Post Pizza Pontification

Okay, so I'm now so full I think I can actually feel the food piled up from my stomach, halfway up my oesophagus. I have this awful feeling that if I were to bend over to tie my shoe laces or something (were I wearing shoes of course) that all the food would just pour straight out of me like a jug of junk-food. It's actually a term, me and the other half invented, when referring to feeling full: being ready to jug. Nice, huh? I'm serious though. I think I might actually end up throwing up before this night is over. I know I ate way more than I should have/wanted to, but I didn't want to be leaving any cold pizza leftover, tempting me to finish it off the following day. Everybody knows that cold pizza the next day is awesome (even nicer when you couple it with some nice KFC Spicy Mayonnaise to dip it into) but I'm back on the wagon of being a good girl again tomorrow, so I needed all evidence of today's naughtiness, over and done with now. That way there's nothing left sitting around when I get up in the morning, demanding that I eat it all and let nary a morsel go to waste.

I don't know how you were raised, but I come from a properly traditional family where all food was home-made, from the highest quality ingredients and portion sizes were measured by the size of the plate you were eating off, not the amount of food you actually needed for your age, size, gender or daily activity level. It didn't matter if you were a 30-something year old guy who had been out sweating on a construction site all day or a 7 year old schoolgirl who spent most of her free time either playing on her bike or sat with her nose in a book. You got your dinner on the same massive platter-esque plate as everyone else - piled high with a serious mixture of meat, veg and carbs - and you weren't allowed to leave the table until you had cleared it. There was probably somewhere in the region of 1500-2000 calories on each dinner plate alone, not including the obligatory portion of dessert which was either a home-made apple pie, rhubarb crumble or sticky-toffee pudding with custard or ice-cream - itself served in something resembling more of a basin than a bowl of any recognisable dimensions. 

You couldn't have pudding unless you ate all your main course and you couldn't leave the table until you'd cleared your plate. And naturally, being as this was back in the 80's, when kids actually played outside, you couldn't wait to be allowed to leave the table and get back outside to roam about like wild animals; so you ate everything you were given as fast as possible, before running out the front door to meet back up with your friends and raise hell for another few hours. Okay, so some of that food was burned off by playing outside, running about a bit and just generally being less like square-eyed couch potatoes than our modern day counterparts. But there really was no need for a child my age being served up food portions a navvy would've had a hard time putting away. And that was only weekday dinners. Breakfasts were sugary cereals and toast, whilst midday meals at school were home-made packed lunches containing about three rounds of sandwiches, crisps, a yoghurt, fruit, two biscuits, some pickled onions (yeah, I was - and still am - a bit of a stickler for a super-sharp pickled onion!) home-made cake and a bottle of juice.

Friday dinner time, was the one day we ate 'junk food' in the form of fish & chips from the local chippy, followed up with a treasure-trove of sugary booty from the sweet shop around the corner. Sunday dinner was a four course event, the likes of which most people only see at Christmas time, unless we were having a barbecue during summer, which in itself was basically just an excuse for my dad to see how much meat he could marinade and grill on his custom built, charcoal fueled, greed-machine.

Food was everywhere, all the time and it was always expected to be received with gratitude, consumed in abundance and avoided only if you were truly ill. And by truly ill, I'm talking stomach cancer, liver failure or need for dialysis, because as far as my family were concerned, if you were sick, you needed to keep your strength up, so even if you were barfing your ring up with an attack of projectile-vomiting-gastroenteritis, you were still expected to put away your own body weight in chicken soup, tea, toast and fruit salads. For real. My family didn't just use food to show love, they practically communicated every known human emotion through the medium of meat and two veg. 

And the weirdest thing about it? None of them thought that what they were doing was wrong. As far as they were concerned, they were taking care of us the best way they knew how. You were doing well to eat up all that home-cooked goodness. A hearty appetite was the mark of a healthy 'growing young girl' (yeah, growing outwards, mother dear!) and to refuse food was an insult that cut to the core of whichever matriarchal family member had slaved over a hot stove to produce it. I come from a large family and my mother, her mother (my grandmother) and her four sisters all made a habit of cooking up ridiculous amounts of food any time anyone so much as set foot over the threshold of their homes. I grew up thinking that it was normal to be given food as soon as you sat down in someone's sitting room, expected of you to finish everything on your plate and encouraged to ask for seconds.

Is it any wonder I ended up growing to the size of a house?

I've carried that mentality, that ethos when it comes to eating food, around with me for all of my life: Always finish your food. Clear your plate. Waste not, want not. It's rude to refuse food from someone who has taken the time to cook for you. Think of all the starving children in Ethiopia...blah blah blah. It's like it's so deeply ingrained in my consciousness, I can't not comply. I was trained to eat like a horse. It doesn't matter what it is I'm eating, I still feel obliged to eat all of it. I have zero concept of how much food my body actually wants or needs anymore, so I almost always end up ordering, buying, cooking or preparing far too much. My plate doesn't look right if I can see any of the white on it. And when I'm not actively restricting, I will feel compelled to procure enough to feed two or three people. It doesn't matter if it's a McDonalds, a KFC, a Chinese takeaway, a pizza, sweets, crisps, cake or a bowl of breakfast cereal. Once I've sat down with my allotted 'portion' I have to eat all of it. 

I can feel my stomach ready to burst and only be halfway through whatever's on my plate, but I have to make sure that I eat every last scrap of whatever's in front of me. It's like I've been pre-programmed to complete some sort of comestible mission. I can't rest until everything is eaten and I'm sat feeling bloated, nauseated and with a stomach now distended from having to accommodate far too much food than is good for anyone. Can't waste a single crumb. Not that food I or someone else paid good money for. I have to be a good girl and finish what's on my plate. It's so fucked up.

I know my parents and my family probably thought that they were doing the right thing by encouraging me to eat so much. They saw food as nourishment, as the key to making me grow up big and strong. For the most part they thought that they were helping me to grow, providing me with good, traditional home-cooked dinners and keeping my junk food intake to a minimum. I was given fresh fruit and vegetables, hardly any fried food, sweets only on a Friday and nothing but good, hearty, home-cooked fare. They thought that they were setting me up for life on a diet of wholesome foods, laden with love. But in reality, all they did was set in place a screwed up way of thinking that would plague me for the rest of my life. They created a binge-eating monster who equated the consumption of food with contentment; who saw wastefulness as wrong and a clean plate as something to aim for. I know they didn't mean to, but in their ignorance they created a monster. A monster I now have to fight; an inner demon I must struggle to vanquish. 

It reminds of one of my favourite poems actually. It's called 'This Be The Verse' and is by Philip Larkin:

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad. 

They may not mean to, but they do. 

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats, 

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don’t have any kids yourself.

It's a poem almost everyone can identify with and I've loved it from the moment I stumbled upon it, in a poetry anthology I found in our school library when I was about 13. The last two lines always make me laugh, because I have always known that I didn't want children and this merely adds credence to my decision not to push out any of my own womb-spawn. By not breeding, I'm not bringing another annoying drain on the planet's resources into this fucked up world; nor am I selfishly creating a plaything of my own genetic make-up to impose my ideas, beliefs, fucked up lifestyle or emotions onto. I mean, it's not just about these aforementioned philosophical reasonings, I do genuinely just detest children and would rather eat my own feet than have any. But a lot of would-be parents would do well to read this poem and take on board the sentiments echoed within it, before they begin their journey into enslavement parenthood. Not that anyone actually seems to 'plan' having children anymore. It's as if everyone who breeds just seems to do so by default, either by accident or the inevitability of apathy. But enough of my childfree-by-choice rantings for now; what was I talking about again?

Oh yes, eating like a fucking pig on my day off and feeling gross for it. I must confess actually: despite today being a specifically sanctioned 'cheat day' I couldn't bear the feeling of all that food just sitting there in my stomach, so I had to and purge it all. Then, I remembered the tube of Cream Cheese & Chive Pringles I had in my bag, along with some Maoam Joystix. They had to go too, so I quickly wolfed them down too with about a litre of water and made a second little trip to the bathroom with Mia. All done, bye-bye. I feel so much better for it now. Clean and calm and under control.

I have this bag next to the side of the sofa I sit on and it's full of chocolate. You'd think that I would have a problem keeping such a large stash of calorie-laden goodness at close hand; that the temptation to eat it all would be too great. But that's the weird thing. Because I promise myself that I can eat a single item of chocolate every day whilst on this diet, I'm not craving it the way I might do if I tried to eliminate it altogether. That little bag of chocolate is my lifeline. My little bag of daily rewards for being a good girl and restricting for the rest of the day. I look forward to eating my little bar of chocolate at the end of every day, with a nice hot cup of tea or coffee, feeling safe in the knowledge that I'm sticking to the plan and hopefully losing weight.

I don't feel remotely inclined to eat any of that chocolate right now. I just want to get through the rest of the night on cigarettes and water. And perhaps the odd cup of tea.

Oh shit, I just saw the time. 2.00am. I only got up at 5.00pm though, so it doesn't feel that late at all. I think when I finish up here I'll go back to reading the rest of Ruby-Tuesday's blog, which I've been working my way through from past beginnings to present, over the past couple of days. So much of what she posts resonates with me. I've found myself open-mouthed in awe reading it at times. Not just because of her enduring strength (even when she thinks she is at her weakest), but because of certain parallels both our lives seem to share. I highly recommend reading it, especially if you are someone flirting with the idea of pursuing an eating disorder. Hers is the real life tale of a girl for whom having an eating disorder is not some romantic notion of a desire to be thin and pretty; it's a harrowing account of the unglamorous, unpretty, unpleasant twin torments of substance addiction and an eating disorder, which is at times almost heartbreaking to read. But there is a beautiful spirit of a beautiful person - beautiful on the inside and out - to be found inbetween the words on this impassioned blog and I recommend it to anyone who wants to know what it's really like to live with mental illness. To read Ruby's story go to http://andthenshedisappeared.blogspot.com and perhaps stop by to offer her some words of support, because I'm sure she'd appreciate them.

But before I go, I just have to say how annoying the X-Factor was this evening. Out of all the categories, I honestly thought that Sharon's 'Overs' was the strongest, with each girl doing a brilliant job. That Shelley was the lowest scoring performer, based on that 10 minute Flash Vote, just seems so unfair. She sang an incredibly difficult song ('Alone' by Heart) and hit some pretty impressive high notes. I know she's not someone you can see as a marketable pop-star and it's supposed to be about the whole package of voice, personality and image, but there were some pure shite and totally forgettable performances this evening. That boy who sang 'Summer of 69' was crap. He didn't hit half the notes, had zero personality and picked a song that is so over-done in karaoke's it should never again be sang by anyone else other than Bryan Adams. And the great-unwashed mess Luke Friend was a bag of balls too. How come those two got more votes, in a singing competition than a woman who managed to sing one of the most difficult songs in the whole arena of soft rock power ballads? It really pisses me off. I just have to hope that tomorrow, the rest of the UK will wake up and vote for the other two girls in the 'Overs' category, along with Abi, Rough Copy and Nicholas. The rest just didn't stand out and I could easily forget their names, songs and overall performance. Lets hope Shelley kicks ass tomorrow against whoever she ends up having to go head to head with in the sing-off. Because she might not look like Taylor Swift or Rhianna, but by fuck that girl can sing.

Okay, rant over. I'm off to check in with Ruby.

Take care folks

Much Love

xx