Tag Archives: control

Slowly Slowly Catchee Monkey…

In the here & now, , , ,

impatience

So I had a bulging mailbag on Friday following my post about getting stuck on the same number, and as with all things diet-related there’s safety in numbers. It was a massive comfort to know it’s not just me, you know? Although I’ve got to say, some of the posse are blessed with far more patience than me. For two weeks now my number hasn’t moved, and I think that’s bad…one of our lot has just four pounds left to lose after shedding almost a hundred, and her number hasn’t budged for five weeks. Christ on a bike, I’d be a basket case if the needle hadn’t moved after five weeks.

Nobody mentions the patience needed in this game do they? Determination, yes…willpower, yes…motivation, yes that too. All those qualities get bandied about as the cornerstone of dieting success and when I’m in the sweet spot I have all of those in abundance. Patience, not so much so. Impatience is one of my things in fact. I honestly think it came free with my vagina in sort of a buy one get one free kind of deal…I’m just not very good at waiting. For anything.

And the thing is, it’s when impatience turns to frustration that my Asshole voice sits up and starts rattling his chains. I’m dangerously close to the edge, so I spent a chunk of time this weekend scouring the world wide web for as many perspectives on weight-loss plateaus as possible. I figured if I can at least understand why my needle isn’t moving, it might help.

According to her website, Jillian Michaels (who I’ve often observed from the comfort of my big fat leather recliner whooping ass on The Biggest Loser as I vaporised a family bag of cheese balls) reckons that a weight loss plateau will typically last for around three weeks. Which made me feel a bit better, I mean she’s da man, right? Professor of making fat folk fit strong and skinny. Except then she went on to say that in her experience, a plateau usually means that you’re not paying enough attention to what you’re doing.

Which pissed me off a bit, I’m not going to lie. It kind of feels like she’s saying I’m not trying hard enough, but I shit you not I am consumed with trying. I have never worked this hard in my entire life. Mainly down to the fact that Cuba and its mountain range is now less than four months away and I’ve still got the equivalent of two arses inside my pants.

I’ll give you yesterday morning as an example…I went for the double whammy again, circuit training followed by boxing. Three quarters of the way through the circuit training as I got to the second set of one of the kettle bell exercises that nearly wipes me out, I was so tempted to feign some kind of cardiac arrest to get out of doing it. My shoulder was hurting, my chest felt like it was going to explode and it took every bit of backbone I could summon to keep going. But I did keep going. I turn up and work hard every day…trust me, even if I wasn’t a fully-paid-up wuss I couldn’t work any harder than I am.

But I did take a long hard look at what I’m eating, just in case. And looking back over three weeks’ worth of food plans, although I’m following the principles that God of Pain outlined and I’m eating within points, I have to admit it’s a bit samey. I’m sticking to the same things, at roughly the same time of day. There’s a definite order, which is something I’ve worked really hard to achieve because it goes against my nature, but it seems that routine in what you eat is a no-no.

Loads of you told me about switching up my food budget for a couple days and then reducing my points back down – apparently it’s a thing, and Jillian Michaels offers the same advice. So I’m going to give that a whirl this week. I’m also going to drink more water…yeah, that old chestnut. I know I always say that, but in practice I seem to run out of steam after a day or two, and I find myself back in the place where I really only actually drink water whilst I’m in the fitness studio sweating my cahoonies off. Outside of that, I don’t touch it, even though I know I should.

So this week I’m going to drink like a camel, and fool my body with an eating plan that is less predictable. Whatever not takes, right? I refuse to be passive whilst the bitch in the bathroom decides whether she’ll grant me a lower number. I hold the power, not her and I’ve so got this 🙂

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A Wise Man Once Said…

In the here & now, , , ,

believe

…whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you’re right.

I think we have Henry Ford to thank for that nugget of wisdom, and it’s one of my favourite ever quotes. I admire its simplicity, and yet it’s really clever. And there’s no doubt about it, the level of self-belief that you carry in your head is 100% responsible for your ability to keep both feet planted squarely in the middle of the dieting sweet spot. Or not.

Isn’t it funny, I don’t remember anything remarkable about the day this all began. I mean obviously I knew that the time was right – it was the first Monday after my holiday. Time for the post-holiday diet. And I suspect because the holiday had been both awesome and agonising in equal measure due to the fact that I weighed as much as a moose, I felt a tiny bit more determined than I had on other Mondays which had come and gone whilst my arse continued to party.

And it somehow felt a bit different. From day one, there was a conviction which came out of nowhere and said to me this time is IT, although I couldn’t immediately put my finger on why this time was going to be different to any of the other times. Starting a diet wasn’t an unknown concept to me if you remember, and to be fair all of them started with 100% commitment. Trouble is, they usually managed to limp across the line of Thursday at best, and by Friday I was usually promising myself faithfully that I’d start again on Monday which meant a power-eating free-for-all over the weekend.

It’s like my commitment bucket had holes in the bottom you know? And I recognised that. I knew that no matter how many hopes and dreams or how much determination I poured into the top, my resolve had a habit of disappearing out of the bottom like sand through my fingers before I’d even got going. I realised that I needed to find a way to patch the holes up. And then you lot happened.

By some miracle I made it to the Saturday. I don’t remember many conversations with the Asshole voice in that first week, it’s like I got a head start, you know? Maybe someone was rooting for me…who knows. But on the Saturday…well, that’s when I started writing. And a little while after that, you started writing back to me, and we’ve been talking ever since.

It’s a beautiful thing. Whenever I’ve had wobbles, you’ve propped me up. When you’ve had wobbles you’ve dipped in and pulled out whatever you need from the posts or the wise old owls who hang out in here. Writing all my thoughts down shines a light on the holes in my bucket, and between us all we’re busy patching them up.

When I started, I thought I could do this. I still think I can. And I’m right 🙂

 

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Don’t Forget The Sausages…

In the here & now, , , ,

image

So I’d obviously given serious thought to the ways in which I could avoid getting sucked into the naughty corner at the spring fair that we’ve been to today. One strategy I flirted with was avoiding the food hall altogether but as I left home yesterday my boy’s parting words were mum don’t forget the sausages…kind of ruled out that option, right? One of the stalls which comes every year sells speciality sausages, and they are heaven on a plate. And trust me when I say my boy knows his way around a sausage…he’s never actually been to this event but he looks forward to it as much as I do and I guarantee he’ll have his nose in my bag of booty faster than a ferret up a trouser leg as soon as I get home on Sunday.

So, my number one strategy for a no samples consumed shopping experience was ruled out before I set a foot out of doors, although as I laid in bed last night and thought about it I decided that was actually a good thing, you know? I wanted to be able to look back and feel proud that I’d faced down the Asshole voice and resisted every single temptation, instead of wimping out altogether. Mind you, at the time I was basking in the afterglow of a big glass of red which always adds a touch of bravado to my thought process.

Let me try and set the scene…did you ever watch that episode of Friends, where Joey tried to make ends meet by taking a job in a big department store, and he was in competition with another bloke to see who could spray the most people with scent in the hope that they’d be the one to sell the most..? Right, well it’s exactly the same as that. Every three steps, someone materialises right in front of you with a bit of cheese on a stick, or a tray of bite-size brownies, and waves them under your nose in the hope that you’ll visit their counter and fill your boots with whatever they’re selling.

It’s what every fat girl imagines heaven would be like.  Times gone by I’m not gonna lie, we’ve probably done two or three circuits. Can you remember where that chilli-infused oil vendor was? No..? Neither can I, we’d best go around again. Oh, you’d like me to try that..? Certainly. They didn’t even make it a challenge, you know…no ‘one sample per customer’ rule in this food hall, we didn’t even have to try and look different second time around. Let’s swap scarves, and I’ll put your glasses on, I’m going in for more Camembert…

So if you’re dieting, it’s carnage. And, all joking aside, it’s hard. It’s hard not to feel resentful that you can’t just face plant into everything and do your best impression of a food hoover which is what you desperately want to do. Well, it’s what I desperately wanted to do.

I guess what helped me get to grips with the Asshole voice today was…well, there were a couple of things actually. Visualising my encounter with the bitch in the bathroom when I get home tomorrow was the first one. Tomorrow’s Sunday…weigh day. No getting away from that, right? No week stretching ahead of me where I can be extra good and unpick any collateral damage before I step on board…today was it, day seven of my dieting week. 

And also, my friend had checked ahead of time what I could eat, and had gone to a lot of trouble making sure she’d organised food to fit my diet…pushing two of everything into my face as we walked around the food hall would have totally disrespected her thoughtfulness, and I wouldn’t do that. So, Houston it turned out there was no problem here after all.

I had saved half my additional weekly smart points, so I had a bit of naughty in the bank. I know these vendors like the back of my hand, I mean come on, I’ve broken bread (or fudge or cake or cheese or sausages) with all of them over the seven or so years that my friend and I have been going. I was able to select my favourite thing ahead of time. There’s a bloke who makes brownies, and without question his white chocolate and raspberry brownies are the most amazing brownies in the world. They are the rock star of the brownie kingdom, and one of them is sitting on a plate in my friend’s kitchen right now with my name on.

No samples, but one treat, within budget and much anticipated all day…it’s going to taste even better than I remembered because it won’t hit a jaded palate. I haven’t assailed my senses throughout the day with all kinds of wonderful. I’ve sampled everything with my eyes, and nothing with my mouth…I’ve had a lovely day and yes of course I still wish I could have dived headlong into all of it. But I didn’t, and I’m feeling strong. Happy.

Most of all I cannot wait to wrap my chops around that brownie ?

 

 

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Different, And Yet The Same.

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quote

I was doing a bit of mooching about on-line last night, and I think I’ve mentioned before haven’t I, about how I love the website StumbleUpon? For folk like me who are interested in stuff, but who have the attention span of a gnat, it’s perfect. There are literally squillions of soundbites of things that might end up being interesting and which you can explore further if you want to, but similarly you can just keep clicking past the things which don’t grab your attention straight away. It could have been built for me.

One of the pages that I lingered over yesterday was in the section about eating disorders, and it contained quotes from people who are living with Anorexia. In recent years I’ve actively sought to understand eating disorders in the context of my own broken relationship with food, and whilst I’ve never felt like I could relate to people who rejected food, I’ve probably got more of an understanding about this illness than I had in the past.

I’m ashamed to admit that growing up as a fat child, in a very naive way, my lack of real understanding meant I was just desperate to catch it. I mean, I didn’t want to be poorly as such, I just wanted the getting thin bit. I used to think if I could somehow catch it until I could wear a pair of hot pants, and then not have it any more, I’d look like all the hot girls I saw in magazines. I was never in any real danger you understand, because becoming anorexic would have required me to stop eating, and that was never on the cards.

I was even fascinated by some of the hard-to-look-at pictures of people who had it. Not because I wanted to look like that, but I used to look at them and think about how much those painfully thin people would be able to eat without getting called greedy. What I never understood in the days way, way before I acknowledged and separated out the Asshole voice in my head, was that they’d lost control of their perspective in the same way that I lost control of mine years later, but at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Just listen to some of the words though. They really got to me.

The word fat assumed a meaning as deadly as cancer. Getting fat was worse than losing your job, worse than being jilted at the altar, worse than living in a trailer park and growing up without shoes. You need to start watching yourself, my Mom said, before it’s too late.

I mean..wow. That’s some serious conditioning about the perils of having a body shape that doesn’t confirm to the norm. I’m sure this young girl’s mum was doing the best she could, and it sounds like she was maybe trying to correct an unhealthy eating pattern with the right intentions, but the fuck-up fairy definitely had a hand in the way that message landed.

People don’t see me. No one sees me. It’s like being fat. No one takes you seriously. You just don’t exist – you’re so big, you’re not even there.

That’s another very profound observation. I remember mentioning in a really early post that sometimes the bigger you are, the more invisible you feel. I’m quite a gregarious character when I’m in the mood to be and I’ve never been one to fade into the background, but some people just have a way of looking at you like they’re looking through you, you know?

At my heaviest I noticed that, a lot. They know you’re speaking but they obviously make some kind of snap assessment which tells them you have nothing to say that they might be remotely interested in, so whatever you say is just white noise. You’re not heard.

You will be tempted quite frequently, and you will have to choose whether you will enjoy your self hugely in the twenty minutes or so that you will be consuming the excess calories, or whether you will dislike yourself cordially for two or three days, for your lack of willpower.

That’s a bit of a leveller, isn’t it? That’s not just anorexia…anyone who’s ever been driven by an urge to use food for all the wrong reasons would identify with that, me included.

What I find difficult to process, is that some of the broken thinking is the same, and yet. If you’re starving yourself half to death and you’re diagnosed with Anorexia, you’re regarded as sick and there’s help, and protocols, and understanding. It’s an illness.

If you’re overeating to the point where your own body is consuming you bit by bit, the vast majority of folk would just write you off as being really fat. Get over yourself, stop eating all the pies, like it’s that simple.

That feels a bit harsh, to be fair. What do you think?

 

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Leftovers..? All Yours Sweetheart.

In the here & now, , , , ,

leftovers

Depending on what time I’ve hauled my sorry ass out of bed on Boxing Day in the past has largely dictated whether I’ve woken up thinking about leftovers, or smelling them. I think it’s fair to say that both my son and I are fully-paid-up card-carrying members of the leftover Christmas food fan club, in fact I might even go as far as to say that between us we’ve probably regarded it as the highlight of Boxing Day.

I can recall more occasions than I’m comfortable admitting to where we’ve pitted our wits against each other in the ‘who gets to the leftover pigs in blankets first’ race, and I’m here to tell you that the sound of the microwave being activated downstairs in the kitchen on Boxing Day morning has historically invoked the kind of reaction that alarm clock manufacturers the world over could only dream about. You see, whoever gets to the tupperware first is in charge of allocation…otherwise known as who gets what. And if that’s not you, damn straight you’d better get there and supervise, so you get your fair share.

So, when my son found out that he had to work on Boxing Day this year, as you might imagine, he was more than a little bit pissed off. To be fair, he wasn’t worried about working as such, I mean why would he…there’s no contractual obligation to work so it’s triple time thank you very much. But jockeying for space with the dollar signs in his eyes was the vision of coming home to pillaged tupperware containing a stringy bit of turkey and the odd unwanted sprout. He was worried that I’d eat Boxing Day whilst his back was turned.

As we were bidding our respective goodnights last night before heading for bed I casually threw it out there that I wasn’t eating any leftovers this year…his face was a picture. The sort of face, I imagine, that you might see on a lottery winner, as the implication of picking those numbers sinks in…well, something close anyway. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ll definitely join in with the turkey, that’s fine…but the crunchy butter-rich sage and onion stuffing balls, the leftover roasties and the crisped up pigs in blankets are all his this year. Although it near kills me to say it, they were yesterday’s treat.

You probably don’t need me to tell you that the asshole in my mind has almost combusted himself into an early grave by jumping up and down trying to change my mind. They’re behind me in the fridge as we speak, and they flirt with me every time I open the fridge door. On a scale of 1-10 I want them to the tune of at least 15, but I’m thinking instead about that size 22 top that I pledged my allegiance to when I got back from Vegas…I remain determined to fit into it on 1st January.

I can’t have both. And one is more important than the other…so I picked that one. And whilst the chatter from the tupperware tubs is driving me bat-shit crazy, I’m happy with my choice.

Today, Boxing Day or not, is the start of a new dieting week. I’m remembering how I worked out a plan to see me through our trip to Dublin, and Christmas, and I’m way beyond proud that I managed to stick to it…I’ve had to dig deep, but I’ve done it and trust me when I say if I could bottle this feeling and sell it, I could retire on the proceeds. And you know what else..? I’m 3lbs down since my last check-in with the bitch in the bathroom.

Epic 🙂

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