Chronicles of a Late Bloomer

Starting weight: 326.8
Last week: 321.8
This week: 319.8
Change this week: -2.0
Overall change: -7.0

Starting weight: 326.8
Last week: 326.8
This week: 321.8
Change this week: -5.0
Overall change: -5.0

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Did everyone read this yet? Apparently fashion week in Spain is set to look very, very different this year. Organizers at Madrid’s big show are using BMI (by measuring the models’ height and weight) in an apparent attempt to:

. . . project an image of beauty and health, rather than a waif-like, or heroin chic look.

They’ll even have medics on hand the day of the show to weigh and measure, and any designer who doesn’t comply may face legal action. How serious are they? According to a related article, organizers have already turned away 30 women who worked the same shows last year for being too thin.

Madrid’s regional government, which sponsors the show and imposed restrictions, said it did not blame designers and models for anorexia. It said the fashion industry had a responsibility to portray healthy body images.

Is it just me, or does this all seem too good to be true?

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I’m not exactly sure what to do with this post, how long it may stay active, or if I will even publish it at all. For now, I’ll write in an attempt to be honest and to explore all elements of my relationship to food. But, I will type it with the bulk of the text beneath the cut.

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Day one, and the eating is easy. I have no delusions¹ about this. Day one is always easy. The good news is that I didn’t swing too far to any kind of extreme today. I went to work, at regular but unplanned intervals I got a little hungry, and then I ate. It was as simple as that. I didn’t swing to one extreme (obsessively tracking, counting, and calculating) or the other (piously bemoaning my hunger and pitying myself for having to avoid cookies).

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1. I also have no delusions about the idea that I will be able to write a detailed and illustrated entry logging what I eat each and every day for the rest of my life, but for today it is kind of fun. [↩]

This happened last time I joined Weight Watchers, too. I did not commit to the program right away. It’s not like I did it on purpose, just that I went to the first meeting, weighed in, and then proceeded to feel sorry for myself for the next week. In my world, a pity party is comprised almost exclusively of eating. Eating. More eating. I ate everything in sight in a defiant act of self-sabotage. (Unfortunately, this is my standard eating M.O. unless I have some sort of imposed structure.) I ate and ate and ate and then, one week later, stepped up on that scale again to see what I had done.

What I had done was add 1.4 pounds to my already sorry frame.

At the time, it was a real motivator. It was a near-tangible consequence of the way that I have treated my body for all of these many years. It was one of those a+b=c types of equations that I am always looking for in my life. Simple math. I eat too much, binge and stuff my face, and then I gain weight. Period. There was no fancy underlying emotion or mysterious cause. I ate too much. I gained weight.

At that point, the defiant eating just, well, stopped. I decided I didn’t want to do that anymore, and I didn’t. I got rid of my junk food. I spent the weekend preparing food and I ate that food throughout the week. I used therapy, friends, journaling, sketching, and other outlets for the emotional energy that usually got dulled out in a sugar fog. I just stopped.

I hope that happens this time, too. Since the weigh-in, I have eaten so much. In my defense, mostly I have eaten it by going out with friends — lots of birthdays and going-away-parties and “I had a bad day and need to bitch”-capades. Most of that food hasn’t been eaten by myself or felt like a binge. It has just felt like overeating. But, I have been eating through the food in my house that, come Monday, will be off-limits. And now it’s Sunday. And that food is nearly gone.

My friend Dr. M says that anything worth starting is worth starting on a Monday. See you on the other side.

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1. I often sketch when I am sitting around waiting for things to start — things like meetings, let’s say. This little scene caught my eye because it is so typical Weight Watchers. “Welcome! Turn off your damn phone! Buy a recycled recipe book! Make a nametag, losers!” [↩]

I had an email from Weight Watchers this week asking if I wanted to use their etools for free. I like the etools, and I use them a lot even though I haven’t been to a Weight Watchers meeting for over a year. And, I don’t always use the etools either, but when I want to sort of track how I am doing for a week, there they are. For $13/month.

Now Weight Watchers has a new promotion. A monthly pass which gives you a nice discount on meetings (between $2-$3/week) and gives you access to etools for free. All the meetings you care to attend plus etools for $40/month.

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I had such a crappy day today, I can hardly stand it.

Work was pretty awful, with nit-picking supervisors and re-do’s and paperwork deadlines aplenty. That, of course, is on top of the general awful that my work sometimes entails — talking about abuse situations, setting firm boundaries with parents, and saying goodbye to the clients who are actually doing well.

My phone bill is overdue (apparently?) and I couldn’t call anyone to vent about the terrible day until I forked over some cash to T-mobile. That’s not such a big deal, except that the whole deal with getting informed about a raise and then not having that raise “go through” for 3 months is really, really crappy. I need money now. Today, in fact. Preferably wired directly to T-mobile so that I can call someone and bitch. Sure, the raise will be retroactive to a certain date, once it goes through, but that does me no good if I can’t pay my phone bill today.

I got home and the new dog had eaten the mail, the curtains, the towel over his crate, and the corner of a box holding my roommate’s vinyl records. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before he eats the records themselves unless I buck up and crate him when I am gone. Meanwhile, I find shreds of things — curtains, towels, bills — everywhere.

Yes, this was the delightful day that I had selected for my first weigh-in.

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Although I love the way they taste, I don’t like the texture of certain vegetables (notably olives, raw onions, raw peppers, and mushrooms). They’re too loud, too fleshy, too overt. When I was little, I would tell my mom that raw onions “taste like they are screaming.” But, as I try to incorporate vegetables and nutrients into my diet, I have to get creative in order to get past my texture fetish.

According to the Weight Watchers’ Recipe Builder, this recipe makes 2 servings of 8 points each. It should also be packed with good carbs, fiber, and protein. I have it listed as a light meal.

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