Tag Archives: determined

Going Forwards By Choice

In the here & now, , ,

So I must start with an apology for all those of you who follow my Shitbird page…I promised to update the page a day early on account of the fact that I was going to be away on Sunday, but I ran into a spot of bother on Friday evening when I caught two blokes dressed in black from head to toe and wearing balaclavas trying to break into my house whilst I was in it.

Thankfully I wasn’t here alone, my friend had arrived for our weekend away and actually she’s the one who heard the noise as they tried to force their way into the back of the house. They scarpered when they realised someone was home, and it’s a good job they did because in that moment, as I saw them through the glass in the back door and realised what was happening I was so fucking furious that anyone felt they had a right to try and batter their way into my house that I flung the door open and gave chase.

I know. It’s the very last thing I should have done, but apparently it appears I am more fight than flight. I’m not sure I’ve ever been tested before, but at least now I know, right? My bravado didn’t last long, and after the adrenaline stopped coursing through my veins, my whole body turned to jelly. I drank a stiff gin, ate a pizza then called the police, in that order.

It was awful, and I’m joking with y’all about it now but I was genuinely shaken. Then I got mad again, then I got upset. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go away and leave my boys home alone which is irrational since my son is almost thirty, stands six feet three inches in his socks and he’s as solid as a rock. If he’d been home at the time he’d likely have managed to grab at least one of them and I can’t vouch for how the would-be burglar might have fared. Being fat and fifty proved to be my undoing as they sprinted across the garden and vaulted the six-foot fence…I was never going to catch them. Thank God.

Anyway, all that to say it threw me off my stride. I slept a bit fitfully on Friday night, and it’s fair to say my head was up my arse on Saturday morning as I threw some things in a bag for our weekend away. We pressed on with our plans to take mum out for lunch before we left for the airport, but my head was preoccupied by visions of a band of robbers hiding behind every bush in the fucking garden waiting for me to leave the house. I completely forgot to weigh in, and I didn’t remember until halfway through Sunday that I hadn’t done it but by that time I was in Krakow, and the Shitbird scale wasn’t.

My eating has been horrible, all weekend. I propped myself up with sugar on Saturday, and whilst I’m not using what happened on Friday as an excuse – like I ever bloody needed one – I’ve had another long weekend of food carnage. In my defence, we have walked our socks off…we covered twenty miles on foot in the three days we’ve been away, which might have helped to counteract some of the food debauchery, but if I were a betting man I’d wager that I’ve continued to go in the wrong direction.

So I find myself standing at a crossroads. I can go backwards and continue to dick around until I’ve eaten myself right back to square one, or I can go forwards by getting my shit together and choosing the right path, the one with clean eating and no food abuse.

I know I have to reset. I’m choosing to go forwards. And as luck would have it, God of Pain texted me yesterday to ask when I was going back to start training again. I texted him back with the intention of saying I’m not sure but my fingers betrayed me and typed tomorrow…I’m coming back tomorrow. I don’t feel ready but I’ve gone and fucking said it out loud now. And maybe backing myself into a corner is just what I needed.

So that’s how come I find myself with my workout clothes laid out ready for a body pump class this evening, and my swimsuit laid next to them ready for an hour’s swim after that. Body pump because I promised God of Pain, and swimming because I promised my boy. I’ll enjoy the swimming, it’ll help to relax my screaming muscles…body pump is going to kill me.

It’s Wednesday 15th November, and today is a new day.

It’s day one. And it doesn’t even matter that it’s day one, again. I fell down, and I got up again. There’s no shame in that.

I’ll weigh in on Sunday. I’m not giving the Shitbird any opportunity to derail my new start. It’s too fragile and I’ve decided I’m the one in charge of my head today.

Hour by hour, right?

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D Is For Daydream

In the here & now, ,


I wish I had a reset button. It would be so much easier than trying to drag my head back into the right place by degrees. I’m kicking and screaming inside like a wayward toddler at the prospect of having to colour inside the lines again after a week or two off the leash and it doesn’t help that I feel as rough as toast, with a scratchy throat and a banging head. It’s like the Gods of Skinny have conspired to hand me an excuse that I can wheel out in case of emergency, you know? I can’t get back on the wagon yet, I’m poorly and we all know you should feed a cold and starve a fever…

Incidentally, I don’t have a cold and I don’t have a fever so technically, whatever bug I’ve picked up is diet neutral and feeling like death warmed up is therefore no excuse at all. Dammit. I need to get a grip and JFDI.

Isn’t it funny, how last week when I was playing fast and loose with whatever I could put in my mouth, my head was full of rash promises about what a paragon of virtue I was going to be as soon as my feet touched home soil. I was going to ace it, yessiree! Full steam ahead, no more messing. Nailed on, I mean guaranteed. With a slice of pizza in one hand and an ice-cream in the other, the prospect of behaving myself at some point in the future seemed incredibly straightforward, dare I even say simple..? It never is though, is it.

Since weigh-in on Sunday, despite this monumental inner tantrum I have stuck to my calorie budget, so that’s a good thing. I’ve eaten my exercise calories, which isn’t ideal but technically it’s allowed. I’m not sure that using all my food budget up by 3pm is the smartest way of budgeting but that’s what happened yesterday…I had to drink coffee for the rest of the day and go without dinner. It doesn’t break the rules per se, but I definitely think it falls under the heading of ‘muppet’. It’s not sustainable.

But I’m trying.

I’m trying to focus on cause and effect. I’m trying to re-embrace the diet and see skinny town in my future instead of resenting the fact that I can’t have what I want. Which, for the avoidance of doubt is ten thousand calories a day, no effort whatsoever on my part and a size twelve arse. It’s just not going to happen. I need to file that thought under D for daydream, and it can take its rightful place alongside my hopes of winning the Euro-millions, or getting carried off and ravished by Hugh Jackman ’till my eyes pop out.

*Sighs*….

I know somewhere in the core of me there’s a well of determination, tenacity and grit. I’m just having trouble getting at it, that’s all. Sooner or later, providing I keep sending the bucket down I’ll hit the right spot and find a way to crack on without all this drama. Bear with me folks…I’ll get there 🙂

 

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Trying It Without The Carrot

In the here & now, ,

So my conversation with the Shitbird Scale yesterday provoked a miserable reaction from my face, which together with the rest of me had expected more. It gave up nothing, not a single fucking ounce. And I don’t know about you, but that feels really unfair when I’ve worked my cahoonies off to make a dink in the number of pounds I gained when I was busy being a dickhead.

Seriously, I’ve done an hour of swimming just about every day, not to mention all the physio and the walking I’ve managed to fit in. It feels like I’ve done nothing except work and work out over the last week, and I’ve stayed within my calorie limits, so there’s no wonder I feel like that foot-square piece of shitbird glass has stabbed me right in the back. I was actually expecting a fanfare and some sort of trophy for having the best week ever.

It could’ve gone two ways. You know me, setbacks on the scale have been known to send me hurtling straight to the hob-nobs. As recently as the end of July I posted a picture of my weigh-in where the number had gone in the wrong direction, and confidently declared that based on what I’ve eaten I don’t deserve this so I’m choosing to not let it mess with my head…yeah well look how well that worked out. Just about three weeks of anarchy followed because it totally messed with my head.

I’m very happy overall with the regime I’m following. I like the rhythm of counting calories now I’ve wrestled my head back into the game but I reckon I need to tinker around the edges of the numbers a bit because there’s a couple of things I’m not convinced about.

Firstly, I’m not convinced that My Fitness Pal is playing with a straight bat when it tells me I burn one thousand and ninety calories doing sixty minutes of swimming. I mean, that’s a lot, right? When I work out at the Kingdom of Pain, or I walk or get on my bike I know exactly how many calories I’m burning because the technology on my wrist updates MFP without any help from me. It just knows. And in an hour’s circuit training or boxing I generally burn somewhere around five hundred, which leaves me red-faced and half dead at the end of the session.

Swimming is different. It’s not an exact science, mainly because my watch isn’t waterproof, so I have to manually add my swimming activity from the MFP database. And much as it pains me, since I’m not in training for the next olympics I’m not convinced I can burn that many calories doing an hour of gentle breast stroke. I mean, old people overtake me as I’m pootling up and down the swim lanes dreaming about what I might scoff with the one thousand and ninety extra calories I’m racking up. Or not, as the case may be. I get out of the water feeling like I’ve worked, but I’m relaxed and nowhere near half dead.

I pottered about a bit on line yesterday and the consensus seems to be that it’s probably nearer six hundred calories an hour. Which is still awesome, but it’s not one thousand and ninety is it? So I’ve probably eaten a fair few ghost calories this week, which will almost certainly have contributed to my failure to move the needle.

Secondly, whilst I hesitate to go against God of Pain’s counsel, I’m thinking I might be better off setting my daily calorie allowance a little bit higher, but not eating the additional calories I’m earning from exercise. I’m nervous about taking away the carrot if I’m honest…the promise of earning a few thousand extra calories over the course of the week motivates me to put in the work because I know it means more food. I wonder if I’ll be able to maintain the same level of enthusiasm if I know it’s not going to result in extra portions..?

Time will tell I suppose. I’ve reset the numbers and I’m going to give it a go. There’s too much effort going into all this for me to just stand still, right?

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Moving Forward With Belt And Braces

In the here & now, ,

So I went back to see my surgeon on Friday, and he’s delighted with my progress. I’m on target for a 100% successful outcome which is the stuff that dreams are made of, right? Especially when you consider that for the last four years I’ve had a red-hot poker residing inside my knee. He showed me some before and after pictures which were taken during the surgery, and you’d never even know from the inside that it’s a fat knee. It’s a thing of beauty.

And now it’s my turn. My part of the deal is to strengthen my quad muscles by committing to physio and lots of exercise. And I’m all over that, even though when I proudly demonstrated to him how strong my knee was getting as I straightened it out, he looked me in the eye and said do more, like I’d barely even got started. I wonder if he’s related to the God of Pain?

I feel like I have worked really hard, this last week. I can’t manage the usual off-road walk that I do with Charlie dog yet, but I am up to almost three miles on even ground before anything starts feeling sore, and that’s awesome when you think it’s only actually a shade over two weeks since I had the surgery.

One thing he did say, was that my kneecap has been pulled off-centre because the muscles are slightly more well-developed down one side of my leg. Apparently that’s because I’ve been limping for the last four years and favouring a certain way of planting my left leg on the floor. Who knew! I mean, I know I’ve hobbled a bit when it’s been really sore but it must have been subtle but constant and I didn’t even realise.

Which, when you think about it is a lot like living a really fat life. When I look back, there were things I used to have to do to compensate for being fat, like rubbing moisturiser into one foot using the other foot, because I couldn’t reach down that far, or doing my ironing sitting down because it hurt too much to stand up. It became the kind of normal that I adapted to and stopped noticing, even though it wasn’t normal at all, exactly like my wonky walk.

I can go back to the Kingdom of Pain in another two weeks, but in the meantime I’ve taken out a second gym membership which gives me access to a network of leisure centres, where I can swim as often as I like and do aqua-fit classes, as well as a bunch of other stuff. I’ve done loads of water-based activity over the last few days which has really helped my arse to disengage from the armchair.

I can generally only manage three sessions with the God of Pain over the course of a week, because the fixed schedule of his classes and limited weekend opening times together with my long commute to and from work make it difficult to squeeze in more. This way I get the best of both worlds, because there’ll always be something going on somewhere that I can do.

It’s a kind of belt and braces approach, but I’m ready to take the last quarter of 2017 by storm…I am on it. I’ve got five days’ worth of food sobriety under my belt and after snatching victory back from the jaws of defeat I’m feeling great. I’ve evicted four and a half of those re-gained pounds from my pants this week, which was exactly the boost I needed.

I was gently reminded that not having a specific goal to strive for makes me drift a bit, so I’m planning to hit 215lbs by Christmas. I badly wanted to say Onederland by New Year but I think that’s a stretch too far…26lbs by Christmas feels do-able.

So…let’s crack on, there’s work to be done 🙂

Talking of Onederland, if you follow Nic’s Shitbird Page, you’ll see she sashayed into Onederland on Saturday, just before she flew out to Greece for her holidays…that’s 151lbs lost and I am so damn chuffed for her!

And don’t forget, if you’d like your own Shitbird page, all you have to do is tell me…the accountability definitely helps to glue your feet to the sweet spot!!

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Fighting Like An Alley Cat

In the here & now, ,


So it’s too soon to hang out the flags, but I think I’ve managed to claw my way back into the game. My food sobriety is fragile, but after a couple more false starts it’s now seen two sun-downs. I’m feeling better. Calmer. I wish I knew why, I mean I haven’t done anything differently than I did on all those other days where I set off with the same steely determination then crashed and burned. Well, apart from not crashing or burning, obviously.

Somehow, on Wednesday I just held it together. And I managed to do the same again yesterday. It wasn’t without challenge…stocking up in the supermarket, the words just give yourself today and start again on weigh day were chanted at me over and over by the Asshole voice but I fought like an alley cat, and I didn’t give in.

It’s a complete head-fuck of course. I’m almost afraid to breathe, as I wait for the hammer to fall again and shatter my new-found resolve. Life would be much simpler if I could get even the smallest clue as to what it is that tips me in or out without warning, you know?

Wrestling my head back into the game has been harder than ever this time and I really struggled to get under the skin of why. I know I’ve had a tough time over the last few weeks but it feels like a cop-out using that as an excuse…life is always going to get in the way. There’s a difference between cutting myself a bit of slack, and throwing in the towel altogether isn’t there? The thing is, a fair weather recovery is no use to me, because sooner or later life is going to pepper my path with shit. Shit happens.

As I’ve reflected on how badly the wheels came off this time, I replayed some of the conversations I had with the God of Pain towards the end of last year, when he began to appreciate just how deep-rooted my issues with food really were. At the time, I was stepping in and out of my food plan like the flaming hokey cokey, and he nailed me one day in an impromptu counselling session, cleverly disguised as a bollocking.

We talked, not just about my go-to foods and my triggers but about the environment I was in when the binges happened. Where I was, who I was with, what I was doing…all of it.

He helped me to see that if I were to stand any chance at all of breaking the cycle, it was no good removing just one of the elements, you know? They all had to go because it wasn’t just about the food. My head would make associations with places and situations, and those subliminal associations would be powerful enough to undermine my food sobriety. Annihilate it, actually.

So sitting for hours on end in my big fat reclining chair, watching TV on my own was a no-no…it put me squarely in the danger zone, even without a bag of snacks because over the last seven years or so that’s where most of the magic happened.

In the first few months of this year, when I was refined sugar-free and completely in control of my eating, I barely went near the chair or the TV. I made sure that I was too busy.

So, let’s think about that. Where have I spent most of the last two weeks whilst I’ve been recuperating and resting my knee..? Yep…feet up in the chair. On my own, with just the TV for company. That’s a bit like leading a reformed but wobbly crack addict back into the crack den, just without the crack.

I’m all of a sudden inclined to be a bit more forgiving of myself. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it’s okay…the car crash that greets me when I hop aboard the Shitbird Scale tells it’s own story. But I do begin to see how all the events of the last few weeks came together and created a shit storm that has been really bloody tough to navigate.

But I’m still here, right? I might have fallen down a lot but I never stopped wanting to get back up. And I’m not claiming it as a victory, not yet. My whole focus is on one day at a time. I’m walking better and further. I’m putting in the hard yards with my physio and although my knee was sore yesterday, I’m going to have good days and bad days as I push myself towards a full recovery.

That doesn’t just apply to my knee.

But I’m out of the chair. And watch out day three, I’m coming to get ya 🙂

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