Monthly Archives: February 2017

The Moose Who Got A Spray Tan

In the here & now, ,

You’ll never believe what I’ve gone and done…I’ve only taken the plunge and booked a spray tan for the day before we go on holiday. I know! I mean, I still have to gear myself up for the humiliation of standing in front of a skinny string bean with my kit off, in a pair of paper knickers which I can guarantee will not have been created with an arse the size of mine in mind, but do you know what, I don’t really care.

I don’t tan these days – I suffer from vitiligo, which means that I’m slowly losing the pigment in my skin, so when the bits of me that do still go brown see the sun, I end up looking like someone flicked tan coloured paint at my milk-bottle white skin, if you can picture what I mean…it’s sort of messy. So I tend to rock the pale and interesting look most of the time and pretty much avoid the sun completely. The thing is, when I see my friend turning a lovely shade of golden brown towards the end of our holidays I always get a tinge of envy…I do love a nice tan. And I’ll tell you what else, don’t you think being tanned makes you feel thinner? I do.

So as I was having my nails done on Saturday, I decided to go for it and I’m all booked in. I realise it’ll all happen the wrong way round, me heading off on holiday in all my bronzed glory to spend a week somewhere hot before returning home as white as a ghost but at least for the first two or three days I’ll feel like I belong in the holiday photos, right? Somewhere around the middle of the holiday, me and my friend might even be the same colour as she develops her tan and mine washes away down the plughole 🙂

Just booking my tanning session made me feel a bit giddy. It’s another example of something I would never have done when I was at my fattest, I mean it’s not just the thought of standing in front of a stranger with all the peaks and valleys of my morbidly obese body on display, although that would be bad enough. It’s the thought of what they might go home and tell their friends afterwards about the moose who got a spray tan, you know?

Every now and again it’s good to remember the way I used to have to navigate my life, avoiding situations where I might become the butt of somebody’s joke. It was exhausting. I used to think two or three steps ahead constantly so I didn’t bump into a situation that I hadn’t planned for, or figured out in advance how to handle. Where I went, what I did, where I sat, what I wore…everything had to be scrutinised through a fat-girl lens to establish its suitability for someone like me. And you don’t need me to tell you that the Asshole voice had a never-ending supply of reasons why I couldn’t do things that normal people could, and what people might think about me if I tried.

Today is day 36 of my new start. I had another strong week last week, and the Shitbird Scale rewarded me with another good loss. The further away I walk from the cycle of behaving myself then spectacularly falling off the wagon, regroup and repeat, the more sure the ground feels under my feet. For the first time in my life, I have been chocolate and salty-snack free for five weeks and one day, resulting in a loss of 13lbs since the beginning of January, which is more than all of last year’s net effort put together.

I’m calm. And trust me when I tell you that calm is the real soul food.

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Choosy Is Good, Right?

In the here & now, , ,

So, I had two things to navigate yesterday. One buffet lunch straight out of the 1970s with no healthy options whatsoever, and then a working dinner with some colleagues last night. I did okay, in fact you would’ve been proud of me. At lunchtime I did eat half a rather greasy sausage and a couple of fat sandwich quarters, but really only enough to stave off starvation and see me through the afternoon. And last night in the restaurant, I watched everyone else eat their appetisers but because there was nothing suitable on the menu for me I didn’t order one. Yes, you heard that right…even though I was ravenous I said no. I would have had one, but I was choosy, and choosy is good, right?

I practised behaving like a skinny girl. Squid? Awesome, I’ll have that, I love squid…oh hang on just a minute, deep fried in batter with a garlic mayo dip? Nah not for me…what else…oooh look, mini ribs with homemade slaw…I’ll have that! Oh blimey, hang on a sec, that barbecue sauce is probably loaded with sugar, and there’ll be half a tub of mayo in that slaw…shit, move past the ribs, come on we’ve got this. So I ordered a big fat juicy steak for my main, and passed on the starter.

The steak was alright, I mean it won’t go down in history as the best steak I’ve ever had but it was okay. It wasn’t big, and it wasn’t even particularly juicy but to be honest by the time I’d watched everyone else eat their squid and their ribs I wasn’t about to send it back. I’d ordered a side order of healthy greens, and I carefully transferred all my fries into the bowl my veggies came in just to get them off my plate.

I did catch my hand reaching out a couple of times to grab one of the fries…I ate three in the end. Which isn’t going to kill me, so there’s no drama and it’s a hell of an improvement on other similar meals in my chequered food past, where no chip escaped unscathed. Not on my watch. Don’t get me wrong, if I was in diet mode and trying, I would’ve just as carefully transferred the fries off my plate in a great show of willpower but over the course of the meal they would have gotten eaten anyway and that’s not willpower as much as geography. But not last night.

I was waiting, you know for the all-consuming desire to kick in and press the override switch on my willpower, but…nothing. It didn’t happen. And I didn’t eat dessert, although I can’t claim that as a victory because nobody else did either so that wasn’t willpower as much as circumstances. 

Interestingly enough though, when someone said does anyone fancy dessert? and the rest of our party shook their heads, my usual visceral reaction of wanting to beat to a pulp all the crazy people who passed on pudding meaning I couldn’t say yes either was also conspicuous by its absence…I didn’t want dessert. And thinking about it, I haven’t eaten anything sweet for over a month now. Saying that out loud almost makes we want to run to the mirror and make sure I’m still me.

I’m taking some comfort from all the above, and feeling rather hopeful that I might continue in a similar vein on my forthcoming trip…not having to fight with the asshole voice makes dinner out with friends a much more enjoyable experience, you know?

Have a great weekend everyone 🙂

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Jury’s Out…

In the here & now, ,

So I think I mentioned didn’t I, that my friend and I are heading out on holiday in a couple of weeks – I’m on countdown, with just eighteen sleeps to go. My friend is the world’s best travelling companion…she is uber organised. My modus operandi is to skid into my holidays having worked up to the very last minute with no preparation whatsoever but you know what, I totally get away with it because my friend does enough organising for the both of us. It’s the only bit of my life where I happily sit back and trust someone else to crack on and just tell me what we’re doing.

We’re cruising again – you know how I love life on the ocean – and this time we’re picking up our ship in Abu Dhabi and sailing into Oman, Fujairah, Sir Bani Yas Island and Dubai. I’ve never been to that part of the world and I’m curious to see what it’s like. It’s also my first hot holiday in a while, so I’m looking forward to finding a shady spot and devouring three or four good books as we sail through the week.

Things are going so well with my food plan at the moment that I’m in an agony of indecision trying to decide what food strategy I’m going to adopt whilst I’m on holiday, you know? Even though I stayed active on our last holiday by scaling waterfalls and climbing the odd mountain, and didn’t feel like I went overboard on the eating, I put on a ton of weight over the course of our week in Norway. I know I lost it again within a couple of weeks of coming home – once my plumbing recovered from the trip – but even so, watching the needle go up by eight pounds or so when I got home didn’t exactly fill me with joy and loveliness.

I’m not sure I ever really got back to the real focus I’d had on losing weight before the trip. I mean I limped along between getting home from that holiday and setting off for Cuba, but the impetus definitely fell off a cliff somewhere towards the end of summer.

My dilemma now, is that it feels a bit too soon to step away from this much more disciplined New Year mindset that I’ve manage to kick-start. By the same token I want to be able to enjoy the kind of carefree holiday moments where my friend and I throw caution to the wind and work our way through the cocktail menu for example, which always seems like a great idea at the time. The trouble is, my inhibitions diminish with each sip of whatever I’m drinking.

It’s not as if I’m a big drinker…actually I’m a bit of a fanny but it’s different on holiday somehow. And let’s be honest, you only get a thimble-full of french martini in your glass so it’s too easy to order another, and another…I seem to remember doing exactly that last time, and waking up the next morning with the remains of a cheesecake in my bed and a spoon stuck to my cheek. Not my finest hour, right?

Today marks my 31st day of eating properly, in terms of no processed food, and barely any refined sugar. I’m feeling awesome to be honest, and I know I can definitely keep the momentum going for the next two and a half weeks. The question is can I keep it going whilst I’m on holiday. Should I..?

I’m trying to steer clear of the kind of fat-girl thinking which equates having a good time with how much I can fit in my mouth, but I can already feel the asshole voice gearing up to flood my head with suggestions like it’s okay to relax a bit, you’re on holiday, and come on, you’ve been so good you deserve a treat…life’s too short, live a little and eat the fucking cake!!

I know those kind of sentiments are built on a crooked belief that denying myself the indulgences I want in the moment is some kind of punishment which will spoil the holiday I’ve worked so hard for. Which is bollocks, and I know it.

Still…

 

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