Shrinking, Again

Today I walked toward a colleague's desk as she was speaking to me. She stopped in midsentence and stared.

I quickly looked down at my jeans and too-big turtleneck, wondering what sort of disaster had befallen them.

“I haven’t noticed you in your jeans for a while,” she said. “You’ve lost so much weight.”

I haven’t, honestly – not a single pound. (In fact, I’m up two pounds.) But apparently that’s not how it looks to everyone else. On the way out of the elevator – wearing the above ensemble, plus my winter coat – a writer at another magazine announced: “Wow, you’re the shrinking woman.”

And so it has been for the past few days. Friend Bearing Chocolate – who I saw not more than two weeks before that -- said she almost didn’t recognize me when she came out of the Tube. At dinner last week, my (male) friend O. said: “You look fit,” then quickly added “I mean, you look toned.” (Fit being a synonym in England for gorgeous – and heaven forbid any male in this country should pay me an actual, unadulterated compliment.) And my hairdresser caught sight of me while finishing another client’s hair Saturday and shrieked: “Look at the size of your butt!” (I confess to sneaking a peek when I went to the bathroom. Frankly, it doesn’t look any different to me.)

These were especially nice (and somewhat soothing) to hear after a week that included not one but two binges – more binges in a week than I’ve had in more than a year. (There was the Chanel binge, and then another – hands-down the worst binge I’ve had in more than a year -- both during and post-Christmas party Saturday night.) Because of my weight loss history, the minute I binge once I tend to freak out, think the whole weight loss caper is over, and that I’ll promptly wake up fat within days. (Don’t think I exaggerate. In August to September ’05, I literally went from a size 12/14 to a 16/18. It’s almost enough to make me laugh when I read these articles that say you didn’t gain the weight in a week so you can’t lose it in week. Almost.)

I desperately wish I could pinpoint what is different this time around, but somehow when I binge the next day I don’t feel like carrying on eating haphazardly and badly – which was, of course, always the thing that turned a binge into the end of a diet. I’m immensely grateful for this, but somewhat terrified that since I can’t identify where it’s coming from, it will somehow disappear.