Cake O'Clock

By Rachel Black

Have you ever been reluctant to wash your jeans? Worried they will shrink to their original size and no longer fit?
In this non-fiction heart-wrenching account Rachel addresses her lifelong history of disordered dieting and chaotic eating. Attempting to understand why she overeats and sabotages her own attempts to lose weight, when all she wants is to be slim, Rachel explores her past experiences from anorexia to binge eating via everything in between, in an attempt to break free from a life dictated by dysfunctional eating.

Written in an engaging style, Rachel's story begins in the past when she was told to lose weight aged 9. It continues through her life, documenting her present day attempts to overcome a feast and famine style of eating before looking to the future and considering how she may change her behaviour permanently.

This book will resonate with dieters everywhere who will understand Rachel's despair and desire to simply take control of the food she puts into her mouth and become one of those people who 'eat normally'.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rachel Black
• Release date: May 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311542410

Rachel Black

Rachel Black lives in Scotland with her husband and two children. At the age of 40, she suffered the opposite of a mid-life crisis and decided to do things properly for once and for all. Blogging and writing all the way, Rachel tackled the wine first. An increasingly 'normal' habit of drinking wine most nights had taken a firm grip. Her first book 'Sober is the New Black' details this acknowledgment, the desire to control her drinking, and finally, acceptance that she cannot moderate her intake of wine and she embarks on a journey of self discovery as she stops drinking for good. One year later her diet demons take centre stage. Having previously been held in check to allow copious amounts of calorific wine, they now rampage free. Cakes, biscuits, chocolate and desserts have gone from occasional treats to daily indulgences and now the scales hover at dangerous heights. The time to change came one day when Rachel was afraid to wash her jeans, knowing they would return to their original size and no longer fit. Cake O'Clock is her second non-fiction book and details of decades of disordered dieting and chaotic eating. This heart wrenching account examines her past, from anorexia to binge eating, and tries to understand why we can control many many desires, except that to eat. Rachel still eats cake and continues to try to moderate it. She is pleased cake does not make her drunk or hungover and her favourite is Carrot Cake, because it's healthy, right?

Book preview

Cake O’Clock

An Account of One Woman’s Intimate Relationship with Food

By Rachel Black

Copyright of

Cake O’Clock

Rachel Black

May 2014

Published by Smashwords

Section 1 The Past

Chapter 1

As I approach my first sober birthday a few weeks from now I have decided it is time to address the abundance of highly refined, processed, sweet sugary delights which have rapidly made themselves comfortable in my life, taking up the void left by wine both in terms of body and head space. I am drawing A line and making A New Start in this regard, from tomorrow. (It’s always from tomorrow, isn’t it? Never today, never now!)

It was only a few short months ago that my head was permanently full of wine. Half of my brain was dealing with a hangover and the other half was continually remembering to buy another bottle and planning when to drink it.

This has been swiftly replaced with ‘What shall I have now?’, ‘What do I fancy?’, and ‘Shall I stop at the bakers to buy a couple of scones? One for now and one to put in the freezer for another day?’. (Always such a plausible theory.)

Sweet treats that I enjoyed instead of wine, that I deserved as a reward, have settled into my daily life, quickly increasing their remit from semi-regular replacement treats to a routine part of each day. Just as wine infiltrated my life, so now have the sweet treats. They have taken a firm hold and asserted their importance. They have gained ground relentlessly, invading morning coffee and afternoon tea prior to their carte blanche throughout the evening. I am dismayed to recognise this all too familiar pattern yet despite this awareness, I am again unable to stop this from developing into a routine part of my life and regularly suffer the physical and emotional consequences of over-eating.

I hate the word Binge. It sounds large and fat, soft and springy much like the body habitus it causes. I imagine a voluminous mass of marshmallow coloured matter, wobbling blancmange style as it continues to expand. I don’t like the connotations associated with the word and I try not to use it, instead referring to my ‘acute over-eating episodes’. As an aside, I don’t like the word Alcoholic either. It too, has stark, negative imagery associated with it and I see myself differently. I was a ‘problem drinker’ as opposed to someone with a ‘drink problem’, a subtle yet important distinction. You may be thinking I am in denial and not facing up to the truth. You may be correct. In any case, it is your opinion and is valid as such.

I am sick and tired, quite literally, of dealing with what I eat and drink. I feel they should not be such big issues; they should not cause so much difficulty and despair. Yet they do and I feel I must change this. Lifestyle changes are not easy. There are no magic pills and it is said you have to challenge yourself to change yourself. I am fearful of challenges. My glimmer of hope is knowing that I have already done this once. I stopped drinking alcohol altogether one year ago. I succeeded against the odds, despite my lack of self belief in my ability to do so. I am daring to hope that I can be successful once more and resolve my contorted relationship with food and diets that have defined my life for the last 30 years.

My first sober birthday already seems like an anti-climax. I know I should be rejoicing in what I have succeeded in achieving but really, something HAD to be done before my life completely unravelled. I feel I only did what had to be done. And I have done it. Alcohol is no longer on my day-to day radar and I am surprised by that. I am particularly surprised how quickly I stopped thinking Friday nights were solely about drinking wine. Alcohol and drinking still pop up from time to time secondary to strong associations that remain: going out for dinner or going out for a curry makes my thoughts short circuit to wine and beer respectively. Although alcohol may no longer have the starring role in my life, it maintains a low grade presence at the periphery. The ubiquitous nature of alcohol in our conversation and in society as a whole, means I am continually reminded I no longer drink. Almost daily someone will remark ‘We can get a glass of wine there’ or ‘We should go for a drink sometime’. When I hear these remarks I’ve stopped reminding them that I don’t drink because it only brings up a whole new conversation which I do not always wish to have. Usually, I find it best to agree that, yes, it would be great to do whatever, to go if I want to, then take it from there. Without making an advanced declaration, I usually arrive in my car because I was ‘running late’, order a diet coke at the bar while making light of the commiserations expressed that I cannot drink alcohol.

The power of association remains strong. On a sunny day I think how lovely it would be to sit outside with a glass of wine, to feel the warmth on my skin as it radiates from the sunshine and the warmth inside me diffusing from the wine. In cold winter months I see Christmas lights outside bistros and bars and again think how lovely it would be, cocooned inside with a glass of wine. Insulating myself with a glass of wine gives a signal that I am not to be disturbed. I feel that there are no demands being made of me, at least temporarily.

The common elements in these situations are feelings of warmth, pleasure and security, the glass of wine seems integral to creating this heady relaxed atmosphere. But I continually remind myself It is not real and it is not true. Reality is far from the lovely imagery I have. It is merely the product of a mind-altering drug, no matter how deep- rooted it appears. The pathways in our brain maintaining these associations lie dormant and do not disappear.

The relationship between events and wine, celebrations and wine, weekends and wine is vivid in sobriety as we cope with our ‘Firsts’. The first time we do something or go somewhere usually associated with drinking alcohol, we cannot help but make a comparison between the two instances. ‘Firsts’ are difficult enough yet have the added challenge of internal background chatter: ‘The last time I was here I was......, the last time I was here I did........, the last time I was here I said.....’ underpinning the reality that the last time you were here you were drunk and were having a good time, this time you are sober and you think you are missing the fun. Thankfully these feelings change as sobriety establishes itself; we realise that talking rubbish and throwing up was never fun at all and we stop missing it. With time and practice, we discover where the true fun comes from, and accept it exists to varying degrees at different times

Initially I swapped wine for an alternative drink. I stuck to my favourite savoury snacks and found ginger beer and lime to be a drink with strong flavours that I enjoyed instead. I really did enjoy this drink and in particular, I took delight in drinking it quickly, drinking as much of it as I wanted and drinking it earlier in the day without comment! Gradually the need for a wine substitute lessened and I began punctuating my evenings with cups of tea and sweet treats. I love them all: biscuits (plain and chocolate), cookies (soft and gooey), cakes (bought or baked), scones likewise, chocolate (preferably Dairy Milk but any type will do) or ice cream (preferably disguised as a chocolate bar or lavished with an indulgent sauce). Breakfast cereals too, all of them, mixed up and crucially, able to be eaten in large quantities without a noticeable absence from the packet.

I have always been diet conscious (some would say obsessed) and have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the calorie count of many foods. Sweet sugary snacks have always been on my shopping list but had been strictly rationed in the past; limited by my discipline and my over-riding desire for wine. I have always wanted more and more of them yet until this last year I have been able to control that excessive desire.

Wine was my priority. I needed sufficient calories to allow for enough wine, and I bought snacks in small individual packs, meaning if I did Iose control and ate several, it was not a family sized disaster. I managed to give up wine and continue to socialise as long as there was the promise of dessert. In recent months I have more than made up for many years of never, ever, ever, even considering, chocolate brownie with warm chocolate sauce, or sticky toffee pudding with ice cream. I coped with my initial perceived hardship of going without wine by continually indulging my sugar pathways with delights previously forbidden. And that’s okay, because I no longer have the bottle of wine, do I?

Well no, I don’t but I abused this shining halo. I thought it gave me carte blanche to eat anything and everything I’d previously deprived myself of (and lately it has literally become ‘continual’.) There is a little internal rebellious me saying, ‘Well, I can’t have wine so I’ll have all the other things it precluded’. I felt justified in doing this and fell into the trap of virtuously refusing wine, for some reason also feeling freed from the dieting practices I have followed all my life. Of course this was not the case.

My pathological love of sweet sugary food, my tendency to greed and over-eating, my constant battle to manage my weight all predated my use, then abuse, of wine. While my disordered eating had taken a back seat for a few years, being meticulously controlled in favour of my liquid love, it was never far away and had been waiting patiently to rear its head and come back with a vengeance. Which is exactly what happened.

Chapter 2

The Past.

I used to say I would do anything to maintain my ideal weight of nine stones. From the start of my weight battles aged nine years, to leaving home to go to University aged 18 years, having babies aged 30 and giving up booze aged 40, my ideal weight of 9 stones has remained elusive. Oh, I’ve hit it a couple of times but only transiently during a slow descent or rapid increase in my radically fluctuant weight.

I’m not sure when I first became aware of the association between eating, weight, and body habitus. I grew up with a background where my mother had meal replacement milk shakes and soups, often ate something different from the rest of the family and intermittently attended a diet club. This was all I knew and I did not question it. Why would I? It was all I had known and we all believe many aspects of our own upbringing are the norm. I once wrote a story at school and mentioned in it that my mum was fat. Photographs from the time show she wasn’t fat but as she continually spoke of being fat and dieted as if she was fat, I must have believed she was fat. Parents are always correct when you are nine aren’t they? I assumed she must be fat and was unaware of the connotations that brought.

My own weight and degree of fatness was first aired when I was nine years old. At that time I knew I liked biscuits and I knew I missed my mum when she worked in the