Category Archives: In the here & now

Two Days And Counting

In the here & now, ,

So I’m two days into my sugar divorce and I’m doing okay. I’ve only had one slip up and that was sort of an accident. Well I’m saying an accident, actually it was more of a reflex action. Someone was passing a tub of chocolate-covered hob nob marshmallows from table to table in a training course I was helping to run yesterday. I didn’t notice it heading towards me, but when the tub came at me from the left, I shoved one in my mouth and passed it to my right.

My arm responded to that tub of hob-nob chocolate in the same way me knee would’ve responded to a reflex hammer…there was bugger-all thought involved whatsoever on my part.

Yes, I know. I sat with that hob-nob marshmallow on my tongue and thought Shit! I’m not supposed to be eating this…

I didn’t feel it was appropriate to spit the damned thing out again, I mean that would make me a weirdo, right? So I made the most of my accidental snack, and sucked it until I only had one little oat left in the middle of my tongue. Which I appreciate still makes me a tiny bit weird, I mean who sucks a marshmallow..? The important thing is, I didn’t compound the situation by eating a bunch more of them and it only cost me thirty three calories.

I’d love to claim full credit for resisting the temptation to go back for more, but actually there were none left once everyone had pitched in. What do you mean, did I look? You fucking know I did. But, even with the taste of chocolate on my tongue I didn’t go find something else instead when I realised the tub was empty and I could have, because there was a shop and cafe dead opposite where we were working.

I don’t think that one indiscretion means I have to re-set the dial. I’ve got fifty six hours and one cock-up under my belt but I don’t feel any worse for having eaten it, and I’ve definitely got less sugar running through my veins than I did two days ago. Seriously, I’m as grouchy as it’s possible to be without actually ripping someone’s face off. Maybe I should be duct-taped to the bed with someone standing guard as I go cold turkey but so far, with the exception of that one incident it’s largely been uneventful. I’m coping, even if my turkey is still only lukewarm.

I did sack off the idea of going swimming last night, so I’m not entirely behaving like a skinny girl. The length swim last night was 9pm-10pm and by that time I’d been in pyjamas for three hours and I seriously couldn’t be arsed. My boy raised an eyebrow and commented that before the holiday I would’ve gone without thinking and he’s right, so there’s definitely still work to do on shifting the holiday mindset.

The fact that he noticed – and commented – has closed off my option of bumming for two days in a row though, so I’ll definitely be in the pool tonight… 🙂

Like it..? Tell your friends!
 

It’s Only Ninety Six Hours

In the here & now, ,

Right, *stamps foot* that’s enough now. I can’t do this any more and I’m ready to come out fighting.

I’ve been upbeat, downbeat, on the wagon then under the wheels all within the space of an hour, pretty much every hour right the way through the week. I had food sobriety in my grasp for the first couple of days, then I wobbled, then I lost it altogether, then I pulled it back, then I wobbled again.

I got weighed yesterday and I didn’t have a clue what to make of the number. It was down from last week, but then last week might have been falsely inflated after the holiday, so I don’t really know whether this week I’ve gone forwards or backwards. All I know is the week has been a hot mess and I can’t carry on like that. I’m turning into a fucking basket case.

I don’t even have the words to tell you how much I crave stability, and peace of mind. The first six months of this year were awesome. Cast your mind back, I mean I was really on my game, you know? Sure, steady steps, and steady progress. I want to walk that walk again and I know exactly what I need to do.

Sugar. Sugar, sugar, sugar. You’re right at the top of my shit list and I’m afraid we need to break up again. It’s really and truly the only way forward for me. If we stay friends, even a little bit I’m likely to carry on going tits up every five minutes and my sanity is at stake here…I’m done.

I couldn’t have picked a worse week to kick the white stuff but I don’t care, it’s now or never. And never isn’t an option.

I’ve got two, in fact probably three days this week where I am working away, and lunch will be catered. I’m also going away on Saturday with my bestie for a long weekend…my timing sucks, but when I look in the rear-view mirror and see how firm and sure the ground beneath my feet was in the non-sugar months it’s a no-brainer.

I’ve emerged after a fairly quiet weekend under the poorly blanket and my nose has finally stopped streaming. Tomorrow I’ll be back in the pool and my knee is also recovered enough now to start doing something a bit more strenuous so I need to get my shit together and make a plan.

Next week when I hop aboard HMS Shitbird, the number will have gone down. I’ll be recording the number on Saturday instead of Sunday due to being away for the weekend so I’ve only got six days to show you what I’m made of. I need to make every day count.

By Thursday the worst of the sugar cravings will have subsided. It’s only ninety six hours. I can do that. I’ll be asleep for at least twenty four of those bad boys, so really it’s only seventy two hours. Seventy two hours fighting for control, not letting the Asshole voice in, and making the right choices.

I’ve got this.

Repeat after me…I’ve got this.

ps…apologies if you’re having trouble getting into the blog or sharing your thoughts. Bloody thing was playing up all day yesterday and now the favourites list has disappeared. The tekkies are hopefully going to help unpick what’s up!

Like it..? Tell your friends!
 

On The Naughty Step With My Candy For Company

In the here & now, ,

Who the hell was I kidding when I thought it’d be easy getting back on the wagon? Myself, apparently. It’s never been easy, getting up from a fall but this time it’s proving harder than ever. It’s killing me, and I’d love to say I’m winning but a high-calorie lunch and at least a dozen refresher chew bars yesterday afternoon tells a different story.

Those things are just pure sugar…cheap and nasty candy that I don’t even particularly like, so what on earth was I thinking? It was there in the office one minute, in a carrier bag in the corner after someone brought it back from a training course, and then all of a sudden there was a little stockpile of it in my top drawer. My hand kept snaking its way in every five minutes for the rest of the afternoon and my jaws never stopped moving.

And I haven’t been swimming since Sunday either, although In my defence, I’ve been too full of this crappy head cold to make it to the pool. I still feel pretty grim, although I’m better than I was. My cold broke good and proper on Wednesday and all I’ve heard from the Asshole Voice since my nose started running is feed a cold…feed a cold…FEED A COLD!!!

Fine, if I was feeding it with the food of sick people, right? Chicken soup, or a bit of broth or rice pudding. Not cheap Halloween candy that nobody else wanted…whoever coined the phase sure as dammit didn’t intend for cheap candy to be the foodstuff that would ward off bugs and help me feel better. I was so wired by the time I’d done with the onslaught of sugar in my system that I went down like a sack of spuds when the sugar crash happened.

As luck would have it, I was home and laid back in my armchair by then, so I dozed for forty five minutes…for fuck’s sake, would you listen to me. I’m describing the life I used to lead and I’ve worked so fucking hard to step out of those shoes.

I don’t know about you, but it colours the way I think about myself when I’m wildly off the rails. Last week was different, I mean I could justify my food fuckery as a conscious choice. A normal thing. I’m on holiday therefore I choose to enjoy everything on offer and suspend diet-related activity until I go home. Lots of people do it, and this year I’ve chosen to be one of them. It’s okay, permission granted, go fill ya boots…I slept easy at night, and accepted the shitbird scale would have something to say about it when I re-joined the real world.

This week is different. Completely different. I took the Shitbird’s damning assessment of my time in paradise on the chin, squared my shoulders and got right back to it. Only I didn’t did I, not really. On the days where I’ve managed to stay within calories, my food choices have been dodgy to say the least. And then I go and eat a spur-of-the-moment calorie-laden lunch and dive off the high board into a bag of pure sugar for no good reason whatsoever other than it was there and I wanted it.

That makes me feel weak, out of control and worthless. In reality I’m only one of those things, but the Asshole voice pulls all three out of the bag because past experience tells him that a complete character assassination is a more effective way of keeping me under his influence.

I know it’ll turn the right way up again if I keep plugging away. In the meantime it’s all just a bit of an uphill slog.

One foot in front of the other, and repeat, right?  🙂

Like it..? Tell your friends!
 

D Is For Daydream

In the here & now, ,


I wish I had a reset button. It would be so much easier than trying to drag my head back into the right place by degrees. I’m kicking and screaming inside like a wayward toddler at the prospect of having to colour inside the lines again after a week or two off the leash and it doesn’t help that I feel as rough as toast, with a scratchy throat and a banging head. It’s like the Gods of Skinny have conspired to hand me an excuse that I can wheel out in case of emergency, you know? I can’t get back on the wagon yet, I’m poorly and we all know you should feed a cold and starve a fever…

Incidentally, I don’t have a cold and I don’t have a fever so technically, whatever bug I’ve picked up is diet neutral and feeling like death warmed up is therefore no excuse at all. Dammit. I need to get a grip and JFDI.

Isn’t it funny, how last week when I was playing fast and loose with whatever I could put in my mouth, my head was full of rash promises about what a paragon of virtue I was going to be as soon as my feet touched home soil. I was going to ace it, yessiree! Full steam ahead, no more messing. Nailed on, I mean guaranteed. With a slice of pizza in one hand and an ice-cream in the other, the prospect of behaving myself at some point in the future seemed incredibly straightforward, dare I even say simple..? It never is though, is it.

Since weigh-in on Sunday, despite this monumental inner tantrum I have stuck to my calorie budget, so that’s a good thing. I’ve eaten my exercise calories, which isn’t ideal but technically it’s allowed. I’m not sure that using all my food budget up by 3pm is the smartest way of budgeting but that’s what happened yesterday…I had to drink coffee for the rest of the day and go without dinner. It doesn’t break the rules per se, but I definitely think it falls under the heading of ‘muppet’. It’s not sustainable.

But I’m trying.

I’m trying to focus on cause and effect. I’m trying to re-embrace the diet and see skinny town in my future instead of resenting the fact that I can’t have what I want. Which, for the avoidance of doubt is ten thousand calories a day, no effort whatsoever on my part and a size twelve arse. It’s just not going to happen. I need to file that thought under D for daydream, and it can take its rightful place alongside my hopes of winning the Euro-millions, or getting carried off and ravished by Hugh Jackman ’till my eyes pop out.

*Sighs*….

I know somewhere in the core of me there’s a well of determination, tenacity and grit. I’m just having trouble getting at it, that’s all. Sooner or later, providing I keep sending the bucket down I’ll hit the right spot and find a way to crack on without all this drama. Bear with me folks…I’ll get there 🙂

 

Like it..? Tell your friends!
 

This Body Will Self Destruct In Three…Two…One…

In the here & now, , ,

Fuck.

Fuckety Fuck.

Well that didn’t quite go as planned, did it? Don’t get me wrong, we’ve had a ball, in fact it’s probably one of my favourite cruise holidays ever. I’m more relaxed than I can remember being for a very long time, and that’s exactly what I needed . The problem is I appear to have returned home with an extra arse, and that definitely wasn’t part of the plan.

In the spirit of full disclosure, the week before I went away did not go well at all. I was on the diet, off the diet, desperately trying to keep my feet planted in that middle ground between between feast and famine, but failing miserably. The Asshole voice was the one I listened to most of the time, which is unfortunate given that he spent all week running his mouth about how I should allow myself to relax, and empty my mind of everything except having a good time. Do as I please, and start again when I got back…you know the score.

The thing is, it’s the message I wanted to hear. So my ears were on full alert and assisted in filtering out any kind of opposing argument. Without even putting up a fight, I leaped headlong into food fuckery, where I remained until yesterday. I became really good at swallowing down the voice of reason alongside whatever I happened to be shovelling into my gob at the time, and I conspired with myself to make sure there was no audible voice to prick my conscience.

I meant it when I said I’d start each day with a light breakfast. That was absolutely the plan. Execution of said plan however…well, that’s where it all went to shit. The day after we sailed, I justified my full English breakfast on the basis that it was Sunday. On Monday I justified it by promising myself I’d call it brunch and eat nothing else until dinner that night…yeh, well it doesn’t take a fucking rocket scientist to predict how that worked out, right? I was back in that buffet line as soon as it opened for the business of lunch.

And so the week went on. Matters weren’t helped by the presence of the gin bar on board the ship, which in no small measure contributed to the devil-may-care-but-I-don’t attitude which wormed it’s way into my psyche and formed the blueprint of our holiday.

I’m not a drinker, in fact I’ve barely had a drink since my last holiday in June. There’s been one prosecco-filled Saturday evening I think since then, but in the last week as we’ve kicked back and relaxed on the balcony I’ve sunk a bottle of rhubarb & ginger gin liqueur and a bottle of Baileys.

So. Yesterday. As I walked the green mile to the Shitbird Scale I could hear that bloke from the X-Factor and his overly dramatic music playing on a loop in my head. IT’S TIME. TO FACE. THE MUSIC…which brings me right back to where I started, at fuckety fucking fuck.

Eating like my life depended on it has been an exhilarating blessed relief from the daily grind of counting, measuring, weighing, worrying about what goes in my mouth. I wish I could live like that all the time, you know? In my head, that’s what paradise looks like. Maybe it’s one of the reasons I’ve enjoyed the week so much, right? And I can’t moan about the fact that I’ve put weight on. With every slug of Baileys and every petit-four with coffee after a six-course dinner, or every groaning buffet plate or full breakfast I threw open the door and ushered pound after pound into my pants. I’m not blaming the gin, or the Baileys or even the Asshole voice…me, I did it. And it was paradise, whilst it lasted.

It just can’t last any longer.

Yesterday wasn’t paradise, but it was my life and I was happy to slip back into it. I got up, got weighed, recorded it and went for a swim. I weighed, measured and counted. I shopped for the kind of food I eat, walked past the stuff I don’t eat and went about living the life I choose for the long term. Once I’ve dealt with the aftermath of living in paradise for a week or two, I’ll be grand.

It’s good to be home…how’ve y’all been? 🙂

 

 

Like it..? Tell your friends!