Sunday 29 July 2012

The Waiting Game


Over the past 23 days, I have eyed up food – black and white cookies, cupcakes, muffins, pizza – but today was the first day I have really, truly wanted to binge and genuinely feared I might.

I had a late lunch at 2.30 pm with a friend visiting from London: eggs, pancakes and sausage, which I inhaled. For dinner we had burgers (I had mine atop a salad – so no carbs, which usually I require to feel full). Maybe it was that I'd tried on a couple of dresses this morning and was upset to find that even after three weeks of not bingeing they still didn't fit. Maybe it was because I almost hoped she'd suggest Magnolia Bakery cupcakes (which she loves) and was a little disappointed (but slightly relieved) when she didn't -- partly because I didn't trust myself, and partly because I knew if we went I'd be wanting a huge slice of cake, which I'd be too embarrassed to order after the food we'd already eaten. 

I don't know what it was. All I know is that I spent a huge chunk of the movie – we saw the new Woody Allen one – thinking about food and wanting to binge. (Who knows – maybe some of the problem was that the movie just wasn't that engaging!) When we left I thought: Hmmm, I could still make it to Magnolia.

I decided I'd have a McDonalds ice cream cone, which (so far) I have been able to eat without it setting off anything crazy. As I walked down Seventh Avenue I popped in to a newsagent to buy a drink, and there were cupcakes. I thought about them – I did.

I nearly ran out of there.

I bought my cone and ate it, and then went to another newsagent for some diet soda (a writing crutch for me). I allowed myself to really contemplate the muffins – going as far as to think about what they would taste like, which is never, ever a good idea.

And suddenly, after what felt like hours of waiting it out, the urge was gone.

Day 24. 

1 comment:

  1. Congratulations. Seriously, being self-aware enough to think about food, being meta-aware enough to monitor these urges enough to write about them later, and still not binge is so admirable to me. Even when I'm on half-marathon training runs, I still only need an hour and a half of willpower, and I'm definitely not thinking about running constantly. I tune out thinking about running by listening to podcasts. I'm not yet at the phase where I can voluntarily turn down the volume on a binge urge enough to concentrate on other things, and those urges last much more than an hour and a half.

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