Category Archives: Freeform thoughts

My Round Tuits.

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now,

tuitWhen I was little, I thought round tuits were real things…my mother seemed to hold them in really high esteem, in fact it seemed like they were her answer to everything. Whenever she wanted to do something, or had something she needed fixing, or a job she needed sorting she mentioned that she was going to get one, to the point where this mystical thing seemed like it held the promise of greatness. Obviously the illusion was shattered when I realised that what it actually meant was ‘I’m going to pull my finger out of my bum and get on with stuff’.

As it happens, I’ve got several round tuits of my own stacked up in a holding pattern, and it’s dawned on me that now I’m officially more than halfway through my allocated life slot, I’d better get a wriggle on. I’ve talked before, in the post ‘Waiting to be Skinny’ about putting things on hold because I wanted to enjoy them without the distraction of being fat, but there are some things where being fat wouldn’t distract from the enjoyment – rather the opposite in fact, the enjoyment in what I’m doing would more than likely distract my attention away from the fat suit.

There’s a programme on TV at the moment called The Great Pottery Throw Down, which is basically The Great British Bake Off but instead of baking stuff they’re making stuff out of clay. It reminded me that I’ve always fancied having a go at making something on a potter’s wheel – I think I first took a liking to the idea when Demi Moore got her groove on with the delicious Mr Swayze in the film Ghost, but whilst her potter’s wheel looked like it totally belonged in a fabulous loft apartment in New York, as a teenager I could never quite imagine how I’d pull it off in my mum’s lounge in West Yorkshire.

Anyway, I digress – despite the lack of a gorgeous half naked man providing an extra pair of hands, I was reminded how much fun it looked so this is one of my round tuits that I’m going to blow the dust off and explore. I’ve made a small note to myself not to get carried away – I do have a tendency to get a bit too enthusiastic about stuff, and if I’m not careful I’ll get to the end of the weekend and find that I’ve won a kiln and three tons of clay on eBay.

Learning to sail is another one of my round tuits, although I suspect that’s best left on the shelf until I’m in a position to nip out of Skinny Town for lessons on the weekend…being fit and active is kind of a prerequisite for that one and wearing a life jacket on top of the fat suit might be a bit much.

You know what else I had..? Writing. Imagine that. A round tuit that just happened after north of thirty years on the round tuit shelf.  And I’ve got to be honest, it’s proved to be an amazing way of taking my head into a different place. I’ve found myself looking around beyond the end of my own nose, for things to chat to you guys about, as well as tipping out various thoughts and feelings for forensic examination. I’m loving the process and bless you for indulging me by reading the words and offering up thoughts of your own. Ironically, writing about being fat sort of takes my mind off the fact that I am fat…go figure!

So I’ve shared mine…out of curiosity, what are yours..?

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My Fifty Year Fitness Goal

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now, ,

set goal, make plan, work, stick to it, reach goal - a success concept presented with colorful sticky notes

So you know how every now and again you read something that really resonates with you, and at the same times inspires you to think that maybe, just maybe if you put the hours in you can pull something similar off yourself..? I just read Jan Bono’s latest guest post on the Cranky Fitness blog, and I’m here to tell you that as I sit here with my morning coffee and toast, having just read it for the second time, it’s really got me. Real tears and everything, both times…I mean come on, even E.T only got me once.

I posted a link to the story on my ‘interesting stuff’ page for anyone who’s curious but in a nutshell Jan dropped over 240lbs, and went on to make the leap from struggling to walk from her house to her car, to completing a 10k event. The post is about how she felt as she was doing it, and afterwards. I’ve had to have a word with myself this morning, I was chomping at the bit to pull on my walking boots and set off.

Given that I’m nearer the house/car end of the spectrum with a shedload of weight to lose, I need a plan of action to prevent the inevitable walk of shame back from the end of my road after the penny drops that I’m not quite ready yet to go the whole hog. Something like that definitely needs more than my usual ‘spectacles, testicles, wallet & watch’ approach to planning, as in it needs to start way before I’m getting ready to leave the house.(For the avoidance of doubt, my balls are purely metaphorical, just in case anyone wondered!)

So my thoughts turned to what it is that I’d like to do…what’s the thing I’m going to aim for, plan and train for..? Imagine that, me in training for something. It’s proving a challenge in itself just wrapping my head around that one. I need some time to think about it, because I want it to mean something, you know?  But I will come back to you on that, because along with my BHAG in terms of longer term weight control, and my short and medium term milestones I can see a hole opening up in my overall plan for a fitness goal, and this would fit the bill perfectly.

With immaculate timing, another of our posse (also called Jan funnily enough, do you think there’s a conspiracy amongst Jans to focus my mind..?!) suggested to me yesterday that I check out the Nerd Fitness blog post about taking the first small step in terms of getting fitter. Interesting food for thought – again I’ve shared it on my page. I’ve never ever tried tackling both diet and fitness at the same time. The asshole in my mind is currently having an utter meltdown that I might even be considering such a thing…he’s on the ropes where my eating plan is concerned given my level of focus and resolve, but he knows I’m on less sure footing where the whole fitness thing is concerned so his voice is loud and persistent. One at a time, get the weight down first so nothing hurts as much…

In the spirit of full disclosure, it’s what I want to hear you know? Sounds much easier and less painful so he’s kind of pushing on an open door. But setting a longer term fitness goal and building a plan might just give me the impetus to drown out his voice and get cracking. I’ve already started my extra walk a day with Charlie the dog, although to be honest the wheels came off a bit last week with not feeling too hot. It doesn’t feel like a habit yet either, but I’m sure I’ll get there.

How does the saying go..? You don’t have to be great before you can take the first step, but you have to take the first step before you can be great. I’m still trying to break free of these concrete boots 🙂

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Bending The Budget

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now, , ,

budget deficit - recession 3d conceptSo I’ve got to hold my hands up and say that I’ve never been really good at budgeting. Cue hysterical laughter from anyone who knows me – I’m the ultimate ‘champagne lifestyle on a prosecco income’ kind of girl. Always have been. My mum was exactly the same…I always remember the twinkle she’d have in her eye when she showed off a new purchase, usually accompanied by the words, ah I was just looking but the devil got behind me and pushed! So I’m very familiar with that feeling, you know when there’s just too much month left at the end of the money..? But then hey, that’s what credit cards are for, right?

I’ve never gotten myself into a situation I haven’t been able to unpick, but lets just say my bank manager lives on his nerves, and I’ve probably contributed more than most to his permanently furrowed brow and sweaty disposition.

I get it though. I understand why I love to spend. When my boy was small and I scratched a living as a single mum, money was really tight and I had no choice but to be really careful. He never went without, although I often did, but that’s almost beside the point – I became really good at creative accounting. Robbing Peter to pay Paul…borrowing from the fuel budget to buy food, paying for fuel from the Christmas fund and reallocating everything back to square the circle as soon as my work bonus dropped in.

Somehow I always got by, but I never felt like I had it all figured out, I was just good at juggling that’s all. I got away with it. In more recent times, money hasn’t been quite so tight and my splurges have grown in tandem with my income but somehow I’ve continued to sail close to the wind and get away with it,  often by the skin of my teeth before every now and again getting a reality check and properly pulling my belt in, spending virtually nothing until I’ve stepped back from the edge and got my financial ducks back in a row.

Thing is, my attitude towards my food budget has often followed a similar path. When I say food budget, I mean the amount of points or calories or whatever I’m counting on my diet of choice. Let me give you an example…lets imagine I’ve got 1200 calories a day…that’s what, 8400 a week? Woohoo!! Monday Tuesday Wednesday is open season, going great. Thursday and Friday there’s looking like a bit too much week left at the end of the calories but it’ll be ok, I can cut back a bit. Saturday and Sunday I can manage on a few leaves of spinach and half a walnut, it’s all good.

Tell you what, I’ll just borrow a few from next week’s calorie budget, if I even it out across the week I’ll hardly notice…Monday Tuesday go ok, Wednesday and Thursday it’s looking a bit sparse but it’s ok…I’ve still got half a bag of spinach and a slice of ham to see me over the weekend…and repeat. It doesn’t compute you know? It appears that I have to be stricter, more disciplined…more in control of my food budget than I’m used to being with my spending of anything else, ever.

Marry that with my food addiction issues, a tendency to binge and my asshole diet logic, and that boys and girls is called the perfect storm. Even now, from my pole position within the sweet spot, wholly committed to the cause and with the posse shoring up my backbone, faced with a buffet at work yesterday I was acutely conscious of the asshole’s twisted calculations going on in my head. How much of it could I get down my neck, if I just ring fenced a couple of points for supper…if I eat fifteen sausage rolls now I probably won’t be hungry later on anyway, right?

I overloaded on the buffet, and scraped through the rest of the day without blowing my points budget but I could have eaten a scabby donkey by the time my head hit the pillow last night…within plan, just, but not a sensible balanced disciplined choice of food spread throughout the day. Far the opposite…feast, then famine. So…where to spend, where to save and how to budget remains work in progress.

Unless it involves blowing my budget on a new handbag obviously…then the gloves are off 🙂

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Fat Flirting

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now, ,

flirting3
You’ve often heard me refer to flirting, although granted it’s usually been in the context of flirting with food. I’ve got an honorary  black belt in that, in the way that only a fat girl who’s spent the majority of her adult life on one diet or another could begin to understand.

All those teenage magazines that I read back in the seventies and eighties..? I paid attention, and they taught me everything I know about holding that gaze for just a beat too long, looking away with a coy smile and then looking back again…conveying I want you with my eyes whilst the rest of my body adopts an I couldn’t care less stance…whether it’s with a bloke or a sausage roll, the principle is the same, right?

I admit it…if I’m feeling mischievous I’m an outrageous flirt. I love the innuendo and the banter, and I’m here to tell you it’s possible to get away with far more as a fat girl than you ever could as a skinny girl. The reason for that? Nobody takes you seriously when you’re fat. Your banter is pretty much guaranteed to be taken as a joke..nobody’s going to believe that you mean it, you know that they’re actually being chatted up. By you.

More accurately the object of your banter would never in a month of Sundays think that you’d imagine they were remotely interested in you…I mean come on, you’re the fat girl. It’s a laugh. I’m not imparting this from a place of bitterness, heaven help me don’t think that for a minute…I’m a single girl by choice these days for the reasons I’ve already shared. But I still like to flex my flirting muscle from time to time, from the safety of my fully paid-for fat suit.

Some of my more risqué conversations have volleyed back and forth for hours, ending in a good laugh, a bear hug and all around agreement that it’s been a top night. If I’d turned serious and acted like I expected it to go somewhere the poor bloke in question would have almost certainly broken the land speed record getting the hell out of dodge, and spent the next few weeks afraid to leave the safety of his front room.

There are exceptions to that rule of course, I came horribly unstuck on a holiday once in the land of camels and hookah pipes…my attempts to secure a good price for a terracotta tagine almost ended in disaster when I found myself practically engaged to a man with funny eyes and something stuck in his beard. I mean how was I to know that buxom blonde women are highly prized in certain parts of the world.

If not for the quick thinking of my taxi driver who – thank God – had clearly watched Starsky and Hutch far too many times, my life could have turned out very differently indeed. I might have been tending goats now instead of writing my blog, imagine that.

So yes, I think I’ve found the one thing to talk about that perhaps I might miss about being fat. In Skinny Town I won’t even be able to flex my pulling muscle with a sausage roll but you know what…I’ll adapt. After all, nothing tastes as good as being skinny feels, right?

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Oh No, Five Oh!

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now, Reflections on past times, , ,

chanel cake

So, that’s it then…I have officially reached the point where my age starts with a five, not a four. I wasn’t sure how I’d wake up feeling today…at forty I was fine, I embraced it. At thirty, I thought my life was over, seriously I think I cried for a week. At twenty…crap, that’s a lifetime away, I don’t even remember how I felt back then. I’m Fifty. I need to try it on for size you know? See how it fits. I could deny it of course…cling to forty nine like a drowning man would cling to a life raft? The flaw in that plan is that I’ve told you all now…me and my big mouth.

I wonder what my fifties will bring? My twenties were all about my boy – he was little, I was first and foremost a mum. I’d pressed the ejector seat on a really bad choice of husband and it was me and kiddo against the world. In my thirties – once I’d gotten over the trauma of actually being thirty  – they were all about being a mum, going back to school and getting some smarts, building my career…oh and winning a fairly gruelling battle with the Big C.  Husband number two came…and went…watch closely, there’s a theme.

In my forties I was more in control. I still made some bad choices but I was getting better at recognising the fuck-ups and dealing with them quickly, so that’s a bonus at least, right? Husband number three was despatched almost before he’d arrived although not before wiping out my bank account and teaching me some very thorny life lessons. But that was at the very top of the decade…I’ve enjoyed my forties on the whole. I stopped chasing the fairy tale and I got to know me.

As I turn fifty, I’m in control you know? Apart from needing the odd tena-lady obviously if someone makes me laugh till the tears run down my leg. I know what I want, having spent a lot of time over the years experiencing what I don’t want. I love my family, my friends, my career, and now I’m writing too, and the more I write the more I want to write…I suspect I’ve unleashed the beast. Putting yourself out there is daunting but to discover that like-minded people enjoy your stuff fills me with a joy I can’t describe.

It’s a shame I’m still fat, but you know what? Whilst I would have loved to have sashayed into my sixth decade as a skinny string bean, I know this is my time. Time to break out of this life-limiting fat suit once and for all, but exactly when is just semantics…I will be fifty and fabulous, even if it’s technically the day before I’m fifty one. And what’s more, I’m planning to stay there – I already know I’m going to need to mortgage my skinny soul against the commitment of counting a food budget for the rest of my life but hey, if that’s what it takes to prevent my home in Skinny Town being repossessed then bring it on…once I’m there, this time I’m there to stay.

So all in all, early indications are that hitting my big birthday isn’t going to trigger any kind of nervous collapse…we live to march another day, posse! 🙂

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