The scales budged a fraction to 167.9, although I don't know whether the reading was correct. Certainly I woke up (at 8.30 am, bright and breezy as if I'd had a long and restful sleep) with my head filled with dreams of locating to New York forever, and going to school here, and being the perfect child of my parents, with a part-time job at some kind of fashionable boutique in town, and an elegant capsule wardrobe reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn's. Sometimes I really wish I was a rich kid, although I feel the repercussions of my friends' experiences just as they do - someone's father cut them off: No more money for you, until you sort yourself out, and get your head together, and show me you can be independent. And ironically this morning, whilst we were out getting a coffee from the local organic cafe near our apartment, was the moment my own father decided to tell me that it was no longer okay to sponge off him financially. My university accommodation costs a third more than it did last year, and thus far I haven't been able (or have been refusing) to contribute. But I'm twenty-one, a good two years older than most of the second and first-years I know, and I see his point. I don't want to be a dependent either. It makes me feel insecure and young and humiliated. He said my sister (just recently eighteen) would be getting the same treatment and talk when she starts to move on in the world. The problem, from my point of view, is that my sister will remain in her cosy cocoon forever, cushioned by my parents because perhaps she's worth it more than I am. And I am not self-pitying - but she is the one out of the two of us with an agent, and a career planned out. On the other hand, I spend the majority of my time flailing about the direction my life is taking - I want to succeed; I don't know how to succeed; life is moving too quickly; I might as well not try at all.

The odd thing about my sister and I, from a psychological standpoint, is that we oppose each other somewhat perfectly. While she is small (5'8" and an American size 2) and takes up a lot of space in terms of personality, I am big but spend the majority of my time trying to hide it. On Saturday, whilst shopping with my sister's manager in a vintage flea market, I chose to walk through the mirror stalls and rows of useless dysfunctional objects in order to avoid the clothes section. Upon hearing me make the point that I would prefer to hide more often than not, that that has become my default, her manager responded that if I want to hide, I should. That is not the sort of advice one gives to someone with crushingly low self-esteem; it's the sort of advice that perpetuates the whole thing. God help me if I try to do anything else but hide. 

I find myself wondering, then, whether my compulsion to hide or make myself appear smaller is due to my own complexes, or due to others' encouragement of this sort of behaviour. In the past, my experiences of letting myself appear as loud and hungry and childish as I feel have always resulted in bad feedback. My weight, or rather my weight gain, is often the only way I am allowed to take up space in our family.

The aim is always, is it not, to take up less space physically in order to allow oneself wiggle room when it comes to expressing emotions. No one wants to hear an overweight girl complaining about her problems. But when a thin woman expresses her anger, her hurt or her joy, she's met with a very different reaction. This was something I observed at school. The fat girls who cried were shunned (and there weren't many of them); the thin girls who cried or yelled or complained were always coveted and immediately reassured.

I applied, on a whim, to the study abroad international exchange offered in the second year. Amongst my list of selected schools sit the Ivy League, which represents a whole other kettle of fish. Wouldn't it be just so, to spend a year at an Ivy League school, to study under great professors and mingle with the rich and pretty just one last time? I miss the upper-class education I so despised as an adolescent. I'd like a second chance to fit in, to wear pearl earrings at the weekends, to eat brunch in brasseries in Kensington, and to know that my life was just one fabulous thing after another.

As it stands, I feel pretty fucking average, and it's about time that changed.

Today's intake:

-2 tbsp peanut butter (250)

-Ruby red grapefruit juice (200)

-Apple (80)

-Soy latte (100)

-Vegan banana muffin (300?)

-Greek salad (500) 

-Smoked cheese (250)

-Chorizo (200)
-Almonds (250)

Total - 2130 calories 

I'm not going to feel bad about that number because the majority of what I ate was healthy, Paleo, protein-dense foods, and way below the kind of numbers I've been hitting this week. I'm going to try to move away from grains like bread, crackers, etc. unless I come in way below my calorie deficit. 

I feel like the smoothies were a really great thing in my diet, so as soon as I'm back at university I'll start incorporating those again. The ideal is, eventually, to be able to burn enough calories through high-intensity exercise like kickboxing and running that I can eat 2000 calories a day of smoothies, salads, good quality/free range meat and eggs, and nuts without gaining weight. I'd rather overexert myself physically and sleep better, look better while eating more, than look skinny and malnourished. Part of me thinks that I'd look even better at 70 kgs whilst exercising a lot and eating Paleo, than not exercising and dieting at 65. 

We're back on Thursday so that will cut out all of the restaurant food (I can't afford to eat out that much at home, boo). Excited to launch into a good long stretch of eating high protein and exercising again. 

I'm in New York. Didn't have the luxury of a scale for the first week, but I knew I was getting heavier. What else does one expect, when living off a diet of gourmet dinners and diner food? Plus I ate my weight in sweets over Christmas. It's basically impossible to count a thing I eat here, due to restaurant portions and not knowing how much oil is on everything, etc. But at a guess I'd say I'm eating closer to 3000 calories a day than 2000. Which, quite frankly, is hideous.

And what is even more hideous is that I finally stepped on a scale I found in our apartment here, this afternoon. After eating only 250 calories' worth of peanut butter and a sip of orange juice, I'm up to 170 lbs (77 kgs). Lesson of the day - don't count on exercise to keep your weight down. I've been walking around eight hours a day since I got here all around the city, running up and down the stairs in our apartment building, running for trains... and I've gained 3 kilos in a week.

I'm panicking and want to cry. My first response whenever this sort of thing happens is to quickly and automatically draw up a damage control plan, consisting of extreme restriction and a little help from my good friends Ex-Lax and Tranquilyn. But here's the deal. I've never been this big before. And I don't know that the fuck to do this time.

The failsafe way to proceed would be to cut to 1500 calories a day, live off protein and coffee, start working out, and pray it comes off. The problem is I'm not back home until Thursday, and then it's a rollercoaster three days' worth of socialising before I have to jump on a train back to University Land and settle into the change of environment quickly enough so as not to disrupt schoolwork. My dream - as it always is when the end of a holiday is drawing near - had been to come back at the start of Term 2 weighing less than 150 lbs. 20 lbs is not going to happen in the space of a week. But maybe 10 lbs will, and it's worth a try.

So the last few days have been pretty bad food-wise; the day before last I binged on a takeaway veggie burger and chips, which set me up to 74.8, and yesterday I met up with an old friend in town. Despite subsisting off of black coffee all day with L., later drunken escapades in Soho led me to devour a greasy shitty burger from Burger King - with all the extra trimmings. Strangely (and perhaps only due to the alcohol dehydration), I maintained 74.8. But I also slept for 13 hours.

It's annoying that more sleep leads one to more efficient weight loss, but not to a more functional existence. One would think, in the logical sense, that more hours awake = more fat burnt. But logic seems to go out of the window when it comes to weight loss, and more time awake is not in fact conducive to burning more fat in the slightest. This is unfortunate, because I'd like to be a part of the human race some day, but that seems to require waking up prior to two p.m. and getting enough time in the evening to do shit and talk to people, something I haven't yet mastered.

We're going out to celebrate my sister's birthday in advance, because tomorrow the two of us fly to New York to meet my dad. I've only had 100 calories' worth of strawberry yogurt, a glug of orange juice, and an americano w cream and Splenda - it's almost 6pm. Granted I take enough Ritalin, I'm sure I'll be able to skimp with just a raw salad for dinner. Restaurants terrify me.

Insomnia has made a vicious return. Tossed and turned for like 3 hours last night before finally settling into a half-slumber, and my head was pounding when I woke up six hours later. I've had this permanent headache since I got back and I'm starting to wonder whether it's psychosomatic, because it comes back whenever I'm stressed out or trying to get to sleep. I've been popping painkillers like there's no tomorrow but yeah, anyway, screwy body not working with me but against me. I presume it's a detox symptom of sorts, from cutting a bunch of shit out of my diet since I returned home from university. The amount of takeout I was living on was disgusting.

72 is so close, only a kilo away, and I think it'll be a number that, ironically, I'll be happy to see. Not because I feel thin there, but because of the associations. At the start of summer last year, I ate my way up to 72 in a depressive feeding frenzy, but went to LA for a month and managed to drop to 65 without much difficulty at all. I definitely think it's a hurdle number, a plateau of sorts, that once broken past gives way to faster weight loss and a speedy entry into the high 60s - and that's where I last remember feeling "comfortable". Not thin necessarily, but lighter in my step, confident enough to show off legs and arms. In general, I couldn't be more thankful for winter, allowing me to bundle up under a million layers that hide the areas I hate. But fear is the best motivator, and fear is always there when you know that it'll be shorts weather soon. Shorts have always put the fear of God in me. 

I know I need to start exercising. It sounds like an excuse, but cardio outdoors is just an impossibility in the current zero degree climate that is London right now. Actually, today wasn't too cold, and I could actually get away without the scarf and gloves for once, but in general it's been freezing... so no, jogging can wait until the spring. I should probably do some crunches or something. Although I don't feel like that will make any difference. In less than three weeks I'm back at uni, anyway, and I'm signed up to the gym there (I have been squandering my £21-a-month membership since October). I want to start kickboxing again, because I used to do it when I was eighteen and loved it. I think there are a few classes near where I go to school, in town, so I'll definitely look into it when I get back. I like the idea of angry exercise. I can't imagine feeling peaceful or relaxed while exercising. Punching things is a form of exercise I can deal with. 

Today I had around 1300 again, which isn't as low as I would have liked, but the smoothie I made for breakfast contained more calories than I'd predicted because I used full-fat yogurt instead of fat-free. I'm getting to a point where fat is starting to freak me out again, way more than carbs and sugar do. I should really start buying everything fat free. Besides yogurt and cheese, I don't really consume fat anymore, at least not for the past 10 days. My diet mainly consists of chicken salad sandwiches, smoothies, cups and cups of black coffee and diet coke, small portions of whatever's being made for supper, and apparently now wine. But I want to cut the wine habit because it's draining, on top of everything else.

The goal is really to end up eating like a normal-but-health-conscious person. Thinking back to LA last summer, I wasn't really consuming anything but frozen yogurt, coffee with soy milk, lunches consisting of bags of SunBites or cashew nuts and too many cans of diet coke, and the occasional large vegan takeout for dinner. I ate a lot of salad and sushi, and avoided cheese like the plague. Plus I was working out for half an hour every day in the living room, doing calisthenics and stuff. I really need to get back into that. I went from 72 to 65 in a matter of weeks. I've done it before, I can do it again.

I feel positive about this. 

Weight loss has slowed, for now. I'm aware that this happens: the water weight goes, and then everything stabilises for a bit, and it's frustrating as hell. But I'm sick of the 70s. 4 more kilos, and I'm back in my safe zone. Whatever "safe" means.

Currently drinking a bottle of wine, and eating non-fat Swiss cheese, and hoping that at some point tonight I'll pass out. All I ate in the day was a cup of mango yogurt, 1 tangerine, 1/2 a cup of cereal, 2/3 of a soy latte, and 2 black coffees with Splenda. Then I got home at 9, and ate a plate of macaroni cheese, because I was starving, and part of me doesn't regret it because it was delicious and I finally got the warmth back into my fingers. But now I'm drinking this shitty Spanish wine I wasted money on and eating more cheese (low-fat, but not low enough). I hate drinking alone, and I know I shouldn't do it, but I felt so wired up until I started. I just needed something to take the edge off.

I have a fear that I will never change. That I'll always stay in this state of dependence (on my vices and other people), and slip into some kind of permanent slump I'll never be able to remove myself from. I want to change my appearance and personality dramatically, although I don't know how. I know that it starts with my mindset though, and trying to stop this self-pity crap. No one will have time for me in the future. I can't stay screwed up forever.

Technically speaking, I only ate around 1300 calories today, and that's not enough to cause weight gain. Emotionally, I can't shake the feeling that I've undone all my hard work in the space of one night. This is how I get at 2 a.m. I start believing things that aren't true, or logical. I wonder where my logic went.

Within the time frame that I have, it is logical to assume that I will be able to drop these last 5 kilos by the end of the Christmas holiday (January 5). But as far as I'm aware, bottles of wine and several slices of Swiss cheese past midnight has never been that conducive to weight loss, so I should probably stop. The question is, as it always has been - will 68 kilos be enough?

Probably not, but we'll address that at a later date.

So it's 7.30, and I've only had 400 calories so far, comprising of some raspberry yogurt, a banana, 1/2 cup of bran cereal and diet coke. I have the most tremendous headache, but it feels worth it, because I stepped on the scales and saw that I'd lost 4 kgs since I got back a week ago.

Currently my weight is 73. At 5'9", that puts my BMI at 23.9, "healthy". A week ago, I was technically overweight by BMI standards, which seems absurd, that you can be fat one week and normal the next. But I guess BMI is stupid, and doesn't take into account muscle, or body composition, or bone density. Still, it's an adequate marker for where I want my weight to be. In the first term of uni, I weighed around 62 kgs after having had the flu, which put my BMI at 20, but I could see my ribs. I guess the initial goal is 68, where my weight remained for the entirety of the second term, where I could wear dresses and short skirts and tights and not feel monstrous - "only 5 kgs less than I am now". But 5 kgs is a lot, and now I've lost the initial water weight, it's only going to get harder. But my goal still stands. I want 68 by the first week back at school, in January, and that's three weeks away.

Presently and in the past, weight loss - for me - has never become noticeable until I lose more than 6 kgs, which is a stone. I'm not expecting anyone to notice, but I suspect they will if I return to university less bloated and in decidedly snazzier attire than last term. That's the aim here. It's not be a sad little thin girl with no energy or motivation, who takes an hour to eat a cereal bar. My aim is to be triumphant, and to have nothing to complain about anymore. I wore a dress today for the first time since summer, with tights and thick socks rolled over boots. I looked "feminine", a word I haven't equated with myself since I first got to university. I know I'm still fat, but I won't be for long. And when I get to 68, the next goal will be lower, and I'll keep going until I finally feel confident enough to wear and eat whatever the fuck I want and not be self-conscious. Summer in this country is a nightmare.

Yesterday the total came to around 1150. So far I've been able to lose on 1300-1500, which is still under my deficit because I'm tall, but I know that as it gets harder to lose, the calories will have to go down too. I'm training myself, conditioning my body to need less and still function as it did before. That's the thing. I haven't felt functional for an entire term, even though my intakes have bordered around the 2300 mark. I guess when you eat too much and gain weight, functionality decreases just the same as it would when you eat too little. You start craving 14 hours sleep and panting on the fifteen minute walk to lectures, and God knows that's not healthy.

Today has been rough. I had multiple arguments with my mother, who seems to revel in blaming her unhappiness on my unhappiness, completely disregarding the fact that whilst at university my ups and downs of emotion have positively zero effect on her life and relationships. I've been intermittently crying and shouting all day, storming out of the house twice and now finally in my room, trying to distract myself with Lost and talking to old London friends.

I want to say to her, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for being a fuck-up. I'm sorry for messing up your life. I'm sorry for sucking the joy out of your day. But then the other half of me just thinks: screw all of you. I'm depressed and I'm not apologising. So why don't you just leave me alone to my misery, and my days spent in bed, and my insular world. Just leave me alone because I know you can't handle it.

No one can handle it, especially not me. I think I am borderline bipolar by medical standards, and need to go back into psychotherapy. I get these intense waves of euphoria that come crashing down so hard in the space of just a few hours. I don't know who I am anymore, and sometimes, I wonder if imitation is all I'm good at. I'm just playing a part and sleep-walking through life, hoping someone will notice and pull me out of the hole. But no one ever does, not for long enough anyway. I guess it's not their responsibility, it's mine.

I ate two scrambled eggs on toast, with ketchup, and then a chicken salad sandwich, even though I didn't want it. Then there was the black coffee chock-full of sweetener that I downed while I was out, along with three cigarettes. I was just chaining outside Starbucks, waiting to calm down. I couldn't go back into the house in that state.

So that's around 550 calories, and it's only 6pm. I want to go down and spend time with my mother, but I know that she can't stand to be around me. She said so herself.

Stopped blogging for several reasons. The first was that my flatmates kept coming into my room in the second term, and I'd often work in the kitchen and leave my laptop there, and I got paranoid about things again. I got paranoid about people googling my email address from university. I was just paranoid.

So now I'm here but I'm posting basically into a void. Currently this blog is just for me, which is both liberating and bewildering in equal measure. I'm posting again because I need a place to keep track of intakes, sleep and behaviour again since Tumblr/Instagram is way too public.

Tentatively, the goal is to stop needing things so badly. I realised recently that I need so many things just to depend on or use as a crutch. If it's not alcohol it's cigarettes, or food, and if it's not any or all of the above, it's trying to control things to the point of megalomania and exhaustion. Then this term, I needed so much sleep. I don't know why, maybe because I started smoking 15+ cigarettes a day again, and didn't work out, and was depressed to the point of staying in bed for as long as possible, so I had no energy. It was weird. And then food. I want to see food as fuel, nothing more. Or at least only feel the desire to eat when I'm hungry, and allow a busy schedule to overrule those cues to eat. I don't want to need anything from anyone or anything. I don't even want to need sleep, although that's a whole other issue I'll get into later. (NB: 6 hours is be a very satisfying amount to get adjusted to every night because it leaves you looking attractively gaunt but still functional.)

I'm gearing my brain and body up for the start of second term. I switched courses, to English. The weight gain is palpable. But it's not so bad. (Not so bad? A year ago I would have cringed at this weight.)

The point is, I'm going to fix it. Thinking of launching into some kind of 40-day stretch like Jesus in the desert. The 7 kilos weight loss I'm aiming for is not, by any measures, a ridiculous goal.