lose weight

I haven’t reviewed my 43 things for a long time and the first thing that strikes me is that I actually HAVE lost weight. I’m happier than I’ve been for a few years, which helps. And I’m doing Weight Watchers online, which really works for me. In fact, I’ve kinda reached my “ordinary” weight loss goal, which is to get back to the size I’ve been for most of my grownup life.

And it was so easy, and I’m eating so healthily, and feeling so happy about myself, that I’ve decided to set another goal completely: to get slim. To get my weight somewhere around the lower half of the “normal” range for my height. I’ve never been thin – my family had a really unhealthy lifestyle when I was a kid – but I realize now there’s no reason I couldn’t be.

Which, unfortunately, means I’ll have to lose as much weight again, and then some. But I’m not in a hurry.

I’m on a business trip in LA. Some people here are thin, as expected; others, this being America (OK anywhere in the western world really) are huge. I do find myself eating healthily though, mostly for the following reasons:

1) it’s too hot to eat very much. Portions are HUGE but they do bag left-overs.
2) fresh vegetables are available everywhere (see climate under 1))
3) bathing suit – seriously. I’ve been in one. In public. It’s not a pretty sight but hey, nobody knows me here.
4) On a business account, I can afford it (my student brain keeps checking the stores and menus for what I’d be eating from my own wallet and it ain’t pretty).

I also realise that gyms do need to be ubiquitous because of the whole driving thing. There are no opportunities for “natural” excercise.

Managed to stay within my sensible eating plan even though I had both dinner and coffee out. This may well end up saving me money too… I’m deliriously happy about this successful second day even though it’s uh, my second day. Had so much energy today, probably from eating real food and sleeping long in an actually heated house (flatmates being gone, no-one here to turn down the central before I get up in the morning).

Managed absolutely zilch excercise (almost embarrassed about counting a 15 minute brisk walk). I used to do yoga all the time. How did this happen???

But here’s my worry: I don’t believe in the plan. I know this approach works best for me, and I’ve lost a lot of weight like this before, but in my heart of hearts I don’t believe it’s gonna work once I go home to where my BF does the cooking. Already we’ve got a dinner party and a birthday party lined up for next weekend and I don’t know how to not eat a lot at a dinner, or how not to drink heavily with my fabulous gayboys all in one room.

Visualisation before and excercise after, I guess. Focus on the rewards. Perhaps I could try some fabulous kind of excercise to motivate me…

In my BRAIN. Joined one of those weight loss things. Like a club. God, I was so thin last year. Hope it’ll go away as fast as it pounced back on.

I’m back in the game again. But this dinner party today requires a small vacation from sensible eating

I’ve stopped losing weight and suspect I’m actually gaining. How the hell do I turn this around? Gaah. The exams really did me in – first no time to eat properly, then the celebrations of it being over, and now vacation. Haven’t been to Pilates in weeks and weeks either. worry

I’ve lost 5,2 kg in five weeks. It’s very respectable, sure, but to me it’s pretty miraculous – I’ve done so many potentially fattening things during this period, balls and dinners and drinking… I think I might be on to something, a way of living that doesn’t preclude all of the good stuff.

I’ve had only one meal at Hall since coming up for term and it was so gross that I don’t want to try it again. It bugs the hell out of me that I have to pay two hundred pounds for money I just won’t eat.

As I realised that I probably will reach my target weight of 76 kg by the end of term, I was suddenly taken aback by the possibility. I haven’t been that light for about seven years – but that’s not a natural limit for me in any way. I was always a bit overweight, all through high school, and now I’m thinking… what if I wasn’t? 66 would place me in the middle of the “normal weight” BMI bracket, not even close to underweight. I think my new long-term goal is to lose an additional 10 kg during the 16 weeks of summer break.

I’ve decided to stay off Hall food until I feel a bit more secure with this new life thing. To that end, I went out today and bought as much healthy food as I can possibly carry, plus a non-stick saucepan and likewise frying pan. Also, some crappy-looking “slimfast” and “weight watchers” and “boots lo carb”-products, with the understanding that there is no WAY that I’ll always have time to actually cook.

Bought scales too. I find that now that I can’t regulate affect through snacking, I do it through shopping. I have the cadillac of scales. It’ll tell me the percentage of water and fat in my body, and my BMI. I’m not supposed to weigh myself more than once a week in my program, but hell, since I paid more for this thing than for my three month diet service membership, I reckon it’s morally all right to stand on it daily.

Navigated some classic hurdles this week: All expenses paid room service at a five star hotel (actually felt rather fabulous only ordering up fruit slices and chicken salad). Airline food (just didn’t have any). Visiting with my South American aunt (only one dinner, a brilliant pasta pesto which turned out rather healthy because she ran out olive oil – lucky me).

I fiddle with my online calorie-counting food diary a lot. I find that fiddling around with the food (making it, noting it down) is about as rewarding as actually eating it. I have a vague recollection that this was also a major part of Weight Watchers. What the hell, if it works. But it sure doesn’t adress the CORE ISSUES.

Since I’m not particularly keen to adress any issues at all, thankyouverymuch, at least not untill I’m thin enough to do it in a nice outfit, I’m just reading Bergdorf Blondes instead. Plum Sykes is adressing the Union on Wednesday and I guess I’ll have to go. Man, The Union seems to be on great footing with Condé Nast, seeing as Graydon Carter was here last term.

I’m not really this shallow, but I kinda have to pretend to be so that I’ll care enough about how I look to actually do something about it. Yup, all’s fab that ends fab. Tomorrow morning I’m taking my first-ever Pilates class. Dieting is a ridiculously expensive business.

I’ve lost weight before. And gained weight before. Nothing dramatic. I was a European size 12 as a teenager (I’m quite tall and sorta naturally curvy). Then a size 14. At 23 I was a size 20, very briefly, and joined Weight Watchers, and although it fluctuates I’m pretty much a size 14 on the top half and 16 on the lower. I take no excercise. I’m a writer. I work with incredibly fashionable people at incredibly fashionable magazines and they’re all very thin. Since last fall I’m also at Oxford, living on campus with mostly wealthy undergraduates who are all, naturally, very thin.

I like fashion. I understand fashion. I can’t wear ANYTHING AT ALL. This has got to stop.

I joined one of those online weight loss services. A real conservative one which basically does calorie counting. I try to limit my carbs anyway, since they make me tired and cranky.

I try to walk more.

At home it’s fine (first week surprisingly 1,5 kg weight loss) but term starts next week and then I’ll be in Britain where all the food is unhealthy and everything they serve at Hall is wrapped in bread and dipped in fat.

This can’t go wrong: I already bought a reward dress in a smaller size.