The Weight-loss Diaries (37 page)

Anyone who’s ever attempted to shed a pound has probably heard that losing weight—and keeping it off—is a lifelong process. But it’s only now that I’m really beginning to understand what that means, even if I haven’t totally accepted it yet. What it means is that every day, or at least every week, I have to think about what went right, what went wrong, and what I could have done differently—because almost every situation will repeat itself. It’s constant refining—constant work.

I’ve spent much of the past few months ignoring everything I’ve just said, and I’m not pleased with the results. So I looked over my food jour-223

Copyright © 2004 by Courtney Rubin.Click here for terms of use.

224

The Weight-Loss Diaries

nals—I haven’t been managing to keep them every day, but four or five days a week gives me plenty to work with—and discovered that my number one determiner of a screwup day is breakfast. If I’m hungry at 10:00 a.m., I’m hungry (and grumpy and ready to grab anything) all day.

I’m hungry after breakfast, Shari thinks, because I’m eating too many carbs, which don’t have staying power. Banana and Special K and milk—it’s the protein, stupid. But besides bacon, which would make Shari cringe, the only protein I can think of that I’d eat for breakfast is egg-white omelets, and who has time to make those every morning? I’ve tried all the protein bars.

They don’t remotely taste like “chocolate chocolate chip” or “raspberry cheesecake,” as the wrappers promise. They taste like dog food.

Shari, from the food-is-fuel school, wants to know why I think I deserve to eat food that tastes good. This questions a belief so basic—at least in the United States—that somehow it makes me furious.

“Why should I have to eat food that tastes bad?” I almost whined.

“What if someone told you you had to eat the same three meals for the rest of your life or you’d die?” she asked. “You’d do it and not look back.”

“Right, but that’s not the case,” I said. OK, whined.

We reached an impasse on this. Stay tuned.

Kitchen makeover is scheduled for the end of this month, and I’m psyched.

When I talked to Kathleen, the spa chef, last night, I admitted I had only two pots, one of which—a hand-me-down from my mother—probably dates

from the Eisenhower administration. But Kathleen says she’s helped clients who think pots are for washing out panty hose, so apparently the fact that I’ve made pasta in mine means I’m ahead of the game.

Shape
is planning to bring a crew of nine—count ’em, nine—into my tiny studio apartment for this kitchen makeover session. A photographer, a food stylist, a prop stylist, a clothes stylist, a makeup artist, an editor, and I’m not even sure who else. They’re also bringing a caterer, which cracks me up.

Where are they going to put the food—in the bathroom?

Considering that
Shape
is sending someone to teach me how to make

“yummy” (the word the editor keeps using) low-fat food, I’ve been ponder-ing the deserving-food-that-tastes-good issue and why Shari’s suggestion that this is not a right of mine annoys me so much.

There’s the psychological explanation, about food being the thing I rely on for comfort and about food always having been the one thing I can rely on to be—to taste—good. But there’s more to it than that. I think the food-

Month 20 (August)

225

tasting-good issue also points at choices I don’t like to make or resent that I have to make. Food that tastes good (cheesecake, chocolate) versus being thinner.

And another set of choices: I don’t mind cooking but am pressed for time and don’t like to clean up. So I can decide to spare the time and suffer through the cleanup, and then I can make low-fat meals that taste good. Or I can decide I don’t have the time and deal with the consequences: prepack-aged or frozen low-fat things I don’t like the taste of or other simple foods (egg-white omelets, grilled chicken) that I’m sick of. Have to pick one—can’t have both. And I usually choose the latter.

Obviously, some compromises can be made, but essentially this is not an intellectual exercise, a logic problem to be solved. It’s not something I can think my way out of. These are the choices. Period.

Alexy was coming over tonight, so I had to race through the Safeway. Remind me always to plan to be somewhere after the supermarket. I had to grab things with such speed that I didn’t have time to so much as contemplate the cookie aisle.

When Alexy showed up, we fell into one of our usual discussions about dating, and I told her about Bacon Boy. Usually I think ambiguous situations involving men are Rorschach tests—a friend’s opinion of it almost always says more about her than about the guy or the situation. Your friend who is secretly still clinging to hope that some guy from two months ago will call her will always look for the positive; the friend who can’t tell her own boyfriend a thing will always give you detailed instructions for how to handle this particular guy; and so on.

But Alexy said the same thing both Mary and another friend had said: he’s insecure. Why don’t I look objectively at his hot-and-cold behavior and think that myself ? I wondered as Alexy spoke. Then I realized I knew the answer: it’s still a habit to look to myself for the cause of other people’s behavior, wondering what
I’ve
done.

Mary doesn’t like BB, the nickname for his nickname. She thinks he’s bad for me. She says he’s insecure—the perfect dance partner for my pathologi-cal minuet, I think wryly. BB flirts with me when he wants something and keeps me around because he needs to have someone think he’s all that.

The books I’ve read suggest that compulsive overeaters should stay away from relationships while they’re getting themselves sorted. I’ve been resisting the idea, though these days it makes more and more sense. It’s hard enough

226

The Weight-Loss Diaries

to figure out what I want—the internal compass I never had—without adding someone else to change the direction.

So my kitchen has been reorganized, but not in front of the camera. Someone finally got the message that the nine people required for this shoot would barely fit into my apartment, much less my kitchen. So we borrowed a kitchen twice the size of my entire apartment. If I were a reader, I’d look at it and think: if she can afford a kitchen of that size, why doesn’t she also hire a low-fat chef and a personal trainer?

For the camera I grated Parmesan cheese. I put berries on angel food cake. I cleaned the oven with a slightly bewildered expression on my face, probably because I’m not sure I’ve ever
used
my oven, much less cleaned it.

Mary saw an outtake from the oven-cleaning shot and immediately requested a copy for her refrigerator so she could have something that would make her laugh every morning.

The day after the shoot, I actually cooked things. Kathleen, the size 6, five-star spa chef, really did completely make over my kitchen—cleaned and reorganized and stocked it. I love my kitchen now, even though the clutter we removed from it is now all over the rest of my apartment.

I got a ton of new stuff: a Microplane grater, a baby Cuisinart, a Teflon pan. I learned how to make granola and also jicama and apple slaw and a bunch of other things I probably won’t remember how to do by tomorrow. I probably won’t even remember what jicama looks like.

Tonight I cohosted a happy hour with this guy I’ve been bumping into in the laundry room of my building for at least a year and a half. We’ve been talking about getting all of our friends together for months—a summit between Capitol Hill staffers (what Mr. Clean is) and journalists. A summit that, we’ve been joking, will change life as we know it, like FDR meeting Stalin in 1944 or Nixon meeting Mao in Beijing in 1971. Only in Washington can you make jokes this geeky.

I stayed chatting with two “Team Rubin” members—as Mr. Clean

referred to my half of the invite list—whom I don’t know superwell. I still find it amazing how people think of you in ways you would never think of yourself. When they found out I had a twin sister, both said variations of the same thing: that Diana and I must be so different because I’m “
so
social.”

Month 20 (August)

227

Then I went home and made a Kathleen recipe: two pieces of ginger lime chicken, one for tonight and one for lunch tomorrow.

I’m dreading going to Miami next week. I wish I could see Mom and

Grandma without the obligatory weekend of shopping (translation: talking about weight), eating out (translation: talking about food and weight and how much so-and-so has left over on her plate, if anything), and talking about the evils of diets in general and bread in particular.

I’m so sick of thinking about how to spend my calories so as to get the most bang for my buck. The thought that I’m going to have to do this daily sounds about as appealing as a steady diet of iceberg lettuce with no dressing. Will I ever be able to put something in my mouth again without thinking about whether it’s worth the calories?

Once upon a time, I thought I’d be willing to pay the price of admission to the thin club, no matter how high. Now I’m not always sure. Peeke refers to my current situation—having lost some weight but still with plenty to go—

as mile 21 of the marathon, but here’s the difference between the two: the marathon had a definite ending.

This page intentionally left blank.

Month 21 (September)

IN MIAMI

I used to call my mother Mom, but on this visit she has become Mother. As in “Not until you eat something, Mother” or “Take your medicine, Mother.”

I want to tell the whole rest of the world to be nice to her—that she’s sick—but I’m not very kind to her myself. Every time I snap at her I swear I’ll be patient with her for the entire rest of the visit, but my resolve never lasts long.

I’ve never seen her this bad. I can barely make eye contact with her. The circles under her eyes are huge, and the color of her skin looks terrible. She’s so thin. She’s so proud that she’s so thin, but Diana and I are horrified.

She seems to enjoy everyone’s making a fuss about her eating. I can hardly stand to watch her eat. I want to do everything for her, because I can’t bear to watch her do it herself. It seems to take forever for her to scoop the inside out of her bagel.

“Mother,” I want to yell, “you do not need to save calories by scooping out the inside of the bagel.” It takes even longer for her to slice leftover steak for a sandwich. Then she eats three bites and leaves it.

“I’m just not hungry anymore,” she says proudly.

Neither am I. I think this is the only time in my life I haven’t been able to eat. There’s a lump in my throat so huge even ice cream seems too much to swallow.

The world shrinks away here, and not in that vacation bubble way.

Instead it just seems like nothing else exists except the hour-by-hour of get-229

Copyright © 2004 by Courtney Rubin. Click here for terms of use.

230

The Weight-Loss Diaries

ting through the day—of arguing with Mom to eat, of making doctors’

appointments, of wondering what’s next.

As we were packing up to leave, I realized this was the first time Mom hadn’t asked before we got here: “What are you eating now?” She’s slipping more and more into her own world.

But still we talked about food, because there’s not much else to talk about. We talked about what the forty ingredients might be in the dipping sauce of an Outback Steakhouse Bloomin’ Onion, which my mother loves.

We talked about mayonnaise and how much Diana hates it. We talked about how Mom hated fish as a kid.

Food as connection. Again.

Mom didn’t want to eat. On the morning we left, she wanted to fuss about giving us disposable razors, the way she usually fusses over giving us coupons she’s clipped. I don’t use disposables and told her I didn’t want them.

“So you’ll have extra,” she snapped, which made me suddenly, inexplicably, very angry. I went into the other room and fumed to Diana that I didn’t want the damn razors. I just want her to be normal and fine for five minutes.

“She can’t help it,” Diana said.

Of course she can’t, but I was angry anyway. I hate this—hate all of it.

Hate that she’s here but not here. Hate that she wants to give us things but they’re the wrong things. Hate feeling guilty.

I went into the kitchen to get a drink, and when I came back, I saw Diana had left the razors on top of my suitcase. Defiantly, I hid them in the bathroom cabinet. Fifteen minutes later, I guiltily retrieved them and shoved them into my bag. When I got home, I put them in a drawer with all the other things I’ve gotten from Mom over the past year that I’ve been unable to make myself throw away: coupons that are expired before I’ve even received them because she forgets to mail them, little-girl-appropriate stationery I can’t find a use for, a glittery butterfly barrette I would never wear.

I came back from Florida to find an e-mail from “Jerri Rubin”—Mom—in my in-box. Except it wasn’t really from Mom. Diana had sent it while she was testing Mom’s Internet connection, which we both know Mom will never use but busied ourselves with anyway. Like her VCR clock that we programmed, it was something we could point to that we had accomplished—something concrete we could do.

I cried over this e-mail—this reminder of something that will never be.

It was a small thing, but I cried big, choking, snuffling sobs.

Month 21 (September)

231

For two days I cried off and on—all the tears I hadn’t cried over the weekend. I didn’t overeat or not eat. I didn’t try to stop crying or avoid crying. This, Shari says, is progress.

Sixteen-mile run with Cara that was, I think, the worst run I’ve ever had. We were both in poor spirits, especially when we got stopped on the trail by
Shape
readers. Cara was rolling her eyes, and I was slightly horrified. I like to hope I’m unrecognizable when I’m running—red-faced, slick with sweat, hair matted. I must look really charming in some of those magazine photos.

IN BOULDER, COLORADO

If I’d had a cell phone with me in the glider this afternoon, I would have called everyone I knew. I’m on another
Shape
assignment, though this one isn’t column-related. This is an “adventure weekend” in Boulder—four days of doing things that scare the crap out of me. Today, Day 1, was gliding. I’d been wavering about doing it all day—I was terrified. It requires no athletic ability—