Starts & Stumbles

It’s been a while since my last blog entry here, and I’ll be honest and tell you it’s because I temporarily fell off the wagon.  Not for the whole time.  For some of the time I was clinging to it by my fingernails while it sped down the street with the driver trying to shake me free!

 

It’s never easy sticking to a change in diet, especially when it’s such a radical change.  I’ve come to realise that hiccups, stumbling blocks and dead ends are natural, but what makes me successful in the long run is how I deal with them.  There was a time I would’ve just given up for the whole day or weekend even if I’d only had a couple of little squares of chocolate, because I’d broken my healthy eating regime so I may as well go the whole hog and just eat what I wanted for the rest of the day.  The problem with that was trying to get back onto that healthy regime, because what I’ve also realised is that as long as I can get through the first three or four weeks, the rest is much easier.  Going back to the beginning because of an epic leap from the wagon was absolutely no fun!

 

I’ve spent the last year kicking myself repeatedly for re-gaining some of the weight I lost.  I think back to my lowest weight in my adult life and it was 3 stones ago.  I’ve sent many pieces of clothing to charity shops in the last six months, all because I can’t fit into them anymore and that nagging reminder was making me more and more frustrated and disappointed with myself.  So I decided I needed to start fresh, and consequently most of those clothes disappeared.

 

I recently commented to someone that it’s not possible to move forward until you stop obsessing over the past, and in that moment I realised I wasn’t just talking about him.  I, and probably most of us, spend too much time thinking about what was, what could’ve been ‘if only’, what should’ve been, when that’s the most destructive thing I can do.  So I’ve been retraining myself to look forward.  On the spreadsheets, graphs and apps I’ve used over the past few years I’ve deleted my old records because seeing them doesn’t help me.  I don’t need to look at a graph with the line that’s going back up because of the weight I’ve gained, I need to start a new one with a baseline and weekly updates from now (well, two weeks ago).

 

I have my focus back.  I’m motivated to get my BMI below 30 by the end of the year (but if I can do it by November I’ll be blimmin ecstatic!).  I have plans for my future and I’m not willing to negotiate.  I lose this weight and get fit, and that’s it; no ifs or buts, just get on with it, because the future I have as my goal is much more important than eating chocolate and crisps in front of the TV.  Unless I’m watching Benedict Cumberbatch with my wireless headphones nice and loud, then a square or two of fantastic quality chocolate takes the experience to a whole new level and should be regarded as a marvellous treat ;)

 

So my weight update:

 

Since January I’ve lost 10.8lbs, of which 5.8lbs was in the last 10 days

 

I’m back!

 

Control? Oh, knickers!

This month has been a challenge.  Three years ago people called me Superwoman because of the focus and drive I had, now I suspect it’s at least a little comforting for those same people to know I really am human.

 

I could use all the excuses in the world for why I intermittently jumped off my food wagon this month.  I could tell you that I’m stressed from organising my second house move in 15 months, or that I’ve been a bit down, that my back pain has been a bitch, that I haven’t been sleeping properly, or that two of my nieces stayed one weekend and I was off work the whole of that week so it was easier to just have a bit of a break.  I could list even more things than that, but what would be the point?  I know they’re all just excuses and so do you.

 

I simply need to re-learn how to be focussed and motivated to the point where I’m in control.  And that right there is the key; control.

 

For most of my adult life I’ve known that I don’t like losing control.  It’s why I rarely drink enough alcohol to get drunk.  Pleasantly tipsy is my limit because I can still retain some control.  I’d rather drive than be a passenger.  I (finally) know that if I have just one cigarette I’ll return to my 20 a day habit, and that realisation is why I’ve now been an ex-smoker for 8 years.  I can’t even have the smallest of drags on someone else’s cigarette (but sometimes I do still follow someone else’s trail of smoke down the street!).  I even caused myself more stress recently by not just accepting the offer of my landlord’s new house because it was easy.  I’m in control of my own future (job offers aside, because who can control someone else’s decision once you walk out of an interview room?!).  I decide where I live and when I move there, I decide how I spend my time, which people I let into my life, how much people know about me, how much exercise I do and which foods I put into my mouth, when and how often.

 

One thing in particular is helping me to focus again, albeit intermittently, and it’s something my sister reminded me of; how good it felt to be in control.  Now, when I’m doing my shopping and I know I’m being tempted towards offers on chocolate or crisps, I say to myself, “No.  I’M in control!”.  It doesn’t always work as well as it could, but a chat with a friend recently has reminded me that it takes more than one statement.  It takes focus and commitment, a real drive towards the end goal that can only come from within.  And our reasons for our lifestyle changes are so personal and diverse that one person’s answer isn’t necessarily another’s.  It doesn’t hurt to have a whole arsenal of buzzwords and tricks up our sleeves.  They don’t even have to make sense to us, as long as they work in our favour.

 

Saying to myself that I’m in control is such a small, simple thing but it helps me.  They’re clearly not magic words, but I’m taking the positive reinforcements and I’m using them regularly, making them part of my everyday life and not just when I’m feeling weak.  And I don’t just mean to deny myself everything I enjoy.  I can still have a chocolate bar or slice of cake, but they don’t have to be huge portions and they don’t have to be every day.  I’ve just had a coffee and a piece of chocolatey traybake, but it doesn’t mean the rest of the day will go to food hell; I have a salad for tea and it’s already prepared.  All I need to do is open the box and eat.  It’s the easy option.  It will take significantly more effort to go out and buy chips!

 

I know I’ve lost my way in the last month, but it’s only a little.  I still eat healthy meals and I rarely throw away the fruit and veg I buy because I actually use it instead of letting it sit there looking like some weird, shrivelling piece of artwork.  I had my monthly weigh-in this morning and the news isn’t good, but I can move on and get on with what I need to do in the coming months.  My reasons for becoming smaller, healthier and fitter haven’t changed and there are still reasons for its difficulty level increasing a few notches, but I just need to be that little bit stronger to push through.

 

I just might need a little help sometimes.  Or a very large kick.

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Four days later and I'm losing those lbs again, so if you're going to kick me please will you wear soft shoes instead of steel toecaps? Much obliged! 

*happy dance*

Oh, the temptation!

It’s been a funny couple of weeks; sometimes hilarious, sometimes stressful, other times downright scary and a bit tearful, and not always with my mind focussed on my health.  But even with the best of intentions when do we all always focus on our health?

 

There have been nights out in Italian restaurants eating pasta with creamy sauces and lots of cheese, and the worst profiteroles I’ve ever had the misfortune to see, let alone put in my mouth.  I had a day off, went to the cinema and had a treat of posh popcorn, followed up during the rest of the day with usually forbidden food, including potatoes (which I don’t normally eat anyway) with lots of cream.  I’ve had brief moments of cravings and bought chocolate alongside my mountain of vegetables.  The result of all this, despite being very good in between, is that in the last two weeks I’ve only lost 1.4lbs.

 

But… add that to the other 7.6, and the total for my first month is 9lbs, which even with my bad days is a respectable loss.  I only feel a little disheartened because I couldn’t resist the scales during the month.  If I’d stepped on them this morning for the first time in four weeks I’d have been ecstatic!

 

Even with these unhealthy meals, and days, I can recognise that treats are essential.  I discovered three years ago that to eat healthily 100% of the time is exhausting, boring and unrealistic.  I always had a selection of my favourite chocolate in the house, but I hid it away.  It was put in a tin in the dining room.  This meant that to have one or two squares I needed to do the walk of shame past my dad, and I made sure beforehand that he knew the tin would be there and what was in it.  Now I don’t have the luxury of someone else’s eyes boring a hole into my head as I walk past with chocolate in my hand, and for a long time that made it rather difficult to stick to eating healthily.  But that switch flicked over inside my head and it was suddenly a lot easier, days off notwithstanding!

 

I don’t believe anyone should deny themselves the food that they really love.  If I have a strong craving for fatty or sugary foods, I usually accept it and satisfy the craving.  I don’t “give in” to my cravings, because that suggests weakness.  It’s not weakness.  It’s just acknowledging that my body needs something specific and feeding it with what it asks for, but that doesn’t mean I go crazy and bury my face in a huge cake.  I know that satisfying a craving can be achieved with just a few bites (or one bite if you have a huge gob!).

 

So I’m going to bake again.  I haven’t baked in the last month because I was avoiding being sucked back into the constant taste testing.  But now that I’m pretty much on track I know I can bake for myself and not binge on the resulting treats.  My tried and tested plan is to freeze small portions of fruit loaves, cakes and scones.  Small individual treat-sized portions can then be taken out of the freezer in the morning before I go to work, and I know I have something lovely to look forward to after my tasty, healthy evening meal.  I was only reminded of this when a colleague was talking about her Christmas cake.  She resolved to eat it all quickly before she makes a big effort to lose weight.  She’d never even considered freezing Christmas cake.  She knows as well as I do that it keeps incredibly well, but a big slab of her favourite cake sitting in a tin in her kitchen is too much of a temptation.  I fully expect her to eat it in the next couple of weeks.  I don’t think she could ever bring herself to freeze Christmas cake!

 

The truth of it all is that every one of us who vows to shed weight knows what we need to do.  It’s not rocket science.  If we eat healthily, keeping the calories and fat down, and move more (for some of us a lot more (me included)!), then we’ll get rid of that weight.  Yes, it becomes more difficult the older we get but it’s not impossible, we each just need to find the tools that work for us and embed them into our daily lives so they become habit.  No, not habit.  Our way of life.

 

I already feel significantly better after only one month and 9lbs gone.  I’m looking forward to feeling so much better soon that I have the confidence again to do the one thing that gives me absolute and unashamedly unadulterated pleasure.  It’s easily the most fun I can have on my own…

Diminishing returns. Yes it does.

24 Jan 2015

It's been a long time since I felt like this. Blimey, I think it's been three years. That's a scary thought!

 

Back then I was at the lightest I'd weighed since I was at uni. I was focussed and motivated, and I was well on my way to losing 6½ stone. I had a routine, I was organised and I was active. So what happened?

 

Up until 11 days ago I'd lost my way. It was only recently that I made myself look back at the events that gradually saw me fall off the food wagon and try to determine how it happened. I decided that in understanding how I'd put three stone back on, I might get my footing right so I could achieve what had once again started to feel like an impossible climb.

 

It turns out that I can pinpoint almost to the day where it started to go wrong, and why. It started with one phone call from a production team. I was invited to go to Manchester to be part of a selection process that could result in an amazing opportunity and my ugly mug being on TV. By jumping in with both feet, my head wide open to be messed with however the puppet master desired, what I didn't realise was that at the same time I relinquished my own self-control. The self-control that found me at the healthiest I'd been since I could remember. It gradually disappeared and made way for a complete stranger to play with my head.

 

I know this sounds like I'm blaming that stranger for making me lose my way. Absolutely not. I'm blaming myself. It was my decision to let my guard down and to let the other person in, and I'm angry not for doing that, because it was one of the most exciting, surprising and exhilarating experiences of my life, but for not recognising what I'd done at the time and for not fixing it afterwards. Because although I didn't realise how it happened, I wasn't daft enough not to see my eating habits had changed and that my clothes were gradually becoming too small!

 

There’s no rhyme or reason to why I didn’t readjust my eating habits and just get back to it, I really do believe it was just laziness.  I’ve discovered that for me, willpower isn’t the big problem once I start, it’s being organised.  I let my routines slip, I let my guard down, I stopped caring and started eating all the wrong foods again.  Then it became a vicious circle; eat too much bad food, move too little, feel bad about myself, eat more bad food to cheer myself up, feel guilty, hide, scold myself for looking like a Weeble, feel bad that I scolded myself, eat bad food to cheer myself up… this really could go on forever.  I know I’m far from being alone in this, yet I always felt like I was.

 

But that was the relapsed me, not the real me.  I used to believe that was the real me, and I spiralled into a self-destructive pattern that was so bad I finally realised if I didn’t do something I wouldn’t get to see my nieces grow up, and that just wasn’t an option.  I also knew I wanted to give myself the best possible chance of having a family.  These realisations dawned in the weeks leading up to the start of the 6½ stone loss, and my plea to my GP for help.

 

I can’t explain what changed this time, three years later.  There was no light bulb moment.  There were no life-changing crossroads. There was no big health scare.  I’d just had enough and resolved to shed the excess weight, and suddenly the switch in my head that made me focus 3 years ago was switched on again.  And it feels bloody fantastic.

 

28 Jan 2015

I’d originally decided that I would only weigh myself once a month.  Oh boy, was I ever wrong about that!  I know from experience that a monthly weigh-in is more effective at keeping my motivation up because even if I’d had a bad week and not lost any weight, I didn’t know so it couldn’t get me down and tempt me towards comfort eating.  It also meant that after a few very good weeks the number of lbs lost would be so high that it would keep me on a natural high for weeks, and push me towards the following month with more energy and motivation.

 

But there are other tricks I learnt, and they’re things that I’ve carried forward to my final push for a permanent lifestyle change (It’s not a diet.  It’s never a diet!).

 

I have to be organised.  I absolutely have to be organised!  It does, however, mean that I still obsess about food, but now it’s in a positive way.  My main tool is a weekly meal plan.  As I often don’t get home from work or after-work activities until  6-7:30pm, the thought of cooking is usually a chore.  So I plan my meals according to my days off and any earlier times getting home.  I cook in bulk and freeze at least two portions of each meal then stick one in the fridge for the next day, meaning every couple of weeks I barely need to cook at all, and even better I need to shop less often!

 

My organisation doesn’t stop there, though.  I know that if I don’t make the following day’s breakfast and lunch the evening before I go to work, I’ll go to the coffee shop and get a huge free scone for breakfast with my cuppa, and then I’ll scrounge around the shops and canteen until I find something I can eat regardless of the fat content (no meat, fish, seafood, peppers or mushrooms makes it a huge pain in the backside! Try finding a vegetarian dish that doesn’t contain peppers, mushrooms or both!).  So before I can sit down in front of the TV or with a book, I prepare the next day’s breakfast and lunch.

 

I’ve definitely become obsessed with food again, but instead of obsessing about all the treats I can have, now it’s about making sure I always have enough healthy food in that I never have to go scrounging in cupboards or resort to a takeaway.  And by healthy food I mean healthy food that I enjoy eating.  It amazes me how many people don’t think about that hugely important point.  A couple of years ago a colleague was having lunch.  She was trying to lose weight and her husband had made her a fruit salad.  She was forcing it down and complaining the whole time because she doesn’t enjoy fruit.  When I realised what the problem was I asked her why she was eating it.  Her reasoning was that she was on a diet and this was healthy, therefore she had to eat the fruit salad.  My only response, and I remind myself of this every week when I’m writing my meal plans, is that you’ll only stick to your ‘diet’ if you actually enjoy the food you’re eating.  It’s common sense.  Try eating three meals a day that you don’t enjoy for a week, then tell me honestly that you’ll stick to it for the next few months because you know you should.  You won’t.  You just won’t.  If you enjoy your low-fat, low-sugar meals, willpower becomes much less of an issue.

 

So here I am.  I’ve eaten my breakfast of lovely fruit salad with my favourite low-fat yoghurt with an oaty breakfast bar crumbled into it, I’m an hour from lunchtime and I’m starting to feel hungry.  But I know I have a salad with cottage cheese and horseradish, and I’m looking forward to it instead of dreading the chore of eating ‘diet food’, because although it’s an odd combination, I love it.

 

I didn’t stay away from the scales, either (we all knew I wouldn’t!).  Two weeks into my change of lifestyle and I’m 7.6lbs lighter  *happy dance*