a belt with them in Los Angeles.) I hope two months from now I can say the same thing about the 33s I bought in the US, but…
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You have lost an astonishing amount of weight and if you never lost another pound think of how far you've come. You can do this because you've been doing this. Do it for me. I've been feeling guilty that you've been doing this and I haven't. If you can do this, I can do it too. So you can't mess up because that will mean that I can't do it either. Show me it can be done. Show me there's a light at the end of this.
ReplyDeleteI'm dying to learn about this thing you're doing. You've lost nearly 50 pounds - you can't even think about letting a little bit of this or that side track you THIS TIME. So - it sounds like you won't have much time to exercise in Cannes (and despite the fact that you'll be working so hard there, it still sounds so glamorous and exciting!) but that doesn't mean that you cant hop right back on the wagon when you return. We're rooting for you.
ReplyDeleteYou’ve done so well don’t let that ‘little voice’ sabotage you now. There is no reason to believe that this trip will be a repeat of last year, now is their? You have spent the last six months making changes and staying focused so please don’t stop now. Be kind to yourself while you’re away don’t drink to much, make the best food choices you can and get back on the program properly as soon as you get home. If all you are able to do is go for a walk then do it, it really will help.
ReplyDeleteWow, you've lost heaps! Congratulations. That's excellent how you went to bed after hunting round for food. I know that when my mind's made up and i'm 'on the warpath', it's extremely hard to pull back. Actually, i think we share the same birthday (May 15th? Although i am year older than you...)
ReplyDeleteI think the anxiety you're feeling is your unconscious asking you to look after yourself in Cannes and try and come up with a few strategies that you can use to support your goals away from home. ie early morning walks, tupperware fresh vegetables, request special meals from the hotel, resource a gym in another hotel?
I hope these comments aren't out of line, but i really relate to what you're feeling. To me it sounds like you sense that you were self-destructive last time, and because that's your pattern, you're afraid of repeating it. If you know that you don't want to, that you can say no to nibbles and champage and they're not a part of your job description, (although being around very skinny famous people might cause some binge-inducing anxiety) and you can come up with some actual workable strategies, you might feel calmer and come back feeling even better, perhaps slimmer.
That's a certainly a glamorous sounding job you have! Good luck.
Happy birthday!
ReplyDeleteBeing not in a routine is extremely difficult for me when it comes to sticking to the course of eating sensibly and exercising. I tend to do best if I make myself a mini-routine for the morning, and that helps inform the rest of my choices for the day. It feels silly to write all of this down, but if something in it helps you get through the nightmare that is Cannes (or at least, for me it would be a nightmare) then it will be well worth it:
I pre-plan what I'll have for breakfast and either bring it with me in my suitcase or buy it in bulk once I've arrived on the site. It tends to be things like apple + yogurt and instant oatmeal or banana + string cheese + high fiber muffin. (I pick unglamorous foods because I want this first meal to keep me tethered to my plan, and not launch myself off into special traveling vacation rules.)
I make a schedule for the time I'll eat breakfast and when I'll exercise and set the alarm for it, so that I know I have to go to bed by a certain time to be able to hit the schedule. I've have gone as far to write down what time I need to be in the shower and dressed and lay out the clothes I'm going to be wearing so that I can't freak out later about the outfit. If the hotel has a gym, I research what time it opens and scope its location the day before. If the hotel doesn't have a gym, I do body weight exercises and pilates and yoga stretches in the room.
I take granola bars and fruit with me everywhere so that I never have an excuse to not eat and then make a series of bad decisions as a result. If I haven't eaten in 3 hours, regardless of what crazy wonderful fancy thing is coming up, I eat. I plan the one day out of the group of days that will be my "anything goes" dinner - and even with that one meal, I tend to pre-pick whether it will be a meal where I eat bread or dessert - not both.
If I am hungry in the airport, I find the three places that have fruit. I drink gallons of water. I do furtive quick exercises where ever I can, like going up down the stair flights when I have a spare 5 minutes, or doing donkey kicks in an empty elevator. I walk as much as possible, even if I don't know where I'm going and there are crowds.
I don't think it is any one thing that keeps me on track when traveling - rather, I think it is all the little things added up that help me not derail myself. By making the little things the focus, I stay focused. And when I get back home, I tend to finally let myself have something crazy like a cheeseburger - because once I'm home and real routine sets back in, I know I don't have to be as hypervigilent as before.
Best wishes to you. I enjoy your blog. And the color scheme is right up my alley :D
Yes, I was right about the jeans and I'm right about this too: it is much easier to stay on track than to get back on track. You know this is true or you wouldn't have lost a lot of weight a lot of times. It's just the moment you have to get past when you are trying to keep on doing your thing. Once you take a holiday from your thing, you have every previous holiday, every favorite food, every bit of self doubt to get past before you get back on track. If you're lucky it only takes a few days, sometimes it takes years. You can keep losing. You can get to goal. Go buy a pair of 32 jeans if it helps. I'm back to the jeans and 2 months from now... do you want the 34s to be your fat pants or your skinny jeans?
ReplyDelete