Square One?

Well, we’re back on our favourite Balearic Island again. We didn’t get here last year — Covid, of course — and it was touch and go as to whether we would come this year, although I booked the tickets back in January. Three of us are double vaccinated, which has made travel possible, but pretty expensive and a real faff in terms of paperwork and testing.

Last summer, I had swollen to extraordinary proportions and, as a I mentioned in a previous blog, Slim Sister finally intervened and gave me a bit of a talking to. This bore fruit and I promptly started a calorie counting and exercise regime which meant that I lost a decent amount of weight fairly quickly. Hooray – right?

Wrong.

In November, I started to run out of steam. By the time Christmas was cancelled, I was not doing very well at all. I managed to pull myself together for a bit, but initially, slowly, and now, sadly, quite quickly the pounds have piled back on. I am not sure if I am exactly back to Square One, because there’s not a scale here, but I am pretty sure it’s not going to be a happy moment when I do force myself to confront the scales again.

This makes me so sad. When I was losing weight successfully, I had such happy thoughts about how much I was going to enjoy my summer holiday. How I was going to look a lot better in a swimsuit. Then I started doing something, which always spells disaster for me. I started projecting weight loss figures based on my current weight loss rate. So, I’d tell myself that if I carried on losing a pound a week, that would mean I would weigh such and such by the time we went on holiday. Then, I’d think, well, that’s plenty of time. I’ll start dieting properly again in a couple of weeks’ and I will still be looking great when the holiday comes around. And when that deadline passed, I’d think to myself, well if I start NEXT week, I might not manage that target, but I will still look a lot better, and on and on it goes until I end up here, with sweat sliding through my fat rolls and feeling pretty damn miserable about my appearance.

You will note that I am not even pretending anymore that my weight loss aims are primarily to do with my health. As I have confessed before, all this blah blah about health is a smokescreen. I, like just about everyone else I know, believe that fat equals ugly and thin = pretty.

Mind you, I am also a bit scared about my health. Covid isn’t over, and fat people are more likely to die from it – there’s no evading that truth. One of the friends who has joined us on holiday had an accident last year, which resulted in a serious brain injury. He spent nearly 6 months in neural rehabilitation, and he is doing okay now. But he talks about the horror of the stroke victims who were in rehab with him. He says he has never seen anything more painful than those people, trapped by their completely useless bodies. He keeps saying: “Whatever you do, don’t have a stroke.” The high fat, high alcohol diet I am currently following is almost guaranteed to give me one. What the heck am I playing at? Why can’t I stop myself?

Anyone got any ideas? I am really stuck.

Update: We are back from our holiday and I am feeling more positive. The confrontation on the scales wasn’t quite as bad as I had been expecting. I am feeling more focused and determined and not quite so pathetically helpless. My writing is also going well so that’s a help, too.

Intervention

What is it about fat that makes it such a super-sensitive topic? If I had a septic toe that I was refusing to treat and it became life-threatening, no one would think twice about telling me in no uncertain terms to get it sorted out. Yet, when someone is quite visibly and obviously putting their health at risk by eating too much, no one says a word. Not even health care professionals. Every time I visit my GP, I expect him or her to say something to me about the elephant in the room (which I have at times closely resembled), but not one has ever even hinted that a change to my eating habits would have considerable health benefits. And to be fair, if someone did broach the subject, I wouldn’t react in the same way as if we were discussing my toe. I would likely be highly defensive and probably a bit angry or offended.

Fat is never straightforward. There are so many layers to the problem (excuse the turn of phrase there!) and often quite deeply seated reasons for it.

So, hats off to Slim Sister who was brave enough to bring up the subject one day and come right out and say that she thought I should take some more definite action with regards to my weight. This blog, and my slow and steady approach was sort of working. I had lost a bit of weight over a long period. But then along came Coronavirus and it all went to hell in a handbasket. Over the course of the first UK lockdown, I put on nearly 10kg!!! (No, that’s not a typo – 10 kg in just over 6 months.) I am not entirely sure why, because I continued to walk the dog every weekday and stopped eating out and entertaining, the latter two having always been high calorie activities for me. My alcohol consumption definitely went up (well, everyone was drinking, weren’t they, so why not me, too?) and I suppose I wasn’t running errands or doing anything like as much calorie-burning trotting about as usual. Those online exercise sessions that I was talking about in my last blog didn’t last because my dodgy ankle became so painful that I realised if I didn’t stop, I soon wouldn’t even be able to manage the dog walking.

So, I swelled. Alarmingly.

Fortunately for Slim Sister, when she brought up the subject, I had already decided that I was going to have to break my vow to never go on diet again. So I was receptive to her words, rather than defensive. I had already decided what to do. I could not bring myself to go back on my decision to never again PAY for a diet (if you have read my previous blogs, you will know about my discomfort with the notion of fat, over-privileged people paying to eat less while others starve). But with a little research and reading of reviews, I found a free calorie counting app and a free exercise monitoring app, and I was good to go.

That was on the 1^st of September and now, two months later, I weigh 10.8kg less than I did then.

The app I use allows you to set a desired rate of loss, and I set mine fairly high at 1 kg a week. I wanted some quickish results to help motivate me and inspire me. But the main reason this has been successful is that I have adopted the same mindset that I used when I gave up smoking 16 years ago. I may have mentioned before that I achieved that (my one and only shining instance of really exercising self control) with the help of the Allen Carr method for breaking addiction to nicotine. I can’t really summarise everything he says about controlling one’s behaviour, but there were a couple of things that really struck me, and that I have been able to use again now, when it comes to food and booze.

Firstly, he asked the question, how bad are those feelings of wanting a cigarette really? Yes, they feel urgent, maybe uncomfortable, but they are not painful or overwhelming. They certainly are not as bad as say, having a really bad cold, are they? But if I asked you if you would be prepared to experience bad cold symptoms for two weeks and after that you wouldn’t crave nicotine at all, would you agree to it? Of course. It’s a very small price to pay to be rid of such a horrible addiction. Who really wants to be spending a lot of money to go around coughing, ponging of smoke, causing damage to the health of loved ones and oneself and generally being a bit of a social outcast?

Being fat has just as many unpleasant and damaging consequences as smoking. But being asked to “slightly reduce” one’s calorie intake and “slightly increase” one’s physical activity is really not such a big deal, is it? No one is asking you to starve yourself or actually go hungry. You are not even having to stop eating or drinking anything you like. You just have to fit what you consume into a framework of a certain number of calories a day. You are being asked to think about what you eat, and do a certain amount of weighing and measuring, but with all the fabulous technology we have at our disposal these days, that is really not much of an ask at all. I spend far more time playing Solitaire on my phone than I do working out how much and what I should eat every day.

The other useful takeaway from Allen Carr was the idea that the decision not to smoke was mine and mine alone. And if I did have another cigarette after I had said that I would never again put one into my mouth, then I had only myself to blame and I would have to live with the knowledge of my own pathetic weakness for the rest of my days. When it comes to diets or eating less, I am the QUEEN of excuses. My kids are giving me trouble – I deserve a nice glass of wine. I am stressed/exhausted/sad/in the mood for a celebration – bring out the ice cream. And on and on. This time round, I am taking ownership of my actions. EVEN IF SOMETHING REALLY, REALLY bad happens, it is not an excuse to make myself more unhealthy by overeating. Incidentally, I also can’t “jinx” my weight loss/diet by talking about it or looking forward to it with anticipation (a piece of weird superstitious nonsense that I find myself succumbing to). No one and nothing can “jinx” something that only I have complete control over, namely what I put into my mouth.

So, that’s the current state of play. I am feeling good – stronger and healthier and more focused. Even my ankle has stopped hurting quite so much now that the load it has to carry around every day has lightened a bit.

Onwards and upwards. Or, better still, downwards (the number on the scale) and inwards (my waistline).

Lockdown

What was that I was saying about distractions being a good thing and wishing for some more? Well, I did specify that I did not want the sort of distractions that have me reaching for a bottle of wine at the end of the day. And the major distraction that we are all experiencing right now – the Covid 19 virus – is definitely one that requires wine and crisps and maybe even some ice cream. If I watch carefully, I can almost see my already enormous tummy expanding like a lump of bread dough in a proving oven. It really is quite worrying. Just how big can it get? Will it pop?

Joking aside, I actually feel ashamed of whining about how social distancing is making me fat. When so many in the world are struggling to eat at all, how dare I complain that I have too much? I am damned lucky to have the wherewithal to get fat.

But acknowledging my privilege does not make me any happier about my super-size. I still want to be leaner and healthier. So much so, that lately I have been tempted by the adverts for a “new” wonder diet that pop up on my screen every 10 minutes or so.

I took a solemn vow a few years back, that I would never again pay money in order to lose weight. To me there is, as I have already mentioned, something almost obscene about rich fat folks using their money to eat less, instead of using that money to help people who haven’t enough to eat to stay alive, much less get fat.

In addition, I am firmly convinced that while any diet will work in the short term, ultimately a diet is something you are “on” and when you go “off” it again, you get fat again. From personal experience, and from a number of accounts I have read, one not only gets as fat as one was before, but usually, a bit fatter. That’s why serial yo-yo dieters end up bloody enormous. I know. I am one.

So, while the new diet is quite enticing, I will resist its lures. Which is not to say, I haven’t read about it and had a look at the promotional material for it. This particular diet is taking the psychological approach. I suppose the idea is that you unlock why you have unhealthy eating patterns and then tackle the root causes rather than merely alter eating habits. This makes sense, certainly. They are selling it as a “brand new approach”, but of course it isn’t. I have been thinking and talking about why I eat too much for as long as I can remember.

All the thinking and talking made me reach the conclusion that I am a comfort eater. I eat as a way of making myself feel better. “Poor old you, you deserve something a bit nice to cheer you up”. I have been saying this to myself my whole life. But here’s the thing: for most of that life I have had absolutely no need of comfort.

Growing up, I was one of the luckiest people imaginable. No money worries, no health concerns, no disabilities. A gorgeous, loving and supportive mother and a busy, happy family life. Academic success, a great career, lovely home, lovely holidays and, if you can believe it, lucky in love, too – a really lovely husband. Yet with all this loveliness, while I certainly wasn’t as fat as I am now, I still ate to make myself feel better and I was always a bit tubby. Ridiculous! If I could, I would go back and give my chubby chops a good slap and make sure I knew and appreciated just how little I was in need of any sort of comfort.

It was inevitable then, that when the fickle finger of fate (or whatever it is that balances the universe’s books) decided to deal me an actual nasty blow, my desire for yummy comforting things to eat and drink would grow exponentially. And the real bummer with this is that even when you have coped with your blow, and your life is more or less back on track, or at least manageable again, you are left looking like someone has stuck a bicycle pump up your backside. And, as we all know, looking and feeling like an elephant is not the greatest feeling in the world. Poor me. Pass the bottle of wine.

elephant-Image by Tina Shaskus from Pixabay — Image by Tina Shaskus from Pixabay

12: State of Play

There are only two people who know I write this blog. Fat Fella, obviously, and one of my sisters. I’ll call her Slim Sister to differentiate her from the sister I mentioned in a previous blog – that one is Skinny Sister, the one whose high cholesterol level produces a shameful frisson of schadenfreude in my fat heart.

Slim Sister may be slender, but she has to work just hard enough at staying slim to be able to understand and relate to the trials and tribulations of lard arses such as myself. She is also probably my biggest cheerleader, and I know is very keen that I should do well on this particular journey. And not for any other reason than that I should be happy and well and satisfied with how my body looks and feels. She’s a good egg, is Slim Sister.

She also has opinions on what I write, and one that she expressed recently is that it is perhaps a mistake not to include a weekly weight report. She felt that it was a good “hook” to draw in readers, along the lines of Bridget Jones’s Diary etc.

I am sure she is right, but I fear that a weekly weigh-in is a dangerous thing for me. I get so influenced by the numbers, both positively and negatively. Looking at weight in numbers also reinforces the problem I have with externalising the whole issue and not feeling it from within. Somehow I have to try and get my heart to agree with my head that the number on the scale is irrelevant and it is what I look and feel like that counts.

But I am not there yet. And today is the day that I leave to go on holiday. The holiday that I was aiming for when I started this blog. The one that would mark the end of the “No Sugar, No Snacks, No Seconds, No Sauce” rule that I had imposed on myself. If you have followed this blog, you will know that I have altered course since I set out. I ditched all those absolute prohibitions because I felt that they were traps that I was falling into. Traps that would, in the long term, result in my failure to achieve what I really wanted – a healthier body and a happier self-image.This feels like a good time to reflect a little and sum up what I have achieved so far and consider what I might do to keep myself going.

I have lost some weight — 4.3 kg (9.5lbs) in total. To my mind that is a miserably small amount and a figure that would normally do nothing to inspire me to continue. I need much more dramatic results to motivate me. Yet, that is exactly the sort of weight loss that I should be aiming for.

Even slower would probably be better. It shows how making small, but permanent changes to one’s diet will, over time, have the desired result. And I won’t suddenly start packing on the pounds once I am “finished” because I never will be. They are forever changes and not based on a number deadline. Just as I have been a non-smoker for 14 years, I now need to see myself as someone who consumes almost no sugar, doesn’t drink much alcohol, only has snacks once in a while in social situations and almost always says “no” to second helpings.

46B56276-5BE4-478B-99B2-1F8DCF80A018 — My future mealtimes? Not bloody likely!

Sadly, I was not that someone last weekend. I was at a party at Skinny Sister’s house. She is a marvellous cook, so I not only had seconds of the sumptuous lunch, but I also tucked into a generous helping of pudding. I found it almost too sickly sweet to finish. Not because it was particularly sugary, but because I am really not used to sugar anymore. Later though, when I got home, I started craving a sweet treat. I had awoken the sugar demon, and it wanted more. Fortunately, there was nothing tempting in the house and sugar demon has gone back to sleep for now. But it is worth remembering that, like nicotine, it is a craving that is always lurking, ready to pounce, and I feed it at my peril.

Giddy weekends aside, I am not doing too badly. I have seriously weakened the grasp that sugar has on me. I no longer routinely eat second helpings and I am drinking far less alcohol. I would prefer to cut this particular one even more, and I probably shall once I get back from my holiday. And as for the last of the four Esses – snacks – well, to be honest that has never been a major vice of mine. I added it in to make up the “Four Esses” rule. Still, it’s good to remember that snacks can be very tempting, especially when one is being so “good” about everything else. And I must also remember not to try to be “too good”, because I am in this for the long haul.

So, that’s the state of play. I fully intend to enjoy a fortnight of mild hedonism and will return to my “normal” life determined to carry on with this journey. Wish me luck.

Stats:

Total weight loss: Minus 4.3 kg (9.5lbs)

11: A Dog’s Life

pet-Image by Jose Antonio Alba from Pixabay — Image by Jose Antonio Alba from Pixabay

I am a volunteer for a charity called the Cinnamon Trust. We walk dogs belonging to people who are either too old or too ill to do it themselves. This is great, because it means they can keep their much-loved pets with them for as long as possible. Last week, I walked a “new” dog. I was chatting to Fat Fella about it afterwards and commented how awful it was to see a dog who was in such pain because he was so fat and arthritic. “I would never allow an animal of mine to get in such a state,” I proclaimed self-righteously. And, to be fair, that’s true. I wouldn’t.

I wouldn’t call any of my pets skinny, exactly, and I am not great at refusing them treats, but I do make sure they keep to a reasonably healthy weight. I wonder why I find it so straightforward and easy to do it for them, but not for myself? If my dog groaned and winced whenever she stood up, as I do, she would be on a diet so fast, her head would spin.

golden-retriever-Image by Barbara Danázs from Pixabay — This is a stock image of a fat dog for illustrative purposes, not the actual dog mentioned. — Image by Barbara Danazs from Pixabay.

Similarly, when my children were younger and I had more control over what they ate, they were both the picture of good health. Poster children for the benefits of eating a varied, yet balanced diet, heavy on fruit and veg and light on treats. I took such pride in their fabulous diets. Yet, I could not do the same for myself.

Nowadays things are a bit different as far as the children’s diets go. My son’s nickname of Captain Shoelace is well deserved. He is very tall and very, very thin. Not, sad to say, as a result of a healthy diet. Far from it. I firmly believe that the fact that he likes apples, and has got in the habit of eating one a day, is all that stands between him and a dose of scurvy. He lives on crap energy drinks, cakes, crisps and chips. The “shoelace” effect is simply the result of a lot of high energy exercise.

apples-Image by Tracy Lundgren from Pixabay — Image by Tracy Lundgren from Pixabay

My lovely daughter, on the other hand, is no shoelace. Captain Jellybean would be a better name for her. She is very well rounded these days. The first time she got pocket money and had an independent trip to the shops with it, she returned home with a shopping bag bulging with chocolates, biscuits and sweets. This was a child who took delight in eating as many as nine different types of fruit and vegetables in a single sitting. Tragically, her love affair with vegetables had, for the time being, come to an end.

carton-figure-Image by Michael Rühle from Pixabay (2) — Image by Michael Ruhle from Pixabay.

The situation with Captain Jellybean presents a tricky challenge for me. How do I tackle it? I don’t want to pass on my own lifetime obsession with weight, but I can’t completely ignore it, can I? She has a minor medical condition that would be improved were she to lose a bit of weight. Her doctor has told her that she needs to look at her diet and exercise regime and see if she can lose some pounds. I want to encourage her, but I really don’t want her to “go on a diet”. I truly believe that dieting like that ends up making you fatter.

Of course, we keep coming up with ways to get her to exercise more, and she is fairly cooperative. She loves the step tracker that her aunt gave her for her birthday and has started boxing classes recently. But if left to herself, she is completely inactive and, like many (most?) teenagers will just slump on her bed watching YouTube videos.

If only I could simply reduce the amount of kibble I give her and pop her on a leash for an extra walk or two every day! If only I could do the same for myself. Is it wrong to wish I were a dog?

You can find out more about the work of The Cinnamon Trust here: https://cinnamon.org.uk/

10: Disconnect

Last week, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a desire to weigh myself. In my usual feckless way, I succumbed and hopped on to the bathroom scales.

Do you ever do ridiculous things on the scales to try and make the numbers go down? I have a wonky wooden floor and fairly ancient dodgy scales, so if I indulge in some creative contortions I am able to lose and gain several kilos in a mere matter of minutes. Fortunately, my better self usually prevails, and I take the mean weight to be the accurate one.

On this occasion, I was relieved to find that the figure showed a small weight loss, but it struck me with some force that I had had absolutely no clue beforehand what those scales would show. I seem to have a some completely disconnected wires in my brain.

Firstly, I can’t feel or see if I am heavier or lighter. I need numbers on a scale to tell me what is going on with my weight. I suppose I have usually relied on the tightness or looseness of my clothing to give me an indication of my size. But this summer, I have discovered the absolute joy of wearing loose, linen shift dresses. I have never before felt so comfortable, cool or free. But without a tight waist band warning system, I could, as far as I was aware have loaded on ten kilos.

And this points to the second disconnect. I clearly do not fully believe that if I eat a bit less and a bit more healthily that it is in fact inevitable that I will lose a little bit of weight. Instead I, like many long-term dieters, seem to have swallowed this mad idea that there is a kind of magical alchemy about weight loss that I don’t fully understand.

This “magic” explains why sometimes I don’t lose weight even when I’ve been “good”. It consists of eating at the right times, of excluding certain food groups entirely, or only eating certain “fat-consuming” things. It is the magic of the keto/cabbage soup/Atkins/5:2 diet. Somehow my brain cannot grasp the simple fact that if I eat fewer calories, I will lose weight. There is no magic about it. The explanation for gaining weight despite being “good” lies in a less than honest memory of what has actually been consumed, not in anything mystical.

the-magician-Image by Vasili1316 from Pixabay — I suppose being sawed in half could be one “magical” way of losing weight! — (Image by Vasili1316 from Pixabay)

No, there is no miracle “cure” for fatness. It’s such a shame, because if there were, and I knew what it was, I’d be a very rich woman. Many people are extremely rich today simply by virtue of being able to convince me and those like me that they hold the secret to weight loss. If I just follow their programme, drink their milkshake or buy their books, I can be a sylph-like goddess. Ha!

At the end of the day, I think we need to be honest with ourselves, and really try to start believing again that fatness is the result of the amount of calories we consume being greater than the energy we expend. Until we can make that connection in our heads, no amount of weighing, measuring, planning and plotting is going to help us.

7: New Resolution

Last week I caught myself chanting the following as a kind of motivational mantra: “Five weeks, five kilos, five weeks, five kilos.” Yes, you read that right. The person who is NOT on diet and is not trying to slim down for an arbitrary deadline is, in fact, doing both those things with a vengeance. No matter how vehemently I insist that this whole endeavour is primarily concerned with a change in lifestyle and an adoption of healthier habits, it is quite clear that I am fully immersed in the dieting mind-set of old, which, in theory, I utterly reject.

meal-plan-Image by Vegan Liftz from Pixabay — Image by Vegan Liftz from Pixabay

That dieting mind-set is the product of years of participating in the diet industry. Popular dieting clubs and programmes were first developed in the 1960s. By the time I joined up for the first time in the 1980s, they were well established and many of their features had become deeply entrenched in our dieting consciousness. The weekly weigh-in is a good example. Back in the day, you were weighed publicly and your weight loss or gain was announced to your fellow dieters each week.

Over time, the idea of shaming people into losing weight waned in popularity and the weigh-ins became more discreet. But in the big business world of dieting, they remained an invaluable tool, providing a boost to morale when the scales showed a loss, or a useful kick up the jacksie when they showed a gain.

I decided some years ago that paying someone to stop me from over-eating was an almost obscene concept in a world where so many go hungry every day. As a result, I haven’t been near a weigh-in or diet programme meeting for some time. Yet I still find myself very wedded to the idea of the weekly weight check. Since I embarked on this particular journey, I have been struggling to resist weighing myself too often and have been very affected by what I see on the scales – celebrating a substantial loss by allowing myself extra treats and responding to gains with depression and despair.

Inkedweighing-machine-Image by Spencer Wing from Pixabay — Image by Spencer Wing from Pixabay

I have also found myself moving the scales around the bathroom in order to get the “best” reading. How utterly stupid. I know very well that the number on the scale is not the point. But I bet I am not alone in falling into the trap of concentrating on numbers to the exclusion of everything else. I did a bit of reading on the internet about current dieting programmes and I see that Weight Watchers, for example, have rebranded their weekly weigh-ins. They are now marketed as “Workshops” with the emphasis on wellness rather than on weight loss. I wonder if the participants have managed to shift their mind-sets accordingly? I know, from my own experience that it is a lot more difficult than it seems.

The only time I have ever lost weight without thinking about it at all was just before my wedding. I was too absorbed in other stuff to spare a single thought to what I was eating. And interestingly, I am unable to tell you how much I weighed at the time. I simply had not bothered to check. In the photographs I look like a person with a healthy weight, but I have never again managed to be that unconscious of my weight – fatter or thinner, it has remained a big issue for me, front and centre in my consciousness.

So, I have had a big re-think and have made a few decisions.

Firstly, no more weekly stats. I am going to weigh myself once a month from now on and may eschew the scales completely if I am brave enough.

Secondly, I am throwing any notion of a timetable or a deadline out of the window. I did not, thank God, gain weight at the rate of a kilo a week, and it is quite mad to expect to lose it at that speed. I also know, from past experience that weight lost quickly as a result of a strict diet goes back on just as quickly once normal service is resumed.

trash-9Image by OpenIcons from Pixabay — Image by OpenIcons from Pixabay

Thirdly, I am sad to say that my original bright idea of saying “No” to sugar, seconds, snacks and sauce, must be abandoned. By this I do not mean that I am going back to gorging on all four of these things. But I am not going to attempt to give them up completely. Right now, I feel like I am at a reasonable level with all four. This week, for example, I had some wine on Sunday when we had a barbecue and I ate a meringue. That’s it, and that is just fine, I think.

6: Disgrace – My Arse

I am so fed up with myself. I wish I could work out where I am going wrong with this whole thing. The week started off so well. By Friday, I had already written the blog in my head – it was going to be called “The Raisin” and was all about how wonderful it was to have stopped eating sugar and how sublimely sweet a couple of raisins in your porridge can taste once you’ve stopped eating other sugar. I was going to wax lyrical about the amazing life lessons I have been taught by this – be satisfied with less, enjoy what you have, excess is awful, blah blah blah.

muesli-Image by moerschy from Pixabay — Image by moerschy from Pixabay

What happened next, I can’t explain.

Fridays are generally a tricky day for me – I have to get my son to an appointment that he doesn’t want to go to, so it takes a lot of effort, patience and a certain amount of stress to make that happen. This Friday was no different, but I managed it and all was looking rosy. Then the phone rang. My mother-in-law was having some health problems and I needed to spend the afternoon with her. No problem. By now it was nearly lunch time and I was really hungry. So when we went through the Macdonald’s drive-thru to get my son his reward lunch, instead of just ordering a black coffee as I usually do, I ordered a veggie burger and chips.

In itself, I don’t see this as much of a problem. The odd fast food meal is perfectly okay in my book. In fact, I was glad I had done it, because it would be a long while before I finally got home and could have something to eat. But why, oh why did I need to buy that bottle of wine on my way home? And the slab of chocolate? And why, oh why did I need to drink and eat them in addition to a generous dinner? Okay, so I was a bit tired, a bit disrupted, and a bit in need of reward and comfort. But really. That was ridiculous.

But it wasn’t a disgrace. And it wasn’t the end of my dreadful weekend.

On Saturday I had to be up early to get down to the cycle track where my son’s club was holding a big fundraiser. I worked there until 2 pm after which I met my husband and daughter and hopped on a train to go into town to watch a comedy act at a festival next to the river. I completely failed to eat breakfast or lunch, so by the time we got there I was ravenous and had a slice of pizza as my first food of the day at 3 pm. And a big glass of wine, because the sun was shining and we were next to the river and it was all so lovely and sociable and blah, blah, excuse, excuse. Then, guess what? They let you take drinks into the auditorium. So, I had another glass. And after the show, we decided to have dinner, and I proceeded to order some really crappy and not very filling and another glass, and then we went home and this happened…

Disgrace.

Also, it turned out that one of the nasty, unhealthy meals I had inhaled during my day of badness had something wrong with it, and I woke with a churning stomach-full of acid at 3 am, and proceeded to throw up for an hour.

Double disgrace.

I just don’t understand myself. I really do want to lose some weight. I am already enjoying the benefits of eating more healthily. Why would I do this to myself? Am I just a pitiable weak-willed moron? What should I do next? I seem to swing from one extreme to another. And the minute I allow myself a bit of smugness at success (as in being pleased with myself for stopping eating sugar) I seem to need to sabotage my efforts. It is so damned frustrating.

I know that if I was reading this blog I would want to give myself a slap and say, “Don’t be so ridiculous. Just stop yourself. How can you say that you really want to be thinner and at the same time not be able to stop yourself putting fattening stuff into your mouth? It’s not rocket science. Are you lying to yourself? Is there a deep, hidden reason that you don’t want to be thin?”

Whoah!!! Just a minute. What exactly am I saying here? I consumed a slab of chocolate, a packet of biscuits and a couple of bottles of wine. So what?? Big bloody deal. I am acting as if I had murdered a small child. I cannot believe I have dived headfirst into the trap whereby my entire sense of self-worth and well-being is based on what I do or do not put into my mouth. Ridiculous. I completely reject this view. The only “bad” thing that has happened is that I am now feeling a bit sluggish and have shocking indigestion. I didn’t even put on any weight.

I have no idea what I am going to take away from all this and no idea what I shall be writing about next week. I hope I lose a bit of weight, but I do NOT want to lose sight of what I believe is really important in life – and that is definitely not the size of my arse.

Stats:

Week six: No weight gain or loss
Total weight loss: Minus 3 kg (6.5 lbs)