Monthly Archives: May 2017

Stepping Back From The Ledge

In the here & now, ,

Three full days under my belt without going rogue, check. Get me. And you know it’s been okay, despite a couple of curve balls. Yesterday morning I took two shredded wheat and a banana to work for my breakfast, along with a drizzle of honey (I’m sorry but even hardcore dieting days require a drizzle of honey on shredded wheat, right? It tastes like a stale bird’s nest otherwise). It was all going really well until I doused the contents of my bowl in skimmed milk which, as it turned out, was 10 days out of date, and rancid.

I rest my case. Nobody likes the skinny stuff. We must get through five hundred litres of semi-skimmed milk on a daily basis in our office, and yet the skimmed milk had clearly been hanging around on the bottom shelf like Billy-no-mates since God was a lad.

Anyway, after I’d finished ranting about my spoiled breakfast – never have two shredded wheat been quite so publicly mourned – I resisted the temptation to dip instead into my stash of emergency porridge. On Sunday, I’d swapped out my food plan to the No Count version of weight watchers, and instant porridge isn’t on the list, so it stayed in the drawer whilst I ate a couple of plums instead. Without grumbling, which is always a good indication that I’ve dragged my sorry ass away from the ledge. The crisis has definitely passed.

Dont you think it’s harder though, to step away from the ledge when you’ve had a blow out blow out, as opposed to just a blow out? Despite the three solid days that I’ve got in the bag since I rebooted my attitude on Sunday, I still feel like I’m carrying more than just guilt about the four days I spent eating off-piste. I swear I can feel my arse following me as I walk. It’s like a bad spy movie, where I turn around quickly and nobody’s there but as soon as I start walking again I know I’ve picked up a tail.

It’s reflected on the scales too. To my horror, I had a cheeky mid-week step-on this morning and the needle had continued to go in the wrong direction. Like five pounds on wasn’t enough to prove the point that off-piste eating was a bad idea, the Shitbird scale messed with my head by suggesting another three of the fuckers had joined the party in my pants.

Now, at the time I was rushing around trying to get out of the house to catch an early train, so I didn’t have the luxury of following Shitbird protocol (which demands an immediate recount on every tile in the bathroom followed by best of fifteen on the most favourable spot) so it might not be accurate.

However. When you feel skinny, it’s easier to act skinny. When you feel fat on the other hand…well it’s harder somehow. Standing on the platform this morning with my skinny latte and my banana, the desire to throw my banana at the first skinny girl I saw and go get a bacon butty from one of the food carts was overwhelming. Happily, I resisted which is the reason I didn’t get arrested, and I made my train without incident.

But I’m still having a fat day, which stacks the odds in favour of broken thinking, right? I’ve got the wind behind me though and I’m feeling mardy, so bring it on, I say.  I’m up for a fight ?

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Climbing Out Of The Hole. Again.

In the here & now, , ,

Saturday night found me sitting at home on my own feeling wretched. My one bad day had morphed into a run of bad days. Confidently declaring I choose skinny, after pouring my heart out to you guys on Friday turned out to be nothing more than a bunch of words and a really strong statement of intent, you know? I believed it from the bottom of my soul as I tipped those words onto the page, but somehow the intent never got wired up to actually drive a turnaround in the way I was behaving. For that reason, Saturday had been day four of what felt like a freight train descending into anarchy.

From a position of food sobriety, I’ve often wondered how it’s possible to have both my head and my heart lined up behind a determination so strong that it could support the weight of a thousand cravings, only for me to watch it fall away to dust when I’m in the grip of an overwhelming need to eat shit, and lots of it. At the very moment that I’m pushing food into my face, I can hear the sound of my Asshole voice laughing hysterically, as he takes the piss out of my naivety in daring to believe I’d ever have the power to stop him in his tracks.

So. Two steps forward and ten steps back huh? If you’ve clocked my conversation with the Shitbird Scale this week, well. What can I tell you? That’s the aftermath of the last few days and it officially sucks. I had to reset the dial yesterday morning, and by some miracle I managed to pull a textbook day right out of the bag. Yesterday, happily, the Gods of Skinny were on my side.

As I laid my lazy arse back in that big fat armchair on Saturday night, I was catching up on one of my favourite medical dramas on the TV and the  Psych doctor said something which struck a chord. He wasn’t talking about me, obviously, but in that moment when I was beating a path back and forth to the freezer eating one raspberry magnum ice-cream after another, he may as well have been. What he said was this…

Ironically relapse can be a very important part of recovery…it happens to most addicts at some point and it’s very often the utter misery of falling off the wagon that motivates those that suffer to finally get serious about staying sober.

Ain’t that the truth.

The only person rooting for me to keep on eating ice cream was Charlie dog, who always gets to lick the lolly stick so to be fair, although I feel sure in his little furry bonce he’d want the best for me, him rooting for me to stop would be a bit like turkeys voting for Christmas and on that basis I forgive him for egging me on.

Even as I ate those ice-cream lollies, one after the other, I didn’t really want them. I just felt compelled to have them. But the words spoken by Dr Whatever-his-name-was kind of stopped me in my tracks because I was miserable. Utterly fucking miserable. And somehow, for once I wasn’t easy in my own company. It was a lonely place. Just me, and the pile of lolly sticks sitting in the chair with a drooling dog at my feet. Some life, right? The thing is, it’s not my life.

It used to be, but it’s not any more. And in that moment, realisation dawned that I was just passing through. I wasn’t staying in that old life. I’d visited it, briefly – well not that fucking briefly if we’re splitting hairs – but it was as wretched as I ever remember it, and I wasn’t staying. No way Jose…it was time to come back. I practically sprinted.

If we’re looking for the learning opportunity here, it’s glaring me in the face. The moment I started messing with my food plan a few weeks ago coincided with my decision to just reintroduce a bit of sweet stuff into my diet…it doesn’t take Einstein to make the connection, does it? No refined sugar equals food sobriety with no binges and an inner peace. Reintroducing refined sugar on the other hand – even in small quantities – well, I’m right back to that combative broken relationship with anything that goes in my mouth.

So listen, I’ve been back to the dark side, and I’ve learned a lesson. To those of you who can achieve and maintain balance by eating a bit of what you fancy from time to time, well fair play to you and I’m more than a little bit envious of your self control. Me, I clearly don’t have the ability to control shit when I’m under the influence of sugar. I sort of knew that, based on the first four months of this year but like a true scientist I needed to prove the theory. And now I have.

So I can’t have it. And I’m not going to have it. This is day two of my refined-sugar-free food sobriety and tomorrow will be day three. Next week’s conversation with the shitbird scale will paint a different picture, and the horrors of this last week will become just one more scar amongst the motley collection which have opened and closed many times over the years.

My heart feels lighter already 🙂

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One Hundred And Fifty One Minutes

In the here & now, , ,

That’s how long it took, to go from hero to zero. I’m always honest with you guys, right? Best buckle in then, let’s get it over with.

I woke up in a dark place on Wednesday, I mean I’d really seen my arse. From the moment I opened my eyes I was seething with resentment that I had to be on this stupid fucking diet in the first place, and I knew I was going to have a bad day. If I look back on the sequence of events I can sort of see it unravelling.

I had a rubbish night’s sleep on Tuesday night, which I think is  where it all started to go tits up. I’d had to pull out of my fat furnace class at the Kingdom of Pain due to my knee, which since our cycling adventures on Sunday has been giving me hell. I’d settled down later in the evening to draft a blog post, but no words had come.

It happens every now and then, you know? I wrote and rewrote the same few moany paragraphs until I was boring myself sick, and I ended up turning in after midnight with a pile of shite on the page and a plan to look at it with fresh eyes in the morning. Which I did, and it was still shite. It took a while for me to get it to a point where I was ready to send it out to your ears and that meant I was late getting into the office.

My to do list was overwhelming, and from late morning I was tied up in a meeting that was due to go on for the rest of the day. For all the reasons I’ve talked about I’d not had time to prepare any food to take to work, so when the catered lunch arrived at 11.59am, my defences were shot.

And I fell.

Mini yorkshire puddings with rare beef and horseradish…oh yes I’ll have one of those. Then another two. Three BLT sandwich triangles and a handful of crisps. Back for another mini yorkshire, and a king prawn and cream cheese blini. MMMmmm that was nice, best have a couple more of them. There’s cake? Awesome. The rocky road looks good…three of those then and a square of ginger cake whilst I’m there. They’re only little after all.

We’re done? I’ll just carry the six remaining squares of cake across the hall for the girls in the office…girls, (chewing) there are five pieces of cake here if anyone wants them...

Just in case anyone on the planet was still under any illusion that I was watching what I ate, I also managed to sink six treacle toffees before we wound the meeting up. One hundred and fifty one minutes to eat my own bodyweight in crap, and I did it beautifully. It was carnage.

So from there, contrite and lesson learned, I headed home to sit on the naughty step and think about what I’d done, right?

Did I fuck. I drove three miles out of my way because I wanted pizza, and whilst I was picking that up I bought a box of Magnum ice cream lollies for my boy. Except I ate three out of the box of four before he got home, and I didn’t tell him about the fourth. FYI I ate that yesterday. Which wasn’t as bad as Wednesday but I won’t be winning any prizes for clean eating, that’s for sure.

How is it, that the ground beneath my feet can be so fucking solid one day – actually for more than one hundred days – and then I’m jettisoned headlong into dieting quicksand for no apparent reason? I think messing around with my food plan has had a catastrophic effect on my psyche. Lesson learned, eh.

This morning, I just feel a bit dazed. And I’ve got two choices haven’t I? I can choose a skinny life, where I pick myself up and reset. Or I can choose to carry on behaving like a fucking ejit.

I choose skinny. I’m starting again with my clean eating as of today, right now in this moment. I’m not waiting until Sunday. From today, and one day at a time.

Walk with me? I need you guys 🙂

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Having A Moan

In the here & now, , ,

I don’t imagine that any of you will have lost sleep worrying about the bruises on my nether regions following Sunday’s adventures with the saddle, but just in case you did, you can rest easy…it’s feeling much better. I mean, if I could be bothered to contort myself near the mirror and get a good look I suspect it’d still be a lovely mottled shade of purple but at least now I can sit down without wincing and I’m even starting to fancy another go.

At the risk of having a moan, I’m really struggling this week to stay upbeat and I think I’ve bumped headlong into a great big wall of dieting boredom. Progress is painfully slow and at this rate by the time I earn my skinny stripes I’ll be too fucking old and addled to enjoy that shiny new life. In the grand scheme of things I’d planned to rock skinny whilst I’ve still got some powder in me puff, but the clock’s ticking, you know?

I suppose when you’ve been on a diet for nearly eighteen months it’s only natural that boredom will set in at some point, and it has. It’s arrived with a vengeance. And you know as well as I do, my Asshole voice is going to be all over that like a rash.

I’m bored…I know, let’s eat something. Just have one. Or ten. 

It’s funny isn’t it, when I started this journey eighteen months ago I was reluctant to let my mind wander into the territory of how long it was going to take to undo the damage caused by years of food abuse. I didn’t want to run the risk of my Asshole voice screeching FUCK YOU and forcing me to dive headfirst into a big vat of cheese balls at the prospect of years of depravation.

Not thinking about it has served me well…I can’t remember a time where I spent this long following any kind of food plan. I’ve lost big amounts of weight before, but I never had this much to lose. I’m a stereotypical fat-girl…every time I’ve lost weight, I’ve found it again and then some.

By the time I arrived in Skinny Town last time I’d lost around 100lbs. This time, 100lbs will only get me a little over halfway there and I the reality of that is starting to bite. I’ve also woken up to the fact that even when I get there I’m going to have to carry on counting and measuring ’till the end of time because if I don’t, I’ll do exactly what I’ve always done and bounce right back up the scale without even pausing to admire the view.

I guess I’m just having a moment, right? I’ve done well to stick at it but my progress has slowed and the Asshole voice is trying to lead me into the is it really worth it? school of thinking. It’s a good job know it’s him, and not me.

I’m buckling in…things might get a little bumpy for a while 🙂

 

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No Fat Incidents To Report

In the here & now, , ,

Aside from the fact that the Shitbird Scale didn’t wholly climb down from its position of Chief Pisser-Offer yesterday morning, I was buzzing as I got ready to go out on my first bike ride in more than seven years. I’d gone to bed on Saturday night having laid all my gear out in readiness, including my old skinny-life cycling shorts, my cycling gloves and my helmet. My bike was standing in the kitchen in newly serviced anticipation.

The only bits of me that were quivering with nerves rather than excitement were my bum cheeks, and to be fair they had a hall pass on excitement for obvious reasons. Size of saddle vs size of arse…no further explanation needed, right? In the cheeks department it was never going to end well, and I’d already made my peace with that.

Pulling on the cycling shorts, I was immediately filled with gratitude towards the person who invented lycra back in the day. You’ve got to bear in mind these bad boys are actually four sizes smaller than the size I should rightfully be wearing, but although it felt like I was wearing an arse corset they did make an heroic effort to stretch far enough to provide padding in all the right places.

On the downside, being squeezed between the waist and the knee area meant that the areas just above the waist and just below the knees looked…well, lumpy is how I think I’d describe it. I pulled a second pair of exercise pants on over the top of my cycling shorts in an attempt to disguise some of the more obvious overspill, and it wasn’t entirely successful but it was better.

I had to swallow my worries that somewhere along the route I might explode out of all that lycra but surprisingly, everything held together and there were no fat incidents to report. And you know what, my friend and I had the most awesome morning. We cycled for the best part of 15 miles, and I can’t even begin to tell you what it felt like, zipping along the greenway on two wheels. I felt free, somehow. Well, apart from having no circulation below the waist, obviously.

And agile…I felt agile. I wasn’t a fat girl on a bike, I was just a girl on a bike, same as all the other cyclists who were out for a Sunday morning ride. It took me right back to the time where I was a fully paid up resident of Skinny Town. And after sniffing the air of that life again yesterday morning I’m more determined than ever to go back and stay there this time.

Now, I’ve got to be honest, by the time we got home, my arse cheeks were not feeling the love. Without thinking, I perched on the edge of a chair last night to talk to my boy and shot up again like a scalded cat but it’s a small price to pay, you know? It’s no worse than the aches and pains I’ve pushed through after working out in the Kingdom of Pain, except the saddle managed to reach places the kettle bells can’t get to. It’ll pass. By mid-week I’ll brave another outing, once the bruises in my pants have calmed down a bit.

I can’t help feeling that a whole new world of possibility has opened up to me, and I’m excited. Eighty five pounds ago, I couldn’t have done this, and now I can 🙂

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