By Jove I Think She's Got It

There’s a little bit of Eliza Doolittle in This Thing I’m Doing (and if you think it’s because I’ve got that awful Madonna I’m-American-trying-to-be-British accent, please kick me. Hard.) I’m a binge eater trying to squeeze myself into the corset of a “normal” eater. And nowhere is this more difficult than on a vacation.

Foodwise, I do best with routines, and I can – and do – tend to eat the same things repeatedly. (I’m not the only one – a nutritionist years ago told me most people eat the same 14 or so foods.) And because I live alone, I’m usually free to eat what I want, when I want.

Not so on vacation, where generally there are other people’s likes/dislikes/hunger levels/sleeping patterns (hello, breakfast!) to contend with. There is my own deep-rooted fear – slowly being dug out, but very slowly – of people seeing what and how much I eat for days on end, plus my fear of whether it’s normal to be hungry when we’ve just eaten X, and only about Y hours ago. And if I am hungry, can I admit it? And finally, there is fear around vacation eating. Much as I’d like to allow myself treats – and as much as I know I need to allow them – it’s hard to let go, even a little bit. My trousers usually feel tighter immediately, my head spins, and I start to fear what other things I might eat. Besides, I feel like I have even less leeway than usual, because all the eating out one does on holiday leaves you with even less of a calorie buffer zone.

But I did fine this weekend in Cornwall – both in terms of what I ate and how I (thought I) handled it. (Of course, this is before I have a peek at the scale tomorrow, but my new motto is -- or I'd like it to be -- that the scale is just a five-second snapshot of the 604,800 in the week.)

I had hand-made Cornish ice cream on Friday afternoon, and half a bottle of sparkling wine from a local winery I love, then passed on pudding at dinner, although of course my size 2-friend had one. Saturday I wanted a Cornish pasty -- I adore them, despite being unable to stop thinking that a pasty belongs in a strip club -- but kept finding only cheese ones (my stomach seems to be objecting to dairy overload, and I didn’t want to test it right before my surfing lesson* – yes, my surfing lesson!). Had to eat before lesson and food options in small towns limited (as was time), so ended up with a greasy steak pasty of the crappy variety I could have bought from a corner store in London. I managed not to be too cranky about it – or worse, binge later out of crankiness (as I embarrassingly have done in the past – binged literally because I didn’t get to eat what I wanted). Nor did I spend too much time obsessing about calories of said pasty and being cranky that I’d wasted them on something that wasn’t very good.

Saturday night all the puddings sounded delicious, but we were in a small-town pub that was very decidedly not of the quaint variety serving home-cooked food. My meal had been very average, and I didn’t want to eat an average pudding. (Size 2 friend had pudding again – on top of the huge cheese pasty she’d had earlier, the chocolate bar she had after surfing lesson and the huge English breakfast she had that morning while I was having my poached eggs on toast.) Besides, I was banking on pudding Sunday, when we had a lunch booking at Fifteen Cornwall.

Yesterday we did a walk in Cardinham Woods, then headed to lunch, where I’d given myself permission to order whatever I wanted. Fifteen had a special three-course meal for ₤24.50, but I wasn’t so thrilled with any of the starter choices – or, more importantly, the puddings. Sixty pounds ago I never would have dared do this, but I said to my friend – who can be extremely cheap – that the prices weren’t outrageously different if you didn’t do the deal, and that I wasn’t crazy about any of the puddings. She grimaced a bit, but didn’t say anything. So I had a lovely ginger parkin with butterscotch sauce and clotted cream -- from the regular, pricier menu. (And it was well worth it.)

We took a little walk along the coastal path afterwards, and I tried not to think too hard about how tight my jeans felt (and mostly succeeded). My mind flitted briefly to what I would say if I was hungry what seemed to me to be too quickly after a three-course meal. (I wasn’t.) In the gas station I bought a banana to stash in my handbag just in case.

This morning I got up and ate a normal breakfast – didn’t even think about trying to cut back, the way I might have in years past. When we stopped at a rest stop midmorning, size 2 friend had apple cake so greasy you could see the spots through the waxed paper. I was tempted, but I ate some berries and drank my water.

I adore Cornwall, but it’s good to be back.

*I'm sure I can't be the only person who has noticed that a wetsuit could just as easily be described as a neoprene catsuit, and is about as flattering.