Tag Archives: weight loss

Part Woman, Part Ostrich

Freeform thoughts, Reflections on past times, , , ,

ostrich

In the way that I often do when I’ve said something out loud – or written it on here which pretty much amounts to the same thing – I’ve been reflecting on something I referred to yesterday. Remember I talked about voicing my determination to stay skinny in between mouthfuls of cake..? It sounds so utterly ridiculous when I put it like that. But as much as I was being flippant yesterday in the interests of provoking a smile and a shared ‘eyes to the sky’ moment with you all, that’s literally what happened.

When I look back I can see myself walking away from Skinny Town, a place I loved and had worked so damned hard to get to. I was walking in the opposite direction without a backwards glance, sitting in my big fat leather armchair night after night with a family bag of cheese balls and a large carton of Haagen Dazs, having already eaten my way through the day. It’s all very well me looking back now and wanting to scream “what were you thinking?!!!” at myself…I don’t think I could answer that even if the Dalai Lama himself rocked up to help me find enlightenment. I wasn’t thinking – my head was empty. I mean yes of course, on a rational level I must have known that the wheels had come off but where I should have been having a word with myself…nothing.

I can’t seem to recall a single conscious thought about what I was doing and yet every day I watched myself get bigger and bigger. Discarding the skinny jeans in favour of elasticated waists and shapeless sweaters. I lived in the moment, and never thought about the pattern. The trajectory, you know? Where I was headed. From Skinny Town to Mooseville in one long straight run, stopping only to replenish the  supply of cake. You know what I think? I think it went beyond just not thinking about it…I think I made a conscious choice to ignore what I was doing to myself and stick my head in the sand. I was an Ostrich. And I’m struggling to understand why, I mean that’s not right is it…normal folk just wouldn’t do that. I mean, maybe they’d turn a blind eye to five pounds, or even ten pounds at a push. But one hundred and forty pounds…? No.

If someone had asked me why I wanted to put the weight back on, I would have looked at them as though they’d taken leave of their senses. I didn’t. And yet, I was.

You know I still don’t have all the answers, right? I know on here I come across as fairly well in control and self-aware, but it’s mainly because I’ve had some wonderful encouragement and feedback from you guys – I know you’re drawing inspiration here and there from the odd post, and the posse in general too which is amazing. I guess we’re all just figuring it all out as we go along. Getting skinny is a familiar journey – the unknown bit, the hardest part for me at least is going to be staying there. Pulling up the drawbridge and becoming a permanent resident of Skinny Town.

But you know, I thought it was worth talking about this today, because we’re all at different stages of this journey, and if just one of our posse is sitting in their armchair every night, walking away from Skinny Town without anyone there to hold the mirror up and yell WHAT ARE YOU THINKING..???  Well I’d feel like we’d let them down.

Please don’t be that person…don’t do what I did. Please.

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Reflections on the Week

Diet update, Freeform thoughts, In the here & now, ,

weekI love Sunday mornings…it’s usually the day where I don’t need to wake to an alarm. Charlie the dog sleeps in my bedroom and he knows that when I’m awake and no alarm has sounded he’s in with the chance of a cuddle. Lately we’ve taken to reading the Sunday papers together on line with his little cold nose pressed into the crook of my arm, as well as the Skinny Girl messages that have come in overnight, since I usually post right before I go to sleep.

It’s been quite a week. My first week following the weight watchers food plan instead of a low-carb regime. It’s gone well – went a bit mad the first couple of days eating fruit which is a huge no-no on a carb free diet, and it’s fair to say that my insides reacted to this change of diet in fairly predictable fashion. Who knew a fat lass could move so fast eh?  Ussain Bolt might have felt a bit intimidated if he’d clocked my personal best somewhere around Tuesday as I sprinted to….ah ok, TMI, right?

Considering I had two days out at conference where the main hall was surrounded by food stalls, freebies, suppliers wanting to give away samples of goodies left right and centre, topped off by a gala dinner where I could only estimate points, I managed to ignore the asshole in my head and keep the faith. I had a brief encounter with the bastard in the bathroom this morning and I’m happy to report than another pound has melted away. Ten pounds would have been better but I’ll take a pound. I’m still in the game.

What else can I share…ah yes, I’ve done a little bit of development on the Skinny Girl website. I’ve tweaked the content on a few of the pages, and most exciting of all I’ve added a subscription facility – yey! This means that should you want a link sending to your inbox every time I make a new post, so you can read it hot off the press or get to the post with just one click, you can become a subscriber and that will happen as if by magic! You’ll see the little box underneath the top ten posts list, just to the right of where your eyes are now…I promise not to share your email address or bombard you with crap. Have a poke around, let me know what you think of the changes…any feedback welcome!

We’ve had visitors from 43 countries so far since the beginning of October – that’s pretty bloody awesome don’t you think?  And this week, somebody posted a comment on the Daily Mail website under an article about dieting where they gave a shout out to our blog…visitors went through the roof. You can imagine the excitement here at Skinny Towers, I was beside myself!

So for every single one of you who loves the blog and has shared posts and told people about it, thank you so much, I’m insanely in love with each and every one of you. As my support network grows, so does yours and I think what we’re building is really special.

Have a great week 🙂

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When is a setback not a setback?

In the here & now, ,

Evil-Scale

It might seem a bit weird to most folk that I’m two weeks into my new carb-free regime and until I got up this morning, I hadn’t been on the scales. Actually, in the spirit of full disclosure I hadn’t even been near the scales, for quite some time – we’ve never had a particularly close relationship for obvious reasons. It’s a mutually painful experience – trust me, you wouldn’t want me standing on you, and from my perspective they rarely deliver me good news.

Neither am I one of those people who monitors my waistline according to how my favourite jeans fit…for some years now my favourite jeans have been languishing in a bin bag at the back of a storage lock-up along with the christmas tree decorations and assorted other household items which are needed infrequently – my house is small so it’s kind of an overflow management arrangement – and most of my waistbands these days come courtesy of that esteemed designer Lucy Lastic, so would fail miserably as a vehicle of measurement.

I know some people who live in a constant state of anxiety about what the scales are going to say from week to week…in some cases even day to day. Apparently some scales lie, some have ‘moods’ so according to one lady I know can weigh heavy some days for no apparent reason at all. Sometimes for weeks at a time. Hmm.

To be honest, my way of looking at it is this; I don’t give a monkey’s chuff what the scales say but I would like to be slim…if I could be slim and 300lbs I wouldn’t mind being 300lbs at all. So as with many things in my life, if something or someone is almost certain to give me bad news, they tend to be relegated to the ‘if I don’t know, I won’t care so I’ll avoid you as long as I can’ place.

Going back to the scales, I kind of knew ‘ish’ what they’d tell me – but for some reason (maybe because pulling the blog together over the last week or so has brought this all into sharper focus) I woke up with a desire to know. And now I can’t un-ring that bell 🙁

Bloody hell!!! Not one of my better ideas. I woke feeling thin (it’s all relative but I don’t have to lift my head quite as high off the pillow to see my toes as I did 2 weeks ago), pleased that I’ve made it to day 14 of my diet without a single cheat, only for those damn scales to reveal that my best guess had been somewhere left of accurate. Logic tells me that over the last 2 weeks I have dropped more than a few pounds…I feel it. But standing on those scales and finding that I’m probably  a good stone heavier than I thought I might have been before I even started the diet was a bit of a blow, I’m not gonna lie.

I’ve spent several moments in quiet contemplation, and the only upside I can think of is that now at least I know – the scale of the task in hand is clear. But so is the size of the prize, and despite the crappy start to my day, I’m on it.

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Holy Moly, the pressure’s on now.

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now, ,

writer

Thanks to a couple of very good friends of mine who’ve been kind enough to share the details of my blog on their Facebook page, I’ve picked up 10 new readers who don’t know me. To them – you, if you’re reading this – I’m just a blogger!! And you have every right to expect quality well thought out words, along with insight, honesty and interesting content.

I’m currently standing in that space between feeling excited and terrified, with a healthy dollop of understanding that from here on in, I really and truly can’t just talk shite as a space-filler, I mean I have a readership!!  What a responsibility…I feel like JK Rowling. Or at the very least JR Hartley.  My ‘web traffic analysis’ graph is going bonkers – well when I say bonkers I mean it’s no longer reporting a flat line of one visitor, so to me it’s become the most fascinating thing E.V.E.R.

Pressure’s a funny thing – I react one of two ways, and I never know which of the two I’m going to get – a bit like Forrest Gump with his chocolates.  I sometimes rise to the challenge and deliver, when I feel the pressure and get in the groove…other times I recognise the pressure on an intellectual level, but it doesn’t motivate me to pull my finger out and crack on at all. Lets take dieting as an example.

Back in January, I knew I had two very special holidays booked – it’s the big five-oh (no!) this year, and I really wanted to be slimmed down and full of energy so I could enjoy them both to the max, so (lets have a pop quiz boys and girls) did I…

a) Take full advantage of the respective 7 and 9 months lead-in time, get cracking with the diet after Christmas and feel slowly more fabulous as the departure dates got closer, or

b) Do nothing at all.

Yep, see how well you know me already…option ‘b’ for bugger all. I did nothing.  As the departure date for holiday number one got closer, like counting in weeks rather than months it did occur to me that I may have missed the boat (well, the cruise ship, pardon the pun) as far as my bikini body was concerned. Short of losing a lot of weight quickly by chopping a limb off shortly before embarkation or having extreme liposuction my options were a bit limited.

Don’t get me wrong, my friend and I had a wonderful holiday, but I felt every sightseeing footstep like a hot blade through my dodgy knee, I had to wedge my super sized rear end into the beautiful dining room chairs every night till the arms left bruises on my thighs, and I had to decline a gentle stroll around the promenade deck after dinner each night since the sheer effort of lifting the last petit-four off the dessert plate just about sapped the dregs of my energy.

Don’t even get me started on the subject of breaking the bed, although that’s definitely a story for another day.

Holiday number two will be different…seven weeks and three days from now, five of my closest friends and I are jetting off for four days of birthday madness, and seeing as I’m in the sweet spot, and your company is keeping me busy and away from the food cupboard, I’m rather optimistic that whilst still fatter than the average bear I’ll be a couple of dress sizes smaller with reduced aches and pains. Happy days!

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