Day 4

W: 163.8. Progress. Sort-of.

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

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

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

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

Total: ~668 calories

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

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

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

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

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

>.<

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

Day 3

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

Intake so far today:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tentatively, the plan for tomorrow is as follows:

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

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

S: - Diet Coke, cigarettes, caffeine pills.

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

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

EDIT:

Had a big salad for dinner:

-- 1/2 iceberg lettuce (7)

-- Spiralized carrot (100)

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

-- Grating of parmesan (50)

-- Lite salad cream (60)

(417 cal)

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

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

Day 2

Weight: 166.0

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

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

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

Total:
-- (~1278)

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

The perks of being home include:

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

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

Day 1

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

Intake:

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

-- Total (1056)

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

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

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

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

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

Some late night thoughts

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

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

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

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

Just another day 0

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

Intake so far --

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

-- (1,103)

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

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

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

Drive

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

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

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

Intake:

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

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

Rushes

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

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

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

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

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

Blah, blah. Still fat.

5.30am

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

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

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

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

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

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

Total:  2075

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

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

On the recent veganism

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

SF vanilla soy latte -- 140 cal
Americano -- 45 cal
Veg stir fry with garlic and hoisin plum sauce -- 230 cal
Salad (Quorn chicken pieces, 3 stalks celery, lite mayo) -- 260 cal
Pizza (2/3 slice) + creamy dip -- ~200 cal

Feel completely disinterested in food. Today experienced a massive dip in energy. Makes sense. I've been living off <1000 calories a day, taking Ritalin every afternoon and smoking a butt-ton to make up for the lack of food. 875 calories today and I'm stuffed. I bought a 400-calorie sandwich earlier. If I were being smart I'd eat it, but I don't want it. Maybe I'll eat half, although then I'd have to throw the other half away and I hate wasting food. Ugh.

It's weird how I have absolutely no desire to binge. 3 more pounds and I'm in the 150s. Part of me wants to stop but then I think, why now? Why not keep pushing? Technically 9 more pounds and I'm there, why not just go a little further?

162.2 pounds this afternoon, my dehydrated weight post-bath. It's working. The knowledge that I could break into the 150s by the end of the week is invigorating.

Intake:

- Salad with romaine, onions, 1 cal garlic spray, egg whites, tabasco (120)
- Caramel macchiato, soy (240)
- Battered sausage with ketchup (480)
- Diet Pepsi (1)

- 841 calories

If I eat anything else tonight it will be a banana with 1 tbsp peanut butter (210) or a small glass of red wine (100) but I'm feeling so full after dinner. We got fish and chips but I didn't eat any of the chips which was a first. I felt so incredibly stuffed just having the sausage in batter. It was a ridiculous amount of calories for just one sausage at any rate. I got the calories off the internet so a little worried about the accuracy of my calculations, but it's not like it was a huge volume of food or anything. I would have felt safer with veg but equally when I got home from coffee it was already 8.30, my mum had just come home from work, and there wasn't time to cook my own dinner. Plus I took some ritalin while I was out, which had the traditional effect of suppressing my appetite, so even though I was planning on eating more than just the sausage I was extremely full once I had finished it. Weird. Maybe my appetite is going down in general. I certainly don't feel the same level of hunger now as I did two weeks ago.

I guess I've lost 10 pounds since March 1st. I don't think it shows. It's probably all water weight anyway. It's odd to think that in three weeks I could fit back into all those clothes I got too big for. My jeans, for one.

It's only 9 pounds until I get back to the weight I was a year ago. I don't think I will be satisfied at 153, but it's a damn good start. My plan is probably to continue restricting below 1200 calories until I hit 150, then channel my energies into clean eating and exercise. The steadier the last 10-15 pounds come off, the longer they'll stay off. At least that's how it's supposed to go. I would love to be 140, athletic, healthy, glowing with self-confidence and able to fit size 10s again. That sounds much more appealing than whittling myself down to some ungodly number and turning into a rake.

163.2 @ noon when I woke up. Today has been successful so far with the exception of an unplanned cheese & ham toastie I bought when I went to meet my sister for coffee. Breakfast was a smoothie (frozen raspberries, red pepper, tangerine, cayenne and grape juice), a piece of wholemeal toast and 1 banana microwaved with cinnamon, vanilla extract and a small amount of butter. Then I had the toastie with my sister (305 calories), a cappuccino, another coffee (black) with C at Starbucks and just made myself a Caesar salad with quorn chicken, romaine and celery for dinner. It's 9pm so if I have anything else it'll be veg because that's literally all I stocked my fridge with today. Cabbage, leeks, stir fry, celery and lettuce. Either way I'm only at a total of 970 for the day, so technically I still have ~200 calories 'wiggle room'. It may however be spent on wine as I find it helps me sleep.

It's alarming to me just how quickly I seem to be able to fall right back into restricting whenever I'm at home. I don't know what it is about being here that seems to facilitate that mentality. Part of it is not being able to eat whatever and whenever I please. My health-consciousness in London seems to increase ten fold. I never get take-out with the exception of sushi literally once in a blue moon. The fridge is always stocked with low-calorie or healthy foods, and whenever we have a cooked dinner it's always protein and veg and maybe some organic pasta. Then there's the not being able to eat at night. That's a big one. By 11pm everyone's usually in bed and the house is dark. I live on the mezzanine floor (essentially the attic) and don't have a door, so a sneaky midnight trip to the kitchen is out of the question. I eat less meat. I walk more; I also sleep more, and wake up earlier. All of these factors mean that some kind of weight loss is always inevitable here whether I'm thinking about it consciously or not.

The question is when (or where) to stop. Technically, it's only 10 pounds until I hit the number I was maintaining last January, when I met L and had just gained some rebound weight off the back of illness. Ostensibly I was 'slim', not underweight nor overweight but perfectly healthy and with pretty much nothing to worry about. Having gained to 172 this year, however, 153 seems like a dream. The worry is I get there and still feel fat. I certainly felt fat at 153 last January, but that's because I was comparing myself to my post-flu low-weight of 137 pounds. To be perfectly honest, I think 137 is about as far as I can push my body when it comes to weight loss. Not that a lower weight wouldn't look nicer, but for the sheer fact that when I weighed 137 my bones started jutting out. Being almost 5'10" has its perks.

Update: Had the rest of the Quorn chicken with some lite salad cream and a glass of wine. So total calories today = 1170. Watching House and sipping a diet ginger beer. Slowly weaning myself off Coke and so far it's been doing wonders for my water consumption.

164.0 this morning so on the right track. Ate minimally:

-Wholemeal toast with hoummous and tomatoes (200)
-Caramel macchiato with soy (240)
-Diet Coke, 1 can (0)
-Bag of chips (175)
-Rocket salad (180)
-Iced coffee (120)

Total: 915

Lowest intake in a while. Trying to get my sleep sorted. My general sleeping schedule at home tends to be a solid block (waking up maybe once, when my sister leaves for school) averaging 3am-3pm. I'd like to adjust to a schedule of 1-9. In an ideal world that would allow me the restorative sleep I need to recuperate from the bad effects of last term, dull my anxiety, and alleviate at least part of the late-night mania I experience after waking up late. Plus it would mean more alone-time, which is hard to fit into evenings spent with my family.  

I'm finally home. Thank God. The end of term was absolute hell. Because of my appalling attendance, I've been encouraged to take a leave of absence and study abroad is now off the table. So I've been devastated, depressed, in a black hole. But now I'm home and I feel like fuck it, I should just be focusing on myself to counter this. I was not who I wanted to be this term. I was overweight, and lethargic, and miserable. I will not return to university the same person in April. I need to change, evolve past this useless era of my life.

165.4 this morning, so 2 pounds lost since I got home. My goal is to be in the 140s or at the very least, low 150s by the time the holidays are up. I don't know what my plan is yet, but it's probably going to be a 1200 calories, no eating after midnight kind of thing.

Food today:

-Caramel macchiato with soy (240)
-Toast with peanut butter + banana (300)
-Roast gammon with asparagus, salad, dressing (350)
-Grape and raspberry juice (110)

Which comes to exactly 1000 calories. Granted I don't eat anything further (and I doubt that I will seeing as it's half past 9) I should technically see 164 tomorrow. There will be some progress after today I'm sure.

Feeling inspired but unable to tap into any thought or idea with the focus it takes to begin a new project. Considering waking up early tomorrow and going to the library or Starbucks to write. I need a fresh start and a new creative schedule, one that works.

The day started off with this. No complaints. I need the brain fuel to power through this 3000-word paper due in for Friday. My sleeping pattern has been much more erratic since essay time started a week ago; 8am became the regular bedtime, and rising at 6pm the norm. I've hated it, as lack of sun makes me incredibly depressed, but anyway. Might have fixed it today. Ended up passing out at 2pm after an all nighter (first essay got done and handed in), and then woke up incredibly disoriented at 2.30am this morning. Spent about two hours in bed watching House then finally got up at 4.30 and decided to work (it's 8am now and I have around 1,750 words of notes which is a definitive start). 6am breakfast pictured above. Morning snack will be more fruit and plenty of water, lunch will probably be sushi even though I can't afford it and for dinner I'm either going to make vegetarian bolognese (with quorn mince) or some other concoction involving the ingredients in my fridge right now. I really love the feeling of sitting at my desk reading articles, eating breakfast and drinking coffee as the sun comes up. It's very gratifying and makes you feel like part of the human race - the part that wakes up before 7am and actually gets shit done in the mornings. It's just peaceful to have that solitude before all the other students wake up. The ideal schedule would definitely involve waking up hours before everyone else, although it means getting to bed earlier. That's the one downside as I love to stay up late and sacrificing that is something I've always found always difficult.

Trying to turn my obsession with food into an obsession with healthy eating will probably be a successful way to navigate the next few weeks. I'm getting preoccupied with the arrangement of my food and how it looks aesthetically before I eat it. In general I love to cook and make food look beautiful so channelling my obsessions into this will prevent me from making bad choices. I hope.

Weighed 165.8 when I stepped on the scales at 3am. It's my absolute intention to be in the 150s by the end of next week. I'm looking forward to being able to relax, read and socialise when I get back. I isolate myself at university to the point of it being voluntary loneliness, except I never feel alone. I just feel disappointed in the other people who seem to be around, for not being interesting enough. Eventually I'm going to pickle in my own snobbery, but for now with all the work it's actually doing me some favours. I really do want to become more obsessive about my work. I'd like the title 'workaholic' to apply to me and I don't care if it makes me antisocial. Work is more fulfilling than meaningless conversation at any rate.

Update: so I finished up the fast at 73 hours and broke it with a bite of a potato rosti and a bite of broccoli. Then I foolishly decided to eat 3 packets of sweets and drink a pear cidre, which in retrospect I feel very bad about. It's now about 5am, I'm getting into bed in ten minutes. I feel very lost as to what to do, whether to carry on while I'm still in the swing of things, or go back to restricting for a bit. Or maybe intermittent fasting. It all depends on my weight. Depending on whether I'm up or down when I wake up I'll make a decision.

68 hours into the fast. This afternoon I weighed 167.0 pounds, which wasn't as bad a gain as I had expected, but still a gain. Today I've had 1/2 a cup of Green Machine (70), a soy cappuccino from Starbucks (120) and a cup of mulligatawny soup (200), in total 390 calories. The problem yesterday was that I went over 1000 calories in liquids without realising or keeping track, which is a remarkably easy mistake to make when your brain is tricked into thinking that soup isn't "real" food. Anyway, I'm glad I stuck with the fast and pushed through despite. There's only 4 more hours until the fast technically ends, but I'm thinking that if I weigh under 165 tomorrow, I'll keep going. It's not as if I have any social commitments coming up that would require eating; the only issue is my own discipline and willpower. But I've read that day 3 is somewhat of a hump in terms of breaking through the hunger wall, so part of me thinks it would be a shame to end it before I get through to the other side. We'll see. Either way, I'm not planning on exceeding 700 calories today, so hopefully I'll see 165 tomorrow, fingers crossed. Then it's only 5 pounds to go before I hit my low weight of the academic year (I got down to 160 some time in the holidays, before I went to New York and binged back the lost weight).

In other news, I saw a therapist today and agreed to ten sessions with him. So that felt fairly beneficial. I ended up crying about my father, as usual. Clearly I have a lot of issues still to work out. But today felt like progress somehow, which was good. I have two more weeks of essays and then I'm home. I am dying to go home and see my friends. I've felt so very isolated this term - this whole year in fact - and being at home, while it can be occasionally stressful, is probably what I need the most right now. I just need to be reminded that there are people who understand and care, I need to be around my family and remind myself that all is not lost.

If I could be somewhere in the 150s by the time I go home, that would be great. I have about eleven days to lose a minimum of eight pounds, in that case. It's a bit extreme but if I continue to lose at a rate of roughly two pounds per day, I could be in the low 160s by the end of the weekend. The grunt work is the difficult bit, but once I stabilise at 160 I'm hoping it will be fairly easy to break through to the 150s in a matter of days. Then I will be working on exercising and refining my diet to be as healthy and simple as possible. The broader goal is to come back in the summer term weighing somewhere around 145, although I don't know how easy it will be to lose that quickly at home. If I could get back to 153 (my weight last January) I would be extremely happy, anything else is a bonus really.

I'm now on my 50th hour liquid fasting. At 38 hours in, I weighed 166.8 lbs. It's now the end of Day 2 and I have had: beetroot and raspberry V8, a soy espresso frappuccino from Starbucks, black coffee, diet soda, mojito (non-alcoholic), Thai tom kha coconut soup, chicken broth, homemade pea soup and about half of a small tub of bean soup (which I stopped eating because it had too much "solid food" at the bottom). I'm extremely bloated and hoping that the fact I feel heavy with water weight is just the sheer amount of liquid I consumed today. Soup especially is sodium-heavy so I've been drinking as much water as possible.

I screwed up a bit today because I felt so incredibly weak in town that I impulse-bought a fuck ton of healthy, expensive soups intending to split them up over the next few days but had what I can only describe as a soup binge whilst watching films in L's room. I hate that I now feel bad for consuming "too much soup". It seems ridiculous to me, that before I was bingeing on real food and not feeling bad about it, and now I'm feeling guilty over soup. I'm just so desperate for it not to go wrong this time. I'm pleading with my body: don't gain, don't gain, don't gain.

My assumption is that I'll just pee it all out (excuse the imagery) over the next 12 hours. Or so I hope. The appeal with a true water fast is that you get to see the numbers go down every couple of hours, every time you pee or happen to be near a scale. Just like obsessive time-checking on a fast measured by hours, I can see how one could get equally obsessive checking their weight frequently whilst water fasting.

Part of me is questioning the whole thing, and if it'll work - and if it doesn't, will I throw in the towel and go back to regular eating? I feel like I want to say no to "real" food for as long as it takes before I get my weight down and get back to myself, but when will that be? Days? Weeks? I don't know how long I could keep this shit up, or if it's even worth it. 72 hours doesn't seem like enough, either way.

I've just got to remember why I'm doing this. It's not just for going home and making an impression. It's to get the control back in my life. It's for the parties, the appearances, the glorious moments of feeling beautiful and powerful somehow, the moments where you know someone's taking notice. It's for being able to wear anything and look amazing, it's for the role in the film, it's for next year abroad at a private American university where appearance will be extremely important (much more so than here). It's for being able to celebrate and not feel guilty about it. I'm sick of feeling guilty.  

25 hours in, and I've consumed two coffees (with milk), a lemonade, chicken and vegetable broth, edamame soup and a can of Coke. I guess this has turned into a general liquids-only fast. Tomorrow I'm gonna cut the milk in my coffee, and avoid full-sugar fizzy drinks as a base rule. I bought some beetroot & raspberry V8, which I'm thinking of splitting up throughout the day. Hopefully, given sufficient black coffee consumption and 'mother's little helper' I should be able to make it through the day on only one soup this time.

Around dinner time I almost cracked. I was hungry and craving a PB&J. Luckily I didn't. I'm telling myself I can have that PB&J, just not now. This is how it works. You put it off, hour by hour until you've done a week's stint and barely even noticed. Or so you hope.

I... don't know how this is going to affect me. I don't even know if I'll lose weight, that is if I last long enough to see a marked difference. I've read stories of girls online losing 6, 8, 10 pounds in the first three days. I don't think that will happen to me. I'm already technically 1/3 of the way through my projected 72 hours of liquids-only and I don't feel like I'll have lost even a pound today. It's hard to get an accurate reading right now because I'm full of water, and part of me doesn't want to step on the scales in case I see the dreaded 170 flash up at me again.

I want to buy jeans again, and fit into the size I've always worn (10-12 UK). Being 5'9, I would have to get considerately more emaciated to fit into a smaller size than that, so a goal of size 8 feels pretty unrealistic at this point. But maybe I'd fit into 12s after fasting. I don't know. I want my old figure back. I also miss seeing the line of my cheekbones when I look in the mirror. My face seems bloated and puffy to me now, and extraordinarily round. Part of it's reality, part of it's distortion. Also, I have developed pudge on my stomach where there never used to be pudge, even at higher weights like 150 and 160. That, and the weight on my face will probably be the first to go, I am assuming (and hoping).

A major motivation is being able to wear the clothes I idolise on others. A smart black uniform of a t-shirt tucked into cigarette jeans, belted at the waist. Military boots, a long coat. or leather jacket. I long to look fashionable, and more infuriatingly own enough clothes to dress in the way that I wish, but I don't fit most of them, and the ones that I do fit seem to look wrong on my slightly-larger-than-usual frame. I look at skinny girls and think that they waste their potential. If I were a size 8 I'd wear whatever I damn well pleased. I'd walk down the street and feel unstoppable.

Looking (and being) scholarly is a good model for success. The more brainy you look, the more brainy you sound and the harder you'll work (or so is scientifically proven). The true exhibition of discipline. Books under arm, cigarette in mouth, rushing frantically to make a lecture. Reading up on literary theory, writing maniacally any chance you get. This is the model I've idealised for myself for the past year and I am so very desperate to emulate it successfully. I seem to embody some elements but not others, and on a case-by-case basis rather than regularly, routinely. Routine and ritual becomes oh so important when you're trying to shift an accumulated thirty pounds of weight.