A few admin notes.

✍️ This will be my last newsie until August. I’m heading out to Colorado and New Mexico for a little vacation, then back to the Cape.

At the end of the month I’m off to Bellwether Farms for Around the Table Yarn’s summer fiber retreat. I’ll be offering free coaching sessions all weekend. Still some cabins left if you like fiber, learning, farms and new friends!

✍️ Lots of you wanted tirzepatide “journey” (I cringe!) content. I oblige you below! I’ll probably do this every newsletter for a few more times and then bump down to intermittent updates.

Heads up: coaching changes.

I’m rethinking the way I work with people, and will likely go back to longer engagements starting in September. If you’ve been thinking about shorter-term work with me at current (very low!) prices, now is a good time to get in touch.

You know how I always say Meals at Mealtimes will solve 95% of your problem on Day One?

Well, I stand by that. Most of the people, most of the time, can probably say goodbye to most of their food chaos by switching to meals. On Day One.

BUT. What about that other 5%? That—aka “comfort eating” “padding” “just plain too much” “marked preference for very-high-calorie shit” “hungry all the time” “just can’t stop thinking about FOOOOOD!!!!!”—is what I’ve been left with, years after recovering from BED.

I’ve still had enough padding in my diet to keep 15+ pounds of padding on my adorably tiny little frame. A few too many regrettable meals. And too much diet thinking and self-recrimination.

That remaining 5%, the phantom limb of BED, occupies an outsize amount of brain space. Seemingly right up in the front row.

It doesn’t trouble me all the time. But I don’t want it to trouble me EVER.

And I’ve done A LOT OF WORK to expel it; I’m gonna say I’ve done everything humanly possible. I am satisfied that it would in fact take DIVINE INTERVENTION to rehab what’s left of that neurology.

That, or, I don’t know, fix the problem by boosting satiety hormones! Yes, that sounds faster-acting.

GLP1 / GIP update.

Week 2, here’s what I noticed:

1. this shit is totally gonna pay for itself! I have lost interest in recreational shopping—which, I mean!!!!!!!!! can you understand??? this is UNBELIEVABLE to me—and my grocery spending, especially on fancy goodies, is way down.¹

2. otoh, I threw out like 3 lbs of chicken I had carefully prepped because it was revolting to me.

3. I also gave away my remaining Mississippi pot roast, because it was too fatty. Extra fat, FKA “What I’m here for” has to be blotted off my food. Salmon, my absolute favorite protein, is now too much for me.

4. Salt, same. Used to be I couldn’t get enough ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

5. Have not lost my taste for sweets, but the diet thinking they came wrapped in is gone. I eat sweets, I feel zero guilt, I recognize they’re not the best fuel, I stop before they can crowd out better nutrition, and it’s FINE.

6. The nausea is brief and intermittent, but real. Smells I never noticed before bother me. Some significant fatigue, too, on a couple very hot days. They say these effects go away…

7. I’ve lost another 8 lbs. (If that alarms you, my physical therapist, basically a double PhD, has firmly assured me there is zero harm in losing weight rapidly, and much to be said in its favor. Just FYI.) Only two pounds of it was muscle. I’ll put that back on.

8. The lack of food noise is a damn miracle and you know what noise I’d like to get rid of next? It’s the moral panic about these drugs that seem to be giving so many women something they want. Unfortunately THAT noise is in the environment, not in my head.

9. Everyone warns you about constipation, which is my lifelong tendency. Guess what I don’t seem to be suffering that; quite the opposite. I have had to reduce my coffee intake 😭

10. Likewise can’t seem to drink hard liquor now. Had 2/3 of a mezcal cocktail at a nice izakaya with my cookbook club and I was reeling. Let me just say, it is NOT LIKE ME to leave a cocktail unfinished.

But all in all, a good week. I’m gonna say it’s felt like 99%.

Eat meals at mealtimes. Stop when the meal’s over. Don’t eat again until it’s time for the next meal.

Sounds simple, right? TOO simple, perhaps?

Well it’s not. It’s the exact right amount of simple. It’s also easy, sustainable, dignified, delightful, cost-free, satisfying and extremely effective.

If you believe that all eating disorders are “very hard to overcome,” you have been misled.

If you can’t seem to get control of your eating, read this book. It will help.

LOOKING FORWARD TO.

I have lots of books stacked up for July vacation reading. But don’t let that stop you recommending more! If you’ve read anything you can’t stop thinking about, hit Reply and lmk!

Here’s what’s on my shelf rn for after I finish Big Chief, by Jon Hickey:

westerns:

The Good Luck Girls, Charlotte Nicole Davis

True Grit, Charles Portis

mysteries:

Rough Trade, Katrina Carrasco

Hell or High Water, Joy Castro

Midnight, Water City, Chris McKinney

SF and other:

Where the Axe is Buried, Ray Nayler

Flashlight, Susan Choi

Agatha of Little Neon, Claire Luchette

Dream State, Eric Puchner