Category Archives: Freeform thoughts

Who’s Pulling My Strings?

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now,

brain

For those of you who’ve been following my blog for a while you’ve probably gathered that I have a day job, and writing my blog is a hobby – I get to indulge my love of words whilst keeping my hands occupied at the same time so they don’t let me down by feeding my face when I’m not paying attention. (By the way is that just me? I swear on occasion I’ve found myself munching on something without any recollection of putting it in my mouth – please tell me that happens to you too, I don’t need any more reasons to feel odd).

Anyway, through the course of my work, I’ve been lucky enough to do lots of self-development, and one thing that comes through time and again is the issue of control. Now I wouldn’t go as far as describing myself as a control freak, (although I would imagine my ex-husband might have a different view  *rolls on the floor laughing*) but I do like to control things that are happening around me, and I hate being controlled. In the context of my life generally, that presents me with no problems whatsoever. But it’s completely at odds when you look at it in the context of my relationship with food.

If it comes down to a stand-off between me, and food, trust me when I say I am not the one in control. For argument’s sake, let’s go with the dictionary definition of the word control – ‘to exercise restraint or direction over; dominate; command’. I could probably exercise restraint over a dish of tripe. And I’d definitely jump at the chance to dominate and command a plate of rocket or watercress (all the way to the opposite end of the earth if necessary, YAK ) but if we’re talking about chips, or cake, or Haagen Dazs…pretty much anything else that actually tastes good (!) I’m a lost cause. In the context of that relationship, I’m the Anastasia to chocolate cake’s Christian Grey…to put it another way, I’m not the one holding the whip.

Sure, right now I’m totally in the zone, standing firmly on the sweet spot so at this moment in time I’m doing ok.  But I’ve been here before and I know I can’t be complacent. I’m not dumb enough to think I’ve cracked it, sooner or later whether it’s a mid-diet fall from grace, or an end-of-diet victory lap, the control will shift from me, to whatever it is that gets hold of my strings and makes me eat cake. And yes, on a rational level I know it’s still me. It just doesn’t feel like it.

I wish I understood why. Trying to find the answer to that is like my own personal holy grail, you know? I can see the quest to understand it becoming my life’s work. The desire to be skinny is alive and well. I don’t lack motivation, I work really hard and like to make a success of stuff…I’m as stubborn as a mule if I set my mind to something and I usually get my own way. All my ducks seem to be lined up in a row but STILL food controls me, not the other way around.

Answers on a postcard please..?

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Man Marking the Muffins

Freeform thoughts, , , , ,

bun

So it occurred to me that being a food hoover is far more complex when you’re a human being than it is when you belong to some other species. Bit of a random thought, but it popped into my head last night when I was cooking tea, having narrowly avoided tripping over the dog for about the tenth time.

Had anyone been observing the two of us as we moved about the kitchen, it must have looked a bit like a sort of clumsy ballet. Whenever there’s food, or the smell of food, or even the hope of food, my four legged fur baby welds himself to my side and develops eyes in the back of his head so he’s in exactly the right place at the right time to take advantage of anything which might come his way, either by accident or design. I take a step, he takes a step. I turn around, he turns around (unless the food is actually visible in which case he removes all risk of missing anything by walking backwards).

Even as a puppy he was solely motivated by food – within 3 days of coming home he’d pee on the puppy pad and then go wait expectantly by the fridge, and his love affair with chicken and sausage in particular continues to this day. Incidentally so does mine, but as a fat girl I’d die before being quite so obvious. As a skinny girl, you can get away with knocking people out of the way like skittles to get to the cake…people will smile and tease you about how you can love cake so much and stay so trim.  “You must have a worm inside you, ha ha ha”... As a fat girl, no chance. Those same people wouldn’t tease you at all, they’d probably just shake their heads sadly and think “No wonder…”

I’m convinced that’s why a lot of fat folk eat in secret, as though it’s something to be ashamed of. Or maybe it’s because we think people won’t notice that we’re fat if they never actually see us put anything in our mouths…that’s asshole logic if ever I saw it. But I for one have lived it! Eating publicly can be difficult when you’re bigger than the average bear – imagine two people walking away from a fast food counter with overloaded trays, one fat girl and one skinny girl…only one of them is going to feel self conscious, judged, ashamed that she’s not about to eat salad. Am I right?

So how come a slavish devotion to food is cute in a dog but shocking when you’re just a fat girl who can’t get it under control? Why does one provoke smiles where the other provokes scorn and judgement from the world in general? I’d hazard a guess that it’s because we’re supposed to be the ones with a fully formed thought process and a sense of reason – don’t get me wrong, dogs are bright but they’re not likely to think things through in a ‘better not have another bonio if I want to wear my favourite collar at the weekend’ kind of way. But we are, we’re supposed to have it all figured out.

But what if your thought process is broken? What if you have an asshole who lives inside your head and relentlessly kicks all reason into the long grass till you can’t get to it..? What then.

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Sunday Celebrations

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now,

balloonsI know that technically, the one month anniversary of Break Out the Skinny Girl isn’t until Tuesday, but today feels more like the right day to celebrate because my blog was born four weekends ago on a rainy day just like this one. And lets be honest, who ever has a party on a Tuesday. So, today’s the day – one whole month in and already I can’t remember what it was like not to log on every day and check in with you all.  We’re still a very small posse but small is beautiful, right?  Forgive me being indelicate but that’s the reason I’m here anyway 🙂

Shall I share some interesting facts? Do feel free to snooze through this paragraph if you’re not quite as fascinated by these facts as I am, to me they are the most beautiful facts in the world but lets not forget that this is a complete labour of love for me, and I’m incredibly honoured that people who don’t know me are taking time out of their busy lives to check out my blog.

I usually write from the kitchen of my little cottage in a small town in Yorkshire, England, mostly in pyjamas with the dog at my feet. It’s an awesome feeling to know that once I launch those words into cyberspace, people are reading them from thousands of miles away…we now have a small but perfectly formed posse of regular readers across the USA as well as here in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Slovenia and Ireland. I make it sound very grand – look at me, I’ve gone global! But if you’re one of them, MWAH, please accept that big sloppy virtual kiss on the chops, and thank you, you make me smile every single day.

I’m about as far from grand as it’s possible to be (although let’s imagine that someone was stupid enough to make luminous yellow pants in XXXXL, and I was brave enough to wear them I suspect you’d be able to see my arse from the international space station – that’s pretty grand) but I don’t think I’ll ever tire of clicking on the little pins on the analytics map which tells me where my visitors live.

Don’t freak out, I mean I’m not going to turn up at your house or anything, it’s not that accurate, but I get the biggest buzz ever when I see a new location pop up, or when I watch that line on the graph of visitor numbers curling slowly upwards. In the scheme of things, and in the context of the world wide web, it’s tiny – we are still only talking about a few hundred people – but to me, it’s huge. I have a voice.

I’m finding it really hard to put into words how much oomph your feedback and words of encouragement have given me over the last month – those of you who have followed my posts from the beginning (ish) will already know that I don’t go near the scales if I can help it, but despite the best efforts of the asshole, I haven’t come anywhere near to the danger zone, so I’m on track and enjoying the journey – your company is helping me big time. 

So thank you – if you love the blog, share the hell out of it, tell your friends, and get them to tell their friends…the bigger the posse, the faster my asshole will retreat. Eww, *screws face up* I didn’t quite mean that the way it sounded. But then you knew that 🙂

 

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Shall We Talk Shoes?

Freeform thoughts, Reflections on past times, , ,

LBs

I watched a documentary the other night about Christian Louboutin and it got me thinking. I do quite miss wearing heels although I’ve got to be honest I’ve never worn the kind of towering creations dreamed up by the likes of him…he doesn’t make shoes for fat girls. His perspective on shoes for those of you who didn’t see the documentary, is that the first thing a woman does when she puts on a pair of heels is to look in the mirror, and check out her own ass. The expectation being that the heels make your ass look spectacular.

Now forgive me being sceptical but it’s going to take more than a pair of heels to justify the use of the word ‘spectacular’ in association with my ass. They’re going to do what? Make it look more curvy..? Yeah cos that’s exactly what I need. Make me a pair of shoes that make it look like I dropped 5 dress sizes and I’ll squeeze my pasty feet into them all day long but till then, red soles or not you can just jog on thanks.

I did once order a gorgeous pair of boots from Jimmy Choo. I should explain, I’m all about the bags – shoes have never really been my thing – and I’d been on-line scouring the January sale to see if they had any nice bags up for grabs when these boots caught my eye. They were flatties, beautiful nude colour suede, lined with sheepskin and utterly gorgeous. Highly impractical, one rain shower or puddle would have ruined them but I talked myself through all the possible scenarios where carefully planned climate-controlled outings would allow me to show them off. I had a YOLO moment (you only live once!) and thought sod it, sod the expense, they’ve got my name all over them.

On the day they were delivered the whole experience was awesome…a box in a box in a box, wrapped with tissue paper and sprinkled with fairy dust (ok I’m lying about the fairy dust) and it was all going so well until I tried them on. Tried one of them on…it was at this point I realised that fancy designers didn’t make fancy shoes for fat feet. I thought I’d been really clever ordering one and a half sizes bigger than normal (*taps head*, up here for thinking, down there for dancing) but no sooner had my big toe passed the sheepskin tongue it became very clear that Houston had a problem. Like a bona fide ugly sister, no way was my foot going to fit into that boot. Not even close. With great sadness and not a small amount of attitude I stuffed them back into their perfect box and sent them back.

I can’t wear heels. There comes a point on the scale of fatness where it’s just not possible – if you’re in the fat club you’ll know what I mean – so for now I’m limited to flatties for fatties. I did manage to score a gorgeous pair of Chanel flip flops this summer, and I’d like to think that Coco Chanel in all her tiny perfection would have derived a certain amount of satisfaction from knowing that the shoe people at Chanel had succeeded where others had failed in making at least one pair of fat feet feel fabulous.

They didn’t do much for my ass though, in case you were wondering 🙂

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Closet Closed for Business

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now,

wardrobe

Is that what your closet looks like? No, mine either. *Sigh*. To be fair, wardrobes like this don’t happen to people like me… I do have a really lovely wardrobe, in fact three lovely wardrobes, but it’s complicated. They are bursting at the seams with clothes…skinny clothes. I can’t put my fat clothes in there. Yes, when I say it out loud I appreciate how ridiculous that sounds but I just can’t do it…if my fat clothes were ever to make it across the threshold of my wardrobe, that’s tantamount to admitting that they’re staying, and that would never do, because they’re not. Obviously.

So the fat clothes – you know the ones that have fitted me for the last six years or so – exist in kind of a holding pattern between the wash basket, the ironing pile and my one ‘fat clothes’ drawer. My skinny clothes on the other hand – the ones that fitted me for about ten minutes – have hung undisturbed since the day I sloped out of the skinny zone with my tail between my legs and started eating all the pies.

When I’m skinny, I love to shop. I have a thing about business suits and evening dresses in particular, which is strange in itself, because I have no real cause to wear either. I mean I could go to work in a suit if I wanted to, but the skinny me could probably wear a different one every day for months before I’d worked my way around them all…a lot of them still have the tags on.  As for evening dresses, although I’ve probably got a couple of dozen in my skinny wardrobe, I can count on one hand the occasions I’ve actually needed to wear one…I don’t live that life.

Which begs the question, whose life was I actually buying them for?  I’m the kind of girl who can’t wait to climb into PJs as soon as I get in from work. Weekends come around, and I love nothing more than kicking back with my family, or having friends around for a few scoops or a nice meal, but dressy black tie functions..? Not for me. It’s never been my thing at all. It’s as if I thought that once I’d hit the skinny zone, this whole new and different world was going to open up and I’d start doing things I’d never enjoyed, and living a lifestyle I’ve never aspired to. Which, when you put it like that makes me sound like a right muppet.

I can’t help thinking that it’s another example of a real mis-fire in the way I think about stuff – skinny equals a glamorous just-stepped-off-the-pages-of-vogue lifestyle, where fat equals jersey pyjamas and a love affair with my armchair. I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s a bloody great chair – but there’s absolutely no reason I couldn’t buy skinny pyjamas and kick back and relax in it as a skinny girl…no glamour required, and the real me could dig in to live the life I choose, not the one I think I ought to want.

Perhaps it’s time for a clear out…or maybe I’ll leave them there just a wee while longer…after all, skinny I’m comin’ to get ya 🙂

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