Fourteen Days

Considering what I ate this weekend – fried food, cheese, carrot cake et al – it’s strange that I’m calling it a success.

I came close multiple times, including yesterday, sitting at Veselka with a friend, ready to sneak off to the “bathroom” (read: the corner shop) to take the edge off. But I didn’t. And after the pierogies (fried), the blintzes with raspberry sauce, the sour cream, and the chocolate-dipped rugelach, I briefly debated carrying on eating. But I didn’t. Not a single thing.

Today, my friend we’ll call Cat yesterday had suggested we drink the prosecco a friend had given her. Some nice, lazy daytime drinking. But I chose not to. Daytime drinking usually leads to daytime grazing, which leads to bingeing. And I already don’t feel like myself these days – I don’t need to add a hangover and post-binge on top of it. I wavered a bit about midday, thinking how nice it would be for the day to disappear in a pleasant haze. And then I realized it wouldn’t, because Cat – an old friend from college who’s recently resurfaced -- isn’t that kind of friend (a story for another time). Just so there was no going back, I booked myself into a 4.30 class at the sort of nutcase (and expensive) New York gym where 95 percent of the women have the sort of bodies where they work out in just sports bras (eek, I know).

I would really, really like to lose some weight. But for right now, I’ll have to be happy just not to binge.

Fourteen days.

This Close

This is how close I came to bingeing last night.

Truly, I don’t know how I didn’t.

I was restless yesterday, thinking I would have a quiet night in and then feeling both hungry and like I wanted to do something a bit more celebratory, since it was a three-day weekend. Not that three-day weekends mean much when you work for yourself, but anyway.

A friend texted to say she was in the neighborhood, and so we went to a wine bar. It used to be I had willpower of steel and could avoid food when I was out so I could go home and eat my planned meal, but I just cannot anymore. And so we had a bit of cheese, bread and nuts. Nothing terrible, but not paleo. Halfway through the bottle of Riesling I was already thinking about a binge. And then I texted another friend to join us, and we drank more (but didn’t eat more) and then the first friend left.

I was thinking about suggesting to Friend #2 that we go for dinner, since she hadn’t eaten. But after we walked F1 to the subway at Union Square, we stood there looking at each other uncertainly. I couldn’t think of anything I really wanted to eat (meaning, with another person, as opposed to what I could shove down my gob in private), and I didn’t want any more to drink. We ended up parting ways, and I thought about pizza and doughnuts (the above-mentioned Dough) and all manner of stuff.

And then I thought about how much better I would feel if I could wake up the next morning not having binged. And I told myself I could even eat my regular dinner when I got home, if I wanted to. And slowly I turned around and walked south instead of north (toward the doughnut shop). I passed a pizza place and a gelato shop and so many other food places I stopped counting. Ice cream cones people carried leaped out at me.

And then I got home and went to bed. Day 12. 

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).