Born Round: A Story of Family, Food and a Ferocious Appetite by Frank Bruni

thirteen days and then twelve left until I could have a proper shower.
    With about eight days to go, each camper was situated alone on his or her own patch of forest to do a “solo.” This was an integral, dreaded component of the Outward Bound experience: three whole days with no human contact whatsoever. You got a whistle, so that if you fell ill or encountered some other serious problem, you could blow it and summon the camper nearest you, who was theoretically within earshot. You got a sleeping bag. You got a miniature, individual-size tarp. You got a water bottle and, so that you could keep refilling it, proximity to a stream. And for food, you got three pilot biscuits and about two handfuls of “gorp,” which was a mixture of nuts and dried fruits, including raisins. That was it.
    You weren’t, in fact, supposed to touch it. It was there for emergencies. Say the mercury dropped sharply, and your body temperature dropped with it, and you found yourself on the verge of hypothermia. In that case, our instructors told us, you should eat. You should most definitely eat.
    But the solo was meant to be a purifying experience, and the idea was that while you were forgoing plumbing, heat, electricity, TV, music, reading material, interaction with fellow members of your species and just about anything else that makes life endurable, you should pass on food as well. If you were going to embrace this kind of asceticism, why not bear-hug it for all it was worth?
    I concurred: I’d leave the gorp and the biscuits alone.
    Eight hours later, I reconsidered.
    Night was falling, and I was losing my mind, because I’d already sung my five favorite albums from beginning to end and made a mental list of everything I should pack for freshman year of college. I’d even spent an hour or two drawing crude pictures with a stick in the dirt. I was deeply in touch with my inner Neanderthal.
    I was lonely. I was even a little scared.
    And the effect of having been told I shouldn’t touch the food in my possession was the endless repetition of a single syllable in my head. As I sat all alone in the gathering blackness, I didn’t think, wolves, wolves, wolves or bats, bats, bats or help, help, help . I thought, eat, eat, eat .
    I told myself I’d just have one pilot biscuit, and maybe the equivalent of a thimble’s worth of gorp.
    Five minutes later, my rations were gone, and I had sixty or so hours of my solo to go.
     
     
     
     
    On the last day of Outward Bound, when we had descended to the base-camp area where we’d begun, our instructors had us trade our hiking boots for sneakers and sent us out on a thirteen-mile run: a half marathon. The point was to show us that after all the fasting, hiking and climbing, we were in fantastic shape.
    I finished the run without pause.
    The next day I saw a mirror for the first time in more than three weeks. I only half-recognized the person staring back at me. He was bearded, something I’d never been. And he was lean: yes, lean. His face seemed longer than mine. I liked the looks of him.
    Back in Connecticut, I called Beth, telling her how horrible Outward Bound had been—and how it was the best thing I’d ever done. I prattled on about a genuine sense of accomplishment and about how true Dan’s words had turned out to be.
    She hurried me to the punch. “How much weight did you lose?” she asked.
    I hadn’t stepped on a scale, so I couldn’t give her a number. But I told her: “I think I’m as close to skinny as I’ll ever be.”
    There was a moment’s silence. “I’m thinking of going out for women’s crew,” she said, talking about freshman year. “Imagine how many calories that must burn!”
    A lot, I guessed. But crew ? That seemed drastic.
    To keep my newly lean Outward Bound form, I’d have to come up with something else.

· TWO ·
    Yo-Yo Me

Five
    To be a successful bulimic, you need to have a firm handle on the bathrooms in your life: their proximity to where you’re