All posts by Dee

Choosing My Miserable

In the here & now, , , ,

fat

Well, it’s been an interesting few days. The battle between me and the Asshole in my head has raged on and on to the point where it’s becoming old news. I’m bloodied and battered but you know what, I’m hanging in there. Yesterday was a good day. I ate clean, no naughties at all and I did two classes last night. Before you worry that you’re about to be dazzled by the light bouncing off my halo, don’t be…Saturday was shit and Sunday wasn’t much better.

So it’s been a rollercoaster, you know? It’s weird, I was off-reservation when I got back from Cuba and I’ve been sailing close to the wind ever since, as well you know but it’s fair to say that things sort of came to a head towards the back end of last week when I had to face the reality of what I was doing. I’d somehow got caught up in this whirlpool of self-sabotage for reasons known only to the voice in my head. I told you he was an asshole.

Anyway, a combination of real-life encouragement from some of my buddies and some proper wisdom and insight from you lot is helping me navigate my head to a calmer place. It was something Margaret said which provided the first reality check, in her thoughts on Friday’s post. She articulated beautifully how that first slip is a really big deal, but when the world doesn’t end the second slip feels less important, and on that sliding scale I’d reached the point where saying fuck it was pretty much part of my daily routine.

It’s a bit like boiling a frog, right? I’m not suggesting you should, but if you were to stick a frog in a pan of boiling water he’d immediately jump out screaming. Stick him in a pan of cool water and slowly turn up the heat, chances are he won’t notice how hot the water is until his legs are cooked. I didn’t notice how hot the water had got, is the long and short of it.

God of Pain provided the second reality check. I was talking to him on Sunday about how hard it’s become all of a sudden. In his usual telling it like it is way, he pointed out that I’ve got just two choices. Hate the journey for a while but stick with it anyway and reach my goals, or abandon the journey and hate the life I will inevitably go back to, and probably myself too just for good measure.

Talk about Hobson’s fucking choice, I mean both of them involve me being in turmoil and I’m miserable either way, right? But not really. Maybe right here and now, in this moment I’m pissed off because I can’t eat crap every day and lose weight. But one year from now when I’m rocking my size 12 skinny jeans I doubt very much that I’ll be pissed off at all.

So I’m sticking with it folks, even if I’m doing it through gritted teeth. I am going to do better because I am not going back to that old life. So here’s the thing. It gets harder to remember how I used to feel when I was at my heaviest. When nothing I wore felt nice, when I was so uncomfortable with a huge downer on myself because I knew I looked like a moose. I kind of felt like I needed a reminder.

Yesterday, I had to ferry my mum around to a few medical appointments, and I dressed in a pair of leggings – every lump and bump was magnified to the tune of at least a hundred, in fact who even knew it was possible for legs to be that lumpy? I’d bought them on-line, and let’s just say they didn’t look like they did on the picture when I put them on, you know? Enough said. They’d never graduated from the ‘fashion mistake but maybe when I’m thinner‘ drawer, well not until yesterday.

I teamed them with a top which is a little bit too snug, good grief it was a total car crash…there was nowhere to tuck my extra one hundred pounds into so it wasn’t on display. Never in a month of Sundays would I E.V.E.R go out looking like that…except yesterday I did. The hospital was so warm and I was sweltering but I didn’t dare take my coat off because I knew what a mess I looked underneath…it was a sharp reminder that I used to feel like that all the time. I haven’t, in a while, and I don’t want to again.

It helped. Yesterday was day one of my season two. And I’m sure it won’t all of a sudden get easier again, but I’ve chosen which miserable I’m going after…I picked the temporary one 🙂

Like it..? Tell your friends!
 

This Wasn’t Part Of The Plan

In the here & now, , ,

fuck-dog

Well, yesterday’s post really struck a chord with you lot, and I’ll tell you what else, it reconfirmed to me that I’m not alone in this journey. I’m not the only one who has an asshole living inside my head and just because I argue with myself about whether I should or shouldn’t go/do/eat/work out it doesn’t make me a freak of nature. I’m normal. It’s irritating but it doesn’t mean the men in white coats need to come and cart me off.

Back in the early days when I first started writing, I remember feeling a bit guilty because my growing band of subscribers weren’t getting much drama out of my journey. I was locked and loaded into that sweet spot, and temptation crumbled to dust once it hit my orbit…it barely even registered in the early days. I ignored naughties of all descriptions whilst I was busy tipping out the contents of my head for examination. Life was easy, you know?

Now it feels like all you get is drama. I’m walking a tightrope and to say I’m wobbling all over the place is an understatement. I felt less isolated and a lot less scared once I’d talked about my post-trek struggle to stay focused because so many of you reached out to say it’s okay…it’s a thing. I felt reassured, but to be honest that’s starting to wear a bit thin now…I’m still wobbling and it’s pissing me right off.

Take yesterday for example – I’d arranged to meet a colleague at the motorway services so I could leave my car there and travel with him to a team meeting. I nipped in to pay for my parking and the lady behind the counter offered me a big bar of chocolate for a pound. As I was shaking my head and saying no, I noticed it was Daim chocolate and my pound was in her till before my head even had time to process the fact that I’d walked out with my parking receipt in one hand and a bar of chocolate in the other.

All the way down to the meeting I convinced myself that I’d offer the chocolate to everyone else and by the time I’d gone around the table there wouldn’t be enough left for it to put a significant dint in my diet. So boys and girls, let’s have a pop quiz.

How many squares of chocolate did my team eat? No Squares. And how many squares of chocolate did I eat? All the fucking squares. I know. That wasn’t in the plan. Neither was the posh fish finger sandwich at the local pub at lunchtime, accompanied by my second lot of cheesy chips in a week. I did have the good grace to go to bed without supper last night but I’m very sure that I weighed more when I went to bed than I did when I woke up yesterday morning. Two steps forward and two steps back again.

The thing is, this time last year, you couldn’t have paid me enough money to make me take a square of chocolate, and I would have faced a firing squad before considering a cheesy chip. I would have happily sat there and watched all my team eat cheesy chips without batting an eyelid, because I was on the road to Skinny Town and nothing was knocking me into the ditch, right? My resolve was cast-iron, rock-solid, and at least ten times more watertight than a duck’s backside. Now..? Now I’m a pushover in the battle for supremacy between me and the asshole in my head…I feel like I’m on the ropes.

And I’m terrified. What if I’ve lost it? I mean I know I’ve lost it momentarily, but what if I can’t find it again? This wasn’t supposed to happen. I can live with the odd bit of drama but for fucks sake there are limits…it’s turning into an almost daily occurrence.

I get lots of mail from people who’ve hit the skids and don’t know how to claw their way back into that sweet spot. I hear you sistahs…I’m right there in a heap with you. We’ll just have to help each other figure this shit out.

I’m not giving up…not in this lifetime. Today’s a new day and anyone who tries to wave a cheesy chip under my nose is going down. That is all 🙂

Like it..? Tell your friends!
 

Why Am I Even Debating This?

In the here & now,

debate

I don’t know about you but these dark and cold mornings are not supporting my efforts to get up and out of bed with any kind of enthusiasm, especially when I’ve booked into an early morning exercise class. I must have laid in bed for twenty minutes or more yesterday trying to think of an excuse why going to box-lite was a bad idea.

It’s a good job I came up blank otherwise that snooze button would’ve been pushed with indecent haste. But I couldn’t help thinking, as I drove to the Kingdom of Pain how draining it is every day to have the same debate with myself on a loop. I should go – I don’t want to go – I need to go – I’ll go tomorrow instead – can’t, won’t finish work on time – I could book in and then say I’m stuck in traffic – stop being ridiculous, I’ll enjoy it once I get there…on and on and on. Every time.

Why do I do that? I do enjoy it when I get there, and I enjoy the feeling afterwards. It’s just the thought of going in the first place that puts a spanner in the works. And that doesn’t make sense to me. I mean, let’s imagine for a second that I was going to the cinema, which I also enjoy. I wouldn’t have to steel myself to get off my arse and go, would I? And the cinema doesn’t even leave me with a surplus of endorphins to make me feel good. Well, unless Hugh Jackman’s in the movie, obviously. *Leers*

I can’t think of any other example of anything where I like doing it but try my best to come up with reasons not to do it. Other things which I don’t especially enjoy doing, like housework, or supermarket shopping just happen without this ridiculous negotiation with the asshole voice, so what is it about exercise that makes it different..? The long standing hatred of getting off my arse which I’ve harboured all my life is clearly more deeply engrained than I realised.

I don’t hate exercise now, but my mind is taking quite a lot longer than my body to cotton on to that fact and get with the programme…I went from hating it, to being irritated by the fact that I had to do it (and just getting on with it through gritted teeth) to the point where I am now…I appreciate the opportunity to poke those endorphins and feel like I’ve earned my tired. And yet. I still have to negotiate with myself before I can bring myself to to pull on my stretchy pants and go work out.

Is it just me? If you want to tip the contents of your own head out and share any insight you may have as to how I can flick the switch from let’s discuss this to let’s go, well that would be awesome. I often hear people say yeah well that’s non-negotiable, and that’s what I want to get to, you know? That place where working out is non-negotiable instead of it being up for debate every single fucking time.

Thoughts?

Like it..? Tell your friends!
 

Scraping A Two.

In the here & now, , , ,

wagon

So this last week was going to be my super-clean eating week, right? As I gazed at the week ahead last Sunday, clearly I overlooked the night-in-with-gin and the day trip to London (which, by the way was all kinds of awesome) which had the potential to make the wheels come off my plan. Keeping my shit together requires me to call out stuff like that with a big red warning triangle in my head.

I’d probably have emerged from underneath last week clutching a gold star if I hadn’t returned to the Kingdom of Pain on Thursday, to be greeted by the stern-faced man mountain inviting me to hop on the scales. I’m here to tell you there was no hopping going on…as I hoisted myself up, I felt like everything was going in slow motion, you know? I reckon it was the weight of impending doom that slowed everything right down. I’d been inactive and armchair-ridden for more than a week so the prospect of a weigh-in didn’t exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Surprisingly, I’d worried for nothing. Between Sunday morning when I drew my line in the sand, and Thursday evening, I’d somehow shaken three unwelcome pounds off my arse and that was enough to dodge the bullet which God of Pain reserves specially for folk who aren’t achieving greatness in the weight-loss stakes. Phew.

Except, in my head that gave me licence to get up to devilment this weekend. The Asshole inside my head put forward a very convincing argument that I was unlikely to be subjected to the bitch in God of Pain’s office again for at least two weeks, so I could take my foot off a little, just for my birthday celebrations and maybe the day trip to London.

Come on Dee, really where’s the harm? There’s no fire to put out…there’s no mountain looming which requires you to be a certain weight is there? So it’ll take you a week longer to get in those size twelve skinny jeans, I mean big deal…you’re at least a fucking year away from wearing them anyway so what’s another week? You can take this at your own pace, come on lighten up, it’s your birthday…

So I did. Take it at my own pace I mean. Depending on which way you look at it, I managed to be both quick and slow at the same time, like some kind of dieting foxtrot. The only thing I slowed down was my progress, and everything else speeded right up…the speed at which I said yes please to a banana and maple syrup muffin on the train for example was lightening-quick.

And once I’d got a taste for it, the speed at which I pinched my mum’s banana and maple syrup muffin bordered on indecent once I’d established she didn’t want it. There was no cooling off period where the muffin sat untouched on the tray table whilst she decided…all it took was one almost-curl of her nose and I was all over that muffin faster than she could form the words to turn it down.

The fresh fruit option got ignored in favour of strawberry yoghurt and granola as a pre-cursor to the muffin and given how good that yoghurt tasted, trust me when I say it hadn’t come out of the low-fat corner of the kitchen. So between Leeds and London I fell off the wagon. And once we were in London, I went under the wheels completely.

I ate a burger. And I don’t mean a skinny little mass-produced plastic burger, oh no…this was the real deal…a burger that knew how to be a burger, with all the trimmings. Like the fries for example.

I didn’t just order fries, I ordered fries covered in cheese and bacon bits. I’ve never tasted anything so divine in my whole entire life…do you know how long it is since I ate cheese..? Shit the bed, it was awesome. This was our pre-matinee theatre lunch. Mum’s Cobb salad looked really good, I would have been more than happy with that myself on any other day. Just not this day. This day, the Asshole voice totally knocked it out of the park.

I didn’t even leave it with the burger. I had honey and ginger ice-cream in the theatre between acts one and two, and then a sandwich and two more muffins on the train journey home.

Yesterday was Sunday. Weigh day. And oh look, I appear to have reloaded one of those pounds…what a fucking surprise, said nobody at all.

Ah well…it is what it is. I had a ball, and my net position is okay. We’re back on track and this week there are no days out or catered meals. It’s just a normal week, with no warning triangles on my calendar and I’m on it. Please God I’m on it…cross my heart 🙂

 

Like it..? Tell your friends!
 

Making Like A Sloth

In the here & now,

Sloth Rainforest Two Toed Lazy Mammal Hanging Sloths

Did somebody pinch some time from me this week? I blinked and all of a sudden it’s Friday…how did that happen? I suspect it’s a combination of me feeling as rough as toast in the first half of the week, and being so busy at work that I’ve mainly come home every night and conked out in the chair with an overwhelming sense that I’d run out of steam.

I went back to the Kingdom of Pain last night for the first time in over a week – I haven’t been working out on the advice of his nibs, who said I had to wait until I was feeling better and I didn’t take much persuading to stay home to be be honest. Me and my reclining chair have had a beautiful thing going on this week.

It’s strange though, despite the fact that yesterday on the way there I was half hoping God of Pain would  say no, not yet, go home you’re still sick, afterwards I could feel the energy coursing through my body, like I’d swallowed some kind of magic potion. I mean don’t get me wrong, I’d rasped and wheezed my way around the pain stations and wanted to die several times over whilst I was actually doing the do, but somehow it managed to perk me up.

Isn’t it amazing how easy it is to forget that that happens? I feel tons better today.

I’m celebrating my birthday tonight with one of my best buddies…my birthday was actually yesterday but it was a work day and a very busy one at that, so tonight I shall be mainly letting my hair down and drinking gin, which is sort of mandatory when we get together…we only really manage it once in a blue moon. It won’t get too messy because a) I’m being very very good and gin tends to make me misbehave (depending on your perspective 🙂 ) and b) I have an early start tomorrow.

Me and my boy are taking my mum to London to see The Lion King…it’s her early Christmas present, because when you get to your mid-eighties it’s all about making memories isn’t it? We’ve seen it before, a couple of times in fact but mum hasn’t and she’s going to love it. So I’m very excited…it’s going to be a lovely weekend with lots of treats which is exactly how it should be on your birthday weekend, right? I even have new pyjamas to lounge about in during our gin-fest, and there’s nothing quite so nice as fresh-out-of-the-bag PJ’s. It’s my idea of heaven.

So things should be back to normal after the weekend…my lurgy should be long gone, there’ll be no election shenanigans to keep me up late and glued to the TV and I can settle back into the routine of work, working out and picking over every bump in the road with you lot.

Happy Friday everyone…chin chin, and have a cracking weekend 🙂

 

Like it..? Tell your friends!