Tag Archives: willpower

It’s A Sign!

In the here & now, ,

I have to admit to having a bit of a spring in my step. I’ve completed five straight days without a single unplanned eating incident and given that I’ve struggled to deliver a full five minutes of good behaviour just recently, I’m feeling accomplished. I’ve got skin in the game again, and the first hurdle is already in my rear-view mirror. Halle-fucking-lujah.

Yesterday had the potential to go pear-shaped when I left home without my carefully prepared lunch, which I’d taken out of the fridge and placed right next to my bag on the kitchen table as I was getting ready to leave.  It was right there, but I still walked out of the house without it, I mean come on, seriously. I left at 6am with a three hour drive in front of me and I was too far away from home to turn around by the time I realised.

The first indication that my head has landed back in the game came as I went into the motorway services on the way to my meeting, having left too early to eat breakfast, and bought coffee. No muffins, or croissants or pain-au-chocolate. Just coffee.

The biggest indicator came mid afternoon as I called back into the same motorway services, having not had chance prior to that to grab lunch. I was eat-my-own-arm starving as I walked in and considered my options. Greggs, Burger King, and a full on selection of confectionary. Fat girl heaven.

With the Asshole behind the wheel, it would have been BK. Or maybe a cheese and onion pasty or steak bake from Greggs, and large bag of crisps and at least one item of chocolate but probably two. Hell yeah, let me hear you say ay-MEN!

I didn’t do that, and what’s more it didn’t even occur to me to do that, you know? I walked into M&S Simply Food, picked up a turkey wrap and a small tub of fresh fruit and walked out again without giving it a single thought. No strop because there was all this stuff I couldn’t have, and no inner turmoil. I was hungry, and I fancied a turkey wrap and some fruit. That my friends, is a sign. I’m back 🙂

I half expected that Charlie-dog might have helped himself to my forgotten sandwich by the time I got home again, but in a show of solidarity he hadn’t. How’s that for willpower, right? He was clearly on the verge of bursting though, having sat and supervised it all day, in between playing out with all his doggy-day-care friends.

I’d fixed chicken, avocado and sweet pepper with a little light mayo and black pepper on a seeded flatbread, and it looked all kinds of awesome. Having bought and eaten something else in its place, I reluctantly rewarded his patience by allowing him to eat it, given that it’d been out of the fridge all day.

I figured his furry constitution was robust enough to deal with it, on the basis that unless I manage to grab him in time he eats cow pats and horse shit when we’re out walking. I soon realised it wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had…overnight he has single-handedly done his bit to obliterate the ozone layer by filling the room with enough gas to blow the roof off.

Come on day six…show me what you’ve got 🙂

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I’m Not Going To Be The One Who Blinks First

In the here & now, ,

So it seems that there’s a bit more to this writing a book malarkey than I’d anticipated. Holy shit is there ever. Having said that, I’ve had some really positive feedback on the stuff I pulled together and I just want to get cracking now. Honestly, it’s been an amazing experience. My head is full of things that I didn’t know on Friday, and now I do. I just need a bit of down-time to process everything, you know? I’m knackered. 

When I finally settled down last night I had every intention of telling you all about it but I ended up doing that thing where I woke up at 3am with my cheek stuck to the laptop which was next to me on the bed. I didn’t get home until late afternoon, and then I’d thrown my bags in the door and headed straight out for a swim. I’ve done so much sitting around this weekend in one workshop after another, I just had this urge to head out and go do something active. Who might have guessed that urge was ever going to take over this body, eh?

One of the non-writing related things I learned this weekend was that it’s much easier not to succumb to the temptation of pudding after half a bottle of Merlot, if you’ve told everyone before the wine starts speaking on your behalf that you don’t eat puddings. It’s a genius strategy, because you can’t then eat a pudding without looking like a muppet, right?

At the gala meal, as everyone else’s sticky toffee pudding arrived I waved mine away…I had to, even though I wanted to weep. It looked all kinds of awesome, and the wine was quite persuasive but there’d been so much chatter over dinner about who was writing what, the whole of our table knew I was writing a book about being on a diet. It was a very effective antidote to the fuck it mentality that I usually fall victim to when I’ve had a couple of glasses of wine.

I did have a couple of dark chocolates with my coffee, on the basis that I’d passed on the pudding, but all things considered I think that was okay. There were seven mealtimes over the course of the weekend, and I’m proud to say I behaved myself at every single one of them. I drank my water. I stayed away from naughty. I passed the test.

I’m still locked in a stand-off with the Shitbird scale mind you. We’re playing that game of who’s going to blink first. I brought my weigh-in forward by two days, because I was going to be away on Sunday morning, and I hadn’t lost a fucking ounce since the last time. Again. I also did a cheeky hop-on this morning to see whether the needle had moved over the weekend…it hadn’t.

I’m not going to be the one who blinks first. Not a chance. I’m going to put in textbook day after textbook day until the Shitbird thing rolls over and offers up a loss. I’m on a mission, remember? 215lbs by Christmas. I keep repeating it over and over like a mantra. And when I get there that means I’ll have less than 70lbs to go before I cross the Skinny Town county line.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy 🙂

 

 

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The Polar Opposite Of Easy

In the here & now, ,

I don’t know about you, but in that moment where I desperately want to eat something I shouldn’t,  the Asshole voice spits out reassurance after reassurance about how easy it’ll be to pick up the pieces pretty much straight away afterwards. My head totally gets on board with the whole concept and works in tandem to erase any old memories which may tell a different story, and right up until the chewing is over I remain convinced that getting back in the game is going to be a walk in the park.

I fall for it every fucking time.

Before you start throwing things at the screen out of sheer frustration that I’m still fannying around, I’m not. I’ve got five days’ worth of skin in the  game but honestly, pulling myself back out of that hole has been a full-on stinking turd of a task. I’m wrung out by the relentless assault on my willpower to the point where it feels like my week has been directed by Quentin Tarantino.

The reality of getting back on plan after a ten day hiatus is the polar opposite of easy. It’s compounded by the sheer boredom of not being able to do much else apart from sit in the chair with my leg elevated and have the occasional potter about. It seems that dragging my mind out of the refrigerator is much easier if I can take Charlie-dog out for a long walk, or go work up a sweat at the Kingdom of Pain.

I’m tetchy from the sugar withdrawal and my mind and body are not occupied with anything other than how much I want to eat whilst I’m sitting around doing nothing. There’s no unsuitable food in the house, so my options are deliberately limited but that doesn’t stop the steady stream of help and advice from the Asshole voice as to how I might engineer a situation whereby I’m left to my own devices and therefore free to order take-out pizza.

Fair to say then that it hasn’t been a textbook week so far. I had some ice-cream on Sunday that I haven’t paid back into the calorie pot yet, but that was my very last sugar-related transgression and other than that I’m doing okay as I claw my way back to clean eating. There might have been an incident with some out-of-budget sprouts and a battered haddock fillet yesterday but I was due to take pain meds and I needed to eat something. It could have been worse.

The big bandage came off yesterday, to be replaced by a full length elasticated support stocking. This didn’t improve my mood any, since my knee blew up like a football and I realised that said support stockings are just not built for fat legs.

Getting it on was easy so I was lulled into a false sense of security, but to stop the dratted thing rolling down from the top every time I moved, I had to make a sort of cuff with the top of it which then proceeded to cut the circulation off in my leg. Drama queen that I am, I convinced myself that I was having a DVT until it dawned on me that the stocking was just too damn tight.

On medical advice when I couldn’t stand it any longer, the support stocking went in the bin and I’m once again swaddled in bandages. Two steps forward, one step back. I’m sore, and my cranky pants are pulled all the way up to my armpits. Surely three family bags of cheese balls and a Daim cake would make me feel better right now..? Except I know they really wouldn’t, beyond a brief moment in time. So it’s a no from me.

It doesn’t stop the image of them playing on a constant loop in my head though 🙁

 

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The Killer Question

In the here & now, , ,

Do you ever shake your head in wonder at the food-related situations you find yourself in?  I do. I found myself in a face-off with a freezer full of ice-cream lollies on Saturday. My feet ground to a halt in the middle of the supermarket in what felt like an act of betrayal, and I probably stood and stared at that freezer for a good ten minutes.

Earlier in the week my friend had included a picture of a raspberry magnum amongst the holiday pictures she’d shared on social media, and I’d made a jokey comment underneath the photo about how I’d once eaten six of them in one sitting. That was true, in fact it happened during my last four day binge and if I close my eyes I can still taste them.

Now, you’ve got to remember that my head was up my arse for a significant chunk of last week, and that perfectly innocuous picture seemed to fire the starting pistol for my tastebuds. Every day since, I’ve been lusting after a raspberry magnum like a dog on heat, and fantasising about beating my personal best by going for seven, or maybe even eight. It was just one in a long line of assaults that the Asshole voice made towards my food sobriety at the back end of last week…it was relentless.

The thing is, when I’m in the grip of an urge to binge, it’s very easy to convince myself that as soon as I’ve eaten whatever it is that I’m fantasising about I’ll be okay, you know? You’re going to cave at some point, so quit with the pathetic attempts at resistance. Just get it out of the way. Fill your boots now and then you can move on…

It never works out like that though, does it? I don’t know about you, but once I’ve got the taste for something, I’m screwed. That’s why I very rarely have a one-incident binge.

How can I even describe what the urge to binge feels like, to a regular person? It’s like a massive build-up of pressure, which in that moment I am utterly convinced can only be relieved by shutting myself away and pushing all the things I shouldn’t be eating into my face. I’ve heard people who self-harm talk about how slicing into their skin with a blade somehow relieves the pressure which is building up inside, and I guess binge-eating is different but the same. It’s certainly followed by all the same emotions…guilt, shame, the whole fucking nine yards. I might not carry self-harm scars on my body per se, but I do have a double arse inside my pants for remarkably similar reasons.

In the ten minutes I stood rooted to the floor in front of that freezer, with the pressure of the last few days threatening to blow like a volcano out of my ears, I literally clung on to food sobriety by my fingertips. I even had hold of the freezer door at one point.

Is this me making a conscious decision then, to choose fat over skinny? That’s the killer question, because if I reach for that box, whether I admit it or not, I’m choosing to wake up heavier tomorrow than I am today. 

That argument swung it, in the end because…well, it’s true isn’t it? Nobody ever ate seven raspberry magnums and woke up skinny the next day. So I didn’t go there. Somehow, I let go of the freezer door. My feet started moving again, and I walked away. Isn’t it evil, the way your mind can manipulate a memory…in the grip of it, I didn’t recall the bilious bloated day-after effect because I was mentally blinkered and could only focus in glorious technicolour on how they tasted.

I did buy a box of peanut bars from the healthy snacks section, and ate every last one of them. But they weren’t raspberry magnums…they weren’t even close to being that naughty. And yesterday I rebooted, and had a textbook day without incident.

One more pound gone this week despite everything, and I can live with that… especially after an obscene amount of healthy peanut bars which, in those numbers probably weren’t that healthy at all.

I’m back at work today, and I’d be really grateful if we could all just keep our fingers crossed that this week passes without incident 🙂

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One Battle At A Time

In the here & now, , ,

One of the guys who I’ve worked alongside for the last couple of years moved on to start a new job last week, and although I was out and about on his last day, when I arrived at the office after the weekend, his parting gift of chocolate for the team was lying in wait on the desk as I walked through the door.

I wasn’t bothered by it on Monday. Beyond a fleeting thought along the lines of how thoughtful he’d been to leave it, it didn’t really register. Yesterday on the other hand, the same chocolate drove me to hell and back. Especially around mid-afternoon when I made a cup of tea.

I’d eaten lunch at 11.40am because the roast beef sandwich on soft wholemeal bread that I’d carefully made to bring to work had toyed with me all morning. Holding out until the clock was at least edging towards 12.00pm had been a miracle in itself given the number of times my mind had unwrapped the foil over the course of the morning. To be honest, it was lucky to survive my journey to work, because It was just one of those days, you know? The kind where your mind is constantly pre-occupied with what you’re going to eat.

I don’t often eat bread these days, maybe once or twice a week. It’s not particularly a trigger food for me – well, not unless we’re talking about warmed Tiger bread lathered with salted butter obviously – but it just always strikes me as a bit heavy on the old food budget and I begrudge spending the points. However, the cold beef left over from supper the night before had begged to be eaten as I’d done a recce of the fridge, so there it was, locked and loaded. And gone, by 11.45am.

Thing is, I can smash down a sandwich in no time. At least with my usual salad box it takes me a beat between mouthfuls to chase a shred of lettuce around with my fork. I might pause to add a little salad cream here or there, or a little seasoning. With a pre-made sandwich, there’s no messing around is there? It was like the culinary equivalent of premature ejaculation. No foreplay, and over in seconds once I’d unwrapped the foil…  yes, yes, YES…oh. Are we done?

By mid afternoon I could’ve eaten my own arm, I mean I was starving. And every time I walked back to my desk from one meeting or another I was greeted by the sight of these two boxes of chocolates. Bit by bit they started to chip away at my resolve. Surely one wouldn’t hurt? I’ve proved that I can survive without chocolate haven’t I, I mean look at me…we’re well into May and I haven’t eaten any since Christmas. I’ve got so much skin in the game it’s unreal, so surely I’d be safe with just one?

I got as far as saying fuck it out loud as my hand reached for the box, only to be stopped in my tracks by a colleague. She looked so genuinely shocked that I might be about to break my long run of resisting temptation that I put the box down and retreated back to my chair with my tail between my legs. And she was right. Of course she was right. She knew as well as I did that I wouldn’t have stopped at one. I would have had three, or seven, or maybe ten and then I’d have stopped at the store on my way home and bought some more. I’d probably still be chewing them as I write this.

Even though I know what lies in store if I awaken the beast, I almost went there. I just about clung on with my fingernails, but I’m hoping today will be easier. It’s a brand new week. My conversation with the Shitbird Scale this morning contained a few naughty words…I’m not sure this experiment about how and when I spend my points is working. I’ll stick with it for another week and then make a call.

I’ve felt vulnerable and a bit out of control these last few days, so I’m claiming yesterday as a victory. That’s how wars are won, right? One battle at a time 🙂

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