Tag Archives: humour

Game Of Thongs

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now, Reflections on past times,

holsI’m getting so excited about my forthcoming holiday – it’s going to be epic. Normally I’m a quiet vacationer – I have such a busy life full of work and other pulls on my time that my idea of holiday heaven amounts to utter relaxation when I’m away you know? On my last holiday I managed to read 8 books, get thoroughly pampered and I relaxed within an inch of my life. The plan is a little different this time – six giddy girlies heading off for a few days to celebrate my milestone birthday and looking at the itinerary, there won’t be much relaxing going on! There will however be lots of laughing, lots of shopping, and plenty of memories being made…I can’t wait.

There’s only one day in the four that we’re away where we’ve got time to chill around the pool – always makes me a bit wistful when I recall skinny trips where I didn’t need to worry about choosing a swimsuit with the type of engineering designed to contain and flatter quite so much body.  I use the word ‘flatter’ in it’s loosest possible term obviously – it’s black which is as good as it’s going to get. The asshole in my head is going to have a field day from the minute I put it on but you know what, he can stick it up his pipe…I’m totally going to style it out and give the impression that I’m one of those lucky people who don’t care what other people think.

There’s nowhere to hide in swimwear is there? I remember I took a trip a few years ago with a guy I’d been seeing for a few months – I was a big girl back then but not in the same way I am now. Even so, I’d spent the days and weeks leading up to the trip agonising over what I was going to look like on the beach. It didn’t even occur to me what he was going to look like – rookie mistake number one. Afterwards, when the trauma of seeing him in a thong for the first time had receded, I made a mental note to expand on the ‘no speedos’ rule which we’d discussed before the trip. He tried to justify it by insisting that we were in Brazil, and everybody in Brazil wears a thong.

I’m here to tell you that they don’t. And in any event, fifty-year-old butt cheeks flapping in the breeze like pillow cases on a washing line are N.E.V.E.R going to be a good look. It’s the one time I’ve felt confident that nobody was looking at my ass since the one next to me was the one putting people off their lunch. But kudos to him – he didn’t care. He was living his dream, and wearing a thong on Ipanema beach was it. Incidentally it was our first and last trip together, in case you were wondering…I’m all for live and let live, but I’ve got enough on worrying about what people will think about me without further complicating the equation.

With a bit of luck there might be a hairy-assed bloke in a mankini lounging around the pool at our hotel in a couple of weeks’  time to take the attention off this middle-aged fat girl in a swimsuit…I can live in hope 🙂

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So How Full is Full?

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now, , ,

sk dog

It’s occurred to me more than once that maybe there’s a fundamental design fault with the human body you know? At least for some of us.  Take your car…it runs low on fuel, the fuel gauge tells you, you fill it up and when the fuel pump clicks, you know it’s full. You can’t squeeze more in, because it just takes what it takes. It doesn’t matter if you’d hoped to squeeze more in, if it’s full it’s full. You wouldn’t stand there and keep giving it large with the nozzle would you? No, of course you wouldn’t.

Now I don’t know about you, but somehow, no matter how much my head recognises that my belly is full, if I’m that way out and want to eat, I’ll find a way to eat. Case in point, Christmas dinner…you know that way where it’s just soooo good and there’s leftovers on the table winking at you and trying everything possible to attract your attention…eat me eat me eat me… you’ve already eaten everything on your plate, you’re stuffed more royally than the turkey ever was and you already suspect you’re going to need a winch to help you up from your chair.

And yet. That minxy little pig nestled in that crispy little blanket seduces you over the brussels sprouts and before you know it your jaws are off again. Your belly is already bursting, you look like you swallowed a beach ball and you’re bordering on a food coma and yet still you can’t resist.

My problem has always been that it isn’t just at Christmas…lots of people walk away from that special once-a-year dinner groaning and pledging not to eat for a week. Me included (although to be fair I’d usually only make it from the dining table as far as the sofa before I was in to the chocolates just because you know, it’s Christmas.) Trouble is, having grown up eating portions that wouldn’t have looked out of place at the top of Jack’s beanstalk, walking away from the table feeling fit to burst was almost the norm in our house.

Having survived the war years on ration coupons and food shortages,  my mum showed love by providing a constant stream of food…she loved to cook, and bake, and although there was only our small little family sitting down to eat, she may as well have been feeding the five thousand. There’d probably have been leftovers even then.  So her love of feeding her family combined with my love of feeding my face kind of created the perfect storm. My full-filter is broken, and I have no concept of what a normal portion looks like. I look at a TV dinner or a ready meal which might be labelled as a meal for one and think “are you kidding me..? “

It’s down to me now though – I get that. Eating till I’m not hungry is different from eating till I’m full, and I get that too. Eating till I’m overfull …I shouldn’t go there at all. There have been times in my life where I’ve felt overpowered by the desire to eat but equally there have been times when I’ve felt like I’m the one calling the shots, and right now I feel strong. In control…it feels good you know?

Even if I still look at a regular sized portion and think ‘great but where’s the rest of it…?!‘

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Is Fat Catching?

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now, , ,

friendsSo I read an interesting article the other day which made me think.  It seemed to suggest that if your friends are fat, you have an increased risk of becoming fat yourself. Hmm. Lets just think about that for a second…that’s like suggesting that being fat is contagious, like a disease you might get if you hug me then don’t immediately wash your hands…how bloody insulting.  If word of this gets out I’d best prepare for a mass exodus of friends, after all lets be honest, nobody’s going to want to risk  being around me if that’s the case 🙁

Having said that, after my initial flash-point reaction of thinking the article had clearly been written by some skinny fuckwit with fat issues, I calmed down a bit and thought about it for a while, and you know what, I can see a world in which there might be just a tiny element of truth buried in there somewhere. By definition, I guess the people you hang out with are into the kind of things you’re into. So if you’re into fitness and an active lifestyle, your friends probably are too. If you’re a foodie and your free time is spend hunting down new places to go eat, stands to reason your besties enjoy that too.

Pop quiz – when I get together with my friends, do we

a) Go to a step-class and work out for four hours burning 5000 calories each before going out for a salad washed down with iced water and vitamin pills, or

b) Go to a movie, eat Haagen Dazs and popcorn whilst we’re watching it and then go out for pizza, pudding and cocktails..?

Yes…it’s never going to be option A. We would probably burn off at least half the ice-cream laughing through the course of the evening but it’s not going to be a calorie conscious night out. Well, in pre-diet days anyway.  But still – none of my friends look like I do. They come in all shapes and sizes, as you might expect. But as far as I can see, nobody has caught fat from me yet, therefore that kind of begs the question, why do I look like this, and they don’t..?

I think I can answer that. After our night out, they’ll probably all step off the calories for a couple of days, because that’s what normal people do. It’s all about balance and that’s the bit I struggle with…when I’m not dieting, I eat all the wrong stuff, and portion control..? Doesn’t even occur to me, I mean portion control is what you do when you’re dieting, right?  Not when you’re off the leash.  So I can do dieting, and I can do not dieting, but woven together so I broadly style it out across the week..?  That I can’t do…it’s one (and I get fatter) or the other (and I get skinnier).

So, when the skinny girl breaks out and I get to a size that I feel happy with, that’s the time when I need to wake up and learn a whole new way of being. Old dog, new tricks? Yep, count me in…I’m ready to learn 🙂

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Tapas, Anyone?

Freeform thoughts,

tapas

Friends are precious aren’t they – it’s almost the weekend and one of my favourite things to do when I’m in the mood to kick back and relax is to get together with a bunch of people I’m close to for relaxed chatter, a bite to eat and maybe the odd glass of wine or two. You just cannot beat an evening where you laugh till your belly aches, and I always find that good food and decent plonk is a great starter for ten.

So the question will always arise, unless we’re dining at home – what does everyone fancy to eat? Admittedly it’s one of the nicer dilemmas to have, even when I’m dieting and in the sweet spot there’s usually something on the menu wherever we end up which will allow me to keep at least a sheen on my dieting halo even if it’s not an out and out shine. But the consensus I dread..? Tapas.

For the uninitiated, it’s the informal Spanish style of eating where little dishes of food heaven arrive at the table in a steady stream and you choose a bit of this, and a bit of that…chat for a bit and then more dishes turn up, and repeat. Everybody dives in and helps themselves and the dishes keep on coming until you’ve had enough. For most people, it’s a lovely relaxing sociable way of eating which promotes conversation and sharing as you meander unhurriedly through the meal. Even as I sit typing this, I love the idea of it. In reality, it makes me bat shit crazy.

I’m in the Joey from Friends camp when it comes to sharing food. I like my food, on my plate under the sole control of my knife and fork. It messes with my head when all these little dishes hit the table and everyone just digs in. I can feel my palms getting sweaty when I see someone going in for the kill on something I fancied the look of and by the time I get to it, it’s all gone. So then I have a bit of something else but I hang onto the food envy.

If a second dish of it turns up a bit later on and I miss it again I swear I can feel the red mist descending. Best friends or no, I want to wrestle it from their hands. And if you strike gold and eat a bit of something you really enjoy, when you go back for more invariably you find that somebody else has eaten the rest of it, so all you can do it use a bit of fancy bread to mop up what’s left of the sauce and spend the rest of the meal watching the waitress like a hawk… poised, ready to pounce but with no guarantee that she’ll be back with more of the one you’re hoping for. And if you’re so busy watching for more of that one, you might miss something else that everyone starts raving about…and so it goes on.

Can you see my point? It’s stress central. And I always end up feeling a bit cheated, like everyone else got all the good stuff. Or got more of the good stuff than I did…I got olives. With so much table activity it’s impossible to tell. But how utterly ridiculous is it that I’d be so pre-occupied with a head full of stressy thoughts about whether I’m getting my fair share of the food – ‘Bitch ate the last meatball!’ – it’s not normal.

There goes the food yanking my chains again…

 

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