Day Seven

Something strange happened this morning: I couldn’t finish my pancakes.

And then something stranger happened: I stopped trying to.

You could say this is because I ate way more than I should have yesterday (and that it wasn’t paleo). But often eating too much (as opposed to bingeing) makes me hungrier the next morning. I don’t know what it was. I do know that it was hard not to finish the last pancake, because I was thinking: What if I’m hungry later? What if, at 11 or 3 or 5 or 9 pm I think: Fuck, I wish I’d eaten that pancake?

(It did make me glad I’d decided to limit my paleo pancake-eating to a once-a-week treat, and also glad that I’m going to start cooking more, so I know exactly what’s in what I’m eating.)

It was not a stellar weekend. Friday drinks turned into the sort of night where you’re not entirely sure how you got home, and I consumed nearly an entire can of almonds instead of dinner. Eeek. Saturday was a long-planned beach day where I gave up on the paleo idea and very nearly binged. There was a bit of secret eating – a sneak to the shop next door  when we had a longer-than-expected wait and I was getting grumpy – but it wasn’t a full-out binge, and it so SO easily could have been. Something strange happened this morning: I couldn’t finish my pancakes.

And then something stranger happened: I stopped trying to.

You could say this is because I ate way more than I should have yesterday (and that it wasn’t paleo). But often eating too much (as opposed to bingeing) makes me hungrier the next morning. I don’t know what it was. I do know that it was hard not to finish the last pancake, because I was thinking: What if I’m hungry later? What if, at 11 or 3 or 5 or 9 pm I think: Fuck, I wish I’d eaten that pancake?

(It did make me glad I’d decided to limit my paleo pancake-eating to a once-a-week treat, and also glad that I’m going to start cooking more, so I know exactly what’s in what I’m eating.)

It was not a stellar weekend. Friday drinks turned into the sort of night where you’re not entirely sure how you got home, and I consumed nearly an entire can of almonds instead of dinner. Eeek. Saturday was a long-planned beach day where I gave up on the paleo idea and very nearly binged. There was a bit of secret eating – a sneak to the shop next door when we had a longer-than-expected wait and I was getting grumpy – but it wasn’t a full-out binge, and it so easily could have been. (I had Devil Dogs, which taste exactly like chemical cream between styrofoam, and Drake's Pies, the apple version, which still taste pretty good though achingly sweet). So maybe not a gold star, but certainly a victory of sorts.

Sunny Side Up

Do I even own a saucepan?

This is what I wondered Monday morning, barely 12 hours after an international flight and about 8 since the end of a binge.

Mail and water bottles littered the top of my stove, and I tried to remember if I’d ever actually used it. (In my other New York apartment — the one downstairs — I think I might have once made oatmeal on the stove top before I got a microwave, but not in this one.) I opened the kitchen cabinets and didn’t see anything but a tea kettle. I could soft-boil eggs in a tea kettle if necessary, right? I cringed a little. It was funny, but not really.

Luckily I found one (and who knew I even own a lid)? I hauled myself (it can only be described as “haul” post-binge) to the Gourmet Garage for eggs, having only narrowly won the internal battle as to whether to just start tomorrow. The one thing about going back to paleo is that you know (or at least, I know) that the first two weeks are absolutely brutal, so the idea of delaying is very tempting. (What did I used to eat for paleo breakfast? I ordered these almond-flour pancakes, which were totally delicious and I loved them, but I’m thinking they ought to be a once-a-week treat, and not an every day one.)

The egg-making itself really wasn’t terribly difficult or time-consuming – really not much longer than it would take me to microwave something prepared. And it was satisfying to make something instead of giving in to laziness. If I had, say, eaten cereal, I’d likely have eaten too much, and all day I’d be fighting the urge to binge (it’s always tempting to just keep on going when I’ve binged the day before, and the 72 hours after a binge I’m probably the most vulnerable to relapsing.)

I think I’m going to need to start slowly acquiring necessary pieces of kitchen kit and pantry staples, because this business of constantly ordering food (even if it’s paleo food) is ridiculous. I could just about manage the eggs, but I’m going to abandon the cooking thing pretty quickly, I’d guess, if every single time I want to make something I have to go out and get everything. I’m also going to need to do some kitchen clearing. I have a toaster on the counter I never use and that space should probably be allocated for chopping… Anyway, after I make breakfast all this week (= boil eggs), my plan is to make dinner once next week.

Meanwhile, I have so many half-started (in my head) posts from London last week, but I don’t think they’re going to happen. The highlights: I did binge, first on Monday night (after a hugely boozy not-quite-dinner, so not entirely unexpected) and then again on Saturday, when it was 3 pm before Friend Bearing Chocolate mentioned lunch (and I sat around for 2 hours trying to figure out how to bring it up). It wasn’t even that I was so hungry by the time I went to the Sainsburys for provisions (yes, I volunteered, of course), it’s that I wanted a hedge against this happening to me again. I wanted to be full. I didn’t love the sound of the lunch we were going to eat (and I didn’t think the portion would be enough), and I was just tired of being hungry and feeling watched. And so I bought a box of raspberry jam doughnuts and ate all five of them (1,000 calories – not actually horrendiferous in the binge scheme, actually). And then I ended up if not bingeing then definitely overeating on the flight home, and then a bit of last-chance eating/bingeing (damn you, Magnolia, for being out of icebox pie) before getting on the straight and narrow Monday. Ask me again in a couple of days, but I’m pretty happy to be on the straight and narrow. I’m tired of feeling blah, and running into the Fig in London (remember him?) and seeing BN2’s best friend (though thankfully not BN2 himself) while feeling far from my best just really sucked, for lack of a better word. Onward and, well, downward (at least as far as the scale’s concerned).

I've Been Passing Time

I think maybe I underestimated how much better I’ve gotten in certain areas, because it’s been a couple of years, at least, since I wanted time to pass quite as badly as I do now.

I want it to be time for the next size down, sure, but mostly, I want it to be time for the next meal. I’m hungry. And also worried about having to go out, and how hungry I might be and therefore what I might eat. And although I never like to eat dinner early – because when I finish that means no more food until the next morning – it’s been awhile since I panicked quite as much about the fact that I was so hungry after lunch I had to eat my afternoon snack pretty soon after it, lest I be unable to concentrate.

The food on this diet, for the record, is so far OK. Nothing amazing, but fine (and better than having to make it myself). My one major quibble is that I’m doing the paleo version, because I’ve learned that I genuinely do feel better and am less likely to get hangry if I avoid grains and dairy.

* * *

I wrote the above yesterday afternoon, before I went out to meet a new-ish friend in Williamsburg, so she could art direct my nails (breaking out of the Essie Mademoiselle rut!) and then we’d grab a drink.

As I am now, with 2.5 hours to go until lunch (eek!), I was absolutely starving at 5 pm when I left to meet her. I bought a seltzer, and then when she was late, gave in and bought a packet of almonds. (I thought they were plain dry roasted, but as it turns out they had all manner of hydrolyzed crap on them, but in the scheme of things I could eat, not that bad.)

I’d planned not to drink, and then – I’m still not sure why – I did. Rosé on a beautiful summer evening in Brooklyn? Yes, please. The friend is super-slim – the sort who can look perfectly dressed in cut-off shorts and a tank top -- and I thought about the unfairness of it all, and we drank too many. On the way home, I wondered if I should skip dinner to make up for the alcohol. I thought about getting off the L at Sixth Avenue, just because walking home from the Eighth Avenue stop would bring me too close to Magnolia Bakery, home of my beloved icebox cake. Which they probably would be out of at that hour, which would mean I’d potentially buy and eat all manner of other things in frustration.

I decided I’d get off at Eighth Avenue and come home and eat my dinner. I felt a little stab of frustration and annoyance (that I couldn’t make it through one day on this diet) and also some fear: Just how fat am I going to get?

I don’t think I’m going to continue this diet beyond the five-day trial. It’s just too dangerous to be this hungry.

Two days without a binge.   

Day One, Again

If you don’t like starting over, stop quitting.

I saw this on Instagram, I think it was, the other day, and it struck me. I am so tired of starting over.

And then I binged again anyway this weekend, maybe because I knew tomorrow was coming.

On Friday I signed up for a five-day trial of a diet delivery program, and I’m scared. Although I’ve tried to stick to a plan for the past year or so that puts me anywhere between 1500 and 1800 calories, this is a stricter limit – something like 1200 to 1400.

But I’m tired of feeling uncomfortable in my body, and lately, feeling like my life is shrinking as I get heavier. I don’t want to do things, don’t want to meet people, don’t want to see friends I haven’t seen in a while, and am almost relieved when they cancel. That’s not good. I haven’t been this heavy in nearly 10 years, and I don’t want to live this way anymore.

I know, I know I should just focus on not bingeing. But I need a little jump start. I need to feel like something is happening. So five days. And if it goes OK and the food tastes OK I’m going to do it for another week and a half or so, which takes me up until I start traveling for a month. If there are longtime readers left, you’ll probably remember what a mess I can be when I start bingeing when I travel – which is to say, that I can’t stop. But we’re not there yet. One day at a time.

Day one. I’d like to say it’s the last Day One, but for now, one day without a binge is enough.

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.