Aftermath

Urgh! I feel SO ill.

In my last post I mentioned how yesterday was going to be a 'cheat day', with my other half bringing home a McDonald's for me on his way home from work. Which I was both fearing and looking forward to in equal measure. As it turned out though, he decided to take the Saturday off, so no Quarter-Pounder with cheese for me. Instead though, he decided to order a pizza. Fuck!

Ordering from Domino's, as opposed to another pizza place, is much less stressful because they provide some info regarding calorie counts on their online site; whilst other nutritional information can be found elsewhere online. Unfortunately, we were ordering from our local fried chicken/pizza/kebab house, which whilst being the nicest, cheapest and friendliest place to order pizza from, they don't supply any nutritional information on any of the food - gulp! But it was a cheat day and I had committed to the idea of having a bit of a blow-out, so I just thought "fuck it!" and took the plunge.

I had a ten inch pizza, topped with chicken, pepperoni and extra cheese (hey, if we're going to be bad, it might as well be über-naughty, right?) and a small portion of fries, with a little pot of garlic and chive mayonnaise. And to add to the fat-tastic calorie fest, I had a can of full-fat Coke to wash it all down with. I certainly wasn't doing things by halves. Oh, and when it turned up, the whole order came complete with a bloody free garlic bread! Grr... Normally, the prospect of getting free food would be great, but not when you're trying to starve your arse off! The guy at the pizza place was only trying to be nice because he used to live in the same apartment building as us and we're pretty friendly. He wasn't to know that he was being the bearer of evil temptation!

And so I ended up with half of a ten inch garlic bread too. Meh! Initially, I ate half the pizza, most of the fries and a slice of garlic bread, all washed down with the can of Coke. I felt instantly guilty for having pigged out and really had to fight the urge to purge - especially after I then glugged back a pint of water afterwards. I really was thirsty, but I also know that there was this not-so-subconscious other motive at work too: if I've binged and I'm going to purge, the first thing I do is flood the rest of my stomach with water; partly to soften up the food in my gut and partly to dilute the stomach acid before it hits my teeth. I repeatedly throw back a pint of water in between purges, about five or six times until I'm sure that my stomach has been completely emptied and rinsed clean. 

So, naturally, after gulping down all that water after the pizza and chips yesterday, my stomach twitched and my throat vibrated in anticipation of a trip to the bathroom. I wanted to do it; imagined myself wandering through the narrow s-shaped turn in our hall-way, navigating past the cat toys next to the door-frame and closing the bathroom door behind me, before silently dropping to my knees. It would have been so easy. But, I'd already promised myself that yesterday was going to be an approved 'cheat day' and I didn't need the binge/purge thing becoming a compulsion that I can no longer control. So, I fought back the temptation to bring it all back up and let every last gram of fat, sugar, salt and ick, sit in my gut until it traveled through my digestive tract, away from the temptation of itchy fingers.

Later that night, as I watched the horror/thriller film 'Mirrors' which I just love (I'm a bit of a fan of a good horror film) another kind of guilt hit me; one that's been drilled into me from a very young age: the guilt of letting good food go to waste. It's one of those weird psychological ties to food I know a lot of people of my generation have. Food is something that we should be grateful for when so many people the world over are going without - even here in the UK, where the numbers of people having to rely on food banks to feed their families, is climbing every day. It's a deeply ingrained guilt, of middle-class sensibilities, that I really need to work on getting rid of. Because, as my other half sloped off to bed and I was left with the plentiful remains of our dinner, I felt almost duty-bound to polish off the rest of my pizza and a bit of garlic bread. That food was perfectly alright, had been bought and paid for and I just couldn't let it sit there mocking me for my wasteful, frivolous bourgeois sense of abandon.

So I ended up eating the whole ten inch pizza, two slices of garlic bread, a portion of fries and a garlic dip, washed down with a can of full fat Coke. Then, to make matters worse, I munched my way through half a bag of Twirl Bites. Well, it's not like I could do that on any other normal, well behaved day, so I just figured that I might as well make the most of a bad day and go out with a bang. All or nothing, right?

Anyways, today I woke up and weighed myself and found that the pound I'd lost between yesterday and the day before, had crept back on overnight, after yesterday's fat-fest. Fucking typical. Starve like an Ethiopian for a week to lose a few pounds, then put one of them right back on again the very minute I start to eat like a regular person. That'll be my metabolism fucking up then I guess. Urgh. You can't win. Well actually, no, you can. You just have to keep at it. Anyone who tries to tell you that you won't actually lose any weight if you don't eat because your metabolism will go into starvation mode, obviously hasn't ever met an anorexic person. I'm pretty sure anorectics don't get to see that 'gleeful clattering set of bones' (to quote 'Wasted' by Marya Hornbacher) by chowing down on cheeseburgers and fries. Yes, it's right that when you first start to severely restrict, it will slow your weight loss down as your body 'goes into starvation mode' but what the nutritionists fail to tell you is that starvation mode ultimately revolves around your body relying on it's own internal resources (fat and lean muscle mass) to get by. It isn't getting anything through eating, so it burns what fuel it has available. And if you're fairly overweight, it will turn to fat first as your body goes into ketosis. However, if you are already at a low BMI, you could be in danger of losing lean muscle mass from places you really don't want it to go, like you're heart, so be careful you starving skinnies out there!

Fact is, I dropped a stone in just over a couple of weeks through severe restriction, both intentional and unintentional. It wasn't difficult and my body got really used to just having to get by on its own resources. I'm planning on continuing to restrict until I get to see something vaguely human looking, staring back at me in the mirror. There is the problem of how the slowed down metabolism will automatically absorb every fucking calorie available if I have a 'cheat day' and I will see an increase on the scales the following morning. But it's just a case of weighing up the pros and the cons. Can you live without going bat-shit crazy on the calories for one day, or do you just need a day of utter gluttony? Is a temporary movement back up on the scale, worth the moment of madness? Your choice. Do you continue straight on in your journey south, or do you take a slight diversion on route to being thin? Everyone is different; your life, your decisions. But either way you just have to make sure that you make a conscious decision to do what you want, be happy with it and stick to it. Mia can be a helpful friend to have around when we occasionally lose control, but let's be honest; we don't really want to be sticking our fingers down our throats every other day if we can help it, do we?

Back to the restricting for me though today. After yesterday's blowout I was wondering how my appetite would fare. I had visions of me sitting here, craving anything with cheese on top as my metabolism screamed for a repeat performance of yesterday. But it's been a lot easier than I thought and I'm sat here now just getting ready to watch the MotoGP on BBC2 (I fucking LOVE motorcycles!) having so far consumed a very reasonable 116 calories in total: 51 from a cup of coffee with semi-skimmed milk and one sugar, 65 from 4 Twirl Bites (I actually had to get the digital scales out to calculate the calorie count on them, because they're so small!). I'm two thirds of the way through my first bottle of water (1.5 litres) which is helping nicely to stave off those hunger pangs, but the other half has just passed me two Fruit Gums, which he calculated to be 7.5 calories per sweet, so we can look to add another 15 calories to my daily total if I do indeed decide to eat them. Which I probably will, because I think I can take the not exactly mahoosive extra calories and not gain any more lard! I guess that's a total of 131 altogether then.

I really do like this way of not eating. I feel cleaner, more in control. Like it's a challenge I'm setting myself and actually achieving. Feeling successful is always a good thing. Yeah, I might have chalked up an extra pound between yesterday and today, but I did enjoy the pizza and I'm right back in control of things today like a good little Wintergirl. And that sounds like the perfect note to end today's entry on.

I'm off to watch the rest of this bike race.

Guten abend y'all

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