Category Archives: Freeform thoughts

Holy Moly, the pressure’s on now.

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now, ,

writer

Thanks to a couple of very good friends of mine who’ve been kind enough to share the details of my blog on their Facebook page, I’ve picked up 10 new readers who don’t know me. To them – you, if you’re reading this – I’m just a blogger!! And you have every right to expect quality well thought out words, along with insight, honesty and interesting content.

I’m currently standing in that space between feeling excited and terrified, with a healthy dollop of understanding that from here on in, I really and truly can’t just talk shite as a space-filler, I mean I have a readership!!  What a responsibility…I feel like JK Rowling. Or at the very least JR Hartley.  My ‘web traffic analysis’ graph is going bonkers – well when I say bonkers I mean it’s no longer reporting a flat line of one visitor, so to me it’s become the most fascinating thing E.V.E.R.

Pressure’s a funny thing – I react one of two ways, and I never know which of the two I’m going to get – a bit like Forrest Gump with his chocolates.  I sometimes rise to the challenge and deliver, when I feel the pressure and get in the groove…other times I recognise the pressure on an intellectual level, but it doesn’t motivate me to pull my finger out and crack on at all. Lets take dieting as an example.

Back in January, I knew I had two very special holidays booked – it’s the big five-oh (no!) this year, and I really wanted to be slimmed down and full of energy so I could enjoy them both to the max, so (lets have a pop quiz boys and girls) did I…

a) Take full advantage of the respective 7 and 9 months lead-in time, get cracking with the diet after Christmas and feel slowly more fabulous as the departure dates got closer, or

b) Do nothing at all.

Yep, see how well you know me already…option ‘b’ for bugger all. I did nothing.  As the departure date for holiday number one got closer, like counting in weeks rather than months it did occur to me that I may have missed the boat (well, the cruise ship, pardon the pun) as far as my bikini body was concerned. Short of losing a lot of weight quickly by chopping a limb off shortly before embarkation or having extreme liposuction my options were a bit limited.

Don’t get me wrong, my friend and I had a wonderful holiday, but I felt every sightseeing footstep like a hot blade through my dodgy knee, I had to wedge my super sized rear end into the beautiful dining room chairs every night till the arms left bruises on my thighs, and I had to decline a gentle stroll around the promenade deck after dinner each night since the sheer effort of lifting the last petit-four off the dessert plate just about sapped the dregs of my energy.

Don’t even get me started on the subject of breaking the bed, although that’s definitely a story for another day.

Holiday number two will be different…seven weeks and three days from now, five of my closest friends and I are jetting off for four days of birthday madness, and seeing as I’m in the sweet spot, and your company is keeping me busy and away from the food cupboard, I’m rather optimistic that whilst still fatter than the average bear I’ll be a couple of dress sizes smaller with reduced aches and pains. Happy days!

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I’ve been thinking.

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now, , ,

fat

It’s a Bank Holiday weekend and I’ve got nothing planned. I might do some exercise.

I’ll just put that out there and let the words settle a bit, experiment you know with how they sound as I read them back. Hmm. They say diet and exercise together is the way to do it, but I hesitate for no other reason than really, who wants to see a proper fatty exercising?  Well when I say for no other reason, that’s not strictly true…there’s at least one other reason – I’m so unfit I’m afraid it might actually kill me.  In recent times I’ve been inclined to go and have a lie down if I’ve felt some exercise coming on.

Remember my skinny knees..? I was so fit at that time. I don’t mean fit as in phwoaaar fit, I mean fit as in fit.  I went to the gym pretty much every day and exercised for at least an hour, and I had bags of energy all the time. I’ve got to be honest, I didn’t enjoy it, in fact I hated it – always have – but in my newly slim and determined to stay slim body I was almost evangelical about it. I’d be beavering away on the cross-trainer and all the time I’d be muttering through gritted teeth about the injustice of not being born with a metabolism that laughed in the face of calories and screamed ‘come and have a go if you think you’re ‘ard enough’ at whatever junk I threw down my neck. But in spite of that I was pretty disciplined, because I had both feet planted firmly in the sweet spot – I was in the zone. And not looking out of place in a room full of other sweaty slim people helped.

I didn’t exercise so much when I was losing the weight, it was something I started doing once I’d pretty much reached my goal weight.  There’s something about fatties exercising that just…well, it’s a car crash isn’t it? For everyone that looks at you and thinks ‘go on lass, good for you’ there’ll be ten others who can’t wait to tell someone about the munter in the gym who was giving it large on an exercise bike, which by the way was threatening to buckle under the strain.  ‘Hahahaha you should have seen the state of it’…and for me that’s like going back in time, standing in front of that class being compared to a pig.

Perhaps I’ll stay clear of the gym until I can blend in a bit more easily. I’ll settle for pushing myself to walk a bit further and a bit faster with my pooch, who’ll think all his Christmases have come at once, bless him. Never mind that my knee will give me hell…no pain, no gain eh?

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The diet, 11 days in.

Diet update, Freeform thoughts, In the here & now,

addictionIt’s going well. Bit light headed today but I suspect that’s because I’ve been busy, and didn’t have chance for any lunch. Other than the inside scrapings of a quiche and a couple of squares of dark chocolate I didn’t eat much yesterday either. I’m following a carb-free regime, and once the alchemy has happened and your body’s switched its fuel source to burn stored fat you don’t really feel hungry.

I’m not gonna lie, in the past, when (usually thin) people have said they forgot to eat lunch I’ve written them off as freaks, on the basis that forgetting to eat was so alien to me as a concept that they were clearly weird. Dizzy’s not good though, need to just watch that. I woke up this morning feeling thin. A bit bizarre when you consider I probably have around 140lbs of excess baggage but still, this morning before I got out of bed, I felt like Kate Moss.

When I did the all liquid diet, I loved the speed with which the weight fell off…my god once I got into my stride there was no stopping me. I stuck to it rigidly for 8 months and it really truly worked for me. There are side effects of course – how could there not be. Drinking 4 litres of water every day takes its toll, I’d never peed as much in my life. And going for a poo was a revelation, if Gillian McKeith had been presented with a bag of my poo she would have drawn the conclusion that I’d eaten Orville, it was practically luminous. Bizarre when you consider I was only drinking watery beige soup and eating the odd beige MDF diet bar.

But I’ve tried a couple of times since and I just can’t find my stride with it again, at all. Just the smell of a ketogenic soup or shake makes me want to hurl so I think that ship has sailed. Which is a shame, because I’d be far less likely to fall off the wagon if I could cut out food altogether and see results at warp speed.

I am a compulsive over-eater. A food addict if you will. I have a thyroid problem too which adds to the complexity but I estimate that my slow metabolic rate is responsible for maybe 10% of my weight problem. Hoovering up food like the world will be on short rations from tomorrow accounts for the rest.

Addiction is a funny thing. If you’re addicted to cigarettes, or drugs, or alcohol you have the option of going completely cold turkey and whilst of course I’m not suggesting it’s easy, it can be done. Sure, you’ll spend the rest of your life battling the urges, and the temptation, sweating it out and working hard to stay clean but it’s possible to go through life never again taking into your body the substance to which you’re addicted.

However. One cannot live without food, so on a daily basis a food junkie has to ‘use’. And for an addict, that’s a big problem 🙁

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Relocation

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now, , ,

Tonga-Island-Picture

I’ve often thought that maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Instead of dieting, perhaps I should just relocate to the South Pacific –  on the island of Tonga for example, to put it bluntly, fat women are where it’s at…if you’re fat, you’re in. And did you know, in Mauritania,  there’s even a ‘wife fattening farm’ – imagine that.  Rumour has it that stretch marks are a major turn-on for Mauritanian blokes…I must nip down to WH Smith and order the Mauritanian edition of FHM, just to have a look. The ultimate body shape in that neck of the woods (I shit you not) apparently comprises cascading stomach flab, overlapping thighs and a neck with ripples of fat. I mean come ON…it’s clearly my spiritual home.

In the same magazine article, which I found in Marie Claire (the irony wasn’t lost on me) they referenced a young woman who was using dodgy under-the-counter medication to increase her appetite because she was desperate to be bigger.  It seems that wherever in the world you live, your self-esteem takes a battering if your body shape doesn’t conform.

Not that I’m banging the ‘big is beautiful’ drum. To some people it may well be…my best male friend for example is particularly partial to a well built lady. He’d be more likely to fantasise about a hippo swinging on a grape over Miley Cyrus  on her wrecking ball, but I’m not in that space at all. I don’t especially want to be a size zero – given my years of yo-yo dieting I’d end up looking like a shar pei puppy if I took my clothes off.  But normal, average, medium sized…yes please.

So, where do I sit right now..? On the scale of thin – slender – slim – average – curvy – cuddly – large – extra large – fat knacker – sumo – mobility impaired – needs a crane to leave the house, I’m definitely a decent fat knacker with one foot in sumo. My knee hurts, all the time.  My feet ache, my back aches, and I can’t walk up a flight of stairs without being really out of breath. I can feel my backside following me when I walk and I’ve even got a spare tyre on my spare tyre. I’ve woken up more than once in a cold sweat, after a night terror where I’ve seen myself living out my days with my belly tucked into a pair of trackie pants, chins flapping in the breeze as I pootle around on a mobility scooter.

But I’m not going there. I’ve decided I’m going the other way.  And in the last 9 days, every step has been in the right direction. For now, I’m still in the game 🙂

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