Why I Don't Have Any Outfit Photos and Why I Hate These Pants

I recently decluttered some pants. Five pairs in total, now that I’ve released my grip on my last pair of skinny jeans. Three pairs were just too big. The skinny jeans were just too skinny. And the jeans— I just decided I hate.

I’d bought a pair of men’s black pants in my usual brand, GEORGE, from eBay, just a size down from the last pair— so a 36. I really liked my last black GEORGE pants, and was sad to see them go, so Matt tracked these down for me. The material wasn’t the same; it was thicker and more polyester feeling, and less drapey. But I liked the fit, and figured at least they’d be warm in winter.

Then COVID happened, and I never even got to wear them before deciding they were too big. I tried them on the other day, realized they were falling down, and figured I’d just wear a belt. I have a black leather belt from storage that finally fits, so I tried that. They looked ridiculous. There was just too much fabric gathered together in front, and no matter how I tried to redistribute it around my waist, I still hated them. See photo.

I put on my Men’s Levi’s 501s, and was happy to see that they finally sit down on my hips the way I intended them to. But looking in the mirror, I couldn’t help fixating on how they seemed to flare out on the legs and make me look like a cowboy, or someone’s dad. The back view was even worse, as by some miracle, they both gave me a wedgie and looked saggy. Despite the fact that they technically fit, I had to admit that I just hated them. See photos.

In order to illustrate these issues, I had Matt snap a few photos on my phone. Since my weight is lower than it has been in ten years, I figured I could handle seeing photos of myself. Oh, how wrong I was. Upon seeing them, I was horrified by how fat, short, and stumpy I looked. I cringed at the ones where my belly was visible through my shirt. I’d hesitated to even take the photos, but my concern was solely that I’d be showing off how thin I am, appearing vain and also opening myself up to commentary on my body. (I don’t enable comments on my blog, so don’t ask me how.)

Instead of seeing them as “thin photos,” I reacted by thinking I looked fat. I felt I’d been objectified, and that I’d exposed my most vulnerable body part— my squishy belly. I looked through the photos again today in preparation for writing this blog, and was surprised to find that I looked fine. The camera on my iPhone definitely distorts things a bit, and always seems to make me look even shorter than I am, but overall, the photos didn’t bother me. What was so different? Why did I have such a negative initial reaction?

At first glance, I thought I simply wasn’t thin enough to be putting pictures of myself on the internet. I’ve been wanting to post outfit photos to show more of how my wardrobe functions, but have always reacted this way to the photos. I thought that this time, I just had to be thin enough. I’m down to my college weight, for christ’s sake. But the last time I actually liked a photo of myself, I was even thinner. Will I like photos of myself if I lose ten to fifteen pounds? Or am I just so used to loathing my body that I keep on doing it, even when I’m thin?

It’s almost like I’ve experienced “fat trauma.” I often forget I’m no longer plus-sized when looking at clothes online. And the other day, Matt said something funny about picking me up, and I immediately reminded him that I was heavier than him. (I’m currently forty pounds lighter than him.) Why hasn’t my brain adjusted? Is it just a common case of body dysmorphia, where I think I’m much fatter than I am? After all, I’m fairly thin, and I still think I’m fat.

But the opposite is also true. When I’m fat, I’m always shocked when I look in the mirror, because I imagine I’m much thinner than I am. I’ve never even looked at our wedding photos, because I didn’t think I could handle seeing myself at almost two hundred pounds, regardless of how well-dressed I was, regardless of how special the event was. And when I tried filming some YouTube videos at 224 pounds, I cried every time I saw the playback.

I saw beautiful plus-sized people online, confident and stylish, posting pictures of themselves on Instagram. Why couldn’t that be me? I was no bigger than they were. Yet every time I saw a photo of myself, I simply didn’t recognize myself. I couldn’t accept my body as my own. So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I still can’t. I still think my current weight would be fine for anyone else, but not for me.

I look back at those old “thin” photos of me on Facebook or on my phone— the ones where I was down to 125. The ones where I was too thin to get my period. The ones where I was thin specifically so that I could objectify myself for my career— where I could pass as thin at auditions, and be seen as a real person, and not the funny, fat friend. I think of those photos and say that that’s who I really am.

I feel like I’m a thin person trapped in a fat body. I imagine that people can see the difference between the “thin me” and my fat body, and I feel exposed. As if my pain and my mental illness are represented by those extra pounds, and it’s out there for the world to see. And my belly— that’s the worst of it. Soft and vulnerable, it’s the thing that makes people assume I’m pregnant, and ask me when I’m due. The thing that makes me feel deformed, somehow.

I saw the photos of those pants the other day, and all of this came flooding out. I talked it over with Matt, I made notes, I pondered.

But then I remembered how simple it really was. It was a fat thought. I analyzed my reaction, dissecting the language the way Carol Munter suggests in When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies. She contends that a fat thought is never about your body. It’s simply code for something else. The thought said I looked “fat.” That I looked “too big.” An old childhood taunt came to mind: “You think you’re so big”— that my brothers and I would throw around to insult each other. If this thought wasn’t about my body, what would it be saying? It would say that I was overconfident— that I was vain— displaying my body for everyone on the internet to see. It would say that I thought I looked so great—so clearly acceptable—that I was allowed to show myself to random people for judgement. It would say that I’d gotten “too big for my britches,” too full of myself. I’d showed off. And that made me feel ashamed.

I nixed the photos, and explained it away by saying I looked fat. A few days later, the pictures seemed fine. Was it safe to post them, or would it trigger another round of self-loathing? In the end, I decided to risk it. The photos are not about how thin or fat I am. This isn’t some weight loss before and after. They simply show you, Dear Reader, why I hate these pants.

My First Weigh-In in Six Months

My last weigh-in at my psychiatrist’s office was February 24, 2020 and I was 168.6 pounds. Since we’ve switched over to telemedicine, I’ve been in the dark about any changes since then. I had my first weigh-in on my new scale on August 14, 2020.

With great trepidation, I stepped onto the seemingly delicate digital scale. It was first thing in the morning (well, afternoon for me since I get up at 2pm), I had peed as much as possible, and I was completely nude. As I stepped onto the scale, I was surprised at how light I felt. I didn’t produce the same impact—the same groaning of the equipment as I had anticipated. I knew the number wouldn’t be in line with my weigh-ins at the office (different scale, no clothes or shoes, no breakfast or coffee beforehand), but it would certainly tell me something. My heart pounded as the numbers flashed and finally stopped: 154.3. That’s a 14.3 pound difference in 6 months, so probably about 10 pounds lost, give or take, with all things considered. This was my lowest weight since a few years ago when I was on Adderall and got down to 152. I was thrilled. But I also didn’t want to let myself get too excited. I knew there would be a psychological impact, and I didn’t know what that would be.

Over the next couple of weeks, I started having graphic binge fantasies: dozens of donuts, endless Reese’s peanut butter cups, bags of peanut butter M&Ms. I wondered how I could get them, and whether it would ever be enough. I headed straight for some online OA meetings. I had to be ready to go to any lengths to keep from going through with a binge. But I couldn’t stop obsessing over it. This went on for 2-3 weeks or so.

It began to register that this probably had something to do with my weigh-in. I thought about Carol Munter’s writing about the subconscious backlash women often experience after losing weight. I thought about the fat/thin fantasies that help reveal your unexpected negative associations with thinness. I tried to think about what this new weight meant to me.

In my mind, I was no longer “fat.” I was a pretty average-sized, or “normal-sized” person. I was around this weight in college, and then when I was in my twenties performing in plays in Cape Cod and RI. I was around this weight after a 20 pound gain following a sexual assault at work and sexual harassment at massage school. I fought against those 20 pounds then, but they wouldn’t budge. I think in my mind they were protecting me from those things happening again.

My February weight of 168.6 pounds was pretty close to 170. I have totally different associations with being that weight. That was my weight after I left OA, when I switched from working in musical theater to singing Wagner and hoping for an operatic career. I thought there would be more respect in opera, more money. I traveled to Germany a few times at that weight. I sang a lot, coaching and auditioning. I was constantly on a diet. I was occasionally asked if I was pregnant.

The difference between these two identities (150 pounds vs. 170 pounds) is far more significant to me than number on a scale. 170 was safer and more respectable, and a heavier body went with my heavier singing voice. 150 was more active, less grounded. At 150 I was dancing, bouncing around from place to place, trying new things.

I remember being a lot sicker, less mentally healthy at 170. But here I was at 154.3, just as sick as I had been in the past at 170. Would people think I was better because I was thinner? Would people be relieved that I didn’t seem as sick because I wasn’t so heavy? Would they expect more of me because I’d lost weight?

It’s no wonder my subconscious wanted to binge and gain that weight back. I didn’t want anyone thinking I was all better. I managed to stay on my diet and exercise regime, and it got easier the more I acknowledged and worked through these thoughts. But just as my mind was settling down, no longer obsessing about bingeing, it was time for another monthly (or once every cycle) weigh-in. (I’d decided to weigh in on the 12th day of my cycle, which is usually about 26 days in total.)

On September 11, 2020 I stepped on the scale again: 150.3. Four pounds down. A big jump for less than a month, and I waited to see if there would be backlash this time. But there wasn’t. The binge thoughts didn’t return, and I went on with my diet and exercise as usual. I attribute it to being in the same psychological “weight identity.” I wasn’t struggling with all those different associations this time.

Today, October 5, I weighed in for the third time: 147.2. I’m in the 140s now, which I haven’t been for about 10 years. Will this next change send me spiraling? We’ll have to wait and see. It does make me start wondering how much weight I actually want to lose. I don’t want to create an unsustainable situation for myself. Do I need to start eating more, eating as much as I want to be eating for the long term? It seems like a good idea at this point, but I’m also keen to lose more weight, and I don’t want to slow that down just yet. I’m apprehensive about more weight loss, and yet the desire for more weight loss never seems to end.

I Bought a Scale, but I Keep It in the Basement

In all of my adult life, I’ve never owned a scale. My issues with food and my weight go all the way back to my very first diet at 5 years old. My (very obese) pediatrician put me on “the gum diet” (chew gum, not snacks) and my fate was sealed. I began my lifelong struggle with overeating, binge eating, constant dieting, and constant weight fluctuations. I started counting calories when I was 9, had a (thankfully brief) bout of bulimia when I was 14, and for all my childhood and teen years binged and dieted daily. I would sneak food to my room every day after school in the 15 minutes before my mom got home from work, having starved myself all day at school. I’d hide sleeves of cookies or crackers and bowls of chips or ice cream under the covers of my bed, eating furtively, ready to shove everything back under the covers if anyone came in my room. If supplies of junk food ran low, I might grab bagels or waffles or microwave pizzas, even resorting to globs of peanut butter mixed with sugar if there was nothing else.

In college I got really into the anti-diet philosophy introduced to me in books by Carol Munter (Overcoming Overeating) and Geneen Roth (Breaking Free from Compulsive Eating). I found peace with food and my body, and a big part of that was taking the advice to never weigh myself. I didn’t want to base my self-worth on a number on the scale. As I relearned what physical hunger felt like, my weight stabilized in a healthy range. I ate whatever I was hungry for, and vowed never to own my own scale. I didn’t believe I could ever have a healthy relationship with the numbers.

Despite my resolve, I’ve somehow managed to find ways to weigh myself over the years. And as life grew more complicated and my mental health declined, I lost that blissful peace with food and my body. My weight went up and down for the next 15 years.

I remember weighing in at the doctor one time in college and being slightly disappointed by the number: 146. I remember when I was working at a gym in my early twenties I used the locker room scale: I was 152 for months despite my efforts to slim down.

I grew very depressed when I was 27 and was barely leaving my apartment when my weight reached the highest it had ever been: I was 183 at my doctor’s visit, where I was also diagnosed with hypothyroidism.

During my subsequent time doing plays in Cape Cod I got down to around 150. I only know this because I would make regular trips to the scale section of a local Kmart and weigh myself in, hiding the scale at the back of the shelves and making sure to use the same one each time (since we all know that every scale is different).

While living in New York a few years later, I actually paid to rejoin a gym solely to use their scale. It was the last one I had used and I wanted to ensure that an update would be accurate.

While staying in Miami for Matt’s work I remember walking almost a mile to a nearby Publix supermarket to pay a quarter for the scale in the lobby. I was 170. Around the same time I joined Weight Watchers, betraying all of my feminist convictions and learning to count points. They gave me a little booklet and every weekly weigh-in produced a sticker with a number on it. I obediently put all the stickers in the little book, documenting my steady progress down from 183 to 163. At the 20 lb. milestone they gave me a keychain and I quit.

In more recent years I’ve secretly used the bathroom scale at my parents’ house, making sure not to eat or drink anything beforehand, quickly whipping off my shoes and clothes and finding the spot on the bathroom floor where I weigh the least. When I was on Adderall a few years ago, I watched my weight go from 211 down to 152, checking in at every family brunch.

For the past 2 years, I’ve been weighing in at my psychiatrist’s office. He has a little digital scale right outside his door and for the first several visits I wouldn’t even look at the number. Eventually I grilled Matt for all the details and soon just started looking at the scale myself. Some weigh-ins were agony, showing less than a pound lost over the 6 weeks between appointments. Others were shockingly good, like the time I lost 11 pounds during our trip to Berlin. I learned to be patient with my progress, feeling sure that this time was different, that I’d never go back to bingeing and gaining weight.

But then COVID happened, and I could no longer go to my doctor’s hospital for visits. We started conducting our appointments over Zoom and I had no way of knowing what my weight was doing. I told myself my weight wasn’t changing much, trying to keep myself from being disappointed when I finally did weigh in. But more and more time went by as our government bungled the management of the pandemic and it kept on spreading. There was no end in sight (there still isn’t) and I realized it would be a really long time before I wanted to risk walking into a hospital.

I started analyzing my body in the mirror: Was I any thinner? Was I gaining? I never got dressed in real clothes so I couldn’t even judge by how my clothes fit. When I started to become convinced that I was regaining all the weight I had worked so hard to lose, I decided it was time to buy my own scale. I knew the number would never coincide with the one on my doctor’s scale, but I could at least start a new marker.

I enlisted Matt in finding a reliable scale, and he found a very helpful article on Wire Cutter that went into great detail. They had tested a number of scales over a period of months, discovering that some scales don’t actually weigh you every time you step on them. They rely on digital memory to simply regurgitate the same number again and again until a large enough difference has been reached. He chose one that actually does weigh you every time and ordered it. Then when it came in the mail he made sure to test it himself. He used a level to find the flattest spot in the house, weighed himself, and then added a 6-pound weight which it registered exactly.

I credit Matt with the idea to only weigh myself on the same day of each menstrual cycle so hormonal fluctuations don’t affect the results (don’t ask me why everyone doesn’t do this). And I decided the best thing would be to keep the scale in the basement so I won’t be tempted to weigh myself more often. Clearly I am prone to an unhealthy obsession with my weight and I don’t want to make myself crazy. I still worry about the day that my weight goes up, or even stays the same. But this seems like the best solution for now, and hopefully I won’t be making any clandestine trips to the basement.

Cha-Cha Chocolate

It’s been well over six months since I bought any new clothes, unless you count replacing my running shoes a month or two back. But what with the current state of the world, I decided to indulge in some new lounge pants. I received some GAP joggers in the mail yesterday- just about two weeks after the day I ordered them. Their free shipping is somewhat slower then usual, I’m assuming due to COVID-related delays. Both pairs of pants are super soft, made of a thin, silky material- a modal/spandex blend. The size L Pure Body Modal Joggers in charcoal are fantastic. They have a high waist and scoop front pockets and I’m wearing them now. The size XL Truesleep Modal Joggers, also in charcoal, were too big, so I returned them. I printed out a free return label and scheduled a free USPS pickup (no post office visit required). I immediately went online to see if I could get a second pair of the size L Pure Body ones, but they only had size M left. While browsing, I realized that they had restocked the Truesleep ones in charcoal and black in a bunch of sizes. I pounced on a pair of black size L. This style has a drawstring waist and a slightly different cut, but are made from the same lightweight, silky material. There was no longer a 40% discount at this point, so I had to settle for 20% off and paid $27.20 for this pair (with free shipping).

It’s pretty surprising to me that I’m down to a size large, but I think GAP stuff tends to run a little big. I have no idea exactly where my weight stands at this point- the last time I was weighed in at the psychiatrist was Feb. 24th (2020). I clocked in at 168.6 lbs, down exactly 1.4 pounds in six weeks. Last week I had my first tele-medicine (video call) appointment with my psychiatrist, so there will be no more weigh-ins for the foreseeable future. I don’t own a scale and don’t have access to the one at the gym, plus I have no way of comparing another scale to the one at my doctor’s office, so I’ll be in the dark as far as any weight loss is concerned for some time. I’m definitely past the point of flying through pants every few weeks since my weight has barely been creeping down over the last several months. Plus it’s hard to say if my clothes fit any differently since all I wear are pajamas.

Without the structure of real pants, I’ve been trying to implement structure in other ways. I’ve deemed Sunday, my day off from exercise, my official cleaning day, and I have to say I really like it. It takes the pressure off all the other days, kind of like the scheduled weigh-ins took the pressure off of constantly wondering about my weight. So now on Sundays I wash sheets and towels, scrub the stove and kitchen sink, wash the dining room table, and give the toilet a good thorough cleaning. There’s something about cleaning a toilet that makes you feel like less of an invalid and more like a grownup. It’s quite therapeutic, if you can get past it being somewhat disgusting. I also do my own laundry and fold it up into little Marie Kondo squares and file it away, ready to start the new week. Finally, I fill up my pill cases and take stock of all my pill bottles and vitamins to see if I need to order more of anything.

It’s only been a few weeks of this, but it’s very satisfying to check off each task on my new-and-improved habit tracker. I’ve expanded from a one-page chart to a two-page spread in my bullet journal, leaving space on a third page for any specific events or accomplishments that need to be written in. I’ve gotten really explicit with all the little things I do every day or every week, from squeegee-ing the shower to wiping the crumbs off the counter after each meal. All the tasks are listed in the approximate order in which I complete them, which helps me stay on track throughout the day. I’d been feeling a lot like I was washing and drying dishes all day long and then wondering where the time went, so writing it all down makes me feel like I “get credit” for everything.

In creating this current incarnation of my habit tracker, I’ve also developed a more specific and fruitful “morning routine.” This term isn’t really accurate when you sleep until 1 or 2 in the afternoon, but bear with me. Once I wake up and check my phone to see what time it is, I immediately start making the bed (Matt’s already been up and working for hours). Once that’s complete, I open up the curtains and blinds to let the light in. Then I put on some socks and a sweater and turn the thermostat up to a normal level (I get really hot when I sleep and need the heat turned down to 64 at night so I don’t keep waking up sweating). I head to the bathroom and brush my teeth, then go straight to my pills and swallow them with a whole bottle of water. This is all before I even say “Good morning” to Matt in his office, just to make sure I don’t get distracted. This all may sound like a no-brainer to most people, but for me it’s a really proactive way to start the day.

The real sense of accomplishment I feel comes from brushing my teeth. Brushing twice a day and not just for a double session at night has been a real struggle for me for years, and a source of deep shame and self-loathing. The humiliation of not being able to take care of myself properly has weighed on me for a long time and I’ve only just this week found a way around it. Matt and I had to cancel our 6-month dental cleanings, and he expressed concern for my dental health while in quarantine and felt he had to encourage me to brush twice a day. His saying that really hit a nerve and I shut down the conversation for two days while it ate away at me.

Once I got past the shame and humiliation it brought up in me, I realized that my main issue with brushing in the morning was that the taste of minty toothpaste absolutely ruins the taste of my morning coffee, one of the great pleasures in my life (I spend hours drinking three cups to get my energy up for exercise). When I explained this to Matt, we went online and ordered three kinds of non-mint flavored toothpaste and it’s proved to be a miraculous solution to what seemed an insurmountable problem. We bought Tom’s of Maine Cinnamon and Clove toothpaste, a pediatric brand’s Cha-Cha Chocolate, and some dubious Italian brand created in 1905. The cinnamon is the clear winner here as it doesn’t interfere with my coffee enjoyment in the least and is far preferable to brushing your teeth with what tastes like a mouthful of hot cocoa (I know it sounds good in theory, but in practice it’s pretty gross). So every morning I get to check that “Brush Teeth” box on my chart, and for me, that’s a big deal.

Capsule Wardrobe Update, and Back to Dieting

It’s been quite a while since I did a thorough capsule wardrobe update and there have been a number of changes to my wardrobe since then. This is despite my weight being relatively stable (my weigh-in this week told me I’m down to exactly 170lbs). I had a look at my last capsule post in September and realized there have been a few items pulled from storage, a few new additions, and some blatant rejections.

For one thing, back in September I had pulled a blush cotton sweater from storage, but soon after that post decided it was still too small to wear. I selected a warmer replacement, my pink Cynthia Rowley cashmere pullover. I started wearing it during our Germany trip and continue to reach for it now.

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Speaking of pink, there was the purchase and sudden demise of an Everlane Air Tee, barely a blip on the capsule radar.

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I toyed with wearing some old blue skinny jeans while in Germany, but apparently what happens in Germany stays in Germany. I decided for the millionth time that I just feel too “girly” in skinny jeans and really don’t like how they look on me. They also slide down a lot since they’re stretchy and tend to bag out after about 20 minutes of wearing them. Since I can’t be bothered to wear a belt with them, I put them away upon returning home from our trip.

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I had quite a trial finding some men’s Levi 501s to replace the size 38-waist ones I thrifted and was wearing in September. They were getting too big, so I bought some 36s on Ebay, only to discover that those were way too tight. I ran the numbers and realized the 38s actually measured 40 in the waist, so I should have been looking for more 38s. I found a third pair on Ebay that the seller said measured 38 in the waist even though the tag said 40, so I went with those. Well, they fit in the waist but otherwise looked way too big, so then those were put aside. I returned to the 36s, creating a button-hack so I could wear them, but soon changed my mind concerning the viability of that project and put them all away. Finally, upon returning from our trip and finding out I’d lost a few pounds, I gave the 36s another go and by god, they fit. So I’m back to one pair of jeans.

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After all of the above changes, I was left with the same number of pieces I had back in September: 26. But I did add a pair of black men’s trousers a while back and they’re still going strong (thank you, Ebay). I pulled my heavy winter parka out of storage and it finally fits, just in time for the cold. It’s a Cole Haan white knee-length puffer coat that can zip up over my mouth when it’s especially chilly. It’s an XL and fits quite nicely at the moment, although I’m not crazy about the flashy gold zipper and the feminine hourglass shape. Lastly, I clawed back my white Gap Factory T-shirts that are too sheer to wear on their own (I layer them both together). They’re not in the best shape in terms of pilling and greying, but it’s so nice to wear a shirt that’s not black or navy that I find myself wearing it anyway.

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So with the addition of these three items into the mix, I’m up to a 29-piece wardrobe for the year.

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Now I don’t know how long this will last, since my pants are already threatening to slide down my hips. But I have yet to go foraging for those infamous smaller-clothes-in-storage. With my weight coming in at 170, taking into account the fact that I’m lifting weights now and probably have more muscle mass than when those clothes fit me before, I’m tempted. But knowing how triggering that Pandora’s Box can be, I’m going to give it some time.

I’ve been eating 2,000 calories a day for 6 weeks now and have only lost 1.2 pounds in the process. This makes me think I’m pretty close to “maintenance” of my current weight with what I’m eating and how much I’m working out. I’ve actually been struggling to finish all my calories on some days and end up eating candy bars to top up. It seems that I’ve refined my regular meals to be low in calories yet still satisfying to a fault.

In any case, I’ve decided that rather than try to push my maintenance calories even higher through reverse dieting, I’m going to cut back to 1,700-1,800 and see if I can get some weight loss started again. As much as I want to continue reverse dieting before I cut back, I just can’t take the psychological strain of waiting another six weeks before I lose any more weight. It’s hard enough waiting 5-6 weeks between weigh-ins at my doctor.

I just don’t think I could take the blow of seeing my weight stay the same or- god forbid- go up. So I’m taking the small win of increasing my maintenance calories from 1,800 to 2,000 and will go back to normal dieting- with a twist. After a week at 1,700-1,800, I’ll go back up to 2,000 for a week. Supposedly this will help keep my metabolism up and make those low-calorie weeks really count. Having these “diet breaks” seems like a good idea psychologically, too. I don’t want to start feeling deprived- or hungry- and get off track. I’m aiming to figure this stuff out for the long term, and I’m doing my best not to rush the process.

Routine Adjustment

We got home from Germany a few days ago and despite a pleasant lack of jet lag, things are feeling a bit tricky with my routines. We managed to get to the gym the morning after we arrived, and food is actually a lot easier here for me, so it’s been good so far. And when I had my psychiatrist’s appointment yesterday and got weighed in, I was pleasantly surprised to see the number: 171.2. That’s 4.8 pounds down from my pre-trip weight of 176. My expectation had been that I might stay the same weight or even gain a bit due to the reverse dieting (I’m up to eating 2,000 calories a day now), but hopefully it’s actually working and my metabolism is speeding up.

Another major factor in my weight loss has to be the increase in exercise since going to Germany. I had just recently switched my weight-lifting days to full body workouts instead of splits and I continued that way for the whole time we were there. In addition to adding more weights, I was walking a lot more there than at home. I walked 10 minutes each way to and from the gym every day, plus I upped my running time to 20 minutes on Saturdays when I would run in the park. So I guess it’s really no wonder that I lost weight with all this extra exercise, but I was still prepared for disappointment at my weigh-in and was happy with the result.

The problem is, now I have to figure out what I’m doing all over again. I’m going to continue reverse dieting, increasing my calories every 2 weeks by 50 calories a day. I have no reason to believe that it’s a total disaster, so I guess I’ll just assume it’s working and carry on. And having 2,000 calories a day to work with certainly made our travel days easier. The only problem I ran into was having trouble eating enough the first 2 days we got back. But I’m trying to plan my meals better so I don’t get too full at night and I think I’m back on track.

In terms of exercise, however, I feel I’m in a bit of a pickle. Ideally I could maintain my increased exercise here at home, but I’m not sure I’m up to it. First of all, it’s freezing here- much colder than Germany- and walking outside is wholly unappealing. It’s also not very pedestrian-friendly where we live in terms of having a destination, so I’m pretty sure outdoor walks are off the table. But those extra 20 minutes of walking 6 days a week really added up, and I don’t want to stall my weight loss by not continuing.

The treadmill is apparently my best option, but it’s so absolutely boring that I find it hard to stomach an extra 20 minutes a day of walking on it. So for now I’ve settled on doing an extra 10 minutes of uphill walking on the treadmill on cardio days, and running for 20 minutes straight instead of doing my run/walk intervals. But now I feel like I need to add walking on my weight-lifting days, and that might be the tipping point where I just want to forget exercising altogether. It was just so easy in Germany, taking an easy walk with the gym as my destination, listening to an audio book on the way. But here it just doesn’t seem feasible, even cutting the time in half from 20 minutes to 10.

I feel like I finally got into a good routine in Germany, and was able to get out of the house relatively easily every day. And now I have to change everything up again, and don’t know what to expect of myself. I want to lose more weight, so that’s some motivation, but I also have to deal with the reality that I struggle to exercise at all, never mind for 30-40 minutes a day. Today, facing a 20-minute jog and a 10-minute walk on the treadmill, I just wanted to go back to bed. I guess I feel like that most days when faced with the prospect of exercising, but this latest development definitely makes it harder.

I might have to just go back to the status quo, let go of this extra walking business, and focus on my shorter, more manageable workouts. Maybe if I just keep at it, the reverse dieting will be the key to weight loss. If I can get my maintenance calories up high enough, I could start dieting again, reducing my calories temporarily, and with my increased metabolism, lose more weight. Whatever happens with the exercise, the most important thing is to just keep going. I can never go back to doing no exercise at all. So even if it’s not exactly what I was hoping for, just continuing is the key.

YouTube Friends

I’m not bingeing, but I want to be. I feel like I don’t know what to do with myself. I can’t think of anything to write about. I feel too insecure to go sit at the cafe, and it just seems to make more sense to stay home. While I did manage to get to the gym today, I haven’t exactly accomplished anything else. I made my breakfast, coffee, and lunch. I actually meditated, so there’s that. But ultimately, I took an afternoon nap with Matt and am now sitting down to watch 3 hours of YouTube while he’s at rehearsal. While watching the last video on productivity, I found myself thinking about cookies and whether or not I should have some. I decided I will make tea instead of eating cookies. I’ll put creamer in it and that will make me feel satisfied, I hope.

Matt left for his rehearsal a little while ago, and in the hour leading up to it, I could feel myself gearing up for a meltdown. I felt the downward slope sneaking up on me, dragging me down to stare into the abyss. I knew I would cry and carry on about the usual- not knowing what I’m doing with my life, feeling like I’ve wasted 20 years on singing. I could feel the momentum gathering but I knew Matt didn’t have the time to listen to it, to rub my feet and explain to me that I’m a worthy human being. So I thought about going to the cafe, did my meditation, changed my mind about going to the cafe, and settled into the couch for some quality YouTube time. I made my tea. I added a tablespoon of heavy cream and a tablespoon of whole milk- my approximation of half-and-half. It’s a little weird with peppermint tea, but it’s way too late for regular coffee and we don’t have any decaf.

This strange little concoction was actually pretty good, but I still want to binge. Maybe if I backtrack to when exactly the urge to binge first struck, I could address the underlying cause of why I want to eat. I was watching this girl on YouTube talk about how she always films 5 videos at a time for maximum productivity. I hate that she is this efficient. I hate that she knows how to make videos so well that she can actually plan ahead like that. I hate that she already knows how to make videos when I have so much to learn. And I hate that her generation actually struggles with spending less time on social media while I’m so baffled by social media that I can’t even get started. And most of all, I hate that YouTube is really just my way of having imaginary “friends” without the actual pressure of participating in a friendship.

I really feel like the YouTubers are my friends- I know all these mundane details about their lives and keep tabs on what’s going on with them. But when it comes to real friends, I’m too afraid of screwing it up to keep up any actual connections. I have a couple of dear friends with whom I communicate via text or email, but even the thought of a phone call gives me so much anxiety that I find it hard to breathe. Here in Germany, I’ve spent a bit of time with Matt’s colleagues in person, and for some reason that’s easier. But I still worry that I won’t remember things we talked about because my memory’s so bad. I still worry about saying the wrong thing or getting timelines and details confused, or retelling a story I’ve already told. And I still hide from people when I go out to the cafe, checking with Matt to see who’s there before I go, or else I just go to a cafe where I know I won’t run into anyone. All this even though I’ve had some lovely spontaneous interactions with these women and like the idea of doing it more. But somehow, my YouTube “friends” always win out and I retreat to the safety of my phone or laptop.

I’ve never even “commented” on a YouTube video- I just like to watch people living their lives, explaining exactly how they do it. I love seeing what they wear, what they buy, what skincare routine they do, how they get out of bed and shower and eat breakfast. I like to see how they organize their cupboards, how they clean their bathroom, what they keep in their purse. I feel like I’m watching instruction manuals on how to live, and I love that because I always feel like no one ever gave me one.

I remember the first “lifestyle” video I ever saw- it was a closet tour by a woman who only wore black or white clothing. I was enthralled. And from that point on I found myself talking things through like she did, as if I were in my own YouTube video: First I take the shampoo and squeeze it into my hand, about this amount, and then I rub it into my hair, etc. I still do this to help me motivate when I’m feeling stuck. Today I said to myself: First I take the stickers off the apples and then I turn the cold water on. I rinse the apples, and put them on the cutting board…. You get the picture.

But I love watching these videos where nothing really happens. Most of the time I feel like even TV and movies are just too stressful to watch, but I always love my YouTube. It comforts me, and makes me feel like the little things in my life matter, too. And a lot of days, the little things are all we have.

Wearing Sweaters and Loose Skin

I’m finally wearing sweaters. Würzburg has cooled down quite a bit this week and I’ve worn 3 of my 4 sweaters already. The thicker pink cashmere one has come in really handy around the apartment with my pajamas, the grey one is making regular appearances at cafes, and the black non-cashmere one survived the trip here and just recently went over to our friend’s apartment. In terms of pants, I’ve worn each pair at least twice, so have yet to feel the need to put any in the wash. Right now I’m wearing my blue skinny jeans with my belt and it’s causing me some serious muffin-topping, so I may put them on the back burner again. I do tend to gravitate towards them though, especially for the walk home from the gym after a shower.

Before leaving for this trip, I switched to my smaller wedding ring which is a much more delicate band than the original (the original is actually a thicker men’s ring, since apparently plus size wedding rings have yet to hit the mainstream jewelry shops). But this thinner band is digging into my finger a bit, which keeps it from falling off, but makes me feel kind of chunky.

Speaking of muffin-topping and feeling chunky, I’ve been obsessing over the view of my inner thighs in the bright natural sunlight in our apartment. It’s got me worrying a lot about loose skin. If you’ve never lost a bunch of weight, you may be fully unaware of this concept, so let me enlighten you. When your skin has been stretched by weight gain, pregnancy, etc., it doesn’t always snap right back when you lose the weight. Magazines and weight-loss enthusiasts always fail to mention this potential side effect, but most people who lose significant amounts of weight in their adult years will suffer from this issue. I’ve been lucky in the past and only suffered from a jiggly belly when thin, but my weight had never reached its most recent heights. Now I’m afraid my legs are joining in the jiggle. But since the only solution is cosmetic surgery (which I have no interest in), I’m going to have to learn to accept it. Maybe all this waltzing around the ladies’ locker room completely nude will help me find that acceptance.

Now I am rather self-conscious waltzing my way to the gym in leggings. I rarely see people wearing leggings here, and I feel like people are staring when I do. Maybe it’s something about how skinny my legs are in comparison to my top half, or maybe not, but I do feel weird. It has dawned on me that people might think I’m pregnant, and if they see me lifting heavy weights at the gym, might be concerned for my health. But I feel like I get the most stares on the street. It doesn’t keep me from wearing them though, since I really have no choice- they’re all I brought to work out in.

I’m also self-conscious about my hair. My hair has been a bit of a disaster here due to the extremely calcium-rich water (we have to de-scale the kettle every couple of days). It just doesn’t curl like it’s supposed to, and I have to use a ton of conditioner. But aside from hair products, my toiletries have been holding up just fine. I’m pleased to report that micellar water is brilliant for removing sunblock, although now that I think of it, I haven’t been wearing my sunblock enough. The issue with it is that I try to use it like a moisturizer in the morning and it tingles and burns when I do. I’ve got a lead on an actual moisturizer with SPF so I’ll be sure to report back with my findings. The other issue with sunblock is that I get confused with walking to and from the gym since I often shower there. Do I put sunblock back on after I shower? And do I bring the micellar water with me? The answer to both these questions is obviously yes, but that has only just occurred to me.

My major concerns have been making sure I get my routine into place, and then taking pains to ensure that I don’t binge. It’s been just about a week since the dinkel-puff binge and my exercise is now truly consistent (our first week here I only walked around town for exercise on my cardio days and that didn’t feel quite right). So while there have been days where I could feel my routine slipping right through my fingers, I’ve managed to get back on track and power through. Today I overcame a great hurdle when I walked all the way to the gym and saw that both treadmills were occupied. Not satisfied with the walk there and back, I hiked it to the park and ran for ten minutes there.

In terms of getting out of the house, my nemesis seems to be the little bed in the spare room that calls to me after breakfast. It seems that if I heed that call, I tend to stay home all day and despair over how I’m not getting anything done. And while some days I’ve managed to rally and do something in the evening anyway, I still feel that that little bed is dangerous territory for me. So today I made sure to get dressed and ready right after breakfast even though it was almost time for Matt to get home. I think for now I have to ignore his schedule and just focus on my own, even if it means he spends his break out with me having coffee. I always want to spend as much time with Matt as possible, but I’m often conflicted about imposing my cafe time on his afternoon break. He always insists that the better I’m doing with my own stuff, the better he feels about everything. So in order to keep him happy, I have to make sure I put on my own oxygen mask first, so to speak. It definitely helps that he’s being really clear about his expectations (or lack thereof) for me. Sometimes I imagine he wants me to attend an event or do some shopping or dishes or whatever, when he’s really fine with whether I do it or not. So he lets me know regularly that I’m “off the hook,” but that I’m always invited. And the less pressure for me, the better.

Reverse Diet

Well, I’m officially starting a reverse diet. It’s all the rage with the body-builders and fitness gurus online, and I’ve finally decided to take part. I’ve alluded to the idea before, but it’s basically a method of slowly increasing your calories over a period of weeks or months so that your body adapts to a new level of caloric maintenance. So by increasing how much you eat slowly enough, you don’t gain weight and you get to eat more. The reason I’ve decided to do this is that I seem to be at the end of the road with my current diet of 1,800 calories. My weight barely changed over the 5-week period before my last weigh-in, and my clothes are still not getting any looser.

Apparently this is what happens to everybody when you’ve been on a diet for long enough: your metabolism slows down. Your body adjusts to taking in fewer calories and you stop losing weight. So in order to get things going again, you need to teach your body to burn more calories. (This means I won’t see any weight loss any time soon, but that seems to be the case anyway.) Theoretically, if I can get my maintenance calories high enough, I can eventually start dieting again and lose more weight. At that point I’ll try a more strategic approach to dieting- taking “diet breaks” every few weeks- so that my metabolism doesn’t slow down again.

But the first step is to add 50 calories to my daily intake every week or two. It’s such a small amount that it’s hard to even measure accurately, but since I have my handy little food scale with me here in the land of grams and milliliters, I should be able to do it.

Complicating all of this is the fact that I’ve changed my weight-lifting workouts a bit. Instead of having “back and biceps day” and “chest and triceps day,” I’m just doing a full body workout 3 times a week. I do 5 machines: Lat pulldowns, chest press, leg press, triceps, and biceps. Since I have rest days in between weight-lifting workouts anyway, it makes sense to take advantage and potentially get stronger by doing a little more. On alternate days, I’m still doing my 20 minutes of uphill walking and slow jogging on the treadmill. In addition to the new workouts though, I’m walking more here in Germany than at home. The gym here is a ten-minute walk away, so there’s an extra 20 minutes of walking 6 days a week, in addition to walking down to the shops here and there.

All of this change in exercise seems to be making me very hungry. I’ve been trying to distract myself with coffee and getting out of the apartment, but I really don’t think I should feel this hungry all the time. Especially since there have been two incidents with some minor bingeing lately, I think that increasing my calories in a controlled manner seems like a good approach all around.

The really weird thing I wanted to mention was that while I was jet-lagging and traveling, I kind of lost my appetite because I was so tired all the time. I couldn’t even get in my full 1,800 calories on several days. That was happening when I first got sick with my recent cold, too. So maybe my body is extra hungry now to try and make up for those times I was eating less. I don’t know.

I just know I need more food. Hopefully if I’m proactive about doing this properly, I won’t end up bingeing and gaining a bunch of weight back. That would be disastrous after all this hard work (I’ve been on a diet for over a year now and have lost 48 pounds) and especially bad for my mental health. As much as I try not to base my self-worth on my size, being heavier in general has led me to some really negative thinking and even suicidal thoughts.

And that is what’s utmost in my mind as I make these food-related decisions. When I was losing weight consistently, I imagined having the luxury of going out to eat once in a while and just estimating my calories. But at this phase of the game, I’m really frustrated with not losing weight and that frustration could blow this whole thing up. And so I always have to eat at home, weighing and measuring every little bite, now getting even more precise so I can inch my calories up over time. It’s really hard. If there were another way to do it that worked for me and my particular situation, I might have a choice. But at this point, I don’t think I do.

And I’m used to having a lot of limitations in my life. I’m used to having to go to the gym, eat the right food, take all my pills, take my Latuda with 350 calories right at bedtime so as to avoid akathisia, never drink alcohol or eat takeout, and get out of the house enough but not push myself too hard. It’s exhausting. But it’s working. So I do it.

Milchreis and Hyper-Palatable Foods

I didn’t tell you the whole story about the dinkel-puff binge. I’d already had a scare week ago, also on laundry day. Matt had gone to do the laundry himself, since he was taking a cab and wouldn’t need help carrying everything. Alone in the apartment, I had my usual chicken sandwich on “graham brot”- a really dense, healthy bread- with spicy mustard. When I was done, I craved something sweet. I had recently bought some yogurts in “dessert flavors”- chocolate, vanilla, etc.- as well as some individual rice puddings called “milchreis.” These also had flavors, some with a layer of chocolate pudding on the bottom. I ate one of the little yogurts- tiramisu flavored, I believe it was. But then something clicked and I couldn’t stop. I ate both rice puddings without checking the calories beforehand. I was sitting there with this pre-determined decision to eat all the rice pudding. Once it was decided, there was no going back. I ate both pudding cups and then made a frantic dash for the calculator app on my phone.

I had enough calories left for dinner and my nighttime pill snack, so I was safe. But I felt the need to confess to Matt when he came home and I told him I couldn’t buy those little dessert yogurts or puddings anymore. It would have to be plain from now on, maybe with a little honey mixed in. I thought it was the food that was the problem- something too sweet for me to handle, so just not worth eating. I thought I was in the clear. But the whole dinkel-puff incident proved me wrong. It wasn’t the type of food that time. It was an emotional trigger, not a food one.

I do feel there are certain foods that are “hyper-palatable” for me, foods designed to make you keep eating beyond satiety. There’s something about particular concoctions of sugar and fat that make me want to keep eating all of them until they are gone. Donuts, for one. Kinder-schokolade here in Germany, Hanuta as well (chocolate hazelnut wafer sandwiches that led to my demise on our last trip here). I’m learning to accept that these foods are engineered for bingeing and I just can’t handle them. But dinkel-puffs? Puffed spelt? These seem relatively harmless- no fat really, only lightly sweetened. But there’s something about the volume of them per portion that makes me drawn to them when I’m in binge-mode.

Because in this case, the binge-mode precipitated the dinkel-puffs. So one incident with some hyper-palatable puddings is one thing, but going on a mission for binge food tells me something else is going on. I recognize that the laundromat incident triggered me somehow, but I still wonder why this is happening now. Is it something about all the supermarkets being closed on Sundays that leads to a sense of deprivation and scarcity, and sends me into a binge? Or is it just that the food here is so bad in general that I feel desperate for anything that tastes good and has the number of calories on the label?

Because aside from excellent coffee and fresh bread, the food here is practically intolerable. I’ve settled on plain yogurt and fresh fruit for breakfast, though finding good fruit can be hard. Lunch is my pre-packaged deli chicken on whole-grain bread. And for dinner, we’ve finally found a good regular meal by taking fresh rotisserie chicken (from the takeout window of a nearby restaurant) and combining it with broth, sesame oil, soy sauce, scallions, broccoli, and kimchi, all from the Asian market, to make chicken soup. It’s very tricky to get everything hot enough at the same time, but we’ve managed to get it right by using 7 bowls, the kettle, and the microwave. Snacks have been muesli, toast with butter, yogurt with honey, or oat cookies (which for some unknown reason don’t trigger a binge for me).

Aside from these regular meals, I honestly shudder at the typical offerings of schnitzel and leberkäse (liver cheese?) that everyone here seems to enjoy. The day-old, flat rolls with cheese melted on them (maybe meant to represent a pizza?) are inedible, as are the prepared sandwiches at bakeries that feature only a thin slice of salami and one sharp piece of lettuce for garnish. And the worst of it has to be “curry-wurst”- chopped up hotdogs with ketchup squirted all over them, served with fries. We can’t afford the Italian restaurants that have decent food (pizza and pasta) and I can’t be bothered to guess the number of calories involved. So maybe feeling so limited in terms of choice is part of the problem and could account for why I’m having binge-scares all of a sudden.

My real concern, though, is whether it’s just the restriction of dieting that has me wound tight like a spring, just waiting to be set off into a binge. I worry that now that I’m not losing weight on my diet, I’m rebelling against it and having these mini-binges. There are so many reasons that could explain why this is happening now, but I don’t know how to address any of them. I’m trying to get on track with my routines and not push myself too much, but I’m also feeling better sometimes when I do push myself. I’ve actually socialized a little bit with and without Matt there, and I’ve been really proud of how well it went. But then on laundry day, I pushed myself again and things went awry. So finding the right balance between pushing and not pushing- that seems important. Keeping myself from feeling deprived also seems key. (Maybe adding some bulk to my lunch would help curb the snack cravings- some cole slaw or something?) But the really crucial issue seems to be coping with my anger in some way other than eating. How, I have yet to figure out.

The Dinkel-Puff Binge

I binged yesterday. I just scraped by, keeping my daily tally to 2000 calories, but it was a close one. I was tired, worn out. I was at the laundromat with Matt and a friend of ours and I started stirring myself into a rage. There was a large family with noisy children, a lot of shouting, a lot of banging around and taking over the whole laundromat, smoking cigarettes at the edge of the door so it filled the place with smoke, and finally, men taking their shirts off in public. While Matt and our friend were working, I was trying to listen to a book that required some concentration, and while I hung in there for some time, I finally cracked. I started doing this thing where I complain about people loudly (and of course, in English) in hopes that they will overhear and get their shit together. This never works, so I finally decided to walk home.

On my way home, I was furious. I was furious at everyone on the street, especially the people in my way, and I’m sure I wasn’t hiding my anger very well. I was on a tear, and I wanted to eat. I became fixated on some puffed spelt cereal I had seen at the DM (the “pharmacy” without a pharmacy where you buy your shampoo and stuff). It was in this little health food section in the back and I made a beeline for it. I was disappointed to see that the “dinkel gepufft” had more calories than I expected. I knew I wanted to eat the whole bag. I was looking for volume. I was looking for transgression. I bought the dinkel puffs and stormed my way out of there, back to our hotel and up the 5 flights of stairs to the safety and privacy of our apartment.

When I checked the calories again, 373 per 100 grams, I decided to just have muesli instead for 351 calories per 100 grams. I weighed out the muesli on my little food scale I had ordered on Amazon and ate it with some almond milk. Unsatisfied, I opened up the spelt puffs and weighed out 50g of those. It filled a cereal bowl, so not bad, I figured. I wolfed them down while watching a Youtube video about makeup. And then I weighed out serving after serving until I’d eaten the rest of the bag, the momentum of the binge a force all its own. I had set this trajectory, and it would not be stopped until I had done something “wrong.” I ran out of almond milk on the last bowl so I added a splash of whole milk that I use in my coffee. Once the bag was empty, I stopped eating. I nervously took out my phone and opened the calculator app to survey the damage.

• Breakfast 350 calories

• Coffee creamer 80 calories

• Dinkel puffs 746 calories

• Almond milk 50 calories

• Whole milk 64 calories

• Muesli 351 calories

Total: 1,641 calories

This left me 159 calories for my 350 calorie nighttime snack that I need to take with my Latuda in order for it to work. Extending my daily allowance to 2,000 calories instead of 1,800 brought me to just 9 calories under my limit. I had squeaked by, provided I didn’t eat anything else until bedtime.

Matt came home and I confessed. He suggested I focus on just getting back on track tomorrow and trying to take care of myself for the rest of the day. He gave me a foot rub and I fell asleep for a few hours. When I woke up, I didn’t know what to do, so I watched some Youtube and got ready for bed. I ate my 350 calories of oat cookies and took my pills.

I felt defeated and scared. Is there something about Germany that makes me binge? This little episode was dangerously similar to what happened on our last stay in this little apartment, the time when I started gaining weight and couldn’t stop. The time Matt had to rub my feet every day to distract me from the mental and emotional agony I was in. The time I had to go home early and get my medication changed by my doctor.

I don’t want to go home this time. I don’t want to be alone in Rhode Island. But I also can’t start bingeing again. And today, the morning after, I feel scared. I feel like I’m starting over. I feel like I “blew it” and I’m no longer going to have any control over my eating.

This morning, I somehow managed to put my gym clothes on, to pack my bag, and since Matt had some rare time off, he came with me to the gym. We came home and I had my usual breakfast- fruit and plain yogurt. I got dressed to go to the cafe, and Matt came with me again.

But this feeling of failure still lingers. This feeling like I don’t know how it happened. If I trace it back, the trigger was feeling like people were being assholes, I was in the right, and there was nothing I could do to rectify the situation. This is exactly what happened many months ago when I had a screaming match with my Trump-supporting neighbors and I binged on candied nuts. It’s the same feeling I have when I think about current U.S. politics, when I think about how there’s no point in getting upset about it when the bad guys always win.

Maybe I can learn from this. Maybe I can recognize the danger of these types of situations for me and find some way to disengage the momentum of the binge. But I’m scared. I felt out of control. I felt full of rage and indignance. I felt like the binge was happening and I had no say in it whatsoever. So how do I keep this from happening again?

Dublin Debacle

We decided that this time around, we would stop over in Dublin for a night before continuing on to our stay in Germany. Due to several cancellations by the airlines, we couldn’t take a direct flight, so stopping in Dublin was our best option. And since the only flights to Europe from Boston are red-eyes, we’re always exhausted halfway through. That feeling that you’d pay a million dollars for a bed and a pillow is brutal, since neither Matt nor I can sleep on planes. So we thought we’d try checking into an airport hotel when we arrived in Dublin in the morning. The catch, of course, was having to lug our checked bags on and off the hotel shuttle and around the airport parking areas. In the rain.

Since I didn’t know what our food options would be at the hotel, I went looking for a shop to buy some prepackaged snacks to get me through the day. I found a little convenience store inside the airport and got a couple yogurts, some crackers, some soft cheese wedges, some rice cakes with chocolate on them, and a Coke Zero. I hoped I’d be able to get a salad or something at the hotel cafe, but this stuff combined with our stash of Larabars could easily cover me if I couldn’t.

After a 20 minute (not 5 minute, like the website said) ride to the hotel, we checked into our room. Relieved that they checked us in early, we opened the door to the room that time forgot. The carpet was matted down to a burgundy piece of felt, cigarette burns dotting it every few feet. The beds were squeaky and you could feel the springs right through them, and the furniture was nothing short of amazing in that it was straight from the 70s. Literally.

Matt politely called the front desk to complain about the cigarette smoke smell, and they were kind enough to switch us to a renovated room on the next floor. Meanwhile, I was so desperate to wash the airplane smell off of me that I actually ran a bath in hopes that at least there was hot water. Matt returned with the new keys to find me sitting in a pool of filth, dirt actually floating on the surface of the water. He applauded my good-natured attempt to pretend that the room was OK, but suggested I get out of the tub before I got some kind of infection.

The new room was a vast improvement. I no longer felt the threat of ringworm or bedbugs and after a long, hot shower, Matt and I descended into the plush white bedding to catch up on sleep. We awoke around dinner time and went downstairs in search of food. There was a casual pub area in the lobby where the prices didn’t seem outrageous, so we went in there and looked at the menu. I saw a green salad with broccolini, quinoa, and cranberries that looked promising. I ordered it without the cranberries, and with oil and vinegar on the side. You could add chicken for a Euro fifty, so I decided to get a double portion of chicken (I assumed that at that price, there probably wouldn’t be much). But when my food arrived, there were two massive chicken breasts on top of some sad looking lettuce and some questionable broccolini. The broccolini didn’t taste exactly rotten, but it was close. For some unknown reason, I ate it all, save some of the chicken which Matt took off my hands. Well, I paid for it dearly with awful stomach cramps all night. Neither of us was able to sleep through the night anyway since jet lag was throwing us off so badly, so we started our return to the airport just as exhausted as if we had skipped the hotel altogether.

Included with our room was a free breakfast, and Matt wanted to take advantage. We thought maybe they’d have oatmeal or fruit or something less volatile than the double chicken salad. We also thought that it would be a quick buffet since all the guests would be rushing off to the airport, but no. With true Irish hospitality, we were met at the front of a dining room by a host who asked for our room number. Matt told him, and we started to follow him to a table where we would have to order from a menu. Before we could get there, another employee confronted me and asked for my room number. We explained that we were already being shown to our seats when she insisted on taking our luggage from us. Already tight on time, this was the last straw for me, and I cursed and stormed out of the place, heading straight for the shuttle. While on the 25 minute ride back to the airport, I complained loudly about the length of the ride, the process involved with breakfast, and the horror of the first room they had given us. While no one seemed to notice, much less care, Matt suggested we simply leave an honest review on Trip Advisor, including the pictures of the first room that he took. This got me to calm down and stop being so embarrassingly rude. I turned my attention to getting through the next leg of our trip without throwing a fit.

Weigh-In Woes

We have Ebay success. I know you were waiting with bated breath. The men’s 501 Levi’s fit in the waist, although they do look a bit weird from the back. In any case, they fit. And the black dress pants from GEORGE are also a winner. I love how they look, and the fabric is exactly what I’d hoped for- definitely a suiting material but not too thin. I just have to hem them, and I’m good to go for Germany, pants-wise anyway.

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Another major task in preparation for Germany is placing our Amazon.de order. The last time we stayed in this apartment, we planned ahead and ordered a blanket, pillows, an electric kettle, and a set of metal bowls with lids and a bonus metal colander, all to be delivered to the opera house and picked up when we got there. This time we’re ordering a bigger blanket, the same kettle and set of bowls, and some packaged foods that I think will help me stay on track. I found my “zero noodles” on the German site, along with those pouches of Indian food that don’t need to be refrigerated- you just nuke them for 2 minutes. Because the thing is, in addition to German supermarkets not carrying some of my staple foods, this apartment has no stove. There’s a microwave, a disgusting kettle, and a disgusting toaster oven. Hence the purchase of our own kettle, with which we can make veggies, pasta, couscous, etc. I don’t know if we need a toaster since the bread is so fresh there- last time we didn’t. Our Amazon pillows, however, were disappointing and the ones in the apartment are ridiculous. There’s no other way to describe how useless they are. We call them “joke pillows” - no matter where you put your head, the filling moves around and your head is flat on the mattress. There are so many great things about Germany- the superior windows and construction in general, the cobblestone walking villages, the coffee, the bread. But for some reason, they just can’t do pillows right. I have yet to find a German pillow I like. So we’re going to hit TK Maxx (yup, just like TJ Maxx) and see what they have in person.

But I digress. I’m especially glad my Ebay pants have worked out because I went to the doctor the other day and got weighed in. I found out that I’ve lost a total of .8 pounds. Not 8 pounds- no, no- point 8 pounds. In 5 weeks. Last time I was 176.8 pounds and this time I was 176 pounds. This is after a week of eating 1,400-1,500 calories a day because I was sick and had less of an appetite. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am. But I really am grateful that I took the bull by the horns and got some pants that fit me well now. Because fitting into my smaller clothes seems further away than ever.

I keep going over that weigh-in in my head. My doctor changed offices, so the scale was in a different spot on the floor. I drank my iced coffee later than usual and so I didn’t get to pee it all out. I didn’t exercise last week- could it be that? Has my metabolism slowed down from eating less? Please, dear lord, let there be some reason for this outrageous result. Because if it wasn’t a fluke, it throws everything into question.

If I keep doing what I’m doing, will I suddenly start losing weight again? Or do I need to change what I’m doing in order to lose more weight? I know my main focus for my diet and exercise regime is to keep my mental health in check. But let’s be real; if I’m working this hard, I want to lose more weight. Is this as far as my current regime will get me? Or do I have to work out more? Do I have to try “reverse dieting” so I can eat more and rev up my metabolism? Or is this just the place where my body wants to be? The most burning question of all is, can I keep doing what I’m doing without the incentive of weight loss?

All of these questions in combination with the not exercising/eating less during my cold has me in a tailspin. First of all, while I was sick, I didn’t try to eat less, at least not at first. I just wasn’t hungry. But then, I reasoned that since I wasn’t exercising, it made sense to eat a little less. Then I started restricting myself to 1400-1500 calories a day, to account for the calories I wasn’t burning at the gym. I imagined that I might lose a little muscle, but that that would quickly be remedied when I started exercising again. Looking back, I now see this self-imposed restriction as disordered eating. I enjoyed the fact that I didn’t need as much food, and I pushed it beyond what felt natural. That’s not a healthy thing for me to do, especially with my history of dieting and binge eating. So now I’m making sure I get my full 1,800 calories, and even allowing myself to go up to 2,000 if I need to in order to feel comfortable. And I need to make sure I don’t get trapped in the idea that I’ve “saved up” this calorie deficit and am allowed to add it all up and binge on those calories. Because that’s just more disordered thinking.

But I really, really want to binge right now. Much like the trying-on-too-small-clothes incident, this weigh-in has me fantasizing about donuts and various baked goods. Between the weigh-in, the restricting last week, and the stress about the limited food options during our Germany trip, I’m an absolute mess.

So last night, I sat down with Matt (I needed a witness), and planned out my food for today. I thought it would be a relief to just know what I was going to eat and not have to think about it. Instead, I feel more restricted than ever. I mean, there’s no cinnamon-raisin toast in my diet today. What if I want cinnamon-raisin toast? Do I ignore that and stick to the plan? Or do I get to make substitutions?

And what about my workouts? Should I switch over to just weightlifting every day instead of every other day? Apparently that makes you lose more fat over time than doing cardio. And what about getting a gym membership in Germany? We still haven’t heard back about getting a short-term membership. I don’t know what I’ll do if I can’t lift weights, now that I know that cardio is a dead end. Or maybe cardio will be enough for the 8 weeks that we’re there. Or maybe I could do HIIT- high intensity interval training.

This thinking is madness. I need to get myself sorted before this trip. I’m just so worried that I’ll come home and weigh in at the same weight or, god forbid, even more. I don’t know if I can continue to be this restricted if I don’t get to lose weight. I just don’t know. And I need to stay on my plan. My mental health depends on it.

I'm Afraid I've Made a Terrible Mistake

Here’s a tip: Don’t try on clothes that you know full well are too small for you. It makes you feel bad about yourself and it makes you want to eat. I made this mistake yesterday, supposedly in preparation for our upcoming trip to Germany. I pulled out the infamous bin of storage clothes that has been whittled down to only clothes that fit me when I am 160 lbs. or less. Right now, I am 176.8 lbs (as of my last weigh-in). Somehow I ignored this not-so-little discrepancy and just hoped for the best. I was looking specifically for two things: some black joggers (2 pairs) and a bunch of sweaters.

The first things I pulled out were the joggers, fully expecting them to fit (they have an elastic waist, after all). But they were too tight to breathe in, never mind sit down in. This was a bit of a blow: I was kind of counting on them as fall/winter pants since my linen ones will not be warm enough as it gets colder. Then, randomly, I tried on a bra. I’ve started wearing real bras lately, but the ones I have are pretty big on me. They’re comfortable and everything, but there’s some pretty significant empty space happening. So I tried on one of the smaller bras, and it resulted in the double-boob effect we all know and loathe, so those went back into the box.

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I tried to stay focused: I’m looking at sweaters. I started with a light-grey, pointelle-sleeve, open cardigan and it actually worked well. I knew there were things in there that I could pull off. Then there was a camel J. Crew cardigan. This gave me sort of a hunchback look, so that was a no-go. I shook it off. There was a black, boxy, supersoft pullover that fit really well, and a blush, boxy, cotton pullover that looked pretty good and could inject some much-needed lighter color into my wardrobe. So I brought those two out with the grey cardigan, but was put off by the smell. Somehow they’d started smelling like thrift store in a subtle way. So I’m currently washing them one-by-one and flat-drying them so I can add them to my capsule.

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Then things got a little weird: I put on my beloved asymmetric blouson-style Vince cashmere sweater, but it looked funny with my baggy jeans. So I put on my black skinny jeans, and we were right back to the negative self-talk that inevitably starts every time I wear skinny jeans. Like how I look like a tomato on a stick and whatnot. But since I’m kind of desperate for pants right now, I blamed it on the sweater and put it away. I revisited the pink cashmere sweater from the other day and rejected it again. It’s not really too small, I think I just don’t like the neckline, so it may be destined for the discard pile. And lastly, I revisited the grey structured zip-up that fits but doesn’t work with the silhouette of my baggy men’s pants and belt. That one’s on the back-burner for future consideration as my pants situation solidifies.

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And speaking of pants, I also happened to get both of my Ebay purchases in the mail yesterday. The jeans were not a success. They were tight. Like, really tight. Like when I buttoned them all the way up, my flesh spilled over the top, threatening to burst the seams. Now the jeans I’ve been wearing are a size 38 and are way too big, so how could these size 36s be so small? I measured the waist: 36 inches. Blerg. This means my current size 38s are much bigger than the tag says. I measured them: 40 inches. Apparently I should have done some measuring before I placed my order. I thought men were exempt from these random sizing discrepancies since they go by actual measurements instead of arbitrary numbers. I guess I was naive to think so. I tried on the grey, size 38, GEORGE pants and they’re perfect. They are literally identical to the size 40 ones I’ve been wearing; they just fit better. And when I measured them, they came up true to size: 38 inches. I guess I’m truly a 38.

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I threw both new purchases into a warm wash and a low tumble-dry, taking them out before the jeans got too dried out. They were actually a little damp, so I put them on and thought maybe I would be able to stretch them out a bit. I squatted, I bent over, I curled into a ball on the bed. I lay like that for a while, watching YouTube, wiggling around. Then I ate lunch and really couldn’t take it anymore, so I took them off. I folded them and put them into the storage bin.

I suddenly felt ravenous. I ate a single-serving packet of Lorna Doones. I had two Coke Zeroes. I took a Klonopin. I lied down and said some affirmations: I am a worthy human being. The clothes may not fit, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with my body. My body is perfect as it is. I am a worthy human being. I put the storage bin back in the closet and called it a day.

And this is why this was a bad idea: I spent half my day making myself feel bad and then trying to recover from it. And all I have to show for it is a couple of sweaters and some pants. Now I know I needed that stuff, but why is it so hard to be honest with myself about my body? What’s so bad about where I am? Was this project purely about practicality and thrift? I don’t think so. I think I’m looking for validation, for reward for how far I’ve come. And the obvious source of that reward is fitting into my old clothes. Because it’s not just about the clothes; it’s about what they represent. I imagine that by wearing them, I’ll have the qualities I had when I wore them before- I’ll be energetic, enthusiastic, and profiting financially. But that’s not how it works. That’s a fantasy. I am where I am with my life. I’m making real progress, however slow and steady it may be. I just have to be patient and keep doing what I’m doing.

Risky Fitness

I’m addicted to a fitness YouTube channel. It’s called Miss Fit and Nerdy and it consists of an intelligent young woman talking about diet and exercise and fat loss and muscle gain, all things I’m interested in but haven’t found a good source of information for. The YouTuber in question, 24 year old Marisa, goes to the gym a lot, doesn’t believe in cardio for long-term weight loss, and eats something called “adaptogens” for the health benefits. She actually reads academic research from exercise and nutrition studies and seems to have a solid understanding of what works and what doesn’t (keep in mind she’s 24 years old and seems to be genetically thin). Her advice on exercise is to “lift heavy” and to only do tons of cardio if you love it and plan on doing it for the rest of your life. I know from my own experience with running a lot that over time your body adapts to cardio and stops helping you lose weight. I also know that reducing your calories lower and lower slows down your metabolism and also stops helping you lose weight. She addresses this second issue by citing the results of a study (go to 2:20) done on two groups of people. The first group ate below their “maintenance” calories for a period of time, while the second group alternated eating below their maintenance calories for 2 weeks with eating at their maintenance calories for 2 weeks. The second “alternating” group lost more weight, and this was attributed to their metabolisms staying higher than those of the people in the first group. This all means that you could potentially keep your metabolism up (and lose more weight) by eating more over the long term. This all makes a lot of sense to me and gives me hope that I don’t have to limit my calories to 1800-2000 for the rest of my life. I don’t know exactly what will happen when I stop losing weight on this diet, and I have to figure out a maintenance plan. I certainly don’t want my maintenance plan to be as restrictive as my diet is now, so this whole concept sounds promising.

The thing is, playing around with my food is dangerous for me. I think of all those people doing “cheat days” and know that I could never do that myself. I have a history of binge eating, which is part of what got my weight so high in the first place. And if I start messing around with my calorie count, I’m afraid it might trigger some dysfunctional eating and/or bingeing. Because while some people can eat for fuel and fuel only, I have a much more emotional relationship with food. Binge eating and eating for comfort have always provided me emotional and chemical release. Even as a young child, I would steal and hide food for secret binges in my room, always ready to whip the food under the covers in case my mom or dad came in. My most recent bouts of bingeing were no secret, but the extreme of my binges was certainly disturbing to my husband and family, and of course, to me. Two years ago, when I was off my meds so I could go through TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation), I ate a steady diet of peanut butter M&Ms for weeks, going so far as to sort the M&Ms by color so I’d stop eating them in a certain obsessive sequence. And then last year, during that horrible time when I was unmedicated and having severe mental health symptoms, I was eating an absurd amount of donuts.

Once I got properly medicated this time, I resolved to go on a diet and lose the weight. Being so heavy was exacerbating my suicidal thoughts, was physically uncomfortable, and was devastating to my self-worth. So for the past year, I have been limiting my calories to no more than 2,000 a day, and more recently aiming for 1,800 a day. And it’s been working. It started out really slow because my meds were keeping my weight elevated. But once the Seroquel was taken out, I started losing about a pound a week. And this is with a very minimal exercise routine I only started 8 months ago: a few weight machines 3 days a week with some walking and a little bit of jogging on alternate days. So the way I see it right now, I don’t want to mess with success. I’m happy with this slow and steady progress and bare minimum workout. But I am preparing myself for that inevitable day when it stops working. I don’t want to become dependent on massive workouts to maintain my weight, and I certainly don’t want to reduce my calories any further. So should my metabolism slow down enough to stop weight loss, I’ll want to have a backup plan. And this system of alternating low calories with high sounds like it could be the answer. As I said, I’m not changing anything right now, but I could try it in the future. And I hope that as long as I keep things structured enough, I could do it without a hitch.

The thing is, I don’t want to ignore common sense. We all know by now that crash dieting doesn’t work in the long term. We all know that “muscle burns more than fat” and so weight lifting is important for weight loss. So maybe this new information about keeping your metabolism high by eating more just hasn’t become mainstream yet. But if there’s science to back it up, I don’t want to ignore it- it may become the next mainstream common sense. Because that’s how it seems to me- like common sense. If reducing your calories causes your metabolism to slow down because your body thinks it’s starving, it makes sense to take measures to counteract that. I mean, if doing endless cardio just leads to needing more cardio to lose weight, weight lifting sounds like a good alternative. No one is disputing that. So why not use this new dieting information to my advantage? I want this weight loss to be for good. I never want to gain it all back. Hopefully I can find a way to put this information to use and create a long-term, hopefully lifetime, solution.

Getting Real About Weight Loss

Well, I went to the psychiatrist and found out I lost 4.8 pounds, bringing me down to 176.8 pounds, and my total weight lost to 47.2 pounds. I know it’s a perfectly good amount for 5 weeks- almost exactly a pound a week after all- but it doesn’t feel very significant. It’s not a nice, round number, and it doesn’t sound so far off from my last weigh-in at 181.6. But I’m right on track. And I think my doctor’s actually impressed at how consistently I’ve been losing weight- he keeps saying how none of his other patients are this successful with it. So I know I should feel good. But the clock is ticking on this next Germany trip, and I still won’t fit into my smaller clothes by the time we leave. I have started wearing my newly thrifted men’s jeans with my belt on the 6th notch, which is another landmark: I started the weight-loss process on the 2nd notch. But the jeans are staying up just fine for now. How they will fit in 7 weeks when we leave, I’m not so sure.

All this progress with losing weight has got me thinking. In the past I’ve always seen any kind of diet or restricted eating as just setting oneself up to binge. The rather dismal statistics on the long-term success of dieters suggest that we’re almost entirely likely to gain back all the weight- plus more- after 5 years or more. My own personal experience with dieting (starting at age 9) supports this idea of diets setting you up to binge. In the past, it was always “one false move and it’s over.” If I strayed at all from my latest diet, I would call it quits and start eating everything in sight, not stopping until I’d binged my way back up to beyond my starting weight. I struggled with binge eating throughout my childhood and couldn’t imagine that there was anything to do but diet.

But then I discovered those books I’m always going on about: Overcoming Overeating and When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies by Jane R. Hirschmann and Carol H. Munter. Their feminist philosophy and practical instructions rocked my world and gave me hope for an ideal approach to food. And with the help I got from those books, I achieved that ideal while I was in college. I could eat whatever I wanted and stay thin. The suggested steps included the (somewhat terrifying) process of legalizing foods- allowing yourself to eat any and all of the foods you craved. Then there was the constant support of carrying around a “food bag” so you always had your favorite foods with you. And finally there was the acceptance of your body at any size, as well as the dismantling of negative thoughts about your body. This process led to an initial weight gain for me as I recovered from dieting, and then after a few months, I started to eat like a normal person. I ate when I was hungry, stopped when I was full, and ate whatever sounded good to me.

As I said, all this worked great for me in my twenties, before the full extent of my mental illness came into view. As I got sicker and sicker, I would vacillate between dieting and legalizing (usually bingeing after my latest diet), getting extremely frustrated and physically heavier. My weight gradually went up over the last decade or so until it finally peaked this year at 224 pounds. I’ve finally acceded to the idea that the feminist approach might not work for me being as sick as I am. And that due to my mental illness, it might never again work for me. So I’ve been adhering to a strict calorie limit since last year as well as doing some minimal exercise, and I’ve been getting the steady results I’d hoped for for so long.

The longer this method keeps working, the more my beliefs have shifted. I used to dismiss anyone who had lost weight by dieting as a fool who was just setting themselves up to binge, never imagining that it could last. But my own recent experience has me questioning whether it might actually be possible- whether you can restrict your eating for a long time (like forever) and successfully keep your weight where you want it. Entertaining the possibility of true weight loss success (other than through the feminist methods I described) is something I haven’t even considered since childhood. But what I’ve gleaned so far from my own experience is that small steps combined with religious consistency are more sustainable than extreme measures. My caloric limit is reasonable, I think, at 2,000 calories a day. I aim to eat 1,800, but if I need to go over that for any reason (like hunger), I’m comfortable with 2,000 and still consider myself within my plan. This little “release valve” is key for me. It makes it way less likely that I’ll end up at the end of the day with 140 calories allotted for dinner, trying to subsist on a can of vegetable soup. It also helped me get through the time change when traveling home from Germany when I was faced with a 30-hour day.

I recently discovered on my calendar that it’s almost exactly one year since I started limiting my eating, and that there was only one day when my caloric plans went out the window. That day I got into a screaming match with my Trump-supporting neighbors and flew into such a rage that I didn’t know what to do except eat. I ate 2 large bags of candied nuts (which were the only sweets in the house) and had half a frozen pizza for dinner. Now I’ve done a lot more damage than that in my bingeing days, but this was way out of line in terms of calories, coming in at around 4-5,000 for the day. But the astonishing part of this story is that the next day I just went back to the plan. With my “one extra bite and all bets are off” history with dieting, this was nothing short of a miracle. All I can attribute it to was, well, partly feeling justified- it’s not often that I’m arguing with white supremacists in my driveway- but also that returning to my moderate 2,000 calorie plan wasn’t too extreme. It actually took less effort to return to my usual meals than it would have taken to start bingeing.

There’s an analogy my husband offered: I’m climbing a very slight slope. If it were too steep, I might come crashing down into uncontrolled bingeing with any slight misstep. But with such a slight slope, I can handle the odd mishap and stay pretty much where I am. Moderation is the key to my eating now, and my mental health depends on it. And so this is an aspect of my life where, at least for now, I have to abandon my ideals. Is calorie counting my ideal way of eating? Of course not. Is it working for me at this stage of my mental illness? Yes. And so it is the most realistic approach for me right now. I would love to live according to my ideals in every way. But I do not live in a vacuum. I have a lot to negotiate in the real world. So I have to compromise and just do what works.

New Jeans, Same Old Story

Here are some pictures of me in the skinny jeans I recently pulled from storage. They were taken the last time I was around this weight. I was trying to create a catalog of outfits I could refer to when getting dressed. My first thoughts upon seeing these photos are highly critical: My arms look really awkward, like they’re too fat to hang down straight. I have a double chin. All the shoes and tops look cheap (and are things I’ve gotten rid of). I look like I’ve been stuffed into my jeans and so the top half of me is all puffed up. These pictures are humiliating because at the time, I thought I looked good. What was I thinking?

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I’ve officially decided to ditch the skinny jeans. They obviously trigger really negative self-talk for me. So I got some new jeans instead. I went thrifting and came out with a pair of men’s 501 Levi’s in a size 38. They’re definitely too big, but the size 36 Levi’s were way too tight. I rolled them up at the ankles, put on my black leather belt, and felt like myself.

I feel like I’m going through the whole process of discovering my style all over again. For some reason, my brain is a little slower than my weight loss, so it takes a bit of time to catch up. It’s as though by the time I figure out my style again at a new size, my clothes are too big and the process starts all over again. When will I learn? I felt really good looking at my closet yesterday and seeing the new jeans with the belt still in the loops hung next to my grey men’s pants and my baggy linen trousers. I felt like it was the perfect selection of bottoms for me at this weight. I went through that little dalliance with the white skirt and the skinny jeans, and then my sanity was restored and I got some new jeans. But wearing the new jeans yesterday (at the hole in my belt where I last wore it) was problematic. As I was heading into the house at the end of the day, I could feel them sliding further and further down until I had to catch them with one hand. My next attempt to wear them will involve cinching the belt a hole tighter and see how they look. But there’s only so much cinching you can do before they cross over into being too big. So I would give them 2-3 weeks, tops.

I feel like some people will read this and think, ”What are you complaining about? You’re losing weight!” For instance, Matt knows how desperately I’ve been wanting to lose weight. So when this issue arose, he said, “Isn’t it better that they’re too big rather than too small?” “No,” I spat back. Despite my prayers being answered and my weight continuing down the scale, I’m finding this whole process of dressing myself during weight loss extremely stressful. Deciding when things are too big, shopping for clothes for a new body size and shape every few weeks, trying to be economical about said shopping, and trying to look the way I want to look- it’s a lot to deal with. And that’s part of why I keep sifting through the discard pile: sometimes a certain look that didn’t work at a higher weight will mysteriously work at a lower weight, especially when you’ve changed other elements of your wardrobe.

For example, my size 3X, navy blue, J. Crew T-shirts have been my absolute favorites for the last 40 pounds, but I had one of them on the day I pulled the size 12 skinny jeans from storage. The T-shirt looked absolutely ridiculous in proportion to the tight-fitting jeans, so I’ve had my eye on discarding those T-shirts. But then I put one on with the new men’s jeans, and voila! It was perfectly oversized. So the T-shirts are no longer on the chopping block, but the skinny jeans are.

Now the white skirt might also be on its way out due to its utter lack of quality. I washed the skirt for the first time (which just goes to show how little I’ve worn it) on a cold, gentle cycle and hung it dry. It came out very wrinkled, so I had at it with the steamer. The skirt has elastic in its polyester blend, so I didn’t want to risk the heat of the iron possibly melting it. Apparently the steamer is just as hot as the iron and so it put some strange puckering in the fabric where the elastic melted. I’ve thought about trying to salvage it with a tumble-dry or a cool iron, but I’ve also thought about tossing it. The whole not-being-able-to-wash-it problem seems like a good excuse to get rid of something I’ve been on the fence about anyway. I love the aesthetic of a pencil skirt with an oversized top on me, but perhaps I might invest in something of higher quality that I didn’t score for 10 bucks at Boscov’s- once my weight has settled, that is. Strangely, I find the skirt in concordance with my style even though it’s more traditionally feminine than the skinny jeans. Weird. After all, there are skinny jeans for men, too. You’d think they might be okay for me, but the decision has been made. Again. Any item of clothing that triggers the onslaught of negative thoughts about my body the way the skinny jeans do needs to be eradicated from my life. And I feel so relieved. I don’t have to have that conflict with myself in the closet every day, toying with the idea of wearing them. I have new jeans now.

I'm Concerned About Skinny Jeans

I’m concerned about skinny jeans. More specifically, I’m concerned about my excitement over wearing them. I didn’t have this feeling at a higher weight. At my highest weight (224 pounds), I wore skinny jeans and felt unattractive and inconsequential. They were the first things to go when I had my Men’s Pants Epiphany. I saw them as a plus-size adaptation of feminine, objectifying, straight-size skinny jeans. I hated the way they clung to the leg, tapering down to a tightly fitted ankle, making me look like a tomato on a stick. And yet, despite this passionate rejection of the style, I’m suddenly harboring a secret desire to don the skinny jeans I recently pulled out of storage. They’re a size 12, and they just about fit since they have some stretch. And every day, ever since I hung them in my closet, I get a little giddy at the thought of wearing them. I’ve resisted so far, sticking to my baggy wide-leg linen pants. Because I know something is not quite right about it. I sense that my motives are questionable. Firstly, because I’m being blatantly inconsistent. Why did I shun the style 40 pounds ago? 20 pounds ago? What makes them suddenly attractive? Is it simply the thrill of fitting into a smaller size? I don’t think it’s quite that simple. I don’t think I’d be quite this excited to fit into my elastic-waist shorts from storage. I’m certainly not as excited to fit into my white pencil skirt that also stretches to fit. So what’s different about the jeans? Is it the fact that they have a button and zip-fly closure? Is it the more defined waist size that makes for more thrilling a fit? That makes some sense, but I still think there’s more to it. I think I’m falling into an old trap- one I’ve fallen into before.

I think I’m tempted to show my body off more now because I’m getting thinner. Regardless of the recent revelation of my affinity for menswear, for boots and belts and loose-fitting men’s dress pants, I’m falling prey to the classic temptation of wearing more revealing clothes when I lose weight. Often when we imagine ourselves thinner than we are, we see ourselves victorious, wearing a bikini or body con dress, regardless of our personal sense of style. As a child of the 80s, I still see those Dexatrim ads in my mind- the lady in the blue bathing suit by the pool, smiling because she is thin. I see the Before and Afters from Woman’s Day magazine covers- the After always showing a woman in a tight-fitting dress or bathing suit. And it’s hard to shake those associations I have with weight loss. I’m still getting sucked in, despite years of feminist thinking, of trying to escape the male gaze, of trying to accept my body at any size. I’m still holding a candle for that skinny version of me in my imagination that feels comfortable in spandex in public. And every time I’m thin, I try to make that image a reality. I get excited as the numbers on the clothes start to fall- 8, 6, 4, 2- and start browsing the sale rack of bikinis. Who am I? In what universe is this the person I want to be? And yet.

And yet, here I am again with the skinny jeans. They’re a gateway I tell you. You start with the skinny jeans, you move on to a short skirt, and the next thing you know, you’re in a bathing suit. But I never feel comfortable in those clothes. I remember being very thin while I was in a play, and the costume designer having to revamp all my outfits so that I would stop hunching over and standing weird in the short, tight skirts and dresses. We settled on a maxi dress and a matching pants set so I could focus on getting into character instead of hiding my body. So I know I’m not comfortable in tight clothes, in “sexy” clothes, in revealing clothes. No matter how thin I am, it’s just not me. So as much as I want to squeeze into those jeans and fish for compliments, I think I’m just going to pass and let them go. I have to protect myself from this slippery slope and stay true to my comfort zone. Partly for my own sense of self, but also to avoid gaining all the weight back. Because my subconscious feels so strongly about this issue that it will go so far as to make me regain some weight just so I stop making such bizarre fashion choices. And I don’t want to have to start bingeing again just to avoid the bathing suit aisle of TJ Maxx. I need to admit to myself that the blue swimsuit on the Dexatrim ad is not my destiny. I need to just look for another pair of men’s pants at the thrift store and stick with what I know feels right.

The Sizeable Discard Pile

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Along my capsule wardrobe/weight loss “journey,” I’ve decided to part ways with a number of items. Most things simply got too big (17 of them to be exact). Some things got worn out (6 items plus socks and underwear). And then there were a bunch of things that just weren’t working for me (16 items). I feel guilty that I’m getting rid of so many clothes. I still have them all in a pile, occasionally pulling something out to see if I’ve changed my mind about it. But most of the things that I’m discarding for aesthetic reasons are too big now anyway. So it is what it is: I’m getting rid of 39 clothing items, 9 pairs of underwear, and a pile of socks. I’m left with 22 items in my capsule wardrobe. This means I’ve cycled through around 61 items of clothing in the past 8 months. This might seem excessive for a minimalist, but I’ve lost 40 pounds and changed up my style a bit, so allowances must be made. 22 items it is now, though I am still questioning my too-big J. Crew T-shirts, white skirt and blue skinny jeans. I just don’t know if I feel comfortable in those more feminine pieces. But if I get to be too much of a perfectionist about it, I’ll be left with nothing to wear.

Back to the sizable pile. My plan was to sell what I could on Ebay and donate the rest, hoping against hope that the donations don’t go directly to the landfill. But looking at the profit margins for selling the stuff on Ebay is pretty grim- with shipping costs constantly increasing, it’s hard to profit at all on lower-end clothing items. This isn’t necessarily a reason not to do it- my main goal is to give the stuff new homes and not have it end up as garbage. But knowing how much work is involved in making good Ebay listings, I don’t feel up to the task and am thinking I’ll give Thredup a try instead. The payouts would probably be close to nothing (less than a dollar in many cases), but at least I don’t have to take all those photos and measurements, then store and ship the stuff when it sells. And I think the stuff that’s not sellable- the stuff I’d be forced to donate- at least has a shot at being recycled. I don’t know for sure what Thredup does with the clothes that don’t sell, but it’s got to be better than going in the trash compactor at Savers.

I just ordered 3 bags from Thredup for “selling” as opposed to straight-up donating. I decided against having the rejects sent back to me for $10.99 per bag. They claim they will “responsibly recycle unaccepted items.” I may not get as much money for my Sorel boots or my Margot handbag, but at least I don’t have to charge $15 for shipping on Ebay. That’s always a deterrent to Ebay shoppers when buying heavy items, especially shoes, which are bulky too. But Thredup has a standard shipping fee of $5.99 which is waived altogether if you buy $79 worth of stuff, so there’s no deterrent to buying heavy items. As far as selling, some items are paid out to you upon receipt, but most are consigned, so you only get paid if and when they sell. In the past, I would sell thrifted high-end and designer items on Thredup and had very good luck with the whole system. The clothes I’m sending in now are nowhere near as expensive as those designer things, so I’m only expecting some dollar-and-change payouts at best. I’m really in it for how easy it is to give your clothes new homes, and in hopes of the “unaccepted items” actually being recycled (my area doesn’t have textile recycling).

I think 3 bags should be enough for everything including shoes- I mean, I’m not putting my socks and underwear in there or anything gross. But I’m excited to see how this goes. It said it would take 2 weeks for the bags to arrive, and then 2 weeks for the clothes to be processed. I’ll be sure to keep you posted. In the meantime, I’ll make sure I steam everything so it looks its best when it arrives. I used to wrap all my items in big sheets of plastic and roll them so they wouldn’t get wrinkled on the way. I’m not sure it’s worth the cost (and wastefulness) of the plastic this time, but it may be. It seems like they don’t steam the clothes once they arrive, so you have a better chance of seeing your stuff sell if you take pains to make it look good beforehand. I know that plus sizes are always good sellers, so I have high hopes my clothes will find homes after all. And hopefully I won’t need to cycle through so many clothes in the future.

Here is the sizeable discard pile:

First, we have the items I just didn’t feel good wearing as I was creating my 25-Item Plus-Size Capsule Wardrobe:

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Next are the items from my original 25-Item Plus-Size Capsule Wardrobe that have gotten too big, worn out, or just stopped working for me:

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Next are some pajamas that got too big and some workout pants that got worn out:

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Here are the shoes that no longer work with my style, or that hurt my feet:

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Here are some worn-out socks and underwear:

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Then there are items I pulled from storage, but the sweater was worn out and the pants got too big:

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And finally, the items I thrifted that got too big or stopped working for me:

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The Cake Epiphany

I was at the coffee shop with Matt yesterday and we were talking about our wedding. I’m going to do a post on our minimalist/budget wedding so we were going over all the different elements of it. One thing we did was to forego the traditional giant wedding cake and order 10 standard cakes from the supermarket- one for each table. The cakes were really good, and there was plenty left over. And as we talked about it, I said, “Man, I could eat a whole cake right now.” As you do when you have as dysfunctional a relationship with food as I do. And then I said, “ But those days are over.” And I meant it. And it didn’t seem that bad. It just felt like a grown-up thought. An adult decision. Kind of like how you can’t drink a whole case of vodka or take an entire bottle of ibuprofen. They’re just not things you can do and be healthy and not get your stomach pumped. Or it’s like how I just can’t eat raw onions anymore because I get acid reflux (apparently as you get older, your esophageal valve gets sluggish and you get reflux from foods that you never did when you were younger). The same thing goes for large quantities of garlic. It just gives me a stomachache now, where as in my twenties, I didn’t cook anything without it.

When I was on a very strict diet for a couple years, back when Matt and I met in 2008, I didn’t eat sugar. Like, at all. Ever. I also didn’t eat wheat (including white flour), artificial sweeteners, or other sweeteners like honey or agave nectar. Ever. It went on for about two years, although for some reason in my head it was more like four. Anyway, it was really hard to do, and the idea of sticking to it for the rest of my life was really bleak. No cake, no cookies, no fried foods, no Diet Coke. Not even bread or bottled salad dressing. For the rest of my life. But those were the rules, and I really liked how thin I was on that diet. I also had really good teeth. I miss that, too. But eventually I started bingeing on dried fruit and nuts, and then finally, on pain au chocolat in Paris. I just couldn’t handle the idea of missing out on croissants in Paris. It seemed like a crucial life experience that would be shameful to miss out on. I tried to recover, going on various other strict diets, counting calories and carbs and exercising constantly. But I just couldn’t get back on board with the no sugar thing. And I think the reason for that was the idea of “never again.” I couldn’t live with the idea of never eating certain foods again.

But yesterday, talking about cake, it was different. I wasn’t saying I could never have a piece or a bite of cake ever again. I was just saying I could never have the whole cake. And that feels OK. I can’t say it’s easy to accept that, but it’s a heck of a lot easier than swearing it off forever. I eat sugar every day, and for the most part, it’s fine. I eat Lorna Doones or Hershey bars with almonds or Stonyfield frozen yogurt. I had oatmeal cookies in Germany as my nighttime snack with my pills, and there was no problem. I just count the calories and stick to the portion that fits into my diet. And I’m not filled with crazed cravings for more. A lot of people who are religiously against eating sugar will tell you differently- they’ll claim that even a bite of sugar leads to just wanting more and more. I used to think this was true for me, hence the really strict sugar-free diet. But this year, I’ve realized that not all sugar does that to me. There have been specific sugary foods that I’ve found it easier to just not eat. I had some particularly sweet, particularly rich chocolate in Germany that I instantly knew was not an option for me. Upon the first bite, I wanted to eat it all. And if I have that response, I’d rather not have to fight it. I’d rather just let it go, back away from the chocolate, and have something more tolerable. I don’t know why Hershey bars don’t do that to me, but they don’t. I can have a whole package of them in the house and it doesn’t bother me. I guess it’s just trial and error. I do find it extremely difficult to deal with foods I don’t know the calorie count for. It’s just not worth the guessing game for me, so I let them go.

I didn’t see this coming, this system for deciding what foods I can and can’t eat, but it’s working for me. It’s a lot of gut instinct, and a lot of brutal honesty as to when I’m feeling out of control. I’ve been around the block enough times with various diets and food restrictions to know what is worth the trouble of eating. To know what will do my head in with intense cravings or calorie confusion. And to be happy with what I can have. I used to think it was more black and white for me. I used to think I had to go to extremes in order to not overeat, in order to stop bingeing. But often those very extremes were setting me up to binge. I don’t feel like that’s happening now. I think this more moderate approach is one that I can accept for the long run. It’s not easy, but I can take it. I’ll take it over bingeing any day.