All posts by Dee

License To Mess About.

In the here & now,

This week was always going to be a challenge. I travelled a couple of hours south on Monday afternoon to meet one of the teams I support for a working dinner and overnight stay followed by a full day’s training course. After a night in my own bed last night I’m away again today and overnight this evening for another working dinner, and this whole day will be catered in the same way yesterday was catered. A tasty hotel finger buffet with an un-specified take-your-best-guess calorie content.

So, fertile ground for head fuckery, right? Especially as I appear to have scored the biggest own goal ever by shouting from the rooftops on Monday that I’m cool with averaging half a pound a month weight-loss because it’s all tickety-boo and going in the right direction. Somehow, between then and now, my Asshole Voice has interpreted that as having a licence to mess about.

I started the week with fabulous intentions following a great weigh-in on Sunday. I got up at stupid o’clock on Monday morning so I could fit in my hour swimming before most people had eaten their cornflakes because I knew I was travelling later and didn’t want to miss my work-out. I ate a carefully planned breakfast and a carefully planned lunch, then drove down to a hotel in the Midlands to meet my colleagues for a carefully planned dinner…that’s where it all went a bit tits up.

I’d preserved enough calories for a decent dinner, having checked out the menu ahead of time on-line. I was enjoying a small pre-dinner glass of Merlot in the bar, when some bright spark suggested eating out instead of eating in the hotel, and the whole team jumped on it like it was the best idea ever. Shit. I hadn’t planned for that…oh well, panic not. I can adapt my plan. It’ll be fine.

We ended up in a restaurant with mainly burgers, pizza and pasta on the menu. I was the lone fat-girl in a sea of middle-aged men, and I was caught in that no-man’s land between despair and actual fucking excitement that genuinely I might have to say knickers to the diet because really, what choice did I have? I tried to be sensible and order a diet coke, which turned out to be diet Pepsi and I can’t stand Pepsi, so I opened my mouth to ask for a glass of water instead but it somehow came out as a large glass of red wine please.

I passed on the appetiser, but my colleagues ordered a bunch of sharing platters and before I knew it, two beer-battered cheese sticks and a loaded potato skin had joined the large glass of red wine in front of me.

I’d ordered the least calorie-loaded option that I could find on the menu – it was chicken, or at least I think there was chicken somewhere inside those deep-fried breadcrumbs loaded with ham and cheese and served with a side of fries. The thing is, after my third red wine of the evening it didn’t seem too terrible, you know? I mean I’d lost three and a half pounds last week, and we’ve already established that my average is half a pound a month so I’m seven times ahead of myself already…fuck it, on that basis I can relax a bit, right? So I’ll tell you what, let’s have all that and dessert too.

I woke up yesterday morning with indigestion and a heavy heart…I mean come on. So obviously I had a lean breakfast and stayed away from the lunch buffet…oh no that’s right I didn’t do either of those things. I ate bacon and eggs for breakfast followed at lunchtime by two mini cheese and onion pies, some divine onion bhajis and a plate of roasted vegetables which were slathered in oil, plus two cookies and a handful of wrapped sweets.

What is wrong with me? I wrote a fucking blog post on Monday bemoaning the fact that for every two steps forward I take one step backwards, and the ink’s not even dry on the page before I’m undoing all the good work of a three and a half pound weight loss by nose-diving straight into the first temptation I can find. I’m genuinely speechless.

I did make amends with myself when I got home last night and took myself off to the pool. I swam for an hour and chuntered to myself the whole time as I swam back and forth about what a dickhead I can be sometimes.

Today is a new day. But it’s another fully catered one with a big dinner this evening, and I’ll have no opportunity this time to out-swim my fork so I’m going to white-knuckle through on a wing and a prayer because I’m worth more than half a poxy pound.

Come on, focus 🙂

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Forward Is Forward, Right?

In the here & now, ,

You know, I wish I’d started recording my weight from day dot of being on this journey. It’s useful to be able to look back and compare where I am now to where I was at a given point in time. I used to reflect on my progress quite easily using the Weight Watchers’ app, but when I broke up with smart points and defected to calories, I think Weight Watchers binned all my data before I’d even shut the door. I tried to access it yesterday but they were having none of it.

I know when I started in August 2015 I was north of 320lbs. I did really well for a few months, but I definitely ran out of steam and fannied around quite a bit towards the back end of 2016, after I’d completed the trek. Honestly, this journey overall has been about as straight as a dog’s hind leg.

I can’t help feeling frustrated when I think about the way I’ve matched every two steps forward with one step backwards. I mean for fuck’s sake…I know roughly where I was on the scale when I left for Cuba this time last year, and at best I’m net 7lbs down from what I was then. I’ve not exactly brought my ‘A’ game over the last 12 months, have I?

Capturing a picture of my conversation with the scale every week from the beginning of this year has been one of the best ideas ever, because now I can look back and use it as a tool to spur me on. I’ve got a holiday coming up in a few weeks and right now, despite a couple of wobbles I actually weigh the same as I did when I got back from Italy in June. I haven’t gone backwards.

And better than that, I’m 15lbs lighter than I was when we cruised around the Middle East in February. By the time we set off again in a month’s time I’m planning to be a few pounds lighter still, and that will be my skinniest holiday in years.

I’d be the first one to admit that my progress hasn’t been especially fast. Says the Queen of understatement…seven pounds off over the last twelve months is fairly shit by anybody’s standards, right? Half a pound a month as an average, I mean it’s a joke really. However. It’s still seven pounds in the right direction. And I’ll take that.

So it’s not quick. Who cares? It’s happening. And I’m doing something I’ve never been able to do before. Of course, I’ve lost weight in the past and sometimes I’ve lost the weight quickly. Lots of weight. But I’ve never kept a diet going long enough for it to be considered a lifestyle change. I’ve never forced myself to exercise consistently when both my mind and body said no, and I’ve certainly never fallen down over and over again, whilst somehow finding the will to get back up as many times as it takes to just keep on going.

This time, I’ve done all of those things. I’m still doing them and that’s why I know that this time is for keeps, because there’s nothing that will stop these feet from carrying me all the way to Skinny Town.

It just might take a while, is all… 🙂

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The Right Kind Of Fix

In the here & now, ,

It’s about a month since I signed up for my second gym membership, which really only came about because I couldn’t continue doing my usual classes whilst my knee was recovering. I was really scared that if I got out of the habit of working out whilst I was getting over my surgery, I’d never go back to it, and swimming seemed like a good compromise in the meantime.

I’m not sure what happened, but I appear to have become a bit fixated with being in the water. With the exception my weekend away, I’ve done an hour’s worth of swimming every single day for the last month and you know what, for the first time yesterday I noticed that my shape is changing.

I’d gotten to the point, before I pressed pause on my workouts, where I was starting to catch an occasional glimpse of collar bone as I chucked the kettle bells around in the Kingdom of Pain, and that was exciting enough in itself because it’d been buried under a mound of flesh for donkey’s years. Yesterday, I noticed that my waist has started to become a bit more…well, waist-like. It sort of goes in, like a waist would go in on normal people.

Completely by accident, I found myself standing with my hands on my hips, and it dawned on me that I had this sort of curve down the side of my body, which somehow my hands just fitted into without a fight. When you’re really fat, you can’t do the hands-on-hips thing. For one thing it’s hard to be sure where your hips are because there’s so much body sitting on top of them, and in any event there’s nowhere for your hands to rest naturally. Not unless you tuck them into one of your spare tyres or grab a hold of your fat, you know? It’s not comfortable. But yesterday it just worked, all on its own.

Now, I appreciate that probably doesn’t sound like a big thing, but in terms of the way it’s made me feel it ranks right up there with being able to cross my legs for the first time. Or being able to cross my arms across my chest. Crossing anything when you’re the size of two people in one body is pretty damned impossible but as my shape changes, my body is slowly remembering how to do all these things that skinny folk take for granted, and I’m here to tell you it feels really fucking awesome.

It’s not very often I get fixated on something that’s good for me, but this swimming malarkey is definitely the right kind of fix. In the space of a month it’s become something I look forward to doing every day, and I find myself bending my plans around making sure I can fit it into my schedule.

It’s a bit like cycling…it doesn’t feel like a chore. And so it’s not on the Asshole Voice’s radar as something I need to be talked out of. I love it, simple as that.

I’m not sure whether discovering I have a waist has turned my head a bit, but I’ve got a good feeling about my conversation with the Shitbird Scale this week…just sayin’ 🙂

 

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Battle By Battle

In the here & now, ,

Do you ever walk that tightrope between success and failure and spend all day wondering which side you’re going to come down on? That was my day yesterday.

It didn’t get off to a flying start to be fair. I walked into our office, and one of my colleagues – who I swear exists on a diet of chocolate and carries no extra fucking weight whatsoever – had left a large tub of Quality Street open on the desk, the contents of which had been picked over and just the usual suspects were left.

The green triangles, the toffee pennies and some nondescript chewy caramels. Half a tub full of rejects, none of which I’d pick under normal circumstances, but you don’t need me to tell you how they taunted me all day. I put the lid on at one point after I’d sniffed the contents for about the third time. ‘Cos that was going to help, right?

I’d taken soup for lunch, except at lunchtime soup just didn’t cut it. So I had my soup and a ham salad from the deli, and I continued flirting with the rejected chocolates. I’m proud of the fact that I held out all day, and didn’t cave…I drove home feeling like I’d won the war, but of course it was just one battle.

The next one started after I’d eaten my carefully calorie-counted omelette for supper. There were nut bars in the cupboard, and skinny cow lollies in the freezer. I’m not doing too well on the staying-away-from-refined-sugar front and I couldn’t decide which one to have, so I had one of each, followed by another lolly because the first one tasted so good.

I realised I’d dipped into my exercise calories, even though the plan is not to. And the other problem was I hadn’t actually done the exercise yet. I’d added them into MyFitnessPal because I was intending to go for a swim. The pool schedule on Tuesdays has lane swimming between 9pm and 10pm. And that’s fine, except at 8.45pm from the comfort of my armchair, in pyjamas, having sunk a nut bar and two skinny cow lollies, I was feeling full fat and happy. The thought of getting changed and heading to the pool for an hour’s worth of swimming did not make me feel warm and fuzzy in any way.

I seriously couldn’t be arsed. Except I’d not only counted the extra calories, I’d already fucking eaten them. So that was the second battle I won yesterday…I abandoned the Great British Bake-Off thirty seven minutes into the technical challenge, when they’d all just cocked up the caramel filling in their Stroopwafels, and went for my swim.

It was lovely, actually. There was only half a dozen of us in the pool, so it was very quiet and non-splashy. The one-woman tidal wave who’s usually there is clearly a Bake-Off fan because she was nowhere to be seen. I just got lost in my thoughts and cut through the water for a solid sixty minutes. I’m glad I went, even though it was the very last thing I felt like doing. I finished the day with thirty seven calories on the table. On balance, I brought it home.

I must try harder to break up with sugar. Again. I keep slipping, but the thing is there’s no tightrope in my life when there’s no sugar in my life. The two things go hand in hand and I know this. It’s hardly new news, and I’ll just carry on trying to crack it.

Today’s a new day after all… 🙂

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Stepping Off, Chilling Ma Boots

In the here & now, ,

I didn’t mean to worry y’all by going AWOL on Friday. I’m touched by the number of emails I had over the weekend asking if I was okay…I’m fine thanks, I promise. I spent the whole of last week feeling knackered and slightly disorientated after immersing myself in the writer’s workshop over a long weekend, before going right back to work on Monday, and then having to co-facilitate a two-day workshop which required me to stay away from home mid-week.

I staggered home on Thursday and cobbled together a post for Friday which didn’t pass muster at all when I read it back the next morning, so I had a mini-meltdown and binned it. I can give you a brief summary if you like…I was mainly trying to justify an unfortunate incident with a plate of garlic bread which one of my colleagues had ordered ‘for the table’ during a working dinner last Wednesday evening, and most of it ended up being eaten by yours truly…yeah I know. Don’t say a word. 

I was trying to justify it to all of you and myself on the basis that I’d been away last weekend and therefore hadn’t had time to go do a food shop, so I’d already ruined my dieting day by eating the stodgy catered lunch instead of taking stuff with me.

Then at dinner, the garlic bread got plonked in front of me without a rightful owner, and it smelled all kinds of awesome. And because I’d had a dodgy lunch – not to mention the three glasses of Rioja I’d drunk before dinner which were undoubtedly influencing my decision-making – I decided I may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. So I ate the garlic bread followed by a juicy rib-eye steak..uhuh.

Now, I was pushed for time last week, my schedule was crazy. However, we all know that the whole fucking supermarket is just a click away these days, and judging by the number of parcels Amazon deliver to my door  I clearly know my way around an on-line shopping cart, so not having the time to do a food shop and using that as the reason for my wobble was a totally made up bollocksy excuse.

On reflection, I think I was just tired. And I know my thought process can turn to shit and my willpower can take a direct hit when I’m tired. I looked around the table and saw everyone tucking into garlic bread and I got an earful of the Asshole voice with his puffed-up outraged sense of entitlement that every fucker else was having it so why couldn’t I, you know?

Apart from that one incident last week I put in a textbook performance, but the garlic bread cost me dear when I crossed paths with the Shitbird Scale yesterday…just one pound off. I deserved it, and there is no excuse. It might’ve been a two pound plus week if I’d not eaten my own bodyweight in something I shouldn’t have gone anywhere near.

Still, I parked it the very next day and I’ve been on it like a car bonnet again ever since. Thankfully, garlic bread isn’t a trigger food for me, it just happened to be delicious and there. Sometimes it feels a lot like I’m taking two steps forward and one step backwards, but I guess that’s just life, right?

I didn’t have the energy – or the time – to start from scratch on Friday, so I had to step off. This weekend has mainly been spent chilling ma boots and recharging my batteries, in between walking a bit and swimming. I even hit the gym – not the Kingdom of Pain, I’m not signed back there yet by the physio – to do some hardcore physio on my knee, which is getting stronger all the time.

This week, I shall mainly be staying away from garlic bread 🙂

 

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