Thunder

Yesterday's weight: 168 
- Oats (250)
- Bagel (230)
- Toast (200)
- Diet Coke (1)

Today's weight: 164
- 3 eggs (210)
- Mustard (30)
- Diet orange squash (1)

This is either the diet of someone very broke, or very depressed; as of several weeks ago, I happen to be both. Yesterday I had a breakdown that prevented me from being able to take regular breaths of air for upwards of four hours, and led to my cancellation of a trip I promised my mother I'd accompany her on. We were supposed to be going to Copenhagen for three days, this morning. At 10 a.m., she left without me, after telling me how disappointed and upset she was. I slept only 3 hours, from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m., and couldn't get back to sleep. I feel like the worst person in the world... And my self-hatred is the best dieting tip ever. After gaining 7 pounds seemingly overnight without very much effort at all, over half of it is gone in the space of a day. I'm living off empty carbs, whatever's in the house. There's just bread, squash, condiments, some soup, and I had the last of the eggs for breakfast, although I wish I hadn't. They felt too indulgent.

I think if I eat enough of the boring foods I'll stop craving strong flavours and just learn to be content with a cheap, bland diet of toast, bananas, and tomato soup. I don't eat cheese and meat anymore, and during my gap year I remember easily being able to live off £10 or £15 a week, minus cigarettes. Extreme vegetarianism, extreme restriction and a willing to abuse my prescription pills will be the way to get the weight off. I don't care anymore. There's cider, and gin, and Bailey's, and wine in the fridge. I have all the goddamn meals I need.

I'll be at least twenty pounds lighter by the 30th September. That is non-negotiable.

Joyeux Dimanche

Happy Sunday! Sort of.

Well, I ate like a pig today. I was 162 again. The number is making me complacent. I may just stop weighing for a week... I say that now, but I highly doubt I'll be able to do that. It would be nice though, to look in a week and see something below this stubborn weight range.

This afternoon I literally couldn't find anything "normal" to eat for breakfast (I haven't done a proper shop in ages because I have no funds) so I had a weird-ass combination of 2 nectarines, a cinnamon raisin bagel, a Diet Coke and most of a tub of hummus. So that was delicious but very strange. I pretty much didn't eat all day apart from the 2 coffees I had (one black, at home, then a frappuccino when I was out). Then I came home and made a huge saucepan of pasta, olives and vegan green pesto which I promptly devoured. Afterwards I shared some blueberries with Mummy. So I don't know how much I actually ate calorie-wise but maybe that's a good thing, maybe I should try to be more intuitive, I don't know. I didn't exercise, which was bad (third day running), but I'll make up for it tomorrow.

I'm still hungry, and it's midnight. I am craving a midnight snack and I know there are gummy sweets downstairs, and peanut butter... ugh I'm just craving sweet stuff so badly at the moment. Alternatively there's more hummus. Life is hard.

I had this insane idea earlier that I want to lose twenty pounds before school starts again and become a perfect student so I can be that perfect girl in her perfect apartment next year. Going on some kind of OCD/manic work bender is so appealing to me right now, as I miss the school schedule I'm more easily able to impose on myself when I'm at university. Next year I really do want to be the perfect student. I was never the perfect student at school, and I hated those girls that just seemed to be able to juggle plates - the ones who were in sports, all the extracurriculars, and got perfect grades. I could have been like that but I was a lazy shit who relied on merit and arrogance to get by. This time I know that I can actually be one of those girls. I have an obsessive side; I just need to indulge it. I need to employ the same kind of manic energy I apply to cleaning the entire house every weekend in my schoolwork, reading and languages. I need to impose a rigid structure on myself during term-time and I need to forget about feeling "comfortable". Comfortable doesn't mean best, comfortable doesn't mean "winning".

Veganism chimes in well with all of this. If I'm vegan, I'm "clean". My diet is more "perfect" and "pure" than the person sitting next to me on the underground, or actually, most of my friends. As for the benefits of veganism in weight loss... well, I will have to reassess after spending a couple of months living off coffee with soy milk and whole-watermelon-monomeals.

I don't know if any of that made sense. I'm in a highly energetic mood, despite the lack of pills today. I suppose I need to make some kind of plan. One that involves ungodly amounts of caffeine, Ritalin, and Dettox.

EDIT: Midnight snack involves croutons, olives, more hummus, a peach, and gummy sweets... The real shit starts tomorrow.

Pilgrimage to holy sushi and other rants

According to Everyday Health, I burned 727 calories just by walking yesterday. Admittedly I walked for over three hours in the blazing heat from one side of West London to the other, all in the name of finding sushi. I found said sushi, and it was worth it. For about five seconds, until I realised how much food I'd consumed, stepped on the scale and saw 167.8 flash up at me a bunch of times.

For the record, I was 162 this morning, so I didn't actually gain. But I never want to see a number higher than 165 on my scales ever again. Seriously.

In some lights, this is very good news. 2000 calories of vegan food, and a couple of hours walking, and I've maintained. Even a month ago, that amount would have been weight-gain territory. So this, in its own little way, makes me happy.

Today I've eaten 3 bananas with peanut butter, an iced soy latte, 3 vegetable samosas with pakora dip, a full fat Coke (sugar craving, don't ask), a huge plate of steamed baby new potatoes with some sriracha ketchup and mustard (completely blanked on checking the calories, but I feel like it was probably a lot as I ate the whole bag - F U reduced Sainsbury's fruit and veg...), and a bag of banana chips. Then at 2 a.m., at some point during or maybe before I started crying on Skype to Lina about our relationship, I devoured most of a cinnamon-raisin bagel with peanut butter and Marmite. So yeah, I definitely hit around 2000 calories again today, but to make matters worse I didn't exercise. I just smoked a lot and felt like a sweaty pig dying somewhere in the Sudan.

More tomorrow...

Summertime Sadness

The OCD inventories can take a brief hiatus here. I got horribly upset last night, about my sister leaving. She's moving to LA in six days. Up until last night it hadn't quite felt like a reality. Then it all hit me. She's going to be alone in a flat in LA and she's 18 and the idea of it terrifies me. So I broke down crying on her shoulder and I think it was probably the first real hug she'd given me in over a year.

I fell asleep at maybe 4am, maybe earlier, I don't remember. Then I couldn't wake up. I don't know why. Whether it was because I felt psychologically or physically shit or both. At this point, waking up at 4pm feels almost suicide-inducing. There's no worse feeling these days. I'd happily take anything over those afternoons. I wish I could find a way to wake up at 6.30am every day and be tired enough to clock off by 11pm. 

I cannot do this anymore.  

I weighed 163 this morning. I have no idea why I gained, but I did. I ate some crisps that I thought were vegan but they weren't, they had cheese powder in them. What the fuck is "cheese powder" anyway? 

I'm going to the gym in half an hour or so, for a late-night biking session. I've had 2 frozen bananas liquified in the blender, with fruit sugar; a piece of bread and oil; a few plantain chips that were left over; an Innocent smoothie. Just over 500 calories. Post-workout snack will be a huge iced coffee with soy from Starbucks, because glorified over-priced caffeine-and-fat-laden milkshakes are really the way forward. I want to burn at least 400 calories at the gym. That way, even if I end up with an intake of 1300, my net will be <1000. Dinner will be... some kind of vegetable hoummous-y concoction. If said ingredients can be found in fridge.

EDIT
This evening I had a ton of brown rice, some soy sauce, sriracha, then a carrot salad with tomatoes and hoummous. I also had more of those crisps, regrettably, but I was starving. Didn't go to the gym but biked instead, only for 20 minutes this time but at least it was something. Also drank two coffees with soy from Starbucks while I called Lina on the phone.

Estimating net calories at 1250. Not terrible, not great either. And that's discounting the coffee, which is a stupid rule because obviously soy milk does have calories, but I'm stubborn and needy and the free coffee calorie rule makes me feel childishly secure.

Ugh.

Vegan cyclist bullshit, part 4

4/08 Intake
W: 163.2

Breakfast
- 2 banana/fruit sugar/water smoothie (250)
- Plantain chips (450)

Lunch
- Iced coffee, soy x 2 (x)

Dinner
- Falafel, brown rice, avocado, cilantro, lettuce, spring onions, sweet chilli and mustard balsamic vinaigrette (850)
- Diet Coke (1)

After dinner
- Peanut butter (120)
- Plantain chips (200)

+ 30 minutes moderate-to-high intensity cycling (-300 cals)
+ 2L water

Reading: 2 pages [28 still to do - carry over tomorrow]

Writing: 4 pgs (script)

Medications: 40mg Ritalin (20mg @ 3pm, 20mg @ 7.30pm)

Sleep: solid sleep from 3am - 6.30am; solid sleep from 6.45am-11.30am (took Melatonin/Beta-Blockers before bed)

NET 1571

Vegan cyclist bullshit, part 3

3/08 Intake
W: 164

Breakfast
- Banana, peach, apple, mint, apple juice smoothie (350)
- Tomato chilli pasta (260)

Lunch
- Black coffee (x)
- Muesli with soy milk (180)
- Apple juice (100)

Dinner
- Jasmine rice, bombay aloo, mango chutney, popadoms (850)
- Diet Coke (1)
- Soy coffee frappuccino (x)

+ 40 minutes moderate-to-high intensity cycling (-400 cals)
+ 3L water

Sleep: solid sleep from 4am - 10am; intermittent snoozing from 10am-1pm

NET 1341

Vegan cyclist bullshit, part 2

Following on from yesterday's post, just did another 40 minute bike ride and now my thighs are killing me, but another 20 tomorrow and a gym workout and I know I can get addicted to this feeling. I had a banana, mint, peach and apple smoothie for breakfast, followed by a bowl of tomato pasta at 4pm. So that's around 550 calories so far, and I'm going to have some cereal now. Dinner will probably be another bowl of pasta, some fruit, and black coffee. Or rice and avocado depending on what I want.

Lina is in France so communication is infrequent and via dodgy wifi. Seeing Tina tomorrow, then we have maybe 9 or 10 days before shooting starts again. So in my mind, that's 9 or 10 days to lose 5 or 6 pounds and plummet myself back into the 150s. I'm agitated about my calories. I don't know whether to keep restricting with this vegan thing, or just allow myself to eat freely and continue to work out. I know the former will produce results, but the second option is more sustainable.      

I'm trying to write this screenplay on spec, but I literally have no idea what will become of it, whether it will even be useful. But I need a new project. Admittedly, the idea of filling my days with writing, smoothies and cycling is incredibly appealing, especially since I now know I only need sparse company to actually maintain a normal level of happiness. Writing is fulfilling and I haven't been doing much of it lately, just occasionally entertaining these brief and random creative ideas that never seem to go anywhere. So I need to get back to that. My other option is sitting on my ass watching movies until the 22nd of August, which won't do anything for me, beyond the instant gratification of being a lazy shit. No - the dream here is to be athletic, to use my body, to live my life. To write a little, sleep a little, eat enough good food to stay healthy and reap the rewards. Next year will be a dream, if all goes to plan. Finally we'll have our own space, and I can just get on with doing my thing. I wish there was a way to earn some money over the next month, but nothing looks promising. Again, living in poverty for a couple of months has its own sordid appeal, so maybe a steady diet of bananas and brown rice won't be so bad after all.

Becoming a chiselled bastard who only sleeps 6 hours a night and subsists off of green smoothies is a number one ambition of mine. The trick is entertaining myself enough that I actually want to wake up.

Vegan cyclist bullshit, part 1

For a long time I sort of lost track of what I was eating, and what I weighed. We shot some scenes, and holed up in Bash's house for the best part of a week. I was on a come-down, and Lina's left now, which made me feel horribly upset, but I think things are going to start to look up soon. There are things to look forward to. Moving into the new apartment on the 22nd, and that will be great. Last night L and I talked about veganism and watched a bunch of cycling videos to amp ourselves up. We want to become superhuman vegan athletes. It's nice to have someone to do this with. Plus this always seems like the right thing to do - to cut out the b*llshit and just eat clean. It makes me feel and look my best.

We took out the bikes so I'm gonna start cycling round the park every day to train. There's an olympic-sized velodrome at the university, so getting into racing would be cool.

Breakfast
- 3 banana/fruit sugar/water smoothie (350)
- Iced soy cappuccino (x)

Lunch 
- Cauliflower rice, tomatoes, parsley, spring onions, garlic, soy sauce (150)
- 1.5 cups orange juice (175)

Dinner
- Brown rice (410)
- Avocado (250)
- Sriracha (5)

Snacks
- Whole wheat toast (90)
- Banana (100)
- Cinnamon (0)
- Dates and peanut butter (300)

1830

Only 1 can of Diet Coke today. Not even upset about that number. Progress.