So - it looks like I'm roughly 14.5 stone. This week went well overall. Didn't have time to do much exercise. My fencing class was due to start today but it's been postponed for a month. I walked from my house to Spitalfields today - I love the fact that I don't even notice covering these distances any more - my feet and legs can take it completely in their stride - pun intended.
Acting class went well on Friday. I wore heels all day at work - something I would normally avoid. I can't wait to buy more pairs of heels - I've never really gone in for them because they always used to hurt to wear fo longer than 5 minutes...all that's about to change.
I went to see a comedy sketch show preview prior to a TV recording on Wednesday. It was okay - but a long trek to Little Venice for the sake of 30 minutes of entertainment - if only it had been later in the year - I could have had a pleasant walk back home - but I don't like walking through places I don't know in the dark even though the most likely danger in St John's Wood after dark is being run over by an SUV. The most dangerous thing was the service at the bar - they'd run out of mineal water so the barmaid told me she would come back with my drink at the table - I was uneasy but I didn't have a chance to argue with her - I hate places that just shove ice and lemon into mineral water (it's actually illegal to serve mineral water in a glass with ice in it) without asking you. I think she even squeezed the lemon. I fished it out and supposed that there was no way that a drop of lemon juice was suddenly going to ruin the plan...
The work cocktail receptions went okay on Tuesday and Wednesday - the food looked great at lunch on Weds but I wasn't tempted. Although my closest colleague there did ask me why I wasn't eating and as I hadn't thought that anyone would ask why, I didn't have an excuse prepared (and really I still can't think of an excuse that wouldn't have sounded weird in that circumstance - it would have either been too much information or an obvious downright lie). She asked twice - I looked like a rabbit in the headlights - she took the hint - but I knew that she thought something fishy was going on - and I don't blame her! Ah well.
The sort of ex came over to see me on Thursday. It's very odd being thinner - especially in his company. This is not really the place to talk about all that stuff though!
It's very weird to think that this can't last any longer than 28 weeks or so at the most - I suppose when you're on a normal diet you have no way of judging exactly how long it will take, so the diet feels like its forever. But I know that there is no way I will be doing this much longer than into August. Woah. So - over 3.5 stone gone and a weigh-in tomorrow. I just want the next 1.5 stone gone so that I'm no longer obese.
If I get my act together tomorrow I shall walk down to Columbia Road Flower Market - but maybe the walk will be too similar to today's.
Well - it's peculiar to think that I'm now about 4 days away from being 1/3 of the way through the entire abstinence process.
I can't see myself going much further than 200 days as I should hope that I would have ducked under 10 stone by then. I may only go down to 10.5 stone - we shall see what suits me and how I feel. I think for clothes strategy purposes, it would be wonderful to be a size 10 as there always seem to be size 10s of everything in the sales!
Imagine my glee this week when my £5 size 16 trousers - purchased at the beginning of Lighterlife with a half sceptical voice telling me that I'd never fit into them - finally met in the middle and did up completely. I'm not sure that I would want to go out in them - being a bit too tight for everyday wear until the next 7-10 lbs has gone, but they actually fit on to my body!
I wore a size 18 blouse this week (I can't remember the last time I could do that - AND it was fitted!) And the strange thing is that when I look at myself in the floor length mirror at work I look 'normal' and not 'fat'. Although part of my problem has always been reverse body dysmorphia - I think I look thinner than I am!
But colleagues do keep coming up and congratulating me, so I'm into the 'people are noticing' stage which seems to kick in at about day 50 for most people as far as I can see.
I slipped up on the water once this week. I only got 1.5 litres in at work and despite a valiant effort in the evening, I mucked up my calculations and I think I only got about 3.5 litres down me, all told. I woke up with cramp in my calf the next morning so I assume that that was my body telling me that it needed more water. I have a feeling that as well as the 4 litres, I need to counterbalance any coffee that I drink with an extra half a litre - this may not be so - but it can't hurt.
I came clean about LL in my actual life blog and had surprisingly few negative comments. Someone else's blog had mentioned LL a week earlier and it was full of rubbish like 'My friend's a GP and says that this is dangerous' and 'The only way to lose weight is to exercise and eat a healthy diet.' I sat on my hands to stop myself from jumping down the throat of one particularly officious and pious sounding loon. The important thing to remember with weight loss is that there is no magic recipe that cures all people in the same way.
Lighterlife is the right step for me right now because I have the money and the focus and the right motivation (at last) for doing it. Once upon a time I went to the gym for 3 hours a day and had tennis coaching for an hour, swam a mile and did an hour of CV and weights. I lost 2 stone without changing my diet, I looked great. But the minute something interrupted my routine and work slowed down and I lost my joie de vivre, I stopped going to the gym and ate my way through the next 3 years. What I'm saying is that exercise was one way that worked for me at a time when that was what I wanted to do, but it was unsustainable. I have, for a long time, known that I was addicted to food. I had been looking for a way to abstain and retrain myself for years. And finally here it is! But of course you can do this in a more conventional way, I wouldn't deny anyone that opportunity and so I expect the same respect for my decision to do it my way.
Today I am going to clean the flat and then walk down to the Tate Modern and sit in the members bar whilst I wait for my guest to join me. then we are going to see the Gilbert and George exhibition. Really not my thing, but I find the artists charming. Then I shall hotfoot it back here to watch Dancing on Ice and Little Miss Sunshine with my other best friend!
This week, following last week's mega counselling session - only about half the group there so we really started to talk, I've started to get to the bottom of why I eat. One of the reasons is to avoid intimacy...but I am also trying to avoid success. In te past I always thought I was trying to lose weight to get a man (for want of a more delicate way of putting it). Now - at last - after 20 years, I'm doing it totally and utterly for me. My sort of ex (it's a long long complicated and crazy story) is partly at the heart of this. My weight ballooned after I found out about his tiny, 8 stone ex. He's sort of supporting me through this from a distance and it's nice to have a straight male's feedback (although three chaps at work are constantly gunning for me!) but the old frustrations with the relationship, such as it was are still there, so I really don't think he'll be the one at the end of all this. Which seems callous, but - and this may be crooked thinking - I have a feeling he was never attracted to me when I was very obese. He'd deny this, of course, but there was evidence to the contrary. And the spectre of the 8 stone ex always loomed. All my life I've picked men who like boyish figures. Partly because of that fear of intimacy, I suppose.
So - what I'm saying is that I'm not doing it or anyone else but me. This is a huge thing to realise!
I took my day 60 measurements on Thursday. I am officially a perfect 18.
It's going to be a relatively low loss this week - probably 2 or 3 pounds, but my measurements have definitely all taken a 1/4 inch shift in the last day or two. I fel normalish again - normal enough to take an inbetween photo on my laptop camera which I shall post. It don;t really have anything terribly unflattering of me from the beginning of January until I get my LL before and after photos.
Anyway - WI tonight. Yesterday was miserable. I was lonely and craved food as I walked past lots of favourite places in Covent Garden and I broke my cafetiere and sliced my finger open - no coffee pain = bad. Fortunately my best friend came round with two flasks of good coffee and we settled in to watch Dancing on Ice and Bride and Prejudice. He's also spent 3 hours today helping me move my flat around - every time I tried to unpack one of the left over boxes from my move a month ago I kept getting headrushes. Sometimes this diet plays havoc with my skull. He was very understanding throughout. It's good to have friends. Especially like him.
I wish I knew how this blog made paragraphs. It makes me look like such a fool. Aha - it could say somewhere that you need basic HTML skills to post.
Well yesterday's post went a bit wrong. I really should preview these things.
I watched the Davina McCall DVDs yesterday (I always watch these things through before doing them for te first time just so I know what to expect) and the second DVD looks WELL hard. Oh well - I shall have t give it a go at the weekend.
Anyway...I've definitely walked 10000 steps today and at a brisk pace too. Although I do feel very dehydrated - despite having already drunk my 4 litres. But I really want to up the exercise and I'm not doing anything strenuous so I'm not sure what the happy balance is. I cold do without this mild headache and feeling of tiredness though...although it's a nice sort of tired.
I also wish that I could backpost on here and add all my notes from the first couple of weeks.
Today was weird as a sort of committee I'm part of at work has invited me to a cocktail reception next month prior to an event we're throwing the next day. I know it's just food, but it'll be the first food and drink type invitation that I'm not able to turn down due to protocol and desire to further my career. Now of course no one would expect me to eat or drink alcohol at either of these events, but our executive dining chefs are amazing. There was a Chinese banquet last year with stirfried monkfish that had me going back for 6ths. Ah well, sparkling water for me...and hopefully attending these two events and being alert and attentive rather than face down in some canapes like I normaly would be means that once I'm at goal and maintaining that I get invited t many more such delicious events.
I do feel that my attitude to food is getting much healthier...I don't feel the pangs of 'it's not fair!' at all and haven't really since week 2.
Anyway - an early night tonight, I think.
I just typed out a huge post on excercise and my goals and background and it disappeared when i tried to post it.
Pah.
Anyway - the short version is
a) that I am beginning to incorporate exercise,
b) I have a series of milestones that I want to bash
next is 15st 2 (long story, but it will show me that I've fixed a long running problem)
then 13st 13 (lighter than I've been since the end of 1998)
then 13st (overweight rather than obsese and the weight at which I start to notice being fat - haven't been there since June 1998)
then 12.5 st (where I start to feel fit)
then 11.5 st (where people start to really notice me)
then 10st 10 (what I weighed when I was 17)
then 9st 12 - I have never weighed this in my adult life - I think I last weighed this when I was doing Jane Fonda every day in 1989!) That may not be where I stay, but I think I owe it to myself to taste it and see!
and c) that this is the best diet ever.
