167, thoughts

I'm 167.8 today. L visited over the weekend, yet I somehow managed to still lose weight. She left today before I woke, and when I finally came round, drowsy and fuzzy-eyed after lunch time, I realised I was alone again.

I don't want to be alone over Easter. :( But I guess I'm going to be, unless my mama comes to spend some time with me. I hope she does, but it can also be stressful sometimes. I have so many little annoying rituals and quirks and things that sometimes I think only L can put up with - the incessant worrying, dips and spikes in mood, random bursts of euphoria, long sleeping hours, constant counting and fidgeting and ticcing, an itching to stay up late at night writing my life out through my fingertips...

You know, it's funny, in my last post I talked about how I'd "stopped centering my entire life around losing weight", that it was "no longer the centre focus of my entire existence". Okay, that's true. Food, and the number on the scales, is not something that has the propensity to make me suicidally depressed anymore. But maybe that's because I'm not technically overweight anymore, and over Christmas, weighing anywhere between 174 and 180 on my father's bathroom scales, I was constantly anxious about it: consciously dieting, limiting myself only to the raw whole foods section of Whole Foods, eating stupidly extravagant salads I couldn't afford in an attempt to slim down, and actively trying, not for the first year in my life, to avoid overeating on Christmas day for fear of what the scale would say the next day. The scales are still an instrument with which I cannot break the addiction. I weigh myself every day, same time. If I don't, I start feeling out of control. Yes, it's not the worst kind of addiction, but an addiction nonetheless. I don't know other women who weigh themselves every day like this, but maybe it's because it's not something women go around telling each other. Maybe it really is a point of shame, no less shameful than obsessively checking nutrition labels at supermarkets, or the compulsive covering of blemishes with a concealer stick before each exiting of one's own home. A small, protective measure that helps you feel just a little more in control, even if it's merely the illusion of control.

But I'm 167 today, the lowest I've been since last summer. Funny how such a small incremental change in weight can trigger all sorts of old associations. 167 means something very different from 170, 172, 174. 167 is a different "era" altogether. I wonder if I can keep it up.

I'm still very conscious of food. Nowadays it tends to be more about amounts, rather than caloric value, if there's even a difference. I can eat "regular food". I eat pasta, potatoes, bread in a way I really couldn't before, as long as I'm not uncomfortable with the amount. I feel anxious about getting in enough fruit and veg, and I try to make these the focuses of my day. I'm not afraid of fats, and I'll cook in oil, but I can't eat a giant plate of low-calorie vegetables, simply because it feels like far too much. I like to leave more on my plate these days. I prefer the act of cooking and making food to the act of eating it.

Losing weight once again, begs the question: will I have to start re-exercising a muscle that up until this point has remained, for the most part, almost completely dormant? Will I have to start actually, actively, obsessing again? I don't want to be a weirdo about food. I don't want food to have anything to do with me. I want it to be a distracted concept. I want to appear to others as someone who really doesn't think about food at all. When I look at it this way, it completely makes sense to me that I've been actively resisting the urge to lose weight up until this point, for the very real fear I might "turn obsessive" again. Being fat isn't fun, but it provides a certain sense of calm in knowing you don't have to think about these things in the capacity you used to. It's really nice to just not give a flying fuck about food. Thinking about food is utterly exhausting and can ruin your life. But being fat and not having the confidence to wear, do, be what you want is even more exhausting, and that's why I'm blogging again. I have the hindsight and maturity to recognise that at 5'9", 150 pounds is not overweight. Equally, I have the experience to recognise that 180 is a place I never want to find myself in again. It's all about finding a happy medium. That's what this is about.

I don't have a "goal weight", particularly. Maybe I want to lose 10 or 15 pounds. But moreover, I want to set myself up to have a good experience once I leave this university bubble. I don't want my weight to be a source of depression or anxiety anymore. I want to focus on other things. Creativity, building a social life, working hard. I want to be someone who casually maintains their weight through healthy eating and exercise, not someone who angrily fixates on numbers and unattainable goals and calorie-counting. Maybe "casual" isn't a term I'll ever truly be able to apply to any aspect of my character, but it makes for a nice goal, and that's something at least.

I still exist (just about)

I started this blog almost 6 years ago, when I was 18 years old and still in school. I weighed 146 pounds. I lived in London; my world was pretty small.

I'm returning to this blog at 23. I weigh, as of this afternoon, 168 pounds, but that number feels fairly irrelevant to my existence. In three months I will be finishing my university degree, and I will move back to London, as a virtual stranger, in the hopes of starting the rest of my life.

I'm blogging again not because I think anyone will listen (will you? Are any of you still there?) but because I am alone, lonely, still figuring it out. I tried to journal but it's not the same. This blog remains a safe space, I never stopped thinking about it really. It doesn't feel like regression to return. Things are different now, but in many ways, they're still kinda the same. I still have a desire to type my entire life into a void.      

Updates since the last time I posted:

-I stopped centering my entire life around losing weight. I just couldn't anymore, I didn't have time, and my body didn't seem to respond to any of the trials I was putting it through. While it's no longer the centre focus of my entire existence, and I wouldn't say I have an eating disorder or even "disordered eating" anymore, it still preoccupies a part of my brain significant enough to want to start blogging again.

-I came off Sertraline (Zoloft) at Christmas, and I haven't gone back on it so far. I'm hoping I can stay off anti-depressants long enough to see if they really did have an impact on my weight. I think they did; I also think (hope) I can stay off them and find other ways of controlling/boosting my mood. I'm still in therapy, as I have been for almost 2 years, but that soon will end too, once I graduate. That's another bridge, I guess, which I'll cross when I come to it. For now, therapy, ADHD meds, not drinking, and working hard at things I enjoy seem to be (almost) enough. For later... we'll see.

-I have a gym membership, but I haven't been since January. I'm also broke, more broke than I've ever been, which probably means I should either quit that membership, or start moving my ass to the gym more. The latter seems like a better option. I also bought a cheap yoga mat recently, which I hope is conducive to like... yoga and things. I'm trying to be "healthy" these days.

-I'm trying (sort of) to write a book. (Again we'll see how the fuck that one goes. Watch this space.)

-I don't have a job, and I need to get one of those really soon

-I don't have a social life, hence why I haven't had a drink in almost 4 months... again, one of these would help (a social life, not a drink)

-I went vegetarian a month ago, and by vegetarian I mean mostly vegan, with the occasional Quorn product thrown in there. It helps me control things a little, plus I've never felt right eating meat since I first went veggie as a teenager. I'm yet to see if this has an impact on my weight, which it must have already in some infinitesimal capacity as I was 175 over xmas and these days I rarely weigh higher than 170/171.

So that's it. I don't know what else to tell you currently... but we'll see how it goes. I hope blogging can become some kind of stability/support system for me again, it definitely was before. Anyway. I digress. Please reach out. Gonna finish drinking my mango smoothie now, and clean the entire house, hooray

x