The weekend binger
That makes no sense,” Rachel’s mother says. “50/20 makes no sense. It doesn’t add up to 100. It’s supposed to be a percentage. Like, 50/50 or 70/30. Did they teach you any maths at school?”
Rachel says that this is nit-picking. She’s good with her eating and her exercise five days a week, and then, for the two days of the weekend, she can do what she likes. “That’s 50/20, Mum,” Rachel says. “And it’s not about maths. It’s about what works for you. Jamie says it’s about finding your own food truth.”
Right now, the only food truth is that Rachel has eaten a full loaf of that lovely soft, white bread that she sneers at Monday to Friday. “You’d run it off going to the shops to get me more,” Rachel’s mother says. “Or can you do that on your off days?”
Before Rachel moved in with Jamie, she just yo-yo dieted like any normal person, her mother thinks. Now it’s all avocados, tiny portions of unpronounceable grains, squash, and green smoothies during the week. Not to mention that press-full of powders worshipped by the Incas, that Rachel will need a mortgage to restock. To be fair to Jamie, Rachel looks very well.
Now, after a weekend on the bread, Rachel has a fine pregnant belly on her. But by Friday, five days off it, the belly is flat as a board.
Still, Rachel’s mother finds it weird how mad they go at the weekend. She reckons their food truth is the weekend — doughnuts, white bread and chips; while the rest of the time they’re miserable, and counting the days to Saturday.
Not that it’s even Saturday they start the splurging. Once the first glass of post-work wine passes Rachel’s lips on a Friday, she’s off. She orders an Indian on the way home from the pub and Jamie brings the special-offer five-pack of jam doughnuts, as well as the ‘buy one get one free’ tubs of luxury ice cream. “We’ve earned it,” Rachel says. “We’ve been so good all week.”
Once, Rachel admitted that she has an awful hangover on Mondays. “I don’t even drink, really, on Sunday nights,” she said. “I have a glass or two with the pizza, but it’s the finishing off the junk before being good starts again. I’ve actually felt like puking a few times.”
When she saw how shocked her mother was by this, that was a food truth Rachel shared only the once.