Monthly Archives: April 2016

Consistent Inconsistency

In the here & now, , ,

consistent

When I was little, my mum used to call me Contrary Mary. She always said it in a jokey way of course but she wasn’t fooling me, there was definitely an occasional undertone of you’re now getting on my last good nerve… I think what frustrated her was how the child who was placid and easy-going one day could do a good impression of the devil child the next. I’m not moody, in fact I don’t have a moody bone in my body. That’s never been the issue…I’m just inconsistent, and my normal can differ from day to day.

I can see how annoying that would be to someone who’s not me…to be fair I’ve driven myself nuts over the last few months especially with the way I’m never quite sure what frame of mind I’m going to wake up in from one day to the next. I’ve noticed it far more since I’ve been dieting, but that’s probably because I’m more tuned in to what’s going on in my head. I’m getting fairly adept at separating my own thoughts from my asshole voice, although knowledge isn’t always power, right?

As soon as I open my eyes in the morning I can generally suss out whether I’m going to sail through the day, or whether I’m going to have to navigate a pathway through the thorns. It’s been a bit of a mixed bag this weekend just gone, in fact Saturday and Sunday were like night and day – Saturday I struggled. God, how I struggled. It seemed like I was locked horns with the asshole pretty much all day, due to fatpantsgate.

Yesterday was completely different, I mean it was effortless. I ended up going to bed last night with one smart point left unspent. Shall I say that again, in case you missed it the first time..? I had leftover food budget that I chose not to spend. I mean what’s that all about? That never happens. I always wring every last drop out my food budget to ensure I get maximum possible chewage, and yet yesterday I left a point on the table. Maybe I’m coming down with something.

So that’s the frustrating thing, right? Why can’t every day be like yesterday? I mean I’d have this cracked in a heartbeat if I didn’t have to waste time arguing with myself. The inconsistency definitely makes it harder to deal with, because after a couple of really good days the asshole voice can take me unawares. If he’s chewing my ear constantly it’s easier to tune him out.

Oh my…I think I might have just put two and two together in my head as I was writing this. Saturday was the last day in my dieting week…there were scant points available as a fallback position when the asshole voice gained a bit of ground. The pressure was on, and I freaked out. Sunday was different…the start of a new week, a whole week’s worth of new points to go at if I so pleased, therefore no pressure and no problem. Give it your best shot Asshole, come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough…

Interesting. In order not to face the kind of pressure that freaks me out I need to have points in the bank right up to the very last minute of my dieting week. You know, make sure I have enough for an emergency hobnob at all times.

Noted 🙂

 

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Radiating Sunshine

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

mad cow

So I woke up this morning ready to face the music – isn’t it funny how in the night things always look very bleak? I’ve never been one to worry about stuff, and sleepless nights are an unknown concept to me but I must ‘fess up and tell you that last night whilst I was watching TV, and starving after vaporising every single available smart point by mid afternoon, I made a coffee with all milk to try and fill a hole…it’s the first time ever I’ve gone over my weekly points. I know, right?

It was the lesser of two evils – there were several items of food that had collectively serenaded me from the fridge all night and I came within a cock hair of caving in…I didn’t, but I needed something. I could have had a large glass of water but quite frankly that was never going to cut it. But although I savoured every drop, the milky coffee weighed heavy on my mind, and from the point at which I woke up for a quick tinkle at normal work get-up time then tried to go back to sleep for my customary Sunday morning doze-fest I had the most bizarre dreams.

I have this mental picture of the Asshole sitting on his buffet in the corner of my mind, furiously loading movie reel after movie reel of things designed to convince me that I’d blown it. The words start of a slippery slope were playing on a loop in my head, accompanied by moving pictures of me whizzing down a giant slide, being chased by one of the Cravendale cows who wanted the milk back. In the next scene I was laid underneath the cow drinking from its udders whilst someone blew my arse up with a bicycle pump and in the last scene I was the cow…it all got very weird at that point.

I walked the green mile to the bitch in the bathroom with great trepidation when I finally shook off the weirdness. I’d managed to convince myself that the half pint of semi-skimmed milk that I’d had over and above my weekly allowance was going to mean a gain this week. I was suitably downcast and ready to take it on the chin, until she told me that I’d lost a pound.

What?? I did my usual double-check on several tiles to make sure she wasn’t taking the piss, but sure enough…another pound gone. And immediately, I started radiating sunshine. The day looked great. I’d dodged a bullet…okay I’m being overly dramatic, it was half a pint of semi-skimmed milk, not ten litres of Haagen Dazs and a ton of cheeseballs. But, for the first time in eight months and eight days I’d stepped over the boundary…thank god the bitch didn’t clock it.

So, it’s a brand new shiny Weight Watchers week and it’s an important one. It’s the UK Blog Awards on Friday in London…I’m too giddy for words. My boy got fitted for his Tux yesterday. I’ve bought new sparkly flat shoes and I’ve totally gotten over myself about the palazzo pants.  I’ve booked Thursday off work for a little turd-polishing, and on Friday we’re doing the whole first-class-train-swanky-hotel thing…it’s going to be an epic weekend.

The week’s got off to a cracking start…I did a long walk with the furry one this morning, and I’ve finally got around to sorting out that mountain of fat clothes. No messing, I’m going to make this week count. No wobbles allowed, right? Onwards! 🙂

 

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Six Fat Ladies On My Washing Line

In the here & now, , , , , ,

washing

I’ve always liked a nice washing line, in fact I think it’s fair to say that washing lines are one of my things. There’s nothing nicer than the smell of fresh blown washing, and there’s few things more satisfying than the sight of a long line of freshly laundered clothes bobbing in the breeze. It’s a pretty day today, lots of blue sky between the clouds, and for the first time in ages I pegged my washing out.

I observed the rules of course…anything that happens to part of a matching pair has to be pegged next to its partner. Each garment has to have matching coloured pegs. Where possible things of the same garment family should be grouped together, like trousers, or tops. Allowances can be made by exception, for example pyjamas have a top and pants but can’t be in two places at the same time, so a matching pair generally trumps garment family…

I know what you’re thinking. It is ridiculous, I can see that. My boy, who isn’t afflicted by the same degree of washing line OCD enjoys winding me up by breaking every single rule on the odd occasion his laundry bypasses the tumble dryer and makes it on to the line. Today though, they’ve been pegged by my own fair hands, and all is in order. I should be happy…and yet.

I looked outside to check on the weather and caught sight of my line of washing with the breeze through it, and there were six pairs of my black trousers lined up next to each other looking for all the world like six fat ladies getting their groove on. With the wind inside them they looked monstrous.

Is that what my arse looks like from the rear view..? Still..?  I can’t believe that something so stupid can turn my mood upside down so quickly. The asshole voice in my head went berserk and my new-found self confidence took a proper battering. How ridiculous is that? I can’t remember the last time I felt like this, and there’s absolutely no logical reason why I should.

Looking at them made me feel fat. And when I feel fat, I start thinking fat. I’ve been grazing all day, it’s now 4pm and I’ve got no points left. None. My weekly ones are all spent too. The sight of my cavernous pants drove me to loiter near my boy who was eating hangover carbs in the form of pizza and I turned the kind of eyes on him that even Charlie dog could only aspire to. Having checked that I had enough points left, he begrudgingly handed over two slices of heaven which didn’t even touch the sides of my mouth as they headed south.

I’d love to tell you that the pizza tasted amazing but the truth of it is I ate both slices so fast I barely tasted them. And there it is, right? The compulsion to anaesthetise my feelings with food when something makes me feel bad. Alive and kicking at the first fucking opportunity. I honestly despair that despite all the work I’ve put in, unpicking the knots in my thought processes and rebuilding the way I think piece by piece, I can still come totally unglued when my self-esteem take a knock.

I don’t wear size twelve pants. I know this. It shouldn’t come as a shock to see six pairs of fat pants going through the laundry. The fact that I’m on track to be in a size twelve this time next year should be enough…today, it wasn’t.

I guess we all get days like this, right?

Tomorrow’s a new day, with a shiny new week’s worth of smart points. Looking on the bright side, I’ll be starving when I wake up tomorrow given that I can’t eat anything else today so if I was forced to find a silver lining in this shitty day at least I’ll greet the new week feeling like Kate Moss 🙂

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A Wise Man Once Said…

In the here & now, , , ,

believe

…whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you’re right.

I think we have Henry Ford to thank for that nugget of wisdom, and it’s one of my favourite ever quotes. I admire its simplicity, and yet it’s really clever. And there’s no doubt about it, the level of self-belief that you carry in your head is 100% responsible for your ability to keep both feet planted squarely in the middle of the dieting sweet spot. Or not.

Isn’t it funny, I don’t remember anything remarkable about the day this all began. I mean obviously I knew that the time was right – it was the first Monday after my holiday. Time for the post-holiday diet. And I suspect because the holiday had been both awesome and agonising in equal measure due to the fact that I weighed as much as a moose, I felt a tiny bit more determined than I had on other Mondays which had come and gone whilst my arse continued to party.

And it somehow felt a bit different. From day one, there was a conviction which came out of nowhere and said to me this time is IT, although I couldn’t immediately put my finger on why this time was going to be different to any of the other times. Starting a diet wasn’t an unknown concept to me if you remember, and to be fair all of them started with 100% commitment. Trouble is, they usually managed to limp across the line of Thursday at best, and by Friday I was usually promising myself faithfully that I’d start again on Monday which meant a power-eating free-for-all over the weekend.

It’s like my commitment bucket had holes in the bottom you know? And I recognised that. I knew that no matter how many hopes and dreams or how much determination I poured into the top, my resolve had a habit of disappearing out of the bottom like sand through my fingers before I’d even got going. I realised that I needed to find a way to patch the holes up. And then you lot happened.

By some miracle I made it to the Saturday. I don’t remember many conversations with the Asshole voice in that first week, it’s like I got a head start, you know? Maybe someone was rooting for me…who knows. But on the Saturday…well, that’s when I started writing. And a little while after that, you started writing back to me, and we’ve been talking ever since.

It’s a beautiful thing. Whenever I’ve had wobbles, you’ve propped me up. When you’ve had wobbles you’ve dipped in and pulled out whatever you need from the posts or the wise old owls who hang out in here. Writing all my thoughts down shines a light on the holes in my bucket, and between us all we’re busy patching them up.

When I started, I thought I could do this. I still think I can. And I’m right 🙂

 

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Shouting About The Hard Stuff

Reflections on past times, , ,

shouting

Blimey, yesterday’s post provoked quite a reaction from you lot. I’ve had a ton of messages about it, to the point where I actually feel a bit fraudulent accepting all this love for being brave enough to talk about something so cringe-worthy. You all totally get how embarrassing it was.

At the time it happened, I wrote about falling out of bed on my personal Facebook page, much to the amusement of my friends. I made sure to leave out the bit about actually breaking the bed though…that was never going to make it into print. Until now, right?

I didn’t feel particularly brave yesterday when I was writing the post, in fact it’s a very weird thing…I felt detached, almost like I was writing about someone else.  Don’t get me wrong, I can remember exactly how I felt as I stood there in front of the bloke holding the bed leg, with the hot flush of shame creeping slowly up my body, desperately wanting to be anywhere but there.  And yet, talking to you guys about it yesterday didn’t worry me at all, I even smiled to myself as I wrote down the words and imagined you all reading the bit about getting my head stuck…it was funny.

That person, the one who was 62lbs heavier than the person inside my pants today seems like a stranger to me. She’s me, obviously, but at the same time she’s not me. It’s so hard to explain, but I think it’s got something to do with the way in which I’ve peeled away layers and layers of stuff over the last few months and laid it all out for examination. Between us, we’ve picked over the bones of all manner of crap, and every time I’ve taken a step forward, I feel one step further removed from the girl who broke beds and lumbered her way through life.

In doing all that, I’m conscious that I’ve sort of become a bit de-sensitised to some of the painful stuff. I can only liken it to having a baby, you know? You start your pregnancy feeling like your body is a private thing, with intimate places which are off limits to most. By the time you push the baby out you’re so used to folk faffing around with your tuppence that you barely look up from your crossword whilst they’re having a poke around.

I’ve talked about it all so much, it’s lost the power to hurt me. To bother me.  I mean, I still remember the pain and the humiliation but I don’t feel it any more, I’m just reporting the facts about how life used to be. And besides, it’s all just between you and me, right?

You’d have laughed the other day. I had to provide some information for the people my boy works for – long story, he doesn’t exactly work for MI5 but it would take too long to explain why they need it. The form asked for my build, so I wrote fat. He was peering over my shoulder as I wrote down my details and he was horrified…mum you can’t write that!  I hadn’t even given it a second thought. I pointed out the fact that I was only being honest, and quick as a flash he said yeah well under the question about facial hair you wrote NONE…if you’re all about being honest…

Cheeky twat.

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