Crunching Calories and the Leap from the Lion’s Head

We last left off in my weight loss “journey” (god, I hate that word— process? progress?) on October 5th when I weighed in at 147.2 (My First Weigh-In in Six Months). The number has continued on down as follows:

10/31/20: 146.7 (0.5 pounds lost)
11/27/20: 143.6 (3.1 pounds lost)
12/26/20: 140.5 (3.1 pounds lost)
1/23/21: 137.9 (2.6 pounds lost)

Slow and steady, as per usual, but I’ve had to make some major adjustments in my calorie counting along the way.

First, there were the biscuits.

So there are these biscuits: “Anisette Toast” by Rhode Island’s own Catanzaro’s bakery. I love these things. And at only 104 calories each, they’ve been such a great weight-loss snack. They’re like a rather hefty biscotti, and pretty filling for only 100 calories. I’d often have two of them on days I was particularly peckish, and was known to even have four of them on days I’d been awake with insomnia and starving. Then one day I noticed they’d taken the nutrition label off the bag.

Months went by before I investigated further. But when I did, I found that on their website they’d changed the nutrition info, this time specifying a biscuit as 58 grams as opposed to “1 biscuit.” And I was astonished to see that an average 58g biscuit came in at 170 calories.

I weighed biscuits. A lot of them were even bigger than 58g. I went into My Fitness Pal calorie-counting app, scanned the barcode on the bag, and saw that the app still thinks they’re only 104 calories. I just couldn’t deal with this new information, so I remained in denial and went along with what the app said.

That month, a particularly biscuit-heavy month, I only lost half a pound. It had to be the biscuits. This could also explain many other disappointing weigh-ins in the past. So I came to terms with it. I ate fewer biscuits, and when I ate them, they didn’t seem like as much of a caloric bang-for-your-buck at 170 calories. I started adjusting the serving size in the app to make up for the extra calories, and the next month I lost 3.1 pounds.

The following month, I realized I’d made another error in calorie-counting. One day a while back, I didn’t finish my protein shake, so I accounted for 120 calories instead of the usual 160. But then I kept copying that day’s breakfast the whole rest of the month, despite drinking the whole shake every day. It was only a matter of 40 calories a day, as opposed to the 130-260 extra calories from the biscuits, so I still lost 3.1 pounds again when all was said and done.

Which brings us to last month. Last month I realized I was tracking my tofu 25 calories short, and my noodles an additional 25 calories short (I eat both every night for dinner). So I adjusted my numbers yet again.

Now around the same time, a disturbing thing started happening. I started getting hungrier and hungrier. I decided it made sense to allow myself those extra 50 calories I’d been eating for so long, bringing my limit up to 2,050.

But I was still starving. After much deliberation, I decided to increase my limit by another 100 calories, adding some extra yogurt and a little extra oatmeal to my breakfast. It still wasn’t enough. My protein shake lattés every morning just weren’t staving off hunger the way they used to. I suddenly needed my breakfast sooner— and I needed more of it.

It finally dawned on me that this sudden change in physical hunger might have something to do with my meds. I’ve gone up in dose on one of my drugs, and it has a potential side-effect of increased metabolism. If I’m burning more calories, this could explain my raging hunger. I decided to do a little number-crunching to try and figure out just how many calories my body is burning each day.

The month I went from 143.6 pounds down to 140.5 pounds, that was 3.1 pounds lost. With a pound being equivalent to 3,500 calories, I figure I was in a deficit of 3.1 x 3,500 = 10,850 calories for the month. If you divide that deficit by the 29 days between weigh-ins, it comes out to a deficit of 10,850/29 = 374 calories each day. I ate an average of 1886 calories per day that month, so if you add my calories consumed to my caloric deficit you get 1886 + 374 = 2,260 calories burned each day.

This past month, I lost 2.6 pounds. 2.6 pounds x 3,500 calories = a 9,100 calorie deficit for the month. Divide that by the 28 days between weigh-ins and you get a 9,100/28 = 325 calorie deficit per day. I ate an average of 2,055 calories a day that month. If you add that to the deficit, you get 2,055 + 325 = 2,380 calories burned each day.

If you average these two months, it comes to 2,260 + 2,380 = 4,640 4,640/2 = 2,320 calories burned each day.

It all started to make sense. I was in a much bigger deficit than I thought. I gave myself the green light to go up to 2,300 calories a day.

This was not an easy psychological adjustment. I’d been eating at a 2,000 calorie limit for more than 2 years, and I never went over my limit. Granted, there were those days when I went over due to miscalculated biscuits or protein shakes, but I was able to let that go. In my mind, 2,000 was an absolute. But I could not accept the idea of a life where I didn’t eat when I was physically hungry.

I questioned whether I was actually physically hungry. But my stomach cramped, my hands shook, my head hurt— of course I was hungry. I questioned whether this was a gateway to bingeing, if I would lose control and gain all the weight back.

But I was reminded that the point of this diet is not to be as skinny as possible. The point of counting calories is to give me the structure I need to keep from bingeing. Not bingeing is the point. And my weight is secondary.

Historically speaking, 137.9 is a very low weight for me. It would be a perfectly fine weight to remain at for good. Eating these increased calories— eating when I’m hungry— might mean that I don’t lose any more weight. It might even mean that I gain some back. And so I’m trying to be okay with that.

But I still have these fantasies of weighing less. I think of that number 135— the weight I was when Matt and I met— when I was still performing in shows. When I wore a bodysuit to dance rehearsals and felt no shame.

And then there were even lower numbers— 125, maybe. I felt invincible then, like no one could tell me I was fat. No one could say anything to me. I wore size 2 jeans, for christ’s sake. And I long to be that thin again.

Is it right to want that? Probably not. I’m 10 years older— that alone usually means a higher natural weight. And I want to be comfortable. I want to feel like I’m eating enough and like I’m not killing myself with the exercise. I want to be at a sustainable weight. And for anyone else, I would of course think this weight was fine.

But thinking about being thinner gives me this sick kind of thrill. Geneen Roth talks about it in her book, Appetites. She talks about how when she lost weight from the flu and her pants got too big, it felt like a bird flew out of her heart. That’s exactly how thinness makes me feel. Like all those prayers I said as a child for God to make me thin finally came true. Like no one could hurt me because I was in control.

I only sustained that low weight of 125 for a couple years. In order to maintain it, I couldn’t eat sugar, flour, or wheat of any kind. I could only have 2 servings of carbs a day. It was, quite literally, my religion.

I made that diet an absolute— it was how I defined my “abstinence” from overeating as a member of OA. Like in AA where alcoholics can’t drink in order to remain sober, I decided I couldn’t eat sugar in order to remain abstinent. And I literally prayed for God to help me stay on my diet.

But the only other time I remember my weight being that low was in middle school. And that was the result of a strict diet and hours on the Nordic Track cross-country ski machine, or jumping around to Jane Fonda VHS tapes. I don’t know if that weight would work for me now.

I don’t really know what my weight should be. I do know that I have to eat when I’m hungry. I’d be crazy not to. And right now I need 2,300 calories a day to feel satisfied.

I feel like I’m walking off the cliff in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: he steps onto an invisible bridge across a chasm on his way to the holy grail— the “leap from the lion’s head.” I will eat, and I’ll just have to trust that my weight will land in the right place the way his foot landed on the invisible bridge. And if it’s not as thin a place as I want it to be, I’ll still have to accept it.