Tag Archives: blowing the budget

Pressing Pause

In the here & now, , , , ,

pause

On my commute into work this morning I was kind of half listening to something on the radio in between pondering my ‘to do’ list and trying to ignore the Asshole voice who was busy trying to persuade me that 7.15am would be a good time to eat my lunch, which was on the passenger seat behind me.

My ears were tuning in and out of the radio intermittently, and I caught the tail end of something which sounded interesting enough to prompt me to reach for the remote control so I could rewind it…duh, I immediately realised of course that the car radio doesn’t come with that option. How annoying. I could go on iPlayer at some point I suppose, but the moment has kind of passed and I can’t even remember now what it was I thought I’d heard.

I’m just so used to being able to pause the TV, or rewind and re-listen when my ears have been multi-tasking and I’ve lost the plotline, you know? I don’t know however we used to manage before that sort of technology existed… I love the way that everything can fit around me, rather than the other way around.

A good friend of mine takes that approach to her diet. She knows she needs to lose weight, and she really wants to, but her diet gets paused every time something more interesting comes along. She has the ability to just step in and out of it at will, and I’m beyond envious of her ability to do that. No way could I ever make that work for me, with my default all-or-nothing psyche.

I almost feel like I’ve paused everything else, to focus on this, you know? It just feels more important than anything else I could be doing right now. It’s my time.

My friend and I both have plans this weekend…she’s having a weekend away with a bunch of friends, and then immediately setting off on holiday for a week. Once I’ve finished writing this I’m heading up to spend the weekend with one of my besties. It’s the spring version of the craft and foodie fair that I’ve mentioned before, so I’m going to be bombarded with temptations at every turn.

I’m busy thinking about strategies to stay on the straight and narrow, where my friend can hardly wait to hit stop on her working week and throw caution to the wind so she can dive into the prosecco and hand the flight controls over to her Asshole voice…she knows he’ll probably crack on and do his worst, and she’s kind of okay with that. When she gets back from holiday, she’ll un-pause her food plan and get right back on track.

I wish I could press pause this weekend…I’d sell my granny to be able to sashay around the food hall accepting samples of whatever anyone wanted to give me like I have in the past. There will be cheeses and oils, and artisan breads begging to be dipped. Cupcakes and fudge and a hundred different flavours of cookie, and that’s before we’ve even gotten started with the cookery demonstrations. I’m going to be all kinds of torn.

The thing is, if I were to press pause, it’d be pretty much game over. Fact. Not a cat in hell’s chance of me waking up on Monday with the Asshole willing to relinquish control and move back to the jump seat…I know that. I’m just going to have to say no, and mean it. Not the kind of no which really means yes. The kind where the word no comes out of my mouth and passes a piece of fudge on its way in. Short of having my jaws wired together, willpower is my only option.

I’ve bought sugar-free chewing gum so I can fill my sinuses with peppermint to combat all the awesome smells. I’ve promised myself a really nice piece of jewellery in exchange for not allowing the Asshole to talk me into anything, and I know I’ll have to ‘fess up to you guys if the wheels come off.

I think I’ve got all bases covered, dammit 🙂

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Everything I’m Not

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eyes-belly

I woke up with a familiar sickly feeling this morning, and I have to say it served as a sharp reminder about both how far I’ve come, and how far I still have to travel on this journey to Skinny Town. It’s my own fault for handing over the control of all food-related decisions to the Asshole voice after I got in from work yesterday…he was on form, as always and I can’t even pretend that I put up a fight.

I’d been very organized before I left in the morning, throwing liver and onions in the crock-pot to slow cook all day, so by the time I got home there was a divine smell. My boy, who would rather stick pins in his eyes than go anywhere near liver and onions threw a dirty look at the crock pot and fixed himself a pizza. Obviously I wasn’t going to fall out with that…more for me, right?

So I’d worked out the Smart Points value in the morning and there was only ten in the whole thing. Which to be fair would have comfortably fed three people…three normal people. People who didn’t eat as though their food supply was about to be turned off for a month. My eyes lit up like a Christmas tree when I lifted the lid.

The Asshole voice was all over it. There’s only ten points in the whole thing so you’ve got more than enough to cover it. And it’s liver…you can’t re-heat liver and it’s too awesome to go to waste. Yes, I know the dog’s almost having a heart attack trying to let you know he’d be happy to share but it’ll give him gas and then we’ll ALL suffer. You can manage that, come on you’re hardcore! It’s only ten points!!

I’ve got to admit, it was a challenge fitting it all on the plate, along with the mountain of vegetables, but purleease…as a fat girl who’s built many a salad bowl in a dish the size of a thimble at pizza hut over the years, I know how to build a plate so nothing escapes. And I ate it…all of it. It was only ten points at the end of the day.

I was fit to pop, so stopping there might have been a smart move, right? Ahhh…isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing. I just fancied something to finish with, and there he was again. Yes I know it’s true that you’re practically about to burst, but chocolate cherries hardly take up any space at all, and you’ve got eight points left! You can’t keep them in the bank, use them or lose them, you know the rules…

So I ate eight points’ worth of chocolate covered cherries.

Then, having got the taste for them I finished the bag using exercise points accrued and some of my additional weekly points for good measure. The last three that I put in my mouth took some effort…I was starting to feel a bit sick to be honest. And yet. I had points to cover them, and I was on one.

This morning when I woke up, I knew I’d over-stepped the boundary. I just felt bilious and that familiar prickle of guilt was there, even though technically I was within points, if you don’t mind a bit of creative accounting. But I wasn’t within normal. Normal folk wouldn’t have done that.

For some reason, I was thought about my Grandma. I have no idea why, but something she used to say started rattling around in my head. Don’t apologise for the things that you’re not…instead, shout about the things that you are. Okay then.

I AM A MUPPET.

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Walking On Solid Ground

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walking

I made it! It’s Friday and I’m anticipating no challenges today. I say that because honestly, Monday to Thursday this week have felt like one long obstacle course and I’m grateful to have skidded sideways into Friday unscathed.

Well, I say unscathed…the cheese and pickle sandwich and fries that I ate at lunchtime yesterday did not support my cause in any way whatsoever but the lightning speed with which my hands reached out and flung them on my plate from the buffet lunch didn’t leave me much time to open the I’m not doing this dialogue with my asshole voice. Once my jaws are engaged in the business of chewing I tend to find that my argument loses a degree or two of momentum you know?

And I’d love to be able to tell you that once I got home last night, I wore a hair shirt for the rest of the day and didn’t compound my indiscretion with any further whoopsies, but that wouldn’t be strictly true either.

So my super-turbo-charged week has one or two dinks in it, including a deep dive into those weekly additional smart points that I wasn’t going to touch, but you know what, I’m still in the game…I have no plans whatsoever for the Bank Holiday weekend, so me and Charlie dog are going to get some lovely long walks in, I’ve got two full days of clean eating left before my Sunday sulk-off with the bitch in the bathroom and I’m gathering up what’s left of my dieting week and going for it, big time.

And if the cheese and pickle sandwich catches up with me I’ll take it on the chin and move my three pound challenge to next week instead.

Blimey…there’s a statement. Can you even imagine me saying that six months ago..? My position in the sweet spot felt incredibly fragile back then. I was terrified that something was going to come along and knock me sideways, back into a world where the short-term need to feed my face trumped any longer-term thinking, not to mention hopes and dreams. And don’t get me wrong, I’m a long way from complacent but honestly, seven months into the journey and I feel like the ground under my feet is a little more solid, you know?

So I stumbled a bit yesterday, and made a not-so-sensible choice. So what? I’m within points by the skin of my teeth but I’m not sitting here with my head in my hands mourning the end of another diet. It tasted awesome, but I’m not craving another one and it hasn’t changed anything. My resolve and determination is as sound as it was before the sharpness of that cheese sandwich exploded onto my tongue, and nothing is spoiled.

I can only think that all the work we’ve done together on unpicking the spaghetti inside my head has started to pay dividends, and I’m one step removed from the twisted way I used to think about food. You know what I’m talking about…I’ve been less than perfect therefore I’ve blown it, I might as well call it a day right now. Today, that thought hasn’t even entered my head.

I’m acutely aware that it used to and I kind of half-anticipated that it might, but as I opened my eyes this morning and mentally patted myself down, I was relieved to note that all my dieting ducks were in a row, and the asshole voice wasn’t even trying to overcomplicate the situation.

Doesn’t that make a refreshing change 🙂

 

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Starting The Week Off Wrong

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crap

For those of you that have been following the blog for a while, you’ve probably started to get the measure of me, right? You’ll know that I’m a perfectionist whose buttons get well and truly pushed when something’s not exactly as I want it to be. And this week has got right up my nose. I think, because it started badly.

I felt wrong-footed, if you know what I mean. Normally, I unpack every shiny new Weight Watchers week with reverence, sort of take it out of the box on a Sunday morning after my encounter with the bitch in the bathroom and admire its shiny newness. I get excited about the way I might spend my points, in the way that we all feel just after payday when the coffers are replenished and we can stop flirting with the overdraft.

When I actually used to go to fat class instead of the on-line programme that I’m doing now, I was never one of the ones who sprinted out of the Weight Watchers meeting and headed directly to the chippy. There were plenty of folk who used to do that, they even had a look-out system going in case the leader drove past on her way home and saw them all inside. Like she didn’t know.

These were the same folk who queued up for a wee immediately before weigh-in to make sure they weren’t carrying a single ounce about their person that could be shed before standing on the scales. But when it came to their chippy tea immediately after class, well they had a whole week to get rid of the evidence you know?

Me, I sort of do it the other way around. I like knowing that I’ve got points in the bank so to speak. I can draw on them if I need to but I’ll eke them out as long as possible so I don’t ever feel cornered by the realisation that I can’t have whatever no matter how badly I want it because I’ve got nothing left to buy it with. It’s kind of damage limitation, because if I’m points poor, the cravings are ten times more powerful when they hit.

I’m exactly the same with money. I spend far more in week three or four of the month than I ever do in week one or two, so I don’t have the stress of worrying that I might run out…I like to get a couple of weeks in, see how the month’s shaping up you know? If the shit hasn’t hit the fan by week three I might indulge in a little retail therapy.

This week, my throw-caution-to-the-wind-because-the-bitch-upset-me-again decision to eat a family bag of Maltesers on day one of my shiny new week put a serious hole in the number of extra weekly points I’m allowed and I’ve had to dance around every other single tasty morsel this week giving extra care to how I spent my smart points.

Because I started the week off wrong by front-loading my food budget, it’s like my worst case scenario has played on a loop all week. I fancy a bit of that – how many points – really that many? – can’t afford it – can’t have it then – want it though – forget about it – REALLY want it now, AARGH! I’m sure you know exactly what I mean.

Still. Just because the week had a bad start doesn’t mean it has to have a bad finish, right? I’ve reached Friday night with one weekly point remaining in the bank, my daily points still nailed on and a shiny new week waiting for me on Sunday morning.

I have a friend coming over tomorrow night for a hot tub and a long-awaited catch-up, and I’ll need to steer clear of the prosecco, which is where my weekly points should have been spent…but I can’t spend them twice so I’ll just have to suck it up and learn another one of these thorny little lessons.

They all move us forward, right?

ps…we have a brand new guest post today courtesy of Autumn…she tells her story beautifully, and you can check it out HERE. I made a new page to host our Guest Spot archives too, it seems a shame to rub them out!

 

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My Big Fat Skinny Christmas

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santa

You know when my boy was little, like parents everywhere I used to get so giddy on Christmas Eve, and those few days over the Christmas period were precious. There’s nothing quite as magical as a little person who believes so completely in Santa Claus. I’m not saying I don’t enjoy Christmas now, of course I do but it’s different. Our family is small, just me and my son, and my mum…to be honest, apart from entertaining the Queen in our living room, Christmas day is just like a normal Sunday with a bit of tinsel thrown in for good measure.

I miss the build-up, you know? Writing letters to Santa, that really fizzy feeling on Christmas Eve…the little traditions we’d created as a family, like always saving sparklers from bonfire night so we could light up the sky to show Santa where we lived, and going to bed in new pyjamas on Christmas Eve. So many special memories. My all time favourite Christmas memory is from the year that my boy really got the Santa Claus thing for the first time, I think it was probably the Christmas before his third birthday and he was so excited.

Having bought and decorated the tree, I was doing that thing where you have a slight re-ordering of the baubles after the kids have gone to bed, since most of them were at three-year-old height and it was a bit sparse at the top. It seemed a bit wobbly, so I went out into the garden to find a really big rock to prop against the base, you know just to steady it a bit. It looked odd, so I wrapped it in Christmas paper…perfect. Except the next morning I found my boy, surrounded by torn bits of Christmas paper with big fat tears rolling down his cheeks, looking at the rock…but Mummy, I asked Santa for a train set…

So these days, it’s mainly about the Christmas dinner, and laughing a lot. My skinny strategy this time has been all about saving points so I could take my foot off a bit, just for today. I did a massive food shop yesterday even though I’m feeding just three of us but the one item conspicuous by it’s absence this year was the Christmas pudding…I didn’t buy one. And because I didn’t, there was no Baileys fresh cream or rum sauce either. I’m the only one who really likes it, and therefore the one who eats it…all of it. You don’t want any..? Oh ok, well it won’t go to waste…and it never did. It went to waist instead…mine!

Chocolates…again, I didn’t buy any of the ones that I usually stuff my face with, like after eight mints, matchmakers, black magic…there are chocolates but nothing that I would cross the road for you know?

I’d like to say that I exercised same restraint with the rest of Christmas lunch…hell no did I chuff! Give me a break, I’m not made of wood…those points I’ve saved up were royally spent on goose-fat laden roasties, pigs in blankets, bread sauce and stuffing. Hallelujah it was glorious. I shall be in a food coma until the middle of next week.

And I survived! I made it work for me, and I don’t feel like I missed out 🙂

I hope wherever you are and whatever Christmas has brought for you, that you’ve made some awesome memories with your special people. Both of mine are snoozing on the sofa right now and I’m just about to go walk off some of those pigs in blankets with the enthusiastic assistance of my furry friend here…lots of love to all of you, and I’ll see you on the other side 🙂

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