Monthly Archives: August 2015

Walking in the rain.

In the here & now, ,

wet dog

Morning…happy Bank Holiday Monday. Oh look, ‘quelle surprise’ it’s chucking it down outside. I can’t even claim a pyjama day because my dog is still going to expect a full service walk. Try and get away with anything like a short cut and I’ll get the doggy death stare as soon as he senses we’re homeward bound…it’s like he taps into my thoughts when we leave the house and if I deviate from the planned route somehow he just knows. You know how you tried to skip two or three pages when your kids were nodding off mid-way through their bedtime story, and three words into thinking you’d gotten away with it they were wide awake and protesting..? That’s what I’m talking about.

But today that’s ok, because didn’t I make a deal with myself that I’d do some exercise this weekend…I even said it out loud, what’s more I wrote it down and a bunch of folk have read it so I’m committed to the cause. In the rain. I mean it’s not just a bit damp out there, we’re talking big fat raindrops falling from a heavy grey sky and every car that drives past my house sounds like it’s driving through a stream. Lovely.

I think I’d enjoy walking in the rain if I was skinny. I’d have on some chic little raincoat, and a pair of adorable wellies, which would accommodate my calves without so much as a grumble. Somehow, those big fat raindrops would surround me without actually landing on me, and I’d arrive back home looking rosy-cheeked, without a hint of frizzy hair and looking for all the world as though walking in the rain was my favourite thing ever.  I would have walked so far that the dog would be exhausted and he wouldn’t nag to go back out again for the rest of the day.

But because I’m fat, we all know it’s not going to be that way. My chic little raincoat in fact resembles something you might find at the local camping centre. My calves will be shoved into wellies that were not designed for fat legs, so they’ll kink somewhere around my ankles and give me blisters, which if I’m lucky I won’t notice because I’ll be too busy grumbling about the red hot poker someone’s wiggling about in my knee. I’ll arrive home soaked to the bone, with a hyper excited spaniel who feels short-changed because we didn’t stay out for at least 3 hours, and he’ll be ready to go again within 10 minutes of getting home.

But, with every step I’m going to imagine the warm shower afterwards, and the feeling of achievement I’ll get when I’ve followed through on my promise to look after both the dog, and myself by not settling down in the armchair with a cup of tea and a packet of custard creams because it was raining too hard to go out.

Happy days!

 

 

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When is a setback not a setback?

In the here & now, ,

Evil-Scale

It might seem a bit weird to most folk that I’m two weeks into my new carb-free regime and until I got up this morning, I hadn’t been on the scales. Actually, in the spirit of full disclosure I hadn’t even been near the scales, for quite some time – we’ve never had a particularly close relationship for obvious reasons. It’s a mutually painful experience – trust me, you wouldn’t want me standing on you, and from my perspective they rarely deliver me good news.

Neither am I one of those people who monitors my waistline according to how my favourite jeans fit…for some years now my favourite jeans have been languishing in a bin bag at the back of a storage lock-up along with the christmas tree decorations and assorted other household items which are needed infrequently – my house is small so it’s kind of an overflow management arrangement – and most of my waistbands these days come courtesy of that esteemed designer Lucy Lastic, so would fail miserably as a vehicle of measurement.

I know some people who live in a constant state of anxiety about what the scales are going to say from week to week…in some cases even day to day. Apparently some scales lie, some have ‘moods’ so according to one lady I know can weigh heavy some days for no apparent reason at all. Sometimes for weeks at a time. Hmm.

To be honest, my way of looking at it is this; I don’t give a monkey’s chuff what the scales say but I would like to be slim…if I could be slim and 300lbs I wouldn’t mind being 300lbs at all. So as with many things in my life, if something or someone is almost certain to give me bad news, they tend to be relegated to the ‘if I don’t know, I won’t care so I’ll avoid you as long as I can’ place.

Going back to the scales, I kind of knew ‘ish’ what they’d tell me – but for some reason (maybe because pulling the blog together over the last week or so has brought this all into sharper focus) I woke up with a desire to know. And now I can’t un-ring that bell 🙁

Bloody hell!!! Not one of my better ideas. I woke feeling thin (it’s all relative but I don’t have to lift my head quite as high off the pillow to see my toes as I did 2 weeks ago), pleased that I’ve made it to day 14 of my diet without a single cheat, only for those damn scales to reveal that my best guess had been somewhere left of accurate. Logic tells me that over the last 2 weeks I have dropped more than a few pounds…I feel it. But standing on those scales and finding that I’m probably  a good stone heavier than I thought I might have been before I even started the diet was a bit of a blow, I’m not gonna lie.

I’ve spent several moments in quiet contemplation, and the only upside I can think of is that now at least I know – the scale of the task in hand is clear. But so is the size of the prize, and despite the crappy start to my day, I’m on it.

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Holy Moly, the pressure’s on now.

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now, ,

writer

Thanks to a couple of very good friends of mine who’ve been kind enough to share the details of my blog on their Facebook page, I’ve picked up 10 new readers who don’t know me. To them – you, if you’re reading this – I’m just a blogger!! And you have every right to expect quality well thought out words, along with insight, honesty and interesting content.

I’m currently standing in that space between feeling excited and terrified, with a healthy dollop of understanding that from here on in, I really and truly can’t just talk shite as a space-filler, I mean I have a readership!!  What a responsibility…I feel like JK Rowling. Or at the very least JR Hartley.  My ‘web traffic analysis’ graph is going bonkers – well when I say bonkers I mean it’s no longer reporting a flat line of one visitor, so to me it’s become the most fascinating thing E.V.E.R.

Pressure’s a funny thing – I react one of two ways, and I never know which of the two I’m going to get – a bit like Forrest Gump with his chocolates.  I sometimes rise to the challenge and deliver, when I feel the pressure and get in the groove…other times I recognise the pressure on an intellectual level, but it doesn’t motivate me to pull my finger out and crack on at all. Lets take dieting as an example.

Back in January, I knew I had two very special holidays booked – it’s the big five-oh (no!) this year, and I really wanted to be slimmed down and full of energy so I could enjoy them both to the max, so (lets have a pop quiz boys and girls) did I…

a) Take full advantage of the respective 7 and 9 months lead-in time, get cracking with the diet after Christmas and feel slowly more fabulous as the departure dates got closer, or

b) Do nothing at all.

Yep, see how well you know me already…option ‘b’ for bugger all. I did nothing.  As the departure date for holiday number one got closer, like counting in weeks rather than months it did occur to me that I may have missed the boat (well, the cruise ship, pardon the pun) as far as my bikini body was concerned. Short of losing a lot of weight quickly by chopping a limb off shortly before embarkation or having extreme liposuction my options were a bit limited.

Don’t get me wrong, my friend and I had a wonderful holiday, but I felt every sightseeing footstep like a hot blade through my dodgy knee, I had to wedge my super sized rear end into the beautiful dining room chairs every night till the arms left bruises on my thighs, and I had to decline a gentle stroll around the promenade deck after dinner each night since the sheer effort of lifting the last petit-four off the dessert plate just about sapped the dregs of my energy.

Don’t even get me started on the subject of breaking the bed, although that’s definitely a story for another day.

Holiday number two will be different…seven weeks and three days from now, five of my closest friends and I are jetting off for four days of birthday madness, and seeing as I’m in the sweet spot, and your company is keeping me busy and away from the food cupboard, I’m rather optimistic that whilst still fatter than the average bear I’ll be a couple of dress sizes smaller with reduced aches and pains. Happy days!

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I’ve been thinking.

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now, , ,

fat

It’s a Bank Holiday weekend and I’ve got nothing planned. I might do some exercise.

I’ll just put that out there and let the words settle a bit, experiment you know with how they sound as I read them back. Hmm. They say diet and exercise together is the way to do it, but I hesitate for no other reason than really, who wants to see a proper fatty exercising?  Well when I say for no other reason, that’s not strictly true…there’s at least one other reason – I’m so unfit I’m afraid it might actually kill me.  In recent times I’ve been inclined to go and have a lie down if I’ve felt some exercise coming on.

Remember my skinny knees..? I was so fit at that time. I don’t mean fit as in phwoaaar fit, I mean fit as in fit.  I went to the gym pretty much every day and exercised for at least an hour, and I had bags of energy all the time. I’ve got to be honest, I didn’t enjoy it, in fact I hated it – always have – but in my newly slim and determined to stay slim body I was almost evangelical about it. I’d be beavering away on the cross-trainer and all the time I’d be muttering through gritted teeth about the injustice of not being born with a metabolism that laughed in the face of calories and screamed ‘come and have a go if you think you’re ‘ard enough’ at whatever junk I threw down my neck. But in spite of that I was pretty disciplined, because I had both feet planted firmly in the sweet spot – I was in the zone. And not looking out of place in a room full of other sweaty slim people helped.

I didn’t exercise so much when I was losing the weight, it was something I started doing once I’d pretty much reached my goal weight.  There’s something about fatties exercising that just…well, it’s a car crash isn’t it? For everyone that looks at you and thinks ‘go on lass, good for you’ there’ll be ten others who can’t wait to tell someone about the munter in the gym who was giving it large on an exercise bike, which by the way was threatening to buckle under the strain.  ‘Hahahaha you should have seen the state of it’…and for me that’s like going back in time, standing in front of that class being compared to a pig.

Perhaps I’ll stay clear of the gym until I can blend in a bit more easily. I’ll settle for pushing myself to walk a bit further and a bit faster with my pooch, who’ll think all his Christmases have come at once, bless him. Never mind that my knee will give me hell…no pain, no gain eh?

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The diet, 11 days in.

Diet update, Freeform thoughts, In the here & now,

addictionIt’s going well. Bit light headed today but I suspect that’s because I’ve been busy, and didn’t have chance for any lunch. Other than the inside scrapings of a quiche and a couple of squares of dark chocolate I didn’t eat much yesterday either. I’m following a carb-free regime, and once the alchemy has happened and your body’s switched its fuel source to burn stored fat you don’t really feel hungry.

I’m not gonna lie, in the past, when (usually thin) people have said they forgot to eat lunch I’ve written them off as freaks, on the basis that forgetting to eat was so alien to me as a concept that they were clearly weird. Dizzy’s not good though, need to just watch that. I woke up this morning feeling thin. A bit bizarre when you consider I probably have around 140lbs of excess baggage but still, this morning before I got out of bed, I felt like Kate Moss.

When I did the all liquid diet, I loved the speed with which the weight fell off…my god once I got into my stride there was no stopping me. I stuck to it rigidly for 8 months and it really truly worked for me. There are side effects of course – how could there not be. Drinking 4 litres of water every day takes its toll, I’d never peed as much in my life. And going for a poo was a revelation, if Gillian McKeith had been presented with a bag of my poo she would have drawn the conclusion that I’d eaten Orville, it was practically luminous. Bizarre when you consider I was only drinking watery beige soup and eating the odd beige MDF diet bar.

But I’ve tried a couple of times since and I just can’t find my stride with it again, at all. Just the smell of a ketogenic soup or shake makes me want to hurl so I think that ship has sailed. Which is a shame, because I’d be far less likely to fall off the wagon if I could cut out food altogether and see results at warp speed.

I am a compulsive over-eater. A food addict if you will. I have a thyroid problem too which adds to the complexity but I estimate that my slow metabolic rate is responsible for maybe 10% of my weight problem. Hoovering up food like the world will be on short rations from tomorrow accounts for the rest.

Addiction is a funny thing. If you’re addicted to cigarettes, or drugs, or alcohol you have the option of going completely cold turkey and whilst of course I’m not suggesting it’s easy, it can be done. Sure, you’ll spend the rest of your life battling the urges, and the temptation, sweating it out and working hard to stay clean but it’s possible to go through life never again taking into your body the substance to which you’re addicted.

However. One cannot live without food, so on a daily basis a food junkie has to ‘use’. And for an addict, that’s a big problem 🙁

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