The Weight-loss Diaries (16 page)

which Mr. Lee does sell—will not do in a pinch). Besides, Mr. Lee has sold me a giant Diet Pepsi every morning for the past four months and watched me examine the calorie counts on nearly every candy bar, then put each one back. Can’t imagine he won’t say anything if I suddenly buy something besides diet soda.

Five minutes before he closes, I run downstairs and buy a bag of pretzels. I’m not sure why. They’re not even remotely what I want to eat, but I buy them because they’re a snack I haven’t had in more than four months, and one that isn’t a diet disaster.

Five o’clock. Finished the pretzels, which do not do the trick. Mr. Lee’s is now closed, but the café in the Borders next door is not. Crumb cake topped with an inch of sugar. Chocolate-covered graham crackers. I realize I have a good six or seven hours before I go to sleep tonight, and there’s no telling how much damage to my diet I could do in that time.

What I usually do when I binge when I’m supposed to be on a diet is call someone to go out to dinner. Usually it’s my sister, because I can be frantic in front of her—impatient for the food to come the way an alcoholic is impatient for a waitress to show up and take the drink orders. And even though

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I can’t eat everything I want in front of Diana, I can eat an awful lot. I can order sides that don’t seem to go with my main—French fries, candied sweet potatoes, macaroni and cheese even if I’ve ordered, say, an omelet. Dessert—

maybe even a couple of desserts—is a given.

At some point she will stop eating, but I will not. I’ll be antsy for the bill to arrive, literally tapping my foot with impatience (and nearly crying when it occurs to me that I’m burning off about a whole four calories from the millions I’ve consumed) because during the meal I’ve compiled a mental list of all the other foods I now want to eat. In a rare moment of closeness I once told Diana about the bingeing, and she said that though she often has cravings for cake and chocolate, she could never buy them (much less eat them) in public. She’d be too embarrassed. What I couldn’t seem to make her understand was that I feel the same way: though I hate myself for buying these foods and imagine that everyone is laughing at me as I do, my need for the food somehow is stronger even than the guilt and shame, and at that moment I don’t care about anything except how I’m going to get what I want, what I
need
.

I’ll pretend I’m going home or to run an errand, occasionally being rude or abrupt with her. (“Can we finish talking about this later? I really have to get this call in to Los Angeles tonight.”) I’ll know I’m being rude and abrupt with her, and I’ll know I should consider trying to stick out the conversation, because then maybe I won’t binge. But I can’t pay attention, can’t think, can’t breathe. I can’t do anything except think about eating. And eat.

Feeling guilty for lying to my sister, guilty for possibly having been rude, and guilty for what I’m about to do, I’ll walk up and down the aisles of CVS

or the supermarket—usually CVS first, since the supermarket is three blocks farther, which means three blocks too far—in frustration. If the line at CVS

seems too long, I’ll leave and go to the supermarket, wishing desperately for an express binge line where I can at least buy a chocolate-chip muffin or a Twix bar to tide me over for the walk to the Safeway.

Let’s say I start at CVS. Depending on how frantic I feel, I’ll skip the charade that I’m here for anything but food (translation: I won’t bother grabbing a magazine or some toilet paper first). I will not stop; I will not pass go; I will head directly to the shelves with Hostess cupcakes and cinnamon rolls. I’ll wonder briefly if a chocolate bar would do it, but it would have to be in addition—at binge times I almost always want something sweet and cakey. I’ll do the complex calculus that involves how many items of junk food I can buy without having it look like they’re all for me and without looking like I’m going to eat them all at once. Unlike the supermarket, CVS doesn’t really sell the sort of stuff packaged to make it look like you’re having a last-minute

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party. Anyway, what twenty-three-year-old has a party where the hors d’oeu-vres consist of Little Debbie cream-filled oatmeal cookies, Chunky bars, and a bag of mini blueberry muffins?

Usually two single-serving items are the most I dare buy at CVS, an amount that’s never enough. So part of the choosing involves how long I can make what I’ve bought last: long enough to make it to the other CVS four blocks away? (Though there is always, always someone I know at that one.) To Safeway? To Marvelous Market? To Firehook Bakery? I scan for the shortest checkout line and evaluate the nimbleness of both the cashiers and the people waiting in the lines. Don’t want to be behind the lady who takes a half hour to unload her basket and fifteen minutes fumbling with her wallet.

It’s all a matter of time—I have to have what I want immediately, and the harder I try to wait it out, the worse it gets. I’ll scan the shelves, debating how much more I’ll be able to eat before even I can’t eat another bite. I’ll strategize: what order should I eat things in—what do I want the most? What do I need to eat first so I’ve gotten it down before I’m so full that even I finally have to stop eating?

A package of Hostess cupcakes, an iced apple-cinnamon roll, and three blocks later I’ll arrive at the supermarket. In my case I’ll try to pretend that I’m just doing normal grocery shopping, which, oh, just happens to include some junk food. Luckily, some of my “junk” includes things normal people eat in normal quantities, so along with my chocolate-chip-cookie-dough ice cream and mini apple pie, I can safely buy cheese and peanut butter and corn bread without anyone knowing they’re binge ingredients. If I think about it—

which often, so focused on the binge, I won’t—I’ll add some apples or tomatoes or mushrooms for the full-on I’m-normal effect. As I’m tearing through the aisles, I don’t make eye contact with anyone. If I do, I wonder:
Can they
tell that the contents of my little red shopping basket will barely last me an hour?

At the grocery store I’ll follow the same routine as at CVS, scanning for the quickest-looking cashier and the shortest line (usually
not
the express line). I’ll head home, wishing I could snap my fingers and be there instantly, because there’s a chance I’ll bump into someone I know on the street—that I’ll be caught eating. I’ll take the back door to my apartment building so the guy at the front desk can’t stop me to chat. And I’ll lug myself up the stairs and collapse against my door, not sure which is more to blame for my exhaustion: the stomach overstuffed with food or all the planning, all the secrecy.

In real time the whole binge might take an hour or so. But in my mind the film is over in seconds, so I can replay it endlessly, torturing myself with

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it. It’s only 5:00 p.m., but I can see the whole evening before me—the inevitability of it. Then, like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, there’s the option of the unknown—at least, unknown for me. Yes, I’ve had a revolting amount of cake today, but what would happen if I stopped the binge right now?

I can’t remember the last time I stopped in midbinge, but part of the reason I was so excited about this
Shape
project was I thought if I dieted properly—none of my crazy 500-calorie-a-day regimens—I might end the

bingeing once and for all. I thought about losing the project before the first column’s ever even made it into print.

So here’s what really happened this evening: thinking about having to tell
Shape
—the arbiter of all things healthy—about my (extremely unhealthy) binge behavior made me more frantic than ever. So at 6:00 p.m. I gave up on work for the day and decided that for dinner I could have whatever I wanted—within reason.

Then I realized I didn’t know what “within reason” is.

I considered all sorts of options: a couple of Chilean empanadas (but I do like the vegetarian ones, and also the apple ones). General Tso’s chicken (shouldn’t do that because I’ll also want fried rice and dumplings). A burrito with lots of cheese (except every time I walk into the place I want chips and quesadillas, too). What I wanted was to be able to have a “normal” meal—

where I felt satisfied but not stuffed—but I’m no longer sure what that feels like. Nor could I think of a single restaurant or take-out place I could go that would feel safe—where I wouldn’t go in and feel my head about to split trying to decide what I wanted to eat the most.

On the way home I stopped at the grocery store and looked at all sorts of desserts: apple pie, cream puffs, carrot cake with cream-cheese frosting. I wanted them all, but more, I wanted desperately to stop thinking about them. It occurred to me that if I didn’t buy them, and therefore didn’t eat them, I might still spend the night thinking about them, but at least the night wouldn’t be a total waste. There was still a chance I’d be able to read a magazine or talk to a friend without thinking: I’m so horribly full, I feel sick, I want to die.

So I didn’t buy anything. I went home and had a salad and some chicken and half a cantaloupe, because it’s a meal that doesn’t require any thought at all.

Was the binge broken? I didn’t dare hope so. For all I knew then, it was just temporarily stalled and would come back later in full force.

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Getting ready for bed, I didn’t congratulate myself for having broken the binge cycle, because for all I knew, it wasn’t over. I had spent a day wanting all these things and almost tasting them. And although the immediate urge may be gone—I’d waited it out—the desire is like a tumor. You think you’ve successfully operated and removed it, only to find a few stray cells still there, hours or days away from growing into something ominous.

I gained two pounds.

And about a hundred pounds of dread. Weight gained. Will it ever come off again? Usually once I start gaining weight, that’s the end of the diet.

I dread telling
Shape
. I’m tempted to lie, then I realize I don’t have to.

For the first few months I’ve had to file weekly journals that won’t be printed, just to let Maureen, my editor at
Shape
, know how things are going. But now, because I’m doing so well—ha!—
Shape
trusts me, so I have to file only my monthly columns. And I’ve already lost enough weight this month (five pounds so far) that even if I’ve put on two, I’ve still got a net loss. I’m safe.

Safe in print, but not safe from myself. I haven’t had a full-out binge yet, but I can feel one coming. Yesterday brought me to the edge. One of these days—someday soon—I’m going to fall.

That’s what bingeing is—a free-fall. You know you’re doing something you shouldn’t do, something you swore you wouldn’t do, something that’s dangerous and destructive. You know you’re going to feel like hell when it’s done—you know it, but in the moment you just don’t care. You close your eyes and jump.

Friday. Three days post-pig-out-that-luckily-didn’t-become-an-all-out-binge.

Spent the party tonight barely able to concentrate on anything anyone said to me, which always makes me feel lonely and disconnected. I was too busy fighting the urges I’ve been fighting all week, warily keeping one eye on the food like it’s suddenly going to attack me. The urges weren’t as bad as they were three days ago, when I ate the muffins and the cake, but with that first bite of the first muffin, my body suddenly remembered the taste of every sweet thing I’d been keeping myself away from, and wanted it all.

I kept away from the food and drank an entire two-liter bottle of Diet Coke, because I knew if I drank alcohol, it would be all over, food-wise.

Sometime between my first and second drink, I’d stop worrying so much about my weight and feel like everything was going to be OK, even if I

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weighed a thousand pounds, and so I’d start eating. Thanks to the liquor, I wouldn’t care—or care as much—who saw me. Everyone eats when they

drink, right? You practically have to—no drinking on an empty stomach and all that. . . . And on what other occasion besides after drinking is it perfectly acceptable for a bunch of girls to head to the late-night pizza place, eating giant slices of pizza and not caring who’s watching?

What I miss about drinking is the beer goggles you get on yourself. After a couple of drinks I can go to the bathroom and think I look OK, or at least not awful, instead of wishing I never had to go back out, wishing I could spirit myself from there back to my apartment and never leave home again.

Mary on the phone: “I think I found a marathon training program.”

“What?”

Then I remembered Candace’s party, where Mary had first brought up the idea of our running a marathon. She hadn’t mentioned it since, so I didn’t either.

Mary told me about Galloway—named for Jeff Galloway, the 1972

Olympic athlete who designed the program. It’s supposed to be beginner-friendly.

“I don’t know if I can run that much,” I told her. What I was thinking was:
If I start bingeing, I’ll be so full I’ll barely be able to walk, much less run
.

“You only have to be able to run three miles to start, and you do that all the time,” she said. After all, she was the one I often bragged to that I had just run six miles that morning: from my Dupont Circle apartment all the way up—and I mean up—Massachusetts and Wisconsin Avenues past the

National Cathedral.

She paused. “Think about it.”

And I did. Instead of immediately thinking of excuses for why I couldn’t, I thought:
Hmmm. Why would Mary tell me I could do something I couldn’t?

For just a moment I reveled in the thought of actually doing this. After all, if Mary thought I could do it, maybe I really could.

Then I came back to earth. I don’t dream athletic dreams, I reminded myself. I’m the kid who mooned about writing a novel or winning an Oscar, never an Olympic medal.

I remember once seeing some Mylar-blanketed marathoners on the Metro and thinking they had done an amazing feat. I’d thought idly then that a marathon was a cool thing to do—for someone else. My athletic ambitions had