WAGblog

Weight again

I went over for lunch at LL's last Thursday, to take a very short walk with L so she could get some exercise with her walker and keep building up her leg muscles, lost to myopathy, a result of taking prednisone when she was so ill this past spring and to type up C's weekly Shabbat message to his family, spread out all over the country now. When I got there, I greeted C with a hug (I've learned to do that) and he complained that there was nothing left of me, as usual...Then L said for him to stop bothering me, I'd put on "an ounce or two"...I said nothing, only smiled and plucked my usual Coke (the only one I have all week) out of the fridge. Inside, I was quite shaken.

Why? It was the plan wasn't it? For me to eat more and gain weight, right? Yeah...sort of. Except that Dr O had told me that if I ate 1000 calories I would be "safe" medically and would NOT in fact gain weight, and so I had done so. I hadn't been rigidly counting calories, true, I had simply eaten sensibly and lightly. And in truth, I thought she had been right, too, in that my clothes still seemed to fit the same, more or less. I had no other visual indications that my weight had changed since eating more. I didn't weigh myself, though, because I didn't want to become a slave of the scale. Still, I was happy enough to stay where I was, eating as I was...Until The Comment. That "an ounce or two" meant to me "four or five pounds" because obviously it would take that much to be noticeable, wouldn't it? At least 2-3 lbs! And that upset me, since I had been laboring under the illusion that I was not actually gaining weight, as Dr O assured me I wouldn't.

Needless to say, I resolved then and there to lose the weight immediately. I ate very little therest of that day. And planned to fast or eat extremely little for the next two weeks to make up for my "over-indulgence" of the past month. Then the next morning I decided just to weigh myself (without clothes for a change) to see the damage. I was astounded to see I weighed 94.5lbs, NOT the 103-5lbs as I'd anticipated. Why had L so blithely said I'd gained weight? Had she any idea what her comment had meant to me? The damage it did? Why did she have to comment on my size or weight at all? Why do people say things like that? I wouldn't dream of commenting on someone's weight, especially not to say they had gained weight, especially not someone who had a history of an eating disorder...I don't get it...

But it brought it all right back home to roost: the concerns about food, the putting off eating and forgetting to do so until late at night, because it is so conflicted; sometimes I don't get down more than a banana or two all day until midnight, when I scramble to get some calories in.

I hate this. I hate going on and on about food and eating, when there are so many more important things to worry about and think about and talk about! In fact, I'm not going to say another word about it. I'm going to stop right here.