Tag Archives: food budget

Six Fat Ladies On My Washing Line

In the here & now, , , , , ,

washing

I’ve always liked a nice washing line, in fact I think it’s fair to say that washing lines are one of my things. There’s nothing nicer than the smell of fresh blown washing, and there’s few things more satisfying than the sight of a long line of freshly laundered clothes bobbing in the breeze. It’s a pretty day today, lots of blue sky between the clouds, and for the first time in ages I pegged my washing out.

I observed the rules of course…anything that happens to part of a matching pair has to be pegged next to its partner. Each garment has to have matching coloured pegs. Where possible things of the same garment family should be grouped together, like trousers, or tops. Allowances can be made by exception, for example pyjamas have a top and pants but can’t be in two places at the same time, so a matching pair generally trumps garment family…

I know what you’re thinking. It is ridiculous, I can see that. My boy, who isn’t afflicted by the same degree of washing line OCD enjoys winding me up by breaking every single rule on the odd occasion his laundry bypasses the tumble dryer and makes it on to the line. Today though, they’ve been pegged by my own fair hands, and all is in order. I should be happy…and yet.

I looked outside to check on the weather and caught sight of my line of washing with the breeze through it, and there were six pairs of my black trousers lined up next to each other looking for all the world like six fat ladies getting their groove on. With the wind inside them they looked monstrous.

Is that what my arse looks like from the rear view..? Still..?  I can’t believe that something so stupid can turn my mood upside down so quickly. The asshole voice in my head went berserk and my new-found self confidence took a proper battering. How ridiculous is that? I can’t remember the last time I felt like this, and there’s absolutely no logical reason why I should.

Looking at them made me feel fat. And when I feel fat, I start thinking fat. I’ve been grazing all day, it’s now 4pm and I’ve got no points left. None. My weekly ones are all spent too. The sight of my cavernous pants drove me to loiter near my boy who was eating hangover carbs in the form of pizza and I turned the kind of eyes on him that even Charlie dog could only aspire to. Having checked that I had enough points left, he begrudgingly handed over two slices of heaven which didn’t even touch the sides of my mouth as they headed south.

I’d love to tell you that the pizza tasted amazing but the truth of it is I ate both slices so fast I barely tasted them. And there it is, right? The compulsion to anaesthetise my feelings with food when something makes me feel bad. Alive and kicking at the first fucking opportunity. I honestly despair that despite all the work I’ve put in, unpicking the knots in my thought processes and rebuilding the way I think piece by piece, I can still come totally unglued when my self-esteem take a knock.

I don’t wear size twelve pants. I know this. It shouldn’t come as a shock to see six pairs of fat pants going through the laundry. The fact that I’m on track to be in a size twelve this time next year should be enough…today, it wasn’t.

I guess we all get days like this, right?

Tomorrow’s a new day, with a shiny new week’s worth of smart points. Looking on the bright side, I’ll be starving when I wake up tomorrow given that I can’t eat anything else today so if I was forced to find a silver lining in this shitty day at least I’ll greet the new week feeling like Kate Moss 🙂

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Helping To Mend Me

In the here & now, ,

hugs

I’m incredibly touched by all the lovely notes and thoughts and messages you’ve sent following my inadvertent gymnastic incident…what a response, honestly! I can’t remember the last time I felt so cared about. I mean my boy looks after me in his man-child way of course, which has even involved doing extra chores uninvited over the last couple of days whilst I’ve been hobbling around feeling sorry for myself. The pills and potions are definitely helping, and I feel very wrapped up in this wonderful cradle of support.

It was a similar thing the other day, when I talked about my obsession with Moussaka, despite it being really high in terms of my food budget. The ink was barely dry on the page before you started sending me low-point adaptations of moussaka recipes, which was awesome, and it sort of got me thinking about stuff. You know me by now, and the way in which my head tends to wander off at a tangent when something strikes a chord. I woke up this morning feeling remarkably clear on things which I’d only half acknowledged before. I love it when that happens, you know?

This blog, and the way I set out from day one to be really honest with firstly myself, and then when I picked up a bit of company with you guys too, is probably the first time I’ve ever presented anything other than a bright and breezy hard shell to the outside world. I’ve never been particularly good at vulnerability, you know? Chinks in my armour..? No, that would never do. Help..? No, not me I’m good thanks, I’ll manage. Sympathy..? Fuck you, I don’t need your sympathy, I’m doing fine. I still shudder at the thought of sympathy, if I’m honest.

It’s always been about putting my game face on and just cracking on with stuff, and never showing if something hurt, or even that I might be struggling. Why? It’s complicated. Some of you are familiar with my dad’s story (which you can see HERE if you’ve not seen my fundraising page) – I had to grow up real quick and be strong as a little girl, and I guess it just stuck. Strong with a hard shell is all I’ve ever known how to be, and yet on the inside I’ve never been like that at all. Fake it ’till you make it, right? If that’s what you choose to show, that’s what people will see.

On here, it felt different. It helped, because I kind of did it in stages. At first my words only had one reader, and that was me. Then I invited a handful of close and trusted friends to peep inside the shell, and I got comfortable with that too. Nobody judged me. Then my friends shared it a bit more widely and that felt okay too, because it was with strangers, you know? I didn’t need to look them in the eye and I could carry on being honest.

In between the jokes and horsing around I peeled away the layers and laid stuff bare. Painful stuff. Certainly stuff I’ve never shared with anyone before. And the most unexpected thing happened…talking about stuff in what feels like a really safe environment, and realising that nobody keeled over in horror meant I gradually got more comfortable with sharing what I thought of as the dysfunctional bits of me. And I’ll tell you what, that feels truly liberating.

I am not the only one who has an asshole voice on speed-dial, nor is the concept of a self-destruct button unique to me. Turns out I’m not that different after all. Turns out that dysfunctional is actually quite normal. Who knew that? I didn’t. I have no need to hide. And I don’t need to be perfect for people to love me.

And you know what else..? It’s okay to let people help. Being vulnerable doesn’t result in me being marched out of town. If anything, people have embraced me because of my vulnerabilities, and not in spite of them and that’s been the biggest revelation of all. That’s acceptance, you know? I love the fact that I can tell you that I don’t have all the answers, and you all pitch in with stuff to help.

Honestly, it feels pretty good. The medication I got yesterday is helping settle my black and blue arse down, but you lot are doing a far better job than the anti-inflammatories in helping me heal…you should come on prescription  🙂

 

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Dealing With The Diva

Biggest struggles, , ,

kicking_screaming-cartoon

I’d like to think that I’m a fairly rational person, with at least a couple of active brain cells, but I’m here to tell you that this whole change of diet thing has knocked me for six. This morning I had the biggest diva meltdown ever over dropping an egg on the floor – my son, who had just arrived home after collecting our Christmas tree put it down and disappeared at the speed of sound, clearly reluctant to get sucked into the shitstorm.

It was late morning, and I was overdue breakfast. After spending half an hour trying to negotiate my way around the Weight Watchers website – half of which still isn’t working – to get the new points values for stuff I had to hand, I’d finally settled on eggs and toast. There were two eggs left in the carton, one of which survived the journey from carton to pan, and one of which didn’t…the one that didn’t ended up half on the tiled floor and half all over my slipper.

At that point the red mist descended. I don’t think there’s a cupboard door that remained unslammed, or a naughty word that remained unsaid. I managed to spread the egg on my slipper to all four corners of the kitchen as I stomped around being ridiculous. Then I sat and cried, and that’s really not like me at all.

So now I’ve calmed down and eaten something else instead – I mean who could be bothered with just one egg, right? – I think maybe I should at least make an attempt to understand why smashing the egg pushed my buttons in quite the way that it did. I’m not sure there’s just one reason…I think it was kind of a killer combination of a few things. Firstly I was hungry. Secondly I’m not the most patient person in the world, so spending ages trying to navigate a website which felt like it was leading me a right merry dance with oops there’s a problem, please try later on every second click hadn’t sweetened my mood.

I think mostly, in the back of my mind, I was – am – still frustrated with the way in which the transition from one diet to another has been handled by Weight Watchers, and I feel like it’s pushed me into a situation where I’ve messed up my lovely clean diet bill-of-health, if that makes sense?

As far as I was concerned, I’ve eaten within points consistently, played it completely straight and resisted loads of temptations along the way. That gave me a real feeling of power, like I’ve got this, you know? The longer I had things under control, the stronger I felt, and every day I was building on a really solid record of getting it right. Knowing you have all that success under your belt makes you really reluctant to break that perfect record, so it gathers a momentum all of it’s own.

To find out that actually, by spending my food budget using a combination of old and new weight watchers currency means I might have unknowingly gone way over my budget makes me feel like I’ve spoiled that perfect record…broken the spell, you know?  And whether that was intentional or not, I’m now wrestling with the asshole voice in my head who is screaming ha ha you’ve blown it, told you this wouldn’t last…the usual shit. And yes, I appreciate that I might just as easily have come in under budget – but the fact is I don’t know.

When you boil it down to brass tacks, I think that I’m scared…I’d settled into a groove with a diet that was working for me. I haven’t fallen off the wagon as much as been thrown off it, and that sucks. But you know what, writing this down is really helping, because it’s forcing me to acknowledge that I’m acting like a proper diva. Yes, of course I have a right to be angry. GGGRRRR. Right, been there, done that…move on.

I’m not starting from scratch. I still have all that success under my belt. I’m still knocking on the door of my third dress size down. I still have you guys, and I have still got a perfect record of making good choices. What I’ll never have control over is other people’s fuck-ups. But I’m big enough and hard enough to step over that bump in the road to Skinny Town and just keep on trucking.

And the diva..? She’s back in her box 🙂

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Bending The Budget

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now, , ,

budget deficit - recession 3d conceptSo I’ve got to hold my hands up and say that I’ve never been really good at budgeting. Cue hysterical laughter from anyone who knows me – I’m the ultimate ‘champagne lifestyle on a prosecco income’ kind of girl. Always have been. My mum was exactly the same…I always remember the twinkle she’d have in her eye when she showed off a new purchase, usually accompanied by the words, ah I was just looking but the devil got behind me and pushed! So I’m very familiar with that feeling, you know when there’s just too much month left at the end of the money..? But then hey, that’s what credit cards are for, right?

I’ve never gotten myself into a situation I haven’t been able to unpick, but lets just say my bank manager lives on his nerves, and I’ve probably contributed more than most to his permanently furrowed brow and sweaty disposition.

I get it though. I understand why I love to spend. When my boy was small and I scratched a living as a single mum, money was really tight and I had no choice but to be really careful. He never went without, although I often did, but that’s almost beside the point – I became really good at creative accounting. Robbing Peter to pay Paul…borrowing from the fuel budget to buy food, paying for fuel from the Christmas fund and reallocating everything back to square the circle as soon as my work bonus dropped in.

Somehow I always got by, but I never felt like I had it all figured out, I was just good at juggling that’s all. I got away with it. In more recent times, money hasn’t been quite so tight and my splurges have grown in tandem with my income but somehow I’ve continued to sail close to the wind and get away with it,  often by the skin of my teeth before every now and again getting a reality check and properly pulling my belt in, spending virtually nothing until I’ve stepped back from the edge and got my financial ducks back in a row.

Thing is, my attitude towards my food budget has often followed a similar path. When I say food budget, I mean the amount of points or calories or whatever I’m counting on my diet of choice. Let me give you an example…lets imagine I’ve got 1200 calories a day…that’s what, 8400 a week? Woohoo!! Monday Tuesday Wednesday is open season, going great. Thursday and Friday there’s looking like a bit too much week left at the end of the calories but it’ll be ok, I can cut back a bit. Saturday and Sunday I can manage on a few leaves of spinach and half a walnut, it’s all good.

Tell you what, I’ll just borrow a few from next week’s calorie budget, if I even it out across the week I’ll hardly notice…Monday Tuesday go ok, Wednesday and Thursday it’s looking a bit sparse but it’s ok…I’ve still got half a bag of spinach and a slice of ham to see me over the weekend…and repeat. It doesn’t compute you know? It appears that I have to be stricter, more disciplined…more in control of my food budget than I’m used to being with my spending of anything else, ever.

Marry that with my food addiction issues, a tendency to binge and my asshole diet logic, and that boys and girls is called the perfect storm. Even now, from my pole position within the sweet spot, wholly committed to the cause and with the posse shoring up my backbone, faced with a buffet at work yesterday I was acutely conscious of the asshole’s twisted calculations going on in my head. How much of it could I get down my neck, if I just ring fenced a couple of points for supper…if I eat fifteen sausage rolls now I probably won’t be hungry later on anyway, right?

I overloaded on the buffet, and scraped through the rest of the day without blowing my points budget but I could have eaten a scabby donkey by the time my head hit the pillow last night…within plan, just, but not a sensible balanced disciplined choice of food spread throughout the day. Far the opposite…feast, then famine. So…where to spend, where to save and how to budget remains work in progress.

Unless it involves blowing my budget on a new handbag obviously…then the gloves are off 🙂

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