It's a Bomb

I usually get offered juice cleanses (no thank you!) and food bars/healthy snacks/meal replacements (ditto). I stopped taking the latter because I never particularly wanted to eat them and so they’d inevitably end up part of a binge. I tell publicists politely that I don’t accept food or drink.

But when a publicist related to an exercise/wellness company asked me for my address recently, for some reason I didn’t bother to ask her what for – the company doesn’t sell anything edible.

Yesterday I arrived home to find a box from a cheesecake company, which informed me it contained dry ice and “frozen dessert.” I left it downstairs. I was annoyed – I didn’t want this cheesecake and hadn’t asked for it, and I didn’t feel like spending time trying to figure out where I could donate it so I wouldn’t have to feel guilty for throwing it out. (When my dad’s girlfriend sent me chocolate for my birthday, I gave it to the woman who does my eyebrows. But what to do with a whole cheesecake?)

I texted a friend.

“It’s a bomb. Throw it out,” she replied instantly.

And so I did, on my way out the door later that evening.

Unfortunately (well, maybe not unfortunately, because it was fun), the evening included a lot of drinks (and also some singing along to a Madonna medley, which should give you a hint how many drinks). I was just congratulating myself for having resisted the urge for pizza when I remembered the cheesecake. Which was still in its unopened dry ice-filled box, still in the huge waist-high garbage bin by the front door of the building.

Reader, I did it. If I were Bridget Jones, I would have been stuck in the bin with the lid having fallen on me, my arse in the air. As it was I thought the lid was going to snap my neck off. Not that there is any graceful way to go dumpster diving, and no that any of this stopped me. I was imagining smooth, creamy cheesecake. Instead it was highly frozen cheesecake bites. A bunch of which I ate anyway. No thank you, exercise-company-who-shall-remain-nameless (there was a note from them in the box).

This after a day where I saw some pictures of me and was truly appalled by how big I was.

Sigh.

Day 1.

I Dream of Corn Chips

I woke up this morning almost able to taste the crunch of corn chips. Did I eat them at the dinner last night? Were there even any on the table? We drank a lot, so I can’t remember, and it’s not a question I really want to ask.

I have this image of myself eating handfuls of them – they were blue -- but maybe it was the edamame.

I know I didn’t binge last night, so I should just put it behind me, but whatever I did wasn’t pretty. Did I eat more sushi than everyone else? I can’t tell. I think so. Note to self: Next time put the sushi on your plate instead of just taking bit by bit from the platter. You know grazing is dangerous.

It’s been a messy weekend, frankly. Friday night I was down at my sister’s, frosting cakes for my nephews’ birthday. I had to stop and wash my hands at times – I was frankly afraid to so much as smell the frosting, let alone lick a tiny bit off my hands. I hadn’t had quite enough for dinner (some grilled fish and a few broccoli stalks and carrots) and I was hungry, and that meant late at night I ate a couple of handfuls of almonds and some (crappy) cookies. Not great, but not a binge by most standards (including mine). What I consider to be the victory is that I didn’t keep eating. The almonds and cookies could easily have been a binge, but they weren’t.

The next morning I woke up and faced the kiddos’ birthday party – 30 kids and tons of food everywhere. I didn’t eat any of it, despite the fact that my sister and her husband are good cooks (and their friends, who could have dropped off their kids, tend to stay at their parties because of it). I don’t eat between meals (well, unless I’m bingeing), and though 11.30 may have been lunchtime for 5-year-olds, it wasn’t time for me to eat. I was helped by the fact that I knew I was going out last night, and I didn’t want to arrive post-binge, or mid-binge.

I was tired from having gotten little sleep, woken up early, and then the party followed by the three-hour train trip back to New York. I was hungry, didn’t know what would be served (usually it’s snacky food) and so ate a small dinner at 5.30, before leaving my apartment for the hour trip to deepest, darkest Brooklyn. I even stopped to buy a package of almonds for what I expected to be a late night, because I knew I’d eaten early and I’ve sometimes binged on the way home from this friend’s. I didn’t plan to eat at the friend’s, but out came the sushi and I picked up my chopsticks, hating myself for it. (I did at least avoid the ones with cream cheese and fried something.) But I didn’t sneak food and I didn’t eat after this, so again, not a binge, though maybe I am over-justifying myself? Who knows? I think the most important thing is to break the habit that eating unplanned things has to spiral into an all-out binge and then I can work on widening my definition of binge to get rid of some of these other behaviors that fill me with so much shame.

As I’d promised myself, I took an Uber home sometime north of 1 am, justifying it as cheaper than a binge.

Day 24.

Open to the Public

There is the idea in blogland that if you disappear, it’s because you’re failing. And that’s not totally true in my case.

Yes, I’m the heaviest I’ve been in awhile. Heavy enough that I don’t like any of my clothes and I’d like to stay home and hide behind my computer instead of going out to meet editors. Heavy enough that I don’t want to get on a scale because I’m afraid it will read a number I swore I’d never go above once I got beneath it.

But I think you can only say you’ve failed if you’ve given up, and that I never have. I made it through to late November without a binge – somewhere north of 100 days, if I remember correctly. And then it’s all been touch and go since then. It was about one binge a week through the holidays, and then January and February were just… bad. March and April I think I’d scrape together about a week without a binge at a time if I was lucky, though there was also a longish stretch in London where I wasn’t eating with much restraint (except at breakfast) but I wasn’t bingeing either. May was full of celebration and so, yes, champagne and all manner of fat and sugar.

I spent the last Friday in May at another big dinner, but instead of bingeing after, as I might have done (because, you know, I’d eaten enough that I’d started to get into the headspace that I should just eat everything I ever deny myself because I’d start afresh in the morning), I went home. Day 1. Maybe not the neatest Day 1 nor one – if I carry on eating that way -- likely to shift any pounds any time soon, but a day without a binge and therefore worth noting.

So here we are. Day 17.

My plan is to post at least once a week, and if any of my old readers are left (hi!) I’ve returned the blog to public. Suffice it to say the reason it was private (I hope) has faded with time. Let’s hope my blogging skills have not…

Sixty Days

I have to be honest: I’d hoped that after two months of not bingeing, buying jeans would be more pleasant. That I’d like what I saw in the mirror better.

I didn’t. The truth is that even after two months of not bingeing – and watching portion sizes -- I am still heavier (or at least bigger, since I haven’t gotten on a scale) than I was when I was at my heaviest last year, which felt plenty big enough.

I felt so huge I actually had to go and try on the one pair of jeans I kept from when I was at my absolute heaviest. You can imagine I was relieved when they were so big as to be unwearable.

This is the thing: Except for the past couple of days, when I have been doubting myself and the way I’m eating, the past two months I’ve been more free of food obsession than at any point I can remember in my entire life. I don’t finish a meal and immediately wonder about the next. I very rarely clock-check wondering when it will be time to eat again. I don’t struggle to work through hunger, because (mostly) I’m not. And walking by bakeries and other places I used to binge does not require superhuman effort. The other night I walked home at 12.30 am, after a few glasses of wine, which normally would be prime binge time for me, and it just wasn’t really a thought.

I would for sure like to be thinner, and – given how carefully I’m eating and the amount I exercise – I’m frustrated that I’m not. But the minute I think about making any changes or trying to cut anything, I’m immediately hungry (and the other night had to cab home after a night out because I didn’t trust myself not to stop at shops and binge otherwise). So I’m tabling the decision for another month. Sanity or being thinner? I don’t want to choose, and for right now, I’m not going to.

Breaking

“It's healthy to say uncle when your bone's about to break.” – Jonathan Franzen

Forty-four days ago, I gave up all grains and dairy. The dairy I think may come back soon; the grains, I’m not so sure about.

I never thought I’d be here, desperate enough to do this. Deprivation leads to bingeing, is what I always insisted. But seven plus weeks in, my hunger is different. I don’t think about food that much. I don’t dream about cupcakes or bread. If my meal is slightly late (or even, as it was on Sunday, a couple of hours late) I’m not about to lose it.

I don’t know how long this will last, but for the moment it doesn’t feel much like deprivation. Very occasionally when I’m out to dinner I look longingly at bread or dessert, but for the most part I think: No, thanks; it’s not worth it.

Thirty Days

It’s been a long time since I got to this point – possibly even something like this time last year, when I’d just hit the 90-day mark.

I remember I binged at a friend’s bachelorette party in late September. There was another one a few weeks later, and then – in a pattern I always hope has ended – they became more and more frequent.

I feel like the year until this point has been one constant battle. Bingeing, eating too-big meals that weren’t binges but still didn’t make me feel so great, and then bingeing again. Or bingeing anyway. And with the bingeing comes the isolating and the hiding and the feeling of being stuck – unable to change any part of my life.

But slowly, s-l-o-w-l-y, things are starting to change again. For the past 30 days, maybe even a few more, I’ve been working for an hour every day (including weekends) on a project I’ve been thinking about for years. I’ve been cleaning a little every day (don’t know about you, but my place seems to be as beyond help as me when I’m bingeing). And I’ve been slowly making my way through some things that have sat on my to-do list for far too long.

I haven’t gotten on a scale. All I can tell you is that I feel a little smaller than I did maybe a month ago, but still heavier than I have been in a long, long time. Heavy enough to worry, for example, about what I’m going to do about a fall coat. And heavy enough to be maybe a wee bit grateful for this sudden bout of heat and humidity, because it means I can put off buying jeans for at least another couple of weeks.

I miss my old clothes. I miss finding getting dressed fun – or at least, not a chore. I miss feeling like I can do anything without worrying about my size. But I’m working my way back there, one day at a time.