Well folks, I’ve got to tell you I am knackered. I mean, it’s been a long day anyway but quite apart from the usual early start and late finish, today has really tested me.  I can only describe it as foodie torture. Yes, I know that’s a strong word and yes I am sure I want to use it…when the cap fits and all that.

I’ve been delivering some team-building development sessions for one of my client groups, and since we didn’t have the space to accommodate everyone back at the office we’d hired a proper venue. Well…let’s just say these people know how to cater.

We were provided with a really awesome lunch. There was a huge choice of amazing sandwiches and wraps, as well as a ton of nibbles like spring rolls and deep fried breaded cheese wheels, I mean serious fat-girl food. I didn’t know which direction to drool in first. But I survived unscathed, much to the Asshole’s frustration. I made skinny choices and ignored the stuff I really wanted, and I even resisted the temptation to kick the shins of the skinny folk who ate what they fancied without blinking.

The problem started when I clocked the huge bowl of Quality Street on the table next to the coffee machine. It was just sitting there in a ‘help yourself’ kind of way. And I was kind of okay with that until the strawberry cream nestled right on the top of the pile slowly came into focus. They’re my favourites. And that’s what tipped me over the edge from mild irritation at having to walk away from what I really wanted for lunch, and blew me into the path of a full-on craving.

I mean sure, there I was standing in front of about forty people talking about work stuff, but the reality is I was on automatic pilot. You know my head was halfway down the corridor in the coffee area with my face planted in the quality street bowl, just sniffing the strawberry cream. Twice I found an excuse to walk past the bowl and make eye contact, and had that debate with my Asshole voice about whether I should eat it or not. Eating one was never going to be a problem right? Three smart points, bish bash bosh, no worries.

Except I knew I’d struggle to stop at one. I knew, that as soon as that sweet creamy bit of heaven wrapped itself seductively around my taste buds I’d be rooting around that bowl like a pig nosing out truffles within seconds, looking for another one. And then another.

It stole my focus and that pisses me right off. How is it even possible that something can get right inside your head and start controlling your thoughts in that way? The only way I managed to get a grip was to agree with myself that I’d have one as we left the building so I couldn’t go back for more. And that’s what I did, in the end.

Good plan, right? Except I was so delirious from the sugar rush that I almost had a fender bender with another car as I reversed out of my parking space…hmm.

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Isn’t it strange how your habits and tastes change as you get older..? I mean there are obvious examples which are a hundred percent to do with the march of time, like no longer pulling on your disco pants on a weekly basis for boozy Friday nights out with friends, or progressing from Radio One to Radio Two . By the time Friday nights come around these days all I’m good for is putting my PJs on and emptying my head of anything that belongs on the too difficult pile. I’d rather stick pins in my eyes than go out on the razzle.

One of the things I’ve definitely bought into as I’ve settled into my life groove is the concept of quality over quantity. When I was younger, it was all about getting the most bang for my buck, in fact much of the time I didn’t have a pot to piss in, so maximising the return on every pound spent was crucial for me, for a lot of years.

Over time I’ve slowly distilled my stuff down and surrounded myself with a much smaller number of carefully chosen things. My jewellery collection for example – I think I’ve mentioned before that I collected statement pieces for years. I sold lots of it last year and kept only the things that were special. Same with my handbags. I had dozens at one time, but slowly I’ve  changed the profile of my collection – now I wear only the brand that I love, and my collection is far more modest, but equally much more loved than ever.

So then, if everything else in my life these days is about quality over quantity, how come the same rules don’t apply where food is concerned? I had a ridiculous day at the weekend where all I could think about was devouring huge plates of food. It wasn’t the food I was preoccupied with, it was the quantity.

Driving home in my car from doing the weekly food shop, I was planning to cook a Sunday roast, and all I could think about was how much I could get away with eating. For some reason I found myself wanting to voluntarily walk into a food coma, you know like the type you get at Christmas? I’m not talking about wanting to cheat on my food plan, far from it. That’s one hundred percent safe. But, within my food budget I felt a real compulsion to eat until I burst.

That’s not normal, is it? It almost didn’t matter what was on the menu, I just wanted a ton of it. I wonder if it’s a comfort thing…wouldn’t that be the ultimate irony since in the hours after a food coma you feel anything but comfortable. I’ve been under a bit of pressure at work the last couple of weeks, plus all the excitement of the blog stuff, and maybe it’s that which is driving this compulsion to stuff my face?

I ate a whole broccoli tree, and a mountain of other veggies with my roast beef to the point where I couldn’t move. I was within points and yet at the same time I knew fine well I was flirting with a destructive eating pattern, because what I ate could easily have fed three people. I wasn’t practising portion control and I suspect even Rambo would have been overfaced.

When I get to the point where quality of food beats quantity of food in my mind’s eye, I’ll know I’ve cracked the code of skinny. Tell you what, I’ll bloody die trying 🙂

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My gramps always used to tell me that if daydreams were worth having they should be big ones. I can still hear him saying dream big, lass whenever the six-year-old me outlined her plans to become a famous gymnast, or a ballerina. Looking back, the adult me would prefer to think that that was the mantra by which he lived his life, and not something he said because I was a rotund child with no athletic prowess whatsoever. I’ve got to be honest, even at such a tender age ‘ballerina’ was not an obvious career choice.

Like all little girls, I wanted to be a princess, and if that didn’t work out my fallback position was just something which allowed me to be sparkly. Thing is, little fat girls tended not to get picked to do princessy sparkly things. Even my mum failed to spot my potential to carry off powder pink, I have photographic proof that when my childhood next door neighbour had a fancy dress party to celebrate his seventh birthday, I went as a cowboy. Not much call for sparkles on that costume.

At infant school I was in six-year-old awe of one of the girls in my class…I actually wanted to be her. She was tiny, with smooth shiny blonde hair, and she was so pretty. She was the one who got to play Mary in the nativity play, looking all delicate and Mary-like, and cuddling a tiny tears doll swaddled in a tea towel. I think that was the year I had a non-speaking part as goat three on the back row, and that’s just kind of how it was.

I thought my big break had come at senior school when, aged 14 I was picked to play the lead role in the school’s production of Iolanthe. I was not your typical leading lady, I give you that. However, despite being fat I could sing, and I think all those years of not getting picked for shit meant that they’d run out of excuses. I was in. I was going to play a fairy.

It would have been awesome, if the music teacher who produced it hadn’t been one sandwich short of a picnic…she wanted it to be a bit edgy. So in her version of Iolanthe, the heroine hadn’t in fact been banished from fairyland to a land far far away, for the last few years she’d been hiding at the bottom of a swamp. WTF?

My big entrance saw me entering stage left covered in weeds made from green crepe paper, singing my big solo whilst pulling a frog on wheels. Bitch. It took me years to live down the embarrassment, and strangely enough, Hollywood didn’t come calling. Their loss, right? And still, no sparkles.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m no longer harbouring any desire to get my kit off and pirouette around a stage…I still dream big though, and I always will. The world may have missed it’s opportunity to see me in a tutu, but I’ll still make my mark on this world one way or another. And when I do, I don’t care that I’m fifty with deflating chins…I’m having sparkles 🙂

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