Well, this is day four of my fledgling food sobriety, and days one two and three passed without drama. I’m doing okay. I ate more crumpets last night than I’d intended after my fat furnace workout – four, not two – and yes I know that’s a lot of crumpets but I stayed within points, and on both Sunday and Monday I left points unused on the table, so we’re all good.
See that picture? That used to be me. I reckon the Gods of Skinny are rooting for me…I suspect they realised that I needed a helpful nugget of resolve lobbing in my direction this week to help nail my colours to the skinny mast and keep them there, so this little gem appeared in my Facebook memories feed. It was nine years ago yesterday, at my work’s Christmas doo. I barely remember even looking like that, although to be fair I think I only fitted into that frock for about ten minutes which is probably why my memories are a bit hazy. It was fleeting, you know? A moment in time.
That night, well…I felt great. From March 2007 to November of the same year, I’d existed on protein shakes and soups. Not a single morsel of food had passed my lips, for eight months. I drank four litres of water every day and ate four meal replacements – I think I was on about six hundred calories daily and apart from the fact that my hair was falling out in clumps, I felt amazing.
That picture was taken on the first night out I’d had in my new skinny body, and far from being the reclusive anti-social old bat that I’ve morphed into these days, I never left the dance floor all night. It helped that everyone was full of compliments and I felt like a million dollars but the thing I remember most of all was feeling completely free, you know?
I didn’t worry once about whether my arse looked like blancmange inside my frock, or whether my bingo wings were on display. I checked myself out in the mirror before I left home and felt very happy with what I saw looking back at me, and then I got on with the business of having a ball.
It seemed like I’d found the holy grail of diets – I was able to completely break the habit of leaning on food as a crutch. I never once felt hungry and I lost steadily, around 15lbs every month. I never stuck, and I never gained…it was a poker-straight route from Mooseville to Skinny Town. The thing is, as soon as I started eating again and un-pressed pause on my fucked-up relationship with food, the weight all came back again at warp speed, and then some.
I’ve got to be honest, I’ve seriously considered whether I might try that again. Especially coming off the back of a really screwed up couple of months, where I’ve massively struggled to play with a straight bat. I just don’t think I could stomach any more of those chalky soups though, you know? I could hurl at the thought of going back there. But maybe if I make a deal with myself…behave, or else!!! Eat clean, or else 2017 is the year of soup that tastes of feet all the way until the moment you can zip up that frock. Sort of a suspended sentence, if you like.
I’ve completed day three of three. This is day four of four and I’m going for it again today. I’m going to eat well, and move a bit, and keep putting one foot in front of the other. I intend to say goodnight to this day later with a smile on my face, knowing it’s another good day in the bag 🙂
