Tag Archives: hungry

Living On Dust

In the here & now, ,

It’s all very well you know, this new way of spending my food budget but I’ve got to be honest, the days where there are no weekly points on offer are a bit bleak. I went to bed last night feeling like I hadn’t eaten for a week. Seriously, I could’ve gnawed my own arm off.

And it’s a bit of a double whammy, right? The way weight watchers allocates your points budget largely depends on what you weigh, so as you work your way down the scale, they knock the odd point off here or there. I get thirty three points to spend every day now I’ve lost a bunch of weight, but when I started it was well into the forties. And I’m here to tell you, thirty three points goes nowhere. And yet, I guarantee that there’ll be folk in the posse who are much nearer Skinny Town than I am whose eyes are out on stalks at the prospect of thirty three, because they’ll be on like twelve.

It’s weird isn’t it, it’s the only system I’ve ever know that rewards success by taking shit away. I suppose they have to, but given that I’m only halfway to Skinny Town I reckon by the time I get there I’m going to living on dust.

Having lived life as a grown-up without food boundaries for the last thirty odd years, getting my head around what a normal portion of food looks like continues to be a struggle for me every single day. Take yesterday for example. I bought a boxed salad for lunch, with ham, but I had to push it and buy a cooked chicken breast off the deli too, just to bulk it out a bit. Because, you know, a ham salad wouldn’t have been enough on it’s own. Of course it would, for a normal person. But to me it seemed stingy.

And when I cook dinner, I eat a mountain of vegetables. Which happen to be free of points, so that’s all well and good however I don’t suppose that whoever wrote the algorithm for deciding how many points are in stuff imagined for a second that anyone would ever sit down and eat a double head of broccoli and a full bag of sprouts alongside the main event when they decided to make all vegetables points-free. I can do that. Easily.

I’d probably do well to remember that although there are foods which are free of points, they’re not free of calories. And no matter how effective the points system is, if you take in more calories than you burn off, you’re knackered. Scoffing a full punnet of strawberries or a whole melon isn’t necessarily working to the spirit of what the points-free element of my food plan is all about, right? It’s taking the piss a bit, if I look myself in the eye and have a come to Jesus conversation.

I’m chasing a two pound loss this week, off the back of a sedentary week which nudged me a cock-hair in the wrong direction. So I can’t afford to take the piss.

Best stop then, dammit 🙂

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Persona Non Grata

In the here & now, ,

I was in text conversation with the God of Pain yesterday morning – he’s one step ahead of all of us you see, and he makes us book our sessions in advance. It scuppers the chance of any of us coming down with a case of can’t-be-arsed-itus, you know in that moment when you step in from work, tired and hungry after a long day and the prospect of pulling on your exercise pants and doing a 360 out the door again is just too grim?  Once you’ve booked your sessions for the week, the thought of having to explain to his nibs why you’re not now going doesn’t exactly make you feel warm and fuzzy inside and is best avoided…when you’ve committed, you pretty much have to follow through.

To be fair, I reckon that’s why I’m still going, ten months after I started…I need that kind of discipline. A big anonymous gym where nobody would even notice, much less give a shit if I didn’t turn up would play right into the hands of my Asshole voice…come on Dee, you’ve had a long day. Sit down, take a load off and have a hob-nob. Go tomorrow instead. We’ve all been there, right? I’m sure it’s not just me. However, there’s bugger all chance of that happening on his watch, and I’m more grateful for that than I can even tell you.

Anyway, as I was booking my session, I happened to mention that I was on day 79 of my food sobriety, and on Sunday I’m due to graduate from his 3 month clean eating programme. Not only that, but according to his scale, last weekend I was only 1lb over the lowest weight he’s ever logged next to my name. And of course that’s made me extra extra extra determined to get under that number by my next Kingdom of Pain weigh-in.

When I said as much to him, he pinged a text back and warned me not to starve myself, and I just stared at the phone in disbelief…I mean, come on, has he met me? I wouldn’t be capable of doing that if my fucking life depended on it.

Or, would I..? It’s an interesting question.

Does anyone ever set out to get to that place where the exhilaration of flying down the scale pushes the desire to eat off their radar altogether? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not likely to be teetering on the edge of anorexia anytime soon, but I wonder whether the folk who are ever intended to end up in a place where hunger becomes their best friend and the thought of food tips them over the edge.

As I laid in bed last night kicking the tyres of what I wanted to write about today, I remember feeling a bit of a thrill as I realised I was peckish…I’d had a decent supper when I got in from my class, but I’d gone to bed with some of my food budget left on the table and God of Pain’s words jumped up and bit me in the ass, you know? Don’t go starving yourself…

I’ve spent my whole life avoiding hunger pangs. God forbid one might sneak up and catch me unawares. I’ve rarely been more than three feet from an emergency snack, and whilst I appreciate hunger pangs don’t hurt exactly, I’ve always avoided them in the same way I’d avoid a dose of the clap. Hunger pangs are definitely persona non-grata in my world.

And yet. There I was, feeling my concave stomach – alright come on, I know I’m shaped like a buddha but cut me a bit of creative license here – embracing the hint of hunger like a kind of badge of honour. I could’ve gone back downstairs and had a crumpet, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to lay there enjoying the skinny experience and get jiggy with my hunger pang.

What’s that all about?

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Feed Me!

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now,

a-bit-hungry-I’m not saying I’m predictable, but most days somewhere around 11am you’ll hear me muttering at my desk about the fact that I’m starving. It’s a word so baked into the flippant fabric of first world language that it’s accepted for use in the ‘I’m a bit peckish and could definitely eat something’ situation but you know when I really think about it, I’m not sure there are many times in my life when I’ve even crossed the line from peckish to hungry.

My 11am declaration is usually more accurately interpreted as it’s at least two hours since I’ve chewed something so just in case there’s a hunger pang formulating somewhere, I’d better take action now in order to avert disaster. As I sit here in my kitchen typing this, thinking about my desk in the office at work I can even visualise my emergency stash – a box of teabags, a plastic box with crackers in it, some salad cream, some mayo, some Aromat, half a punnet of grapes and a tin of almonds. I’m not sure I could tell you from memory where my hole punch is, but if you needed a cracker quickly I could definitely deliver.

It’s almost like I’m scared to find myself in a situation where I don’t have ready access to food. Given that I work in an environment where two sandwich vans visit daily, there’s a fully stocked shop just around the corner, a vending machine down the corridor and a trading team upstairs who have a never ending stream of samples available, in the unlikely event that a hunger pang did manage to make it through, it wouldn’t exactly be the end of life as I know it.

Which begs the question, why am I so reluctant to allow myself to feel hungry? That’s surely the cue which most normal people look out for when they’re deciding whether to eat or not. And it’s not like we’re up against the clock as soon as a hunger pang strikes…you know, like you have thirty seconds to eat something or you’ll implode and the world will stop spinning. Hunger pangs aren’t painful, not unless we’re talking the kind of belly hunger that most of won’t ever experience.

I’m not sure that feeling hungry has ever been the number one reason why I eat. If I had to call out the number one reason I’d be hard pushed to decide between habit, and boredom. I think habit might have it by a nose…the first thing I think about when I get in from work for example, is what’s for supper. And often in the past if I’ve grazed my way through the afternoon I’ve probably not even been hungry at that point…but I do associate walking through the door with preparing and eating food.

So, prepare it, but leave it until I’m hungry then..? No, epic fail on that front too…if it’s there and ready to be eaten, I’ll eat it. Where food is there, whether I’m hungry or not, I’ll eat. Even now, when I’m in the sweet spot and my resolve to stay within budget is stronger than I can ever remember, I’ll eat. Those occasional catered lunches at work..? I’m still going in for the kill whether I’m hungry or not. It’s there, it’s got my name all over it, and I’m in there with my plate as though my life depends on it.

So…that’s head hunger rather than belly hunger, right…? I’m sensing work to do, in understanding the difference 🙂

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