The Donut Hole

I’ve been thinking about buying a donut. Major decision, I know. But for me, it is. Donuts were the food I gained a lot of weight eating last year. At the worst of my mental illness last summer, in between crying and screaming at people, between going running and lying down seething, I ate a lot of donuts. Sometimes 9-12 a day? Something like that. And they were giant fried crullers with glaze on them, aptly named a “glazed stick” at our Dunkin Donuts. They probably had 4-600 calories each, as they were larger than the standard glazed stick at 370 calories. Multiply that by 12 and you get at least 4,800 calories a day in donuts alone. But let me explain.

Despite my horrific mental state on little to no medication at that time, I was also trying to “legalize” donuts. This is part of the process of overcoming overeating introduced in Jane R. Hirschmann and Carol Munter’s books Overcoming Overeating and When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies. The idea is to eat certain foods freely until they lose their taboo and therefore, attraction. They become like any other food. The legalizing process usually doesn’t take very long- in my twenties, it took less than a year. I went from compulsively bingeing to eating freely and normally. I was thin and could eat whatever I wanted. I’ve been chasing that state ever since, trying to legalize foods and find more effective ways of dealing with my emotions instead of eating. After a certain amount of time (and weight gain), I would get scared, start counting calories, and go back to dieting. This time, I thought, if I could stick it out long enough, it would work for me again. I committed completely to the process, keeping the freezer full of donuts and eating them for almost every meal, waiting for the inevitable day when their allure had run its course. It never did. I was either eating for comfort from my extreme duress or I was ravenous from Seroquel all the time. I couldn’t even find a sense of fullness, never mind satisfaction. I couldn’t relax around food because I couldn’t ever relax at all. I was in the worst way in terms of my (Bipolar II) depression and rage. My husband and my mom were trading shifts babysitting me, all day, every day, always at the ready to take me to the hospital if it came to that. I was wishing for death, fantasizing about suicide constantly as an escape from my unbearable situation (I should have been in the hospital, but I refused to go). It was the first time in 10 years that I’d been unmedicated. And then I was prescribed Seroquel, and gradually worked my way up in dosage. The Seroquel made me tired and hungry, but it did nothing for my agony. My rages settled down, but so did my ability to exercise. It’s difficult to even think about that time. Apparently, it was no time to legalize donuts. It’s better to do that when you’re mentally healthy and can think clearly and take care of your emotional needs.

Since I started counting calories and dieting again, I haven’t even looked at a donut. I eat cookies every night with my Latuda (you need to eat 350 calories with it), but somehow that’s been just fine. Lately, though, I’ve been feeling awfully deprived. I walk down the street in Berlin, seeing people eating whole “personal” pizzas themselves, thin people eating “kuchen” or cake with their coffee, eating ice cream in public- huge, elaborate sundaes made in the shape of a plate of spaghetti or piled high with waffles and sauces (yes, there is something in Germany called “Spaghetti Eis” with vanilla ice cream “pasta”, red raspberry “tomato sauce”, and white chocolate “parmesan” on top). And I’m not eating any of it. It’s too hard to estimate the number of calories in even a bite of cake, so I just don’t eat it. It’s also really difficult to fit cake into your 1,800 calorie allotment for the day.

And so, the donut. Going to the grocery store here is a real trigger for me. There are all kinds of junk foods we don’t have at home. And the last time I was in Germany, I was bingeing on them. At the bakery counter with my husband the other day, he was buying a loaf of bread for himself. I was eyeing all the things I can’t eat. The cheese danish, the “Schwein Ohr” (“pig’s ear”- kind of like a giant Palmier), and especially, the jelly donuts. Strawberry filled, generously glazed perfection. I brought up the idea of having one as my night time snack with my husband. He saw it as a potential Pandora’s Box, something not worth playing with. I argued, claiming it would be easy to estimate the number of calories, since they were comparable to a Krispy Kreme and the calories in those are listed online. And then he reminded me: I have a history with donuts. And it’s not one I’d like to relive. So the donuts are staying behind the case for now, and perhaps forever. I will not fall down the donut hole again.