Tag Archives: blowing the budget

Walking On Quicksand

In the here & now, ,

You know when I was a little girl, I couldn’t imagine what quicksand was all about. Clear as anything, I remember the day my mum told me about it and I was fascinated by the concept that the ground beneath your feet could suck you down and swallow you whole. I had nightmares about it for weeks afterwards and I’m not kidding when I say it was years after that conversation before I set foot on a beach again, I mean there was no point in taking chances, right? As far as I was concerned, fat girls would sink quicker.

I don’t know for sure, but I imagine this is what it feels like, to walk on quicksand. With every step forward, it seems like I’m getting sucked further and further away from the next step forward after that. Wednesday was my day one, and it was going okay until I had a little wobble over a catered lunch. I pulled it back in the nick of time but dwelled on my semi-okay lunch all afternoon.

It turned out to be a really long day. I’d done no planning whatsoever, on account of getting back from my weekend away too late the day before. I figured I’d just wing it in a healthy way. Because I’m good at doing that…ah. That’s right, my bad…I’m not good at doing that. I knew it was one of those. Who the fuck am I kidding?

When I walked through the door after twelve hours and a long commute, off the back of a night with disturbed sleep listening for robbers, my resolve cracked into a million pieces and I fell headlong into the wrong kind of supper. You don’t need the detail, but it was a definite screw-up. I’d also missed my exercise class after getting stuck in traffic. I was tired and I was still freaking out about bad men in my back yard so I didn’t go swim either. In the space of an hour I pissed off the God of Pain, irked my boy and ate my bodyweight in crap.

However, I got up yesterday and had another stab at it. Even though I was tired and grumpy after yet another disturbed night, where between the hours of one and five sleep had eluded me in favour of having ears on high alert whilst Charlie-dog snored quietly right next to me. I ignored all that and threw myself into the business of day one. And last night when I got in I ate a healthy supper. Go me, right?

Wrong. I’d actually used up all my calories by mid-afternoon so technically no matter how healthy my supper was, I shouldn’t have been eating supper at all.

I’m acutely aware that I’m bouncing around all over the fucking place. But I’m trying to be forgiving of myself. I’ve had a massive shock and my defences are low on account of all this broken sleep. There’s no question that at the moment, my Asshole voice is ruling the roost.

I do have a plan. A friend of mine is coming to sort out my CCTV today, and install security lighting, service my burglar alarm system and fit additional locks to the back door. That will help me sleep more soundly in my bed. I’ve not wanted to leave the house un-guarded this week but I think all the additional security will encourage me to stop acting like a fucking drama queen. And stop eating the wrong kind of supper.

It’s been a funny old week. But today is day one, right? Let’s hope this one sticks…I’d love to meet day two tomorrow 🙂

 

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The New Enemy In Town

In the here & now, ,

Well I’m here to confirm that after eighty hours of being sugar-free (apart from my accidental hob-nob marshmallow) I’m surviving the experience and actually the sugar cravings haven’t been too bad. Except I woke up this morning thinking about cheese.

Now, I’m about to ‘fess up, and if me talking about food is likely to tip you over the edge you might want to look away now so you don’t get ambushed by my personal self-destruct button.

The reason I woke up thinking about cheese this morning is because yesterday I ate cheese. Actually, I ate a lot more than just cheese. I ate a dirty bacon sandwich when I arrived to meet my colleagues for a working day out of the office, and I’d already eaten breakfast before I left home so it wasn’t the best start…still, everyone else was having one and I hopped aboard the bacon train and joined in regardless.

To be fair, we did then go for a nice long walk around a country park to do a bit of open-air thinking and that might have mitigated the bacon a little bit, except when we got back to the hotel it was time for lunch. Lasagne probably wasn’t the healthiest choice on the lunch menu, especially combined with a side of skinny fries…I did tell her to hold the rocket, which might have saved me three calories. Maybe even four, at a push.

The lasagne was all kinds of awesome, with it’s bubbly cheese and béchamel sauce, all of which I can still taste if I close my eyes. But there was no sugar. Well, no sugar that I could see. Fat, yes. But no sugar. So technically it wasn’t a cheat, right?

I know. Don’t even say it. All the way home in the car I was trying to justify what I’d eaten on the basis that I didn’t have dessert. I tried to guesstimate the calories, and if I take our not-far-off-ten-thousand-steps walk into consideration, and the hour’s swim I put in last night I probably netted out somewhere near to neutral.

Except I can’t now stop thinking about fucking cheese.

I don’t allow myself melted bubbly cheese ever, because it’s definitely one of my trigger foods. As I’m finding out to my cost…there’s a new enemy in town. Sugar? Sugar who? Forget sugar, today I’m lusting after cheese. I’m still not entirely sure what sat behind my dodgy food-choices yesterday but it’s another example of me going off-piste and white knuckling my way through the week.

This too shall pass.

It’s my birthday today, not that I celebrate birthdays much any more. They seem to come and go at warp speed now I’m getting on a bit you know? Still, I’ve got an exciting weekend lined up…my bestie arrives this evening, I haven’t see her since we went to Italy in June and after taking mum out for lunch tomorrow we’re heading off to Krakow for a long weekend.

I’ll be staying away from sugar. I’m hoping that by the time we return my head will be more willing to help me take a straight run at the remaining six weeks of the year in a way which suggests I mean business…not before fucking time, right?

I’ll be back on Wednesday folks, have a great weekend 🙂

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This Body Will Self Destruct In Three…Two…One…

In the here & now, , ,

Fuck.

Fuckety Fuck.

Well that didn’t quite go as planned, did it? Don’t get me wrong, we’ve had a ball, in fact it’s probably one of my favourite cruise holidays ever. I’m more relaxed than I can remember being for a very long time, and that’s exactly what I needed . The problem is I appear to have returned home with an extra arse, and that definitely wasn’t part of the plan.

In the spirit of full disclosure, the week before I went away did not go well at all. I was on the diet, off the diet, desperately trying to keep my feet planted in that middle ground between between feast and famine, but failing miserably. The Asshole voice was the one I listened to most of the time, which is unfortunate given that he spent all week running his mouth about how I should allow myself to relax, and empty my mind of everything except having a good time. Do as I please, and start again when I got back…you know the score.

The thing is, it’s the message I wanted to hear. So my ears were on full alert and assisted in filtering out any kind of opposing argument. Without even putting up a fight, I leaped headlong into food fuckery, where I remained until yesterday. I became really good at swallowing down the voice of reason alongside whatever I happened to be shovelling into my gob at the time, and I conspired with myself to make sure there was no audible voice to prick my conscience.

I meant it when I said I’d start each day with a light breakfast. That was absolutely the plan. Execution of said plan however…well, that’s where it all went to shit. The day after we sailed, I justified my full English breakfast on the basis that it was Sunday. On Monday I justified it by promising myself I’d call it brunch and eat nothing else until dinner that night…yeh, well it doesn’t take a fucking rocket scientist to predict how that worked out, right? I was back in that buffet line as soon as it opened for the business of lunch.

And so the week went on. Matters weren’t helped by the presence of the gin bar on board the ship, which in no small measure contributed to the devil-may-care-but-I-don’t attitude which wormed it’s way into my psyche and formed the blueprint of our holiday.

I’m not a drinker, in fact I’ve barely had a drink since my last holiday in June. There’s been one prosecco-filled Saturday evening I think since then, but in the last week as we’ve kicked back and relaxed on the balcony I’ve sunk a bottle of rhubarb & ginger gin liqueur and a bottle of Baileys.

So. Yesterday. As I walked the green mile to the Shitbird Scale I could hear that bloke from the X-Factor and his overly dramatic music playing on a loop in my head. IT’S TIME. TO FACE. THE MUSIC…which brings me right back to where I started, at fuckety fucking fuck.

Eating like my life depended on it has been an exhilarating blessed relief from the daily grind of counting, measuring, weighing, worrying about what goes in my mouth. I wish I could live like that all the time, you know? In my head, that’s what paradise looks like. Maybe it’s one of the reasons I’ve enjoyed the week so much, right? And I can’t moan about the fact that I’ve put weight on. With every slug of Baileys and every petit-four with coffee after a six-course dinner, or every groaning buffet plate or full breakfast I threw open the door and ushered pound after pound into my pants. I’m not blaming the gin, or the Baileys or even the Asshole voice…me, I did it. And it was paradise, whilst it lasted.

It just can’t last any longer.

Yesterday wasn’t paradise, but it was my life and I was happy to slip back into it. I got up, got weighed, recorded it and went for a swim. I weighed, measured and counted. I shopped for the kind of food I eat, walked past the stuff I don’t eat and went about living the life I choose for the long term. Once I’ve dealt with the aftermath of living in paradise for a week or two, I’ll be grand.

It’s good to be home…how’ve y’all been? 🙂

 

 

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What Is This Thing Called Moderation?

In the here & now, ,

So most of my on-line shopping from the weekend landed today, and I spent a delicious hour after work opening bags and boxes, and trying stuff on for size. Happily everything fitted and I love it all, so although my credit card is severely winded and may take some time to catch its breath, fuck it, right? Life is short, and if I can’t eat the cake at least I can indulge myself in other ways. Although today I ate the cake too, which I appreciate is taking liberties.

I’ve got to be honest, it’s not been a great week where food has been concerned. I’d like to say I’m struggling but technically I’m not struggling. I’m just not behaving, which is a different thing altogether. I feel a bit out of control on a number of fronts actually…you don’t even want to know how much of a battering my finances have taken in the last week. I didn’t mean to go quite so wild, but this is me all over.

It all started when I got a voucher code through the post for 25% off one of the on-line clothes retailers that I’ve used before, and sniffing a bargain I went onto their website ‘just for a look’. Yeah well that didn’t end well did it….seeing nothing I fancied but with my shopping head on, I wandered onto my favourite clothes website and burned a bloody fortune. No discount voucher, and apparently no self-control either.

If there’s anything to be said for life as a very very fat lady, it’s this; it was cheaper. I mean sure, I used to spend a fortune on cheese balls but I hardly ever bought any new clothes. It would be fair to say I’m making up for lost time.

In the same way I go for ages being really good on my food plan before blowing my food budget in a spectacular fall from grace, I have a tendency to do the same thing with spending money and buying clothes. It’s a while since I bought anything outside my budget, but this weekend I behaved like fucking Rockefeller and almost melted my plastic.

Don’t get me wrong, I really love the stuff I’ve bought but I’m already feeling guilty at my lack of self control, and I’m dreading the sound of my card statement thudding onto the doormat. The postman may just get a hernia as he carries it to my door and the poor parcel man definitely did.

I think we’ve established that moderation is something I’m just not very good at. I’m okay at it for a while, and then BAM, all of a sudden I find myself careering off down the wrong path without any warning. It’s like I need the exhilaration of that ride, where in the moment, nothing matters except the adrenaline rush. What does that make me? A hedonist? Or maybe just a dickhead. I’m thinking that one.

However, I will be the best dressed dickhead in town. Every cloud…  🙂

 

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Running Out Of Noughts

In the here & now, ,

Well, I first of all have to say thank you to everyone who took the time to write to me after Friday’s post. As the day went on, my shoulders got squarer, and I definitely felt less guilty about the three bowls of pasta consumed by that lady which, according to y’all, were not my fault. You might remember a blog post back in the early days called The Sorry See-Saw. I was weighing down the heavy end again and watching all the sorry roll towards me when it really wasn’t my fault, but you lot are definitely my voice of reason.

I hope she doesn’t check out my Shitbird page this week, that’s all I can say. She’ll be apoplectic and probably chucking stuff at the screen if she does, because last week wasn’t pretty and of course it’s reflected in the number. I’d about got myself back in the zone by the end of the week but it’s all gone to shit again over the weekend.

I got a call in the early hours of Saturday morning to say mum was on her way to hospital, and I mean it was the full blue-flashing-lights job. She’s had a nasty chest infection over the last week which has seen her feeling a bit grim, but she took another tumble on Friday evening which shook her up and she was struggling to breathe. I shot out of bed as soon as I got the call, pulled my pants on – backwards as it turns out – and almost beat the ambulance to the ER.

We were there all night. She got admitted, and has been hooked up to oxygen and I.V. antibiotics ever since. She’s responding quite well, and thankfully the CAT scan ruled out anything sinister as a reason for yet another fall but they diagnosed pneumonia, and we all know how that can turn out when it grabs a hold of a frail octogenarian whose tank is already running on empty. She’s had a really crap few months.

When I finally headed home on Saturday after mum was settled and sleeping, the need to eat a mountain of crap was overwhelming. I drove home via the supermarket and all I could think about was going home to bed with a box of double caramel Magnums. The Asshole voice was screaming at me that things were too serious for just one box so I bought two and I ate the whole fucking lot in one sitting.

I headed back to the hospital later on, sat and held mum’s hand for a while then went and cleared my head with a swim before ordering Chinese food and eating till I almost popped.

Yesterday was supposed to be better, only it wasn’t. We spent time at the hospital with mum, and she seemed a little bit better, but she’s so tiny and frail in the midst of this big nosy ward. She’s very hard of hearing, and it’s a strange environment with no familiar faces so she’s scared and a bit confused and it’s heartbreaking leaving her there, but we’re not allowed to stay. Turning straight to my drug of choice seemed like the only way to get through the rest of the day and I pretty much ran out of noughts on the calculator when I tried to tot up the number of calories I’d consumed by the time I stopped eating. Shit.

Sundays are nearly always good days because they’re my ground zero, you know? The start of a new week and an opportunity to start a clean untainted sheet. Well, this week’s sheet already looks like the dog threw up on it, and it’s only minutes into Monday.

I’m going to try and reset again…it’s all I can do. My focus has to be on my mum, with a little bit left over for me. I’m going to try and find an hour somewhere in this day to take solace in the pool instead of the food cupboard. I just keep reminding myself that this too shall pass.

 

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