Category Archives: In the here & now

Switching To Autopilot

In the here & now,

So life’s all still a bit shit. I’d love to deliver you a positive and motivational Monday morning blog post, but the truth is I’m up one minute and down the next, and I haven’t really been overly focused on what’s going in my mouth. I’m desperately worried about my mum, who is home but still very unwell, so most of my energy has been directed towards her and her needs…assessments, risk assessments, care plans…you name it, I’ve been all over it and I’m doing everything I can to make sure she has enough support around her to give her a fighting chance of getting well.

We couldn’t even go visit her this weekend, because on top of everything else there’s a sickness bug doing the rounds in her residential home, so they’re locked down in quarantine, which hasn’t helped.

I left it until the last possible minute yesterday to step aboard HMS Shitbird. I was scared of what the damned thing was going to tell me so I did the whole ostrich thing and buried my head in the sand. I have a routine on a Sunday morning, you know? Get up, pee, weigh. Not yesterday. I got up, had a pee, ignored the Shitbird Scale and went to make coffee. Then I went for a swim without giving it a second thought.

I came home, did some shopping…walked past it twice as I was dotting washing around the house to dry, visited the bathroom several times through the course of the day and still refused to make eye contact. When I finally climbed the stairs to bed last night I couldn’t avoid it any longer…after all, I promised I would post my weight every week and it’s a cornerstone of my accountability. I was expecting a beasting to be honest, so just one quarter pound on was a relief.

I’m not even sure why I was expecting it to be so bad. I haven’t been really bad. I mean, I’ve had bad moments, for example on Saturday evening I won a big bag of chocolate orange segments in a pig-racing competition (not real pigs!) and let’s just say they didn’t go unappreciated. But, I opened them for everyone to enjoy whilst we were there, which was a much safer bet than me taking them home, right? I had my fair share but I didn’t have them all, in the chair on my own after I got home when nobody could see. And I enjoyed every last one of the ones I ate, along side my pie and pea supper.

I refused to feel guilty…it was just one night, and I needed to blow off steam with a bunch of friends. The week overall had been one big fucking trauma, so I wasn’t holding out hope that my conversation with the scale would buck the trend. But actually, if I really think about it, my eating wasn’t so bad.

I’d sort of kept a watching brief on what went in my mouth, even if it didn’t always make it into the food diary on MyFitnessPal. I made it to the pool five days out of seven. I wasn’t perfect but I kept control, after a fashion. All things considered, I’m claiming it as a victory. It’s fairly heartening to realise that I flicked the controls to autopilot because there was so much else going on, and the Asshole between my ears didn’t screw things up completely.

I’m not sure what this week will bring. I’m hoping mum will really turn the corner and I’ll get a decent night’s sleep without waking up every hour and wondering if she’s okay. I’m supposed to be going on holiday the weekend after next and I’d love to think she’ll be well enough by then for me to go ahead with the trip. It’s been a rough few months and I’m trying hard not to feel bad about saying I’m ready for the break, but I can’t remember the last time I needed one quite so much.

We’ll see. In the meantime, I graduated Sunday with a decent chunk of calories still on the table, so I’ve started the brand new shiny week as I mean to go on. I want to be back in the sixteen stones something next week…watch this space  🙂

Like it..? Tell your friends!
 

I Thought It Was You!

In the here & now, ,

You know, there’s a lot to be said for the power of positive thoughts and prayers.  Against all the odds, my mum has rallied. It’s unbelievable. Honestly, I didn’t think this was going to end well, but I’m now thinking that maybe her disorientation had a lot to do with the fact that she just hated being in hospital. She was utterly miserable, but couldn’t articulate the reason why.

The infection in her chest is much better, and ever since she pulled all the tubes out of her hand, her medication has been given orally so yesterday morning I lobbied the doctors to let her out. I knew she’d be much more comfortable back at home, and they agreed, so we broke her out of there and brought her back to the residential care home where she lives.

She’s like a different woman, I mean you wouldn’t believe the difference. As soon as I got her dressed and she realised she was going home, she perked up. She’s a long way from being well, but the crisis is over I think and there’s a bit of blue sky peeping through the clouds.

And thank you all, for your touching messages of support for both Mum and me. They really helped. Well, they helped me at least. Mum remains completely oblivious to the fact that she’s had the thoughts and prayers of an international posse behind her…I did once try and explain the concept of my blog, but it was a bit beyond her.

As for my diet, you’ll be relieved to hear that I’ve totally held it together for the last three days. I’ve found an hour to swim each day even amongst all the crap, and whilst I haven’t exactly delivered a textbook performance in terms of food choices, I have stayed within my food budget. I’m not going to get straight A’s for this week, but I certainly won’t have SEE ME scrawled in red pen at the bottom of my copy book. I did okay, all things considered. I pulled it back.

Although I might have bought a small handbag to cheer myself up instead of medicating with food…just sayin’ 🙂 (*innocent face*)

Yesterday morning, as I walked onto the hospital ward, the ward clerk pulled me to one side, and said Dee! I thought it was you! Don’t you remember, you used to live next door to my mum and dad! And of course, as soon as she made herself known to me I remembered who she was. We had a good catch up but all the time we were chatting, I was digging around the scraps of my memory to try and recall how big my arse had been last time she saw me.

Because it makes a difference, right? I mean, I know it doesn’t, but it does, really. If I bump into someone I’ve not seen for ages and I know I’m fatter than they remember, its excruciating. If I’m skinnier, well it’s the best feeling ever. I’ve been known to abandon a full shopping cart and slope off out of the supermarket when I clocked someone down the aisles who’d remember me last as a skinny girl. It’s too embarrassing.

Isn’t it stupid, that seeing an old friend and catching up on each other’s big life events can be overshadowed by thoughts about body image. Wouldn’t you think by now I’d be old enough to know better? She was pleased to see me, she sought me out and came to say hello, and she wasn’t remotely interested in the size of my arse either then or now. And yet, it was all I could think about when we were chatting.

Work in progress, right?

 

Like it..? Tell your friends!
 

No Sausage Rolls Welcome Here

In the here & now, ,

In the last hour of yesterday, when I was kicking back and relaxing in my armchair, glued to the final part of a TV drama I’ve been looking forward to since last week’s episode, I didn’t eat anything, so I’ve officially declared it as a victory. It’s the first time in four days where I ended the day without incident.

It wasn’t a bad dieting day all things considered…I ate a sensible breakfast, a questionable mid-morning snack from the sandwich van, followed by a sensible lunch, a dodgy afternoon snack from the ice-cream van and very sensible light supper followed by an hour’s swim after I got back from the hospital. I tried, you know? And more importantly, I counted.

I didn’t want to. I mean, I wanted to want to, almost as much as I wanted not to have to but in the end I just bloody behaved myself and sulked about it like a petulant child. But you know what, as I was drafting some words for this blog post, for the first time since the weekend I felt like I could look myself in the eye and report that on the dieting front at least, my day had been okay. Even though it’d been a shit day in every other respect.

Mum’s poorly. I got quite choked at the hospital yesterday…I was telling her who was coming for a visit today, and she didn’t recognise the name of my best friend in the whole world, even though for the last thirty odd years she’s affectionately referred to her as daughter number two. That was a first. The doctors can’t tell me if this sudden mental decline is due to the infection, or whether the last pieces of mum are slipping away from me. I cried like a baby on the way home.

In between all that she still made me laugh. For some reason, she’d pulled the cannula out of the back of her hand, twice, and when I asked her why, she put on her very best innocent face and pointed at the old lady in the opposite bed… it wasn’t me, it was her, she did it. We both got a fit of the giggles when I caught her eye and she knew she’d been rumbled. It was the one bright spot in what was otherwise a difficult visit.

So let’s see what today brings. Between you and me, I’m hoping it doesn’t bring anything resembling a sausage roll. I’m working from home today and there’s only wholesome food in the house, plus neither the sandwich van or the ice-cream van will be calling to tempt me, so I’m in with a fighting chance.

I’m not expecting miracles…I just want to keep the wheels on, that’s all.

Like it..? Tell your friends!
 

Running Out Of Noughts

In the here & now, ,

Well, I first of all have to say thank you to everyone who took the time to write to me after Friday’s post. As the day went on, my shoulders got squarer, and I definitely felt less guilty about the three bowls of pasta consumed by that lady which, according to y’all, were not my fault. You might remember a blog post back in the early days called The Sorry See-Saw. I was weighing down the heavy end again and watching all the sorry roll towards me when it really wasn’t my fault, but you lot are definitely my voice of reason.

I hope she doesn’t check out my Shitbird page this week, that’s all I can say. She’ll be apoplectic and probably chucking stuff at the screen if she does, because last week wasn’t pretty and of course it’s reflected in the number. I’d about got myself back in the zone by the end of the week but it’s all gone to shit again over the weekend.

I got a call in the early hours of Saturday morning to say mum was on her way to hospital, and I mean it was the full blue-flashing-lights job. She’s had a nasty chest infection over the last week which has seen her feeling a bit grim, but she took another tumble on Friday evening which shook her up and she was struggling to breathe. I shot out of bed as soon as I got the call, pulled my pants on – backwards as it turns out – and almost beat the ambulance to the ER.

We were there all night. She got admitted, and has been hooked up to oxygen and I.V. antibiotics ever since. She’s responding quite well, and thankfully the CAT scan ruled out anything sinister as a reason for yet another fall but they diagnosed pneumonia, and we all know how that can turn out when it grabs a hold of a frail octogenarian whose tank is already running on empty. She’s had a really crap few months.

When I finally headed home on Saturday after mum was settled and sleeping, the need to eat a mountain of crap was overwhelming. I drove home via the supermarket and all I could think about was going home to bed with a box of double caramel Magnums. The Asshole voice was screaming at me that things were too serious for just one box so I bought two and I ate the whole fucking lot in one sitting.

I headed back to the hospital later on, sat and held mum’s hand for a while then went and cleared my head with a swim before ordering Chinese food and eating till I almost popped.

Yesterday was supposed to be better, only it wasn’t. We spent time at the hospital with mum, and she seemed a little bit better, but she’s so tiny and frail in the midst of this big nosy ward. She’s very hard of hearing, and it’s a strange environment with no familiar faces so she’s scared and a bit confused and it’s heartbreaking leaving her there, but we’re not allowed to stay. Turning straight to my drug of choice seemed like the only way to get through the rest of the day and I pretty much ran out of noughts on the calculator when I tried to tot up the number of calories I’d consumed by the time I stopped eating. Shit.

Sundays are nearly always good days because they’re my ground zero, you know? The start of a new week and an opportunity to start a clean untainted sheet. Well, this week’s sheet already looks like the dog threw up on it, and it’s only minutes into Monday.

I’m going to try and reset again…it’s all I can do. My focus has to be on my mum, with a little bit left over for me. I’m going to try and find an hour somewhere in this day to take solace in the pool instead of the food cupboard. I just keep reminding myself that this too shall pass.

 

Like it..? Tell your friends!
 

The Wrong Kind Of Tasty

In the here & now, ,

If I were to try and define my dieting week in a few simple words, I would probably boil it down to two buffets, two working dinners, four lots of calorie carnage and a handful of steps in the wrong direction. But strangely, no recriminations. Well, not from me anyway. I wish I’d held the line but I didn’t. I tripped up, but now I’ve dusted myself off and hopefully my three-day dalliance with the fuck up fairy will be netted out by the days where I was able to look myself in the eye and know I’d turned in a textbook performance.

I did get a telling off though, from a lady who reads the blog who is frustrated at my lack of progress and is also holding me responsible for the fact that she’s eaten three big bowls of pasta this week.

It rattled me a bit, I’ve got to be honest. I mean, that’s my biggest fear, you know? I love the fact that you guys are walking every step along this path with me, and I draw so much strength from your company and your encouragement, and your wise words when the going gets tough. Equally, I feel honoured that you allow me to share your journey too. But I’ve always worried that I might be setting a bad example when I face-plant into the wrong kind of tasty and then tell you all about it.

I’ve always justified it in my own mind by telling myself that you all know I write the blog to keep myself accountable, and I’ve never pretended to have all the answers. To be fair, any one of you could probably hold this blog aloft as a shining example of how not to lose weight, because a lot of the time I’m very successful at not losing a fucking ounce.

I didn’t approve her comment, so you won’t see it in the thought threads…it had a tone to it that I didn’t much like, so I filed it in the shit tray. In any event I suspect you lot would have lynched her, and none of us need that kind of drama, right? These are friendly pages. But I think what she was trying to say was that the way I write things down makes her think that it’s okay to cheat on her diet too, because I seem to get away with it and I should take some responsibility and try harder so she can feel inspired and do better too.

She’s probably right.

My problem is, I’ve spent a lifetime not being honest with myself about the reason I’m fat. I’ve shied away from being accountable, and I’ve blamed the size of my arse on everyone and everything except my fucked-up relationship with food. Being honest this time, and hiding behind nothing at all is the only reason I’m still here.

So lady, I’m genuinely sorry if you’re not getting what you need in these pages. I suspect you’re in the wrong blog. Maybe you could try and find one with pictures of smooth-limbed skinny string beans sipping cucumber water who are itching to tell you all the reasons why they’re so fucking perfect.

I’m not there yet, and it might take a while 🙂

Like it..? Tell your friends!