Not Flaking on the Flakes

"Want anything from London?" I e-mailed my New York Times editor, not really expecting her to take me up on the offer. As you'd expect, our correspondence tends to be businesslike, although – in a recent not-directly-article-related exchange we had, which also happens to be the only such exchange we've ever had -- she had revealed she had once lived in England and loved it.

"I'd love a Flake," she wrote. "And maybe when you come back we can get a coffee for the exchange since we've never actually met."

Invitation to come in and meet a New York Times editor? Yes, please.

That I might have to make an appearance at the New York Times – no less, the Styles section of the Times (home of the glossiest-looking freelancers) – as a writer to whom they pay actual money to write about fitness was in the back of my head almost every time I binged in London. Maybe it was even there every time; all the time.

At some point during the trip I began to wonder if I could even handle getting a couple of Flakes from one continent to another. Never mind if I ate them – what if they kicked off a binge I couldn't stop? (You know, because my history of stopping binges once they've started is so fantastic.) I debated getting someone to mail me a couple, but doubted they'd survive customs – or the NYC heat. If things got desperate, I had once spied some Flakes (familiar yellow wrapper and purple text, though the text happened to be in Urdu) at a newsagent on Greenwich Avenue and 10th Street. For me, it's a "clean" newsagent – meaning one where I have never allowed myself to buy binge food, because it is one I go to almost every day – which means I try not to contemplate the food offerings. So I hadn't looked to see if they'd had any Flakes recently.

As I feared I might, I debated eating the Flakes on the plane ride home, sometime probably around the time I debated buying in-flight duty free chocolate and eating it all. But I didn't. I got home on July 4 and put the Flakes in my refrigerator, where they've sat ever since.

I had a brief debate with myself about how much weight I could lose – should try to lose – before revealing I was back, and therefore possibly having to make an appearance. But for maybe the first time ever, I discarded the idea of doing anything drastic, even extra exercise. Your focus is just not to binge, I told myself.

After nearly two weeks of not bingeing, I felt sufficiently emboldened to say I was back and hadn't flaked on the Flakes (yes, that's what I wrote). She said she was swamped for the next couple of weeks, but did I want to come in on Monday the 30th? The restricter in me, the extreme dieter, immediately was delighted at the thought of extra days with which to torture myself with punishing eating plans and exercise regimens. Except, whoa, hang on, I don't do that anymore, I thought. I have tried for 37 years to control my weight that way and it's stopped working. My job is not to binge.

And while I confess that sometimes I hope and wish I lose weight just by not bingeing, mostly I really do want just want to, well, not binge. Since I got back from England, I have not done crazy workouts. Most are 45 minutes; some aren't even that long. I eat an extra snack – one at night – if I need it, something I never ever would have done before. Yes, I worry sometimes that "if I need it" will turn into something I expect every night, but then I return to the day I am in. Do I need it tonight? If I do, I have it.

On Friday my editor e-mailed asking if I would like to change our meeting to a time when we could also meet with her boss. It didn't seem like an invitation I could turn down.

Because of his vacation schedule and then hers, the meeting is now not until late August. For a brief moment, I was too busy being excited by the prospect of possibly being thinner by then even to care about the delay. Immediately that was replaced with: Your job is not to binge. Today. Just today. I may actually even believe that.

Day 17.