Tag Archives: willpower

The Sandwich Dance

Biggest Triumphs, In the here & now, , , ,

sanger

It was all going so well. Don’t panic, it still is, I’m just being a drama queen.  Today…plain food sailing from the minute I opened my eyes. Porridge, pointed, tick. Lunch, prepared at home and taken to work, pointed, tick. I even ate lunch at lunchtime, not mid morning, that’s how much I was on my game today. Over-ripe banana masquerading inside a greenish banana skin, cheeky knacker can’t fool me – bin – so no mid afternoon snack, but that’s ok. I wasn’t hungry. Until someone offered me a free sandwich and suddenly I was starving. And I said yes, to the sandwich. Well strictly speaking I didn’t, I opened my mouth and actually formed the word ‘no’, but somehow yes came out instead. Along with my hand, to take the sandwich. Judas!

Lunch, for a big meeting going on down the corridor had been catered apparently, and there was stuff left over. They must have been fairly important visitors, I mean this wasn’t just your ordinary sandwich, this was an epic sandwich. And somehow it was now sitting on my desk. Staring at me. Being all….seductive.

It was a large round soft brown bread roll, with double cheese, spring onion and mayo inside, all wrapped up in a little cellophane bag. It could at least have had the good grace to be a sandwich I wasn’t struck on, but that sandwich just happened to be my favourite.  I love cheese. And you know what else..? It was as heavy as a brick. I mean that sandwich was made by someone who knows how to make a sandwich…bursting at the seams, chock full of filling, not some mean-fisted measured spoon’s worth. I picked it up and when I felt the weight of it, I felt proud of the guy who’d made that sandwich, in a fat-girl-strikes-gold kind of way, he’d knocked it right out of the park.

The asshole in my head sprang into action immediately. Go on…it’s your favourite. And you’re practically on holiday now, so it’s ok. You’ve done really well but you can take your foot off for a few days, you don’t want to be worrying about points. You’ve probably got enough points left anyway and if you did eat it, you could go without dinner later, it’s six and two threes…go on, it’ll be fine…it’s cheese! Mmmmm….cheeeeeeese….

That sodding sandwich flirted with me for the rest of the afternoon. You know the score…every time I looked at it, it was looking right back at me. I moved it off to the side, next to my bag, but I could still see it out of the corner of my eye where it seemed to be almost dancing to get my attention. I tried and better tried to concentrate on the piece of work I was doing but all I could think about was how that double cheese and spring onion combo would taste as it burst onto  my tongue and how my taste buds would explode at the sharpness of the cheese.

But I didn’t eat it. I brought it home. It was a helluva fight…me and the asshole in my mind both battered bloody and bruised. But now it’s like I’ve stuck the pin back in the grenade…it’s lost it’s power. I brought the sandwich home so my boy can take it to work for his lunch tomorrow.  It’s sitting in the fridge right behind me as I type this, still soft and brown and heavy and very very cheesy…but I’m over it.  The craving passed.

Me: 1 – Asshole: 0. Again.  Let me hear you say YEAH!

Like it..? Tell your friends!
 

Eat This Instead!

Biggest struggles, Freeform thoughts, , , ,

This is an evaluation image and is Copyright Chud Tsankov. Do not publish without acquiring a license. Image number: 0521-1102-1611-4613. http://www.acclaimimages.com/_gallery/_pages/0521-1102-1611-4613.html

I get very excited when someone offers me a piece of bona-fide advice which has been endorsed by people with letters after their name, especially when it claims to eradicate some of those bumps in the road which could make the wheels come off my diet. I was totally ready to be impressed yesterday when I saw an article on cravings, and how you might stop them in their tracks. Granted the article was in the Daily Mail rather than the New England Journal of Medicine, but hey it could’ve been scribbled on the back of a fag packet for all I cared, so long as it worked.

In my haste to get to this holiest of holy grails I was even prepared to pretend I hadn’t zoned in on the typo on line four which referred to the ‘sweet draw’ rather than the sweet drawer – yes I know, I’m a freak, but stuff like that really twangs my strings. Anyway, there was a team of nutritionists – a whole team mind you – who were standing behind this research, so I ignored the typo and pushed on.

And it started well…I was nodding along by line eight.  Yes, I completely bought into the fact that your body finds ways to tell you when you’re deficient in something. I remember drinking about 2 litres of fresh orange juice every day when I was expecting my son, even before I knew I had a baby on board. Totally random fact which might have nothing to do with anything, but I was relating, you know..? There was definitely an air of expectation…like this was it, I was going to learn how to get rid of all those cravings once and for all. A defining moment. I’ll run through the advice shall I..? Distill it for you and give you just the good bits, you know, the highlights…?

“If you crave something sweet, eat broccoli instead.” Yeah because that’s going to cut it. The Asshole will totally go for that.

“If you crave chocolate, have some.” Right then. Way to go to combat the craving. Did the Asshole actually write this one? He uses that line all the time.

“If you’re craving a salty snack have some anchovies.”  Are you fucking kidding me?

“If you’re craving some dirty carbs, eat some turkey instead.” And again…wtf?

I stopped reading there, having written off said team of nutritionists as skinny dimwits who had obviously never experienced a fat girl craving in their lives. I mean come on. A craving will turn your head inside out. I’ve been known to drive the 15 miles to Ikea in my slippers at warp speed, screeching into the car park at 9.55pm a whisker before they close so I can buy a Daim cake, simply because I cannot contemplate getting through the night without one. I’ve eaten dog chocolate when there was nothing else sweet in the house. If you’d offered me a broccoli floret when I was in the grip of that craving I’m here to tell you that you’d have been invited to leave with the suggestion of shoving it sideways where the sun doesn’t shine ringing in your ears.

For advice on how to combat cravings, don’t ask the experts – ask a fat girl. We might not always be able to follow our own advice, but we know better than most what might work, sometimes. I’ll give you a clue…it’s not broccoli or anchovies. For me, right now it’s toothpaste. If I’m desperate to eat something and I’ve spent my food budget for the day, going and brushing my teeth with an overloaded toothbrush takes the edge off. It’s not much, but it’s something.

No holy grail today then…ah well. We’ll all just keep plugging away shall we? 🙂

 

Like it..? Tell your friends!
 

The asshole inside my head.

In the here & now, , , ,

thoughtSo we’re getting to know each other a little bit now, right? I think it’s probably about time I introduced you to the asshole who lives inside my head. Think of it like I’m inviting you home to meet the folks. Now, I don’t think this is unique to me – I suspect not, I think perhaps everyone has a member of his extended family who muscles in on their thought process from time to time – but my guy has a black belt in mind games and he’s pretty much carved out a permanent home in a corner of my head.  He doesn’t really have a name, so I just call him Asshole.

Now you might think that’s a bit rude, but it’s a name that suits him. The first dictionary I looked at defines the word ‘asshole’ as ‘a stupid, mean or contemptible person’ and I’ve gotta be honest, it suits him perfectly. Occasionally he’s thrown me the odd crumb of a compliment but knowing him as I do it’s nothing more than reverse psychology…he’s clever like that. Strangely, since I named him, it’s been easier to separate his voice from my own, and I’m here to tell you that’s been a big help. Strangely enough he’s been very quiet over the last couple of weeks – I suspect he’s just observing these blog shenanigans from the sidelines and lulling me into a false sense of security until he’s decided on a strategy.

His is the voice I hear when one of my insecurities bubbles near to the surface. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fairly confident person and I’m very comfortable around people, but when he spots a loose thread he’s in there like a ninja, grabbing every opportunity to blow a big hole in my self esteem. His words are like barbed wire. ‘You look really fat in that’. ‘Yeh your hair looks ok but OMG who’s gonna look at your hair with so many chins clamouring for attention’. ‘I don’t know why you’re even bothering to look at the new winter collection, you’re going to look like a sack of spanners in whatever you put on anyway’…you get the gist. ‘Did you see the way that skinny woman looked at you when she walked past? You’ve probably put her off hob nobs for life’.

And he’s armed with a thousand ways to poke holes in my willpower. His was the handiwork you saw first hand when I poked fun at the suggestion that booking a block of gym classes would keep me motivated. He’s the absolute daddy when it comes to talking me into something I shouldn’t do, and talking me out of doing something I should. He tries his best to derail me whenever I’m motoring down the right track, and his impressive success rate over the years has turned him into a right smug little bastard.

He HATES it when I find the sweet spot. That place where I am right now makes it much harder for him to get at my willpower but he still walks beside me wherever I go, looking for his window of opportunity…I might be on top of things just now but I feel him, waiting. He’ll focus his energy on  my mood as a back door entry to my willpower because that’s worked well for him in the past.

I’m happy to report that for now, that door is locked and bolted.

 

 

 

Like it..? Tell your friends!