The scales budged a fraction to 167.9, although I don't know whether the reading was correct. Certainly I woke up (at 8.30 am, bright and breezy as if I'd had a long and restful sleep) with my head filled with dreams of locating to New York forever, and going to school here, and being the perfect child of my parents, with a part-time job at some kind of fashionable boutique in town, and an elegant capsule wardrobe reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn's. Sometimes I really wish I was a rich kid, although I feel the repercussions of my friends' experiences just as they do - someone's father cut them off: No more money for you, until you sort yourself out, and get your head together, and show me you can be independent. And ironically this morning, whilst we were out getting a coffee from the local organic cafe near our apartment, was the moment my own father decided to tell me that it was no longer okay to sponge off him financially. My university accommodation costs a third more than it did last year, and thus far I haven't been able (or have been refusing) to contribute. But I'm twenty-one, a good two years older than most of the second and first-years I know, and I see his point. I don't want to be a dependent either. It makes me feel insecure and young and humiliated. He said my sister (just recently eighteen) would be getting the same treatment and talk when she starts to move on in the world. The problem, from my point of view, is that my sister will remain in her cosy cocoon forever, cushioned by my parents because perhaps she's worth it more than I am. And I am not self-pitying - but she is the one out of the two of us with an agent, and a career planned out. On the other hand, I spend the majority of my time flailing about the direction my life is taking - I want to succeed; I don't know how to succeed; life is moving too quickly; I might as well not try at all.

The odd thing about my sister and I, from a psychological standpoint, is that we oppose each other somewhat perfectly. While she is small (5'8" and an American size 2) and takes up a lot of space in terms of personality, I am big but spend the majority of my time trying to hide it. On Saturday, whilst shopping with my sister's manager in a vintage flea market, I chose to walk through the mirror stalls and rows of useless dysfunctional objects in order to avoid the clothes section. Upon hearing me make the point that I would prefer to hide more often than not, that that has become my default, her manager responded that if I want to hide, I should. That is not the sort of advice one gives to someone with crushingly low self-esteem; it's the sort of advice that perpetuates the whole thing. God help me if I try to do anything else but hide. 

I find myself wondering, then, whether my compulsion to hide or make myself appear smaller is due to my own complexes, or due to others' encouragement of this sort of behaviour. In the past, my experiences of letting myself appear as loud and hungry and childish as I feel have always resulted in bad feedback. My weight, or rather my weight gain, is often the only way I am allowed to take up space in our family.

The aim is always, is it not, to take up less space physically in order to allow oneself wiggle room when it comes to expressing emotions. No one wants to hear an overweight girl complaining about her problems. But when a thin woman expresses her anger, her hurt or her joy, she's met with a very different reaction. This was something I observed at school. The fat girls who cried were shunned (and there weren't many of them); the thin girls who cried or yelled or complained were always coveted and immediately reassured.

I applied, on a whim, to the study abroad international exchange offered in the second year. Amongst my list of selected schools sit the Ivy League, which represents a whole other kettle of fish. Wouldn't it be just so, to spend a year at an Ivy League school, to study under great professors and mingle with the rich and pretty just one last time? I miss the upper-class education I so despised as an adolescent. I'd like a second chance to fit in, to wear pearl earrings at the weekends, to eat brunch in brasseries in Kensington, and to know that my life was just one fabulous thing after another.

As it stands, I feel pretty fucking average, and it's about time that changed.

Today's intake:

-2 tbsp peanut butter (250)

-Ruby red grapefruit juice (200)

-Apple (80)

-Soy latte (100)

-Vegan banana muffin (300?)

-Greek salad (500) 

-Smoked cheese (250)

-Chorizo (200)
-Almonds (250)

Total - 2130 calories 

I'm not going to feel bad about that number because the majority of what I ate was healthy, Paleo, protein-dense foods, and way below the kind of numbers I've been hitting this week. I'm going to try to move away from grains like bread, crackers, etc. unless I come in way below my calorie deficit. 

I feel like the smoothies were a really great thing in my diet, so as soon as I'm back at university I'll start incorporating those again. The ideal is, eventually, to be able to burn enough calories through high-intensity exercise like kickboxing and running that I can eat 2000 calories a day of smoothies, salads, good quality/free range meat and eggs, and nuts without gaining weight. I'd rather overexert myself physically and sleep better, look better while eating more, than look skinny and malnourished. Part of me thinks that I'd look even better at 70 kgs whilst exercising a lot and eating Paleo, than not exercising and dieting at 65. 

We're back on Thursday so that will cut out all of the restaurant food (I can't afford to eat out that much at home, boo). Excited to launch into a good long stretch of eating high protein and exercising again. 

I'm in New York. Didn't have the luxury of a scale for the first week, but I knew I was getting heavier. What else does one expect, when living off a diet of gourmet dinners and diner food? Plus I ate my weight in sweets over Christmas. It's basically impossible to count a thing I eat here, due to restaurant portions and not knowing how much oil is on everything, etc. But at a guess I'd say I'm eating closer to 3000 calories a day than 2000. Which, quite frankly, is hideous.

And what is even more hideous is that I finally stepped on a scale I found in our apartment here, this afternoon. After eating only 250 calories' worth of peanut butter and a sip of orange juice, I'm up to 170 lbs (77 kgs). Lesson of the day - don't count on exercise to keep your weight down. I've been walking around eight hours a day since I got here all around the city, running up and down the stairs in our apartment building, running for trains... and I've gained 3 kilos in a week.

I'm panicking and want to cry. My first response whenever this sort of thing happens is to quickly and automatically draw up a damage control plan, consisting of extreme restriction and a little help from my good friends Ex-Lax and Tranquilyn. But here's the deal. I've never been this big before. And I don't know that the fuck to do this time.

The failsafe way to proceed would be to cut to 1500 calories a day, live off protein and coffee, start working out, and pray it comes off. The problem is I'm not back home until Thursday, and then it's a rollercoaster three days' worth of socialising before I have to jump on a train back to University Land and settle into the change of environment quickly enough so as not to disrupt schoolwork. My dream - as it always is when the end of a holiday is drawing near - had been to come back at the start of Term 2 weighing less than 150 lbs. 20 lbs is not going to happen in the space of a week. But maybe 10 lbs will, and it's worth a try.

So the last few days have been pretty bad food-wise; the day before last I binged on a takeaway veggie burger and chips, which set me up to 74.8, and yesterday I met up with an old friend in town. Despite subsisting off of black coffee all day with L., later drunken escapades in Soho led me to devour a greasy shitty burger from Burger King - with all the extra trimmings. Strangely (and perhaps only due to the alcohol dehydration), I maintained 74.8. But I also slept for 13 hours.

It's annoying that more sleep leads one to more efficient weight loss, but not to a more functional existence. One would think, in the logical sense, that more hours awake = more fat burnt. But logic seems to go out of the window when it comes to weight loss, and more time awake is not in fact conducive to burning more fat in the slightest. This is unfortunate, because I'd like to be a part of the human race some day, but that seems to require waking up prior to two p.m. and getting enough time in the evening to do shit and talk to people, something I haven't yet mastered.

We're going out to celebrate my sister's birthday in advance, because tomorrow the two of us fly to New York to meet my dad. I've only had 100 calories' worth of strawberry yogurt, a glug of orange juice, and an americano w cream and Splenda - it's almost 6pm. Granted I take enough Ritalin, I'm sure I'll be able to skimp with just a raw salad for dinner. Restaurants terrify me.

Insomnia has made a vicious return. Tossed and turned for like 3 hours last night before finally settling into a half-slumber, and my head was pounding when I woke up six hours later. I've had this permanent headache since I got back and I'm starting to wonder whether it's psychosomatic, because it comes back whenever I'm stressed out or trying to get to sleep. I've been popping painkillers like there's no tomorrow but yeah, anyway, screwy body not working with me but against me. I presume it's a detox symptom of sorts, from cutting a bunch of shit out of my diet since I returned home from university. The amount of takeout I was living on was disgusting.

72 is so close, only a kilo away, and I think it'll be a number that, ironically, I'll be happy to see. Not because I feel thin there, but because of the associations. At the start of summer last year, I ate my way up to 72 in a depressive feeding frenzy, but went to LA for a month and managed to drop to 65 without much difficulty at all. I definitely think it's a hurdle number, a plateau of sorts, that once broken past gives way to faster weight loss and a speedy entry into the high 60s - and that's where I last remember feeling "comfortable". Not thin necessarily, but lighter in my step, confident enough to show off legs and arms. In general, I couldn't be more thankful for winter, allowing me to bundle up under a million layers that hide the areas I hate. But fear is the best motivator, and fear is always there when you know that it'll be shorts weather soon. Shorts have always put the fear of God in me. 

I know I need to start exercising. It sounds like an excuse, but cardio outdoors is just an impossibility in the current zero degree climate that is London right now. Actually, today wasn't too cold, and I could actually get away without the scarf and gloves for once, but in general it's been freezing... so no, jogging can wait until the spring. I should probably do some crunches or something. Although I don't feel like that will make any difference. In less than three weeks I'm back at uni, anyway, and I'm signed up to the gym there (I have been squandering my £21-a-month membership since October). I want to start kickboxing again, because I used to do it when I was eighteen and loved it. I think there are a few classes near where I go to school, in town, so I'll definitely look into it when I get back. I like the idea of angry exercise. I can't imagine feeling peaceful or relaxed while exercising. Punching things is a form of exercise I can deal with. 

Today I had around 1300 again, which isn't as low as I would have liked, but the smoothie I made for breakfast contained more calories than I'd predicted because I used full-fat yogurt instead of fat-free. I'm getting to a point where fat is starting to freak me out again, way more than carbs and sugar do. I should really start buying everything fat free. Besides yogurt and cheese, I don't really consume fat anymore, at least not for the past 10 days. My diet mainly consists of chicken salad sandwiches, smoothies, cups and cups of black coffee and diet coke, small portions of whatever's being made for supper, and apparently now wine. But I want to cut the wine habit because it's draining, on top of everything else.

The goal is really to end up eating like a normal-but-health-conscious person. Thinking back to LA last summer, I wasn't really consuming anything but frozen yogurt, coffee with soy milk, lunches consisting of bags of SunBites or cashew nuts and too many cans of diet coke, and the occasional large vegan takeout for dinner. I ate a lot of salad and sushi, and avoided cheese like the plague. Plus I was working out for half an hour every day in the living room, doing calisthenics and stuff. I really need to get back into that. I went from 72 to 65 in a matter of weeks. I've done it before, I can do it again.

I feel positive about this. 

Weight loss has slowed, for now. I'm aware that this happens: the water weight goes, and then everything stabilises for a bit, and it's frustrating as hell. But I'm sick of the 70s. 4 more kilos, and I'm back in my safe zone. Whatever "safe" means.

Currently drinking a bottle of wine, and eating non-fat Swiss cheese, and hoping that at some point tonight I'll pass out. All I ate in the day was a cup of mango yogurt, 1 tangerine, 1/2 a cup of cereal, 2/3 of a soy latte, and 2 black coffees with Splenda. Then I got home at 9, and ate a plate of macaroni cheese, because I was starving, and part of me doesn't regret it because it was delicious and I finally got the warmth back into my fingers. But now I'm drinking this shitty Spanish wine I wasted money on and eating more cheese (low-fat, but not low enough). I hate drinking alone, and I know I shouldn't do it, but I felt so wired up until I started. I just needed something to take the edge off.

I have a fear that I will never change. That I'll always stay in this state of dependence (on my vices and other people), and slip into some kind of permanent slump I'll never be able to remove myself from. I want to change my appearance and personality dramatically, although I don't know how. I know that it starts with my mindset though, and trying to stop this self-pity crap. No one will have time for me in the future. I can't stay screwed up forever.

Technically speaking, I only ate around 1300 calories today, and that's not enough to cause weight gain. Emotionally, I can't shake the feeling that I've undone all my hard work in the space of one night. This is how I get at 2 a.m. I start believing things that aren't true, or logical. I wonder where my logic went.

Within the time frame that I have, it is logical to assume that I will be able to drop these last 5 kilos by the end of the Christmas holiday (January 5). But as far as I'm aware, bottles of wine and several slices of Swiss cheese past midnight has never been that conducive to weight loss, so I should probably stop. The question is, as it always has been - will 68 kilos be enough?

Probably not, but we'll address that at a later date.

So it's 7.30, and I've only had 400 calories so far, comprising of some raspberry yogurt, a banana, 1/2 cup of bran cereal and diet coke. I have the most tremendous headache, but it feels worth it, because I stepped on the scales and saw that I'd lost 4 kgs since I got back a week ago.

Currently my weight is 73. At 5'9", that puts my BMI at 23.9, "healthy". A week ago, I was technically overweight by BMI standards, which seems absurd, that you can be fat one week and normal the next. But I guess BMI is stupid, and doesn't take into account muscle, or body composition, or bone density. Still, it's an adequate marker for where I want my weight to be. In the first term of uni, I weighed around 62 kgs after having had the flu, which put my BMI at 20, but I could see my ribs. I guess the initial goal is 68, where my weight remained for the entirety of the second term, where I could wear dresses and short skirts and tights and not feel monstrous - "only 5 kgs less than I am now". But 5 kgs is a lot, and now I've lost the initial water weight, it's only going to get harder. But my goal still stands. I want 68 by the first week back at school, in January, and that's three weeks away.

Presently and in the past, weight loss - for me - has never become noticeable until I lose more than 6 kgs, which is a stone. I'm not expecting anyone to notice, but I suspect they will if I return to university less bloated and in decidedly snazzier attire than last term. That's the aim here. It's not be a sad little thin girl with no energy or motivation, who takes an hour to eat a cereal bar. My aim is to be triumphant, and to have nothing to complain about anymore. I wore a dress today for the first time since summer, with tights and thick socks rolled over boots. I looked "feminine", a word I haven't equated with myself since I first got to university. I know I'm still fat, but I won't be for long. And when I get to 68, the next goal will be lower, and I'll keep going until I finally feel confident enough to wear and eat whatever the fuck I want and not be self-conscious. Summer in this country is a nightmare.

Yesterday the total came to around 1150. So far I've been able to lose on 1300-1500, which is still under my deficit because I'm tall, but I know that as it gets harder to lose, the calories will have to go down too. I'm training myself, conditioning my body to need less and still function as it did before. That's the thing. I haven't felt functional for an entire term, even though my intakes have bordered around the 2300 mark. I guess when you eat too much and gain weight, functionality decreases just the same as it would when you eat too little. You start craving 14 hours sleep and panting on the fifteen minute walk to lectures, and God knows that's not healthy.

Today has been rough. I had multiple arguments with my mother, who seems to revel in blaming her unhappiness on my unhappiness, completely disregarding the fact that whilst at university my ups and downs of emotion have positively zero effect on her life and relationships. I've been intermittently crying and shouting all day, storming out of the house twice and now finally in my room, trying to distract myself with Lost and talking to old London friends.

I want to say to her, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for being a fuck-up. I'm sorry for messing up your life. I'm sorry for sucking the joy out of your day. But then the other half of me just thinks: screw all of you. I'm depressed and I'm not apologising. So why don't you just leave me alone to my misery, and my days spent in bed, and my insular world. Just leave me alone because I know you can't handle it.

No one can handle it, especially not me. I think I am borderline bipolar by medical standards, and need to go back into psychotherapy. I get these intense waves of euphoria that come crashing down so hard in the space of just a few hours. I don't know who I am anymore, and sometimes, I wonder if imitation is all I'm good at. I'm just playing a part and sleep-walking through life, hoping someone will notice and pull me out of the hole. But no one ever does, not for long enough anyway. I guess it's not their responsibility, it's mine.

I ate two scrambled eggs on toast, with ketchup, and then a chicken salad sandwich, even though I didn't want it. Then there was the black coffee chock-full of sweetener that I downed while I was out, along with three cigarettes. I was just chaining outside Starbucks, waiting to calm down. I couldn't go back into the house in that state.

So that's around 550 calories, and it's only 6pm. I want to go down and spend time with my mother, but I know that she can't stand to be around me. She said so herself.

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.