Category Archives: In the here & now

Doing My Typical Thing

In the here & now, , ,

trainers

I found myself shopping on line last night for new trainers in anticipation of this new exercise-filled life I’m going to be living. That’s so typical of me, I mean at that point I hadn’t even spoken to the bloke, you know? I had no idea what kind of footwear I might need, because it’s a fitness studio not a gym, and in any event I’m hardly lacking in the trainers department, given that I bought a new pair back in January in honour of the hurt machine moving in.

Turns out that me and the hurt machine get on better when I’m barefoot so I don’t even use them for that. To be fair I have worn them a lot…mainly for dog walking. They’ve lost that just out of the box look, but they’re not exactly battered, in fact I would imagine that Nike designed them to withstand far more rigorous activity than they’ve ever seen on my feet.

I suspect my need to accessorise is driven by the fact that somewhere in my head lurks the conviction that if I look the part, I’ll be able to pull it off, in a sort of fake it till you make it kind of way. I’ve always been the same. I remember once in my later teenage years having the hots for a bloke who I knew was really into playing squash, so I tried to pretend I was too. I even bought a squash racquet so it could lean casually in the hallway when he popped round for a coffee.

My ruse worked, right up to the point where I ran out of excuses not to join him in a game, which unsurprisingly didn’t go well. He more or less stayed in the same spot on the squash court for a full hour whilst my chunky legs made a heroic effort to propel me around, chasing a ball I was never going to catch…by the end of the session I couldn’t even speak, in fact I was on the verge of needing an iron lung. It wasn’t the biggest surprise in the world when I never heard from him again. But despite the epic failure, throughout the nightmare I dripped Slazenger from head to toe.

I’m not quite sure what a fitness studio does if I’m honest..? I just know this bloke comes highly recommended as a trainer. Let’s not forget I’m a child of the eighties, so I’m seriously having to put the brakes on and stop myself running out to buy a headband and legwarmers which in my head is what everyone will be wearing. I’ve got my feet sorted out but I’m feeling slightly nervous that I’ll stick out like a sore thumb because I don’t have the right uniform.

Logic tells me it shouldn’t matter a monkey’s chuff what I’m wearing, as long as it covers the flesh and holds in a bit of the wobble. But then, if my life was remotely governed by logic I wouldn’t have gotten myself into this pickle in the first place, would I..?

So, I’m going for my assessment tonight, and tomorrow it starts. And you know how I’ve struggled with the thought of fitting everything in..? My weekend away with its enforced technology withdrawal demonstrated perfectly that it’s not all going to turn to ratshit if I don’t post every single day.

I’m going to force myself to cut back a bit and post four times a week, instead of daily…that’s going to feel very weird especially at first. But freeing up time to get serious about my fitness supports my longer term goal and I’ve got to be honest with myself… it’s the only way I can juggle all the things I need to do.

I’m thinking I’ll try and post on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Seems to make sense,  the blog is quieter over the weekend anyway. I hope that works for you guys.

You won’t all desert me, will you?

Promise..?

I can’t do this without ya 🙂

 

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So Go On, Ask Me..!

In the here & now, , ,

FUF

I can’t believe that just over a week ago I was skipping out of the office with a whole week’s worth of lovely things stretching out ahead of me and as of around 5.15am this morning when the alarm went off I came right back down to earth with a bump. I love my job, but I’ve got to be honest, I’ve loved pottering around at home even more. Sigh…I guess all good things have to come to an end.

Still, when I set off for the office this morning I was wearing a new top, and that’s always nice, right? I felt good, and even better still…go on, ask me what size it was..? Only a size twenty…I KNOW!! That’s a size sixteen to my friends over the pond I think, and I’m here to tell you I felt positively slinky as I got into the car, even with my one pound gain this week.

So that’s now four dress sizes lower than when I started. Let me hear you say YEAH! I seem to have been stuck in a size twenty two for ages, and I’ve kept on trying the next size down but you know what I mean when I say it fastened but it didn’t feel quite right..? Today, it did. Today, I was all over that bad boy. So the twenty is hard won and very satisfying, especially when people noticed, and commented…you don’t need me to tell you how wide my grin was every time someone did 🙂

It’s come just at the right time. I’m still a bit raw from being outsmarted by the Asshole voice before the weekend but there’s nothing quite like going down a dress size to give you a boost, right? I suspect my efforts this week will be turbo charged, and you know what, so they should be. I fully intend to make up lost ground, and this is the week that I’m going to pull my big girl pants on and join a gym.

I’m not looking forward to it, in fact I’m already wearing my not-impressed face at the thought of taking that first step. And all the steps that come next, as it goes. Even so, I’m doing it. A friend of mine has made a recommendation and I’m speaking to the guy tomorrow, but if for any reason it doesn’t pan out, I’ve already got a plan B…that’s how serious I am.

Tomorrow marks nine months since I started my diet. That’s a lot of skin in the game, you know? And it hasn’t all been perfect like it was in the early days. I spent a lot of time worrying that if I slipped and spoiled my perfect record it would all turn to shit but you know what, life’s not perfect. The life skill of being able to pick myself up again when things don’t go my way applies every bit as much to my journey to Skinny Town as it does to life in general. That’s what makes me a survivor in life, and that’s what’s going to get me over the Skinny Town county line.

If I pull my sensible head on for a minute, I can see it clear as day. The bumps in the road that I’ve encountered are giving me the opportunity to practise the things I need to be able to do easily if I’m going to make this stick. They’re not nice when they’re happening but without them, I’m missing an important bit of the learning. It’d be a bit like learning to drive without reverse parking being part of the test, right? I might get my license but if I ever needed to get out of a tight spot, I wouldn’t know how if I hadn’t learned that bit.

So I guess my wobbles left and right are serving a purpose, even if they don’t feel like it at the time. It’s good to know that when the fuck-up fairy visits she leaves a nugget of wisdom behind for me to find in the aftermath, and they all help to move me forward 🙂

 

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The World Didn’t End At Foxy Lodge

In the here & now, ,

cabin

So I’m safely home after a weekend of utter awesomeness, in fact if I were forced to pick, I think I’d have to say this has been one of my very favourite girly weekends ever, and we’ve been doing this a long time so there are a lot to choose from. I’m not sure I could put my finger on exactly why, except maybe because I thought this one might be hard and it turned out not to be at all…I worried for nothing.

Wednesday night, when I slipped on that dieting banana skin, it knocked the wind out of my sails a bit. Maybe the Asshole voice thought I was getting a bit cocky, you know? Anyway, whatever, I greeted Thursday feeling thoroughly pissed off but resigned to the fact that I’d have to be far stricter with my food budget over the weekend than I’d been anticipating.

I knocked that one right out of the park, I mean I’ve had one or two tastes of naughty but it would barely even qualify as a dabble, and my best estimate is that I’ve stayed entirely within points.

And get this, every single one of my friends turned up for the weekend complete with exercise gear in a full show of solidarity, and we’ve made a respectable dink in the nature trails around the lodge. If I tell you that under normal circumstances we never make it further than the hot tub with just an occasional foray up to the reception area to try and get a phone signal, or *ahem* the recycling area with all our empties you’ll understand how much of a departure from the norm that really is.

I was totally surrounded by support, and it made getting back on solid footing over the weekend totally effortless. I’m so lucky 🙂

And you know what else I realised..? I didn’t post for two days, and the world didn’t end. I feel slightly ridiculous for panicking about it so much. When I arrived there on Thursday it took me about twenty laps of the car park, on foot and waving my iPad in the air before I got enough signal to post the one I’d already teed up. The cabins are buried in woodland and there was no chance of getting enough signal to write, so I gave myself up to a world without technology and you know what, it was fine.

I missed talking to you guys of course, but I actually realised that if for whatever reason I can’t manage to write a post every single day it’s not going to make the wheels come off my diet. Who knew! That in itself is a massive pressure lifted off my shoulders, and we’ve already established that pressure doesn’t do me any favours, right?

Anyway, the bitch in the bathroom greeted me like an old friend when I got home earlier, and then delivered the news with a flourish that I’d put on a pound. Shit. Still, my mid-week wobble says I deserve it, so I’ve taken it on both of my chins, and it’s all good. It’ll come off this week, no doubt in my mind at all.

It’s been lovely having a week off work, and both my weekends away…I’m rested and raring to go. I’m ready to embrace normal again, and crack on with the business in hand. This week is the week I get serious with this bloody fitness malarkey…watch this space 🙂

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Autopsy Of A Binge

In the here & now, , , , ,

spring cleaning

When I’m not in the grip of a binge, I find it really hard to get my head around the concept that an Asshole voice inside my head has the ability to take over every thought, and for that brief moment in time completely rule the roost. I mean, I can talk about it, and even report it as fact but the truth is I’m detached when it’s not happening right now. Being in a position where I’m not the one calling the shots seems unlikely, from my current vantage point of control.

On an intellectual level I get it of course – in the same way that I understand that some people feel the need to drink their way into oblivion, and other people are driven to get high…what I can’t do, outside the moment is to call up how it feels as I lose my grip and tumble head first into a binge. I can only feel that in the moment, and I can’t comprehend it when I’m not feeling it.

Last night, it got me. Head on. I’ll tell you about it in a minute but before I do, I want to try and unpick why. I’d had a great sorting out kind of day. In some respects. What I didn’t do, was the walking I’d intended to do, nor did I make the call about joining a gym…I was too busy. I did have a chat with my boy last night as he was cooking dinner, about how I was thinking about not front-loading my blog posts for this weekend and having a couple of days off instead as I kicked back with my girls…he was horrified.

He knows how much this means to me in terms of accountability and support. He also understands that the creative outlet of writing is the anchor which has kept me in the sweet spot over the last nine months, you know? That, and the love that I get from you lot. He was worried that if I didn’t post, I’d go completely off the rails…he’s seen it, and lived through it too many times over the years. Not blogging, obviously, I’ve never done this before but if I’ve ever stepped away just for a second from whatever thing was working for me at the time, I’ve gone under the wheels and it’s pretty much been game over.

To be fair, I worry about that too…when I started this journey I said I would post every single day, and I have. One hundred and eighty thousand words so far, that’s like two whole books’ worth of words in a little less than nine months. I spend at least a couple of hours writing every day, and when I’m time poor that’s a big commitment. If I join a gym and have to find time to fit that in too, something’s going to have to give.

So that scares me anyway and his reaction reinforced my own worries you know? My boy is right…I need this outlet. I also need to join a gym and build up my stamina to honour the commitment I’ve made to do this trek because I’m not getting enough traction on my own. I have to do stuff with my mum, and I have to work a full time job and run a house…I’m a bit freaked out that I’m not going to be able to fit it all in. And after our conversation brought it all to the surface last night I watched the TV and chewed it all over in my mind.

Then I chewed a bunch of other stuff. For fuck’s sake. The extra weekly points that I’d so carefully saved for this coming weekend away…gone. The additional exercise points that I’d built up, also gone. Twenty points that I haven’t even earned yet have gone before they’ve even fucking arrived.

And in that food fug last night, which by the way was entirely sugar-related, the Asshole voice talked me into believing that I couldn’t over-flex my food budget at the weekend anyway since five of my closest friends were going to act like the chuffing diet police so I may as well get all my chocolate in whilst I had the chance, and live on dust until Sunday.

It seemed like a very plausible argument, right up until it didn’t. Then I cried, and washed the kitchen floor. I have no idea why, it wasn’t dirty and in any event my cleaning lady was coming today, but I think I just needed to scrub something, because I felt dirty.

On the up-side, talking about it has at least opened the window on why it happened. I’m not reacting well to the pressure I’m putting on myself to do it all. And I still don’t know how I’m going to pull it off if I’m honest, but in the cold light of day as I sit and survey the damage I’m fed up, but a lot less freaked out. I’m back in control. I’m okay. I’ve still got this.

So, I need to be more careful this weekend than I thought, right? We’re planning healthy food anyway, and I’ll have some fizz, but none of the edible goodies I was saving up for can feature in my weekend. And you know what, I’m okay with that…it is what it is. I’m just happy I’ve made it out of the other side and I still have my eye on the prize.

It’s all good, if a little too close for comfort 🙂

By the way, if the posts are a little sporadic over the next couple of days, bear with me…we are staying in a forest and based on past experience there’s next to no phone signal and no wi-fi!

 

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Weeding Out The Fat

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

struggle

So much for having a relaxing time of it whilst I’m off work this week…I’m skidding sideways into today’s post in a very last minute dot com kind of way because I got busy this morning having a bit of a sort out and I’ve only just nicely come up for air.

I have to hold my hands up and admit that having surveyed pretty much every fashion choice I have made over the last, I dunno maybe four or five years, I need locking up and the key needs to be thrown away. Immediately.

On the face of it, I had a clear out not that long ago, and it’s not that I’ve gone down another size since then or anything exciting like that…I just had a nagging feeling that I didn’t quite do it properly the first time. I sort of scratched the surface, but I knew if I looked there would be more stuff to go through and sure enough, today I not only did a second lap of the wardrobe but I went through all my drawers and the under-the-bed storage too.

I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count all the items I’ve unearthed where I’d bought  something without trying it on, in the hope that whatever I’d brought home would make me look nice, only to ball it up in disgust and shove it in the bottom of my wardrobe or the back of a drawer when it actually made me look like the back end of a bus. The thing is, what I really wanted to look was skinny. That’s what I mean when I said nice…I meant skinny. There’s no wonder nothing much lived up to my expectations.

I never try stuff on in the shop. I think my aversion to changing rooms stems right back to my teenage years where it was all the rage to have communal ones. They’d be filled with skinny girls, looking effortlessly chic in whatever they tried on, and I’d be the fat one in the corner avoiding eye contact with anyone whilst I tried to force my spare tyre into whatever I’d managed to find in size large. Please God let something fit…I just want to carry a bag that says Top Shop…

I vividly remember getting so hot and bothered that no matter how much I’d managed to tame my unruly mop of hair before hitting town with my friends, by the time I emerged from the fitting room it would be wild and curly, sitting on top of a chubby red face which would never really recover for the rest of the afternoon. It was traumatic.

I struggled to find my groove, you know? I found it really hard to carve out my style as a fat girl, and desperate as I was to follow fashion and copy the kind of looks I saw in Jackie and the other teenage mags, it was nigh-on impossible. Other than the asymmetric layering styles that I’m fairly fond of nowadays, I still think that very few people can design great clothes for fat bodies. Scaling up skinny clothes doesn’t work. And most designed-for-fat clothes tend to be created with my mother in mind.

As I see it, shopping as a fat girl is sort of a Hobson’s choice situation…it’s on that basis that I’m prepared to overlook some of the very questionable purchases I’ve made and then buried over the last few years. It wasn’t my fault m’lud. I wonder how many folk will get their garment of choice home from the charity shop when I’ve dropped this lot off in the hope that it will make them look nice, and then ball it up in disgust and shove it in a drawer…

I’ve got to say though, all in all it’s been a good day. I’m feeling really organised, I’ve got a fair number of auctions running on eBay and about ten massive bags for the charity shop. Best of all, I’ve uncovered some old friends, in fact I’m wearing a shirt right now that I’ve not been able to get into for at least three years, and that’s a good feeling 🙂

 

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