He told Isabel, who also wanted a tune-up, that the most digestible alcohol was champagne and that there’s nothing wrong with eating a lot of olive oil. To my mind Isabel didn’t need his help, considering she once lost twenty pounds eating an entire angel food cake per day and nothing else, but I was glad to have a comrade-in-arms. At Vinnie’s urging, I began to keep track of what I consumed (down to the almond) in an iPhone app and lost nearly twenty pounds in a few months. I sat at my temp job, my snacks for the day lined up on the desk in front of me, waiting for the moment I could add them to my log. I both dreaded and cherished the last bite of the day (usually another almond). I couldn’t see the difference in my body, but my scale, and my mother, assured me I was shrinking.
Every pound lost made me giddy, but at the same time a voice inside me screamed, Who is this lady you’ve become? You are a potbellied riot girl! Why are you plugging your caloric intake into your smartphone!?
What followed was a year of yo-yo dieting. Hence, this journal entry from the end of 2009: I started to consider dieting and weight for the first time, going from 152 pounds to 145 pounds to 160 pounds to 142 pounds. Now, as I write this, I’m about 148 pounds and my goal is to reach 139 by February (but more on that later).
Throughout much of that year, I was the world’s least successful occasional bulimic. I understood the binging part of the equation fairly well, but after stuffing my face with all the readily available cookies and soy cheese I would drift into a stupor and forget to try and vomit. When I finally came to, all I could summon were dry heaves and a string of the celery I ate nine or ten hours ago, during a more hopeful time. My face puffy, my stomach aching, I’d fall asleep like a flu-y baby and awake the next morning with a vague awareness that something terrible had gone down between the hours of eleven thirty and one. Once my father noticed a constellation of broken capillaries around my eyes and asked me gently, “What the fuck did you do to your face?”
“I cried,” I told him. “A lot.”
Another time I announced my intention to puke up a box of pralines to my sister, who then banged on the locked bathroom door crying and screaming while I labored over the toilet. “It didn’t even work,” I told her, stalking back into my room.
A friend once told me that when you’ve been in AA, drinking is never fun again. And that’s how I feel about having seen a nutritionist—I will never again approach food in an unbridled, guilt-free way. And that’s okay, but I think of those college years as the time before I was expelled from Eden.
What follows are entries from a 2010 journal chronicling my attempts to lose weight. This has been, up until now, the most secret and humiliating document on my computer, kept more hidden than my list of passwords or my index of those I have encountered sexually.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 21, 2010
Breakfast, 11am:
two pieces of gluten free toast (100 calories each)
w/ flax oil (120 calories)
? greek yogurt (35 calories)
peach (80 calories)
lunch/snack, 1:30 p.m.:
1 oz. salami (110 calories)
celery sticks (??)
Afternoon snack, 3:30 p.m.:
Mesa sunrise cereal (110 calories)
Rice dream (110 calories)
? greek yogurt (25 calories)
w/ 8 pecans (104 calories)
8 dried cherries (30 calories)
Dinner, 8:30 pm:
Steamed zucchini (no calories?)
Approx 6 ounces steak (not sure of calories)
Tomatoes (60 calories?)
Arugula (3 calories?)
Newman’s Own Dressing (45 calories)
Dessert:
Small bite dark chocolate (30 calories)
Swiss Miss Fat-Free Hot Cocoa (50 calories)
4 am:
1 bite of peach (10 calories)
spoonful chunky almond butter (110 calories)
celery (0 calories I think)
total caloric intake: approx: 1,560
Notes: could have had more veggies. I also recognize I look better than ever and that I’m radiating a kind of good health I haven’t before. Also, working with my psychology/food guilt—the need to be perfect is what obsesses and then derails me, when the real goal is to enjoy food and listen to my body. That never steers me wrong. This journal is going to help a lot. I will try and stick to 1500 calories a day or less and not weigh myself next until September 22nd.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 22, 2010
Breakfast: 12:00 pm
Mesa Sunrise cereal (120 calories)
Rice Dream (110 calories)
2 pecans (26 calories)
2 dried cherries (20 calories?)
Lunch: 1:30 pm
2 scrambled eggs with salsa (150 calories)
Arugula (3–7 calories)
Snack: 3:45 pm
? green apple (45 calories)
1 spoonful chunky almond butter (110 calories)
5 dried cherries (30 calories?)
Snack: 6:40 pm
2?3 bag of peeled fruit snack—dried fruits, cashews, walnuts (200 calories)
Dinner: 9pm
2? corn chips with two scoops guacamole (100 calories?)
Chopped salad of beets, carrots, jicama, spinach, jalape?o dressing (150 calories?)
Fried fish taco w/ corn tortilla (300 calories?)
1 piece of fried plantain (50 calories?)
total caloric intake: approx 1,411
Notes: This journal is a place to record all the conflicting, intense emotions I have about food and to free myself of them. It’s about more than calories. I decided I will weigh myself every Sunday, so I know I’m on the right track. Today I weighed 149.5 on my mom’s scale (a heavier scale). I’m not going to obsess about weight, but a positive goal would be to be 139 pounds by the November 12th premiere of Tiny Furniture. I am going to make strides to make that happen (taking my supplements, listening to my body, avoiding gluten, refined sugar, booze, a lot of red meat and fats, going to Physique 57 class even though the women there are all engaged to be married and mean).