The Weight-loss Diaries (12 page)

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The Weight-Loss Diaries

ure I came up with and how long I walk/jog later, there’s no way I’m going to get on the scale tomorrow and not see a gain. Will I be depressed or determined when I see the number? I wish I could say for sure.

I e-mailed Shari, not telling her quite how much cake I ate but admitting that I had more than I should have. She told me to go ahead and eat my lunch anyway, since the last thing I needed was to deprive myself and then be starving in the middle of the afternoon. I couldn’t bring myself to admit to her how much eating the cake had upset me, but I felt better just having told her I’d eaten it and making a concrete plan for what I’m going to do for the rest of the day (get back on plan ASAP). Yes, I’ve read diet advice like that before, but there was something about telling it to someone directly, and knowing that person would probably ask about it tomorrow, that helped.

This, I guess, is why having a diet buddy is supposed to be so great. But I’ve never had one, because I’ve never had any friends with anywhere near as much weight to lose as I have. Besides, it always seems to be the one friend who doesn’t really need to lose any weight at all who’s the person who volunteers.

If I had a bathroom scale at home, I’d be on and off it every fifteen minutes.

Shari is always telling me weight is just a number, and “you is what you is.”

Much as I want to believe her, I can’t. How can I explain that I just
know
I looked thinner at 199 than I did at 200, and thinner at 189 than at 190?

I weigh myself only once a week, and only at the gym. Unfortunately, today—approximately nineteen hours A.C., or After Cake—was my weekly weigh-in day.

I got on the scale, telling myself I had to have gained at least two pounds, yet hoping desperately I was wrong.

I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t gained a thing.

I got off and on the scale, double-checking, triple-checking, quadruple-checking. No gain. I felt like I’d gotten away with something.

I wondered if the gain could possibly show up later, like sometime next week. Then even I had to laugh at myself for being so paranoid. I couldn’t just be happy that I hadn’t gained any weight, though—I next had to start thinking about the fact that I hadn’t lost any, mentally readjusting my “if I lost one pound a week” pre-wedding timetable (though I’m ahead of schedule, thanks to losing more than one pound a week in Month 1).

All day I considered whether I should try to cut back a little this week so I could lose more by my next weigh-in—make up for lost time—but I knew I shouldn’t go there. Besides, if I eat exactly as I’m told, that’s at least

Month 2 (February)

57

one less thing to think about. I’ll still think about my weight, but at least I won’t be sitting around coming up with twenty-seven options for dinner.

Today was one of those days where the weights at the gym feel heavier than usual. I suppose that beats the days my body itself feels heavier and I have to struggle through my walk/jog. My mantra is:
If I did it before, I can do it
again.
I don’t often love the workout, but I love the feeling of
having
worked out. Another gold star.

I’m especially pleased with myself because I’ve been going to the gym before work. I’m not a morning person—for important interviews, I have to have friends call me to make sure I’m out of bed. But it’s before work or never—after work, there are always so many other things to do. Besides, I definitely love the virtuous feeling of sitting at work, knowing that I’ve already checked one thing off my list.

The aren’t-I-great feeling usually helps inspire me to work on my other activity-related project. That’s small changes in my routine. Dr. Kosich says that if you watch the average amount of television and use a remote control to change the channel, that’s ten calories a day your body isn’t using up. Big deal, right? In a year, that’s a pound. Of course, I could get myself crazy—

and bore my friends to pieces—making little calculations like that, so I try to add the extra activity slowly and keep it to myself. I take the stairs to my fourth-floor apartment at least once a day. I aim for inefficiency at work, walking back and forth to the supply closet and mail room, instead of saving it all for one big trip. I can never write without taking lots of little breaks anyway, so a trip to get an envelope is a perfect excuse. Sure, sometimes I’m just procrastinating, but at least I’m accomplishing something else.

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Month 3 (March)

After weeks when all the foods I can’t or shouldn’t and—if some diet experts had their way—may never eat again seem to pop out at me in luminescent colors as if under a black light, suddenly they recede. Tonight I got home from dinner with friends, sat down to write my food diary, and realized I’d thought about food exactly once during the whole meal: when it was time to order. Considering that I normally think about the rolls (can I have more than one without looking like a pig?) and dessert (will anyone order any?) and what’s on everyone else’s plate relative to his or her size (how unfair it is that so-and-so can eat fried chicken and be so tiny), I felt like calling someone to brag. But I couldn’t think of anyone who would quite be able to share my glee over
not
thinking about food, so here I am alternately writing about it and wondering how long it will last.

At the restaurant tonight I got Mary to split a turkey burger with me, since the menu said they were a half pound—more than two times a “serving size” of three ounces. I ignored the roll and fries. I didn’t think about them or consider having just one or wonder if I should pour a ton of salt on them (a trick my mother picked up years ago at Weight Watchers) to keep from picking at them. It was as if the entire link in my brain that used to send my hand out automatically to grab them was broken, as was the link that shrieks,

“Oooh. Fries. Must have some.”

Trying to describe how I managed this is like trying to describe how you learn a foreign language. You memorize all these random vocabulary words and silly dialogues about passing Katya the caviar (if, say, you’re learning Russian, as I did), and every time anyone asks you a question in Russian, you realize you can’t give the answer you’d like to give because it’s just too complicated. But then after a few weeks of feeling like maybe you’re not meant 59

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The Weight-Loss Diaries

to speak Russian, one day someone asks you a question and an answer pops out instantly, unbidden and perfectly formed. Something has snapped into place.

And just as quickly, the link is functioning again, allowing me to consider eating all the things I know I shouldn’t. This afternoon at work was bad, bad, bad. I couldn’t stop thinking about food. It was a struggle all day—some days are like that. Today’s obsessions included chocolate-chip cookies that had been on the table for hours. Then there was lunch out where there’s no way to measure food or know precisely what’s in my dish, and where even when I manage to divide my portion (as I did today), I debate picking at the edges of the “forbidden” bit. And then there were the Hershey’s Kisses that a (thin) coworker keeps in her desk drawer. I can’t imagine keeping candy in my desk. In a Camryn Manheim interview I once read, brass at “The Practice”

wanted her character to have a bowl of something sweet on her desk. She said no fat person would do that, but if they wanted, she’d look longingly at a bowl on someone else’s desk. That’s what I did today: thought longingly about what I can’t have, especially because everybody knows I’m on a diet and I didn’t feel like getting The Look and/or the quasi-sympathetic comments.

You know The Look—the gaze that says, “I know you’re eating some-

thing you shouldn’t be, and I’m not going to say anything, but how can you expect to lose weight if you eat like
that
?” And the quasi-sympathetic comments, usually including things like, “I heard there was a diet where you can eat a candy bar a day—is that the one you’re doing?” Or worse: “Oh, but you’re doing so well. I couldn’t have lasted more than an hour with what you’re doing” (this usually from the slimmest girl you know—the one who eats like a football player yet saves sweating exclusively for sex).

After literally twenty minutes of back-and-forthing about whether I could have anything to snack on—and I wonder why some days it takes me half a day to write a few paragraphs—I ended up making low-cal hot cocoa from packets in the kitchen. I knew I had to have something and didn’t think I’d be able to hold myself to one piece of chocolate just then, so I didn’t want to get started.

By 6:00 p.m., I felt like I’d spent all day resisting the urge to eat, nearly counting the minutes as they passed, every cell in my body screaming for something to eat. Could I eat that? Should I eat that? What if I had just one?

Could I exercise it off ? And what am I going to tell people at the happy hour later, when I’m not drinking? What can I say to avoid the diet commentary?

“I’m on medication”? The voices in my head got louder, and the potential

Month 3 (March)

61

problems grew more numerous until finally, in an instant, I shook them out of my head and just did it—I gave in and consumed extra calories.

I drank at happy hour. Two gin and tonics.

Aaah
, I thought after the first sip, sinking into the drink. But the peace didn’t last longer than that first sip, the same way it rarely does past a first bite.

It’s as if that first bit of whatever’s forbidden sets something loose deep inside me and sends bubbles up to the surface, demanding everything I’ve thought about eating in the past few hours, plus everything I’ve passed up over the past few weeks.

Except before I could finish plotting the excuse I’d use to sneak off and do a drive-by grab of the buffet, a friend who was meeting us at happy hour showed up and whispered: “From far off it took me a minute to realize who was standing here, because there’s definitely less of you.”

Fight with Diana tonight. She started in on me that my “crazy” food behaviors—like no carbs at dinner—are annoying. Then she berated me for being

“less fun” when I’m watching what I eat.

“You sit there like a martyr during dinner,” she said. “You make everyone else feel guilty about what they’re eating.”

Her big complaint: I don’t do big pig-outs with her anymore.

“Can’t we have fun without doing food stuff ?” I asked. (A direct quote.

I’d better watch it or I’m going to turn into Peeke.)

“It’s winter,” Diana said flatly. “What else is there to do?”

This morning I woke up late, and instead of dashing around, I just lay there not wanting to get up, not wanting to go to the gym, not wanting to go to work—not wanting to do anything except lie in bed, read the newspaper, and eat. When I finally got myself to the gym, I had time for only a twenty-minute workout. Since I didn’t feel like moving in the first place, pushing myself harder (because I’ve got only twenty minutes instead of my usual fifty) was out of the question. Which made me feel grouchy. I walked to work, trying to remember that twenty minutes is better than nothing—and that for once I have not taken the all-or-nothing route, every last minute of the workout or none at all. I did
something
. Rah-rah for me. Honestly, losing weight makes me feel like I’m in the middle of some feel-good brainstorming session where everyone’s playing by the rules and finding something positive to say about every idea, no matter how ludicrous.

I wonder if this is why I’m so bad at losing weight—because the feel-good mind-set is so alien to me. It requires finding something positive—no mat-

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ter how minuscule—in everything, and my brain doesn’t work that way. So you ate two pieces of chocolate cake? Well, at least you didn’t eat your usual four. So you didn’t get in a whole workout? At least you got in part of one.

I’m not used to being this forgiving of myself. I’m the person who gets an A on the exam but still can’t forget that I’ve missed some incredibly stupid question.

Bought a pair of size 14 jeans! Thankfully, I had a mission—finding jeans to wear to my friend Rebecca’s party tonight—otherwise I might have just stood there, not sure where to look first. No worrying about whether the XL will fit or whether I’m part of the “all” club that one size always fits. No plus-size department. In any store there are a zillion things I can try on.

I was practically hugging myself all night long, thinking,
I’m wearing size
14 jeans
. And it wasn’t the dressing-room mirror playing tricks on me: I
did
look much slimmer in the smaller jeans. From the moment I walked in the door, everyone I knew at the party was telling me how great I looked—

including my friends’ boyfriends. The attention was sweet, if a little unsettling. It’s not that I’m usually the wallflower type, just that if life were a movie, I’d have the overweight and/or not-beautiful sidekick role. Janeane Garofalo in
The Truth About Cats and Dogs
. The funny one. So when there’s attention focused on me that doesn’t involve telling a story, I’m not sure how to handle it.

When I got there, Rebecca and I started talking, and she said, “I don’t know how to say this, but, um”—she paused, and I looked down to see if my fly was unzipped and wondered if I had something unsavory hanging out of my nose—“you look smaller.”

“Yeah,” said her fiancé.

Then another friend’s boyfriend started quizzing me about what I was doing—what I was eating and how much and what sort of exercise I did. Soon a little knot of us—men
and
women—were discussing exercise and diets. A size 2 friend confessed that throwing out half a candy bar never solved the problem of eating the whole thing—eventually she’d fish it out of the garbage can. One of the guys said he wouldn’t let his girlfriend bring ice cream into the house, because he’d eat the whole tub, no matter the size. Who knew that other people—thin people, male people—ever thought about food the way I do?