I don’t know if you caught up with the comments thread underneath my Valentine’s post, but my heart went out to Jo, one of our lovely posse who had an altercation with her asshole voice yesterday, and it didn’t end well. I get so cross…not with Jo, obviously but with whoever or whatever it is that plants one of these asshole voices inside all of us with the sole intention of making the wheels come off our good intentions.
I can only liken mine to one of those con-men who arrive at your door full of charm, wangle their way inside and then bugger off with the family silver whilst you’re making them a cuppa.
I thought it might be helpful to compile an Asshole voice top ten, sort of a twisted thinking hit parade if you will. Mine’s had some success with these over the years, but maybe calling them out will demonstrate that your Asshole voice is in fact involved in a much bigger plot to pepper the world with fatties, and by virtue of the fact that you’re reading this I’d hazard a guess that you’re front and centre of it all with a target on your back.
So, your Asshole’s pick of the pops might go something like this…
- That thing that you’re not supposed to eat, well I know you don’t want it, but you need to eat it just to prove that you can stop at one.
- Well that’s it, you’ve gone one point over your allowance for the day, so you may as well park the diet and have a hob-nob. You can start over tomorrow.
- Look, this craving has been twisting your melon for the last three hours…why don’t you just have a tiny taste of the double chocolate sundae and get it out of your system? You don’t have to eat it all.
- You just had a big poo so you must have dropped like two pounds in an instant…that bag of cheese balls won’t even register if you eat it right away.
- There’s stuff in the fridge that’s tormenting you, right? If you finish it off now, all of it, tomorrow you’ll not be tempted by anything, because there’ll be no naughties in the house.
- If you really want two family bags of Maltesers it’s fine, because you can just eat bananas and drink coffee for the rest of the week.
- Look there’s food in the fridge that’s about to go out of date – it’s a gazillion points but it’s wrong to let it go to waste, you should absolutely eat it.
- A balanced diet means eating from all of the food groups, right? So really you need that slab of freshly baked bread lathered with butter to avoid becoming malnourished.
- Look! Cheese balls are on offer, two for one…they’re a bargain and you don’t have to eat them, they’re useful to have in, just in case someone who likes cheese balls comes round.
- You just had a terrific weight loss this week, well done…you don’t have to get on the scales for another week now, so you can so get away with being naughty.
Now I’m relying on you guys to tell me if I’ve missed anything obvious off the list…this is sort of like a public service you know? They say that forewarned is forearmed, so anything that helps us dodge these particular bullets as we jog on towards that skinny life can only help.
Right back at the start when I began this diet, almost 6 months ago now, one of the first things I did was to give my asshole voice a personality. I imagine him looking a bit like the picture at the top of this page, sitting on a stool in the corner of my head just waiting to pounce on opportunities to undermine what I’m trying to achieve.
I can’t tell you how much that has helped me…it allows me to separate his voice from my proper thoughts. I’ve learned to recognise when he’s the one speaking, and close him down straight away. Well, most of the time anyway. If you’re anything like me, and have a stubborn streak running through you, the minute you think someone else is trying to sabotage you, you just get more determined.
I had an email once from someone who said I wasn’t taking responsibility for my own thoughts by blaming someone else, and my diet was doomed to fail on this basis. I pointed out that I didn’t actually think there was a bloke living inside my head – duh – but you know what, if it helps me to squash the twisted thinking for the first time in my life, who the hell cares that someone disapproves of the way I choose to do it. I’m more than 50lbs down, go figure.
Whatever works, right?
