Tag Archives: shhh naughty words

Scraping A Two.

In the here & now, , , ,

wagon

So this last week was going to be my super-clean eating week, right? As I gazed at the week ahead last Sunday, clearly I overlooked the night-in-with-gin and the day trip to London (which, by the way was all kinds of awesome) which had the potential to make the wheels come off my plan. Keeping my shit together requires me to call out stuff like that with a big red warning triangle in my head.

I’d probably have emerged from underneath last week clutching a gold star if I hadn’t returned to the Kingdom of Pain on Thursday, to be greeted by the stern-faced man mountain inviting me to hop on the scales. I’m here to tell you there was no hopping going on…as I hoisted myself up, I felt like everything was going in slow motion, you know? I reckon it was the weight of impending doom that slowed everything right down. I’d been inactive and armchair-ridden for more than a week so the prospect of a weigh-in didn’t exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Surprisingly, I’d worried for nothing. Between Sunday morning when I drew my line in the sand, and Thursday evening, I’d somehow shaken three unwelcome pounds off my arse and that was enough to dodge the bullet which God of Pain reserves specially for folk who aren’t achieving greatness in the weight-loss stakes. Phew.

Except, in my head that gave me licence to get up to devilment this weekend. The Asshole inside my head put forward a very convincing argument that I was unlikely to be subjected to the bitch in God of Pain’s office again for at least two weeks, so I could take my foot off a little, just for my birthday celebrations and maybe the day trip to London.

Come on Dee, really where’s the harm? There’s no fire to put out…there’s no mountain looming which requires you to be a certain weight is there? So it’ll take you a week longer to get in those size twelve skinny jeans, I mean big deal…you’re at least a fucking year away from wearing them anyway so what’s another week? You can take this at your own pace, come on lighten up, it’s your birthday…

So I did. Take it at my own pace I mean. Depending on which way you look at it, I managed to be both quick and slow at the same time, like some kind of dieting foxtrot. The only thing I slowed down was my progress, and everything else speeded right up…the speed at which I said yes please to a banana and maple syrup muffin on the train for example was lightening-quick.

And once I’d got a taste for it, the speed at which I pinched my mum’s banana and maple syrup muffin bordered on indecent once I’d established she didn’t want it. There was no cooling off period where the muffin sat untouched on the tray table whilst she decided…all it took was one almost-curl of her nose and I was all over that muffin faster than she could form the words to turn it down.

The fresh fruit option got ignored in favour of strawberry yoghurt and granola as a pre-cursor to the muffin and given how good that yoghurt tasted, trust me when I say it hadn’t come out of the low-fat corner of the kitchen. So between Leeds and London I fell off the wagon. And once we were in London, I went under the wheels completely.

I ate a burger. And I don’t mean a skinny little mass-produced plastic burger, oh no…this was the real deal…a burger that knew how to be a burger, with all the trimmings. Like the fries for example.

I didn’t just order fries, I ordered fries covered in cheese and bacon bits. I’ve never tasted anything so divine in my whole entire life…do you know how long it is since I ate cheese..? Shit the bed, it was awesome. This was our pre-matinee theatre lunch. Mum’s Cobb salad looked really good, I would have been more than happy with that myself on any other day. Just not this day. This day, the Asshole voice totally knocked it out of the park.

I didn’t even leave it with the burger. I had honey and ginger ice-cream in the theatre between acts one and two, and then a sandwich and two more muffins on the train journey home.

Yesterday was Sunday. Weigh day. And oh look, I appear to have reloaded one of those pounds…what a fucking surprise, said nobody at all.

Ah well…it is what it is. I had a ball, and my net position is okay. We’re back on track and this week there are no days out or catered meals. It’s just a normal week, with no warning triangles on my calendar and I’m on it. Please God I’m on it…cross my heart 🙂

 

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Landing On The Wrong Square

In the here & now, , , , ,

snake

I woke up early yesterday, having failed to fool my body into sleeping an extra hour as the clocks did their thing and rebooted ready for the dark winter months. I did however make good use of the extra hour, laying in bed for ages and contemplating the fact that I’ve been back from Cuba for two whole weeks – two fairly shit weeks in the grand scheme of things, with the last week in particular being a truly platinum-plated turd.

My general willingness to remember that I’m not that armchair-hogging food addict any more seems to have disappeared like a fart on a breeze, and I’m doing that thing where I’m refusing to look myself straight in the eye because I’m afraid of what I might see. For the few days leading up to the trek I was acutely aware that I’d taken my foot off the gas and made some dodgy choices, and whilst I was away my food plan went out of the window altogether. Neither of those two things would have been a massive issue. However. The two weeks since I came home have been a dieting car crash.

And you know what, I’d be the first to admit that I’m not very good with sums, but if I do a few quick calculations on the back of a fag packet I can’t avoid the reality of the situation I’m in…this isn’t just a bad few days. In the way that fuck-ups can run away with you like a freight train in a bad movie, this has morphed into a bad month.

I’ve been trying to think of ways in which to position it with myself so it doesn’t sound so bad and the most positive spin I can come up with is that I’m currently in hiatus between season one and season two. Season one was the start of this journey…begin the diet, find a voice, make some friends and build this awesome support forum. Find an adventure requiring focus and commitment, nail the plan and walk towards it as one big posse with the season finale featuring a finish line in Cuba. Season two picks up where season one left off, and it’ll take us right up to the point where the rest of my life can begin in a pair of size twelve skinny jeans.

The thing is, it’s not really a hiatus is it? The word hiatus suggests I’m pressing pause, kind of like a way to gather my thoughts and shape what I’m walking towards. Except that’s not what’s happening here, is it? I’ve fallen out of the naughty tree and I’ve put weight on…I’m struggling with my food plan and my head is refusing to play nicely. There’s a whole sub-story going on off-camera and that’s definitely not what’s supposed to happen when we’re taking a hiatus, at least it never did on Grey’s Anatomy.

It’s more accurate to imagine I’m living in a giant game of snakes and ladders, and right now I’m sliding down the back of the biggest fucking anaconda on the board. You know that one that always lurks right in the middle, and everyone in the game blows on the dice before they roll it when they’re in the general vicinity in the hope that it might prevent them from landing on that square..?

Well, guess who landed on the square. For fuck’s sake.

I didn’t see it coming but the more I reflect on the last few weeks, the more I think perhaps I should have, you know? Think about it. The trek was never supposed to be a thing in its own right…it was always a means to an end, something I signed up for as a way of staying on the path to Skinny Town.

And the fact that I brought it home was always going to be cause for celebration, given the amount of preparation I’d done to get ready for it. My mistake was allowing the Asshole voice to lead me directly to the I can relax now, it’s over! school of thinking, which was never going to end well. I could have prepared better for the fact that that might happen, and been ready for it. Note to self, that will ALWAYS happen because you have an Asshole who lives inside your head. It’s not rocket science, is it?

What I need to do now is figure out how to not let my bad month turn into two bad months, and then three. I can’t – won’t – go there.

First things first. I’m going to go to the Kingdom of Pain every day providing my work schedule allows me to get there…this week it does (although I’m away for the weekend which given the fragility of my food sobriety will throw up a new set of challenges but one step at a time, right?).

I had my eating under control last week between Sunday and Wednesday…it was the latter part of the week where it all went tits up. I was stressed, I couldn’t fit a work-out in and before I knew it the Asshole voice had snuck some all or nothing thinking into the equation…you can’t do THIS so don’t worry about THAT either.

Yesterday was better, in fact it was a good day. I worked hard in my circuit training class yesterday morning, I ate healthily, and I went to bed not having listened to any of the suggestions about popcorn or maltesers which were helpfully put forward by the Asshole voice as I was watching TV last night. Today I’m going to use yesterday as a blueprint and do the same again.

One foot in front of the other, and repeat, right? 🙂

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I Couldn’t Outwalk My Fork

In the here & now, , ,

fork

I know you’re all expecting the next chapter of my trekking story today but I’ve got a major battle going on as I try and cling on to my place in the sweet spot so I’m afraid the contents of my head have jumped the queue…trekking day two and beyond is buffering as we speak but my woes are already lined up and ready to go. Sorry about that.

I’ve got to be honest, I’ve had better weeks. On a scale of one to ten, one being really shit and ten not being much better, the needle didn’t even get off the starting blocks. I’m in that place where I’d be grateful for a one. My boy’s been in hospital for emergency surgery so I’ve had a  couple of sleepless nights…it doesn’t matter how old they are, your babies are your babies, right?

In between all that, my website is still broken and the people who should be sorting it out are seemingly much better at apologising for the inconvenience of it all than they are at actually fixing the fucking issue. I’m seriously at the end of my rope. For all of you trying to join in with the chatter and leave a comment, I’m really sorry you’re being blocked as suspected bots. If it’s any consolation whichever gremlins have taken up residence are tarring me with the same brush and I’m also getting regularly booted out of my own website for being of suspected dodgy character.

So I’m tired and I’m frustrated, on top of suffering from the huge anti-climax of returning from the jungle with a lack of forthcoming adventures to keep driving me forward…it’s got D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R written all over it.

On Wednesday I stuck to my food plan. Yesterday I didn’t. Yesterday anything was fair game. It started well, with melon. Well, I say it started well but to be honest I’d taken melon to work to snack on throughout the morning, and I accidentally ate it all in the car before I even got there so if we’re splitting hairs it didn’t start that well. But still, the melon was the only healthy highlight in what turned out to be a dieting car crash. I ate sandwiches and chips, and cake and crisps and chocolate.

I can’t even blame it on the fact that I was stressed…on Wednesday, as my boy and I sat for fifteen hours in a waiting room at the hospital and waited for someone – anyone – to feel better and vacate their bed so he could get the surgery he needed, I was stressed to the moon and back. He was on nil-by-mouth so no naughties passed my lips at all in what I considered to be a noble and selfless show of solidarity, you know? Yesterday however, surgery safely over, son on the mend and stress levels on the downward march, my jaws barely stopped moving all day.

What’s that all about? That’s not part of the plan. Especially when you consider I had a come to Jesus moment with the God of Pain on Sunday when he clocked the fact that I’d put six pounds on since he weighed me just before I left for Cuba. I swore to him that I was back on track. Genuinely, what I ate in Cuba was heavily carb-laden and dextrose-rich and I’m cool with the effect that had – we all needed that fuel to get through the trek.

What I didn’t need was all the other stuff I ate, on those nights where we stayed in nice hotels…I dined on the excuse that I was going to burn it off but clearly I failed to out-walk my fork. I also didn’t need any of the crap I’ve eaten since we got back. So Sunday was my reboot, the day where I drew my line in the sand and picked up where I’d left off. Except the week hasn’t shaped up that way for all the reasons I’ve talked about…or, should that say all the excuses I’ve made.

There is no reason why I should’ve allowed the wheels to fall off my food plan, just a lot of excuses why I did. I’m disappointed that I disrespected all the effort I’ve put in to get to this point, but today’s a new day, right?

Today I’ll do better.

 

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Dear Matthew…

In the here & now, ,

matthew

Ok so this is the sort of luck I have, right? I’ve been planning this trek for the last nine months – let’s recap. The hurt machine, then the walking, then the Kingdom of pain. The focus, the planning, the raising of money, which is the biggest thing of all…and some jumped up fucking wind with big swirly ideas thinks it can smash into Cuba and threaten everything I’ve worked so hard for…well I don’t bloody think so. Hurricane Matthew you can just fuck right off.

Sorry…as Meredith Grey would say, I’m feeling all dark and twisty as I sit, glued to the weather channel watching this big round white swirly thing chart a course towards the same place I’m headed in a few days time. I can’t begin to imagine how the people who live in hurricane alley feel every time one of these monsters rears its head, their nerves must be shredded. It’s bad enough sitting here with my morning coffee after a restless night dreaming about losing my new Tilley hat to the wrath of Matthew, or getting carried away on the wind like a fat Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.

I hate the fact that I’ve got no control over what’s happening. So much so that I vaporised a whole bag of dinky deckers last night as I watched the latest weather reports from the safety of my armchair. People are being evacuated…best eat chocolate then. I mean for God’s sake what was that going to do to save the situation, apart from making me heavier and therefore less likely to blow away.

I feel like a mardy child, reacting because things aren’t going my way. I want to stamp my foot and thump the table and demand that the wind dies down. I have this horrible feeling that the whole trip is going to get canned just as we’re geared up to leave…when I come to think about it, it was a silly season to organise the trek in in the first place, given that it’s not unusual for hurricanes to come out to play in October.

I’m going to be like a cat on a hot tin roof for the next few days until we’re more certain about how and where Matthew is going to make landfall. Right now the folk who know about this stuff think it’ll smash into the eastern side of Cuba on Tuesday. We’re headed for the central bit of the island on Friday. I’m hoping that means that the bit we’re trekking in will be sort of out of scope for the worst of it. I don’t mind wind and rain, in fact that’s preferable to high heat any day in my book but I suspect the health and safety bods will be risk-assessing us to the moon and back, you know? I have this big fat knot of worry that they’ll make us postpone it.

Watch this space, and please keep everything you can possibly cross crossed…

 

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Spending What I’ve Earned *Cough*

In the here & now, , , ,

icecream

So, I was telling you about my holiday…we got as far as Tuesday, and the first sign of wobbly wheels if I recall. It was fine, I mean nothing disastrous. I’d climbed the steps which would have counteracted some of the naughtiness at dinner that evening. Just not all of it. It might have brought me safely over the line of three courses. Maybe. But not five, and definitely not the cheese board.

That said, I enjoyed every mouthful, and the Asshole voice talked me into being okay about it with a fine selection of reasons why…the steps, the walking, you’re on holiday, everybody deserves a treat, you can’t expect your friend to eat alone, you’re doing a big hike tomorrow, you’ve deprived yourself for a whole fucking year and you deserve this…

And it’s true, I was doing a big hike the next day. Which seemed to offset a whole host of eating opportunities, in fact it would be fair to say there was definitely a bit of creative accounting going on. Let’s count them…you’d better have a good breakfast, you’ll need the energy. (Number 1) – Cue full English breakfast, on account of the fact that we were meeting for the hike at 12.20pm and wouldn’t be eating lunch. That’s plausible, right? Most important meal of the day and all that.

And after that big breakfast we had a busy morning…Wednesday was Geirangerfjord, a stunning village at the foot of the enormous mountain I was going to hike up in the afternoon on an organised excursion. My friend and I walked a fair distance as we explored, climbing at least as many steps as I’d done the day before only this time it was up the side of a waterfall. It was so pretty I forgot to notice how much effort it took to get up there you know?

When we got back down to the village there was a little cafe selling ice-cream, and Asshole logic suggested that a small snack might be in order whilst I waited for my tour group, seeing as I’d used up quite a lot of energy climbing the waterfall. I’m not sure three scoops in a cone the size of a small hat was absolutely necessary but hey, I was hiking up a mountain, so I’d burn that off in no time, right? (Number 2).

And then the hike…man that was hardcore. We walked about three and a half miles, to a height of around 650m and it was challenging walking, with a guide who must have been some distant relative of Usain Bolt. At one point I thought perhaps my lungs were going to explode, but I just pushed through it, and powered as I was by mint choc-chip, pistachio and rum and raisin ice cream I made it to the top, and the waterfall we’d gone to see was spectacular.

I’ve got to be honest, it was worth the climb. We were looking down on the clouds as they blew in and out, and when they cleared the views were breathtaking. And I felt genuinely on top of the world, it was certainly the most physically challenging thing I’ve done to date but I did it, and what’s more there were younger fitter folk who took longer to get up there than I did. It seems I have some grit when it’s needed…who knew? Coming down was tough on the knees and I was glad to get back to the valley, but all in all it was an awesome experience.

Before we went back to the ship they took us to a little farm nestled against the hillside where they served us coffee and big fat waffles loaded with jam and cream. I was going to say no thanks, but before I had chance, yes please came out. Fuck. But it was okay, because I’d just climbed a mountain, right? I’d earned that waffle. (Number 3)

When I finally got back on the ship, my friend had bagged a table in the pool bar out on deck at the very back of the ship so we could enjoy the sail-away from the best seat in the house, and we ordered a bottle of wine, which to be honest barely touched the sides as it went down. Shall we have another..? Oh go on then…be rude not to…things got a little jumbled after that.

I remember us deciding that since the scenery was so stunning we’d forget about dressing for dinner and we’d stay up on deck, grabbing something from the buffet to eat where we were sitting. Never a good idea when you’ve got a couple of bottles of wine under your belt, especially when you fancy everything on the buffet and you can keep going back for more. And double especially when you’ve climbed a mountain and feel like you’ve earned a bit of what you fancy, having conveniently forgotten that you’ve already spent anything you’ve earned twice over, on the full English, the whopper ice-cream, the fully loaded waffle and two bottles of wine.

And best not get me started on the rocky road dessert. I had at least one whilst we were up on deck and I seem to remember taking one down to the cabin with me when we made our way to bed much, much later that night. Actually that’s not strictly true, I don’t remember doing that per se but the empty dish was there when I woke up and there was a spoon in bed with me.

I shall complete my holiday memoir in the next post. For now, let’s just say I’m in the process of dealing with the aftermath..  🙂

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