You know when you’ve done stuff for years, to the point where it becomes part of the fabric of who you are, kind of like bolt-on DNA because it’s part of what defines you? It’s really bloody hard sometimes when you step outside of that familiarity you know?

I’ve got to be honest, this weekend has been a toughie. I was glad to get back to work this morning just for a sense of normality. It sounds ridiculous but genuinely, the lure of curling up in my big fat armchair in front of the TV, and not moving except for the odd trip to the fridge was so strong, and I can’t tell you how utterly pissed off I felt because I wouldn’t allow myself to do it.

I felt like a child on the verge of having a maHOOsive paddy because I wasn’t allowed to do what I wanted.  I really surprised myself with the amount of rage I felt inside, I mean I’m so even tempered and easy going it’s a bit of a rare event when the red mist descends. I didn’t know quite what to do with myself.

I was in a sour mood to start with due to the the incident I shall refer to as pillgate. Three weeks’ worth of wasted effort. Dumbass. I set off on a long walk with Charlie dog but I’d eaten not long before I went out, and that, combined with the half-walk-half-stomp – think Whoopie Goldberg crossing the road in Ghost just after she gave the cheque away, if you know the movie you’ll know the scene – gave me a stitch and made my ankles hurt so my poor fur baby got marched to the top of the hill and then back down again, and short changed on the fun stuff.

I was just arsy all day. I was snippy with my mum, and that’s hard to forgive because she’s the sweetest wrinklie on the block. I’d promised to wax her chin since she was starting to sport a beard that that the Ayatollah Khomeini would have been proud of, and I stepped up to the task with a bit too much gusto. I doubt her chin hair will dare poke it’s head out again this side of Christmas.

Plus, I ate a family bag of Maltesers. Fucks’ sake. I might not have been sitting in the chair in front of the TV when I did it (which by the way according to the Asshole means it doesn’t count) but opening the bag and then having to go back to my phone to key in additional malteser points five times until Oh look the bag is empty…well, it’s got naughty child written all over it.

I rebelled against the headlock that this sweet spot has me in, and how ridiculous is that when I’ve had my nose pressed to the window for years trying to get in. But I sort of did it safely…yesterday was the first day of a shiny new weight watchers week and the collateral damage saw 50% of my ‘extra’ weekly points eroded in one hit. I’ll take that. And breathe…

On the basis that the storm has passed and I woke up this morning determined to make that additional pound get the hell out of dodge this week along with a couple of its friends, I think I might just have got away with it.

Days like that really suck. I can not let myself fall back into that comfort zone. I went hell for leather on the hurt machine last night as if my life depended on it, and in some respects it even might. I’m walking towards the magic, and I’m not going back there.

It’s bloody hard though sometimes, you know?

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Hello newly gained pound…meet the rest of my body. I’d like to say you’re very welcome but at the risk of being rude, don’t unpack your bags because actually you’re not welcome here, in fact you can just fuck right off. I mean where did you even come from..?

Something tells me I need to do an autopsy on the week because this can’t happen, right? For the first time in six months I am fatter today than I was this time last week. I’m gutted…but having had a quick flick through the week maybe it’s a lesson learned. And to be fair I have to own it. I got complacent.

Last weekend I headed south for a visit with my best buddy, was treated to a lovely Sunday lunch out, and had a handful or two of snacks in the evening which I pointed and counted. When I say pointed and counted I mean sort of guessed. Snacks I hadn’t tried before, with nutritional info on the bag which I didn’t even look at so to my shame I can’t even try and blag an educated guess. Just a plain old common-or-garden guess.

On Monday I had no breakfast, but where I’d normally eat fruit or something mid-morning in the office, I just had a couple of latte coffees during the day whilst we were working and then dinner in my hotel. Sensible choice, chicken caesar salad and I asked for the dressing on the side, which came in a jug…going well so far. Quite a large jug if I’m honest and not only did I pour it all on, I seem to remember scraping out what was left with a piece of lettuce to make sure I didn’t miss any. I don’t imagine the duck pancakes appetiser helped my daily points total either, which for the second day running was a wild guess.

Tuesday, I tucked into a generous breakfast in my hotel, more confidently pointed since it was familiar food. But definitely generous, on the basis that we would be working through lunchtime. I ate a late afternoon snack, a wrap bought from the deli next door…only guessable in terms of points. Then three large glasses of red at the bloggy folk social, oh and let’s not forget two cheese balls.

The rest of the week wasn’t bad in terms of food choices, with the exception of the whole sleeve of Jaffa Cakes which I’ve already ‘fessed up about. Is this a good time to mention that I’ve not been near my hurt machine in over a week..? And yesterday was the first time I’ve been out walking for any real distance with Charlie dog.

It’s been a busy week but that doesn’t make it any different to most of my weeks so I’m not even going to try that excuse. Fact is, I have no excuse, and the days of trying to cobble one together are long gone. I got complacent, cocky, whatever you want to call it, and the bitch in the bathroom has given me a good kicking because of it. I got what I deserved based on the week I put in – sometimes you look at the number on the scale and life feels unfair because you tried so hard, right? Not this week. This week, much as it galls me, the bitch had a point.

I’ve talked before, a lot, about worrying that if I stepped out of the sweet spot I’d be terrified I wouldn’t get back in. That if I wasn’t perfect all the time I’d get jettisoned out into the bad lands of cheese balls and chocolate to fend for myself. But that’s not where I’m at, in fact nowhere near. I didn’t fall off the wagon, I just didn’t pay enough attention that’s all and the short sharp shock which this newly acquired pound of lard has served up today was my come to Jesus moment.

Bitch, I see your pound and raise you…rematch next Sunday and come prepared to eat dirt 🙂

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I never cease to be amazed by the way that the inner workings of my head conspire sometimes to throw a rusty nail under the wheels of my momentum. It’s ridiculous and it just drives home to me how much of a work in progress I really am.

As the blog continues to grow and new people find us, and as my weight loss slowly becomes a bit more noticeable, I’ve enjoyed more than my fair share of genuine support and compliments lately, you know? But it’s probably fair to say that lovely as they are, they’ve lulled me into a false sense of security. This isn’t easy. And I don’t have it in the bag.

This week is a case in point. I clearly didn’t learn from the last time my subscription notifications were invaded by gremlins – nobody died, and eventually the issue got fixed after winding me right up for a couple of days. It works perfectly maybe three times out of five, so it needs constant attention, and this must be the third or fourth time it’s gone tits up completely but it always gets resolved eventually…nothing to get in a sweat about, right?

So how come last night, during a long and frustrating exchange of emails between me and the technical folk who host my blog, for whom English doesn’t seem to be their first language and who can’t seem to understand what the issue is, I thought that eating an entire sleeve of Jaffa Cakes would somehow help make the situation better?

Twenty four smart points – out of a daily allowance of 38 – spent on crap for no reason other than I was pissed off that I couldn’t get anyone to just bloody fix it. I couldn’t even go back and double-check in my weight watchers thingamabob that I had enough weekly points left to cover my wobble, because this false sense of security has seen me more and more often totting things up in my head instead of using the tools I have to hand.

The tools are there to keep right on top of what I’m eating. My head on the other hand has a very selective memory, ably assisted by the asshole and although I’m quite good at sums, I’m even better at forgetting what’s on the list of stuff I’ve eaten that needs to be added up. So I think I had enough weekly points left to get away with the Jaffa Cakes but it’s really twisting my melon that I won’t know for sure.

Just look at how many my buttons are available for pushing right now. Control, because I can’t make it work. Patience, as in I don’t have any and it’s been broken for three days now. Frustration, because I can’t make the clever blokes understand what’s wrong and they keep asking me the same questions and going round in a loop with the same answers which don’t bloody fix it, and most of all the fact that it’s not perfect is driving me bat-shit crazy.

So it turned me into a basket case and resulted in the unfortunate incident with a sleeve of Jaffa Cakes that I don’t especially even like, I mean they’re chewy and sweet and all that but have never been one of my go to foods. The dog, who was sitting on my knee as I sulked in the armchair and fed my face with one after the other watched closely but he wore a resigned look and didn’t even bother to drool, I mean his doggy intuition told him that none of them had his name on.

They weren’t worth it. And the fact that I’d vaporised a year’s supply just added to my very sour mood. Eating the Jaffa Cakes was never going to resolve the issue, and the sodding thing is indeed still on the blink. Me, I’ve kicked the rusty nail to the side of the path and today I’ll keep on moving forward.

More importantly I’ll keep on doing the work, because times like this show me exactly how far I still have to go 🙁

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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?

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