The Mother of All Setpoints

I've been at 100 for a week now.  The line between triple and double digits is a big one for my body.  I mean, biiiiiiiiig.  As in, the gauntlet is thrown down and it is ON.  Anything below 100 causes my body to cling stubbornly, desperately, needily to every calorie it's given like it is the last one it will ever, ever see.  Picture a rotund, disconsolate Italian mother sobbing into her apron in despair as her only child walks out the door to move into her freshman dorm at college 200 miles away -- that's my body at 100 and below.   The calories are off somewhere else, playing drinking games and skipping class and my body is just sitting there with a cup of coffee at the kitchen table, pouring over family photo albums and hoping for a weekend visit.  I wish there were some way to communicate to it that it's all good, that it needs to just chill and trust me on this one.  Of course, this is the same body that decides that it will be quite necessary to inhale an entire bag of doublestuf oreos in one sitting (oreos which, by the way, now come in a resealable bag?  Who are these people who think there could ever be a reason to reseal a bag of oreos once you've opened them?  I mean, are there people who actually put them away before the bag is finished???? Mind-boggling.)

I can't stay at 100.  It's enough to keep me from wanting to peel my skin off and be ok with sex, but it's not enough for me to flatten my stomach.  We all have problem areas:  for some of us it's hips, for others, thighs, for others, arms, for some, stomachs.  I'm ok in all areas except my stomach.  I want an absolutely perfectly flat (if not concave) stomach and it's the last thing to fall in line for me (even with lots and lots of exercise, including core work).  Going under 100 allows me to achieve that -- but just DAMN, it's like some epic battle.  Small And Her Metabolism, now showing at a theatre near you.  (Rated R for Restriction.)

Repairing the Damage

I am fasting today because I ate everything that wasn't nailed down yesterday.  (Actually, there were some nailed-down things I wanted to eat, too.  I thought that maybe I could claim the nails add a little iron to my diet.)

You know what the hell of it is?  The real hell of it is that we rob ourselves of pleasure, even in the midst of binging.  The feeling of guilt, of panic, overwhelms the taste of the food, dulls our senses to it.  We chew so quickly, stuffing the food down, working frantically to make the evidence of our sin disappear.

Sometimes it's just easier to starve.

Saturday = Satis

Fasting today.

A juice fast.   Bolthouse Farms:  Green Goddess and Berry Boost -- O, how I love thee!!!!  There is something about buying a big beautiful bottle of juicy nutritious wholesome goodness and saying to yourself, "OK, self, here it is, you are all set for the day.  All your calories are in here, and it's really very simple.  You can chug this all in one go or pour yourself little servings at intervals, but when it's gone, it's gone, and you're done."  No guesswork, no gnashing of teeth, no decisions, no counting, no regrets.  It's nom nom nom and it's all taken care of, there is nothing to throw you off track or send you skipping merrily down the road to hell, prettily paved though it may be with its lovely bricks of good intentions.  You are good to go.  Green Goddess has 560 cals for the entire bottle (which, I might add, is quite large).  See how pretty that is?  Pretty pretty pretty.  A pretty plan indeed.

I am listening to Mozart chamber music, surrounded by journals and books pens and cats and sunlight.   My kind of day.  I worked harder than I had planned this week, and I am therefore being indolent today.  And days of indolence are excellent for fasting.  :) 

Satis is Latin for "enough."  Today is Saturday.  Satis, Saturday.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Seeing all the way through

There are days when I am certain of things, and days when I am not certain of things.

The not certain days are disconcerting and the most disconcerting part of all is that in the midst of questioning my life, and everything in it, and the seeming futility and pointlessness of the road I have taken, I seem to lose sight of the fact that I will in fact wake up later -- sometimes a day, sometimes a week -- and see that everything is okay and the road I am on is good and not everything is all fucked up.  My circumstances are the same, but my perspective changes.  But I forget that when I am having a dark day.  And the dark days, the days when it seems I have made irrevocably bad choices (actually, it's not even that...it's more that I have failed to make choices, good or bad, and allowed inertia to carry me downstream like an oak leaf)....those days seem to come closer and closer together.

This dichotomy reminds me of something else:  my relationship with food.  When I am in control, I am so very, very, very in control, and I can't imagine ever going back, ever gaining another pound, it's going to be all down from here, and I look with this condescending mixture of pity and irritation on my binges of only days before.  When I am out of control, it is the exact opposite -- the scale is going to continue to go up, it is never going down again, never, because I will never again figure out where the off button is, and  I look with longing and bafflement at the days of control and they seem as foreign to me as if they had not in fact been experienced by me at all, but were something I read in someone else's blog.

Great Lengths

The binge monster.

What great lengths we will go to in order to avoid it.

When we were little, we were worried that monsters hid under the bed.  Now we worry that they are hiding in the refrigerator.

Afraid of monsters?  You bet your sweet ass I am afraid of this one.  It preys on me when I am most vulnerable.  The growling of my stomach is a siren song for it, summoning it from the stygian depths where it slumbers.    I watch helplessly as it lumbers up to attack.  I know it well, this beast with its matted fur -- its corpulent, hirsute arms will squeeze me in a chokehold embrace while it bears its moss-covered fangs, slobbering and smirking all the while.  I'll admit I've done some weird things in my time to avoid the bastard, but tonight is a new one, even for me.

In what has to be one of my more inspired and insane moments to date, I actually consumed 1/4 cup of hot sauce which was so hot that I then had to drink four large glasses of water in rapid succession.

Yeah.  I know.  I'm probably going to pay for this later (I have a pretty strong stomach, but still)....but it will be WORTH IT because the binge monster turned around and slinked off in disgust (I don't know if a corpulent being actually has the ability to slink, but stay with me here), dissuaded from his purpose by a peppery red concoction.   It was like an exorcism but with hot sauce instead of holy water.  At any rate, the bastard has left the premises.  Maybe he will try the house next door....he'd have a lot more luck with the twinkie queen living there.  Maybe I'll just put a sign on my front door for him next time with a picture of a cupcake and a big red arrow pointing to her house.

Na na na na I can't hear you

I cannot think about disaster readiness.  It's been around forever...my mother used to talk about having to do nuclear bomb drills and everybody had to know where the atomic fallout shelter was and stuff like that.  Well, it's never gone out of fashion, it seems.  Lately talk of an apocalypse seems to be all the rage.  People are talking about buying MRE's and learning to wash clothes by hand with a freaking washboard and buying handguns and making sure they have enough candles and blankets to live indefinitely without electricity in the event of a major catastrophe that lasts years.  I read about people stocking up their garages with food and weapons, I know people who are buying gold because the currency is going to collapse, etc. The global uncertainty about political strife and climate change and people are talking about the sky seriously falling.

Ok, two things:

1.  This is freaking me out.  I like the earth just the way it is (well, okay, maybe a few changes...I'd dismantle all the nuclear weapons and stuff).  I'm not sure I would even want to live in a post-apocalyptic world where everything has been burned to a crisp and I'm having to pick people off my property with a double-barrelled shotgun.

2.  I can't think about this at all because well, damn.  Anas are going to be the first to die in a catastrophe that causes food shortage -- we have no fat storage to draw from.  We'll look really good for a few weeks, wearing those jeans we wanted to get into for like, forever, and then poof, we're gone, whilst the more gargantuan members of the species continue to thrive.

So.  Disaster preparedness, kiss my ass.  I don't want to think about you anymore.

Thematic Envelope

So this saving money thing is going nicely with the ana thing.  Less food, less stuff, simplify simplify simplify.  So far this month, the money I have not spent when I otherwise would have (and it's gone into the kitty for the good cause thing) is below.  The estimates are easy; I am such a creature of habit, I always get the same things at the same places when I go out; and if I go somewhere new with friends, I look at the menu and decide what I would have gotten and add it to the total. :)

1.  Dinner after work (10.00)
2.  Breakfast with friend (11.00)
3.  Loaf of artisan bread to c/s (5.00)
4.  Lunch out while working out of town (11.00)
5.  Lunch out while working out of town (8.00)
6.  Italian dinner with Big (48.00)
7.  Dinner with friends (10.00)
8.  New H. L. Mencken box set (and damn I really want this thing...I'm going to exercise some self-restraint for now and either order it at the end of my 60 days or ask for it as a birthday present in the fall) (44.00)
9.  Vegan crayons (9.00)  (see notes for #8)
10. Vegan cookbook (12.00)

This has been a really neat thing.  When I go out with friends, I am able to just sit there while they eat without having to feign sickness or some other excuse.  Suddenly I have this perfectly rational and truthful explanation for why I am not joining them.  This plan is an ana's dream, I tell you.

Weight today:  102.  I'm averaging 1000-1250 cals a day, which on my metabolism-deranged body is not enough to move the numbers.  This week I'll be hitting it a little harder and ramping up the exercise....

Ice

Outside, the snow -- frozen into sheets of ice -- glistens in the sun.  Everything here has stopped -- we are not used to such things in the deep south.  I've used this time to hermit in a rather sloth-like sort of way; I am somewhat reluctant to engage in the ridiculous frenetic exercise that normally fills my days, because Big (my husband) is here with me.  I don't know if it would matter, though.  My thoughts and feelings about food and weight are not on his radar.  He's seen all the evidence and we've even talked about it, in small, truncated, awkward conversations.  It's not something he likes and it's not something he understands, and so, in his world, it doesn't exist.

I thought I had a limitless capacity for denial, but I'm nothing compared to him.

Of course, this is a mixed blessing.  I like being left to my own devices....I like that I can skip meals, engage in bizarre rituals of preparing food and eating, etc.. I like that I can embrace ana -- hell, she practically has her own room, her own key to the house, she could get mail here -- and there is no one to police me.  I am free to do whatever I want.

The only thing is, I often wonder:  what would it take for him to see that I am hurting, that I am scared, that I sometimes feel that I am one step away from losing my tenuous grasp on the few marbles I have?

I've told him, in the most direct way I can.  That didn't work.  We went to counseling together.  That didn't work.

I wonder how small I would have to get before he would see me.

Really see.

A Fast Fast

I am a really awful faster.  I don't know how people do it and function.  But when I am triggered, I can (sometimes) manage 24 hours.

I need to fast today, and I will.  I'm back up to 103 -- how does one gain two pounds after one binge?  I know, it's not real weight, right?  Tell that to my scale.  The numbers there look real enough.

Plan for today:  lots of cups of tea, and I have watercress and balsamic vinegar in case of emergency.  Last food intake was at 9:00 p.m. last night, so if I can at least get to 9:00 p.m. tonight, that will be 24 hours.  I'm still snowed in so there's no excuse for failing -- no work to be done, I can just sit here and read your lovely blogs and some books I've been meaning to get to, and drink tea, and hermit.

Also:  Thanks for the comments and support -- they mean a lot!

Quality and Quantity

Still have a spotless record on the vegan thing, but today was a binge.  I'm snowed in and stir-crazy.

Tomorrow will be better.  Exercise and restriction to make up for today.

Quality, not quantity

I want 2011 to be the year when I eat smaller amounts of food, but of much better quality.  I want to be able to enjoy wonderful food like avocado, almonds, dark chocolate, olive oil -- all things I assiduously avoided for years, all the while consuming lo-cal, chemical-laden, tasteless diet food with ingredient lists that read like a novella.

Today for lunch, I am going to eat a sandwich of avocado, watercress, bell pepper, sprouts, cucumber, lemon hummus, and a sliver of onion on nine-grain, whole wheat bread.  Scrumptious.  The total:  a mind-blowing 390 calories.  I know, I know.  Waaaaaaaaaaay, way too high, right?  Just unthinkable.  For years -- literally, years -- a sandwich like this would have been verboten, something as foreign to me as eating cat poop.  I would instead eat something with 100 calories.  Something artificial, and not satisfying.  And then I'd be so hungry, I'd have to eat another 100 calories of whatever it was.  And then another.  And another.

Yesterday, I made the sandwich I just described, and something wonderful and miraculous happened:  after I ate it, I was sated.  I was okay.  I didn't need to go back into the kitchen for anything more.  I had a banana for breakfast, this sandwich for lunch, and an Amy's burrito for dinner.  Total for the day:  820 calories.

My weight is down two pounds since January 1:  I'm at 101.  Progress....

One week in April.

Update on the vegan thing and the money thing:

The vegan thing seems much easier this time.  Hope it sticks.

I've saved about $35.00 so far, money I would have thrown away on senseless stupid stuff.  $5.00 of that money would have been spent on a loaf of bread I was eyeing, thinking about taking it home to c/s.  Didn't do it.  Felt good about that.

I keep trying to work myself into some level of enthusiasm.  I have so much to be grateful for, so much.  And yet it's so difficult right now to think of anything other than crawling under the covers.  I think it's this season.  I wish I could sleep until spring.

It takes so much energy, sometimes, to interact with people, to appear normal, engaged, something other than completely gray and flat inside and uninterested in saying one word to anyone about anything.  My job requires a lot of interaction with people sometimes, and January and February are the busiest months of the year.  I have to be "on" all day and that's hard in the best of circumstances, but when I am feeling like this, what I appear to others, what others see, clashes violently with the real me.  It's so incredibly difficult and so jarring.  Even my husband doesn't know the real me.  Sometimes he catches a glimpse, and to be honest, I think it scares him.  I know it does.

It's taking insane amounts of energy to appear normal right now.  People leave the room and I shut down immediately, drained beyond measure with the charade of normality, of enthusiasm, of the polite necessities of custom.  Small talk.  So, so, so difficult.   When I am finally alone I deflate like a balloon.  I could sit and stare at the wall for hours, I think.

I am not losing but my normal sense of urgency appears to be a casualty of this thickening of my heart, this clouding of my brain.  I don't feel the urge to binge but I can't seem to buckle down and do the hard work that needs to be done, either.

Every year in April, my husband and I visit a city I love.  I love everything about this city:  its shops, its food, its flowers, its trees, its architecture, its history.  I am always happy there, always.  I have imbued the city with qualities it does not possess, I see it as a magical elixir for everything wrong.  When I am there everything is perfect and beautiful and I am happy.  If I could live there I would be perfect and beautiful and happy.

I cling to the promise of April in this city I love so.  It's all that's keeping me going right now.

Two Things for Two Months

January and February are not good months for me.  It's cold, and bleak, and it rains a lot.  The gray in the sky matches the smudged shadows in my head.

I want to focus on two things for the next two months:

1.  Going vegan (again) -- I've been vegetarian forever, and it's very easy for me, but for some reason it's very, very difficult to go vegan. When I try to go vegan, I never last for more than a few weeks.  I think it's the cheese.  Yes, there is vegan cheese, but I'd rather eat greasy cardboard.  In fact, I think that some of the vegan cheese I've eaten actually was greasy cardboard. I miss cheese, and bread, and cheese, and milk chocolate, and cheese.  Did I mention I miss cheese?  And eating in restaurants is a freaking logistical nightmare -- trying to communicate with the kitchen through the waitstaff proves exhausting, embarrassing, anxiety-provoking, and irritating all at the same time.  This segues nicely into goal number two, which is:

2.  Spend no money for two months on anything except groceries, gas, and household necessities.  That's it.  No new clothes, no thrifted clothes, no new books, no used books, no eating in restaurants, no movies, no cute vintage aprons, no candles, nothing.  I am far from wealthy but I have an abundance of stuff and I really don't need anything more.  I may want more, but there is literally nothing at all that I need.  My little house contains everything I need, and then some.  So I want to note where I would have spent money and didn't, I want to start a list and every time I don't buy something I would have ordinarily bought, I am going to write it down.   At the end of two months, I will donate the savings to a worthy cause.  I already have the perfect idea for where this money can go.

So combining the two quite nicely, my little plan means I won't be tempted by restaurant food, as it's strictly verboten until March 1.  And I can stop (at least temporarily) accumulating stuff. And simplify.  Simplify my diet, simplify my home, simplify my life. I want to put less in my stomach, less in my car, less in my house. And at the end of two months, I will (hopefully) have something to show for it in more ways than one.

"It is the great curse of Gluttony that it ends by destroying all sense of the precious, the unique, the irreplaceable."  


-- Dorothy Sayers