Monthly Archives: April 2016

Who Saw THAT One Coming!

In the here & now, , ,

exercise

Well, I’ll be damned! Who’d have thought it..? They said it would happen…to be fair, you lot pointed out that it would happen, and I nodded along of course, because you’re a bunch of wise old beans who know stuff. But genuinely, on the inside, and with my hand on my heart I didn’t believe it, not even a little bit. And yet. Here I am.

Did you notice, yesterday? At the risk of repeating myself, I wrote this…

I’ve missed walking this week – my sore hamstring and pinched nerve have given me more than a couple of challenges, but I’m slowly feeling better and it’s a gorgeous day out there…as soon as I’ve put my last full stop on the page, me and the furry one are going to go out and have a bit of fresh air. It might be a bit slower than normal, and it might take a bit longer but I’ve had a touch of cabin fever over the last few days, so it’s time to motor. That’s going to be up there flirting with a ten.

It was only when I was reading the post back to myself last night and looking at your messages, including an ‘I told you so’ email from one of the posse that I realised. It might have snuck up on me by stealth, but there I am in black and white, referring to something which falls completely under the heading of exercise in a very positive manner, as in I’ve missed it and I’m anticipating that I shall enjoy it to the power of ten. Bugger me!

Those words weren’t planned, they just tumbled onto the page with the rest of what I was thinking about. I wrote them without really thinking about them, and even as we walked, I didn’t realise that the Asshole voice was conspicuous by his absence. There was no nagging to hang an early left in order to cut the distance down from the route I had in my head. All I thought about yesterday, even as I was  gently encouraging my still-a-bit-tender hamstring up the big hill at the start of our walk, was how good it felt to be out in the fresh air, and not hobbling around at home feeling guilty because I wasn’t moving much.

And actually, whilst we’re on the subject, that’s another revelation. I didn’t fist-bump at the opportunity to sit on my backside all week and rest. To be fair there wasn’t much sitting going on anyway, given the bruising 🙁 but I genuinely felt frustrated that something had come along to disrupt the momentum that I’ve been building up over the last few months. I was even careful with my food plan to compensate for my lack of activity.

Even as I write this I’m shaking my head in wonder…I could almost use a cold compress on my forehead to help me cope with this amount of sensible. I didn’t do any of that through gritted teeth, or resent the hell out of having to tighten up my eating. I did what felt right, under the circumstances, and without really thinking too much about it in order to adapt and find the balance in a tricky situation. Me! I did that!! In a perverse kind of way, I’m grateful for the injury because it helped me see.

Every now and then, it’s good when someone helps me lift the veil off, you know? It makes me realise that bit by bit I’m changing. Honestly, I’m far more excited by the changes I can feel happening on the inside than I am about the fact that I’m four dress sizes down…my body has changed shape countless times over the years, but my head never shifted in the way it looked at things. This time, that’s what’s going to keep me in Skinny Town, right?

Two more pounds off this week…I feel strong, steady and very sure-footed. Come on!

 

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Shooting For The Tens

In the here & now, ,

tens

So I got to thinking, as I woke up and carved out in my head what today was going to look like, what score I’d give the day if I looked back and tried to put a number on how much I’d enjoyed it. And I can see how that might seem like a bit of a weird concept at first, but a random comment I overheard yesterday planted a seed of an idea in my head, which overnight has done its usual thing of turning nothing into something and setting a train of thought into motion.

The comment was made in response to someone dropping their carefully chosen cupcake on the floor during our office bake sale yesterday, which typically landed buttercream-side-down. I mean, of course it did…don’t they always, right? I head someone laugh, and then say Oh no, what does your joy look like today!

My first thought was what an odd thing to say – it’s not an expression I’ve heard before. My head immediately started demanding to know how the joy in my day was shaping up, but I was up to my eyes in bagging up cake and collecting money so I sort of forgot about it. However, in the way my mind often does, it busied itself developing the theme whilst I slept, and started demanding answers this morning as soon as I woke up.

Imagine if we had to put a number to how much we enjoy the stuff we fill our days with. Say maybe on a scale of 1-10, with the bottom of the scale being hating every minute of it, and ten being just about delirious with enjoyment. That led to me thinking about all the things I probably needed to do today, and I realised the list was quite short.

Saturdays tend to be the only day that I can completely call my own, so in the context of my week, today is it in terms of the best possible opportunity for squeezing in a few tens. I got to thinking about how many tens I’d have on my scoreboard from the stuff I needed to do today, and I seemed to have quite a lot of fingers left over when I’d finished counting. Bugger…I didn’t see that coming. If I can’t pepper my best day with tens that’s saying something about me isn’t it?

So, I decided I was going to make today all about the tens. The suggestion that this is a deliberate ploy to avoid any chore-related low scores is just a wicked rumour, and to be fair there aren’t too many chores that need doing. Well, apart from the mountain of fat clothes which need putting on eBay, the same mountain that I managed to ignore again last weekend and which continue to piss me off every time I walk past them. But apart from that I’m good.

My first ten of the day was a dirty great bacon sandwich, which was epic. And let’s face it, you’d probably expect a fair number of food-related high scores, right? This is me we’re talking about. However, I’ve also decided that I’m going to score a mood-boosting ten for effort by staying within points today, and so despite it being a bit points-expensive it was totally counted and totally worth it.

I’ve missed walking this week – my sore hamstring and pinched nerve have given me more than a couple of challenges, but I’m slowly feeling better and it’s a gorgeous day out there…as soon as I’ve put my last full stop on the page, me and the furry one are going to go out and have a bit of fresh air. It might be a bit slower than normal, and it might take a bit longer but I’ve had a touch of cabin fever over the last few days, so it’s time to motor. That’s going to be up there flirting with a ten.

Oh, and me and my boy took a walk down to our local bookmaker last night for a quick flutter on the Grand National, so the biggest ten of the day might come later, if I win. I’m not holding my breath, over the years I’ve discovered that my system of picking winners according to what colour the jockey is wearing or the name of the horse is more than a little bit flawed and I’ve never won a bean. It does make for a more exciting 20 minutes though, watching the race when you’ve had a little flutter.

Whatever you’re up to today, make it count… get out and chase those tens, they are yours for the taking 🙂

 

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Using Life’s Imperfections Perfectly

In the here & now, , ,

can

How about this for a great quote…

Your ability to grow to your highest potential is directly related to your willingness to act in the face of imperfection. You will come to succeed not by finding a perfect moment, but by learning to see and use life’s imperfections perfectly.

Isn’t that awesome? I tripped over it on the way around my virtual stomping grounds a couple of days ago, and it struck me as useful, but I needed to play around with it a bit in my head before its meaning sort of morphed into something I can really relate to.

Shall I paraphrase in plain old Yorkshire speak? I’ve interpreted it to mean stop dicking around using the excuse of I can’t, because…instead, say I’m going to, even though [insert whichever bump in road here]. Adopt that approach and you’ve cracked it.

Today’s particular bump in the road was all tied into the fundraising efforts of me and my four colleagues who are trekking 90 miles across the Escambray mountain range in Cuba, to raise money for our chosen charities. We decided that we would run a bake sale in the office, and over the last week or so we’ve been busy recruiting bakers from around the various departments. Today was the day, and there was much anticipation.

In my car, on the way to work I was sat beside three airtight containers, one holding flapjack (my favourite), one holding chocolate brownies (my favourite) and the third one containing baked raisin and oatmeal cookies. My favourite. The Asshole voice was almost apoplexic. You can’t put those on the table and sell them if you haven’t tasted them, come on they might not be nice! What will people think! You at least have to try one of each. It’s a necessity, it certainly doesn’t mean you’ve cheated on your diet.

Remember, I have a near 50 mile commute…that’s a lot of time to spend trapped and alone in the car with the Asshole voice, where nobody would see if I caved in and plundered the boxes, right? I was so busy mentally calculating how many smart points might be in each, and getting stuck on the sums that by some miracle I made it safely into the car park without consuming so much as a crumb. I’m here to tell you it was a very close call.

The actual bake sale was easy…our bakers had done us proud, and there was an amazing spread. I’ve put it right out there that I’m losing weight to be able to do the trek, so surrounded by words of encouragement, and with the ching-ching of pennies hitting the bottom of the collecting tin as folk lined up to choose their cake, I could hardly be seen face-planting into any of the baking could I..? I might have licked my finger from time to time when I was helping to clear up afterwards but in the grand scheme of things I consider that a victory.

Trouble is, not all the cookies were sold, so they came home with me. My boy will vaporize them over the weekend and to be honest I’m over my wobble…in reality if I was going to have a treat, it wouldn’t be cookies. I actually cut myself a slice of carrot cake to bring home, and I’ve wildly over-estimated the smart points value, so I will have that after supper, and I will enjoy every single guilt free mouthful. It looks like heaven on a plate.

What’s more, I can look back and say I did, even though… 🙂

If you haven’t read about my trek to Cuba, and you’d like to understand more about why I’m passionate about getting fit enough to be able to honour my dad’s memory by raising as much money as possible for people affected by mental illness, you can see his story HERE – I’m grateful for any support you feel able to give, no matter how small 🙂

 

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Different, And Yet The Same.

In the here & now, , ,

quote

I was doing a bit of mooching about on-line last night, and I think I’ve mentioned before haven’t I, about how I love the website StumbleUpon? For folk like me who are interested in stuff, but who have the attention span of a gnat, it’s perfect. There are literally squillions of soundbites of things that might end up being interesting and which you can explore further if you want to, but similarly you can just keep clicking past the things which don’t grab your attention straight away. It could have been built for me.

One of the pages that I lingered over yesterday was in the section about eating disorders, and it contained quotes from people who are living with Anorexia. In recent years I’ve actively sought to understand eating disorders in the context of my own broken relationship with food, and whilst I’ve never felt like I could relate to people who rejected food, I’ve probably got more of an understanding about this illness than I had in the past.

I’m ashamed to admit that growing up as a fat child, in a very naive way, my lack of real understanding meant I was just desperate to catch it. I mean, I didn’t want to be poorly as such, I just wanted the getting thin bit. I used to think if I could somehow catch it until I could wear a pair of hot pants, and then not have it any more, I’d look like all the hot girls I saw in magazines. I was never in any real danger you understand, because becoming anorexic would have required me to stop eating, and that was never on the cards.

I was even fascinated by some of the hard-to-look-at pictures of people who had it. Not because I wanted to look like that, but I used to look at them and think about how much those painfully thin people would be able to eat without getting called greedy. What I never understood in the days way, way before I acknowledged and separated out the Asshole voice in my head, was that they’d lost control of their perspective in the same way that I lost control of mine years later, but at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Just listen to some of the words though. They really got to me.

The word fat assumed a meaning as deadly as cancer. Getting fat was worse than losing your job, worse than being jilted at the altar, worse than living in a trailer park and growing up without shoes. You need to start watching yourself, my Mom said, before it’s too late.

I mean..wow. That’s some serious conditioning about the perils of having a body shape that doesn’t confirm to the norm. I’m sure this young girl’s mum was doing the best she could, and it sounds like she was maybe trying to correct an unhealthy eating pattern with the right intentions, but the fuck-up fairy definitely had a hand in the way that message landed.

People don’t see me. No one sees me. It’s like being fat. No one takes you seriously. You just don’t exist – you’re so big, you’re not even there.

That’s another very profound observation. I remember mentioning in a really early post that sometimes the bigger you are, the more invisible you feel. I’m quite a gregarious character when I’m in the mood to be and I’ve never been one to fade into the background, but some people just have a way of looking at you like they’re looking through you, you know?

At my heaviest I noticed that, a lot. They know you’re speaking but they obviously make some kind of snap assessment which tells them you have nothing to say that they might be remotely interested in, so whatever you say is just white noise. You’re not heard.

You will be tempted quite frequently, and you will have to choose whether you will enjoy your self hugely in the twenty minutes or so that you will be consuming the excess calories, or whether you will dislike yourself cordially for two or three days, for your lack of willpower.

That’s a bit of a leveller, isn’t it? That’s not just anorexia…anyone who’s ever been driven by an urge to use food for all the wrong reasons would identify with that, me included.

What I find difficult to process, is that some of the broken thinking is the same, and yet. If you’re starving yourself half to death and you’re diagnosed with Anorexia, you’re regarded as sick and there’s help, and protocols, and understanding. It’s an illness.

If you’re overeating to the point where your own body is consuming you bit by bit, the vast majority of folk would just write you off as being really fat. Get over yourself, stop eating all the pies, like it’s that simple.

That feels a bit harsh, to be fair. What do you think?

 

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Two Bad Mangoes

In the here & now, , ,

moods

I’ve always wondered at the ability of food to affect my mood one way or the other. Take yesterday morning for example, I’d mentally drafted out my food plan for the day before I even got out of bed. That often happens anyway when you’re preoccupied with food like I am, but I’m trying to be especially diligent this week due to my baboon-coloured bum and enforced inactivity. I barely managed three hundred doddery steps yesterday and I’m not holding out much hope that today will be a whole lot better.

As I shuffled downstairs, I was visualising the juicy sweet mangos that I had picked up at the weekend, which together with a handful of blueberries would provide me with an exotic point-free breakfast. Mango is my favourite fruit, so despite the lack of a big fat bacon sandwich I was approaching breakfast with enthusiasm, you know? No watery skimmed milk and MDF cereal on my watch.

They were monster mangoes, I mean a proper fat-girl pick. I couldn’t wait. However, as it turned out, both of them were rotten. I mean come on, both of them. Instead of sweet juicy mango coloured flesh, I was met with dark mushy stuff that gave off the kind of whiff that said don’t eat me unless you want to shit through the eye of a needle for a week. I was gutted. So my points-free breakfast back-up plan, having decided that an egg-cup sized portion of blueberries flying solo wasn’t going to cut it, was a tin of grapefruit segments.

Which would have been perfectly lovely, if my palette hadn’t been anticipating mango. When I’m in the mood for sharp zesty and citrus, grapefruit does the job admirably. When I’m in the mood for exotic juicy and tropical, it doesn’t. It scored an epic fail. And just like the flavours dancing on my tastebuds, my mood immediately turned from sunny to sour.

If I really think about it, food has always had the ability to colour my mood a few shades lighter, or darker depending on the situation. And I’ve always struggled with food envy, you know when you’re out with friends and they order food which is better than yours when it all arrives? Or bigger than yours, which is even more irritating.

If you read the Tapas, Anyone? post way back in the early days you’ll already know that the food element of any evening out can completely overtake any social aspects for me, as the asshole voice gets involved with an opinion, no matter how unwelcome.

And let’s not even get started on how many times the needle has moved from one end of the spectrum to the other, when I’ve been in the grip of a binge…I could easily move from anticipation and euphoria to satisfied and all the way along to frustrated, resentful, guilty and devastated…all in the space of an hour. And every bit of it was food-related.

I realise I’m probably coming across as all kinds of weird. But let’s be honest, if the relationship I’ve always had with food was on the right side of normal, we probably wouldn’t be here, right? Just to put it into context, much of this conflict goes on on the inside, and you generally get an even-tempered smiley person facing out to the world in general.

I know that the key to a life free of food-inspired mood swings is all about striking the right balance. Nutritious and tasty food with the odd treat thrown in for good measure. Creating a framework that works for me and which I get comfortable with to the point it becomes my new normal. And I guess that’s what this whole thing is about isn’t it…me finding my new normal. I know I’ve got a way to go but I’m working on it 🙂

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