Chapter 13. Sliding.
A week or so later, concerned by his continued perusal of a website that he had initially considered to be of passing interest, he starts a food journal using a renowned weight-loss programme on his personal communication device.
This alleviates his concern for a few days; the programme has a built-in safety mechanism that stops him from going too low, and determines the recommended daily intake for him to lose at a steady, healthy pace. While he is of course fully capable of determining the minimum and maximum intakes for himself, he finds it a valuable and impartial tool that helps him to identify which thoughts are logical and which are… 'disordered'.
Reassured, he begins to take more time to observe his body's physical changes, something that he had originally been hesitant to do in case it triggered a downward spiral to his past habits.
He weighs himself daily before he gets into uniform, and takes the opportunity to monitor his progress in the mirror. His facial features are becoming sharper again, his chin and cheeks more defined. Although he is still larger than is healthy, his collarbones are beginning to show again (something that he had not noticed disappearing), and if he holds himself at the right angle and sucks in as much air as possible, he can see the vague outline of the bottom of his ribcage.
Inevitably, however, after breathing in and feeling that rush of illogical euphoria at his success, it is necessary to breathe out again and see the gut once more settle into place, hiding his former physique.
He tries to tell himself that it is of no consequence, but he finds himself becoming impatient. Just as when he was an adolescent, he wants to see results immediately, to know that his endless, daily efforts are not in vain and that he does not, in fact, have a faulty metabolism. He wants to know that he can in fact lose the weight, that it is possible to be what he once was, and that he will not find himself once more chasing an unrealistic goal.
Somehow, this… distasteful, un-Vulcan desperation manifests itself in continued perusal of that forum, a forum that he knows to be unhealthy and to indirectly promote disordered results and ways of thinking, but that nevertheless throws fuel on the fire of his despair at not losing 'fast enough'.
He attempts to fight it. For the most part, he succeeds, though he sometimes catches himself contemplating a fast to 'cleanse' his body and break through his 'plateau'.
He does not engage in this behaviour, though he does start to limit the amount he eats still further. He cannot help but wonder if this is healthy and safe, too, and keeps expecting the programme's failsafe to warn him, but it does not. He reflects on this often, for he now cannot remember whether he had chosen to have the failsafe engaged, so confident had he been at the time of his ability to distinguish logic from disorder. Additionally, he is curiously reluctant to check either way, and so he continues in much the same vein.
He does not eat breakfast anymore, but he is not much concerned by this. He has learned, from his observations of his fellow cadets over the years, that not everyone is hungry first thing in the morning, and he knows that he certainly is not. On the days when he is, he tells himself that it would be illogical to change his routine and introduce an unknown variable, and so simply ignores the hunger until his predetermined schedule allows for his midday meal.
He is eating two meals a day now, one at midday and one in the evening. Sometimes he feels ravenous and euphoric, at other times he feels strangely satisfied and has to force himself to eat at his designated times. He starts experimenting with his hunger instinct by removing one of his afternoon snacks, and does not notice a considerable difference.
The daily weigh-ins tell himself that he is still losing, and he only occasionally feels light-headed or unbearably hungry now. He starts to worry, in fact, at this lack of hunger. Should he not be feeling ravenous, by now? Should he not be in pain?
Eventually, he decides that this must be because of the change in metabolism commonly brought about by adulthood, and questions it no further. If he were drastically undereating, he reasons, his body would tell him.
oOo
Precisely 3 months later, he judges that he is just shy of halfway to his goal weight. His waist size has reduced, his muscles are more visible again, and he is beginning to fit back into smaller uniforms. Overall, he is beginning to feel more like his old self, in a way that he was unaware he had lost.
He has begun to adopt some of his old mannerisms again, if only in private.
He often finds himself pressing a hand against his stomach while sitting at his desk working, judging the amount of fat there and seeing how far he must press his gut in before it feels approximately as it had before. He finds himself brushing a hand against his collarbones and trying to judge if they are more prominent while changing.
More frequently, he finds himself resting a hand between his ribs and stomach while lying flat in bed, feeling the ribs beginning to emerge and wondering when he will again achieve that noticeable dip when lying prone. Often, he is dissatisfied with his progress and finds himself sucking his gut in, simulating the dip and more prominent ribs himself, before reluctantly blowing out again and dismissing the practice as illogical.
Occasionally, he finds himself waking up shaky, clutching his stomach in discomfort, before the sensation subsides and he begins his routine as normal.
Occasionally, he finds himself deliberately eating or drinking something that disagrees with him, as a roundabout way of cleansing-
Purging
-his system when he feels particularly heavy.
He still considers fasts but recognises the thought as a harmful one and does not indulge it. He must, and he will, control.
One day, he does slip and, curious as to whether the practice would cause the pain that he had known previously as an adolescent, he decides to only eat a root vegetable for lunch, cutting out all his other usual components.
He decides to do this in his quarters, away from prying eyes, because he knows by now that he is driven more by propriety than by his body's own signals.
He prepares the vegetable and puts it on his desk alongside a nutrient bar (in case he should end up excessively hungry and in pain) and decides to work until he feels hunger. Then, he decides, will be a good time to judge how sated he is once he has eaten the vegetable.
The hours pass, and before he knows it, it is 16:30 and he has yet to feel hunger. He is discomfited by this – has he suppressed the hunger, somehow, by working?
Perhaps he is not hungry because he had attended an obligatory social event (complete with obligatory large meal) on the Thursday evening? Spock frowns, fully aware that it is now Sunday evening and that he had eaten very lightly on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday to compensate.
Perhaps water retention from the heavy meal on Thursday? He does feel somewhat bloated and larger than normal, and has ever since Friday morning now.
In any case, he does not know the answer and he is reluctant to waste the vegetable…
(Especially, a traitorous voice in his mind supplies, because you know full well you are restricting and falling back into that trap).
…So he consumes it slowly and absently while working. Fascinatingly, his stomach begins to growl as he does, as if the consumption of food has awakened his appetite.
He begins to worry, then, that he has gone too far with his experiment today, and consumes the rest of the vegetable. He is still faintly hungry, but part of him believes that this is a more emotional type of hunger, than physical. He is still bloated from the large meal, is he not?
No, that is not so…
Except, yes, it is. Isn't it?
He does not know for certain, and the programme has not warned him that he has eaten too little. He is reluctant to act on incomplete data, so he decides to leave the nutrient bar for another day, and to instead keep himself for the evening meal.
He limits himself to the vegetable and his normal Sunday meal (which is the largest meal of the week, since he had read on the forum that a weekly indulgence helps form consistent good habits and prevent bad ones). By the end of the meal, he feels the pressure that he has come to learn means he is approaching full, but also an undertone of slight pain. He attributes this to the green tea he had consumed that morning, to help dispel the bloating and heavy feeling from Thursday night, and this is confirmed as his stomach churns uncomfortably.
As the hours pass, he still feels a slight pain and a faint sensation of hunger, but he is not concerned. It is merely a sign that his digestive system is returning to normal following the unprecedentedly large meal on Thursday, and that his brain his experiencing its usual delay in interpreting his body's fullness signals.
He returns to his work, after logging that day as 'complete' on his programme, and continues to drink water to make sure that he is hydrated enough to flush out the water retention.
The programme still has not warned him that this is unhealthy, and he is certain that between the water and his brain interpreting the delayed fullness signal, he will not require further sustenance this evening. Especially, he reflects, as today is his specified day without physical exertion.
It wouldn't do to contribute to Thursday's weight gain by overeating and under-exercising.