Tag Archives: binge

Food, Shmood, Whatever!

Freeform thoughts, , , , ,

dream

One of the things that really fascinates me about people is that we’re all different. Each one of us is different in the way we look at the world as well as having different priorities, and different stuff which pushes our buttons. One of the things which intrigues me most of all is how people who are really different often get on incredibly well.

Take my friend for example. She’s one of my special people you know? We’ve been through a lot together over the last twenty-odd years. Our friendship is rooted in mutual affection and respect, although I guess that hardly needs calling out when I’m talking about a friendship which has lasted all this time. And yet, I think you’d struggle to find two more different people.

You know me, I’m an eternal optimist. I look at the world through can-do eyes, and I have an unwavering belief that everything will come good in the end. Looking back I’m not sure why I was blessed with such a sunny disposition, I just can’t remember a time when I didn’t have hope in my heart that even shit would eventually turn to gold if I hung in there long enough.

In the middle of whatever shit-storm has surrounded me, I’ve stubbornly refused to stray anywhere near why me? territory because I just don’t find that it helps. What I do instead, is blithely push through and hope for the best. I’ve always described myself as good in a crisis, and that’s fine and dandy in the moment, but I don’t always cut to the chase and deal with the pain or the fallout because I’m so busy focusing on the positive outcome which I’m sure  will materialize…eventually.

And God forbid I would need to ask anyone for help, I mean it’s just not something I do…I never have. So I emerge from the storm with a smile on my face, and life carries on but there’s often stuff which stays unresolved on the inside. In an indirect way I’m sure that’s contributed to the size of my arse, you know?

My friend’s approach is different. She would look you in the eye and tell you how strong I am, but in reality she’s the strong one. She’s not afraid to have a few why me? moments, but she’ll do it whilst she’s staring down whatever it is that’s causing her pain, and she deals with it there and then. It might take a while to come out the other side, but when she does, it’s resolved in a way that isn’t just skin deep, I mean it’s mended, not ignored.

So we’re like chalk and cheese, but very close non the less. Last time we were chatting we talked about how my diet and exercise regime was going, and reflected on how I’d been up and down the scale a gazillion times over all the years that we’d been friends, and how food had always been my Achilles heel. And then, my friend said something which sort of stopped me in my tracks.

I really only eat because I have to, I wouldn’t care if I never ate again.

HELLO?  I thought I knew about all the ways in which we’re different, but I never knew about that one! I couldn’t quite wrap my head around what she was saying, you know? I mean this is food we’re talking about. It’s the first thing I think about when I open my eyes in the morning, and on Sundays especially when I wake up to a brand new Weight Watchers’ week bursting at the seams with new Smart Points, I get really giddy at how my week is going to pan out and what food I’m going to be able to eat.

It preoccupies me, all the time. Even now I’m losing weight, in fact probably more so now I’m losing weight. My head, to one degree or another, is always overly invested in what I’m going to eat next, where it’s coming from, and how I can absolutely maximize the experience. And we all know by that  I mean how much I can fit on the plate whilst using as few smart points as possible so there’s scope for more  food later.

I suppose I’ve always known that not everyone is as preoccupied with eating stuff as I am, but it never occurred to me before that point that anyone, ever, would almost regard food as an nuisance…necessary to make the wheels go round but serving no purpose other than providing fuel for their body. I mean, it’s food! It tastes good!! What’s not to love?!!!

I can’t begin to understand it, but then I suppose some folk wouldn’t be able to imagine a world without wine, right? My friend is one of them, to be fair.

Me, I’d rather eat the grapes 🙂

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A Debt-Free Easter Monday

Reflections on past times, , ,

eggsI couldn’t help thinking as I came downstairs this Easter Monday morning to find no plundered Easter Egg boxes with I owe you notes hastily scribbled and stuck to the side, how different this year has been to many in the past. To be fair, my boy didn’t have any Easter Eggs this year – he’s not overly bothered by a desire to eat chocolate and I figured that not having any in the house was safer. He’s in his late twenties now so the fact that the Easter Bunny didn’t come calling isn’t going to send him to therapy in later life, you know?

When he was little I was in a particularly bad place where my relationship with food was concerned. I mean, I’d grown up as a fat child and my mum had regularly applied edible band-aids to anything that hurt me, so medicating with food was par for the course. However, in my very early twenties I found myself alone with a new baby having escaped from an abusive marriage, and at times it felt like food was my only companion.

We had a tiny family, even back then. Just the two of us and my mum, who lived nearby, and a handful of extended family who lived much further away. I had a bee in my Easter bonnet about my boy not ‘suffering’ from a lack of Easter eggs due to the fact that our family unit was so small, so I remember buying Easter Eggs for him from long-gone family members…here you go son, this one’s from your great grandma and that one’s from your old Uncle Donald…even I didn’t remember too much about Uncle Donald, who was my mum’s second-cousin-once-removed and who’d been pushing up daisies for a good twenty years before my boy was even born. And he must surely have wondered in his two or three or four-year-old little head who the hell all these relatives were, who sent Easter eggs but never came to visit.

So on Easter Sunday there was always an impressive array of chocolate eggs for my boy, hand delivered by the Easter Bunny. If I’m being completely honest, some of them were the second or even third replacement of the original purchase, depending on how many times I’d been caught in the grip of a binge in the month or so leading up to the big day. And lets not even get started on the post-Easter binges, which were all very well until he got the hang of sums. Then it became a bit more difficult to get away with. But I had four left Mummy and now there’s only three…

I became really adept at fashioning the fancy foil in an Easter Egg sort of shape and arranging them in their boxes on top of the dresser until I had chance to replace them, so he could count them not realising they were empty. And then when he was older, and sussed that out I’d scribble an I owe you, and promise two eggs to replace the one I’d accidentally eaten.

On the surface of it, it’s amusing. Except it’s not, not really…since when is it amusing to lie to your child, and steal from them..? I mean, I know it’s only chocolate but still. That’s the behaviour of an addict, right? I didn’t recognise it back in the day, it’s only now that I can look back retrospectively and feel that hot flush of shame when I realise how messed up it all was.

This year, there is no carnage, not a single creative foil sculpture, and no I owe you notes. Mind you, these days I’d be far more likely to get greeted by an infuriated man-child holding an empty box hollering I can’t believe you’ve eaten my fucking Easter egg again…a bit like me, he calls a spade a spade. But I’m here to tell you that waking up chocolate-debt free on the day after Easter is a good feeling 🙂

 

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Part Woman, Part Ostrich

Freeform thoughts, Reflections on past times, , , ,

ostrich

In the way that I often do when I’ve said something out loud – or written it on here which pretty much amounts to the same thing – I’ve been reflecting on something I referred to yesterday. Remember I talked about voicing my determination to stay skinny in between mouthfuls of cake..? It sounds so utterly ridiculous when I put it like that. But as much as I was being flippant yesterday in the interests of provoking a smile and a shared ‘eyes to the sky’ moment with you all, that’s literally what happened.

When I look back I can see myself walking away from Skinny Town, a place I loved and had worked so damned hard to get to. I was walking in the opposite direction without a backwards glance, sitting in my big fat leather armchair night after night with a family bag of cheese balls and a large carton of Haagen Dazs, having already eaten my way through the day. It’s all very well me looking back now and wanting to scream “what were you thinking?!!!” at myself…I don’t think I could answer that even if the Dalai Lama himself rocked up to help me find enlightenment. I wasn’t thinking – my head was empty. I mean yes of course, on a rational level I must have known that the wheels had come off but where I should have been having a word with myself…nothing.

I can’t seem to recall a single conscious thought about what I was doing and yet every day I watched myself get bigger and bigger. Discarding the skinny jeans in favour of elasticated waists and shapeless sweaters. I lived in the moment, and never thought about the pattern. The trajectory, you know? Where I was headed. From Skinny Town to Mooseville in one long straight run, stopping only to replenish the  supply of cake. You know what I think? I think it went beyond just not thinking about it…I think I made a conscious choice to ignore what I was doing to myself and stick my head in the sand. I was an Ostrich. And I’m struggling to understand why, I mean that’s not right is it…normal folk just wouldn’t do that. I mean, maybe they’d turn a blind eye to five pounds, or even ten pounds at a push. But one hundred and forty pounds…? No.

If someone had asked me why I wanted to put the weight back on, I would have looked at them as though they’d taken leave of their senses. I didn’t. And yet, I was.

You know I still don’t have all the answers, right? I know on here I come across as fairly well in control and self-aware, but it’s mainly because I’ve had some wonderful encouragement and feedback from you guys – I know you’re drawing inspiration here and there from the odd post, and the posse in general too which is amazing. I guess we’re all just figuring it all out as we go along. Getting skinny is a familiar journey – the unknown bit, the hardest part for me at least is going to be staying there. Pulling up the drawbridge and becoming a permanent resident of Skinny Town.

But you know, I thought it was worth talking about this today, because we’re all at different stages of this journey, and if just one of our posse is sitting in their armchair every night, walking away from Skinny Town without anyone there to hold the mirror up and yell WHAT ARE YOU THINKING..???  Well I’d feel like we’d let them down.

Please don’t be that person…don’t do what I did. Please.

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So How Full is Full?

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now, , ,

sk dog

It’s occurred to me more than once that maybe there’s a fundamental design fault with the human body you know? At least for some of us.  Take your car…it runs low on fuel, the fuel gauge tells you, you fill it up and when the fuel pump clicks, you know it’s full. You can’t squeeze more in, because it just takes what it takes. It doesn’t matter if you’d hoped to squeeze more in, if it’s full it’s full. You wouldn’t stand there and keep giving it large with the nozzle would you? No, of course you wouldn’t.

Now I don’t know about you, but somehow, no matter how much my head recognises that my belly is full, if I’m that way out and want to eat, I’ll find a way to eat. Case in point, Christmas dinner…you know that way where it’s just soooo good and there’s leftovers on the table winking at you and trying everything possible to attract your attention…eat me eat me eat me… you’ve already eaten everything on your plate, you’re stuffed more royally than the turkey ever was and you already suspect you’re going to need a winch to help you up from your chair.

And yet. That minxy little pig nestled in that crispy little blanket seduces you over the brussels sprouts and before you know it your jaws are off again. Your belly is already bursting, you look like you swallowed a beach ball and you’re bordering on a food coma and yet still you can’t resist.

My problem has always been that it isn’t just at Christmas…lots of people walk away from that special once-a-year dinner groaning and pledging not to eat for a week. Me included (although to be fair I’d usually only make it from the dining table as far as the sofa before I was in to the chocolates just because you know, it’s Christmas.) Trouble is, having grown up eating portions that wouldn’t have looked out of place at the top of Jack’s beanstalk, walking away from the table feeling fit to burst was almost the norm in our house.

Having survived the war years on ration coupons and food shortages,  my mum showed love by providing a constant stream of food…she loved to cook, and bake, and although there was only our small little family sitting down to eat, she may as well have been feeding the five thousand. There’d probably have been leftovers even then.  So her love of feeding her family combined with my love of feeding my face kind of created the perfect storm. My full-filter is broken, and I have no concept of what a normal portion looks like. I look at a TV dinner or a ready meal which might be labelled as a meal for one and think “are you kidding me..? “

It’s down to me now though – I get that. Eating till I’m not hungry is different from eating till I’m full, and I get that too. Eating till I’m overfull …I shouldn’t go there at all. There have been times in my life where I’ve felt overpowered by the desire to eat but equally there have been times when I’ve felt like I’m the one calling the shots, and right now I feel strong. In control…it feels good you know?

Even if I still look at a regular sized portion and think ‘great but where’s the rest of it…?!‘

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Feast or famine

In the here & now, Reflections on past times, , ,

yo-yo-dieting

Over the years I’ve probably tried every diet going. All the usual suspects – the ones where you rock up to fat class once a week, pay your subs and hop on the scales, then sit down for ‘the talk’ – some of them were quite good and the diets do work if you stick to them. The meal plans are flexible, it’s normal food, yadder yadder yadder…it’s just a bloody long slog when you have lots to lose.

And yes I know, I’m looking at it all wrong. The long game gets you into a healthy eating pattern, it’s habit forming, you learn about nutrition, get support…I get it. Only I never really did get it. I always got so far, then got stuck. Bored, impatient, call it whatever you like but sooner or later the asshole would get a lucky strike and BAM I’d come tumbling out of the naughty tree, hitting every branch on the way down. And that’d be it, goodnight Vienna, out of the game. Shackles off, bring on the buns.

Same thing with the other diets I’ve tried. I’ve existed on packs of space dust and hermetically sealed ping meals delivered to my door every week for weeks on end –  2 minutes in the microwave guaranteed to produce a tasty portion-controlled meal. Some of them were actually ok, but then considering I practically had to re-mortgage my house for portions that wouldn’t look out of place on the sodding yellow brick road, they ought to be.

Again with the boredom though…I rarely managed to see it through. The one thing I’ve never considered is weight loss surgery, because I recognise that the problem is 100% in my head. I’d be the one liquidising mars bars or finding new ways to drink fish and chips through a straw if my stomach was the size of a thimble.

Some of the diets I’ve tried have dipped into the psychology of weight loss – the liquid diet in particular came with a big element of homework and group therapy. I found it fascinating and it really did work. For a while. Mainly down to the speed of loss I think, I didn’t have time to be bored, in fact it was exhilarating. I wish I could do it again but I gag at the thought of that chalky soup now.

I guess where I’m going with this, is that despite understanding the concept of a balanced diet, the science of expending more energy than you take in if you want to lose weight and even the psychology behind identifying the triggers which set me off, I’ve spent practically my whole adult life either losing the weight, or putting it back on again. I’ve probably lost and gained around 1000lbs or more over the last 30 years. It seems knowledge isn’t power after all.

How many cycles of despair, followed by determination, hope, success, celebration, pride, self-destruct and back to despair can one girl go through in one lifetime? Lots – the answer is lots. When I hit that sweet spot, and I’m in the zone, life is good. When I’m not, I binge. For me, there’s never been a middle ground. I really want it to be different this time…to coin a phrase, I’m too old for this shit.

So anyway, just to manage your expectations…when I reach the end goal, if my victory dance is done with a donut in my left hand don’t be too surprised, and I hope you’re in this for the long haul because when I get to where I want to be, well that’s when I’m going to really going to need my support network to help me stay there 🙂

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