Authors: Courtney Rubin

The Weight-loss Diaries (41 page)

BOOK: The Weight-loss Diaries

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Dan never cared much about the things I wrote—he’d be happy for me if I was happy about something, but it ended there. But Craig would ask about the book, seeming frustrated that I was so vague about it. I didn’t want to tell him about it, not just because it’s very un-English to write anything so personal but because answering his questions about the book would bring us right up to the edge of discussing all kinds of things food and weight and body related that I didn’t want to discuss.

It always felt too soon—our relationship still too fragile to bear that sort of weight.

So I hid, falling back into old, bad habits. Craig would disappear downstairs to practice piano for an hour, and I’d say I was heading out to get a newspaper or a Diet Coke. Along with them I’d usually buy a snack—sometimes

Epilogue

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healthy, sometimes not. It was insurance—something that would let me be with Craig all day and not worry, not obsess about when we might eat and whether at some point I was just going to have to announce that I was hungry.

I’m not a morning person, but in Marrakesh I would leap out of bed in the morning to be the first in the shower so I could go down to breakfast without him. Everything at the hotel was a buffet, and being alone in the morning—not feeling like anyone was watching or could tell that I was so unsure of how much to take—made it easier for me to handle the rest of the day.

On Christmas Eve we went to Chez Ali, a Moroccan palace that serves a family-style dinner and puts on a spectacle of music, camel riding, and fire.

It was just Craig and me at a table meant for eight, and they served us as though the table were full.

Fear.

When a huge bowl of couscous arrived, he asked me to serve it. I muttered something about not being very good at it.

“Do you want to practice?” Craig snapped. “You don’t have to be good at everything.”

I sat there for a good thirty seconds, blinking furiously as I tried not to cry. I cast a glance around the dining room, looking for some clue as to how much to serve, like it was a pop quiz. Then I served—two ladles apiece. I put the ladle down slowly—
chink
—and looked at him warily.

Then I explained. I told him I was afraid to serve the couscous because I’m not sure what a normal portion is. I told him I’m not sure what a normal portion is because I’ve had problems with food all my life. I gave him the thirty-second version, testing the water.

“I should have known,” he said and covered my hand with his. Then:

“I’m glad you told me.”

When the next course arrived, he served it. Was it my imagination, or was he beyond careful to serve us both exactly the same-size piece of pastry?

It never ends, but it gets easier.

The feelings cycle through faster, like a video on fast-forward. I didn’t spend the whole evening brooding about having said anything to him. I didn’t feel like I couldn’t look him in the eye.

Instead I thought:
This is me. This is the real me
.

Food and my obsession with it are things I will always have to deal with.

Some days the burden is heavy. Other days it isn’t. But I know—the way I

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Epilogue

know I look terrible in the color yellow, the way I know I’m allergic to scal-lops—that this is mine to deal with, probably forever. That when I get stressed or frustrated or angry or upset I will immediately look to food, even if it’s just for a second. It’s a handicap I have to work around, and I’m working on it.

At Christmas lunch the next day, Craig and I talked about where we had been on Christmases past. As I told Craig about mine, I’d have a brief flash of what I had been wearing and what I ate or didn’t eat.

A day later, as I wrote about Christmas lunch, I realized I didn’t remember pacing myself during lunch so as not to finish my food before he did. I didn’t remember what we ate or if I had left anything on my plate. I didn’t remember what I was wearing and how it fit and whether I could feel the button on my jeans making an imprint on my stomach as I took another bite. I could remember only the conversation—the feeling of connection, the feeling of being lucky to be able to live in London for a while and to be traveling in Marrakesh, even though not under the most ideal of circumstances. I felt happy.

I felt lighter.

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments always remind me ofa cross between a yearbook mes-

sage, where you strain for something unique and meaningful and not too sappy (but give up by the fifth book put in front of you), and a wedding invitation list, where each time you add another person, you think of about seventy-five others who then need to be added.

Thanks first to
Shape
magazine, which gave me an opportunity I couldn’t begin to appreciate at the time and allowed me to take the column in direc-tions they (and I) never expected. My editor, Maureen Healy, was unfailingly enthusiastic and encouraging. Dr. Pamela Peeke and Shari Frishett, LCSW, provided support that went well beyond what they originally signed on for. I am also indebted to Nancy Clark, M.S., R.D., and of course, to all the
Shape
readers whose heartfelt and heartening letters sustained me during the writing of both the column and the book.

For six years, Jack Limpert and
Washingtonian
magazine gave me the freedom to write about a lot of things that are important to me and to write in an office full of people who cheered me on. Special thanks to Sherri Dalphonse, Diane Granat, Leslie Milk, and, of course, Bill O’Sullivan, for his patient and careful reading of this book and so many of the stories that came before it.

Thank you to my agent, Ted Weinstein, and to my editors, Michele

Pezzuti and Heidi Bresnahan, and everyone else at McGraw-Hill.

This book might never have left my daydreams without my amazing

friends: Kate Ackley, Annemarie Borrego, Andrew Clark, Angie Fox, Sarah Gale, Josh Green, Cree Harry, David Hothersall, Jean Kalata, Cindy Kush-ner, Stephen Martin, Brent Mitchell, Mark Murray, Jon Spira, Jay Sumner, Ashley Wall, and Shawn Zeller. Thanks especially to some old and dear 257

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Acknowledgments

friends (lifelines throughout this project and so many others): Brian Hiatt, Adam Hill, Christie Kaefer, Erica Siegel, and Alexy Yoffie.

My family taught me to dream big dreams and to believe I could achieve them. The reassurance and enthusiasm of my father and grandmother helped give me the push I needed to write parts of this book. And I want to thank my mother for all she gave me. She missed seeing this book in print by just a few months, but I know she would have been happy for me that I wrote it.

In this book I have chronicled a lot of not-so-nice behavior on the part of my sister, Diana. I’m happy to say the rocky stage of our relationship seems to be ending as I write. Diana provided constant pep talks by phone and instant messenger and didn’t try to stop me from being honest, even though she knew a lot of what I wrote might not be flattering to her. For all of that I am deeply grateful.

Finally, I am quite sure this book could not have been written without the wisdom and encouragement of two people I feel so lucky to know: Elizabeth Bard, my transatlantic cliff-jumping buddy, and my best friend, Mary Gardner, partner in crime, marathons (phone
and
running), and sushi.

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