Tag Archives: feeling the love

Hurting You, Pleasing Me

Biggest struggles, Freeform thoughts, ,

 

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So we’ve had the most amazing trip. I’ve made some awesome memories and one of the nights in particular will stay with me always…early cocktails on the terrace of the Skyfall Lounge watching the sun set and seeing Las Vegas come alive, followed by dinner on the terrace of Olives restaurant at The Bellagio, whilst their fountains danced right in front of us…it was magical.

This was day two. Bearing in mind how flexible the weight watchers food plan is, up to that point I had felt completely in charge of me…keeping track of points when you’re constantly being offered things where you can only estimate point values – like the airline meals for example – is always going to be a challenge. But you’ve got to eat, on an 11 hour flight, right?  And when you cross time zones and end up with an extra 8 hours in your day you kind of have to adjust stuff, mess around with your budget a bit.

I took a balanced approach…accepting a little pot of ice-cream with the movie on the flight felt okay because I’d refused a bread roll and chosen not to eat desserts and cake with the meal…not perfect, but given the asshole’s campaign to make me forget the diet for the duration of the trip I felt I was firmly in control of my choices. So I was doing ok.

But going back to our memorable night..getting a table on the terrace at the Skyfall Lounge is a privilege reserved for a very chosen few. My friends had made the reservation weeks in advance, emailing details about the fact we were celebrating a milestone birthday to help get it in the bag, and so there we were…pre-dinner cocktails with the best view in town. Amazing. And then the manager rocked up with a surprise birthday cake bomb which he proceeded to souse in limoncello, cover with two huge dollops of whipped cream and present to me with a flourish. What a lovely gesture…but man oh man, I’d quietly made skinny food choices all day, trying to juggle stuff so I could fit all the planned treats in, including cocktails and a special dinner.

So do I say ‘thanks but no thanks’, and throw the gesture back in his face, or do I eat it as he’s standing there expectantly, having just presented the fat lady who is clearly no stranger to cake with the best boozy creamy cake ever. Let’s look at the evidence…I’m a people pleaser. I do in fact love cake. And limoncello. And cream! And they’re all on a plate together in front of me, an unexpected gesture made by someone who wanted to do a nice thing, just for me. And the asshole in my mind is on it like a car bonnet…you ungrateful cow, of course you have to eat it…it would be totally rude not to, he’s trying to make your birthday treat extra special, you’ll look ridiculous if you make a fuss and say you don’t want it…

Dilemma. And bugger me, fast forward a few hours…we’d had a magical dinner, again, seats on the Olives restaurant terrace are really difficult to engineer since everybody wants them yet they aren’t bookable in advance. We got really lucky, and the evening was made more enjoyable still by our waiter Paul, who was utterly charming, and just wanted us to have an awesome time. And would you bloody believe it, after my carefully chosen meal he arrived at the table with profiteroles with a Happy Birthday piped in chocolate and birthday candles, just for me, thinking he was going to make my evening extra special.

Again with the dilemma…and again with the asshole who by this time of course was hopping up and down like Rumplestiltskin screaming don’t be rude just eat it and be thankful for the lovely gesture, don’t even think about saying no! Once again I’m faced with Hobson’s choice…put someone’s feelings before my own and risk the wheels coming off my food plan…or put myself first and hurt their feelings. Twice in one otherwise perfect night!

So…over to you guys. What do you reckon happened..? And what would you have done in my place..? Bear in mind, I’m not perfect and I’m navigating the road to skinny town the best way I can…I’ll share the outcome tomorrow but I’m curious as to how you all would have reacted ?

 

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Weekly News Round-Up

Diet update, In the here & now, ,

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I’m running very fast this week to try and get ahead of myself.  It’s a clever little devil this WordPress thingamabob, I can write posts up ahead of time and schedule them to appear as if by magic, so in the unlikely event that my girlfriends do arrange for me to be ravaged for 24 hours straight by that dream boy I was dropping hints about, or if I’m actually trapped in the bathroom with a tiger, our posse should still have fresh reading material on a daily basis whilst I’m on holiday, or at the very least most days. Too cool for school eh? I will have some time whilst I’m away (an eleven hour flight for example!) and I adore writing this so I’m hoping to grab a bit of time here and there, but I like to be prepared just in case.

And, stand by for exciting news – we now have our very own Break Out The Skinny Girl Facebook page! If you’re on Facebook, please come and make friends…I’ve been sharing the daily blog posts via the BOTSG Facebook page and you guys can share or post stuff to the page too if you like…get in on the action you know?

I know in the context of the world wide web we’re really small potatoes but so far this month we’ve had almost fifteen thousand page views for the blog from almost sixteen hundred different folk…that’s purely down to you lot telling your friends about BOTSG, so thank you, I think you’re all beyond awesome! The subscription button that I introduced last week has proved really popular and now lots of people are getting Skinny Mail direct to their inbox daily, and feedback has been great…I’ve scratched my head in bewilderment more than a few times and just thought, you know, how has this even happened?!  I dared to dream. And here we all are.

In other back-of-the-net news…everybody in the office ate Chinese food at lunchtime yesterday. Except me! LOOK at my halo shining! I’d taken my lunch, which I’d pointed, and I ate that and left the noodles to them and it didn’t bother me a scrap. And today, I picked my son something up from the chippy whilst I was getting my holiday money, and despite the fact that it smelled divine, I buzzed in and out, picking up lunch for him and nothing for me, and what’s more it didn’t bother me one bit…I felt normal! To a skinny string bean that’s nothing…only a fat girl will get the magnitude.

So I’ve not engaged with the bitch in the bathroom this week, (for those of you who are new to BOTSG that’s code for the bathroom scales!) nor do I plan to until after my trip. Maybe then I’ll propose a truce once a month or so just to keep a watching brief. I should really pull my big girl pants on and deal with the trauma once a month you know? But I feel skinnier…that’s good enough for me. Twice this week I have worn shirts for work which have been too snug to wear up to now, and now they’re not. Do I need to explain the width of this grin..? Nah, course I don’t…you get it!

Anyway, I hope you’ve all had a great week – I don’t actually head out until Tuesday, but let me apologise in advance for any posts that don’t make sense after that…yes, probably too much champagne 🙂 🙂

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What Would YOU Keep?

Freeform thoughts, Reflections on past times,

loveSo I was telling you yesterday about my epic fail in the hypnotherapy stakes, and it prompted me to have a look through some of the homework I had to do during the time I spent poking around in the dark corners of my head. I nearly fell off my chair when the word homework was mentioned, I mean I didn’t think I’d signed up for that…I didn’t even turn homework in on time at school.

As a grown up somehow I felt less of a need to rebel,  although given that I still regarded the therapy lady as a bit mystical I think perhaps I was just a tiny bit scared that she was hiding some eye of newt in her cupboard to use on wayward clients. And to be honest, if this was the woman who could unlock my head and break out the skinny girl, the least I could do was give it my best shot, right?

So she asked me what I would change about myself if I could start from scratch and design a new me. Well, let me tell you I was out of the traps like a greyhound. By the time I’d finished my list she was the one with glazed eyes. It was like giving a four year old the Argos catalogue at Christmas and asking them to make a list. I wanted to change quite a lot, as it turns out.  But then she started to play dirty, and asked me what I would keep. That was so much harder to answer.

I settled on my eyes. I’ve always had quite nice eyes I think. Sadly mother nature forgot to bless me with thick dark silky eyelashes – bitch, they’re probably in the back of her cupboard along with my long skinny legs and impressive chest which have never seen the light of day either – but they’re a nice green colour and with the aid of either mascara, or falsies, they can look quite striking.

Actually I should caveat that – they used to look quite striking. I thought I was doing really well in the face department as far as ageing was concerned until I started wearing contact lenses a couple of years ago, and after I’d tried to blame the first lot for being defective I realised with 20/20 vision I really wasn’t ageing quite as well as I’d thought. I sulked for a week.

And that was kind of the end of my list…a bit pathetic really. I did try and explain…my hair almost made the list. I like the colour, it’s very silvery blonde now (80% mother nature and 20% because I’m worth it 🙂 ) but it was disqualified due to its tendency to kink, curl and generally misbehave whenever there’s a sniff of moisture in the air. Do you remember Leo Sayer..? That’s all I’m sayin.

My knees, well they would have made the list if I’d been 140lbs lighter but sadly they were disqualified too on the basis that nobody could remember what they looked like in their former glory, and seriously, no matter how kind someone was being, they’re not ‘keep list’ material in their current state. One of them really hurts, all the time, and the number of dimples per square inch would only look appealing on toddler.

So yes, just the eyes. It’s funny, her question was what would I change, and what would I keep. I’m the one who made the leap to all the physical things, which shows you the level of my preoccupation with what I look like when I’m fat.

So, my homework was to reach out to five of my friends, and ask them what things about me they would keep if they had to re-design me. So I did. And all five answers made me cry. Nobody talked about my kinky hair, or my dimpled knees. Or my eyes actually…they talked about my warmth, and my humour, and the fact that they knew I was in their corner no matter what. They talked about how I’m always positive and how I challenge them in a good way and make them realise when they’re being a dick. They talked about lots of things that had chuff all to do with what I looked like. Isn’t that interesting.

Why don’t you try it? I felt ten feet tall and on days where everything’s a struggle, those words will help to light you up from the inside…promise.

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Sunday Check-in

Diet update, In the here & now, , ,

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I seem to recall making a rash statement last weekend about using Sunday posts to give you an update on my progress. I’m going to have to apply a little creative thinking if I want to keep you occupied for longer than one blink of an eye, diet updates are something of a challenge when you’re averse to standing on a set of scales.

For those friends who are new to my blog, welcome and to save you wading through past posts, I’m benchmarking my success by size not weight – me and the scales, well we have a ‘thing’ you know? They bring out the diva in me so I avoid them wherever possible, and  working  on the principle that if I haven’t cheated on my diet, I’m bound to be losing weight,  giving them a wide berth means one less opportunity for the asshole in my head to attack my mood if the needle hasn’t moved as much as I’d hoped.

So two good things happened to me this week – my friend at work looked at me and said ‘you look thin today’ – bear in mind this is all relative, I am about as far from thin as it’s possible to be, but when the weight does start to come off, it’s not unusual for it to come off my face first, so I suspect that’s what she meant – it did prompt a cheesy grin and a feel good factor of eleven on the one-to-ten scale!

The other huge thing to happen this week which has caught me completely unawares is the incredible support and messages I’ve had from around the world from people who have dipped into my blog and taken the time to read and respond to my posts – truth be told I’m a little bit overwhelmed.

Sean and Jack, who both have well established blogs very graciously allowed me to signpost their respective sites on my ‘Interesting Stuff’ page, and reciprocated with a link to my blog from their own pages, which has sent visitor numbers into overdrive! I’ve found myself turning into a geek, looking at graphs and getting very giddy when pins started dropping left and right – I’ve had visitors from seven countries in the last 24 hours which just about makes me want to pee my pants.

Being serious for a minute, the amount of people who have reached out and offered words of encouragement, or emailed me and shared their own story has been nothing short of awesome. Exhilarating! Touching.  To the asshole in my head, stick THAT in your pipe and smoke it…there’s a posse of us now and we’re all motoring through this together.

One of the popular motivation theories for keeping on the straight and narrow if you’re in this for the long game is apparently to build a really strong support network. Well bugger me, isn’t that the truth!  I feel on top of the world. Thanks for reading, I feel the support and I’m sending it right back at ya 🙂

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