10:47 a.m. - Friday, Mar. 07, 2003
\"What's Normal??\", asks Ms Leslie
Question: Am I the only one who can�t seem to throw away food?
Case in point: Like the hedonist I just am, I lost my willpower and ordered a medium extravaganza hand-tossed pizza from Dominos. Hold the green peppers please. And an order of butter, sugar and cinnamon with a dozen balls of hot, doughy bread for a place to put them. Also known as Cinnadots. Total calories, I�m not sure, but I think five thousand is probably a conservative estimate.
Now I could afford to lose my will once in a while, if I could do it with just a tiny bit of restraint. One slice of pizza is something less than five hundred calories. Two of the Cinnadots is probably three or four hundred. If I ate one slice of pizza and two Cinnadots, I would be breaking my diet, but it wouldn�t be serious. My exercising would probably eat up those extra calories without any serious weight gain. But no��. I can�t watch that pizza grow cold. I can�t let it go to waste. Even after I�ve eaten so much that it doesn�t even taste good, I feel compelled to work on it until it�s gone. And by gone, I mean that in the case of the Cinnidots, the dots are gone and I have licked the tin foil wrapping clean of every trace of butter and sugar. For the pizza, gone means I have eaten even the crust and whatever crumbs of sausage or olives have fallen off into the box. Eight slices of pizza and twelve sticky dots and then I fucking LICK the plate!
Then I spend the night and the next day with heatburn, diarrhea, and a self hatred that makes the physical suffering seem like an itch.
I got off lucky yesterday. I didn�t eat anything else, so I only gained a pound and a half from the Dominos binge. That�s not a lot of damage physically, compared to what I already weigh. The emotional damage though, is building up. It�s really hard to feel strong and healthy emotionally when I feel myself and see myself doing things that are destructive and wrong for me. It makes me feel weak and worthless. It makes me even more avoidant of my bedroom mirror and even less likely to venture out into the world where the people are.
On the upside, I do get to meet the young man who brings my pizza. He likes me. I overtip, remember?
So, back to the question: Am I the only one? How do you know when to stop? How do you destroy the excess food on your plate? What do you do when you hear it calling you, uneaten, from inside the box?
I desperately need to learn what normal is.
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