Presto Diet - Day Three

My partner showed me a video of Penn Jillette talking about his weight-loss. Said video is here.

I bought his book 'Presto' and started upon a reading rampage. His book is funny and I definitely don't agree with everything he talks about but the main pretence made sense to me.

I've only ever done one diet before, the Liver Cleansing Diet - which my Mum and I did together when I was about 16 or so. I did it and lost a bunch of weight and got a crazy amount of comments and positivity from EVERYONE. It was stupid, because as soon as I began to eat like myself again (binges and all) I just gained the weight back on. Plus I felt like a fucking failure.

Recently I decided to go back to Over-Eaters Anonymous again. I'd gotten to the point of exhaustion with my bingeing - my obsession with food had taken up so much of my energy that I was barely able to keep the rest of my life together. OA is a strange place, you go there because you really don't want to and you keep going because you really really don't want to. It's that type of awful feeling, deep down in the pit of yourself that is just screaming to leave the room - and your rational self realises that sitting in a room for an hour with strangers, telling you about their lives and eating habits should not illicit that reaction. The only reason your mind is reacting like that is because it's trying to save it's addictive self. You and your body want to keep running yourself into the ground because the addiction is just that strong, it has been your coping mechanism for life.

That addiction has both helped and hindered me through almost my entire life, starting back when my relationship with food and my body went sour. Much like how most of my future romantic relationships would go, it was a one-sided, needy-as-fuck relationship. Food was my first love. My second was my friend at Primary School that I used to obsessively stalk whilst he played soccer on the field.

Needless to say, the unrequited loves of my life made me terribly unhappy and food was a comfort to my loneliness, anxiety (that one has become quite the fucking buzz-word lately hasn't it?) and fear.

So this book by a Magician who at best I find funny and at worst I find annoyingly arrogant, felt refreshing and interesting. It also sounded like an bizarre way to implement the Meal Plan which OA recommends as part of your recovery process. A bit like doing an experiment on my fucked up, self-abused body.


At the real core of it all, I don't want to think about food constantly, I don't want to be obese and have all these shitty health problems at 31 years old, and I sure as hell don't want to die early because I ate too much BK.

The Potato Famine part is tough (it's also pretty offensively named). I have done it for almost 3 days now and my obsessive mind has been obsessing about potatoes a lot. And then this morning I woke up and I wasn't hungry, I think mainly because I don't really feel like a plain potato or kumera. That's interesting to me - that because I've taken the choices and pleasure out of my food (it's for 2 weeks), my mind doesn't feel like eating and I can clearly listen to what the rest of my body needs.

So I feel okay, more okay than I expected to feel. Although Penn mentions that the third and fourth days are generally the shittiest for people, so I'm waiting for that. The headaches are shit, the hot flushes are annoying and the puffy face is too but so far that's it. In the meantime I see my weight has gone down - whether or not it's just water weight or something else I don't know but that's cool, I'm in this for the long run. I started at 106 kilos and I'm now 102, my goal is 75.

I want my body to be healthy and live a long time and I'm eating potatoes for two weeks, then a mainly vegan based diet until I reach my target weight. Once I'm there I'll be vegan most of the time and eat what I want every two weeks, for a 4 hour period.

Penn's book may be a money-making venture, it may have more jokes and ego than medical advice (he does mention that he is after-all not a Nutritionist but a Las Vegas Magician) but it has helped me because it led me to believe that with my naturally obsessive and extremist personality (much like his), I needed to make changes that go with my nature, not against it. I cannot eat like a 'normy' and I don't want to. I'm going to eat like a big fat Magician whose trying to heal his body, and so far I feel like this is working for me.

Watch this space...

I Am Fat (if you try to tell me otherwise I will sit on you to death).

Instead of telling you my weight I'll tell you my BMI is 30.5 (clinically obese). I'm a very tall person, with big boobs, no arse and no hips but a large belly in-between. I also have PCOS (Poly Cystic Ovary Syndrome), am Insulin Resistant (pre-diabetic) and am a recovering Compulsive Binge Eater.

So those are the stats that I'm working with here, not that they actually mean a lot when put them in a list like that. It's a lot like the total of your student loan, it's there, you're aware of it, you fear it's wrath but it's not actually sitting next to you on the bus. Or if it is then it's that smelly guy with the beanie who you hope won't talk to you. 

I always thought that my Bipolar would be my 'undoing' but it turns out that my weight is the lurking threat that I have only recently had the courage to look at. Before I was able to be drug-free and mostly mentally stable, I was in survival mode and often my biggest real goal of the day was getting out of bed and into the shower. 

I feel like I wake up every day of my life inside a fat suit. I'll take this opportunity to say that, yes I know I'm not massive (I've been told most of my life that I'm not "that big", thanks to genetics I look okay but feel heavy and sluggish) and plenty of people have it much, much worse. However, I'm still going to complain and that is my right. Once you tip the scale to 'obesity' on the BMI I think the one thing you do get to do is label yourself as fat without people telling you you're not "that big". They mean well but honestly, the only thing it makes me feel is guilty for expressing how I feel, which as far as I'm concerned is the most important part. 

Tomorrow I am starting the 'Couch to 5k' program. Partly because I like the idea of commiting to just three days a week but mostly because I don't want to die of diabetes or whatever horror my Doctor wants to warn me about next.

I am terrified. Not of the health warnings but of the running part. I take quiet pride in my successful attempts to avert P.E in school (the best one was my manipulation of the heart scan I had to get when I was 15 for a heart murmur, that I turned into a full year of not being 'able' to run). Any exercise freaks me out, I feel like everyone is staring at me but most of all I fear failing myself once again in an attempt to create a healthier version of me. 

Wish me luck. I'm not kidding myself, I wrote this mainly so I don't have the gaul to chicken out tomorrow.