I'll Leave the Cupcake

3 little monkeys + 1 sunburned aunt

I spent Friday night piping homemade frosting onto homemade cupcakes and making peanut butter and jam sandwiches in the shape of monkeys.

It was surprisingly fiddly, not surprisingly messy, and absurdly satisfying. It was for my (three) nephews’ third birthday party, and my sister needed help. I was happy to do it, happy I could do it, and happy none of it ended up in my mouth – not that night, and not the next day at the party.

It’s not that I intend to deny myself frosting forever. But I knew starting to eat it the night before would get messy, because I wouldn’t just take a taste, and I’d arrive at the party the next morning already feeling a little sick. At the party itself I was so busy chatting, chasing, and corralling that I never really got around to them.

It was a novel feeling, getting back home and for once not worrying about who had seen how many cupcakes (and heaven knows what else) I’d eaten, and what might be being said about me by my family.

It may be almost as good as cupcakes themselves.

Twenty-six days without a binge.

I Saw the Sign

For at least a few months now, from time to time my therapist has suggested Weight Watchers. Not necessarily for losing weight, but as a way to learn that no foods are forbidden, and that anything can be fitted into a healthy eating plan.

I listened, but inwardly I dismissed it. I haven’t done Weight Watchers for years, but I didn’t want to measure anything and track anything. I didn’t want to deal with my tendency to overestimate grossly the points of what I eat in restaurants. I didn’t want to start obsessing about the best ways to use my points, and spend ages calculating options. I didn’t want to switch to foods that are less whole, less filling, and sometimes more chemical (nonfat cheese, nonfat yogurt) because the point system encouraged them, or to discover that foods I like to eat (and were, in some cases, nutritionist approved) have an absurdly high number of points. And most of all, I didn’t want to weigh myself, which I knew would be required to start.

As the months passed and still I was unable to string together more than a couple of days without bingeing, and none of the foods my nutritionist was telling me to eat sounded appealing, I became more desperate. But still I wasn’t willing.

Then a friend in London told me she was doing Weight Watchers for what turned out to be the same reason I was considering it: So she could get a handle on portion sizes and fitting in foods (as she pointed out, chocolate, for example, does not have little devil horns next to its point total).

I wanted just to do it, but I couldn’t face finding out that I’d gone above a number on the scale (200) I swore, after 2006, I never would again. And I was sure I had. By this point last week I had managed to string together maybe six or seven days without bingeing – more than I had managed in a while. I was eating healthy foods but in huge portions; portions I knew were way too large but I almost didn’t care – that’s how relieved I was not to be bingeing.

And then a friend I’ve started doing Barry’s Bootcamp with on Wednesday mornings got engaged, and mentioned she wanted to lose weight. I told her I’d do it with her, and suggested we look at Weight Watchers. Then I saw a blog friend doing it, too.

Something snapped.

At just after 3 in the afternoon – despite the amount I’d already eaten and drunk that day – I went to the gym and steeled myself to get on the scale, reminding myself that just because I didn’t technically know the number didn’t mean I didn’t know it in some sense.

It was 195 pounds, or one pound less than what I weighed at the nutritionist in November. I got on both scales there just to double check, and the numbers were similar. Then I signed up for Weight Watchers.

That night I reminded myself that still I weigh less than I did for most of high school. Today is Day 5 of WW, but more importantly, day 12 without a binge.

Walking on Eggshells

“What do you want to eat?” the nutritionist asked me, and I began to panic before I even considered.

I try not to consider what I really want to eat. Ever. Because considering means choices and rules and fears and often a binge, because I want it all right now and I can’t have it.

Being asked what I want to eat is, for me, like being first in line at the buffet: I have no idea how to handle it, and I want to see what someone else does first. (When confronted with a restaurant menu, I try to choose the first healthiest option that leaps out at me and close the menu pronto. Woe to the person who asks me: “Oh, but wouldn’t you rather have X?”)

But yesterday I returned to the nutritionist after having been away for nearly a month. Two weeks in Africa, where I was so unbelievably fine you’d have thought I was normal. A plateful of food, three times a day, end of story. (And a total of nearly 60 days without a binge.) And then, upon returning to the US, two weeks of bingeing unlike any I’ve seen in years, if ever.

Usually I like getting back to my routines, but back at home, none of the foods I typically eat tasted good. Plus, there wasn’t much routine: Less than 48 hours after I landed in New York, I went to Chicago for a wedding. I didn’t feel very well, which bizarrely can be a binge trigger. And I did: At the rehearsal dinner, at the wedding, at the brunch on the Sunday. I got so ill (cold/flu) on the Sunday night I feared I wouldn’t make it home and lay around desperately feverish and stuffed up on the Monday. Tuesday I was again ill, but I binged anyway. Wednesday OK, Thursday a ball (where the week’s four days of bingeing meant the dress I wanted to wear didn’t fit), where I binged again.

Friday OK, Saturday overate (but didn’t binge), Sunday a bachelorette party that included a trip to an artisanal chocolate shop in Brooklyn. (Do you even need me to tell you what happened?) Monday to Thursday I was OK – eating more than I needed, but not bingeing. Friday I went on a (terrible) date (more of which, another time) and binged afterward. Saturday’s eating not stellar; Sunday a binge.

I had wanted to avoid the nutritionist until I could scrape more than a few non-binge days together. That might have worked if I didn’t have a wedding this weekend and then a trip to Los Angeles, among other things. Suddenly I realized that if I didn’t go in and see her this week, I could be in binge free-fall until I got back from LA.

I didn’t want to eat the things she’s told me to eat. And yet I wanted her to tell me what to eat. I wanted a whole new eating plan, so I could feel hopeful, the way I always used to at the start of any diet.

And so I went to see her, hiding out in my Sweaty Betty tracksuit because I’m afraid to put any of my jeans on.

“Now is not the time to get creative,” she said. I knew it. And in a lot of ways, I knew she was right.

“But I just can’t face eating some of these things anymore,” I said. “Maybe I could just have one more lunch option?”

“What do you want to eat?” she said gently.

My brain went blank and fuzzy, live a TV screen when there’s no signal. Then something surfaced.

“Um, eggs?”

I told her I kept remembering a lunch of steamed eggs with spinach with delicious bread (with a lot of olive oil) I had in March at Buvette, a French restaurant near me.

“Eggs are good. Filling. How do you want to eat them?”

I had a vision of a sandwich involving mashed hardboiled eggs. She suggested I add avocado and arugula.

Last night I shopped for the ingredients, and I felt the frisson of excitement: Something new. Something that just might fix me.

I knew it wouldn’t, but it tasted good anyway.

#THIS

This morning I tried on one of my most favorite dresses -- a 3/4 sleeve minidress with a side zip that, what do you know, actually zipped up.

Caveats: It's still a little too snug to wear in public, and I tried it on before I'd had so much as a sip of water.

I'm not complaining. I'll take it!

Teetering

You know that dream where you wake up and suddenly you’re skinny? I’m having it again.

Except I know – I know – it will be any day now, if I can just hang on.

Not skinny, exactly, but I’m in a weight range that, if past experience is any guide, just a couple more pounds suddenly will make a massive difference.

I’ve lost 16 pounds since November 7. I have mixed feelings about that number. On one hand, 16 pounds is 16 pounds. On the other hand, that high weight number came from being on a scale within hours of a massive binge. Given the amount of water weight et al I tend to put on from one, I suspect the true loss may be more like seven-ish pounds. But you know, better a downward trend than an upward.

Another reason for mixed feelings: Technically, I’ve lost more than 16 pounds – I haven’t got the records, but I suspect it’s more like 26, between the upward blips from binges.  Every time I try anything on, which isn’t all that often, I think of the old road signs: If you lived here, you’d be home by now. If you didn’t binge, you’d be slim(mer) by now.

I’d be a lot of things if I didn’t binge, hmmm?

Meanwhile, I haven’t in 23 days. (Which, if you’re counting – I cannot help doing so – is the longest I’ve managed since November.)

The Mess I've Made

At least in my case, it felt a lot like the moment I realized – and accepted -- I had regained a lot of weight.

Which is to say, that bad decision after bad decision after bad decision mixed with an awful lot denial has brought you to a point that you need to do something beyond what normal people do, because your problem is just that much bigger. And there is almost relief in accepting it, because at least now – hopefully, hopefully – you realize from that point on it can only get better.

That’s how I felt nearly two weeks ago, when in the middle of the night I emailed for help sorting out something that has caused me more shame – and perhaps lost me more friends, and created more distance – than any amount of food I ever have eaten; any amount of food restriction and crazy exercising I ever have done.

My apartment was a disaster.

There, I said it.

It wasn’t a cute disaster, like the girl who needs five minutes of the date she brings home closing his eyes so she can hide a few embarrassing things.

It wasn’t the casual “my place is a total mess” you tell someone before letting him or her in and giggling nervously.

No one – absolutely no one -- has been in my place for a year and a half. Bulbs burned out in lights that were too high for me to fix, and I wouldn’t let anyone in to change them. I bought lamps. Sometimes I’d have to use the flashlight on my phone to see my way in. Other times I would get as far as the refrigerator, crack open the door, and use that light to get far enough into the apartment to turn on the lamp. (I’m sure there is a joke in the fat girl, or sorta fat girl, seeing by the light of the refrigerator, but I can’t think of it right now.)

Except for a bed, I had never bought furniture – a long story that is partly to do with my initial inability to commit to living in New York (and thus owning anything), and partly to do with my dad and what is or is not in his basement. I’m not even going to get into that. There were piles everywhere. Piles upon piles. Boxes that have not been unpacked. Clothes that got destroyed by moths because it was dark in the bedroom and I couldn’t see to find the clothes, let alone notice any problems with them. (I also didn’t know NYC had moths, because DC didn’t. I assumed they were a London thing. But never mind about that.)

And so I lied and I schemed. It wasn’t too hard -- I’d had a lot of practice from bingeing, after all—though it was exhausting. I always had a reason why someone couldn’t meet me at home; why we shouldn’t meet in my neighborhood; why a friend couldn’t stay. I had exercises from the foot doctor I was supposed to do at home but didn’t because there was never room. I sweltered and slept poorly in the summer because I wouldn’t let anyone in to install an air conditioner. I have never set up my printer/scanner – first because it was wireless and I wouldn’t let the Time Warner people in. Even when I found out how I could set up wireless Internet myself (and did) I still didn’t deal with the printer/scanner because it was beneath a pile of stuff. And so I always have to go to Kinko’s to do it.

Pause to let it sink in that I work at home. So I don’t even ever escape this rubble; this chaos, this constant reminder of pile upon literal pile of bad decisions: clothes I have binged my way out of; things I bought and lost the receipt so I can’t return; clothes I have ruined by letting them sit in piles in the dark.

Sorting through and getting rid of some of these things is hard, because it involves accepting things about myself that I don’t necessarily like and often don’t want to accept. Accepting that I will never be a size two or four or even six again. Accepting that my life does not and probably never will again require the shoes and gowns and dresses it once did, and that I probably can’t even walk in most of the shoes anymore. Accepting that I am financially irresponsible in general, and in particular, that money I wasted – sometimes a lot of it -- will not be recouped because let’s be honest, I am probably not going to get it together to sell X thing on eBay, or to get X thing fixed. Or X thing is no longer in any shape to sell because of the way I have treated it -- or has not retained value. 

Today I paid a scary and also truly embarrassing amount of money for help – embarrassing because I let things become so disastrous that I need help for something normal people do not. Because I need help for something that, like bingeing, normal people cannot understand.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get quite the help I expected, needed and paid for today, and that the company promised me. And so the two kids -- two guys from inner city Baltimore and Washington DC who, despite company promises, had zero training, less than six months’ experience, and were more used to just cleaning trash out of abandoned housing used as dumpsters – will not be returning for the other two days.

But that’s a story for another day, and it’s all OK. The lights are on again. There is space to think and acres (OK, feet) of clear floor – and room,  I hope, for better things to come along.

(And) Still Fighting It

A week ago, I paid some $90 for three bites of dinner that made me feel sick. 

It wasn’t the restaurant’s fault – I’d binged beforehand. (I’m not sure how much I spent on that: $30?) I was set off, I think, by a mix of frustration and loneliness. Frustration because a friend’s request that we meet for dinner at 9:15 pm at an overcrowded restaurant that doesn’t take reservations caused me so much anxiety and paralysis. Frustration that I couldn’t reach anyone for advice. Frustration that after all of these years of fighting, I am overweight again. Frustration that after all of these years of fighting, I am still, well, fighting.

And shot through it all, like chocolate in stracciatella gelato, the feeling of being utterly alone.

I have started and not finished so many posts over the past month or so, but here is the thing: If I am honest, despite seeing a nutritionist and a therapist I seem to be getting worse and not better. (If I am optimistic, which I manage occasionally, I hope it is that I have to get worse before I get better.)

I managed 29 days without a binge right when I began seeing the nutritionist. Since then it has been approximately one binge every week to 14 days.

I had hoped 2013 would be the year I didn’t binge – I had made it to January 13, including a visit to friends in Provence starting an artisanal ice cream business, without one.  I’ve had two since then.

Still I don’t say tomorrow is another day, because – as I try to remind myself – I don’t have to wait to stop bingeing. I can stop right now.