Category Archives: Freeform thoughts

Food, Shmood, Whatever!

Freeform thoughts, , , , ,

dream

One of the things that really fascinates me about people is that we’re all different. Each one of us is different in the way we look at the world as well as having different priorities, and different stuff which pushes our buttons. One of the things which intrigues me most of all is how people who are really different often get on incredibly well.

Take my friend for example. She’s one of my special people you know? We’ve been through a lot together over the last twenty-odd years. Our friendship is rooted in mutual affection and respect, although I guess that hardly needs calling out when I’m talking about a friendship which has lasted all this time. And yet, I think you’d struggle to find two more different people.

You know me, I’m an eternal optimist. I look at the world through can-do eyes, and I have an unwavering belief that everything will come good in the end. Looking back I’m not sure why I was blessed with such a sunny disposition, I just can’t remember a time when I didn’t have hope in my heart that even shit would eventually turn to gold if I hung in there long enough.

In the middle of whatever shit-storm has surrounded me, I’ve stubbornly refused to stray anywhere near why me? territory because I just don’t find that it helps. What I do instead, is blithely push through and hope for the best. I’ve always described myself as good in a crisis, and that’s fine and dandy in the moment, but I don’t always cut to the chase and deal with the pain or the fallout because I’m so busy focusing on the positive outcome which I’m sure  will materialize…eventually.

And God forbid I would need to ask anyone for help, I mean it’s just not something I do…I never have. So I emerge from the storm with a smile on my face, and life carries on but there’s often stuff which stays unresolved on the inside. In an indirect way I’m sure that’s contributed to the size of my arse, you know?

My friend’s approach is different. She would look you in the eye and tell you how strong I am, but in reality she’s the strong one. She’s not afraid to have a few why me? moments, but she’ll do it whilst she’s staring down whatever it is that’s causing her pain, and she deals with it there and then. It might take a while to come out the other side, but when she does, it’s resolved in a way that isn’t just skin deep, I mean it’s mended, not ignored.

So we’re like chalk and cheese, but very close non the less. Last time we were chatting we talked about how my diet and exercise regime was going, and reflected on how I’d been up and down the scale a gazillion times over all the years that we’d been friends, and how food had always been my Achilles heel. And then, my friend said something which sort of stopped me in my tracks.

I really only eat because I have to, I wouldn’t care if I never ate again.

HELLO?  I thought I knew about all the ways in which we’re different, but I never knew about that one! I couldn’t quite wrap my head around what she was saying, you know? I mean this is food we’re talking about. It’s the first thing I think about when I open my eyes in the morning, and on Sundays especially when I wake up to a brand new Weight Watchers’ week bursting at the seams with new Smart Points, I get really giddy at how my week is going to pan out and what food I’m going to be able to eat.

It preoccupies me, all the time. Even now I’m losing weight, in fact probably more so now I’m losing weight. My head, to one degree or another, is always overly invested in what I’m going to eat next, where it’s coming from, and how I can absolutely maximize the experience. And we all know by that  I mean how much I can fit on the plate whilst using as few smart points as possible so there’s scope for more  food later.

I suppose I’ve always known that not everyone is as preoccupied with eating stuff as I am, but it never occurred to me before that point that anyone, ever, would almost regard food as an nuisance…necessary to make the wheels go round but serving no purpose other than providing fuel for their body. I mean, it’s food! It tastes good!! What’s not to love?!!!

I can’t begin to understand it, but then I suppose some folk wouldn’t be able to imagine a world without wine, right? My friend is one of them, to be fair.

Me, I’d rather eat the grapes 🙂

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My Side Of The Street

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now

dropOne of the things I love and value the most about the way we chatter on here and exchange thoughts and perspectives is that sometimes out of nowhere I throw a lasso around a couple of things I’ve read, tie them together in my mind with a big bow and all of a sudden there’s a brand new-to-me insight that I can add to my bag of tricks. To be honest, that’s what’s keeping me nailed on and committed – I can’t even begin to tell you how much it’s helping.

Something that Fleury said in her guest post, and the genius way in which she knitted together the parallels between life and diet really got me thinking.

Her very first point was if you drop it, pick up the pieces…well you would, wouldn’t you? Take this morning for example, I knocked a box of cotton buds off the shelf in in the bathroom and they skittered to all four corners of the room. It would never have occurred to me to just leave them there.

Once I’d finished muttering naughty words I picked up all the ones that hadn’t managed to gather fluff in their bid for freedom and put the rest in the bin. I didn’t have to think hard about whether I should do it or not, it was a simple reflex action, because my brain is wired that way. If we didn’t pick stuff up as we went along, our lives would be spent stepping over crap on the floor, and I don’t know anyone that could live that way. With the possible exception of my boy…he could live that way 🙂

Reading Fleury’s post again this morning, my brain made the leap from her words, to cotton buds and then right over to something Kathy said in a blog post a while ago, about keeping her side of the street clean. Kathy was talking about owning your own actions, and not worrying what other folk are up to on their side of the street – as long as you keep your side of the street clean you’re doing ok.

I know it’s not strictly the same thing – Kathy was making a different point – but that’s the weird way my mind works. It made the leap, and all of a sudden putting those things together created an image in my head that just seemed very logical and…well, obvious.

I don’t want to live in chaos. It’s not how I live my life, so why would my approach to losing weight be any different?  If I drop something, and I pick it up straight away, my side of the street stays clean and I’m not required to navigate a path through crap. It’s like nothing happened. It’s dealt with, right away, and life carries on. My street isn’t ruined. I don’t have to move house because things will never be the same again. That would be an over-reaction, right? I’d pick it up, and move on with my day. So if I ever drop a blooper on my diet, why should it be any different..?

I mean it’s harder, because there’s the buggeration factor otherwise known as the Asshole voice, who would bust his balls to see the ground under my feet littered with the wrappers of a hundred dieting fails. But the principle is the same. Once you pick up the pieces, life goes on. Your side of the street is as clean as it was before whatever you dropped hit the deck, and you can move on.

Speaking as someone whose internal wiring has always thrown me into the path of ‘all or nothing’ thinking, it’s a concept I’ll need to work at, since it’s as far away from my dieting default as it’s possible to get. But I’m recalibrating, you know? I’m choosing it as one of the life skills I need to practise until it’s perfect. I’m hoping that by the time I get to Skinny Town it’ll be as natural to me as breathing.

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I’m working my nuts off to get fit so I can complete a 90km trek in October, to raise money in memory of my dad. You can read his story HERE and I would be so grateful if you’d help me honour his memory by donating whatever you can afford. Together we can make a difference and help other people who have been affected by mental illness. Thank you!

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Officially Going Nowhere

Freeform thoughts

passport

I just realised that my passport expired yesterday so if I wake up in the morning with an urge to take off to some far flung exotic destination, I’m buggered and I’m going nowhere. I’m gutted to be honest…my passport contains a fairly flattering skinny head shot and since I shall be forced to get a new passport before I’m officially resident in Skinny Town, the next one will actually have to look like me.

I was skinny and ten years younger when the picture in my passport was taken which might help you understand why I’m quite attached to it. To be honest I’m astonished that I’ve been allowed to travel on it all these years but with the exception of one very diligent immigration bloke when we arrived in Russia last year nobody has ever questioned it. The guy in Russia took some convincing mind you.

I ended up standing in front of the immigration booth trying to mime the fact that I’d put weight on, by puffing my cheeks out and striking a particularly fat pose, not that I needed to pose that much since I was topping the scales out at over 320lbs at the time. All done under the watchful eye of the other folk in the queue…definitely one of those moments where I wanted the ground to swallow me whole.

I can’t even take a selfie and edit out a chin or two can I..? I think the pictures have to come from one of those little booths, although to be fair it is ten years since I last went through the renewal process so things might be a bit different now. I won’t need it until the back end of August so I’m going to hang on for a bit so I can at least take a running jump at my skinny face. It’s got to last me for the next ten years so I need to put my best foot forward, right? At least it’s only my head.

On another note, I had to fill in a medical questionnaire today for the Cuba trek. Question 4a in section three threw me a bit when it asked for my weight…I wasn’t expecting that. I made up an outrageous lie obviously 🙂 Well it’s not strictly a lie, right? By the time I set off I will be significantly smaller than I am now and besides, I’m not running the risk of being booted from the trip because they’re scared that hauling this fat old body up a mountain might actually kill me.

It’s a bit different to our trip in the helicopter last October, where if you remember I ended up paying an arse tax for a wider seat…just one of the indignities you have to suck up as a fat girl living in a world built for folk who know when to quit with the cheeseballs. If all goes according to plan, by the time I get to the foot of that mountain I’ll be wearing large pants instead of extra extra extra large, having consumed no cheesy balls for well over a year. There’ll be no reason for anyone to look at me and think she’ll never be able to do this…

I’m really going to enjoy that moment of just being like everybody else 🙂

Whilst you’re here, please take a moment to pop into our guest blog page, where our very own Fleury Knox has given us a few things to think about! You can find it HERE

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Served With A Backhand

Freeform thoughts

compA friend of my mum paid me a compliment today when we bumped into each other as I’d popped in for a visit and I accepted it with good humour, but as I’ve reflected on our conversation I’m starting to feel just a little bit mugged off. When is a compliment not a compliment..? I’d hazard a guess and say when it’s served up immediately before a long silence that contains no spoken words  whatsoever but the implied meaning says more than words ever could.

I can think of a few really obvious examples. When someone says you’ve got such a pretty face, without exception we all know what they really mean is shame about the rest of you, if only you’d lay off the pies, but they’re too polite to come out with it. Whenever I put weight on, it goes to my face first and I’ve always hated that.

I remember reading teenage magazines with make-up tutorials way back in the day and I used to lay on my bed and seethe with resentment that with the best will in the world no matter how much I yearned for a heart-shaped face mine could only ever be described as round. It felt really unfair, like I’d been dealt the joker you know? A little dab of this week’s free blusher here, and a bit of shading there and my face still looked…well, round.

When someone says I like that top, it gives you a really nice shape, it feels like what they really mean is you generally look like a sack of spuds but that pattern hides more of your lumps than the one you wore yesterday. And yes, I get that the way you interpret stuff has got a lot to do with how you see or think or feel about yourself but still, some compliments are framed thoughtlessly and they sting, intentionally or not.

As a fat girl you kind of get used to bumping into comments like that, and whilst not everybody serves them up, you quickly get to know the people who do. If you’re anything like me you’ve probably shrugged them off a lot of the time and beaten yourself up for being oversensitive and maybe that’s even true some of the time. But not all of the time, right?

My mum’s friend wouldn’t have deliberately upset me for the world. I know that. But right after she told me how good I was looking, she followed it up by saying mind you, you’ve always been good at losing weight haven’t you…

Now, is that me, or were the words shame you can’t keep it off said without actually being said? Of course they were. Emphasis on the word losing, then the words just sort of hung there in the silence whilst I studied my feet before the conversation moved on to other things.

The annoying thing is, she’s not wrong. But it’s not her place to point it out you know? Which she didn’t, exactly…except she did, in not so many words. And now I know that she thinks that I can’t help feeling a bit offended, like I’ve been judged and found wanting. What she really means is you just keep on getting fat. You keep on blowing it. You SUCK at being a skinny string bean…I already know all those things and knowing she thinks that too has landed. Bad lands, remember..?

Best thing I can do is prove her wrong I suppose. And I fully intend to. In the meantime I’ve whiled away a good couple of hours fantasising about what I wish I’d said in return. I should’ve said yes, that’s so true but I’d rather keep trying than just accept …you know…whilst throwing a glance at her own not unsubstantial midriff. Pointing out her face looks like a melted welly boot might have taken it a bit too far.

Even though it does 🙂

 

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When Chocolate Calls Your Name

Freeform thoughts

image

I’m writing this blog post on the train, on my way down to see my best friend…she very annoyingly lives nowhere near me and despite nagging her incessantly for the last twenty years or so to move back to my neck of the woods I’ve given up now, she’s got a couple of grand babies and I know when I’m beat.

Even the lure of my roast dinners couldn’t tempt her away these days, especially since the portions have shrunk, and rightly so. But I have business meetings in London over the early part of this week, and I grabbed the chance with both hands to come down early for a weekend visit and some cuddles with those babies.

There’s a young guy sitting opposite me across the aisle, who bought a bar of chocolate from the trolley as it made it’s way down the carriage. Me, I bought coffee and I’ve already polished off the two bananas I brought with me for breakfast. But I’m fascinated by this bloke…he ate one strip of chocolate, and now he’s gone to sleep. With the chocolate open, and unfinished on the table right in front of him. Who does that?!!

I’ve never been able to do that. I have friends who laugh about recipes which invite to you use leftover wine, on the basis that no such thing exists, and whilst I can take or leave wine, there’s definitely no such thing as leftover chocolate in my world. I mean, buying a bar to eat later would be hard enough but come on, surely once you’ve had a square and got the taste for it you can’t just leave it sitting there? And sleep.

My mind is wandering all over the place…I’m imagining some kind of ninja move to swap out my empty banana skin for his barely touched bar of Galaxy. I mean he’s out for the count, right? He might just think he dreamed the chocolate and really he ate fruit, kind of like the shower scene in Dallas…the chocolate never happened, in the same way that Bobby Ewing never shagged that other woman whilst Pamela was off being dead for a bit. It was all a dream.

I’m thinking no, I probably couldn’t get away with that. Christ, I’m a fifty year old woman reduced to thoughts of skullduggery by an open bar of chocolate that’s not even near enough for me to smell it. Get a grip woman. It’s a good job he doesn’t have cheesy balls or we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. I’d be looking at getting escorted off the train at the next station on the basis that the bright orange e-numbers smeared all over my chops proved the case against me despite me denying all knowledge m’lud.

I know that sugar is addictive, and I’m seriously thinking about cutting all refined sugar out of my diet…can’t just quite commit but they’re more than idle thoughts. But what about the other stuff that I find just as addictive..? Cheese balls being a case in point. It’s the same thing, once I start and I get the taste for them, it’s over.

I’ve been known to sit and eat three family bags of them one after the other when I was gripped by a binge, usually followed by something sweet to finish with. And you know whilst the concept of that feels very alien to me from this perspective of food sobriety, my God there are times where I just want to melt into my big fat recliner and vaporise my own body weight in crap. I won’t…but sometimes I really want to.

Which brings me back to the train and Rip Van sodding Winkle across the way there with his half eaten bar of Galaxy. On a scale of one to ten, exactly how wrong is it of me to hope it bloody chokes him?

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