Day 4

W: 163.8. Progress. Sort-of.

Breakfast
-- 1 fried egg with mustard (100)
-- 1 cup elderflower cordial (30)
-- Small plum (20)

Lunch
-- Diet Coke (1)
-- 2 soy espresso frappuccinos (x)
-- Bite of a pastrami sandwich (~30)

Dinner
Salad:
-- 1/2 lettuce (7)
-- "Bacon" pieces (100)
-- Caesar dressing (250)
-- Roast chicken pieces (105)

Extras
-- Gum (25)
-- 1 glass champagne (x)

Total: ~668 calories

I had an amazing day up until this evening. I'll start with the good. So it is boiling in London, as I mentioned. In a sort of I-can't-move-too-fast-or-I'll-die kinda way. I got up around 1pm again drenched in sweat. That was pleasant. Anyway, I ended up having a great afternoon. All I had was the egg with mustard and a piece of fruit until 5pm, when I decided I couldn't take the heat anymore and splurged £2.50 on a huge bucket of Diet Coke with ice from Nando's. Okay, it wasn't a bucket, but there was like 750ml of Coke in there. It was so worth it. I sucked the whole thing down and smoked a bunch of cigarettes while talking to Lina on the phone, while we both respectively sweated our asses off from our different locations. Probably for the best because sweaty isn't too hot on fatties, or so I hear.

So then after I'd peed like a racehorse I floated down to Starbucks to meet Caro and Tina. When I say floated, I mean to say I literally dream-walked in a foggy haze for about ten minutes because a) I was very hungry but ignoring it (note-to-self: don't mention The Diet to friends) and b) it was probably about thirty degrees outside. Again. Anyway, I cooled down internally after consuming the Starbucks (icy, creamy, caffeine-laden goodness - thank the Lord for not counting coffee calories because I most definitely needed those frappuccinos. Or so I'm telling myself...).

That was all great. We had a mega catch-up, a much needed conversation about how our respective lives had been going. I haven't seen Caro in six months. She looked like a goddess, as always. We went to Tesco and I escaped with buying 2 tins of low-cal soup and lettuce while C bought a big pastrami/gherkin/mustard deli sandwich. She offered me a bite and I savoured it, realising this is what the other side now tastes like - heavenly - and I'm not a part of that anymore. A 500-calorie sandwich is now over half my intake.

Everything was fine until I sat down and had dinner with my mum. I don't usually walk around the house half naked but I was in my bra and underwear all evening, simply because it was too damn hot. Then as we were sitting on the sofa with a glass of bubbly each she starts talking about the gym thing - how it'll be great for me to get fit, and get "back into shape". I paused and asked her if she thought I looked overweight. Her response? "You could lose a few pounds. Especially on your legs."

Well, if there were ever any doubt before, now I'm certainly not eating those all-butter croissants I glimpsed downstairs in the bread bin.

>.<

I'll have legs like these before you know it.

Day 3

W: 164.4. So -4 lbs in 3 days. Oh how I missed being home, and restricting...

Intake so far today:

Breakfast
-- 1/2 bowl cereal with skim milk (200)
-- Innocent orange/mango smoothie (99)

Lunch
-- 2 iced coffees from Starbucks (x)
-- Diet Coke (1)
And quite a few cigarettes whilst talking to Lina on the phone, which gave me a nice little nicotine rush.

Dinner
-- (Yet to have; am thinking a big salad with all the trimmings. Plus a bit of whatever my mum cooks. Shouldn't exceed 400 cals)

The day has gone very well. I woke up at 1pm and snoozed for a bit before I decided to get up and get going. The weather in London is glorious. Almost 30 degrees I think. Very very hot, and sunny, and clear. I was pouring with sweat on the way home from Starbucks but I felt like I was working out as I was walking, which was great. After I had my coffees I went around Tesco to do a mini shop for the next week. Got some staple items:

• A huge tub of fat-free plain yogurt (1kg and it cost me £1. It's 45 cal for 1 cup.)
• Big punnet of black plums 
• 250g tub of grated carrots
• Salad cream (20 cal per tbsp)
• Iceberg lettuce
• "Bacon" salad sprinkles 
• Mustard  
• Corn thins (like rice cakes but more buttery-tasting)
• Stevia sweetener 

For some reason, I feel like I can do this. It's 7.30pm and I've subsisted off 300 calories all day. Also, as I was walking round the supermarket, I felt a little dizzy but in a good way. It was like the hunger high kicked in. A little reminder that feeling hungry can be a good thing sometimes. I don't remember, genuinely, the last time I felt hungry. Just a sign of how I've been catering to my impulses for the last year and given little thought as to how empty/full I actually feel. 

Tentatively, the plan for tomorrow is as follows:

B: - Fat-free yogurt with Stevia, frozen (100) and 4 plums (100) 

L: - Coffee (seeing Caro and Tina for a much needed catch-up), rice cakes if I need them (100)

S: - Diet Coke, cigarettes, caffeine pills.

D: - Big salad, bit of whatever is cooked for dinner (400 max).

Will update later if I get a chance. Feeling in control and like this evening will go fine though. Also I've got to get on with joining that gym...

EDIT:

Had a big salad for dinner:

-- 1/2 iceberg lettuce (7)

-- Spiralized carrot (100)

-- "Bacon" salad sprinkles (200) <-- these are actually vegetarian

-- Grating of parmesan (50)

-- Lite salad cream (60)

(417 cal)

Which brings today's total up to 717 cal. For some reason feel like I ate a lot more than that, probably because the salad was so filling. This feels like progress.

If I eat anything else today it will be something like fruit or more lettuce with those bacon things. They are the bomb...

Day 2

Weight: 166.0

Breakfast:
-- Toast with butter (100 cals)
-- Scrambled eggs (150 cals)
-- Mustard (5 cals)

Lunch:
-- Diet coke (1 cal)
-- Activia nonfat peach yogurt (70 cals)
-- Crisps/chips (~200 cals)
-- Ham and mayo sandwich (280 cals)
-- Soy espresso frappuccino (x)

Dinner:
-- Beef stew (~300 cals)
-- Caesar salad - lettuce, tomatoes, dressing (50 cals)
-- 1/2 Kinder Bueno (122 cals)
-- 1 glass champagne (x)

Total:
-- (~1278)

I'm back at home. It feels odd but very, very comforting. Like this whole year never happened and I'm 19 again, sitting in my little loft bedroom contemplating the future. It's nice.

The perks of being home include:

1. Friends. Old friends, who I miss horribly while I'm away. Tina, Caro, Bash and others are on hand. This means a minimum of three social Starbucks a week which is, quite frankly, a god-send, considering how depressed I can get after weeks of no company;
2. Less (junk) food in the fridge/cupboard. The worst we ever have is crisps, or cereal, but that's it.
3. More structured days and therefore mealtimes: no one in my family eats their last meal much later than 8, and everyone's in bed before midnight. Even here as I write this it's 12.30 a.m. and the house is quiet (my mother has work early tomorrow morning, my sister's abroad) so I can't just sneak down for food in the middle of the night. I have to be satisfied with dinner.
4. There are several gyms down the road from me, with ridiculously cheap membership costs. One is £15 a month or something. I might not be able to afford much but I can definitely afford that, so it might not be as hard to get fit this summer as I thought. 
5. I don't have any work, which means working harder on this.

I need to get under my self-imposed limit tomorrow. It's not that freaking hard to shave 300 calories throughout the entire day. Glad I lost though. I feel like 160 is within my grasp. Clearly my metabolism's running higher than usual so I'm going to take advantage and shock my body over the next week. I hope.  

Day 1

Weighed 167.2 lbs this morning, so down a lb from yesterday. I don't know how that happened, with the late night port and roast chicken, but it did so I'm not complaining.
 
Tentatively, the plan is to go a little mad over the next three months. It's the summer holidays, which means no school, no commitments, and generally the kind of social interaction that merely involves coffee and/or vodka. So I'm taking advantage and shooting for a large amount of weight loss before October. Or, more specifically, before I turn 22 at the end of September. I don't have a "goal weight" so to speak. I guess I'm seeing, in a morbidly curious way, how far I can push it before people start to pick me up on it. It's so easy these days to say I've lost or gained weight out of stress, or eating "healthy". I don't consider 170 lbs to be healthy so that statement makes me laugh.

Intake:

-- Potato salad, leftovers (150 cals)
-- 2 pieces of toast with butter and jam (250 cals)
-- Diet coke (1 cal)
-- Espresso frappuccino, soy (x*)
-- 1/3 olive pesto panini (100 cals)
-- Roast chicken breast w/mayo (175 cals)
-- Bite of bagel w/avocado and lime (~30 cals)
-- Sushi pack, vegetarian (230 cals)
-- Sweets (90 cals)
-- Mango (30 cals)
-- Port (x)
-- 3 L water (0 cal)

-- Total (1056)

* I don't count coffee, which might sound a little counter-productive but it's generally my one treat, and the soy milk helps me get in stuff like B12 that I don't get from anywhere else. Plus, it's caffeine, which - at least in my mind - cancels some of those calories out. I also don't count alcohol, unless it's Baileys or something equally calorific. Lucky for me neither coffee nor booze have ever contributed to any weight gain I've experienced, so unless not counting them proves unhelpful in the future, for now I'll consider them "nil".

I shouldn't have had the 1/3 panini, but Lina and I went to Starbucks. I don't know why I feel this need to nibble on everything. I'd always rather have a bite of ten different things than a full meal. It does me no favours.

I'm thinking of subsisting off sushi, coffee and wine for the next three months. I definitely drink more coffee at home, which will be good in terms of curbing hunger and replacing meals. I like the idea of chain-drinking black coffee every morning for breakfast to kick my metabolism up the butt. And making fresh smoothies. I've really fallen off the fruit and veg wagon, but all that's going to change soon when I realise a mono meal of fresh fruit is almost always more satisfying and efficient than fatty carby goodness from Starbucks will ever be.

Today I really wanted to stop eating after 8 but I had that sushi. I definitely am going to stop eating after 10pm every day, as a base rule. The only things that will pass my lips after dinner will be alcohol, tea, water and diet coke. I'd like to condition myself into considering San Pellegrino and an apple "lunch". Today yes, I exceeded my limit. Only by a fraction but I'm justifying it by telling myself I'll be home in two days, where I can successfully restrict to my heart's content. I seem to buy, and eat less there naturally. Plus I can get away with eating maybe like, a salad for dinner if I want. It will be easy there. And too hot to want to overeat.

I have to pack for London. There's shit all over my room. Pill packets and empty bottles and clothes strewn everywhere. Just got some Port from the fridge and a cup of Diet Coke, and shared some of those sweets with Lina. I like that sweets are fat-free. They don't bother me as much as regular food.

Some late night thoughts

It's 3am on Saturday morning, and I'm still up at my desk drinking Port. I don't know why we even bought the Port, but I've had two glasses of it tonight and it's made me tipsy. Ridiculous. Lina didn't feel well, so she lay down on my bed and fell asleep about two minutes afterwards. That was around 1.30 and she's still asleep so I thought I'd take the opportunity to post with some thoughts. I guess what I'm realising is that ever since I stopped losing weight, or trying to lose weight I have felt like there was this huge hole in my life. For a while, and intermittently I was able to fill that hole with various creative projects, but recently I've realised I can't just be okay with merely writing a little, and surviving. It's not enough for me. I can read every book, write a novel, make a film and still that won't be enough for me because I'm not my life's work anymore. I used to dream that by the time I reached my twenties I would have made myself into some kind of work of art. I look at myself today and just think that I'm an average person. People used to look twice at me; now I sort of blend into the background. At least that's how it feels. When I think about next year, with the apartment and everything, I think of how I will fit into that aesthetic.

I have fantasies of coming back after the three month summer holiday 30 lbs lighter. In fact, 20 lbs would be fucking fantastic, but we'll see how it goes. The new plan is as follows --

-- Under 1000 calories per day
-- Tons of water and caffeine
-- Planned meals

This shit starts tomorrow. I need to get back there. I will.

Just another day 0

So. 168.2 lbs on the scales today. A little gain but it's not surprising since I stayed up until literally 7am with Lina and drank. Baileys happened. So did vodka. And doughnuts. Oops. God I never eat that kind of food, but I'm sure it put my limit up to something like 2000. Ugh. Anyway...

Intake so far --

-- 2 bagels, toasted + butter (600 cals - dear God)
-- 1/2 "mean greens" green smoothie (92 cals)
-- Pita bread with hoummous (230 cals)
-- Diet coke (1 cal)
-- Cinnamon cereal with lite soy milk (180 cals)

-- (1,103)

I need to find some way to curb my addiction to carbs. It may just be the end of term situation I've found myself in, where I have very little money and all I seem to have in the cupboard is bread and cereal. I guess the bagels were somewhat of a mistake. But at least until I started recently posting again, I kind of stopped counting calories in the moment. I used to be so aware of every bite of food I put into my mouth. Over the last year I just shovelled in whatever was around and never paid much attention to quantities during the act of eating. Later on I'd clock up estimates and get freaked out at how much I'd actually consumed, but I guess a part of me just selectively forgot about it. Then I gained fifteen pounds and wound up here, so I suppose I'm paying for it in some ways now, but mostly I'm trying to forgive myself for the last year. I was pretty much a major depressive up until the recent Easter vacation, so it's no wonder calorie-counting went out the window.

It's so muggy in England. Seriously, I open the window and there's zero breeze. Then when we were walking to the supermarket to buy ingredients for waffles (not my idea) my jumper was like, sticking to my back. Anyway. A note on the waffles - I just got off the phone to my mother and now our flatmates are doing some kind of flat dinner thing with a film. I might just have half a waffle because then we're eating real food afterwards. Oh God, it's 11pm. I have got to get my shit together.

PS. Took some photos in the full-length mirror today, this was the best one. I guess the weight gain isn't as horrifically obvious as I thought it was, which is vaguely comforting. Being 5'9 does have some perks at least. Still, my tentative goal is to be back to 158 by the next round of shooting (7th July). Thunder thighs be gone.

Drive

So the last scene for the 1st half of shooting is a wrap. To be honest, it didn't go great. The d.p. - whom I will call Drive not only for the sake of anonymity, but because he talks relentlessly about the Ryan Gosling film and usually nothing else - turned out to be a bit of an a-hole. A total a-hole, in fact, which is a shame because at points I thought I might quite like him; which would have been fine, except he has some kind of personality disorder that renders him incapable of actually understanding other humans. There were several offences that led to this discovery of Drive being an unreliable and selfish person to keep around. Besides his general toxicity on set, he refused to pay for or contribute towards anything during his stay, he didn't thank anyone before he left, and then he ran over Lina's laptop with his car. Unbelievable.
 
We secured the trendy town flat today. Lina brought something to my attention that I realised explained, in part, why I gain and lose weight in the phasic, bipolar way that I do. The times when I've lost the most amount of weight (or most successfully dieted) have been during instances in which I have felt independent. Now that Drive is out of my hair, we don't have a stupidly early shooting schedule anymore, and I'm going home to London before the next round of shooting, I'm going to take advantage and diet my ass off for the next two weeks.

Found some very interesting things reading back over this blog. The most notable thing is that since I weighed a recorded 156 pounds at one point two years ago, I have only gained 1 inch on each measurement (waist and hips). Which leads me to believe that a large proportion of the weight gain was actually muscle mass, which is denser and heavier than fat. This makes sense, as I can still fit my size 12 jeans. I guess the point is that if I were 156 pounds again, I'd look thinner than last time. That's the aim anyway.

Today's been a slob day, but a nice one. I've haven't done much besides lounge around with Lina in bed. We went out for a drink, and had some smokes and a happy conversation. We're both so excited about next year. I can't wait to just have my own space and dictate my own schedule. I still feel very much like a child in student accommodation, which has probably been a major reason why I compensated with over-spending on food (food no student should be able to afford, and which I couldn't afford but bought anyway out of boredom and self-hatred). This morning I weighed 168.0 lbs. I know I can get down to 166 by the beginning of next week. The first couple of pounds are nothing, and I'm looking forward to the initial thrill that comes with the first week of restricting.

Intake:

-1/2 a bagel + Vitalife (150 cals)
-Kalamata olives (50 cals)
-2 glasses of orange juice (200 cals)
-2 pieces of toast with jam (170 cals)
-Peach bellini (95 cals)
-Iced latte, skinny (90 cals)
-1/2 pack Hula Hoops (60 cals)

So that's 815 cals so far and it's midnight. I'd like to start getting back into not eating after 10pm, or somewhere around then, but seeing as I woke up so late (mid-afternoon) I'm gonna make dinner in about ten minutes. Probably shouldn't be more than 500 calories so keeping under 1500 today and that will be the lowest intake I've had in literally months. I broke my vegan detox yesterday - a month later and I'm seriously craving protein. So we're gonna make some eggs and toast, she's going to have smoked salmon and I will have some honey-roast ham. And hollandaise sauce. Perfection on a plate. Maybe it will be less than 500 cals, who knows.

Rushes

167.6 lbs. Don't know how I've managed to gain, but I have, so I have to deal with it. As soon as humanly possible. I actually hit 156 pounds earlier this term. Granted, I was sick but still. It was a start. Oh well, it's gone now. So I have to get my act together. Start restricting like the good old days. I don't know what my plan is yet. I suppose the plan is just to toughen the fuck up, eat well (and vegan), and count every calorie meticulously. That's what worked last time, right? I don't even know anymore. I don't remember what it feels like to be thin. Or anything less than bursting out of my old favourite jeans.

My eating schedule is weird because of filming, but I could learn to work around it. It gives me a license to not eat all day, subsist off of an olive here and a diet coke there, but my problem is that I automatically pig out the minute I get home in the evening. Like today: all I consumed during the day was half a sandwich, three crackers, a spoonful of couscous, a slice of watermelon, and a shit ton of caffeine. I wasn't even physically hungry, because I get such a high off shooting days and appetite goes out the window. But then I came home and my resolve flew out of the window. I don't know. Today's been a weird day. Ranging from kind of amazing in some parts (we're making a movie, isn't this cool?) to terrible in others (my dad is interested in someone new. It's been exactly a year since his last relationship ended and in my selfish, sad way, like any child of a broken home, I still don't want him to like anyone besides my mum. I don't want to know about the hot new girl he's after who, might I add, is only seven years older than me.)

We also got the apartment. It's very central and very nice (and very f*cking expensive but we will cross that bridge when we come to it). Though I think it works out to slightly less than what we're paying now, so that's good. I have a job set up for next year now, too, which will make rent less scary an issue and also afford me some nice furniture that I want (an unfurnished flat? A blank canvas!). I mean, technically, everything's going well. I guess when I watched the rushes back I realised I am just so far off where I want to be. I prayed so hard that this weight would be off by now, by the time we started shooting. Everyone is saying I look great on film. I don't know. I looked at myself on the screen and thought I looked more bloated than anyone I know.

One weird thing that happened this week was that our flatmate tried to kill herself, I guess, and Lina and I were involved. Everyone was involved, including her boyfriend, and the RAs after we found that she'd locked herself in her flat and no one had a key. She'd written a suicide note and everything. But she was just sitting in the shower naked and crying. It reminded me of me, before I took the medication, and it scared the shit out of me.

I think the reason I feel bad is that something's missing from this puzzle picture. Everything else is going well. I finished the year on a high. I got a 2:1 overall with a first in my presentation. Blah blah. We're making a film. We're going to live in a beautiful apartment next year. We have - good Lord - friends.

Blah, blah. Still fat.

5.30am

It was amazing to hear some of my old readers are still here; that made me feel so warm and fuzzy inside like you wouldn't believe.

I really did disappear on this place, and I regret it, but more on that later. Right now it's 5.30am on Tuesday morning and I'm sitting at my desk in my university bedroom. I currently live in a soulless high-security compound that looks like a prison masquerading as luxury student accommodation. I hate it. You need a keycard to get through two sets of gates and then into your flat and then into your individual room, and all the rooms look the same. Mine's as homely as I could make it, though. I have fairylights and stuff, and the bed is big which is a plus. I can't wait to get the f*ck out of halls and into a real apartment in town next year. Lina and I saw one today, and put an offer in. (NB. For the record, Lina and I met - ironically - about a day after I stopped blogging, and started dating a couple of months later. I will talk about her probably a lot on here so for now, all you need to know is I love her to bits and that she's my partner in crime.)

Unsurprisingly, my lack of blogging (and subsequent lack of keeping account) led to a big-time weight gain. It's quite shocking, actually. I went from pushing underweight in late 2013 (low 130s, whilst dating The German and living off booze, in halls) to actually overweight in late 2014 (173 pounds was my highest). It's shocking to write that on here, where I set a precedent on maintaining numbers such as 138, and 145 for very, very long periods of time even during/after bingeing - and arguably felt bigger at those weights than I do now. It doesn't really matter how I got here. You could say I gave up the restrictive component of my eating disorder, but then, conversely, my depression, prescription pill abuse and alcoholism got a ton worse and I started habitually ordering Dominos at 4am.

As of this morning, I weigh 167.0 pounds (still bad, but no longer overweight). I am over the worst of my depression - a lovely doctor sorted me out and I am now on a new antidepressant, Sertraline (Zoloft). I'm still taking the Ritalin, but not in the same capacity as before. I sort of don't know what it does for me anymore, beyond making my mouth incredibly dry and killing my appetite for a grand total of 2 hours. The pills are okay but the feeling of being unbeatable was better. Now that I have metaphorically picked the pen back up, I am hoping, very much that I will be able to get back to that golden weight range I've been struggling to return to ever since I lost the aid of this blog.

Without further ado, I'll post today's death list:

- Soy espresso frappuccino (230)
- Cappuccino (90)
- Diet coke (1)
- Avocado (300)
- White rice (405)
- 2 nectarines (110)
- Potato wedges with salsa (250)
- Bag of crisps (179)
- 2 pieces of toast (220)
- Peanut butter (200)
- Banana (90)

Total:  2075

Yeah... I'm glad to be back. I missed you.

PS. Alfie still in the saga of my life. I can't wait to tell you all about it.

On the recent veganism

Living a lowly existence. Other people call this kind of shit "relaxing". I've had some kind of nasty sinusitis/chest cold thing and it's been doing my head in. I've been indoors for maybe a week. Tonight Lina and I are going into town for dinner and to go over lines. We might take some photographs for the film, too, which means dressing up. So far today I've had cereal, soy milk, a banana, a mango, a tbsp of peanut butter (in a moment of weakness), and about two litres of water. We both went fully vegan about three weeks ago, which has worked wonders for my skin and digestion. I'm beginning to think I really do have some kind of mild intolerance to dairy, or at the very least milk and processed cheese, as since I cut it out completely it has majorly minimised break-outs. Also, I've realised I don't react at all well to oily foods. Cutting out animal products and avoiding oil and salt wherever possible, and sticking to a vegan/plant-based diet for the best of the last month has been illuminating. I feel bad eating processed cheese and cheap red meat. I don't think anyone should consume those foods regularly. They don't sit well in my system; I prefer knowing that everything I've eaten was clean and not homogenised ten times before it arrived on my plate.