Tag Archives: diet

One Whole Week

In the here & now, , ,

When I stepped aboard the Shitbird Scale last week and the number forced me to acknowledge exactly how rebellious I’d allowed myself to become, I took it on the chin. As the week went on, I resisted the temptation to check in every day, so between you and me I approached yesterday’s weigh-in with not a little bit of trepidation…lets be honest, there hasn’t been much good news coming out of my bathroom of late.

I’d had a good week, so I was confident that the needle wouldn’t have moved up. Given my recent trajectory that’s progress in itself, right? I was hoping for a solid two pounds off. I felt like I deserved two pounds, because I’ve tried really hard to kick the Asshole voice into the long grass and focus on my input this week. One of the biggest revelations for me over the last year or so has been that taking care of the input is my job, and actually all the scale needs to do is report the output. It’s less about the number, and more about my side of the deal.

Except the bitch in my bathroom used to toy with me…she seemed to get off on messing with my mojo by giving me a different reading within seconds of the last depending on which tile in the bathroom she happened to be sitting on when I hopped aboard. and I played right into her hands…best of three. No, hang on a minute, let’s make it best of five. Or ten, or fifteen…maybe I should take an average…? No wonder it twisted my melon.

Although initially I baulked at the price, I think choosing this particular Shitbird Scale when the old bitch hit the skids was one of my better ideas. I mean obviously we did the customary weigh-day waltz around the bathroom to get the best possible reading, but unlike the last one, Shitbird scale held the line – it didn’t matter which tile it stood on, the number was the same. There was a definite air of it is what it is, fool…take it or leave it, you know? And since the number was three pounds lower than last week, I’ll take it thank you very much.

Three pounds. That has a nice ring to it doesn’t it?  And it feel like a solid three, because it wasn’t a one, then a four and a two before it landed on three. Times past, when I’ve been awarded a good loss and I’ve declared a successful week, the bitch has been known to snatch it back the following day and revert to something less impressive. Rarely did it happen the other way around, although to be fair I wasn’t kidding when I hinted at the best of fifteen…it’s not unheard of, as rituals go.

The thing is, even before I clocked the number, I felt calm and self-assured on the inside. I’ve stopped bouncing from feast to famine, you know? This week, I managed to get a grip. And it’s fragile, I know that, but it’s there and it’s holding. I’ve been the one behind the wheel this last week, and the Asshole voice wasn’t even holding the map.

Seven good days. Seven days’ worth of skin in the game through a week that was as challenging as it gets – I’ve had two Christmas-related social events, two off-site meetings where lunch was out of my direct control and one night out with my boy where I selected carefully from the menu based on what I could have rather than what I wanted, and immediately followed up one sensible choice with another as I avoided the Ben & Jerry’s concession in the cinema. I didn’t even try and lick the counter as I walked past.

That’s progress folks  🙂

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Some Kind Of Balance

In the here & now, , ,

balance

I woke up yesterday morning feeling very skinny, which is odd when you consider that I’m still one hundred and two pounds heavier than I intend to be this time next year. But then, don’t you think feeling skinny is a subjective thing anyway? I have a friend who often says I’m having a fat day today, as she stands there in all her skinniness looking for all the world like she needs to eat a meal. But in that skinny moment she feels fat, in the same way that I laid in bed yesterday morning with all my spare tyres feeling skinny.

The truth of the matter is that I’m nearer to skinny than I’ve been in recent years. I’m back at my pre-holiday weight, in fact I’m a pound under and you know what that means…the last couple of weeks have gone according to plan. Well, ish. I wanted to come back from holiday weighing the same as when I went, and if we discount the few days where my plumbing went into lockdown, I pretty much pulled it off.

I feel so proud of that. I’m proud of the fact that I managed to get straight back on track from the minute I came home – I’ve not managed to do that too many times in my life – yeah, try never – and I’ve spent the last few days trying to put my finger on exactly what’s been different this time.

I think it’s because although I spent a few days with my foot off the gas, I never actually disengaged my head from this journey. In the past, when I’ve pressed pause on a diet, it’s involved ripping up sensible altogether – if I’m not going to be very very good then sod it, I’m going to be very very bad…you get the picture. No point in being good at dinner when I’ve been wicked at lunch! No point in exercising because my diet’s gone to shit so what’s the point! All or nothing, which is the sort of crooked thinking which has derailed many weight-loss attempts over the years. My past is littered with them.

This time I managed to keep a watching brief on everything I ate, even though I ate a lot. Well, with the notable exception of the rocky road dessert. I still don’t have a scooby doo how many portions of that I actually ate. However, most other naughties were noted and enjoyed, without guilt but with acknowledgement that I’d have to work extra hard to deal with the consequences, whether that was on holiday or after I came home. My head accepted that…and it stayed in the game.

I squeezed in extra opportunities to exercise, like getting back off the ship to walk the steps in Alesund, and climbing up that waterfall on the morning of the day where I’d already booked a challenging hike in the afternoon. I didn’t have to do those things, but all the time I was focused on keeping some kind of balance. More food? Right then…more exercise too.

I didn’t need to get my head back in the game when I came home because the truth is, it never stepped out. And you know what, I’m feeling more sure footed than ever now I’ve proved to myself that thinking about things in a different way made me act in a different way. I pulled it off…how cool is that.

I’ve got this. One hundred and two pounds to go.

This time next year… 🙂

 

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In Search Of Magic Beans

Reflections on past times, , , ,

beans

I felt a bit embarrassed today when I got a visual wake-up-call about how my pre-occupation with food might look to other people. Yesterday I forgot to bring the containers home that I’d taken my lunch to work in, so today my feet were fighting for space under the desk with a double helping of airtight boxes. There were six altogether, plus two large plastic cups which I use to chug my blended smoothie of the day on my morning commute.

On top of my desk, nestled amongst actual work stuff you would have found a punnet of plums, a bottle of salad cream, some emergency crackers and a tin of soup. In the bin behind me were a couple of banana skins and an apple core. It must have looked like I’d been under siege for a month, for God’s sake.

I did do a quick recce on everyone else’s desk and I was slightly reassured to find that there was the odd snack or two kicking around other corners of the office but put it this way, if the entire HR team had been kidnapped by aliens, when Mulder and Scully rocked up to investigate they would have known immediately which desk belonged to the fat girl.

It puts me in mind of a conversation I had with my doctor twenty odd years ago. A friend of mine had been to her doctor because she wanted to lose weight, and he’d handed her a prescription for pills to supress her appetite. I wanted to get me a piece of that action so I made an appointment to see someone at my own surgery with the intention of getting my hands on some of these magic beans. It seemed like the perfect answer.

It transpired that my doctor was a little less accommodating. Actually, he was a twat. He sent me off with a flea in my ear and a long lecture about how fat people were unnaturally preoccupied with food and basically I needed to get over myself. He even illustrated said lecture with a story about his own fat friend, who had joined him recently on a skiing holiday and had taken sandwiches ‘for the journey’, which he used as an example of how fat people were different to normal people, and couldn’t bear not to have food within touching distance. Judging by the way he said it he didn’t mean different in a good way.

I’d give anything to have that same conversation with him now, with my additional twenty five years’ worth of life experience and a slightly lower tolerance for being mugged off. I doubt I’d be able to resist commenting on how lucky his fat friend was to have such a supportive chum, you know? I mean, with the 20/20 vision of hindsight I was trying to go about it the wrong way, but I was reaching out, you know? He could have helped me, if he hadn’t been so busy judging me.

It’s the first and last time I ever talked to anyone about how much I was bothered by being fat. Well, until you lot of course. And I’d like to think that I’d get a more supportive response if I went to chat to a healthcare professional about it these days. I wouldn’t, of course…I’d rather stick pins in my eyes than have that conversation. But still, I hope they’d at least give me some leaflets and a bit of advice.

All joking aside, my jaws have barely stopped moving today – I’ve only grazed on low point healthy stuff but I know I need to give some attention to this phobia of hunger pangs. God forbid one might sneak up on me, right?

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Before I go, I have some hugely exciting news, and I need your help please! Break Out The Skinny Girl is now available on Kindle Blogs, I mean come on!! We have arrived! It’s become available today in the Kindle Store through Amazon…if you read and enjoy Break Out The Skinny Girl, would you do me the honour of leaving a review on your thoughts about the blog? You can find it HERE  It can’t be done on mobile devices only computers or Kindles (no idea why) but thank you, your support as usual means the world to me 🙂

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A Bag Of Contradictions

In the here & now, , ,

recipe

Over the years I’ve gotten to know myself quite well, you know? I mean all this wrestling my head into the skinny zone stuff is different and new, but I’m fairly au fait with the way my mind works in the other bits of my life. Non food-related situations if you like. Unsurprisingly, it’s far less troublesome when the Asshole voice doesn’t have a view.

Having said that, I do confuse myself if I stop and think too hard about it. For example I’m not good with change, which is ironic when you consider that much of my professional life is spent up to my eyeballs in managing change. On a personal level, I don’t like it at all. I know what I like, and I like what I know. And yet. I have the lowest boredom threshold ever. Routine is anathema to me, and when I’m bored I get destructive, which often doesn’t end well.

Seriously, the joke’s on me, right? Easily bored but doesn’t like change…wtf am I supposed to do with that? Good job I’ve got a sense of humour.

So anyway, I can feel myself starting to get a bit bored with my menu choices, so in order to head destructive off at the pass, I’ve just bought a new recipe book. I’ve decided that it’s time to get a bit more adventurous with the food I’m preparing, so I can stop feeling uninspired, which in turn means I’m less likely to get tempted to go play out on naughty street. That’s good planning, right?

If you’re anything like me, there comes a point after a while where no matter how much you love a wide variety of food, you keep returning to the same tried and tested handful of meals. There’s comfort in familiarity…you know the points value, it’s easy and you know it works, as in I ate this last week and I lost weight…but I recognize that I need to up my game in order to keep my head interested.

Why that involved buying a new recipe book, I have no idea. I must have a dozen recipe books. Low fat, low carb, low GI…Weight Watchers, Slimming World, Atkins…it’s like Barnes & Noble in one corner of my kitchen. And to be honest, beyond a quick flick through to admire the pictures when I first bought them, it would be fair to say they haven’t seen a great deal of action. Wait, that’s not strictly true, one time when my friend visited with her grandson and he couldn’t reach the table we sat him on half a dozen of the largest ones, but it’s fair to say not many of the pages are splashed with wayward ingredients.

So, that’s my latest challenge to myself. I have no delusions that I’m about to turn into some kind of domestic goddess, and I already struggle with a pitiful amount of spare time. But this whole journey has been about finding ways that I can do stuff, rather than making excuses as to why I can’t, right? Once every week, most likely at the weekend, I am going to pick out a recipe that’s interesting, nutritious and which isn’t going to bust my food budget, and I’m going to try it out.

My boy would tell you this has disaster written all over it but if it keeps me out of mischief I’m game… 🙂

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Nothing To See Here

In the here & now, , ,

snd

I spent some time in the company of a good friend of mine a couple of weeks ago and we had a long-awaited catch up with each others’ news. Not that I had masses of news to share, to be fair my life revolves around work, family and blog, in that order and almost exclusively. I’m incredibly lucky to have a very tight group of close friends, and whilst I love them all to the moon and back, we don’t actually see each other that often you know? Busy people with busy lives and we’re spread far and wide to boot.

So it’s fair to say my down-time is mainly spent focusing on me. I fill it with a bit of writing, a bit of reading…some walking of course, I guess just burning time in that way that I seem to be able to do effortlessly. I appreciate my life might look a little solitary and introspective to anyone on the outside looking in, but actually after a Monday to Friday full of early starts and late finishes with more than a little bit of madness sandwiched in-between, solitude is generally how I like recharging my batteries, and it works for me. Except I always feel a bit lacking in the news department when eyes turn to me for any kind of update.

My friend, on the other hand was full of news. She’s busy ’till she’s dizzy, all the time. Her work isn’t hugely demanding, in fact she freely admits that she goes to work for a rest from her massively over-stuffed social life. I’m telling you, my ears were exhausted by the time she’d done updating me on everything she’s been up to. As well as side-helpings of who’d done what to who, and what this person and that person thinks about it…I think I was fully appraised of the comings and goings of anyone I’ve ever known by the time she paused for breath. She thrives on being in the thick of everything, not to mention being the glue that holds several different groups of friends together.

And then it was my turn to fill her in on all my stuff…hmm. It didn’t take long! We chatted about my blog, and my diet of course, and how it was all going…it’s the biggest thing in my life right now. We talked about how I can feel my body starting change in response to all these hard yards, and things which felt impossible as I emerged from my fat and painful summer last year are starting to feel not just possible, but like actual plans. We sketched out what my life as a skinny string bean might look like, and reached the conclusion that it would look pretty much like the life I live now, just with smaller pants. I like my life, and I’m not  looking for anything else to change.

I don’t know that I could do what I’m doing, against the backdrop of a hundred other commitments. If I lived my friend’s life, for example…I’m not sure I could get my shit together under that amount of busy. Our conversation, and the opposite nature of our lifestyles made me reflect I suppose, about how lucky I am to be able to dedicate so much time to just me.  I mean, my mum’s quite needy these days and work is busy, but the way I juggle those things with the time I spend in here and focusing on me, is to empty my dance card of as many other commitments as possible, which I guess on the face of it makes me appear quite anti-social.

I’m not, not really. But I am quite selfish of my time, and I’m not inclined to apologise for that. Seriously, I take my hat off to those of you in the posse who manage work and family commitments and an active social life alongside your diet and exercise needs. I mean seriously, bloody good effort…I don’t know that I could juggle all that. Being a single girl, I’m lucky in that it’s okay for me to focus on just me…there’s nobody to get in a strop because I’m only pleasing myself.

It’s an interesting thought though. Maybe I need to learn how to juggle more balls..?

 

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