new goodies for a new year

I am a testament to our consumer culture.

"I would be happier if I were thinner"
"I would be happier if I bought more stuff"

Well I prefer to combine the two, and purchase stuff laden with the alluring promise of weight loss. And I tell you what, it certainly makes me happier! My dears, I have shopped, and if this post were audible you would hear my squeals of delight.


First on the list was a new set of bathroom scales, complete with bioelectrical impedence body composition analysis. Ooooh excitement! I also bought 2 new types of diet pills. One of them is my standard caffeine packed pep pill. The other is a hydroxycitrate tablet that claims to help with lipid metabolism, but I suspect it's bullshit. My local discount pharmacy had a half price vitamin sale so I thought I'd splash out anyway... and besides, you can't beat a good diet pill placebo effect! I bought some other fun "supernutrient" tablets and some hair/skin/nails vitamins. I even bought bio-oil to try and kill my stretch marks (again, I'm sure it's bullshit).

I'm so excited to fill my stomach with crazy supplements and measure every inch of my body fat and its location... but I'm going to hold out until I wake up on new year's day. That is my big proper super special day 1, and I'm going to start off with a bang! It will be one hell of a shock of a bang, too, because holy moly I am the size of a house. Absolutely revolting. I'm trying to stay positive though - the more I have gained the more I have to lose. And I am GOING to lose it! And I love losing weight! So hell... I'm just giving myself more of what I love!

CAN'T
WAIT
'TIL
2010

Pasco xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Yes, that is to be the plan...
New year, new ABC.

My pre-Christmas ABC was a trial run, and damn I did well! It is no big shock that I came unstuck over the holidays - probably the toughest challenge imaginable. But I have proven to myself I can do it and I will start it properly on January 1st.

in the mean time I am going to try and have a relatively normal and pleasant few days. I want to take care not to binge but it is neither essential that I starve. Just a little relaxation and resetting.

x

wwwwhoops!

Just to update you all, I never made it home from my parent's place and I never made it to the gym. Instead I continued to eat. Then I bought myself a glorious, gorgeous pink KitchenAid mixer and proceeded to make homemade pizza and pasta with mum. So I ate and ate some more and now I am about to go to bed stuffed. Honestly, I really haven't even contemplated throwing up. The food we made was too incredible and wholesome and amazing. I would feel terrible vomiting something created with such love and care. It was actually delightful. Mum and I poring over the bench, kneading dough and negotiating the pasta maker together. I'm bloated but for the first time in as long as I can remember I'm sort of enjoying the feeling.

So I've been thinking about how to progress from here. Initially what I was thinking was that I should retrospectively grant myself THREE days off for Christmas rather than one (an obvious underestimation of what I would need) then repeat day 6 tomorrow and continue from there. But I'm concerned I'll fuck it all up again, and if I keep on granting myself these concessions then I know that my entire ABC plan will fall apart. So I think what may be better is to hold out until the new year, and resume day 6 on January 1st. Then again, the ABC seems entirely pointless if it has these huge gaps in the middle of it - I don't want to gain a whole heap of weight in the mean time. So... what to do? I think I will sleep on it ans see how I feel in the morning. If anybody has an thoughts, I'd happily hear them.

Much love
Pasco x

Would you believe it?

I've already blown it!

I'm still at Mum and Dad's and there is just so much delicious Christmas food still lying around. The moment I got up I bee-lined for it. Despite my better intentions. I thought I'd just eat 300 calories worth and fast the rest of the day. I ate about twice that so now, if I'm to have any hope of resurrecting day 7, I have to go to the gym and burn off at least 300 more to make up for it. Shit.

Better that than giving in and admitting defeat though.

Break on Through

Christmas over
Boxing day (aka Christmas with the "other side") over

I had my freebie on Christmas day. Ate like a pig, and loved it. Managed to get away with one almighty spew in the evening and actually went to bed with a smaller than anticipated abdominal bulge.

Yesterday morning, boxing day, I ran. I ran and ran through the blistering Australian heat until my skin became cold, my limbs were tingling and my head began to space out. I didn't count my calories and I'm almost certain I went over my allowance, but I'm calling it a success because I ran so damn hard.


And now the worst of the holidays are behind me and I'm on the other side. I'm not sure if I made it to 55kg by Christmas morning and I'm going to give myself a few days for the weight to settle before I assess my progress (or lack of it). 300 calories today. Straight back in the game!

That goes for you girls as well :)
x

...and to all a good night!

I made it!
I made it I made it I made it... I made it through today!

I deviated from the plan a little. Didn't have time to go to the gym so decided to fast to make up for it. But then I managed to squeeze in a 40 minute run from my parents' house in the evening, allowing me 400 calories for dinner. I had a few prawns, then I baked Christmas cookies. Baking is my hugest challenge - I love it, but I always eat so so so much (of both the ingredients, the batter and the finished product). I managed to stick to 3 very small cookies, and overall came out exactly on par with my daily total. I'm so pleased and proud. I didn't think I could do it but I DID! 5 days, perfectly executed, no purging.

And tomorrow is CHRISTMAS! My free pass. I will try and be relatively good but if I fail it doesn't matter. It doesn't count. It is a day of fun and love and I am going to have the most fun and love I possibly can!

May you all have an absolutely magical Christmas!


Pasco x

tomorrowphobe

Another day down. A lovely day. More exercise. Eating slotted neatly and easily within my calorie allowance. Sanity, good. The realisation that I haven't thrown up for 4 days, fantastic!

One more day, then Christmas. My free pass. Free... free to eat, but hopefully also free from the horrible compulsion to binge. I hope to employ all your helpful strategies to have a lovely day without going overboard. And to get back on track for boxing day.

Christmas will be OK. Right now my largest fear is the "one more day" between now and then. Day 5. 100 calories. I will need to go to the gym and do some serious cardio to "earn" more calories, because I don't think I can stick to that amount. I'm going home to my parents' place to start setting up for Christmas. Their house is an enormous binge trigger and there will be family dinner, not to mention Christmas food aplenty. I'm feeling a little panicked about it. On the brink of giving up... I don't know if I can burn off enough! I don't know if I can control myself! I've done so well and I don't want to waste it! I wish I could just skip tomorrow, go straight to my merry little Christmas then the following days of amends-making.

I really REALLY want to stay strong and get through it. So bear with me while I ponder through a plan.


♦Wake up, open pressies with housemates (we won't see each other on Christmas day so we are having mini Christmas tomorrow)

♦Suggest we do not crack into the special chockies we bought for Christmas because it is "too early" and perhaps propose we split them and take them along to our respective Christmases to share with our loved ones

♦No breakfast, just diet pills

♦Hit the gym and try for an hour of cardio. This will be hard (felt faint at the gym today and barely made half an hour) but it is super important. If needs be, do four 15 minutes intervals with rest breaks. Aim to burn around 500 calories, allowing 600 calorie total intake

♦Come home, eat 100 calories of egg whites, take more diet pills and fill up with a buttload of metamucil and raw veggies

♦Pack handbag full of celery, carrot sticks and snow peas

♦Head for parents' place and attempt to survive the afternoon on zero-calorie vegie snacks and gum

♦Brave the family dinner, suggest something light like ham&salad, be careful to keep it under 500 calories, and "let's not have dessert because we should save room for Christmas"



Well... it SOUNDS doable...
I feel a zillion times better just having typed it out!

Would anybody be keen for a bit of a "surviving Christmas" tip share?

day 3 at peace

I slept really badly last night and have been so sleepy today. I decided to forgo the gym, which means I've only had 300 calories to play with and I have used them all up now. That's OK - it's 4pm and I think I'll have a quiet night in drinking peppermint tea before going to bed early.


The horrible mood of yesterday has lifted, and I feel hungry and tired

...but at peace

x

Labile

Two days of the plan effortlessly completed. I'm exercising, eating perfectly, not even getting hungry. An ideal start.

But my mood...
My mood is off.
This isn't good.
If I can't maintain my mental state I know I won't be able to maintain my diet.

I've been working like a trojan at the gym. It has been feeling great. Hard, but great. But several times I have almost burst into tears on the treadmill. I haven't felt upset and there have been no precipitants, but I've been getting these massive sudden surges of emotion. I guess it's endorphins, but this doesn't normally happen and I don't like it. And tonight I feel terrible. Looking around at my room and just being swamped by this immense guilt. Receipts and tags litter my floor from the shit I have bought that I don't need or really even want. Consumption. Fuck it's so gross. There are a couple of little gifts my mum has bought me and when I see them I want to hurl because I feel so completely undeserving. It sickens me, that she loves me. I am a leech. I owe her so much. SO much. I'm thousands of dollars behind in rent that she has been covering for me, and I don't even try to make it up. I continue to fritter away unearned cash on frivolous shit. Consume consume consume. I really fucking disgust myself.

I'm really really feeling it right now. Guilt guilt disgusting fucking self-loathing horrible guilt. It worries me. I don't want my mind to crumble under my new regime.

EMERGE

It is no use waiting for new year's resolutions. I have LET MYSELF GO. And I'm starting again. Right now. This morning's numbers were horrifying and eye opening. I'm at a crossroads on the the cusp of fat. My complacency has been my undoing. Who was I to think I could get away with not counting? Not exercising? I need strictness and exactness, measuring scales and nutritional labels. Be cruel to me, badger me, hold me accountable. I don't want to be fat. I'm not ready to give up. I need this. Here we go!

New Starting Weight
57 kg, 125.4 lbs, BMI: 20.4

Goal Weight
48 kg, 105.6 lbs, BMI: 17.2

GW 1 - 55.0 kg, 121.0 lbs
GW 2 - 53.0 kg, 116.6 lbs
GW 3 - 51.5 kg, 113.3 lbs
GW 4 - 50.0 kg, 110.0 lbs
FINAL GOAL - 48!

Now I cannot get there without rules. Hard and fast, no room for diversion, absolute-all-or-nothing rules. And I think the rules need to start with some structure- a tried and tested diet plan. I had great success with the ABC in the past. I only made it through about 10 days but I did beautifully well over that time and lost a lot of weight. It's a good place to start.

So here are the bare bones of it:

1: 500 2: 500 3: 300 4: 400 5: 100 6: 500 7: 300 8: 400 9: 200 10: fast

11: 150 12: 200 13: 400 14: 350 15: 250 16: 200 17: fast 18: 200 19: 100 20: fast

21: 300 22: 250 23: 200 24: 150 25: 100 26: 50 27: 100 28: 200 29: 200 30: 300

31: 800 32: fast 33: 250 34: 350 35: 450 36: fast 37: 500 38: 450 39: 400 40: 350

41: 300 42: 250 43: 200 44: 200 45: 250 46: 200 47: 300 48: 200 49: 150 50: fast

And here are my personal amendments and details:

♦I will deduct all exercise calories from my daily totals. I need to start exercising, and this is my incentive. The more I burn, the more I can eat

♦As always, I will not count calories in plain raw vegetables

♦Now this is a new one for me! I will not count calories in alcohol, but ONLY for spirits straight up, or with zero-calorie mixers. This being the last summer holidays of my life, I think I ought to allow for a little merriment!

♦I will be granted ONE free day for Christmas (I mean who am I kidding, I love Christmas!). So this means Christmas eve will be day 5 and boxing day will be day 6.

♦I will take care of my whole body, meaning supplements ahoy! Fish oil, fibre, calcium, multivitamins. None of these will count for any calories.

♦Finally...

I will not fail!

I hope to reach my first goal by Christmas morning. 2kg in 5 days sounds like a stretch, but I put in on very quickly and with any luck it will drop straight off. Then onwards and upwards into the new year and beyond. I will emerge victorious!


Pasco x

Secrets and Lies

My housemate (who I love and adore and am worried I'm influencing) told me a few days ago in a half-joking-half-serious way that she was "never eating again". Since then we have engaged in an obscenely open dialogue about dieting (starving oneself) and have been encouraging one another not to eat at all. I talk openly and laconically about my ridiculous restrictive phases and fasts of days gone by, and she talks openly about how perhaps we should be less open. It's the "everyone does it, in secret, so why not just talk about it and help each other" approach... with a little of the "but let's not tell anybody else just in case" approach tacked onto the end. The two of us, together, open.


But it is not entirely open. The purging cannot be open. I'm sure everyone probably suspects, but as long as nobody actually knows I can kind of live with the shame. Tonight I had the most incredible purge of my life. It has been a few days since the last time, and I have been doing OK, but the last couple of hours I've been home alone after a reasonably crap-food day. So I had some icecream and popcorn and cheese and chocolate, and it seemed that one second I was full and the next I was empty. I stepped into the shower to vomit and almost instantaneously the entire contents of my stomach came smoothly and easily upward and onto the tiles. It flowed out of me. Everything! I had taken a glass of metamucil half an hour beforehand, and I'm now considering conducting an experiment some time in the future to see of this was responsible for my success.

You see? I'm revolting! Some things can only ever be secrets.
But for the other things, I now feel I have a friend.

Pasco
x

I'm in hiding

I'm too scared to step on the scales and too fat to blog. I suppose it's denial. If I can't see the numbers and I can't see you all, then I can't be doing that badly.

So... I'll just be hiding away, waiting for a bit of impetus, a bit of change. I think I might take some dexies and clean my house. Clean home, clean slate, clean body?

Fingers crossed.

I look a myself in the mirror

How can I be so familiar
Yet unfamiliar
All at once?

Composure

I inhaled all of your words and I calmed myself down and had a couple of OK days. I was away in the country doing some work, and a lot of the eating was out of my hands. Constant company meant I couldn't go too haywire, and I made smart choices where I could. So yes, a couple of OK days. Not fantastic but calm, composed, and (thanks Lulu) sensible.

Then today I had a brilliant day. Fruit and salad. Plenty of both but not a thing more. I blatantly ignored the KFC my friends and housemates ate at dinner and stuck to my guns. So two OK days and one brilliant day makes three puke-free days and a little hope. Just have to stay sensible. Slow and steady wins the race.

Calm
Controlled
Composed

Furious

Fuck, I'm so angry at myself.

I can't sleep. I want to scream, or cry, or slam my head into the wall. But I've got nothing. I know the emotion is there, and I'm desperate to give it an outlet, but I can't actually connect with it.

I just really desperately want to punish myself. Somehow. I have that hideous feeling of frenzied panic, where my weight is steadily climbing and I'm COMPLETELY powerless. I hate myself for it. Get a fucking grip! Stop this! Stop it!


I don't know what to do. I feel like I'm out of time, out of control, out of options. Trying, trying, trying all the time. But am I really? Really? Surely not. Just feigning trying. Making excuses for myself. This can't possibly be the best I can do. I've done better before. What is so different now?

Momentum, that's what. The pendulum has swung. I'm terrified. How the hell can I try harder than this? There's too much inertia.

Oh god, oh fuck, how could I let this happen? I am so, so angry at myself. I know it isn't helpful, but it seems to be all I can really feel. Anger, a blurry grey mesh of hate and fear.

Puppet

I'm trying to keep positive
Trying trying TRYING

Every day I do well but every night I end up unable to stop eating and invariably throwing up as much as I can as quietly as I can before bed. It didn't used to be like this. I never struggled with night time eating in the past. I wish I could shake the habit. I HAVE to shake the habit. Otherwise no amount of positivity will dig me out of this hole.

It is just so hard to shake the habit when I feel as though I have no control over myself. I don't know how it continually happens. I am a marionette and I'm controlled by someone whose theory I understand but who I cannot connect with emotionally at all. Dancing the same stupid fucking dance, bound by the same endless fucking song.

But today I'm feeling more positive

I can't make my goal by Christmas.
Berating myself for it won't make any difference.
And desperately struggling to overcompensate for my failure is only making the situation worse.

I can get a grip. I can do OK. I can lose a kilo or 2 by Christmas no sweat, and I will feel better and stronger and healthier for it. Then there is a new year with new challenges and new opportunities to reach new and better goals. So I set this one a little too high. Accepting it and doing the best I can is the only step forward.

Besides,
It's summer.
And it's beautiful!


x

I'm not doing very well...

It is becoming increasingly clear to me that I'm not going to make my goal. I have been failing regularly and epically.

I want to give up. Often I think that I should just give up, maintain my weight where it is. Anise is right, this is all bullshit. It crowds us out of our own lives. I don't want that.

Then I remember that it is impossible to give up. Putting the disordered eating to bed and adopting normality sounds oh so very simple, but any time I ever try I just end up even more tortured. No sense of full or empty, just incessant desire to eat, never ever satisfied.

So all I have is starve or binge.
And while starve usually leads to binge anyway,
I suppose it's somewhat better than binge alone.

Defeatistly yours,
Pasco
x