Tag Archives: asshole voice

And So It Continues…Just One More Day

In the here & now, ,

I’m still trying to find the loose end that’s making my whole self unravel. Maybe I ate it thinking it was spaghetti, I mean there’s so much food sneaking past my lips it wouldn’t be too hard to miss the fact that I’m actually eating myself.

We did a team building day in the office yesterday and we kind of had to draw out our life in ten minutes on a flip chart. The brief was to be completely honest…oh fuck. That’s never going to end well is it, for a girl with no filter?

I drew a heartbeat right the way across the page, kind of like a heart monitor. I put all the things that make me happy on the peaks of my heartbeat and all the things that make me sad at the lows. All my happy things were friends and family, and handbags and holidays…writing my blog and hanging out in these pages. The lows were jobs I’d hated, and general life bleurgh.

I’m so used to being freakishly honest with you lot, it felt like the most normal thing in the world to talk about food too, and how come it was riding the peaks but also lurking in the depths of the lows. The best of times and the worst of times. How it makes me happy but also very sad. How when I’m over-eating I’m happy because I’m eating, but sad at the same time because I’m not in control. And when I’m not eating I’m sad because I’m not eating but I’m happy at the same time because I am in control.

Then I looked around and realised that every other flipchart life story on the wall had life events and career paths. Mine was the only one with cake. And reading all that back doesn’t make me feel any less of a fucking basket case. I was at work, for fuck’s sake. Not here. Here I can say shit like that…probably not so much so in the office, right? Bet they’ll all be locking up their emergency biscuits from now on.

Anyway, that’s kind of how my week’s shaping up.

I’m at the gin festival on tomorrow with my boy…I’m going to make that my last day of fuckery. I bought him the tickets as part of his Christmas present and we’ll have a really good laugh and hopefully try some artisan gins and specialist tonics. I have no doubt that we’ll stagger home on the train feeling three sheets to the wind and food will definitely be consumed so there’s not even any point in pretending that today will go according to plan.

But Sunday, with you lot chomping at my heels and making me listen to good sense…well. I’m going for a reboot. I so want to pull it off and get back to a world where my every waking thought doesn’t involve food. Or even if it does, a world where I can stick my fingers in my ears and ignore the Asshole voice.

Not before time, in fact way overdue…

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Fat, But Optimistic

In the here & now, ,

So, Wednesday was it, right? I’d planned to take Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day off the diet but I’d made a firm commitment to myself that Wednesday 27th was the cut-off point after which normal sensible non-Christmas eating would resume. Quid pro quo, if you like. Dear Gods of Skinny, you give me three days off and I’ll give you four days on, and I mean on it like a car bonnet. I’ll be all over it. I’ll net out even-stevens next weigh-day and it’ll be like Christmas never happened.

It was a good plan, as plans go. The only problem was, my head didn’t want to get on board with it. At all. I went to bed on Tuesday night feeling as determined as it’s possible to be the night before you start a diet, when your belly’s still full and fat. Trouble is, I woke up on Wednesday panicking about all the nice things that I hadn’t eaten yet and I was sunk before I even got out of bed.

And I found myself pulling that all or nothing shit too. I’m not going swimming today because really, what’s the point? I’ll go tomorrow when I’m back on my food plan, today’s a write-off…

I settled down to write a blog post, and no words came. I’d kind of thought I might ‘fess up about my indiscretions, and talk about moving past them so we could all look forward to the New Year and how we were going to get this skinny shit down once and for all. Except I was still chewing and it felt all wrong, and in the end no words came anyway so I put my laptop away and carried on eating Christmas, plus a bit more for good measure.

Then I cleaned out the fridge, took some chicken out of the freezer to defrost overnight and went to bed hoping for an overnight miracle. In my heart of hearts I was expecting yet another epic battle when I opened my eyes yesterday, you know? Getting day one under my belt is a psychological minefield and it never comes without a fight.

However. Do you know what I got? Nothing. I got nothing. No rebellion, no tantrums and no demands to start my day with a bacon sandwich. Just a quiet acceptance that the diet riot was over, and it was time to behave. And yesterday was flawless. Granted, a day later than planned but the point is, it happened.

I hadn’t been logging food on my off-piste days, so there was a half-hearted whoop whoop from the Asshole voice when I logged in mid way through the week and my app told me I had all my weekly points left plus some rollovers…the actual fuck I do, I’ve probably used up all the weeklies due to me as far as halfway through next year. So I wiped them off and closed down that avenue of food fuckery and he didn’t even put up a fight.

It seems I weathered the storm…I feel good. Fat, but optimistic. I’m ready for the New Year, and the new start, hell I’ve even kick-started things early in the spirit of damage limitation. Read my lips, this is OUR year…we’re heading to Skinny Town, people! 🙂

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Painting The Sky Purple

In the here & now, ,

So I’ve been doing my Weight Watchers thing for a week today, and you know what, it’s going okay. Better than okay actually, I haven’t stepped a toe out of line. I feel like I’m getting away with murder though…I’ve eaten some lovely healthy meals, but over the last week I’ve also managed to fit in a large cream scone, three small pots of Haagen Dazs and a family bag of galaxy counters and still gone to bed with points on the table most days.

Technically I’m following the flex plan to the letter, but I’m being really fucking creative with the way I’m spending my food budget. I’m sure the clever folk who built this new programme must have looked at case studies of people like me, who colour inside the lines but use the wrong coloured crayons. I think my sky is purple right now.

When they allocate your daily and weekly points they probably have a reasonable expectation that what, maybe 80% of  points will be spent on healthy food with the odd snack thrown in? I’m filling up on zero points food and hitting snacksville with a pocket full of points after sundown because it doesn’t say anywhere that I can’t…

I’ll feel smug right up to the point I don’t lose anything, right?

It’s a bit like Charlie-dog being evicted from my lap when I’m eating and told to go lie in his bed. Technically he does as he’s told, because a quarter of one paw in the bed is still in the bed, right? The rest of him might be stretched out in a masterclass of bed-avoidance with his eyes locked and loaded onto my dinner plate, but to all intents and purposes he’d have a very valid argument to say he’s followed the brief.

That’s exactly like me with my food plan. I’m determined not to go over my points, and I haven’t. Quite the opposite actually, most days I don’t need them all. I’m also determined to eat well, and I have been. I’ve been rooting out zero point foods like a pig rooting out truffles, and making the most of them. Banana pancakes with hot berries and yoghurt for breakfast…cooled garlic roasted vegetables with chicken for lunch…only a handful of points gone by suppertime, but then whoop whoop bring on the points-fest.

Somewhere, in the adult part of my brain I know I don’t quite have the balance right between good stuff and naughty stuff but I’m still justifying it to myself over and over on the basis that I’m following the rules. LEAVE ME ALONE!!! I’m bloody behaving myself and still it’s not good enough!!!

I think maybe I’m pushing the boundaries to see how far I can go over the holidays, I mean let’s be honest, this is without doubt the hardest two weeks of the year for anyone on a fucking diet. I just need to stay in rapport with my food plan and refuse to listen to any lobbying from the Asshole Voice, who will sooner or later engineer a situation which tries to force me into breaking my cracking run of good days.

He’s got no chance of doing that if I don’t feel like I’m on a diet, you know? And right now I don’t. If I’ve gone down a notch or two on the Shitbird Scale by Sunday, that’ll be my Christmas present to myself right there.

Well, that and the handbag I might have accidentally bought to send to Santa… 🙂

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Fifty Years’ Experience

In the here & now, ,

Well look  at me, sashaying into day three of my latest new beginning with a smile on my face. I’m officially feeling one hundred percent in control of my food plan, dare I even say enjoying it? I’ve got to be honest, going back to Weight Watchers feels a bit like pulling on a pair of my oldest most comfortable slippers, you know? It’s familiar, even though it’s different.

It’s simple. I prefer points over calories. Don’t get me wrong, spending a few months diligently counting every calorie – ok *looks sheepish* you got me, maybe not every calorie – has been a really valuable exercise, in that even though some foods don’t contain points I have a heightened awareness of what’s in stuff. Just because they have a zero points value doesn’t mean my arse will shrink at warp speed if I throw portion control to the wind. I’m not actually eating air, and I get that now. That was the My Fitness Pal lesson, and it needed to be learned.

Wednesday was my first proper day on the new flexi plan, and if it hadn’t been for that pesky gin advent calendar seducing me as I walked past with the promise of chocolate and cherry gin behind door number twelve I would’ve actually carried some of Wednesday’s points over to Thursday. For a girl who many moons ago mastered the technique of wringing every single food opportunity out of every single day, that feels more than a tiny bit impressive. I had points left but I wasn’t bothered about going to find something to spend them on. The end.

Well, except for the miniature gin, as things worked out. But I am starting today with two points carried over from yesterday…just sayin’.

However. Y’all know as well as I do that I’ve been here before. Too many times to count, right? I’ve got fifty fucking years’ experience of being fat and I’m about as far from being an expert on weight-loss as it’s possible to get. What I do know, is that the first few days of a new beginning go one of two ways. Either, the fire in my belly will carry me along until the new regime is established and the Asshole voice doesn’t even try to de-rail me, or he’ll be at my heels and in my head from one minute after midnight on day one.

This time I’m basking in his absolute radio silence. It feels different from the last few new beginnings. It’s like someone’s kidnapped him. He didn’t try and talk me into a mince pie when they were freely available in the office. The box of Thornton’s chocolates I brought home earlier this week to give to a friend are sitting untouched on the kitchen table and he hasn’t done anything twattish like circulate a memo round my head every five minutes suggesting I could open them for myself and buy her another box later.

I’m making the most of this honeymoon period and I’m going to use it as an opportunity to settle into my new food plan. We’re within spitting distance of Christmas, so the next couple of weeks are going to be a bit bumpy…I know that and I’m ready for it. I need to focus on the fact that my skinny life is waiting for me in 2018 and it’s about fucking time I made it happen having spent the last year treading water.

I’ve got a good feeling about this folks…it’s game on 🙂

 

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The Wrong Number

In the here & now, ,

It’s going to be one of those weeks, you know when you can just tell?

It didn’t start well. I practically speed-walked the twenty two steps from my bed to the bathroom for my Sunday morning weigh-in, and I could hardly wait to hop aboard. I had really high hopes this week, in fact I was already planning what words I might use to tell you how fabulous I felt at losing [insert impressive number here] pounds. I felt skinny.

Then the Shitbird thing declared a zero loss, and within a heartbeat I felt fat again, like someone behind me had sprung into action and was busy filling my pants with marshmallows. I went from hero to zero in the length of time it took the little digital display to get its shit together and show me the wrong number.

I don’t know what kind of voodoo fuckery is at play here. I’ve stayed within calories pretty much every day, I’ve been to the pool five times. I did the spin class for God’s sake. I’ve attended meetings at work where the free cookies went uneaten and I didn’t even begrudge walking away from them because I felt skinny, right up to the moment where my toe confidently nudged the Shitbird awake yesterday morning. The number it spat out threw shade over all my effort, and I had a massive strop.

And of course, look who’s woken up…the Asshole voice has been chirruping in my earhole ever since.

Look, Dee, your body’s obviously telling you that it needs a break, that’s why you’re not losing any weight. You’re going on holiday in just a few short days…why don’t you take your foot off the gas and give your body the break from dieting that it so clearly needs. You can start again when you get back, and I bet the weight will practically fall off of its own accord because you’ll be so rested and ready to give it everything you’ve got…

It’s so fucking hard not to be influenced by that voice especially when the words are falling onto such fertile ground. You have no idea how much I want to say fuck it and log out of My Fitness Pal without a backward glance. I want to stamp my foot like a stroppy child and head to the deli tomorrow instead of taking a carefully calorie-controlled lunch to work. More than that, I want to cruise around Italy next week drinking my own body weight in gin cocktails and sampling every fucking morsel of food that the army of chefs on board want to throw at me.

You’ve been through the mill Dee. You’ve lost Elsie and you’re still grieving. You’ve had surgery and you’ve had more than your fair share of stress with your mum being ill. If anybody ever deserved a break it’s you. You deserve this holiday. And it doesn’t even really count if your food plan goes a bit off the rails, I mean it’s not like you’re sitting in an armchair and having a binge, is it? You’d just be doing what normal people do on holiday which is eating a bit too much and drinking a bit too much. Just allow yourself that for God’s sake…

On Saturday, I went shopping for new shoes. I remember savouring the feeling of how easy it was to bend down and fasten the straps as I tried to decide which ones to buy, I mean less than two years ago I couldn’t even reach my feet. In the end, I bought three pairs of shoes and a bunch of other stuff, and I justified it all as a treat to myself for making it through a shit summer and keeping my head in the game.

And yet, not twenty four hours later that fucking scale tipped me headlong into a shitstorm by making me feel fat. I argued back and forth with my own head all day yesterday ’till in the end I was even boring myself.

It’s a rollercoaster isn’t it? Yesterday I stayed within calories, went for a good walk and I swam for an hour. Today I’m going to do the same. One foot in front of the other, and repeat, right?  I’m so excited about my forthcoming trip and I do deserve to go away and have a brilliant time. But I’m feeling wobbly, and the Asshole Voice is at his most persuasive.

I need to tread very carefully, that’s all.

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