Here We Go Again

So I’ve gained weight. A lot of weight. So much weight that I avoid mirrors and clothing shopping and events of any kind cause huge stress. Case in point: I’m supposed to go to a friend’s birthday weekend in a place where it will be cool enough for jeans, and I don’t have jeans, and can’t face buying them. It’s too hot in New York for jeans right now, anyway. And I don’t want to see pictures of myself in jeans – or, frankly, anything else.

And it’s not that I haven’t been trying to get my act together. It’s just… not happening. Or really, it happens for a few days and I fall apart spectacularly, usually at the weekend. And I’m not even doing any kind of rigid diet – at this point all I want from myself is not to binge.

I have at least a few more days’ reprieve from dealing with it, because I’m visiting friends in France. (I know, what a drag, right?) This is actually the one place in the world where I never binge and I’m doing my best to keep it that way.

‘Till soon.

Hot Dog!

This past weekend I visited the sister and the nephewage – and ran a 10-mile race around the cherry blossoms for which I hadn’t really trained. (Thanks, I suspect, to CrossFit, I ran the whole thing without stopping, albeit not very fast.)

Better than the race, though, was this: On Saturday night, we returned to the house with children a little cranky and overtired from a birthday party. (I initially interpreted my sister’s failing to offer me cake as a comment on how large I’d gotten. Either way, I didn’t eat cake and didn’t much notice – I was busy talking to one of the dads about Russian literature. Oh DC and your nerdery, sometimes I miss you!)

The plan was to order out, and my sister eyed me warily when her husband suggested she and I walk over to Pennsylvania Avenue, where there’s a burger and a pizza restaurant next to each other. She has witnessed years of my crazy food behavior, which often has included extreme control over where I eat.

But I shrugged, said I was fine with whatever, and meant it. I decided on pizza, pausing only when my sister told me they were “huge slices” instead of individual pies.

“How many do you think is dinner?” I asked. She suggested two slices. They were delicious. I realized the only pizza I’ve eaten in recent years that wasn’t part of a binge was an Amy’s low sodium frozen spinach pizza, which I used to eat almost daily for lunch when I first moved to New York.

The next day, after my ten-miler, we took the triplets to a lunch/playdate. Food available, even for adults, was hot dogs, chili, and tater tots. It wasn’t what I would ever pick, but it was that or nothing. I had a hot dog on a bun – surprisingly good – and a few tater tots (not so much). I didn’t chafe at the fact that I was wasting a lot of calories on something I didn’t really want to eat. That’s probably why I didn’t also think about what I could eat when I left, or on the trip home.

I’m not sure what switch has flipped. Maybe it’s that I haven’t been trying to control my meals much. For sure I am eating more than I need, but I’m so relieved not to be bingeing that I almost don’t care.

Day 19.

Cheaper Than Therapy

I’ve had ice cream the past five days out of six, and yet my jeans – which I am afraid to wash – are marginally less frightening.

I’m in Provence, at my friend E’s. It wasn’t a convenient (or cheap) time to come, but E has a book due and needs help, and I jokingly justified the cost of the airline ticket as cheaper than therapy for me. In a lot of ways, this is the most relaxing place in the world for me. Except for breakfast, which I make for myself, I get served delicious food at regularly timed intervals and do virtually nothing to make that happen.

E. says I am much calmer about food than she’s ever seen me. It’s funny, since it’s been years since I’ve been so panicked about my size. It’s been months of bingeing for me – which is to say, pretty much since Christmas. I get a week here and there without, but nothing close to the sort of eating it would take actually to lose some of the weight I’ve put on. I guess I’m calmer about food here because I’m just relieved not to be bingeing – I can’t worry about whether the olive oil or the ice cream or the cheese is too much.

I’ve had a few close calls – whenever I’m left alone in the house, or at least, in the kitchen, the urge creeps in. But this has always been a safe place for me, and I want it to stay that way. 

Double Dip

Magnolia Bakery and I, we’ve met again. At least four times, maybe more, in the past three weeks.

And once – this past Sunday – twice in the same day.

You see, I hadn’t noticed that the icebox cake I’d asked for a slice of was peppermint, not plain. I don’t like minty desserts, but liking it was hardly the point. I was cold and tired and frustrated and disgusted and sad and disappointed and scared.

I think I was actually hungry not long before I had the first slice, but I wasn’t by the time I got it. I’d already had a Hamentaschen (raspberry, maybe, probably) by then, and possibly something else. A black and white cookie, I’m pretty sure. Neither of them were good, but again, with bingeing, that’s never really the point.

And many hours and countless grams of sugar, fat, and carbs later, I had another slice at a different location. It was the last slice left, and as the woman behind the counter boxed it up and handed it to the cashier, the cashier told her in some sort of code where to leave the remnants so that she could have them later. I flashed back to being allowed to lick one of the beaters when my mother made whipped cream. For an instant I yearned to be back in our kitchen in Florida, 25 years ago. Now I remember I was out of control – or well on my way to it – even then.

From midway through December until, well, Sunday, I reacquainted myself with just how exhausting and painful (both physically and mentally) consuming way too much food is. I struggled to get out of bed some days. My back hurt. My head hurt.

It was terrible, and I had no one to blame for it but myself.

I stretched my stomach so much that today, five days of clean eating in, it is showing no signs of snapping back. (Usually three days does it for me.)

I feel like I’ve been constantly hungry and slightly fragile, so much so that tonight I didn’t dare go out and run a couple of errands because I didn’t want to be out near shops. And so my step count (I’ve been tracking mine with a free phone app) is woefully low for today. Such are the trade-offs, I guess.

Exercise – which I usually find easier to deal with than food – has been a struggle. I feel, quite literally, weighed down.

But getting back on track is like cycling up a steep hill. Though you’re pushing as hard as you can, the pedals feel like they won’t move – are barely moving. But you know if you stop, starting again will be even harder.

And so I push. Today it was a very slow 4.5 mile run on the treadmill, done at 6 pm after a whole day of fighting with myself about it. I know one of these days I will wake up and feel like myself again, if I can just keep going.

***

Thanks, by the way, for the comments checking in. It's funny how it's hard for me to write when things are going well, yet (different) hard to write when things aren't. Hmmm. Makes me wonder about my choice of career.... 

Three Months and Counting

This morning I passed a woman mainlining a Magnolia Bakery red velvet cupcake as she walked down the street, and felt a surge of something.

For once it wasn’t jealousy or resentment or despair – or a craving for one (or four) of my own.

It was gratitude. Seriously. That for today that is not my life, and that it hasn’t been for the past four months (today, I think, is day 117, though I’ve basically stopped counting after 100 days).

That doesn’t mean I’m not going to eat Magnolia Bakery cupcakes again – though weirdly last week, after months of walking by and practically licking the glass, the smell actually nauseated me. But at least for a few minutes, I genuinely couldn’t imagine cramming a cupcake in my mouth, at least not before 11 am. (This isn’t to say I’m not absolutely overcome sometimes with the urge to binge. It is there, to a greater or lesser degree, almost every day, which may be part of why I was so grateful to find myself without it, even for a few minutes.)

The idea that I have gone an entire summer without a binge is unbelievable to me. I think this current binge-free period may in fact be the longest I’ve gone in my adult life without bingeing, restricting and/or exercising for hours. I can’t quite explain it. I’m still sometimes as cranky, depressed, despairing and every other thing I ever was, but occasionally the gratitude bubbles up as if from nowhere and I am, dare I say it, almost overcome. So overcome – or at least, wise enough – that the other day I turned down an extremely well-paid, high-profile assignment… because it involved doing a juice cleanse. I felt a tiny bit of regret (and a dash of despair), but mostly just the sense that no amount of money was worth what a juice cleanse might do to my head.

And the $64,000 question: Weight. I have been weighing myself once a week, in the gym, after breakfast, which I know is not ideal but seems better than having a scale in my apartment. I don’t scale hop any other day but Wednesday (weigh-in day), though I’m nearly always tempted, especially if I have been out for a lot of meals that week (or eaten particularly cleanly).

Right now it’s hovering about 20 pounds lower than where I started a little over four months ago, and about seven pounds above what Weight Watchers would name as the top of my desired weight range. Most of my London clothes still don’t fit, and I’m not delighted to consider that they may not ever, because I am not sure I’m willing to eat less than I do now, and exercising more is not a good idea. (I’m already at six days a week.)

But I know this for sure: However I feel about it, bingeing certainly isn’t going to help.