Fresh start Friday?

I begged off from dinner with my co-workers at a French restaurant (where I surely would have ordered steak frites) and instead cobbled together a healthy meal from the hotel food court: teriyaki chicken, green beans, steamed rice, and a fruit cup.

Less fat, fewer calories, and no awkward chit-chat with the people I work with? Win-win-win.

No more Gatorade.

It’s also the first time in perhaps my entire life that I’ve started to grow sick of eating.  Like, I want to eat to numb myself, but I can’t eat because I can’t think of anything that appeals.  Usually, there are so many foods that I deny myself that I have no problem finding something to eat, even if I’m not hungry.  If I’m upset, cake or crackers or a chocolate bar will all do just fine.  But now?

Yeah.  All I want to do is sleep.

Breakfast: toast with peanut butter, two cups of coffee

Lunch: A handful of Pringles

Dinner: The innards of a six-inch Subway sandwich

Middle of the night: Saltine crackers with low-fat cheese

Today, I got up and went to work, feeling muddled, but forced to deal with the outside world.  Here is what I ate:

Breakfast:  Two old-fashioned donuts

Lunch: A classic skillet (potatoes, eggs, peppers, onions, cheese) with bacon and pancakes at IHOP

Midday: Two chocolate cupcakes, a bag of Skittles, and an entire packet of Orbit gum

Dinner: Cheeseburger and fries

I read once that suicidal people kill themselves right when they’re coming out of their depressions, since they’re too weak to do it at the depths, but they can plan as soon as they’re feeling better.

I feel like that with my eating sometimes:  when I’m at the lowest point, I don’t care about food.  I’m too numb to think about food.  When I’m just slightly improved, I have just enough strength to try eating myself out of my mood, or maybe taking the edge off the numbness makes me feel pain and drive me to eat.

Whatever the case, it’s almost enough to make me want to be utterly, totally numb all the time.

That makes it sound like we have an unhappy marriage.  We don’t.  But right now, I’m really upset that there’s nothing in the house for dessert.

Normally, I avoid beggars. I don’t make eye contact. I just scoot on by as if they don’t exist. Generally, this grants me invisibility as well–with one notable exception. Coming off the 1 train at 34th Street in New York back in 2005, a man sitting in the stairwell asked for help. I ignored him. He called me a “smelly bitch.”

Anyway. I’d been thinking a lot about the hungry, about how fortunate I am that I can afford to overeat, what an absolute luxury it is to be fat. A couple of friends and I recently discussed the 7-11 phenomenon, how the store is a popular spot for beggars. And it’s an awful, guilt-inducing experience when someone asks for help at 7-11, because I never go in there to buy anything I need. No, I walk out with Dr. Pepper, or Smartfood popcorn, or a Hershey bar. To have someone ask for my help when I’ve spent my last bit of cash on Mountain Dew and Doritos is humbling…and humiliating. The triumph of having enough change for a sugar fix is instantly eradicated and instead, I’m embarrassed, questioning my priorities.

When the man at the market center asked for help, I kept walking. I had $30 worth of foreign fashion magazines in my arms, and it was raining, so I was juggling a coat, a scarf, and an umbrella. I was angling my head to keep my glasses dry in the downpour. But something about a man asking to eat–the most basic of human needs–when I’d spent $12 to park to interview two players in the fashion industry (because I have an awesome job) and then $30 on magazines and then was headed back to my warm, dry car and then to my warm, dry home and my husband…well. I stopped in a corner of the plaza and considered.

Finally, I pulled three dollars out of my wallet–all my ones–and walked back to the man. “I hope this will be enough to get you something in there,” I said, gesturing to the food court just through the center’s doors. (I know from experience that $3 will buy a huge slice of pizza at the Italian joint just inside.)

“Thank you,” he said. “God bless you.”

I shrugged and walked off to my car. I am not religious. And I knew that I hadn’t done anything so great. Three dollars means nothing to me–hell, I’d just dropped $10 on British Vogue, and yesterday, I spent $40 on Filofax refills. But it meant a meal to that man.

Sometimes, I get so down on myself and my life. That I can’t buy the clothes I want, that my car isn’t quite the model I wanted, that my job is sometimes dull, that I will have to save up for the SLR camera and MacBook I want. And I lose sight of how lucky I am, to have people who love me, to have a home and a car and a job and more stuff than I’ll ever need. To have people who would help me, that if the worst happened, I would never be homeless or starving.

Sometimes I think what a curse it is that I overeat. Sometimes I forget what a blessing it is that I can’t remember the last time I was hungry.

There was nothing that appealed to me.

I know how to eat right. I know that scarfing down a box of cookies doesn’t solve problems. I’m well aware that a cheeseburger and fries does not constitute a nutritious lunch. When I cook dinner, I grill chicken, steam asparagus, and munch on a crisp salad.

So why was I browsing the diet books at all?

I’ve been on Weight Watchers (three times at least). I did the Carbohydrate Addicts’ Diet. I’ve gone low-fat, low-carb, and low-calorie. I drank Slimfast twice a day for months on end.

And I’m still fifty pounds overweight.

I am an emotional eater. Every time something goes wrong, every time I feel sad or depressed or lonely, I turn to food. I’ve downed a dozen large chocolate chip cookies in half an hour. I’ve made my way through a box of crackers in an afternoon at the office. I’ve gone to multiple stores looking for exactly the right slice of cake that will cure what ails me. I munch hamburgers in my car. The clerks at all the local 7-11s know me, despite the fact that I take pains to vary my path and never visit the same one on consecutive snack runs.

Every time I turn to food, it lets me down. But for a moment–when the beef or the pastry or the fried dough slides across my tongue–I hang on to the hope that this time it will work. This time, just this once, that box of Vegetable Thins will be my friend. The chocolate mini donuts will love me back. And that frozen pot pie? It will make up for being bored out of my mind at work.

The reason I’m overweight, the reason nothing has worked for me, the reason I didn’t buy a single diet book, is because my weight problem isn’t a matter of choosing better foods or eating more veggies. No, my weight problem is in my head.

I hope to use this blog as a space to sort out my issues with food, my food-related memories, my sick rationalizations, my place to fight the urge when the drive-through is calling me. I’m sick of hiding. I’m sick of turning to McDonald’s to solve my problems. My stomach is a wreck, I’m broke, and I need to change.