Tag Archives: reboot

Something Of An Epiphany

In the here & now, , ,

I can’t go on like I have been, right? I know, and you all know that something had to change. I’d lost it. That precious terra firma in the sweet spot that I was so attached to all of a sudden felt like shifting sand under my feet. I was struggling to even stand up straight, never mind pushing ahead with my plans to get skinny. And I’ve been battling with myself every day to the point where I’m just pissed off with it all.

That’s not right, is it? I mean, I’m used to a bit of internal dialogue with the Asshole voice, after all both of us have co-habited inside my head for years. But there have been long periods of time over the course of this journey where I’ve been properly in control, with just an occasional spat. I saw a steady weight loss and I was broadly okay because I can do it when my head falls in line with the rhythm of losing weight.

Towards the end of last year after I came home from the trek I lost the plot completely, and had a wild food-fest over the run up to Christmas. I pulled it back in January and this year was going pretty well, right up until August when I lost my God mum. Since then it’s been rocky to say the least. But I realised something over the weekend.

Somehow, all the shit I’ve waded through this year has tilted my thinking, and my focus has shifted away from all the possibilities of a skinny life and become fixated on the wrong thing. I’ve been spending way too much time feeling resentful about all the things I can’t have instead of feeling excited about what’s within touching distance. There’s no fucking wonder I’m struggling is there? I’m just one big ball of resentment and the more my head says you can’t have [whatever it is], the more I dig my heels in and cheat my way to having it anyway.

That’s how come I’ve managed to welcome thirty or so pounds back into my pants.

What I should be doing is focusing my energy on achieving my goals, which haven’t changed. I want that skinny life, filled with all those lovely clothes and just the one chin. I want my square knees back, and an arse that doesn’t feel like a tsunami going off in my pants whenever I take a step. Thinking about the possibilities of that life is what glued my feet to the sweet spot in the early days, but I’ve lost my way of late.

I’ve also lost sight of how me being positive and believing I can do it can help and inspire the people around me to do it too. My friend Nic is a case in point…if you follow her Shitbird page you’ll see she’s been ping-ponging all over the place just like I have. We sat and discussed it on Saturday over a coffee. And a dirty great cream scone. We didn’t have our eyes on the delights of a skinny life, we were too distracted by the contents of the cake cabinet. The thing is, we can inspire each other to great things one minute, and willingly, gleefully dive headlong into food fuckery the next.

Well, no more. We made a pact, even as we were wiping the crumbs from our respective chops…I promised not to lead her astray any more and she did the same. Yesterday was day one reboot for both of us and as we checked in with each other last night, it was holding. She’s relying on me, and I’m relying on her. It’s a big responsibility, right? If I don’t cheat, she can’t either. And vice versa. It’s a full on pinky promise.

That, combined with my shift of focus away from all the things I can’t have and back to the size of the prize was something of an epiphany…it’s a conscious step and let’s hope it’s the game-changer we both need.

Who else is in?

 

 

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Walking On Quicksand

In the here & now, ,

You know when I was a little girl, I couldn’t imagine what quicksand was all about. Clear as anything, I remember the day my mum told me about it and I was fascinated by the concept that the ground beneath your feet could suck you down and swallow you whole. I had nightmares about it for weeks afterwards and I’m not kidding when I say it was years after that conversation before I set foot on a beach again, I mean there was no point in taking chances, right? As far as I was concerned, fat girls would sink quicker.

I don’t know for sure, but I imagine this is what it feels like, to walk on quicksand. With every step forward, it seems like I’m getting sucked further and further away from the next step forward after that. Wednesday was my day one, and it was going okay until I had a little wobble over a catered lunch. I pulled it back in the nick of time but dwelled on my semi-okay lunch all afternoon.

It turned out to be a really long day. I’d done no planning whatsoever, on account of getting back from my weekend away too late the day before. I figured I’d just wing it in a healthy way. Because I’m good at doing that…ah. That’s right, my bad…I’m not good at doing that. I knew it was one of those. Who the fuck am I kidding?

When I walked through the door after twelve hours and a long commute, off the back of a night with disturbed sleep listening for robbers, my resolve cracked into a million pieces and I fell headlong into the wrong kind of supper. You don’t need the detail, but it was a definite screw-up. I’d also missed my exercise class after getting stuck in traffic. I was tired and I was still freaking out about bad men in my back yard so I didn’t go swim either. In the space of an hour I pissed off the God of Pain, irked my boy and ate my bodyweight in crap.

However, I got up yesterday and had another stab at it. Even though I was tired and grumpy after yet another disturbed night, where between the hours of one and five sleep had eluded me in favour of having ears on high alert whilst Charlie-dog snored quietly right next to me. I ignored all that and threw myself into the business of day one. And last night when I got in I ate a healthy supper. Go me, right?

Wrong. I’d actually used up all my calories by mid-afternoon so technically no matter how healthy my supper was, I shouldn’t have been eating supper at all.

I’m acutely aware that I’m bouncing around all over the fucking place. But I’m trying to be forgiving of myself. I’ve had a massive shock and my defences are low on account of all this broken sleep. There’s no question that at the moment, my Asshole voice is ruling the roost.

I do have a plan. A friend of mine is coming to sort out my CCTV today, and install security lighting, service my burglar alarm system and fit additional locks to the back door. That will help me sleep more soundly in my bed. I’ve not wanted to leave the house un-guarded this week but I think all the additional security will encourage me to stop acting like a fucking drama queen. And stop eating the wrong kind of supper.

It’s been a funny old week. But today is day one, right? Let’s hope this one sticks…I’d love to meet day two tomorrow 🙂

 

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The Terrible Two’s!

In the here & now, , ,

I think I might have just realised what’s going on with my head and its refusal to play nicely. Think about it folks, it’s happened…I’ve reached the terrible two’s.

Two years ago to this very day, I’d just signed up with my web host and was trying to figure out what buttons I needed to push to make my words appear on a web page somewhere. As things worked out, no words made it anywhere that day because I just couldn’t fathom how it all worked. But I was excited, and I stuck with it because bizarrely – out of the blue and never having done anything like this before – I just knew that I needed to write.

My first blog post materialised the next day, and they’ve come on a regular basis ever since. Two years in, I get really choked when I think about how you lovely lot have stuck to my side like glue and what’s more you’ve managed to wade your way through just about three hundred thousand words. I can’t quite believe it.

This also means that I’m two years and five days into my diet. And that explains a lot, right? I’m officially a dieting toddler, doing toddler type things…pushing boundaries, acting out and generally ignoring all reasonable requests in the interests of touching hot things which are lying in wait to burn my fingers, not to mention working out how to climb over the safety gate. Yeah well I’ve well and truly figured that one out haven’t I, in fact I’ve turned into a regular fucking Houdini .

All joking aside, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting over the weekend. Mainly yesterday, which I spent in my own company. I had lunch with a bunch of friends on Saturday, who’d rescued me from another day in front of the TV when they realised that cabin fever was in danger of actually killing me. I can’t even tell you how awesome it was to leave the house. We went to a local garden centre for a bite to eat and I smacked headlong into my own rebellion, again, by dodging the healthier options in favour of a hot steak sandwich with fat chips and coleslaw. I know.

And a Florentine. Two florentines in fact, because I ate one in the cafe and took one home in a doggy bag for my boy. Now, if I look myself straight in the eye, I’m forced to admit that the duplicate florentine was never going to make it as far as the handover. If he’d been home when I got in there’s a slim chance he might have ended up with it, but only because he’d have likely rugby-tackled it out of my hands. He wasn’t there to take on the fight, and in the end it was out of the bag with indecent haste and eaten before I’d even put the latch on the door.

Yesterday also started badly. I had a less than inspiring conversation with the Shitbird Scale, and yes I know a pound off is a pound off, but I’d hoped that the four pounds on last week had been all bandage and now the big bandage is off it obviously wasn’t. So I went downstairs and ate leftover Shepherds Pie. For breakfast.

And then I cried. A proper, ugly cry because really what the actual fuck was I doing?

I’m still trying to pull all my thoughts and reflections from yesterday into a bunch of words that make sense. I need to let them cook for a bit longer and besides, it’s our birthday today so I’m not going to get all deep on your ass. It’ll come when it’s ready.

It’s a proper milestone today. We are two years a blog, and two years a tight-knit community who support the living daylights out of each other, even when one of us is acting like a complete brat.

*Coughs, and tries to look innocent.

I can’t begin to arrange enough words in anywhere near the right order to tell you how much your support means to me, and how you guys are the reason that I haven’t given up. You’re the reason why, two years in, I’m still here and I’m still trying. And today more than ever, out of respect for all the sheer bloody effort that’s gone into this journey over the last seven hundred and thirty days, I’ve rebooted my head, again.

Day one, take…whatever, I’ve lost count. It doesn’t matter. Day one is all that matters 🙂

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