Caloric Confessions of a Guilty Conscience
by Jamie Schmidt

My mother passed along her green eyes, her love of literature, and her neurotic Jewish guilt to me when I was born. They stayed with me. We both tend to overreact. We have the same voice. She always kept a vial of Valium in her purse for emergencies; I kept Advil and a pen in mine. Just in case.

I do not know what it is that makes my heart speed up, my pulse quicken, and eyes brim all too often. And I do not know what it was that caused so many sleepless nights years ago. But it happened, over and over again. I went to a couple therapists. One gave me anti-anxiety medicine after just one meeting, which I immediately flushed down the toilet. Another prescribed sleeping pills, which caused slight hallucinations right as they kicked in. I saw mice scurrying around the room, I felt relieved that I would soon drift off. Sweet Ambien. The doctor stopped giving it to me after a while. I told myself that I stopped needing it.

I never could lie. When I was a kid I drew on the walls of my bedroom in black magic marker, then confessed to it. I lost my library card and felt guilty. I ate Oreo cookies and felt guilty. But this story is not about not being able to sleep some nights. It is much more about the Oreo cookies.

I have known how many calories are in everything I have put in my mouth for the last 11 years. It began when I was 12. I was in ballet class and wanted to be as flat chested and curveless as a dainty prima ballerina. As an adult, 5-feet 6 1/2 inches tall and 125 pounds, I now realize I was not cut out to dance. But that didn’t stop me from trying.

I started a food diary that year in ballet class. So did my best friend, Debbie, another dancer wannabe. We gave each other moral support to lose weight. Neither of us had gotten our periods yet. I made a diagram on paper. Lines went everywhere. Math was in the margins. That was the year I started to read the backs of cans, jars, and boxes. I do not remember high school calculus or all the boys I have had crushes on. But I still know the amounts of calories in a box of raisons is 130. A glass of orange juice, 120. Meatless spaghetti-Os -- 150. I know that one serving of macaroni and cheese made with 2 tablespoons of olive oil or margarine instead of one tablespoon is 270 calories and 8 grams of fat. One tablespoon of Welch’s grape jam is 35 calories.

Want to know what you can eat for 80 cals? An orange or a banana is 80, or an apple, an egg, or two plain slices of light wheat bread. Is it sick that I still remember? I don’t know. I often associate calorie counting with Debbie. She is from Long Island, bright, sarcastic, funny. She’d be a great Woody Allen leading lady. We met at age 11. I have heard more about Debbie and her disgust with her thighs than I have ever heard from another woman. I could go the rest of my life and never hear about thighs again. She hated them. Five feet tall, she has always had short legs. When she ate too many starches, her weight shifted to her thighs. So she said. I never noticed.

One Thanksgiving break in college, I did take notice. Debbie came home 25 pounds lighter than when last I saw her. She had lost one-fifth of herself. It was hard not to cringe as I hugged her and felt bones protruding. No one said anything smart to her about it. She smiled, happy with herself, and said, “I have been walking a lot.” The next time I saw her, on spring break, she looked like herself again.

As for me, between the start of college and the middle, I lost 19 pounds. My mother took me aside. It wasn’t the first time. When I was 12 she found the food diary and forced me to eat a few oatmeal cookies. “You can’t survive on 670 calories a day,” she told me when I was 12. She said it again when I was 19. The year that she found the food diary was also the year I wound up in the hospital. I don’t know how to explain this part very well. I know that I stopped eating and drinking and slept all over the house, in a chair, on the floor. I weighed 80 pounds and had circles under my eyes. But don’t forget that I was 12 - girls are still pretty small at that age. I passed out in the bathroom and my parents took me to the emergency room where I was hooked up to an IV. I ate a lot of eggs at the hospital. When I came back, my sixth grade class dropped off a bundle of homemade “feel better” cards.

I don’t think it matters so much what I weigh anymore, but I still weigh myself everyday. I have a method. I weigh myself naked before I have had my coffee or showered. When I sleep over at my boyfriend’s house, I miss this morning ritual. It is almost like skipping morning coffee. I like setting the scale on five so I have a little math to do after the weighing. After the math, my number usually varies between 123 and 125. Don’t tell anyone. My driver’s license still says 120.

I still know the amount of calories that are in everything I eat and I still add it all up at the end of every day. My mind immediately sums apple + yogurt + a side salad + roll + Nutrigrain bar + one cup of macaroni and cheese + one Oreo cookie + one banana. It comes to 1070. My math has sharpened over the years. At restaurants I estimate. But since I need to stay within my calorie limit, I am very aware of what I put in my mouth. I like to stay between 1,000 and 1,500 calories each day. I have been called a “food snob” by my boyfriend, Steve: I didn’t approve of the Taco Bell chalupa he was devouring.

I don’t dance anymore. I run and do yoga. I am a size six, for the most part. I tend to date men who are thin, almost too thin. I also tend to befriend women who are almost as obsessive as I am. I have read about eating disorders. People starve or vomit or a combination of the two to gain control of their lives. These people are perfectionists. I am not. I like it neat on the outside, but I would be afraid for you to open my door, my car trunk, or my closets. There’s a real mess. I let a lot of things slide.

Still, I can’t help remembering silly facts about calories, fat grams, and weight. I know that I was 122 pounds in a photo that is stuck to my fridge, and I was 124 pounds in a snapshot that rests on my nightstand. It’s not about food, you must know. Overall, I am a picky eater. I don’t eat red meat, poultry or seafood. I also don’t eat ice cream or drink milk. I mostly eat yogurt, fruit and vegetables, rice and beans, nuts, breads, and too much coffee and candy. I love tofu pad Thai, and I make a great potato-bean casserole and zucchini bread.

But I don’t think about the food that much, this taste and that. It is more about the math -- that and the denial. There is something about denial that I have always found seductive. I have broken up with men because I wanted to know what it would feel like. I have moved 1,000 miles away from the people I loved the most. Over the years, I have denied myself family, physical and emotional love, and food -- all for the high it gets me.

There is a certain edge you get when you let yourself go hungry. I know that it is stupid for a girl like me to go hungry, a middle-class girl whose parents overworked so she would have food to eat. But there is something to be said for walking around with the feeling of hunger -- of want -- in the pit of your stomach. Perhaps it is the reason that runners run and writers write.

I know that I might not ever be able to stop myself from doing addition at the end of the day, but maybe that is okay. Maybe nervous energy can be channeled into something that propels me to go after things a little bit more. That’s the way I choose to look at it. I may count too much and worry too much and have too many restless nights, but I’m still here.

Maybe I am getting defensive on you. Because you know it all now: the counting, even the past with sleeping pills. It makes me feel like you are watching me get weighed. But there are other parts to me, you must know. And think about it. Other people wash their hands obsessively. Some people are addicted to substances. Some even hurt themselves. Me, I count. Today, I have had 170 + 80 + 100 + 75 + 300. Day ain’t over yet.

Maybe I can’t control it, but I assure you, it doesn’t control me. Still, I hope one day it loses me, slips out the side of my ear. Maybe I will forget how to add, who knows. Because I don’t want to pass it on. Green eyes, sure. Literature, too. But I don’t want to pass the calorie counting to anyone else.