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.