Week One

“How do you think you did this week?” the nutritionist asked me.

She’d weighed me standing backwards, so I had no idea. And the object was not to lose weight.

I shrugged. I’d already told her that the weighing and measuring had brought out my tendency to restrict – a tendency I hadn’t realized was so close to the surface. (Longtime readers may remember my account of the Summer of a Thousand Peaches: When I was 21, and in an effort to get done losing weight as quickly as possible, I kept trimming from my diet until I was down to, literally, three peaches a day plus buckets of diet Coke.)

I’d already told her that despite that, I ate everything on the plan*, which was the truth. And that I felt like I was starving on the first three days -- fairly typical for me in the 72 hours following a binge – but that on no day did I ever feel full after lunch, even though it’s my largest meal of the day.

“Well, I didn’t binge,” I said. “But there was the olive oil and the sweet potato thing and…”

The olive oil was my realizing on about Day Six that I was supposed to be using one to two teaspoons of olive oil at lunch and dinner, not one to two tablespoons. (I’d thought it looked like a lot.) And the sweet potato was my following instructions and choosing what looked like a miniscule sweet potato – only to discover on an exchange list that “small” was four ounces. When I checked my receipt from the store, I discovered the one I’d bought (and eaten) was eight.

“Beth,” she said. “I have been doing this for a long time and I have never seen this.”

It turns out I lost nearly 10 pounds. And even taking into account that I was weighed about eight hours after a binge (which happened), and that I got my period a couple of days later (which also happened), it is a lot.

I felt like I was being scolded. It was about the only time in my life I’ve ever felt bad about losing weight. Because – as she reminded me – the point at the moment is to “normalize” my eating. It is not, much as I might like it to be, to lose weight.

I’d be lying, though, if I said I wasn’t happy about the weight loss. I’d also be lying if I said I wasn’t both happy and a little bit worried at the thought of a little bit more food at lunch, which I have been given. Happy for obvious reasons; worried because, well, because what if this week’s weight loss was a total fluke and I end up gaining from this? I’m barely OK with the idea of staying the same – I do not want to gain.

I must also confess that – thanks to my journalist ability to read upside-down – I caught sight of my weight on the paper. I’m going to hope this is last week’s weight (meaning the starting weight), and not this week’s, but it was 194. Which horrified me no end. But onward and – hopefully eventually – downward…

Not including today (because it's not over yet), eight days without a binge.

*For those of you who are curious about what the food plan I’ve been allotted is (and I know I would be), I’ll post it below. It is restrictive in terms of foods but not calories.

Breakfast: 1 cup of oatmeal with a single serving size container of 2 percent Fage and 6 oz. applesauce.

Mid-morning snack: 1 tbsp peanut butter, 1 apple

Lunch: 4 oz. protein, 1 cup of brown rice, vegetables, 1 to 2 tsp olive oil or other fat [this is being bumped up to 6 oz. protein this week]

Snack: 2 tbsp peanut butter on 1 slice of bread

Dinner: 4 oz. protein, ½ cup brown rice (or 1 small sweet potato or 1 cup squash), vegetables, 1 to 2 tsp olive oil or other fat

Snack: Banana