Day 2

Missed my morning seminar, slept until 12 then had to manically scramble to get to this dumb study abroad meeting that actually turned out to be fine. But then I got a threatening email about attendance and my anxiety hit breaking point. Weirdly, this seemed to eradicate my appetite entirely.

There's such a strong correlation between anxiety and eating - for me at least. It seems that when I feel guilty, or like I've done something wrong, I either binge or stop wanting to eat entirely.

So until about 15.30 I hadn't eaten anything, no breakfast, nothing. I suppose this all had something to do with feeling like I'm in a perpetual state of intense stress and worry these days. It's like I'm constantly trying to make sure something doesn't go wrong, and when it does, I feel like I can't cope. So having this one area of my life under control (my eating) reduces my stress significantly. If I'm not eating, that's one less thing to worry about. There's nothing worse than life stress and binge eating combined.

At least, that's something I tell myself logically.

It's now 17.22. About half an hour ago I took some ritalin, 20mg worth. Plus vitamin D. I hope that will stave off my hunger and allow me to get engaged in something productive, some reading maybe.

After my meeting with the study abroad woman I went to meet L at the library. I love L. Even though I am not very good at being pleasant company when I feel this way, or even a particularly nice person.

Currently she is in the mode of trying to save money like me, and attempting to live off a shoestring budget. Both of us struggle with indulging in luxuries not fit for students, such as impulse purchases, taxis to and from campus, dinners out in town and expensive cigarettes.

For example, at the library after meeting L, I bought a ham and tomato sandwich even though I wasn't hungry. They're always so expensive. The only reason I ate this sandwich was that it was only something like 275 calories for the whole pack. Also, I had a moment of clarity, which was that I might feel extremely ill later if all I ingested throughout the day was coffee, diet coke and pills. The sandwich was, at the time, an example of me trying to be 'sensible', although I regret the fact that I ate it despite my bizarre lack of hunger.

The total of the sandwich, and the two coffees I bought on campus comes to 375. I don't think that's such a scary number, but I'll have to find something low-calorie for dinner.

Ultimately, I want to be someone who doesn't have to worry about any of this stuff anymore. There's a magic in the maths of the whole thing, but maths doesn't interest me as much as art does. I often wish that I didn't have to consider my body and all its functions at all - thinking about my body makes me grimace. But I know that if I lock into the maths now, and commit to it fully, it might not have to matter ever again. Then I get to experience everything wonderful that happens after the hard graft is up - art, beauty, calm, peace, wisdom, control.

--UPDATE

20.24 - The ritalin wore off and I got hungry, so made pea soup for dinner (frozen peas; chicken stock; water; creme fraiche; pepper) and it tastes divine. 120 cals for the whole lot. There's something heavenly about making a low cal dinner from scratch with ingredients from the kitchen. Store bought soups are convenient but always seem to have such a high sodium content.

The fear is always that once you open the gate to eating, you won't stop.

Going to crawl into bed and read for an hour...

--UPDATE

22.19 and I'm done for the day. Made a fruit sorbet out of frozen berries, which came to 60 cals, then ate a salad with a tbsp philadelphia and balsamic vinegar. It's become customary to pour hot sauce over every salad I make, because it has 0 calories and makes everything taste explosive.

Then ate half a wrap with cream cheese, because for some reason after all that food, I actually felt properly hungry for the first time all day. So today's total came to 695. That's not very much, compared to what I was eating before, but it's not as good as it could have been. Tomorrow my limit will be 600 max.