However, I've now experienced feeling skinny and I beg to differ. For a start, I was getting quite uncomfortable at how thin I looked. Stepping on the scales and seeing numbers beginning with 5 was kind of alarming to me. I don't actually like seeing my ribcage in the mirror, nor do I appreciate the fact that my shoulders didn't bother to get proportionally smaller.
I'd be lying if I didn't say that there were some days that I honestly felt pleased with myself for managing to exercise a modicum of self-control with regards to food. There is a strange sense of satisfaction in, for example, walking past a cafe, may be even walking into the cafe and just not eating anything. The thought 'I could just eat one of those' is immediately followed by the realisation 'Or, I could not eat one of those'. This is initially quite an exciting revelation, I suddenly realised that I could take control of my own body in one empowering moment of not eating.
Luckily, this wore off after a couple of days of feeling exhausted, hungry and tired (and no, I wasn't actually starving myself - I was still eating around 2400 calories at the lowest point, which is supposedly enough for a normal person...)
I'd be lying if I didn't say that there were some days that I honestly felt pleased with myself for managing to exercise a modicum of self-control with regards to food. There is a strange sense of satisfaction in, for example, walking past a cafe, may be even walking into the cafe and just not eating anything. The thought 'I could just eat one of those' is immediately followed by the realisation 'Or, I could not eat one of those'. This is initially quite an exciting revelation, I suddenly realised that I could take control of my own body in one empowering moment of not eating.
Luckily, this wore off after a couple of days of feeling exhausted, hungry and tired (and no, I wasn't actually starving myself - I was still eating around 2400 calories at the lowest point, which is supposedly enough for a normal person...)
The bliss of, for example, Caius Hall's very own Chocolate Lumpy Bumpy Pie (don't knock it til you've tried it) is surely a far more intense feeling that the subtle knowledge that it's taken weeks of ignoring hunger pangs to see a slightly different number on the scales.
To settle the debate, I have produced a list of things that really do taste as good, if not better, as how standing on those scales and seeing 58.9 felt:
To settle the debate, I have produced a list of things that really do taste as good, if not better, as how standing on those scales and seeing 58.9 felt:
- Fresh bread
- A bacon butty - with real butter and well cooked bacon
- A really good cheese and ham toastie. The kind where the cheese is all stringy and melted.
- Cadbury's Creme Eggs
- A cinnamon pastry
- Sticky toffee pudding
- Chocolate fondant
- A big bowl of muesli, with blueberries, strawberries, nuts, raisins, seeds, chocolate chips and chocolate sauce.
- Nutella (by itself, on toasted bagels, in porridge, on fruit loaf...)
- Dominos pizza whilst at a ball
- Chocolate cake
- Rice pudding
- Chocolate granola with gold-top milk
- A toasted hot cross bun with real butter
- A rack of BBQ ribs
- Creamy scrambled eggs on toast
- Really thick hot chocolate
I may or may not have eaten all of these in the last five days
The moral of this story is that being skinny is alright for a limited amount of time, but eating food is significantly more fun, tastes better and stops you fading away into nothingness.
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| Pizza > Most Other Things |
On the other hand, I've also developed a perculiar love of salad, raw carrots, ryvita and huge servings of vegetables that doesn't look like it's going away anytime soon...
