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.

Back to the grate

So I've been back at uni for four days now - term officially started today, and it felt like the longest goddamn day I've had in months. It completely wrecked me, if I'm honest. I felt like I was running on about ten quarts of adrenaline all day long - I don't know what it was, but I felt constantly anxious, and really jittery as if something bad was coming. I saw Tommy, which I thought would be weird, but it wasn't. It felt like New Years never really happened... which is probably a good thing. So that should have calmed me down but I wasn't really worried about that in the first place. It didn't help that the first lecture room we were in was so cold that the whole class couldn't stop shivering. I didn't stop shivering even when the class ended and we went into the warm common room area. (I go to university in the north, so it's normally around 5/10 degrees colder than London - oh joy). Even through lunch when everyone was chatting and relaxing and getting coffee, I felt flinchy and nervous. Like I couldn't even eat half a sandwich without feeling on edge again (too on edge to eat... am I onto something?) and the copious amounts of coffee/ritalin I swallowed over the course of my 9-til-5 didn't help me feel any better. Sure, I could concentrate, but my teeth were chattering. And I don't know if it was from the cold or the fact that I'd turned into a nervous wreck.

The minute I got back to the flat, I broke down on my flatmate's shoulder and sobbed for about an hour. Then I proceeded to stuff my face. Oh, by the way, I think things are going to be okay between me and Freddie (the flatmate I fell in love with last year who lives opposite me). We seem to be getting along very smoothly as friends and while I know there will always be some affection there, it doesn't seem to be making things difficult for me any more. I'm reminding myself of reasons why we're better off as friends, and they all make sense. I think last term I was just in a very vulnerable, emotional state and I clung onto anything that made me feel momentarily better. Now that I feel I have my priorities in line after the Christmas break, it doesn't make sense to feel so hysterical over someone who probably isn't at all right for me. Not to mention I can hardly fit a relationship into my schedule this term (which sounds like something a business woman would say but it's true). My priorities are work, losing weight and getting healthy again (emotionally and physically). Slowly trying to patch myself together again, and I feel I might be able to do it this time.

I've given up booze which seems to be saving me a LOT of money. Two weeks down :) I cut down on cigarettes too, but I'd like to cut down even more when I can handle it. The thing I need to focus on now is eating real meals. They don't need to be big, but they need to be sufficient enough to fuel me through the evening, stave off binges and randomly picking at food from the minute I get home. I have my breakfast sorted - cereal with soy milk seems to fill me up and isn't too heavy for workshops and things. Lunch is a bit of a question mark at the moment. Because I'm now spending 5 lunch times a week in my department (we occupy our own section of campus), I need to be able to decide on a budget lunch to eat regularly every day. A sandwich and cappuccino lunch costs £6.30 in my department. Which is ridiculous and factoring in cigarettes, bus fares, book allowance and other food needs, I'll be out of money by February. I think I'll go for black coffee (cheaper and lower cal) from now on and bring my own sandwiches. Dinner time, I'm thinking of buying a ton of quorn readymeals/ingredients to make vegetarian curry and just eating that all week. Then maybe on the weekends I can allow myself a treat like going into town for Starbucks. My flatmate (the one whose shoulder I broke down on and who worries about my health) told me I should buy some frozen pizzas. I guess the big vegetarian ones can be cooked and then half can be put in the fridge for the next day... but still, I don't really want to eat pizza :/ It feels weird eating pizza and expecting to lose weight (even though it really is a case of calories in versus calories out).

As far as my scales tell me, I haven't budged from 152.8. Which isn't great. I remember I got down to 140 lbs last term and I want that feeling back. I think my aim is to lose 10 lbs and get down to 143 by the end of January. If I give up snacking and stick to my meal plans it shouldn't be impossible. I also have a weird feeling I'll be burning a lot of calories working this term. You'd be surprised just how exhausting a full day of lectures and seminars can be :(

Acting workshops tomorrow. Eurgh. I wish I looked forward to them more, but I just find them fucking terrifying.

Off to read a pretentious book on theatre and then to bed with a hot water bottle :P Will update later this week if I get a chance x

Time for change

Sooo... I'm permanently stuck at 152.8 lbs. My scales love that number. And do you know what the disturbing thing is? I look at my body in the mirror and I don't think it looks that different from when I was 146 lbs. Which is stupid, because obviously 9 lbs (edit: 6.8 lbs, thank you Phoebe... my maths went out the window) makes a difference. And then I start freaking out about where the weight's gone, that maybe it's all gone to my face, and perhaps I haven't noticed the difference because I see my own face every day, but in reality it's a ginormous round blob with no structure whatsoever. That kind of stuff really gets to me and freaks me out. Then I think maybe it's all a trick, maybe I AM huge but my perception is so distorted that I'm kidding myself I look a lot thinner than I do. I don't know. It's all really disturbing and weird. I think the problem at hand here as that I've got far too comfy with being back in this weight range, and it hasn't quite hit me that I'm no longer the slim BMI-20 I reached while at uni. I keep thinking I am then wondering why I feel so goddamn heavy at the end of the day.

Seeing as one of my own private resolutions for this year is to be more honest about my failures, I'll admit that today turned into somewhat of a binge.

Breakfast
- Cereal with soya milk, 250 cals
- Coffee, 30 cals

Lunch
- Soya cappuccino, 150 cals
- 2/3 mushroom and emmental toastie, 300 cals

Dinner
- Most of a cottage pie made with quorn, 250 cals
- Diet coke, 0 cals

Binge
- Dairy-free chocolate buttons, 145 cals
- Jelly beans, 35 cals
- 2 pieces of brown bread with butter, 300 cals
- Bagel sandwich with cheese, 450 cals
- Crisps, 100 cals

Total: 2,010 cals. 

I'm hopelessly ashamed of that number but the sick thing is, I don't even feel full. I feel heavy, sure, but I could probably eat another 500 cal and not blink.

Also, my lack of fresh fruit and veg concerns me.

It's time for a cheese and carbs cleanse. I think if I could give up things like crisps and bread for short periods of time it would really help me out. I don't think other starches like potato are as bad, but any sort of refined flour products are terrible for weight loss. Cheese, also, is terribly fattening, and unfortunately incredibly addictive. I've been toying around with the idea of resuming my vegan ways, but it's just not an easy thing to do during the winter. I might, however, compromise and just give up major dairy products for a while - cheese, cow's milk, and yogurt being the primary offenders. Things like quorn which are low-fat and high-protein feel 'safe' to eat in any quantity, even though they contain egg whites.

The new regime should probably start with a few pointers:

- More emphasis on fruit and veg: sugar in fruit is better to binge on than sugar in sweets, cereal and white bread
- No whole dairy products: cheese, yogurt and milk banned unless listed as minor ingredient.
- No flour.
- NO BOOZE! Yes I said it, I'm quitting drinking until I whittle my weight down to a sensible level and get on top of my work.

So I guess the plan is to lose 4 lbs before I go back to school, which is probably doable if I a) sleep at proper hours b) flush my system out with tons and tons of water and c) stay under 1000 calories a day. I'm going to use my timetabled acting workshops as motivation to do this. I have 3 per week scheduled for this term and the idea of performing in front of 20 other people at 153 lbs fucking terrifies me.

Anyways, I've rambled on enough, and it's time for me to go to sleep. I will write up tomorrow and see how it goes.

Party hard

So last night was definitely interesting. Happy New Years, by the way! ^.^ I don't know about you but I definitely had a strange one.

To start off, my mother went away three days ago to spend NY's with her friends in the country. Which has been great because I've had the house to myself. Yesterday started out okay food wise. I ate a bowl of cornflakes with soya milk for breakfast, which was like the blandest thing ever, but I'm trying this new thing where I don't give myself too much variety. Strangely, it worked and I didn't feel hungry all day until about 5pm when I ate a block of cheese (damn you Christmas leftovers) before I went to meet Tina. Tina, for the record, is having a huge mental health crisis and may have to go into hospital for her depression. Which is a pretty serious deal, so I'm seeing a lot of her these days. So she came over to my house about a hour and a half before I was supposed to leave, which was quite stressful, considering I was only half-ready. The stress combination of seeing her in such a state and frantically trying to make myself look presentable caused me to eat 3 jam doughnuts, a bag of crisps and a big iced coffee. I don't know why I did it, but maybe I was pre-empting a binge. That almost always happens to me before leaving the house to go out.

Anyway, we shared a black cab to central London, because the party I was supposed to be turning up at was en route to her flat. Then I had to trek around this huge busy station to try and find Caro and Tommy, so that we could get to this house party. A bit of back story: Tommy is this guy off my course who I've been doing a lot of writing with recently. He's from New York and even more cynical and sarcastic than me, which generally means our conversations go a little like this:

GABBY: Your shirt is so ugly.
TOMMY: Your face is so ugly. Remind me why I hang out with you again?
GABBY: Because you're holding a candle for me, remember?
TOMMY: Oh yeah, I remember now. I'm hopelessly in love with you.
GABBY: Have you finished reading that scene I sent you yet?
TOMMY: No, Jesus, you're so demanding.
GABBY: Fuck you.
TOMMY: Fuck you.
GABBY: D'you want to grab a coffee?
TOMMY: Sure babe.

So I found them and then we went to this shindig, which basically turned out to be a bunch of people we'd never met before hot-boxing this poor girl's living room. Long story short: I smoked a joint to myself, drank rather a lot of vodka, and got monumentally pissed. The three of us ended up sharing another cab home (I'm sure it'll be the last one I can afford in a while), came back to mine, drank even more booze, and then Caro passed out in my bed. Me and Tommy ended up fucking at 5 in the morning and then we fell asleep as the sun came up. It was kind of... a very weird experience. We were almost dancing round the subject all night and then it just happened. I think I'm too used to having straight-forward, uncomplicated, boy-girl sex. This was just so weird. We were having conversations in the middle of it. About fucking Allen Ginsberg, and the beat poets, and just loads of other random stuff I'm pretty sure it's not normal to talk about during sex. I guess that's drugs for you, right? Anyway, and then we had to streak through my house naked because my mother decided to come back three hours early and not notify me.

I told you it was a strange New Years. The beginning of term is either going to be extremely fun or extremely awkward, but I guess we'll just have to see...

So today food wise has been weird because I kind of went to bed at 7am for half an hour, then again at 11am and woke up properly at 3pm. I forced myself awake with some coffee, a cream cheese and Jarlsberg bagel sandwich (possibly the most fattening concoction I've yet dreamed up), and a big fruit salad with low-fat yogurt. In all fairness, it did allow me to function for at least the following four hours. Then at 9pm I decided it was a good idea to make a huge salad with sweetcorn and tomatoes and cucumber and eat it with these spicy veggie patties and a fuck ton of mayo. I'm talking full fat, real Mayonnaise, which I NEVER do. Thank God for diet coke, because I think I've chugged enough to clean out my intestines for the next week. And I'm sorry, that was way too much information, but it does make me feel marginally better about the colossal amount of food I ate over the past two days.

I'm now super busy until I go back to university. School starts on the 13th and by then I've got to have completed these two essays, read a ton of books that haven't even arrived yet, and miraculously have got my head together. January's gonna be wicked fun.

Resolutions

Long story short, I gained weight. A lot of weight. I’m 152.8 lbs. currently, to be precise. And it has come to my attention recently just how unattractive I become when I go over the 145 lb. mark. To put it one way, my face looks like a circle. I’m 20. If ever there is a time to shed your puppy fat for good, it’s now. The other day when hanging out with Caro in the broadway, the guy who was serving us cigarettes said I looked fifteen. He could have been joking but it got to me. I don’t want to have a baby face anymore. I see girls with those big wide smiles and skinny chins and smile lines and I feel jealous. I hate smiling these days because it just pushes my cheeks out even further. Ugh.

As well as losing the fuck ton of weight I gained this winter, I’m also in dire need of totally re-booting my attitude towards work. I’m not expecting to become perfect at everything overnight, but next term is going to be the most hectic term of the year, and my energy needs to be peak. The only way to get round this is by getting myself organised, staying focused on the task at all times, and essentially entering some sort of lean-mean-work-machine state whereby anything is possible. Last term I quickly lost sight of the things I set out to achieve, and it ended disastrously. Next term will be a different story. Fingers crossed, because I really do want to do well this year.

So the resolutions after New Years will be as follows:

-Start exercising
-Quit drinking
-To not buy cigarettes anymore
-Get into routine and stick to it
-Lose 30 lbs
-Make one short film
-Read more widely
-Do well at school.

-Oh, and don’t fall in love again, because it ruins everything, as I found out this year.

I’ll get back to logging my intakes tomorrow. There’s been no point as of late considering I’ve been eating well over 2,000 calories a day. The emphasis this week will be placed on more fresh fruit/veg, and less cheese/carbs, which I rely on way too much to make up the majority of my diet.
I actually can’t wait for 2013 to be over. It’s been one hell of a year, ‘hell’ being the operative word.

Damage control

I'm 149 lbs again, and not happy about this recent development, although I suppose I only have myself to blame for eating the way I did towards the end of term. I realised last night that I've completely forgotten how to eat for health rather than for comfort. I'm so used to being able to shove in a huge bag of salty crisps, cheese on toast, or cereal washed down by a bottle of mulled wine. They're just empty carbs which provide temporary happiness but in the long run they do me absolutely no good. It's no wonder I've put on half a stone. 

Realising that I'd actually forgotten how to eat well, I decided to look back to posts from earlier this year and 2012. I'd like to get back to how I was eating around the time I went to Amsterdam in September last year. I was living off a lot of vegan, organic foods and fresh produce, having yogurt granola and fruit every morning, drinking homemade smoothies and going out for sushi lunches with friends. I don't know what happened to that way of living! I suppose it faded away, along with school, old friends, and summer time. Still, I'm determined to get my health back on track. I've got a nasty cough so I'm limiting myself to a max of four cigarettes a day until I get better. I am also going to make a special effort to do mundane things like eat more fruit and veg. It may be the season to be jolly, but who says being jolly means getting fat??!

I started off the day with low fat vanilla yogurt, granola, sultanas & a chopped banana, plus an Innocent fruit smoothie. I'm meeting Tina at 5pm for Starbucks, so I think I'll have a super green lunch of mange tout, olives, and cucumber :) Dinner will probably be a bit of whatever's knocking around, although I do feel like making some soup and baguette. I'll see how it goes.  

On another happy note (insert sarcasm here), I've felt really, really unwanted since I came back to London. It's not that I feel like my family hate me or anything, but ever since Monday, my mum and sister keep throwing out little reminders that my return has caused disruptions. This morning my mum lost her rag with my sister because she wouldn't get up to go to school, and she blamed it on me coming downstairs at midnight to go to the bathroom. As if that is reason not to get up in the morning. Then she proceeded to say that everything was fine before I came home, and now no one can sleep because of me, and maybe I should just go back to university. I have half a mind to go back early in the new year. Honestly. If no one wants me here I'm not going to sit around and get shit hurled at me for being up at night. Did I mention that they moved me out of my room and into the attic mezzanine in my absence? It's so cramped up here, I don't have a door and I have to walk down a VERY rickety spiral staircase that creaks whenever I need to get downstairs. Good plan putting the insomniac on the top floor. 

Ugh. Anyway, rant over. I hope my mother cools her boots and stops blaming me for things that aren't my fault. I feel like I'm eighteen again on my gap year, like the unruly invalid child who's out of everyone else's schedule and makes more problems than she's worth. Or something.

It's been a while

Decided to return to this blog now that term has officially ended. I need it.

What’s happened?

A heart break, some weight gain, an (ongoing) existential crisis, more insomnia, and a lot of confusion. Long story short, I fell in love with my flatmate, the boy who lives opposite me. I'll call him Freddie. It was unrequited love, as far as he let on, although various things did happen between us that lead our friends (and me) to believe otherwise. The German fucked up big time and I decided to kick him out. Oh, and I also realised I'd been on a manic episode for about eight weeks and seriously needed to sort my shit out before I actually went up the wall. Now I'm back home and still reeling from it all. Time for a checklist? This term I -

-Went through about thirty condoms
-Spent about £1,300 without really realising
-Slept on average 4 hours a night
-Realised if I were to give up smoking I'd probably become a nymphomaniac instead
-Got even more entrenched in my disordered habits surrounding food and alcohol
-Sabotaged and saved up about a gram of Ritalin, which I fully intend to make proper use of this Christmas
-Met some people I'll probably know for the rest of my life.

Currently I need to numb myself by trying to diet again. I’ve become far too curvy for my own liking. Too soft round the edges. It’s not good enough. I need to be strong, fast, athletic, svelte. I cannot come back to university in January this same person. I do not want to be her anymore. She has not served me well.

Further musings - is it weird that I want to be tall, lean and athletic like a boy? I’m surrounded by so many chiselled beautiful young men at university who all have faces sculpted by angels, and naturally being a theatre student I like the idea of becoming an androgynous-looking faery. I get afraid of my own curves. They remind me I’m a woman and this fact often makes me feel very vulnerable.

It's all very Brechtian, I suppose. Watch this space x

Deliriously ill

Got the flu. Not the regular kind, where you can still function, but the kind where I literally couldn't get out of bed for four days, except to pee (and even that was with some considerable difficulty). Missed three days of lectures and an essay deadline. Nice way to start out term, Gabby.

So my weight sort of plummeted to 142 lbs. I don't know what to make of this, because I definitely look thinner than 142 in the mirror. Maybe it's because I'm all ill and frail and gaunted out. But when I went to the kitchen to get some water earlier, I received three comments all pertaining to how skinny I'd gotten, and how my ribs can now apparently be seen through my chest. Excellent.

My sister called me on the phone today. The conversation went a little like this:

Gabby's sister: So how are you feeling?
Gabby: Like someone ran me over with a truck.
Gabby's sister: Shall I bring your Doc Martens up next Friday when I come visit? You forgot them. Oh and shall I bring that sniffy stuff that people put up their noses when they have colds? The stuff in your drawer?
Gabby: How do you... and I'll be better by next Friday.
Gabby's sister: So how's the German? Guess what, I lost so much weight since you left because mum only buys grapefruits and parmesan cheese now.
Gabby: Can't you buy your own food?
Gabby's sister: Well I could, but I can't be bothered. And I quite like grapefruits, anyway.

My sister doesn't HAVE any weight to lose. Last time I checked, she was only half an inch shorter than me, and barely scraping 105 lbs. Is this normal for an almost-seventeen-year-old girl whose primary sources of exercise involve hair-straightening and galavanting up-stairs balancing multiple bowls of ice cream, pizza and apple pudding at once? When I was seventeen, I was heavier than I am now, shorter than I am now, and the idea of eating even half a pizza by myself would probably have given me a hernia.

More concerning is that she's going through my top drawers, or rather, knows what's in them. Oh well. That's all water under the bridge now, I suppose.

I caved and bought a pair of very expensive, digital, bathroom scales. I can't stand not being able to know my weight. Today was the first day that I binged. Actually, properly binged. Luckily none of it was alone in my room... but me and my flatmate shared a big bar of Galaxy, ordered Chinese, and devoured a family bag of crisps/quite a lot of cereal in the space of about 3 hours. I feel sick. And fat. And I started my period.

This calls for a new plan to be drawn up. I bought scales, and I bought food. Healthy food that I could probably use to restrict if I tried hard enough. I shouldn't have to try, but I do, and to be honest, I don't think I can face going home heavier than I was when I left.

Technically, the new plan's daily total shouldn't come to more than 500. Realistically, alcohol exists, my appetite is very much still alive, and random pizza dates in my bedroom with The German have become commonplace. But there you go, an actual set plan for now. I'm hoping I can keep it up for a couple of days, then assess how it's going via the scales.

Wonder if it's possible to come back at Christmas a waif. Dreading weigh-in numero 1 on Saturday morning, when my scales arrive. Perhaps if I work hard enough, start sleeping with The German instead of eating dinner, and watch enough French cinema I MIGHT just get the result I want. 

Confessions of a drama queen

University life is... surprisingly not as strange as I'd thought it would be. Our campus and town are amazing, and I'm in love with my flatmates. Fresher's week ended, and thus began a stream of lectures and workshops. My lectures are great. I sit with two guys and a girl, the gems I've picked out, at the back of the theatre, put on my glasses, and scribble like there's no tomorrow. It's like being in an English literature A-level class, which is comforting. Workshops, however, are a strange hybrid of RADA training and nursery school. They involve hours of leaping around, circle time, making bizarre noises you never deemed yourself capable of, and, of course, trying desperately to impress twenty-odd people you've never met and feel extremely intimidated by.

I also met a boy. He's 21, and a transfer student from Berlin. We act like a married couple, which is ridiculous, because we've only known each other 10 days. My flatmates, affectionately, refer to him simply as 'The German', which I have now unintentionally started doing, and probably will continue to do on this blog. The German, who has blonde hair and blue eyes and lips that would make you weep, goes back to Germany at Christmas. This makes me very sad. But right now, it's beautiful. And totally unexpected.

I'm also rather alarmed not to be weighing myself at all, which has led to some anxiety over the past few days, as I'm convinced I've gained. Technically speaking, the only 'bingeing' I've done has been on alcohol, which generally makes me lose, but I guess I don't trust my own eyes anymore. I've been trying to go by how my jeans fit, and they seem to fit the same. So logically, I've maintained. Emotionally, I'm huge. Now that my timetable has picked up I'm aiming to create some sort of plan I can stick to. In an ideal world, I'd like to survive off fat-free plain yogurt, diet coke, coffee, and either a sandwich or soup for dinner depending on how hungry I am/how cold it is. I've also re-discovered my love for Quaker's Instant Oats and Caesar salad, so those may be factored in too. I seem to struggle when I have too many options, as I want to eat everything. So less variety is probably better, and in smaller, more controlled amounts than I have been allowing myself. It'll be okay. I hope.

That's all for now. Need to find a cosy jumper to go with these leggings, and then heading in to nursery for three hours of yelling like a wild boar.

Strange kettle of fish

I love my internship. I feel heartbroken that I have to finish work next Thursday, and I'm also dreading my birthday a little bit. Because I'm turning 20, and that means I should probably have lost some weight by now. Which I haven't. Evidently.

The idea of Fresher's is also freaking me out. Because it was sort of my aim to be tiny be then, and I'm not tiny, I'm 148 lbs. Fuck.

Trying to get the weight off isn't really working out either... I had coco pops for breakfast. Not exactly gonna shed the pounds eating chocolate before 11am, am I? I should probably start living off soup and salad for the next two weeks, with the small chance that I might actually weigh under 140 by the time uni starts. But I probably can't be bothered. I don't know. Maybe it will be easier when I actually get there. Maybe I'll grow up and realise that 5 packets of crisps at 2am won't get me anywhere, but then again who knows... it's the unpredictability that gets me, and of course the dreaded 'Freshman Fifteen' constantly lurking at the back of my mind.

The weird thing is, I've realised that I don't actually like food anymore. Well, maybe I don't like the food I eat anymore. These days, there are only a few staple items I still derive pleasure from consuming*, and they hardly constitute the perfect diet. I'm constantly after the ULTIMATE flavour, the 'perfect food'... something that's cheap, low-cal, satisfies all my cravings and fills me up. But that doesn't exist. Does it? I used to think soup was the perfect food for the fact that it was cheap, yummy and low-cal. But I can't be bothered to make soup, because it's not that great. It doesn't make my taste buds explode, and I probably don't get much satisfaction from it besides temporarily warming up. Then there are things like sushi, which obviously taste amazing and are satisfying, but it's rarely cheap, and I don't know any uni student that can afford to live off a diet primarily made up of vegetarian sushi. You'd think that because I'm disinterested in food, I'd be eating less. But I'm not. I'm eating more than ever, shovelling things in, hoping they'll satisfy my oral fixation. I eat a lot of crisps and chocolate these days, which isn't great. I try and replace it with raw almonds and dried fruit and things that may have some health benefit, but it's not the same. I'm obsessed with salt. Something has to be really salty or sweet for me to be satisfied. It's ridiculous.

Anyway, a bit up in arms, but coping. Need to buy kitchenware today. Super fun. I'm happy to be back on this blog, though. It's a comfort.

*These items would probably comprise of: Starbucks coffee (namely sugar-free vanilla soy cappuccinos, and gingerbread lattes, which aren't actually out yet as it's still technically summer). Goats' cheese, walnut and honey salads, which I don't think you can even buy in London... hangover from LA, I guess. Diet coke, copious amounts, must be ice cold (and preferably in a tall McDonalds cup with a straw). Pumpkin croquette, inari nigiri and edamame boxes from Wasabi, which cost a small fortune. And menthol cigarettes. Of course. I suck.

The College Food Pyramid

General rant... I don't think my body is capable of maintaining. I fluctuate so damn much that it's near impossible to stick to anything and I get so disheartened when I think I'm maintaining, then suddenly I'm back up the scale without much explanation, and get triggered into binge eating again. Sigh. How are you?

I rarely post on this blog anymore. It's sad because I used to write avidly on here, documenting every incremental change on the scale, every moment, every feeling. Honestly, sometimes I actually use my archives to remember when stuff happened. I think all my major life events starting from late 2011 up to the present date are documented on here, which is insane.

I'm 147.8 lbs right now. That's horrible. I don't even have time to get upset about it, though. My work schedule is hectic and demanding as hell. I didn't think I was even capable of working this hard. I finish next Thursday, then Friday it's my birthday. And that, readers, is terrifying.

Update on life

There are so many things I want to write about sometimes, but I often wonder how I'm going to phrase it, if there's any point, if anyone will listen, etc. Quite a few things have been going on though, so I feel like even if these posts do go unnoticed, there'll be out there, and my mind can settle a little bit, having written it down.

I can't work out if I'm happy or sad at the moment or just... nothing. My diagnosis finally came through:  it's confirmed, I have ADD inattentive-type with possible characteristics of bipolar type 2. My psychiatrist put me on Ritalin. This has not made my mother happy. In explaining that it has made a world of difference to me, and my ability to focus and remain stable, I only received negativity in response. She thinks it's all bullshit. Never mind about the years and years I've spent wondering what the hell is wrong with me. Never mind that every school report from secondary school confirms, proves what I was suspecting, and never mind that two medical professionals have agreed on my diagnosis. I guess my mother has been through so much that any problem is now 'normalised' for her. I'm not allowed to be depressed or ill anymore, I'm not allowed to try to understand what is going on in my own head, otherwise I'm instantly branded as attention-seeking, looking for validation, or 'navel-gazing'. All this has led to constant snapping and arguing, which makes me feel monumentally awful, considering how well I thought we were doing.

It would be easy to say I'm feeling depressed, but the truth is, I'm more frustrated than anything else. I started an internship at the beginning of last week around the same time as starting the pills, and I think I concentrated better and worked harder in those five days than I did the whole of my A level year at school. I was on such a 'high' from how brilliantly my week had gone, and proud, in a way, that I'd gotten through it - and that high was crushed by the supreme lack of support coming from my mum. I got a chill yesterday night, and as a result I'm currently holed up in bed with copious amounts of cough sweets, sudafed, and icy diet coke. It sucks; I want to be well, and I want to be working. Not only am I terrified I'll be too ill to go to my job tomorrow, but I have this uneasy feeling that all of last week was a fluke. That my body just can't handle working from 10am-7pm every day, and every time I try, I'll get ill. No matter how many pills I pop, how many vitamins I take, how well I eat, I'll just crash and burn eventually. This kind of morbid, dead-end thought train is one I'm used to, and I know it's unproductive. I just can't help thinking that's me, my life, my future, and I'm fucked, basically.

Well, on a better note, I've managed to maintain a steady 145 lbs. It feels good to be able to stay in my 'safe region' without much effort and I can definitely see the change in my body since two months ago. I don't know if I have a goal weight. I don't think it would be helpful to make one, because I am too apathetic to aim for anything as concrete as a number right now. I just know that I want to vaguely skinnier by the time uni starts. And that Ritalin appears to have a handy side-effect of eliminating my appetite all day, but that's a whole other kettle of fish.

My grocery list concerns me

Do you ever have those supermarket shops where everything you pick up seems to be oddly, unintentionally ED-orientated? I just had one of those shops. I met Tina for a late-night coffee (I hadn't seen her in weeks, due to overlapping vacations and lack of time) - it was lovely, and we caught up on everything. Decided to go for a swan around Tesco's - casual trippy 10pm supermarket times, as you do. We walked around all the aisles, plucking things off the shelves as we went. It was more of an excuse to hang out in the warm, more than anything. I barely concentrated on what I picked up, until checkout, when I realised everything I'd selected was either low-calorie, fat-free, or just plain eating disordered. I had picked up those mini cans of tuna, the ones with 54cals per tin (granted, I've been craving those for ages, but I didn't get the normal tins, I got the ones I get when I'm restricting). Also on my grocery list: fat-free strawberry yogurt, bran cereal, rice cakes, hot sauce (the Ocal kind), sugarfree jelly, salted cashews, Thai noodle cup-a-soup (also 54cals), and diet coke.

The thing that concerns me is that I didn't even pay attention to what I was taking off the shelves. It's like I was on autopilot or something. HOW ON EARTH am I going to manage at university, if my sub-conscious default is to select these kinds of foods? I mean, I don't even think I have to compare calories on packaging anymore. I know nutritional labels so well, it's almost an unconscious reflex to pick up the lowest-calorie, lowest-fat products without even having to think about it. This scares me a little bit, because it actually takes more effort and thought to select 'normal' foods that a 'normal' person would eat from a supermarket, than to come out with the most disordered grocery shop I could muster.

Another note on this: I think I'm becoming a food hoarder. Like, not even joking: I buy cans of soup for our cupboard even though there's already like, 8 untouched tins in there. I've got cream of tomato, leek and potato, mushroom, Chinese broth, tinned chopped tomatoes (basically soup), baked beans (in a soup-like can), now these Thai cup-a-soups, on top of my extensive collection of Light Choices vegetable cup-a-soups (which contain enough sodium to kill a small dog). Do I need more soup? -No. Am I on a special soup diet? -No. Am I preparing rations for hibernation? -Hardly. So my compulsive soup-buying behaviour disturbs me. I'm also the same with portioned packets of diet hot chocolate, sweetener sachets from Starbucks, and, recently, yogurt.

Little worried here.

Haven't checked my weight in two days. Probably a good thing, but feels fucking terrifying.

This time last year...

I read back on some old posts from this time last year, circa my tonsillectomy. This exact day last year, I weighed exactly the same as I do today. 146 lbs. It's not even depressing, in fact, it was quite a relief that 'at least I hadn't gained'. It brought about a certain comfort, that I was back there again, and therefore, perhaps, could proceed in a similar way to before. Only this time, I plan on keeping the weight off, and I'm not aiming for something ridiculous.
 
I need to emotionally break myself off from the last few years of my life. I have to stop indulging fantasy-type memories of relationships I had that were TRULY toxic, such as with Charlie and Rebecca. I keep glorifying and romanticising my time with them as if they were the best years of my life, but they really weren't. They were the worst. I was at my most psychologically unwell when I was friends with Rebecca, and she made it worse. We were terrible for each other. Charlie isn't a nice person anymore, and she probably caused me the most damage last year out of everyone. I cannot continue to idolise them and reminisce and wish I were friends with them again. I cannot aspire to be like them anymore, I cannot live in this permanent state of nostalgia which ultimately winds me up depressed, and hating myself with a passion.

It's time to build myself back up again, nurture myself, and live for ME, not for anyone else. If I'm going to be depressed, I want to be depressed about MY stuff. I can't factor them into that depression on top of everything else. They will no longer have an effect on my mind like that, and I will no longer wither at the thought of what 'Rebecca and Charlie are doing without me'. It makes me weak, and I can't afford that, not now. I need to be strong, I need to be fit, and I need to be good to myself (and the people around me who truly care).

After making plans all day to starve myself again, I deleted all I'd written, and started afresh. I dug out my favourite fitness blogs that I used to follow. I decided I'm going to start exercising and practicing yoga again. I vowed to give up smoking, and chucked out my pack. And I felt a little better.

I’ve been 145 for days, and it has frustrated the hell out of me. I want to drop these last 9 lbs so it can just be over, and I can concentrate on other things besides weight loss.

I worked out that when I'm back down to 136, my BMI will be at 20.1. The disordered part of me senses I’ll still be discontent with that, but it’ll be a lot better than where I am now.

I just want to buy pretty clothes and shoes and to feel confident in my own skin again. I’ve already dropped a stone, so why is this last stretch proving so difficult?

Ate a shit ton today already, and out of cigarettes.

Breakfast: Slice of Nimble toast with peanut butter + fat free lemon yogurt (240 cals)
Lunch: Nakd cocoa orange bar + Seattle latte + 2 packets of Hula Hoops :/ (560 cals)
Snack: Jaffa cakes x2 + diet coke (140 cals)
Dinner (yet to have): Butternut squash soup (160 cals)

Total: 1,100 calories

Perfect illusions...

I come back home after a weekend away, and suddenly, I feel tiny. I'm wearing an outfit that two months ago I honestly wouldn't have been brave enough to wear - a tight long-sleeved v-neck navy top, tucked into high-waisted stretch American Apparel jeans (now baggy on me, despite the fact that I only bought them a month ago). A long-sleeved thin stripy cardi, heeled chunky suede boots, and my beloved thick-strap brown leather satchel from LA. I feel like Charlie in this outfit... maybe. My hair's tied back in a high ponytail that swishes while I walk, and I feel like I could be an off-duty dancer. I walk through the door, linger in the doorframe of the sitting room while my family sings my praise. And the funny thing is, I've eaten enough for 5 men this weekend (truckloads of sushi, crisps, vodka, tiramisu... oh, God, the tiramisu...) and I still feel thin. Because they're praising me, and I guess technically, I've lost over a stone, so I must look slimmer.

I eat more: chocolate, some red cabbage and potatoes from their roast dinner. It was delicious. Half an hour later, my body freaks out, and I die on the toilet for ten minutes. Apparently my digestive system cannot handle this quantity of food, and like clockwork, I will still be 145 in the morning. I am taking this as a good thing.

Caro and I spent the day eating, and watching Black Swan. That film is pure thinspo, I swear, and it's made me want to start dressing like a ballerina. I don't want to be perfect these days, but I wouldn't mind creating the illusion of perfection. Kind of like fooling other people into seeing pretty. I wonder if that would work.

I'm taking heed of my body's signals, and easing up on the restricting this week. I start work experience on the 19th, and I need my energy back by then. Healthy food is good, junk food is bad; but I can find a balance. I only want to lose 10 more lbs, and then I can be done, forever. I wonder if that will be enough, but I don't think I can afford to be asking myself such questions at this stage.

On another note, I'm seeing a psychiatrist on Tuesday morning. My doctors all seem to agree that I might have ADD. Guess I'll be adding that one to the list of other diagnoses... merely scribblings on paper that have neither helped nor hindered me, I suppose. Meh.

Plan for tomorrow:

Breakfast: Yogurt + slice of Nimble toast with Flora + tea
Lunch: Nakd bar + smoothie + iced coffee (seeing Caro)
Supper: Butternut squash soup + Sunbites wholegrain crisps (or fine-milled oatcakes)
Snack, optional: Options hot chocolate + 2 oatcakes with Dairylea

It sort of looks like my old recovery food plans. Which is strangely comforting, for reasons very unknown to me.

Sushi party

I'm maintaining 145 lbs eating around 1,000 calories a day. I'm shooting for a bit less than that, but I've made a decision to only lose 9 more lbs. 136 is my new 'goal'. I've been there before, and I can be there again, I'm confident. My new diet will consist of good, nourishing foods: soups, sushi, porridge, good oils from things like olives and sundried tomatoes (my new favourite thing), reduced fat cheese, lots of fresh salad veggies, tuna, tea, fruit. When I reach 136, I'll be switching back to the kind of health-freak diet I was eating last August combined with exercise, in order to maintain my weight loss. I can work on maintaining before I go to uni, safe in the knowledge that when I go away, I won't be piling on pounds the minute I start a new lifestyle.

Tonight is Caro's birthday, which will involve copious amounts of sushi. YUM. It's so odd that she's only turning 19, when in a month I will be turning 20. Strangely, I feel like she is the older one.

Well I'm seriously late for helping her pick up her cake from the centre of town, so I need to hop in a shower ASAP. Sorry for the brief and boring update, I'll let you know how the party goes though :)

Back in control

I'm currently sitting at my desk with a giant mug of lemon squash (5 calories), listening to the Shawshank Redemption soundtrack, and dying for a cigarette, of which I have none. It's so time for me to cut down again. 

Yesterday, I ate around 800 calories, but dropped another pound. I'm down to 145 again, and it's weird to think I'm only 3 lbs off pre-Amsterdam weight. I feel 'slim' here. Not thin, but 'slim', and perhaps I could feel happy with that for a while. Maybe it's because I was in the 150s for the better part of this year, and the drop has made me feel smaller than I am? But I've lost a stone since my high point a couple of months ago, and it's a good feeling. 

I'm totally in control of this. I can take it however fast or slowly I'd like. I don't hate my body, and I'm not desperate to shed 'layers and layers of icky fat'. I know I want to be in the 130s again, eventually, but I have two whole months to do that, and then I'm moving out of this mould for good. It's chill.

The plan, as it stands, is to alternate between 600 and 800 calories every couple of days to keep my metabolism from completely failing on me. Today and tomorrow will be 600 days, Friday I'll allow myself 800 as it's Caro's birthday. We'll be having sushi, cake and Smirnoff Gold cinnamon vodka shots :o It's gonna be insane. And I am not going to get too drunk, like I did on the last night of Portugal. Ohhh no. 

Was lovely to hear from a couple of you on my last post :) I'm going to catch up on everyone's blogs tomorrow, as I have a ton of inoculations this afternoon :/ Dead-arm times, yay. 

A month too long

I just got back from Portugal, and I'm tired. Weight loss has happened. I'm now back down to 147 lbs, which feels positively surreal, but I'm happy about it. I'm back on the restricting train. I was abroad with my mum, her boyfriend, her son, my sister, and Caro. It was lovely. We swam, played tennis, went to the beach, and ate high-protein, nutritious European meals. There was no room for bingeing or useless overeating at night, because I was around someone all the time. Is it too soon to say I might be over bingeing? Because I haven't binged since before we left for LA, at the end of June, and that is a very long time for me.

With regret, I've also found myself drifting away from this blog. I am so out of touch with this world, I've forgotten how salubrious it can feel to get everything out in writing. I did write on holiday - pages and pages, although I'm not entirely sure if they mean anything, or say anything remotely important about what's been happening. I don't know if any old followers still read this journal, but if you are one of those long-time readers of mine, you'll remember who Rebecca was, in all her twisted glory. For the new ones, Rebecca was a friend I had back at school, and we had a very complex and intense friendship made almost impossible to maintain due to respective eating disorders, and the competition/destruction that arose between us because of them. Early 2012 we parted ways, right around the time I was in hospital, and none of us ever heard a word from her again.

When I was LA, I received a message from her. It was long and rambly and apologetic, and she went into excessive detail about how bad she felt about leaving, how she was off to McGill in August and needed to make amends before she left for good. I was shell-shocked, to say the least, We stroke up a conversation, and we ended up pouring out to each other. She suggested meeting up in the last week of July, and with a nervous excitement, I agreed it would be good to see each other. On the day, she stood me up, with no word since explaining what happened. It did exactly what Caro warned me would happen: it fucked me up inside. And I've been slightly fucked up ever since, especially since learning that she and Charlie are now incredibly close - a disheartening, off-kiltering, jitter-inducing nugget of information.

But moving on from that - I'm concentrating on the good things in my life. I love my family. I love them so, so much - and I love that my family keeps growing as the months go on. I'm off to uni at the end of September, which I am incredibly excited (and nervous) about, but I know it'll be a fantastic experience, and I'll finally be able to knuckle down to work at a subject I love, not to mention meet some new people. And, strangely, I feel like I have control of my weight for the first time in a while. I'm  thrilled not to be in the high 150s anymore. Looking back, I don't know how I let myself out of the house. And while 147 is a number I've always considered high, it feels very comforting to be back at this goalpost. Because I know that I've gone from 147 to 144 to 140 very easily in the past - the proof is in this blog. And I will do that again.

I'm definitely planning on updating more from now on. I'm doing 600 calories a day for now, and it helps to chart it up somewhere, to mark progress.

I don't know if anyone will read this, or be interested, seeing as I've been gone so long, and my past updates have been extremely sporadic. But it would be great to see if there are any of you still out there. If you are, let me know.

xxx