Tag Archives: food budget

Switching To Autopilot

In the here & now,

So life’s all still a bit shit. I’d love to deliver you a positive and motivational Monday morning blog post, but the truth is I’m up one minute and down the next, and I haven’t really been overly focused on what’s going in my mouth. I’m desperately worried about my mum, who is home but still very unwell, so most of my energy has been directed towards her and her needs…assessments, risk assessments, care plans…you name it, I’ve been all over it and I’m doing everything I can to make sure she has enough support around her to give her a fighting chance of getting well.

We couldn’t even go visit her this weekend, because on top of everything else there’s a sickness bug doing the rounds in her residential home, so they’re locked down in quarantine, which hasn’t helped.

I left it until the last possible minute yesterday to step aboard HMS Shitbird. I was scared of what the damned thing was going to tell me so I did the whole ostrich thing and buried my head in the sand. I have a routine on a Sunday morning, you know? Get up, pee, weigh. Not yesterday. I got up, had a pee, ignored the Shitbird Scale and went to make coffee. Then I went for a swim without giving it a second thought.

I came home, did some shopping…walked past it twice as I was dotting washing around the house to dry, visited the bathroom several times through the course of the day and still refused to make eye contact. When I finally climbed the stairs to bed last night I couldn’t avoid it any longer…after all, I promised I would post my weight every week and it’s a cornerstone of my accountability. I was expecting a beasting to be honest, so just one quarter pound on was a relief.

I’m not even sure why I was expecting it to be so bad. I haven’t been really bad. I mean, I’ve had bad moments, for example on Saturday evening I won a big bag of chocolate orange segments in a pig-racing competition (not real pigs!) and let’s just say they didn’t go unappreciated. But, I opened them for everyone to enjoy whilst we were there, which was a much safer bet than me taking them home, right? I had my fair share but I didn’t have them all, in the chair on my own after I got home when nobody could see. And I enjoyed every last one of the ones I ate, along side my pie and pea supper.

I refused to feel guilty…it was just one night, and I needed to blow off steam with a bunch of friends. The week overall had been one big fucking trauma, so I wasn’t holding out hope that my conversation with the scale would buck the trend. But actually, if I really think about it, my eating wasn’t so bad.

I’d sort of kept a watching brief on what went in my mouth, even if it didn’t always make it into the food diary on MyFitnessPal. I made it to the pool five days out of seven. I wasn’t perfect but I kept control, after a fashion. All things considered, I’m claiming it as a victory. It’s fairly heartening to realise that I flicked the controls to autopilot because there was so much else going on, and the Asshole between my ears didn’t screw things up completely.

I’m not sure what this week will bring. I’m hoping mum will really turn the corner and I’ll get a decent night’s sleep without waking up every hour and wondering if she’s okay. I’m supposed to be going on holiday the weekend after next and I’d love to think she’ll be well enough by then for me to go ahead with the trip. It’s been a rough few months and I’m trying hard not to feel bad about saying I’m ready for the break, but I can’t remember the last time I needed one quite so much.

We’ll see. In the meantime, I graduated Sunday with a decent chunk of calories still on the table, so I’ve started the brand new shiny week as I mean to go on. I want to be back in the sixteen stones something next week…watch this space  🙂

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The Polar Opposite Of Easy

In the here & now, ,

I don’t know about you, but in that moment where I desperately want to eat something I shouldn’t,  the Asshole voice spits out reassurance after reassurance about how easy it’ll be to pick up the pieces pretty much straight away afterwards. My head totally gets on board with the whole concept and works in tandem to erase any old memories which may tell a different story, and right up until the chewing is over I remain convinced that getting back in the game is going to be a walk in the park.

I fall for it every fucking time.

Before you start throwing things at the screen out of sheer frustration that I’m still fannying around, I’m not. I’ve got five days’ worth of skin in the  game but honestly, pulling myself back out of that hole has been a full-on stinking turd of a task. I’m wrung out by the relentless assault on my willpower to the point where it feels like my week has been directed by Quentin Tarantino.

The reality of getting back on plan after a ten day hiatus is the polar opposite of easy. It’s compounded by the sheer boredom of not being able to do much else apart from sit in the chair with my leg elevated and have the occasional potter about. It seems that dragging my mind out of the refrigerator is much easier if I can take Charlie-dog out for a long walk, or go work up a sweat at the Kingdom of Pain.

I’m tetchy from the sugar withdrawal and my mind and body are not occupied with anything other than how much I want to eat whilst I’m sitting around doing nothing. There’s no unsuitable food in the house, so my options are deliberately limited but that doesn’t stop the steady stream of help and advice from the Asshole voice as to how I might engineer a situation whereby I’m left to my own devices and therefore free to order take-out pizza.

Fair to say then that it hasn’t been a textbook week so far. I had some ice-cream on Sunday that I haven’t paid back into the calorie pot yet, but that was my very last sugar-related transgression and other than that I’m doing okay as I claw my way back to clean eating. There might have been an incident with some out-of-budget sprouts and a battered haddock fillet yesterday but I was due to take pain meds and I needed to eat something. It could have been worse.

The big bandage came off yesterday, to be replaced by a full length elasticated support stocking. This didn’t improve my mood any, since my knee blew up like a football and I realised that said support stockings are just not built for fat legs.

Getting it on was easy so I was lulled into a false sense of security, but to stop the dratted thing rolling down from the top every time I moved, I had to make a sort of cuff with the top of it which then proceeded to cut the circulation off in my leg. Drama queen that I am, I convinced myself that I was having a DVT until it dawned on me that the stocking was just too damn tight.

On medical advice when I couldn’t stand it any longer, the support stocking went in the bin and I’m once again swaddled in bandages. Two steps forward, one step back. I’m sore, and my cranky pants are pulled all the way up to my armpits. Surely three family bags of cheese balls and a Daim cake would make me feel better right now..? Except I know they really wouldn’t, beyond a brief moment in time. So it’s a no from me.

It doesn’t stop the image of them playing on a constant loop in my head though 🙁

 

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You. Cannot. Be. Serious.

In the here & now, ,

So, you already know that this last week wins the award for shittiest week ever. I thought we were past the storm. I didn’t have a bad day on Wednesday, in fact I managed to do a few hours’ work from home and it was comforting to start picking up the pieces. I wasn’t in a great place, but I felt like I was doing okay.

And I was doing okay, except it clearly wasn’t written in the stars for our shit time to be over quite so soon. My mum, who is very wobbly at the best of times, took a tumble yesterday morning, and she’s broken her shoulder in two places. I mean, you just couldn’t fucking write it could you?

She’d been laid in agony on the floor for around an hour before anybody heard her cries for help, and yesterday morning as we sat in the ER, my tiny frail eighty four year old mum sobbed like a child in my arms. On top of the heartache of the last few days, it was just all too much.

Now, I held it together beautifully all day. I wiped her tears, and propped her up. I intercepted doctor-speak and translated it into something she could understand. Most of all I promised her everything would be okay, because that’s exactly what she needed to hear. She’s reached her fill level of bad news, and she coasted through yesterday on a combination of codeine and reassurance. I limped through on adrenaline and focused on her.

Last night though…I didn’t know what to do with myself. The urge to binge was overwhelming. Fortunately, before I could face-plant into the food cupboard, two of my good friends arrived with a big bunch of flowers and a hug, which pretty much saved me from myself.

I did eat eight Ryvita Marmite thins with some soft cheese before I went to bed, which may or may not have found their way onto Saturday’s food budget on the basis that yesterday’s calories had already run out and the dieting day was closed for business.

It’s okay though, I can get away with it. Saturday still belongs to this week, and on Saturday I get more calories to play with. It’s creative accounting at it’s finest and you know what, if I count the calories at some point this week who really gives a fuck? I know I’m not supposed to be propping my battered spirit up with food, but yesterday was just exceptional in it’s shitness and a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

Surely, that must be it now…I’m kind of approaching that fill level myself, you know?

 

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They Didn’t Burn A Hole

In the here & now, ,

I had a major stress head on yesterday morning. I’m doing some self-development sponsored by my work this week, learning how to interpret and administer a psychometric tool, so I’m on a three day course in the city near where I live. I’d left home in plenty of time and it was all going so well, right up to the point that I went to turn into the road leading to the venue, only to discover the road was closed. Beautiful.

So it’s rush hour, twenty minutes before the course was due to start and I’m driving past where I need to be, in a one-way city loop with no idea how to double back and find a different way in. I know, I think to myself, I’ll call the hotel and ask them. And that would’ve been a really good plan if anyone had answered the fucking phone.

Almost exactly twenty minutes later, I figured it out, but not before I’d turned the air blue inside my car. By the time I’d parked up and done a fast hobble across to the hotel, through the lobby and up to the first floor I was utterly frazzled. My hair, which had looked styled and smooth when I left home had gone rogue on me. The more hot and bothered I got, the wilder my hair got, and by the time I arrived I looked like Albert Einstein. I had big sweat patches under my arms and my cheeks were a lovely mottled shade of purple, I mean we’re talking off-the-chart attractive.

As I half skidded in a very lopsided fashion into the middle of a bunch of delegates, my eyes were drawn like magnets to an enormous tray of bacon sandwiches. Then I caught a whiff of them, and it was pretty much game over…all thoughts of how frazzled I was disappeared, and the deal was just about sealed when some random bloke shook me by the hand and passed me a plate.

Now, bearing in mind this is week two of my experiment, and I’ve hit the point in my dieting week I’m supposed to eat all my weekly points. As I stood there salivating with the plate in my hand you bet your sweet ass I was furiously totting up how many points I’d need to knock off my tally. I could have it, one hundred percent guilt-free. Get in!

Except, I’d already had breakfast in the car on the way there. I’d made a coconut and mango breakfast smoothie with a base of unsweetened almond milk, and it’d been really thick and filling. It dawned on me that I wasn’t actually hungry.

Now, you’ve got to bear in mind that a small detail like that has very rarely stopped me from indulging myself in the past. And I don’t know what was so different in that moment, but yesterday, it did stop me. I wanted that bacon bap like you wouldn’t believe, but on the other hand I didn’t want it at all, so I listened to the voice of reason, and I put the plate down. I went into the bathroom and had a stern word with the birds nest on my head instead.

That was a wise decision as it turns out, because those bacon baps were not actually for the delegates of the course I was on. Turns out the bloke who handed me a plate assumed I was with his lot and that’s why he tried to feed me. As if looking like a mad professor wasn’t embarrassing enough, I narrowly avoided getting in bother for the unauthorised consumption of pig flesh.

It wasn’t the only bullet I dodged yesterday…I managed to sidestep a whole host of booby traps, including a bowl of ginger nuts and fruit shortbread biscuits which were staring me down from the coffee area, not to mention several unwise options at the lunch buffet. I had my weekly points in my back pocket, but strangely they didn’t burn a hole. I wasn’t bothered. I’d decided at the top of the week that I was going to treat me and my boy to Chinese food one night, and I was happy enough knowing that treat was coming. Decision made, move on.

That’s another step forward, right?

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It’s Going To Be A Beaut

In the here & now, , ,

optimism

So it was a great weekend at Foxy Lodge, all things considered. I got there late and proceeded to cough and splutter my way through the weekend with a bit of a dodgy chest, in fact right now I sound like I’ve been smoking forty Capstan full-strength on a daily basis for the last twenty years. One of the gang almost didn’t make it at all due to a whoopsie on the stairs a few days ago which resulted in blue flashing lights and a broken bone, but even though we were a bit battle-scarred we’ve still pretty much laughed our way through the last couple of days. I love my girlies to the moon and back again.

Most importantly, I’m not emerging from the other side of my weekend with any bruises on my conscience as a result of me being really naughty. I had some drinks, I had some nibbles and I didn’t smart-point my meals, but we’ve eaten plenty of healthy stuff and I didn’t go mad. Well, I went mad on grapes actually, but not on anything bad. I walked a bit, and I found a balance that I was happy with and it just felt normal.

And yesterday, well I was right back to counting points and I’m happy to do it. I’ve got a good run at this now, come on lets make a dint in those regained pounds this week. There were six of the unwelcome little fuckers re-glued to my arse by the time I drew a line in the sand last week, did I mention that? No, *coughs* I didn’t think I had. Well there we go then…their ass belongs to me in the month of November, and by the time December gets here they’ll be toast. Six pounds on is what one bad month looks like in my world…now allow me to demonstrate what a good month is all about. November you’re going to be a beaut.

I’ve got a couple of fairly tough days coming up this week…I’m working until mid afternoon tomorrow and then I’ll be on a train for around seven hours followed by an overnight stay, and one meeting the following morning before I have to do the whole thing again in reverse. Two days when my sustenance will need to come from the best that the buffet car can offer…unless.

I need a plan. There’s an M&S Simply Food in the station, so here’s what I’ll do. I’m going to stock up on the snacky things I love to eat and can easily count as part of my food budget. I’ll get some fruit and a table picnic for my journey and that way I know I’ll be able to steer clear of the chocolate muffins and Haribo and ten-fingered kit-lats which usually seduce me as they go past on the catering trolley.

That sounds simple doesn’t it? Plus, I’ll have you lot to keep me company – well, on the way down at least….you’re my secret weapon. On Wednesday as I’m heading home I’ll be working pretty much all the way, but on the way down it’ll be evening all bar a couple of hours so I can chat to you guys and draft Wednesday’s blog post which will keep my hands from feeding my face with anything on the banned substance list, right? Don’t you just love a plan.

Apart from feeling a bit grim with my ropey old chest, I’m happy and optimistic going into this week…it’s the first one in a while where I’ve got a number in mind for my encounter with the bitch in the bathroom next week, and I’m going for it, big time. I’m not allowed to work out until my chest infection has gone, so right now it’s all about managing what goes in my mouth.

Come on, I can do this…let the dog see the rabbit 🙂

 

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