Just Another Manic Wednesday

I am that girl I've always hated.

You know, the one who isn't overweight – and technically, I am not -- but complains that she is fat. I'm cringeing and bored just writing the sentence.

Yesterday I hit 149 lbs, and yet today I feel as large and lumbering and conspicuous as ever. I wanted to wear my coat in the office to hide myself. It didn't help that the third person in the office asked me if I were going to carry on doing the challenge once it was over.

"You should!" said our nutrition director cheerfully.

Sigh.

I think part of the problem is that I am, honestly, much lumpier than I was. I lift weights maybe once every couple of weeks if that, and my clothes all fit differently (which is not any kind of synonym for better, alas). I can wear a lot more of my wardrobe than I could a few weeks ago, but some of the clothes I'd expect to fit at this weight just don't.

And the weird, almost-detached consideration of food and bingeing continues.

Yesterday there was a party at the office and I could imagine exactly how I'd plot and sneak to get to the leftovers. Today at the frozen yogurt shop I could imagine eating massive handfuls of the chocolate chips.

"Are those butterscotch or peanut butter?" I asked, pointed to some caramel-colored chips.

"Butterscotch," the woman answered. "But we have peanut butter ones, too."

I could imagine cramming them all in my mouth, with great speed and of course, great shame.

I'd expect myself to be doing this sort of thinking if I were starving all the time – a well-documented effect of starvation is preoccupation with food. But I am (counting blessings here) genuinely not. Obviously I can always eat – only post-binge, and a couple of times, when my mother was dying, have I ever been incapable of eating.

Zzzzzzzz. Anybody out there?

Fifty-three days clean.

***

I wonder if some of the thoughts of bingeing are because I am beyond exhausted and feeling trapped, and the only way I know how to escape is to binge.

Today I had to cancel a dentist appointment and a dinner, and I wanted to crawl under my desk and either take a nap or cry at the thought of all the things I have to do before I go to London – and how bad things will be when I get back. I have emails (both personal and email) I haven't answered for weeks, and I hate feeling always behind; always a million things I could or should be doing.

***

In other happier news, I spotted one of our fashion editors wearing a top I own – one I purchased with no advice from a magazine or anyone else. "I love this top," she said when I asked about it. Guess my taste isn't quite as bad as I'd thought!
Bon Appetit magazine has moved to our floor. It amuses me no end to pass by their desks on the way to the bathroom. I love seeing file folders that read "Breaded Pork Chop" and "Crostini Misc." They don't drink their water out of paper cups or water bottles like the rest of us – they use Mason jars.

I adore those jars and use them to hold kitchen implements, and I told that to a (very cute) guy who, it turns out, used to work at Vogue but went to culinary school and now works in the Bon Appetit test kitchens. As you do, I guess.

"It's great because when the ice melts the mouth of the jar keeps it from cascading at you the way it would in a regular glass," he told me. (Don't say you never get any useful information from me.)

I told him that I hadn't required an ice cube since I moved to New York, but that I'd keep it in mind if and when the temperature rose a good 50 degrees.