Tuesday 29 September 2009

I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

Sunday after my half-marathon, I hunted for a suitable stand-in for a Yahrzeit candle, the memorial candle Jews light on Yom Kippur and on the anniversary of the death of an immediate family member.

I hadn’t forgotten about Yom Kippur – in fact, I’d wrestled slightly with my guilt about not doing anything at all. (I’ve never found services I’ve liked in London, they are outrageously expensive, and I have very few Jewish friends here.) But until Saturday night, I’d forgotten it’s one of the two days a year I should light a candle for my mother.

So there I was late Sunday afternoon in an Indian off-license on the outskirts of south London.

“Do you sell candles?” I asked hopefully.

“Candies?” repeated the woman at the counter in a thick Indian accent, gesturing toward the confectionary.

“No, candles,” I repeated, miming blowing one out. Which is exactly what you wouldn’t do with a Yahrzeit candle, which is supposed to burn for 24 hours, but never mind.

She pointed helplessly to another aisle of candy.

I wandered up and down the aisles of the shop, thinking how if I were back in the US this never would have happened. I wouldn’t be doing nothing for Yom Kippur – likely I’d be with my sister and her husband and friends – and most grocery stores eve would sell Yahrzeit candles, so there’s no way I could forget to buy one. (To be fair I never had to buy one in the US – my mother died the year after I moved to London.) I don’t fast on Yom Kippur – a doctor long ago suggested that I take the “illness” out that Judaism offers – but I still felt guilty being in a shop, even contemplating things I might like to eat. I remembered driving in the car at dusk on Kol Nidre with my mother years ago – I must have been about 11 or 12 years old. She’d just picked up a new car and was laughing nervously about how inappropriate that was on the eve of one of the most solemn holidays of the Jewish calendar. On the radio she found a broadcast of services from a synagogue, probably one in New York. Standing in the Indian grocery store looking at 3 for £1 Kit Kats, I wondered if I could find such a broadcast in England. I doubted it.

I was just about to leave when I spied fat white household candles in bunches of five – and next to them, towers of scented colored candles in glass bowls. “Burns for 30 hours,” proclaimed the package. Perfect. I couldn’t decide which smelled less cloying, so I chose the one that read “with love” – that was the point of this anyway, wasn’t it?

I arrived home just as dusk was falling and pulled up the text of the mourners kaddish on my blackberry (the fastest option), telling myself it was – and is – the thought that counts.

The candle glowed pink in its little glass bowl. Within minutes, the kitchen already was filled with its overly sweet smell. I thought of Shalimar, the perfume my mother always wore.

Until the last year of her life – when she was all but gone – my mother always went to the memorial service on Yom Kippur and at home, lit candles for her father and brother. So the candles, at least, are a ritual I’ve always wanted to do for her.

I don’t need a candle to remind me to think of my mother – I do every day -- and somewhere, I hope she knows that. But still I feel better for having done something, and I know that that would make her happy.

Monday 28 September 2009

2:03:41

It was a more-than-slightly-ludicrous thing to do: Run a half marathon without ever running more than five or six miles in a go.

But I was getting a bit tired of signing up for races and not actually doing them, either because work (from the days when I’d get sent abroad on short notice) or life interfered. For one thing, it’s a waste of money. For another, well… just not turning up isn’t my style.

In this case, I meant to train, I really did. I did short runs pretty religiously, at least 4 times a week for about 40-45 minutes. But – and I say this as someone who very rarely lets myself get away with excuses for not exercising – things kept getting in the way of a long run.

I decided to try the half marathon anyway. (If I’m honest, it helped that it started at 1 pm, which meant I didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn and try to make my way across England via public transport on a Sunday morning.) My goal was to run for 80 minutes (approximately a double workout) and I figured I could walk the rest if need be. (I’d promised a friend I’d quit if it seemed like a couple of hours’ exercise was going to jeopardize my ability to do so for the next few months – in other words, if I was in too much pain.)

Reader, I ran the whole thing. In 2:03:41 – which is a 9:26 mile pace. I sped up like mad on the last mile, with what felt like buckets of extra energy. I’m not sore. I have no chafing and no blisters. I keep prodding various parts of my body, waiting for them to hurt, but they don’t.

How did this happen? I’m not really sure – especially because it was seriously hot for England yesterday, and I’m not used to running in those conditions. (Judging by the number of dropouts – and need for medical aid – neither were most people.) And also because the race was at 1 pm – an odd time in terms of figuring out what to eat and when. (I spent way too much time obsessing about this last issue before, for the record, finally deciding on porridge for breakfast, no morning snack, and then a noon-on-the-dot lunch of a peanut butter and jam sandwich and a banana.)

Talking it over with a friend (who actually got blisters just from dashing about offering support for me on half-marathon day), our best guess is that I’m in reasonably good shape (me!) from exercising 5-6x per week: running, Pilates and cross-training (the cross-trainer itself, plus some boxing, skipping rope, weight lifting etc), plus walking everywhere I possibly can. And every Saturday since early July I’ve run nearly an hour to Pilates class, taken the class, then walked a couple of miles to meet a friend for lunch. So… my body is used to moving – and for long periods.

Then again, maybe I was just lucky. Or maybe it was the pizza and (a serving of) chocolate-covered biscuits I had the day before.

I am amazed and grateful. And already I’m itching to enter another half and get my time beneath 2 hours – with training, of course!

* * *

In case anyone’s curious, I spent a lot of time – too much time – obsessing about how much (but not necessarily what, specifically) extra I could eat if and when I finished.

The answer was: nada – unless I desperately needed it.

My thinking was that one day a week (usually Saturday), I get a good 2 to 3 hours of exercise (running/Pilates/walking) and I don’t (usually) eat (much) extra on that day. Yes, running might be slightly more intense, but not enough to justify the sort of extra food everyone thinks it does. (There are loads of studies about how lots of people actually gain weight running marathons because they fall into the trap of thinking they can eat whatever they want.)

I didn’t need food during the race. Although I’d packed jelly beans (good for a quick hit of sugar), I wasn’t at all hungry, and since I hadn’t trained with anything, in the heat on race day didn’t seem the time to try it.

After the race I wasn’t particularly hungry either. When I got my medal I also got a medium-sized Mars bar (166 calories) – not a chocolate bar I would ever choose, mostly because the whipped inside makes it about as satisfying, to me, as eating chocolate air. (Or Pret’s chocolate skinny topcorn, which is so not worth the 200 calories – you could eat a 35g bar of Green & Blacks for that calorie cost, but I digress…) I only ate the Mars bar because my friend had my backpack of snacks, and we spent more than an hour hunting for each other, so I had to give in and eat something. Later – stuck in traffic for hours -- I had my prepacked bag of nuts and dried cherries and raisins, aka my new favorite Sainsbury’s discovery. Dinner, for the record, was a not-exactly-celebratory M&S Cumberland pie (it was part of a deal, and I don’t think I’ll be eating it again). Oh yeah – and a Granny Smith apple, which for some reason I was craving, and chose to eat over a tiny (15g) Green & Blacks.

Yes, I was craving an apple. The world really has gone topsy-turvy, hasn’t it?

Friday 25 September 2009

My Cup of Tea

Tuesday night I went to the Burberry fashion show and afterparty – a star-studded affair that made me a tiny bit nostalgic for my old job. I didn’t miss the anxiety of feeling like I couldn’t come back empty handed – that I had to speak to the big name celebrities. (And last night there were tons.)

I slightly missed the sense of purpose I had at these kinds of events. I ended up spending much of the evening wondering what, exactly, I was doing there, because fashion parties aren’t exactly known for being welcoming. I did enjoy the feeling of not feeling conspicuous, the way I used to. Honestly, the thing that made me feel the most conspicuous wasn’t, for once, my weight, but my last-minute decision to wear a gray Burberry Prorsum evening coat – if anyone would know how many seasons ago this coat was, this crowd would! For the record, it was an ill-considered sample sale purchase (I bought it in the days when I covered parties all the time and needed a proper evening coat), and I bet half the crowd could guess I hadn’t paid full price for it.

I enjoyed the special Kooks set (I snapped a cheeky pic of their set list on my blackberry -- not sure why), and the vague feeling of exclusivity that comes with knowing that not only was I invited to the “hottest party in town” (whatever that is), but that I didn’t have to beg my way in – I was invited just for being me, as opposed to because of who my employer was. It was a little ego boost I sorely needed. (I know it’s a bit vain, but I also enjoyed the ego boost that came with having one of England’s most influential fashion editors practically shriek at me: “You’re so tiny!” Even if it isn’t meant literally, in the fashion world that passes for “You look good,” which frankly, is good enough for me.)

* * *

I’m at 39 days clean now, and I’m afraid to say it’s all just kind of working, but it is. And I am absurdly grateful for that.

When I say it’s all just kind of working, please know that that is very different than saying I’m not thinking about it at all. I am nowhere near that point. I still think about food a lot: what I’d like to eat and what I’m going to have for my next meal and maybe the one after that. And I have my danger moments – like when I wanted to eat about 20 more biscuits than the two I allotted myself today. Maybe – after seven years in this country – I really am becoming British, because I find a cup of tea helps a lot. I have mine with a splash of milk, and I find it incredibly comforting. Maybe it’s because I have to sip it slowly – it’s hot – but often by the time I’ve finished my desire to eat any more has loosened its grip (not sure it ever goes away completely). If it hasn’t, to me that’s a sign that maybe I do need to eat a bit more, and so I do. Whatever works, right?

Sunday 20 September 2009

Faggots With a Side of Lesbian Tea

Seven years ago last Friday, I moved to London. I celebrated – sort of -- with a lunch of faggots and mash. Which I ordered, if you can believe, partly because the dish came with purple cabbage. (Yes, I ordered a dish partly because of the vegetable it came with. Craziness.)

A faggot, for the record, seems indistinguishable from a meatball, except it had a slightly slimy sausage-casing-type-thing. (I know, I know – I should not stop or pass go but should go directly to writing menu descriptions, right?) Had I not been with actual British parent-types I might well have taken a picture of the daily specials sign with the dish listed – after seven years, my "I've fallen down the rabbit hole" moments are very rare, and this almost qualified as one.

I left over half of the mash and had a slice of plum and almond tart with clotted cream for dessert. Plus a cup of tea: English breakfast with milk. (A friend recently told me this was builders' tea, as opposed to the green tea – "lesbian tea," she says it's called – that she drinks.)

***

On Thursday – fueled by a scoop of West Country clotted cream ice cream – I went windsurfing. As I zipped up my wetsuit I had a flashback to the last time I windsurfed – my first lesson, in July – when I'd been bingeing. (Knowing I was going for a lesson was the only thing that kept me from a huge binge in the early afternoon, but as soon as I was off the water I dove into the food.)

It took me a while to remember what I'd learned the previous lesson – to get my sea legs back – and I had more than a few seconds of wondering if I were the worst, most-fraidy-cat-ish girl this particular instructor had ever taught. I found myself wanting to tell him I'd lost a lot of weight, just so he could understand that in Sports Age I am actually about two years old and thus he should be gentle with me. Also so he could understand that my goals are incredibly modest. Forget about fast tacking – just being able to keep my balance standing on the board practically is enough for me to turn cartwheels (though not, of course, on the board).

I fell repeatedly trying to learn the aforementioned fast tacking, and only when I think about it now do I realize that not once did I worry about the size of the splash I created. It's possibly an even more thrilling feeling than the wind in my sails, practically flying over the water.

Thursday 17 September 2009

Thirty Days

Thirty days. Actually, 31.

I can't remember (and nor, shame on me, does my blog actually document) the last time I hit that amount of binge-free days. I think it must have been in March, because I had a long stretch abroad.

It hasn't been easy, and – unlike, say, the 100 pushups challenge – it's not over when I hit the goal. (OK, ok – I never actually finished that one. But you get the idea). I just have to keep going. Actually, the goal of trying not to binge is an awful lot like maintaining weight loss -- the rewards aren't tangible, and they aren't visible to anyone but me. Nor will I ever meet the goal and cross it off the list for good – it will be there every single day.

Worrying about my food has caused me plenty of problems this month, but I've also had a good amount of success. I've managed to be more flexible than I have been in a while, and I feel like I'm edging – slowly, slowly -- toward a detente with food, as opposed to war. Yesterday I tried a bite of a friend's fish and chips and another of cauliflower cheese.

That may not sound like much of a victory to you, but one of the iron-clad rules I got from binge-eating treatment was to eat one plate of food, and not to sample anyone else's. I like rules. I can follow rules. I'd be delighted if someone told me exactly what to eat every day – that's part of why I find some spas the best vacation ever. (Yes, the massages are fantastic, but the total vacation from food and worrying about it is what makes it bliss for me. ) But although I like rules, too many of them – too many ways to strain to be perfect (because, like many people who binge eat, I am a perfectionist) and to fail – is also a binge trigger. So I'm trying to teach myself that a bit of rule-breaking is good for the soul. It doesn't mean I'm going to binge every day. It doesn't mean I'm going to put on 93 pounds. In this case, it just means I get a taste of something delicious I wouldn't have otherwise.

(For the record, I nearly ordered the fish & chips myself. I didn't say no because of calories – I said no because I genuinely didn't think my stomach was up to handling that amount of fried stuff, and because the chips I saw being served to other diners looked lacklustre. Plus, I really wanted a burger.)

Just after we'd ordered we realized we hadn't put enough money in the parking meter, and my friend who was driving has the world's worst parking karma. One minute over and no doubt we'd get a £60 fine. So I volunteered to walk the four blocks to the car and top up.

I walked down the street, automatically scanning for food shops that were still open. I could binge, I thought gleefully. That lasted about a second. Then I thought: But I don't have to, and for tonight, I don't want to.

Monday 14 September 2009

Normal Eating

Went out to lunch yesterday at a lovely French-influenced restaurant by the water. The rest of the table had fish and chips (posh fish and chips – I've never seen it done with salmon!) but I fancied a steak baguette with red onion compote and so had that, sans chips (mais avec salad).

The steak was cooked perfectly, the baguette was exactly as I'd imagined it (don't you hate it when you order something with a particular taste or mouth feel in mind and it's nothing like that?) and I was perfectly happy. I won't say none of the desserts looked good, but none of them spoke to me. It was too hot for a tea so I was happy sipping a diet Coke while the rest of the table indulged.

It probably didn't hurt that earlier in the day I was wearing – for the first time – my waist size 26 James jeans, which my grandmother bought for me when I saw her this summer. (For the record, they were deeply discounted at Loehmann's, otherwise my Depression-era grandmother would have wondered who'd moved the decimal point.) My friend's mum – who I don't think of as particularly overweight -- said she didn't think she could get a single thigh into my jeans. She couldn't know that probably the reason I was so pleased to hear this was because it was the sort of thing my grandmother and mother used to say about my sister while I'd be in the corner glowering. Or – more likely – trying to figure out how to sneak another cookie. Or four.

***

"You didn't ask for my opinion, but I thought that was a really large portion we got," a friend who knows about my eating struggles said on Friday night, aka the night I consumed the Mt Saint Pasta served to me.

To be fair, I occasionally have asked him when I can't begin to guess what "normal" is – crazy when you consider that he doesn't ever think twice about what he eats. But I digress.

He said he was worried about me when he thought I'd been considering pudding options (I wasn't really – just thought I was being polite listening to what was on offer.) I was furious, but couldn't figure out a way appropriately to express it.

I tried to explain that I was experimenting a bit lately – that I'd seen the problems being too rigid about my food could cause. He asked me why -- when I was already out of my routine – I'd be playing with fire. I started to try to explain, then realized I shouldn't have to. Normal eating is sometimes overeating – because you want to, because it tastes good, because any number of reasons.

Of course his comments made me want to raid the refrigerator. That, however, is not normal eating, so I didn't.

Saturday 12 September 2009

Sunshine

It's a lovely sunny day and I'm sitting inside writing a post partially because I feel the need to remove the previous one from view.

I try not to feel sorry for myself too often – there are a lot of people who are a whole lot worse off than I am (and hopefully, will ever be). But the previous post just happened to be one of the moments when I chose to wallow – thanks for listening.
I am dreading the email that will arrive any day now telling me how much I owe in US taxes, but other than that, things are looking up slightly. After two months of cajoling, I've landed an interview that should – fingers crossed – pay a month's rent when it's published. Payment for this particular magazine is on publication, and it's a monthly that has been known to sit on stories for years, but it's too early to worry about that now.

On the food and exercise front, I'm at 26 days without a binge. I'm determined to get to 30, which is just four days away, yes, but I'm staying at a friends' parents, which is always a binge trigger for me. (My room had a sampler of Green & Blacks left on the bed, and last night's dinner was homemade spaghetti Bolognese. When I finished the Mount St Pasta that had been served to me – I know, I know, I didn't have to finish it -- there was the a rather large puddle of tomatoey orange oil on my plate. Ah, let's not think about that....)

My weight seems to be hovering between 10 stone 5 and 10 stone 7 (145-147 lbs). I'm happier when it's closer to 10 stone 5, but mostly I'm OK with this – mostly because I have been having the extra odd treat and haven't been plagued too badly with hunger (although today and yesterday I've just felt constantly hungry and like I'm waiting for the next meal).

A bit of a nothing post, but just to let you know I'm not about to throw myself off of Waterloo Bridge or anything...

Wednesday 9 September 2009

Tired

Last night, I went to dinner with a friend – a mostly lovely friend who has done things like organize my birthday drinks (and insist gently on my having them in the first place) after BN2 and I split up.

We were wandering up Marylebone High Street looking for somewhere to eat, and she was fairly tactful about choosing something in my price point (her own is somewhere in the stratosphere). But over dinner, she started asking me things like: "So what are you doing all day?" to which my answer amounted to "not much besides scrabbling around trying to find work." She quizzed me about what my former colleagues where doing. "So they're in the same boat as you?" she said, making it clear what she thought of that particular boat (going the way of the Titanic, in case you couldn't guess.) Finally she said: "So what are you going to do?" (emphasis on "do," so it practically sounded like "doom.")

The questioning about my work had been going on for what felt like forever, and I could feel myself getting cranky and defensive. I decided to say something before I snapped out an answer I'd regret. "This is stressing me out. Can we please not talk about this?" I said, immediately feeling crummy.

"Sorry," she said, and immediately began chirping away awkwardly about a work trip to the US she has to take next week.

Later, she – as many people do, and I know they mean well – started suggesting stories I could write. Except like most other people's suggestions, they are about as helpful as Lauren Graham's grandparents. I had breakfast with Graham – pre-Gilmore Girls (a show I actually never watched), -- and I'll never forget her telling me about her grandparents watching her (failed) TV show called Conrad Bloom: "You know, honey, your show is cute, but why don't you get on that Friends? And I was like, 'What a great idea! I'll just call them. I'll be the seventh Friend!"

Sigh. I know I'm being a bitch. Or maybe just an, erm, Richard – now that the PC police apparently staged a bloodless coup in England.

We said goodbye at the Tube, she making me the standard US expat offer of bringing back any clothes I need from Banana Republic/J Crew/Anthropologie/etc. I smiled and thanked her politely. She doesn't know I'm about to get my act together and eBay a chunk of my clothes -- and the proceeds won't be going to buy any more unless I'm somehow gainfully employed or with a fantastic contract to write for, say, Vanity Fair before the end of the auction. Not likely.

I walked home from Warren Street – partly for exercise; partly to avoid the Tube fare. A row of cabs with their lights on seemed to glow in the dark by Kings Cross. There was a chill in the air – at the (free) kickboxing class I took today, someone told me she'd just spotted a conker, something that usually doesn't appear until October – and I told myself to try to appreciate that the weather was still warm enough to walk without being miserable.

When I arrived home an hour later, I found all of my post from the past couple of days had been thrown out or stolen – something that's happened once before. In that post was supposed to be a £250 voucher I can't replace and a tiny check (it's about $20) from the US that literally would end up costing me more in long distance phone calls to get reissued than it's worth. I wanted to cry. I wanted to eat. But mostly, I wanted to sleep for a year. And then to wake up with my old life. Or at least, my old bank account.

Tuesday 8 September 2009

Loving Meals

Last night – a couple of hours from being 22 days since I’d last binged – I started a post about my success. I started to write about how it had been since early spring or late winter since I’d gone so many days, and about how it had seemed if not easy, then not supremely difficult, either. I wrote about how I didn’t want to say it had been easy (it wasn’t), and how I feared getting overconfident.



I didn’t have much else to say, and I was uninspired to write more. So I deleted it and went off and ate a chocolate-covered biscuit – I was genuinely, un-ignorably hungry, and the biscuit didn’t put me much above my usual calorie count for the day.



A couple of hours later I went to bed, congratulating myself on the 22 days, but already thinking about the pancakes I’d bought for breakfast the next morning. I was slightly hungry already, so I knew I’d probably wake up starving, and I was pretty sure that the pancakes – though delicious – wouldn’t be filling.



What to do?



This morning after much internal debate – this is why, sometimes, I like to keep my food routine and safe, because it prevents this sort of angst – I ate half the pancakes. It was a struggle just to eat half. I cast about looking for what else I could eat, teetering on the verge of a binge. I had a small bit of yogurt (protein, which I’ve been experimenting with making sure I have at breakfast), a banana, and finally – knowing I had about 100 calories left – dove into a packet of chocolate covered raisins. I started eating them on autopilot. Suddenly I realized they tasted, well, indescribable. Not indescribably good or even indescribably bad – just sort of sharply sugary and not really like raisin or chocolate. Nor were they at all filling or satisfying. I shoved a few more in my mouth. I thought about a comment I’d heard at the weekend, about loving meals. This, I thought, is not a loving meal.



I stopped eating the raisins. I made myself a cup of tea and settled down to work.



* * *



Loving meals. What are those, exactly?



Different things to different people, of course. As for me, I used to cram so much cheap sugary stuff down my gob when I was bingeing (am bingeing?) it was almost my way of punishing myself, or certainly my way of telling myself that if I was going to eat, it wasn’t going to be anything nice. That I didn’t deserve anything nice.



Now I am fussier about what I eat because I eat a lot less of it. But I think I could be even choosier, and I’d like to be. I think I need to move beyond what is going to fill me up and not provoke a binge (let's just say I wouldn't be delighted to have to photograph every meal -- hmm, maybe I should try that) to what I really want to eat – to what is satisfying on multiple levels. I do this every once in a while, but not quite often enough. On one hand I fear too much contemplation of what I want – it has been a binge trigger in the past – but on the other I know that I’ll never beat the binges for more than a few months if I don't try.

Loving Meals

Last night – a couple of hours from being 22 days since I’d last binged – I started a post about my success. I started to write about how it had been since early spring or late winter since I’d gone so many days, and about how it had seemed if not easy, then not supremely difficult, either. I wrote about how I didn’t want to say it had been easy (it wasn’t), and how I feared getting overconfident.

I didn’t have much else to say, and I was uninspired to write more. So I deleted it and went off and ate a chocolate-covered biscuit – I was genuinely, un-ignorably hungry, and the biscuit didn’t put me much above my usual calorie count for the day.

A couple of hours later I went to bed, congratulating myself on the 22 days, but already thinking about the pancakes I’d bought for breakfast the next morning. I was slightly hungry already, so I knew I’d probably wake up starving, and I was pretty sure that the pancakes – though delicious – wouldn’t be filling.

What to do?

This morning after much internal debate – this is why, sometimes, I like to keep my food routine and safe, because it prevents this sort of angst – I ate half the pancakes. It was a struggle just to eat half. I cast about looking for what else I could eat, teetering on the verge of a binge. I had a small bit of yogurt (protein, which I’ve been experimenting with making sure I have at breakfast), a banana, and finally – knowing I had about 100 calories left – dove into a packet of chocolate covered raisins. I started eating them on autopilot. Suddenly I realized they tasted, well, indescribable. Not indescribably good or even indescribably bad – just sort of sharply sugary and not really like raisin or chocolate. Nor were they at all filling or satisfying. I shoved a few more in my mouth. I thought about a comment I’d heard at the weekend, about loving meals. This, I thought, is not a loving meal.

I stopped eating the raisins. I made myself a cup of tea and settled down to work.

* * *

Loving meals. What are those, exactly?

Different things to different people, of course. As for me, I used to cram so much cheap sugary stuff down my gob when I was bingeing (am bingeing?) it was almost my way of punishing myself, or certainly my way of telling myself that if I was going to eat, it wasn’t going to be anything nice. That I didn’t deserve anything nice.

Now I am fussier about what I eat because I eat a lot less of it. But I think I could be even choosier, and I’d like to be. I think I need to move beyond what is going to fill me up and not provoke a binge (let's just say I wouldn't be delighted to have to photograph every meal -- on second thought, maybe I should try that) to what I really want to eat – to what is satisfying on multiple levels. I do this every once in a while, but not quite often enough. On one hand I fear too much contemplation of what I want – it has been a binge trigger in the past – but on the other I know that I’ll never beat the binges for more than a few months if I don't try.

Tuesday 1 September 2009

Jen & Me

I'm still on the never-say-no-to-a-free-workout-trial kick, but trekking across London at odd hours of the day and night is not always time (or cost) effective. So today's effort to combat workout boredom: I tried Jennifer Aniston's workout.

Um, it's not hard.

Or at least, it does not make me gasp for breath and sweat in a way that suggests forces are at work ripping fat off my body in such a way that I will look like Ms. Aniston.

According to the Times (which may or may not have nicked its info from my almost-employer), Jen runs on the treadmill for either 20 or 22 minutes at "precisely" 5.7 mph and a 1.5 incline. I started out at 10 kph and a 2.0 incline, which at the halfway mark I kicked up to 10.1 kph and a 3.0 incline. I got off at 20 minutes because I was a little bored (of treadmill-running, not my favourite thing) – and also because I'd already done a half hour on the cross trainer.

Maybe it's super-difficult when one doesn't eat? And she does couple it with a lot of yoga. And I know from personal experience that celebrity workouts printed in magazines are often a very small fraction of what said person actually does. That revelation probably doesn't surprise you: How many celebs do you think actually just have a fast metabolism and really don't diet, the way they all seem to claim?

***

I scale-hopped this morning: 10 stone 6 (146 lbs). I feel OK with that, actually. I've gone 15 days without a binge, which seems more important at the moment than what I actually weigh. (Ask me again about this if my clothes suddenly stop fitting.) And I've relaxed slightly about my food, having a bit more when I'm hungry – and sometimes that's extra chocolate and not, say, fruit, which is all I would have allowed myself in the past. I've had a good bit of wine. I feel like I'm living life instead of just trying to manage my food around it.