Friends in Fat

I’d been looking forward to the Fat Summit, as Peridot nicknamed it, for months, but when the weekend arrived I was a little nervous. Besides the usual summer camp will-they-like-me and will-I-be-the-odd-one-out kind of anxiety (I know, I know), I also feared I’d be annoyingly controlling about my food in response to the bingeing I’ve been doing with alarming regularity.

But I am back, newly grateful to live in England and have the opportunities I’ve had (like the amazingly gorgeous heather-covered walk we did Saturday), newly inspired to kick up my exercise routine a notch (those hills in the Peak District are an absolute killer), and frankly, newly proud of what I’ve accomplished to date on the weight loss/weight maintenance/exercise front, even if it’s been a rocky few months. I think sometimes in the day-to-day struggle I lose sight of the fact that – up five pounds or no -- I’ve lost more weight than you’re allowed in a checked piece of luggage on an airplane.

On Friday night, Lesley mentioned a Beck exercise she’d done with hunger – and how her husband was saying hunger was nothing to be afraid of. I decided to experiment over the weekend with my own hunger – embracing it, I guess you’d say, instead of panicking. I decided I’d eat when other people wanted to eat, instead of looking at my watch and thinking: Yay, it’s 1 pm, so I get to eat lunch now. (This did feel slightly like a step back when I consider how hard it has been for me to learn to be a bit assertive about what I need when it comes to food and hunger, but it was just a weekend experiment.)

We had lunch at 2 pm Saturday and brunch at noon Sunday, and I was fine. (I never do brunch because putting two meals together sends my head into a tailspin about exactly how much I’m allowed to eat.) I even managed a run Sunday morning fuelled only by a plum – normally I wake up starving and cannot even think about anything, let alone working out, until I’ve had breakfast. But I was fine. A little cranky, maybe, by pancake time, but otherwise fine (I think). It was a good lesson that – as a friend of mine used to say – nobody ever starved to death between meals.

It’s now Wednesday and I’ve gone 10 days without a binge. Will this be the time I get to 30 (and beyond)? I hope so.