Tag Archives: muppet

Sorry I’m Late!

In the here & now, , ,

Oh my Looooooord it’s good to see you guys! A million thank yous for your patience…I’m just about there by the skin of my teeth for a Monday post…I’d almost forgotten how.

So, for those of you who don’t follow me on Facebook, and might be thinking I somehow fell off the edge of the world in a careless moment, I had an accident and shattered the screen of my laptop, which meant that I couldn’t publish anything. If I could get into WordPress and see the screen of my phone well enough to try and compose a blog post I might have been able to work around it but I couldn’t get the formatting right, the words kept disappearing and in any event, the insurance company said it wouldn’t take very long.

Five days, is what they said. Five days to assess the damage and then five days to repair it.  Five days max. Except it was three days before they even collected it, then a weekend happened. I should’ve known at that point it wasn’t going to run smoothly, you know? I chased twice and after exactly five more days they told me yes, the screen was definitely damaged. No shit, Sherlock…that would account for the big white hectare of nothingness between the left and the right edge then, right?

Just five more days Mrs Tipton, we’ll repair it and you’ll have it back…except five days later some fucking ejit had forgotten to get an authorisation code to go ahead with the repair so it was still sitting on a bench somewhere with a shattered screen. You can probably take your best guess at how pissed off I was, on a scale of one to ten.

To make amends, they offered me a new laptop instead of a repair, which I accepted, with a slightly less sour face. It finally came last Thursday, and I was too giddy for words until I remembered that new ones don’t come pre-loaded with the software that I need and I still couldn’t fucking write.

I had a code somewhere to load the software that I’d bought when I changed my laptop a couple of years ago, but it had disappeared into that safe place black hole along with all the other things I can never put my hands on when I really need them. Long story short, I ended up having to buy it again. It took me hours of angst trying to download and install it because the instructions were not written in ABC language, in fact it might as well have been written in Swahili for all the sense it made to me. But it’s done now, I finally figured it out, and I’m IN.

God it’s so good to be back!! My fingers are tingling and I’m in my happy place.

I’m also in a world of fat. I know. I’d love to say that in my three wordless weeks I’ve been focusing on myself, spending time in the gym and existing on a diet of dust with a side of fresh air, and I’m looking buff.

Yeah, cos that was always going to happen, right?

I’ve been completely under the wheels. I mean don’t get me wrong, I’ve been busy…we all know the devil makes work for idle hands and all. Work has been a little crazy, I’ve started a new business venture which is going better than I might have hoped and I’ve generally tried hard to fill the space I normally reserve for chatting to you guys, but in between all that it’s been like feeding time at the fucking zoo.

I daren’t face the Shitbird…haven’t been near it. I’ve stacked a family sized bag of toilet rolls on top of it actually, so it’s buried out of sight. I can feel my arse following me as I walk around, I mean it’s tragic but even now my head isn’t playing ball. I’m a mess. I haven’t been swimming since the last time we spoke, and the last time we spoke I hadn’t been swimming since…well, it might even be before Christmas.

What the hell happened?

I’m hoping that this is my cue to get my shit together. Now I’m back in that place where I have to be accountable, I mean. It’s like my enforced hiatus from tipping words onto the page signalled a free-for-all in the who gives a shit stakes but I’m back, and I have to make it count…I can’t go on like this with the Asshole steering the ship can I?

I don’t feel ready, that’s the thing. Oh, I’m ready not to be this fat. I just don’t feel ready to stop power eating and I’m really scared that I’m not going to be able to.

Suggestions welcome…  🙂

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License To Mess About.

In the here & now,

This week was always going to be a challenge. I travelled a couple of hours south on Monday afternoon to meet one of the teams I support for a working dinner and overnight stay followed by a full day’s training course. After a night in my own bed last night I’m away again today and overnight this evening for another working dinner, and this whole day will be catered in the same way yesterday was catered. A tasty hotel finger buffet with an un-specified take-your-best-guess calorie content.

So, fertile ground for head fuckery, right? Especially as I appear to have scored the biggest own goal ever by shouting from the rooftops on Monday that I’m cool with averaging half a pound a month weight-loss because it’s all tickety-boo and going in the right direction. Somehow, between then and now, my Asshole Voice has interpreted that as having a licence to mess about.

I started the week with fabulous intentions following a great weigh-in on Sunday. I got up at stupid o’clock on Monday morning so I could fit in my hour swimming before most people had eaten their cornflakes because I knew I was travelling later and didn’t want to miss my work-out. I ate a carefully planned breakfast and a carefully planned lunch, then drove down to a hotel in the Midlands to meet my colleagues for a carefully planned dinner…that’s where it all went a bit tits up.

I’d preserved enough calories for a decent dinner, having checked out the menu ahead of time on-line. I was enjoying a small pre-dinner glass of Merlot in the bar, when some bright spark suggested eating out instead of eating in the hotel, and the whole team jumped on it like it was the best idea ever. Shit. I hadn’t planned for that…oh well, panic not. I can adapt my plan. It’ll be fine.

We ended up in a restaurant with mainly burgers, pizza and pasta on the menu. I was the lone fat-girl in a sea of middle-aged men, and I was caught in that no-man’s land between despair and actual fucking excitement that genuinely I might have to say knickers to the diet because really, what choice did I have? I tried to be sensible and order a diet coke, which turned out to be diet Pepsi and I can’t stand Pepsi, so I opened my mouth to ask for a glass of water instead but it somehow came out as a large glass of red wine please.

I passed on the appetiser, but my colleagues ordered a bunch of sharing platters and before I knew it, two beer-battered cheese sticks and a loaded potato skin had joined the large glass of red wine in front of me.

I’d ordered the least calorie-loaded option that I could find on the menu – it was chicken, or at least I think there was chicken somewhere inside those deep-fried breadcrumbs loaded with ham and cheese and served with a side of fries. The thing is, after my third red wine of the evening it didn’t seem too terrible, you know? I mean I’d lost three and a half pounds last week, and we’ve already established that my average is half a pound a month so I’m seven times ahead of myself already…fuck it, on that basis I can relax a bit, right? So I’ll tell you what, let’s have all that and dessert too.

I woke up yesterday morning with indigestion and a heavy heart…I mean come on. So obviously I had a lean breakfast and stayed away from the lunch buffet…oh no that’s right I didn’t do either of those things. I ate bacon and eggs for breakfast followed at lunchtime by two mini cheese and onion pies, some divine onion bhajis and a plate of roasted vegetables which were slathered in oil, plus two cookies and a handful of wrapped sweets.

What is wrong with me? I wrote a fucking blog post on Monday bemoaning the fact that for every two steps forward I take one step backwards, and the ink’s not even dry on the page before I’m undoing all the good work of a three and a half pound weight loss by nose-diving straight into the first temptation I can find. I’m genuinely speechless.

I did make amends with myself when I got home last night and took myself off to the pool. I swam for an hour and chuntered to myself the whole time as I swam back and forth about what a dickhead I can be sometimes.

Today is a new day. But it’s another fully catered one with a big dinner this evening, and I’ll have no opportunity this time to out-swim my fork so I’m going to white-knuckle through on a wing and a prayer because I’m worth more than half a poxy pound.

Come on, focus 🙂

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Friends With Benefits

In the here & now, , ,

You know how sometimes, you listen to someone wittering on about something, and you want to shake them and turn the mirror round so they can have a good look, and see what you see? Usually that they’re talking shite and the problem is closer to home than they’re prepared to acknowledge, am I right?  Yeah, well that was me on Monday.

I don’t know what’s changed between Monday and now, but I re-read the post yesterday when I was catching up with all your messages, and all I could hear was one big whinge. Poor me, I’m such a victim, I’m trying so hard and it’s not my fault…holy moly what did I sound like. I never play the victim role, but I was definitely trying it on for size wasn’t I? Sorry about that, I feel suitably sheepish. In fact, I feel like a dick.

I’m haven’t really hit a plateau, have I? My recent inertia stems more from the two steps forward and four steps back school of muppetry. I had an email from a lady who suggested I was probably not being honest with myself about what I was eating, and after I’d swallowed my initial response – which may or may not have included a bit of salty language even by my standards – my indignation prompted me to hold the mirror up to myself and take a good long look.

Fuck’s sake. She wasn’t wrong. Looking objectively, I had to acknowledge a bunch of stuff.

There are some things I’m doing really well. I tip out all my thoughts and feelings, and pick the bones of them with those of you who are kind enough to listen three times every week, and that’s what’s helped me achieve longevity on this journey. No way would I still have skin in the game after six hundred and fifty eight days on a diet if you lot hadn’t lent me your ears. I feel supported, and I’d hope those of you on your own journey to Skinny Town feel supported in these pages too. So we got that down, right?

I’m broadly happy with my food plan. Well, as much as I’m ever going to be. Between you and me, I am bored to the back bollocks of counting points, but last week’s switch to No Count has given me a shiny new toy to play with and I’m doing okay. So I can tick that box too.

So, the basics then..? All those things that I know I should do to supplement both of the above, like drinking two or three litres of water every day, and counting points for the dressing I put on my salad, or the honey that I drizzle on my breakfast…huh, so about that… do I really use one level teaspoon’s worth…? I have no idea. I’ve never drizzled it onto a teaspoon, I mean who does that? I guess it’s probably about a teaspoon’s worth, and I count the points on that basis. That’s near enough, isn’t it?

Actually, it’s probably not enough. Not if it’s several times per week’s worth of guess work. As for water…huh. I don’t do that either. I forget, I don’t like the taste, it makes me wee a lot…blah blah blah. I rarely get even half a litre down my neck. I know I should, but I don’t. I have no excuse.

And don’t even get me started on gravy. Come on, I’m a Yorkshire girl, and gravy runs through my veins, in fact most of my meals revolve around it. It’s only since I’ve started following the No Count plan, and my points budget is much smaller,  that I’ve properly read the values again and realised that one point buys me only four tablespoons’ worth of gravy. You’re shitting me, right? I thought it meant four tablespoons’ worth of granules, so I’ve happily been sailing my food through a lake of gravy with every meal, for more than eighteen months. I want to bang my head on the table and wail.

That’s the sound of a penny dropping, right there. I feel like wearing a black armband today, since me and gravy won’t be seeing each other any more. Well, maybe from time to time, sort of like friends with benefits.

I was a bit rattled at the suggestion that I wasn’t being honest with myself, but once again I’m more grateful than I can tell you at the way you lot help me keep it real.

I’d better try harder to read the small print in future, eh 🙂

 

 

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A Question Of Perspective

In the here & now, , ,

I remember taking part in an experiment, donkeys years ago, at a children’s museum, you know one of those places where it’s all about experiential learning, and touching and feeling stuff? The experiment that stuck in my mind was in a room dedicated to the five senses, and there were all kinds of neat things lined up for little hands to touch.

I remember these three tubular steel bars, all fixed to the wall next to each other. The one on the left was really cold, the one on the right was really warm and the one in the middle was just at room temperature. If you grabbed hold of the middle bar with your right hand when it had been holding the warm tube, it felt cold. If you grabbed hold of the middle bar with your left hand after it’d been holding the really cold tube, it felt warm. It was all about helping little minds to understand perspective, right? A clever demonstration that something can feel different in different circumstances even when it’s exactly the same.

My perspective on the dirty number offered to me by the Shitbird scale this morning is different to my perspective on that same number last time it stared back at me from the little digital display. Then, I was hitting the number from a position of power. It was a smaller number than the week before, and you bet your sweet ass I felt skinny as I snapped the picture.

This morning, off the back of two or three dodgy days where my food plan has gone a bit off reservation, and I’ve felt horribly out of control to the point where my fingertips are shredded from where I’ve clung on so tight to my place in the sweet spot, instead of making me feel like a rock star, that same number was practically hollering fat bastard in my face as I reluctantly picked up my phone to record it for posterity.

And share it with you guys, obviously. Good, bad or ugly, at the end of the day, that’s the deal…I promised.

One number, and two different perspectives. I celebrated it last time, but right now, today I want to smash the fucking Shitbird thing with a big hammer and make the number go away, because it’s jumped in the wrong direction.  A lot.

Now, logic tells me that I cannot possibly have gained over four pounds from just two days of questionable choices. Sure, in the old days when I was power eating that might have been a possibility but I haven’t gone all out and had a balls to the wall binge. Not even close, but I have eaten too much. I know that.

Making the protein balls which contain nuts and dates and peanut butter and honey wasn’t exactly the brightest thing I’ve ever done, especially since playing around with my food plan had made me feel wobbly. I mean, talk about dangling myself right in front of temptation…? And I already knew at the weekend that my crazy work schedule and the revision I had to do for my exam meant I’d hardly be working out this week, so if ever there was a week where protein balls weren’t fucking needed in the first place it was this week. And yet, out came the blender.

I am such a dick sometimes.

Anyway, it is what it is. I’m hoping that this obscene number is an aberration, and when I reboot both my weigh day and my food plan on Sunday things might look a little brighter. At the very least I’ll have time to kick the Shitbird scale around every tile in the bathroom until it gives me something I can live with. For now, I remain pissed off to the max. The experiment is over, and I’m going back to my steady-away poodle down the numbers.

Bah 🙁

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Packing Away The Attitude

In the here & now, , , ,

Well first of all, let’s have a resounding cheer for those amongst us who hit the new year feeling blissfully happy and proud at how well they coped with all the excesses of the festive season…yeee…what?

Ah. Not just me then.

If you did it, if you pulled it out of the bag then you’re my hero. Personally, I’ve been on the ropes a bit, in fact I’m not going to lie, sometimes I wasn’t even in the fucking ring. I was doing so well too. Even I can see that the timing was shit…after my major-league wobble I managed eleven straight days of clean eating, right up until the day before Christmas  Eve but then the wheels fell off my very fragile food sobriety once again and it’s been open season in the space between then and now.

I can only liken my Christmas to the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan, where some poor bloke is elbow deep in mud with bullets whizzing perilously close to his tin hat as he tried to navigate the battlefield and claw his way to the other side. Except in my case they weren’t bullets, they were chocolates and cookies and salty snacks. No cheese balls, in case you were wondering…I didn’t cross that line. Yey me. However, it was the single piece of restraint I managed to show, and it was more symbolic than waistline-friendly.

Well, I say fuck it…that was last year, right?

I’ve packed away my Christmas decorations this morning, and I’ve stuffed my Christmas Eating Attitude right down to the bottom of the box, next to the really shit baubles, you know the old tatty ones that get strung at the back of the tree where nobody sees? As I taped up the box for another year, it felt a bit like that Biggest Loser episode, you know the one where they climb a big hill wearing backpacks containing the equivalent amount of weight that they’ve lost and then they lob it off the top of the hill? They all cry and congratulate each other and then go home and hit the gym for last chance workout.

I had a false start yesterday. It was the first of January and it was a Sunday, so two new starts for the price of one…a new year and brand new Weight Watchers week. I made it ’till about 4pm and then I blew it. I was feeling really sad after a visit to my Godmother who is terminally ill. When she was first diagnosed the doctors said that they couldn’t cure her, but she’d probably be able to rub along for a good few years yet. Now they’re not telling her that any more. And I know it’s part of the circle of life, but it seemed like a good reason to eat everything that was left in my Christmas cupboard when I got home and then sit and cry about how unfair life is.

So today is my actual day one. I haven’t changed my weigh-day, and I’m not about to take the piss by insisting that I wait until next Sunday because otherwise it’s not a full week…today is it.

I know I have to make some changes. I need to get more accountable, you know? I mean sure, I already share with you my losses and my gains, but the overall pattern gets lost in the mix and I can hide from it too easily by cracking a joke here and there, so here’s the thing…I’ve been tidying the blog up over the last few days, getting ready for the new year and archiving stuff properly and as part of that I’ve made a new page – the Shitbird Scale now has a voice. And there, every Sunday, I will post a picture of our weekly conversation.

Shit the bed, did I actually say that out loud?

Well, it seems I did. And look at what the fucking hokey cokey diet has done to my weight loss…my regain was 15lbs prior to stuffing the Asshole back in his box before Christmas, and now it’s morphed into a 22lbs regain. I’m 22lbs heavier than my pre-Cuba weight. That means I’m 22lbs further away from my goal weight of 147lbs. All because I’m a muppet.

So the box is taped shut, my Christmas Eating Attitude is packed away and today, so far, feels like a new start. One minute at a time. I have 120lbs to lose and I’m going after it.

Who’s with me?

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