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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.