Moving onto more normal things...or actually, not normal at all...I lost weight this week!
Really.
Just goes to show you don't have to be perfect, as I didn't stick to my plan properly except for yesterday. I didn't let going over my allowance be an excuse to 'start again tomorrow' though, and that's what's made the difference.
Because let's face it, 'start again tomorrow' sounds all virtuous and determined, but what it really means is 'ooh, that means I can have an entire chocolate cake now'.
I can pinpoint exactly what's made the difference this week.
I've rejoined the WW message boards. They help me keep focused on what I want, they add an element of fun to the whole thing, and they give me something to do in the evenings. I find it hard to relax, you see. Unless I am eating, I can't watch tv or read because it isn't active enough. I have to go clean. And I'd rather eat than clean. But typing distracts me.
There were also some very wise words - or really, kick-up-the-ass words - from TatumsMom yesterday (sorry, I can't do links!), which definitely got me through the evening without succumbing to the lure of the newly-stocked fridge. (It probably also helped that the most exciting thing it contained was plain yogurt.)
The main reason, though, was that a couple of days ago, I once again hit Rock Bottom.
Oh, it's a lovely place to be. Sobbing in your bed. With unbrushed teeth.
Ok, no, it's awful.
But for me, there is something about getting to the point where I just feel totally, irredeemably out of control that is really...nice. Hopeful. Affirming.
There is nothing I can do about my eating, so why bother?
You need to understand, here, I am a perfectionist. A Super-Perfectionist (perhaps I should have an outfit. That might make it less cripplingly painful).
Every last thing in my life needs to be carefully planned. I have it all written down in a little folder .
Eating, work, money, housework. I even have every recipe I know how to make written down in a list. With sub-headings, naturally.
I have to stick to my plans, 100 per cent, to feel remotely OK about myself.
Of course, trying to do all this is generally unsuccessful anyway, and it causes me no end of stress - which leads me to overeat.
I then feel awful and go to bed, but the next morning, after about an hour of misery while I wonder why God has switched on the big light again, I usually manage to dust myself off and promise I am going right back on my plan - or, preferably, an even stricter one. A regime. That means I can get out my eraser and change the rules in my little folder.
Deep down, I don't really believe it's going to work, but feeling 'on track' means I can put my misery behind me. Besides, I don't see any other options.
There have been only two occasions in my life when I couldn't manage to scrape myself back up like this. When I really just got too tired to do it anymore. Exhausted from month upon month of 'today will be the day's ending in binges and desperation. Sick of planning to shed all the weight by a certain time, then watching, helplessly, as a small regain (which seemed astronomical at the time) spiralled out of control.
Two occasions when I just couldn't bolster myself up to get back on the rollercoaster. So I didn't bother. I told myself I. Could. Not. Do. It., sat back, and waited for the inevitable end (you know - 900 pounds, dead, chewed by animals ).
Those two times were...the morning I first started losing weight, in May 2007, and another morning a few days ago.
You see something weird here, right? I didn't suddenly eat my way to 900 pounds. Because as soon as I admitted I couldn't cope with this, that my plans weren't working, I started losing weight.
It's not about simply 'not dieting'. For me, that's just another diet - because I still care too much. It's about...giving up.
Now, this is starting to sound like Overeaters' Anonymous. And even though I am a Christian, I don't go in for all that stuff. Or, I believe it works, and I believe religion has a lot to do with it...but I also believe it has much to do with good, old-fashioned psychology .
Once I didn't feel I had to follow a plan, it became a lot less stressful.
I am a peculiar soul. Once I stop keeping a budget...I spend less. As soon as I abandon my cleaning rota...the house looks better.
And, perversely, it is only when dieting is not that important to me that I lose weight.
4.5 pounds this week to be exact .
So while I may be a Very Sick Bunny, probably a Completely Certifiable If She Had The Cash For Therapy Bunny, today I am a pretty happy bunny too .
It should have been a good Sunday. I had it all planned out.
Get the supermarket shop out of the way early, then spend the afternoon watching DVDs, doing a bit of gardening, cooking a roast dinner. Chilling out after a hectic week.
Only it didn't work out quite like that. We managed the shopping. Then the bloody car broke down. In the Asda car park.
That car has been nothing but trouble since the day we got it. Brakes, alignment, tyres, radio. And we've only had it three months. This time, it was the immobiliser refusing to turn off. We sat there in the heat for two hours, as our newly-purchased ice lollies defrosted into a sad puddle and the AA man (a tortured soul from the very start) became more and more pessimistic about the chances our old banger would ever sputter into life again.
After the bloke's 532nd despondent headshake, I could take it no more. I headed into the shop for the loo.
MISTAKE! MISTAKE!
That's when the Bad Thing happened. Yep, the car was just a bonus.
This was my Worst Supermarket Nightmare.
Seeing Someone I Knew Before I Was Fat.
As I strolled blithely through the automatic doors, my mind considering nothing more sinister than whether I'd packed a spare tampon, I heard the hesistant voice:
'Rach? Rachel? Is that you?'
Shit, shit, shit (sorry about the language, but it really is necessary).
It was D from the newspaper. The newspaper I'd left under a cloud of depression a year and a half earlier. The newspaper from which I now oh-so-inconveniently needed a reference.
So I couldn't even blank him.
How on earth had this happened? And how had I not seen it coming? Something had gone very wrong with the workings of the Intuition Department in my head.
Normally, as I ponder the perfectly innocent-sounding move of nipping out for some milk with no mascara on, the little gnomes up there start bashing away frantically at my cranium. 'Hey there! Idiot! Everyone in Cornwall goes to Asda on a Sunday! Sort yourself out!'
The Make An Effort Brigade, I call them. Where I am happy-go-lucky, hopeful, spontaneous, they are the sort who like everything planned.
Jobsworths. Losers. Wouldn't catch them going to the pub on a whim of a Friday afternoon.
Still, they are only trying to help. And so I obey them. Nip upstairs, change my shirt, brush my hair, slap on some lippy.
All that effort. And the worst thing is, it's almost always been in vain. It's not so much that I haven't seen anyone I know (the whole of Cornwall goes to Asda on a Sunday). It's more that I have always spied danger in time to make a speedy dash behind a pyramid of canned soup or some other equally useful barrier.
But not today. Who knows what the bloody gnomes had been up to this week? They'd kept pretty quiet, anyway. Irresponsible. Losers. Probably all down the pub.
Meanwhile I, cruelly deserted, had fallen victim to the well-known Law of the Sod. The one time I'd come to the shop looking truly terrible, I'd been caught.
I almost couldn't go over. Couldn't look at D. But there wasn't really any choice.
I took a deep breath and fixed on my widest, brightest, 'I am very successful, really,' smile.
'Hi there, D. Lovely to see you. How are you?'
The conversation proceeded, rather stilted, as these conversations so often are. I caught him looking me up and down in a surprised way. Imagined him running back to the office with the gossip - 'You know, she's obese!'
I had a minor flash of relief as I realised I wasn't the only one looking less-than perfect. From his appearance, it seemed drinking was still D's crutch to get through the job, as eating had been mine.
I extricated myself from the conversation as quickly as possible, cunningly managing to avoid any embarrassing 'so what are you up to these days?' questions. Noticing D did the same.
I got to the loo, and studied myself in the mirror. Oh no. Sitting in a hot, broken car for two hours had done me no favours. It seemed I had at least applied some mascara before leaving the house. Bonus. Sadly, though, none of it was left on my eyelashes. There was, however, plenty on my cheeks, and attractive little gunky bits in the corners of my eyes.
My top was too tight and low cut. And my boobs! Huge, freckly, disgusting.
When I had been in that job about two days, I was outside the room and I overheard them talking about me. 'She's so pretty.' I wondered what they would say now.
Ah well. It was all over. It had been a matter of five painful minutes out of an otherwise calm, ordered life. Nothing terrible had happened.
The whole experience had been...a nothing. So why was I shaking, sweating, trembling at the knees?
It affected me deeply. I couldn't stop thinking about it, going over the conversation in my head.
The saddest thing was, I'd liked D. We'd been mates. Moaning together about the shocking hours and the even more shocking wages. Ganging up against the Evil Dictators who were our bosses. Sneaking out to the pub of a Friday afternoon for a drink or ten.
And yet, after I'd left the job, I'd never seen him again. Or any of my other work friends, for that matter. They'd invited me to the pub with them countless times, but I'd always made some excuse.
Their pub trips were always too happy-go-lucky, hopeful, spontaneous. Fitted in on a whim between unforgiving deadlines.
That was no good for me. I needed time, to plan, to primp, to lose some weight.
I'd just cut myself off. And now I couldn't even bear to see them in the shop.
I was still their friend, still the same person inside. And, goodness knows, they all had their own issues. So why had I let this happen?
I am sure you all know the answer. Low self-esteem. Cripplingly low, in fact. I could really do some work on that.
So you will be glad to know I have learned from the experience.
Asda is open 24 hours. Next week, I shall do my shopping on Friday. At 10pm.
I will look awful, but it won't matter. I won't see anyone. And I won't have even the tiniest niggle of worry about it.
Because everyone else will be down the pub. Including, no doubt, my gnomes .
I decided to get back on track with WW Online five days ago. But I haven't stuck to my Points on a single day since. In fact, I would say I have gone spectacularly over my Points.
Now, there are mitigating circumstances, and I shall duly credit myself with those. My parents have been visiting, so I have been cooking a lot and we have been out for two meals. Also, although I haven't stuck to Points, I haven't binged as such - I haven't thought 'oh well, I've blown it,' and eaten four portions of everything.
But when a day involves cheese for breakfast, a pub lunch of goat's cheese salad, garlic bread and your husband's fries, a snack of chocolates and cheese and a dinner of seafood pasta, chocolate cake and ice cream, you should be worried.
Last night, when my parents had left for home after another pub lunch, I ate a supper of soup and a roll. An hour or two later, I was still hungry. I went into the kitchen to grab a pear and found myself putting on the pan for some pasta, which I ate topped with a generous serving of grated cheese.
I reckon there were about 900 calories in that. It took 10 minutes to cook. 10 minutes during which I had many, many opportunities to change my mind - even had the desire to - but blocked all of it out. It took about five minutes to eat, and I didn't enjoy any of it.
My desire for instant gratification is huge and powerful. It was 9.30 when I made the pasta. I went to bed at 11. The hours I was asleep don't really count, so what I realised even at the time was that I was choosing a small amount of gratification now over the immense pleasure I could feel basically an hour and a half later when I stepped on the scales.
But I still ate it.
To make matters worse, on some level I actually expected to wake up this morning and have lost weight. Errr...how exactly?
It's like when I was a kid and I used to pray my hair would grow ten inches overnight. Or my late homework would miraculously have been done for me and left in a neat pile on my desk.
Except now, I am an adult. I have, as they say, put away childish things. At least in theory.
As an adult, I should be aware that if I don't change my behaviour, my weight is never going to change. Well something has gone wrong, because while technically I know this...somehow at the same time I still don't quite get it.
Alright, so that's not a glowing endorsement, but I bet it's as good as most people could do.
Generally, everything is in the right place. My job is OK. My home life is OK (except for hubby, J, - he's great). And I look OK.
I'm no supermodel, but I scrub up pretty well. Like everyone, I have good points and bad. I'd like to be smaller, but I do look slim-ish. I'm pretty, albeit in an old-fashioned, curvy way. I have a tummy and my bum is too round. But I have big boobs and a nice shape.
Overall, I am pretty happy with my life. Which means it disturbs me when something comes along to upset the balance. And lately there have been some pretty strange things going on chez Rach.
I have been having Issues with my neighbours. They have always been noisy. And their dog annoys me. Cute, but she barks all the time. She harasses my cats - not just from her garden. She will run all the way under the fence and into my house. And if she comes into my garden while I am out, the neighbour comes round to get her.
The fence belongs to the neighbours, so legally I can't mess with it so the dog can't get in. So I should just talk to them. But the trouble is, I am really bad at confrontation. I would rather bury my head in the sand and hope the trouble goes away. If it doesn't, I tend to live with it (while complaining protractedly and energetically to my husband).
My other issue with my neighbour is a weird one. THE WOMAN HAS STARTED HANGING HER CLOTHES ON MY LINE! Yep, you heard me right. Not content with invading my space to collect her precious delinquent of a dog, yesterday, when I looked out of the window, I saw this woman's jeans on my line. And I am not one to judge (please don't hate me), but they were huge! She is a very large woman, you see. I only have a short washing line, and quite frankly, the gigantic arse of her jeans was taking up most of it.
I can't believe I still didn't do anything. I just don't like to make a fuss.
Until last night.
When my crazy neighbour stole my trousers.
Yep. She was wearing my pants.
She must have sneaked into my house somehow.
Yesterday evening, I was sitting on my couch, happily tucking into my dessert, and without warning I glanced up and saw it. My neighbour's round, hard, buttery thigh dressed in my nice midnight blue velvet track pants. Stretching them.
As you can imagine, it was a bit of a shock.
Particularly since my neighbour actually didn't seem to be around.
Yep, this Huge Random Thigh, this UFA (Unidentified Fat Appendage) appeared to be attached...to me.
I panicked. You would have, too. Who the hell did that leg belong to? 'J, J!' I yelled. 'Look at this!'
J looked round from the computer, only mildly interested.
'Yeah. It's a leg.'
'It's disgusting. How the hell did it get here?'
J rolled his eyes. 'It's a lovely, lovely leg. You have lovely legs.'
I sat there in shock. It was not a lovely leg. And I'm sorry, but it bloody well wasn't mine. It was...I swear...my neighbour's leg. A Fat Person's leg. The leg of someone who has Let Themselves Go. The sort of person who is badly out of control. The sort of person I feel sorry for in the supermarket.
No. Nope. Not me. Not my leg.
I pushed it out of my mind and went back to my chocolate ice cream and The Office. But I couldn't quite forget. Because it was my leg, wasn't it? No, no, please no!
Did my leg really look like that? I had no idea. So I did what I always do when I want an honest picture of how I look.
I sat down for some Facebook Therapy. I cannot recommend this highly enough. It is effective, and free. What you do is click on the 'pictures of you' section. Skip past the ones you put there yourself. You know the lights/camera angle/good fairies are making you look misleadingly good. That's why you put them there. Click on the other ones, the ones other people put up.
God, there were hundreds of them. There was my belly, hanging over my too-tight waistband, there were my three chins wobbling as I grinned like a loon, there were my huge boobs swinging pendulously, my beloved lacy bra (already a G cup) obviously totally inadequate. And, yep, there were the legs. Fat Lady legs, attached to me.
My reaction was immediate and violent. I was sweating, my heart was pounding. It couldn't be. Not again.
I mean, being ridiculously overweight once can be explained as a temporary blip. Twice is starting to look...well...just a little careless. And like I just plain am a Fat Person.
I pulled the plug on the computer and ran upstairs. I had to put some distance between me and those pictures, between me and the fat girl.
A cup of tea, a chapter of a trashy novel and a good long look in the mirror later, I was feeling a little better. Those were just bad photos - I didn't look that bad in real life. Alright, so maybe I wasn't as slim as I had thought, but I looked...OK. My pants were size 12.
I went downstairs to seal my improved mood with some more ice cream.
But I couldn't eat it. It was cloying. Because...I was just kidding myself, wasn't I? 5ft 6 and 190 pounds wasn't 'slim-but-curvy', was it?
It was obese.
And what about those size 18 pants I bought the other day 'to tide me over'? The ones that were taking up all that space on my washing line (sorry, neighbour).
I had to try to get my head round it. It was simply not possible that the picture of myself I had in my head tallied with how I actually looked.
In my head, I look like I did at 20, with a couple of minor wrinkles.
In real life, I look like I did at 20, with a couple of minor wrinkles and 60 extra pounds.
When I look in the mirror, I focus on my eyes, my mouth - not my three chins. I unconsciously stand up straighter, pull my tummy in. I look at my nice hair, my nice clothes. So many distractions.
In shops, I consistently pick out shirts I think are right, and am then surprised when I can't get one arm into them.
I almost laugh when I look at my pants. They look like you could fit two of me in them...yet somehow when I put them on they still feel tight.
Except in my dreams - where Fat Rachel is a regular star - I rarely see a true picture of how I look. And when I do, I block it out. Like I said, I am not good at confronting things. I won't accept all those surprising glimpses - a fat thigh when I relax on the couch, a wobbly arm when I brush my hair, swollen feet when I sit on the toilet.
I will look at my thigh, try really to see it - but my mind just seems to slide over it. I can't take it in.
I just don't feel fat inside. I am the same person I always was - so why does everyone, including myself, treat me so differently?
That is a subject for another blog. But for now I say, enough. My lack of ability to face problems is hurting me. It is stopping me asking my neighbour to keep her dog in her own yard. And it is stopping me taking charge of my own (rapidly expanding) waistline.
I am not going to allow myself to deny the reality of the situation one day longer.
Pretty long blog to tell you all I am sticking a fat photo on the fridge, eh?
So I just spent almost an hour writing one of my mammoth blogs, only to be told it is too long. So I cut it in half. It is still too long.
Now, I write long blogs. It has never been a problem before.
I like writing them, and I figure I have to stick to word limits in my 'real job', so here I shall write what I like. If they are too long for people, no one has to read them.
So now I am frustrated. Anyone know how long the blog is allowed to be? Because I may have to find another site!
And, unless I want to split it into six sections - and I don't - you will have to do without my latest offering ; )
A tricky conundrum. One which many of us have obviously not been able to crack.
Now, I am no scientist. Extensive personal experience aside, my knowledge comes from 15 years of reading Cosmo, supplemented by a 10-minute trawl through an online textbook .
That said, the way I see it, there are two main ways people know when to stop eating:
1. When they feel full
This is how those fabled 'naturally slim people' know when to stop eating. Presumably, anyway. I wouldn't know .
Bit of a no-brainer, in theory. You feel hungry. You eat. You feel full. You stop.
Obviously there are brain signals and hormones and whatnot involved. Somehow. (I didn't read that bit). There are complications I shall go into later. But, in general, it seems to work pretty well for a lot of people.
2. When they reach a pre-set limit
However, most dieters have scrapped the hungry/full part of the eating equation. Instead, they usually choose to set their own limits on what they will and will not eat. For example, a dieter might set a daily consumption limit of 1500 calories.
From then on, hunger doesn't play much of a role in their eating. They wake up in the morning, thrilled to have a full complement of calories to play with. They eat them when they like, whether or not their stomach is growling. When they reach 1500 calories, they stop, whether or not they are still hungry.
***
Now, no one is born counting calories. So how on earth have so many people moved from eating according to hunger to eating according to a diet plan?
Well, here's how it happened to me:
It is 5 or 6 pm on an evening in late August. I am 11 years old. Preparing for the new school year, I am trying on my uniforms.
Me: Mum, my skirt's too small.
Mum: I'm not surprised, the amount you've eaten this summer.
Me: What?
Mum: All the snacks. It's got to stop, or you'll be huge.
Later the same evening. I sit at the kitchen table, under the light, studying my reflection in the dark window. I pinch repeatedly and frantically at the skin under my chin. For the first time in my life, I feel fat. Huge. Gross. I resolve to cut out all biscuits and crisps.
Bam! There you go! From eating when I felt like it, to restricting my intake, in one surprisingly quick and simple step.
I'm sure we all have our own stories. The important thing is, it doesn't really matter whether we control our eating using hunger or a diet plan, does it? The end result will be the same. In fact, for losing weight, dieting's actually got to be better, right?
Well, no. Because restricting our food intake doesn't seem to work that well with the way humans think.
All human beings are sometimes going to overeat. Even naturally slim people occasionally eat for comfort or simply for enjoyment. A friend might cook us a three-course meal. We might forget something we ate earlier in the day.
So what happens when we overeat?
If we tend to regulate our eating using hunger, we just feel really, really full. We unbutton our trousers. We make a mental note that two chocolate brownies is one too many.
But if we tend to control our eating using a diet plan, the response is different.
We keep eating.
Once we have passed our chosen calorie limit, we just keep going and going, often until we are painfully full.
Why? Because with our usual food limit obsolete, we don't know when to stop. As dieters, eating has stopped being about fuelling the body and started being about how we look. We aren't used to recognising feelings of fullness, let alone using them as a reason to stop eating - we stop eating only because we don't want to be fat.
We tend to think if we have exceeded our set food limit, we have 'failed'. We are going to put on weight anyway, so we may as well keep eating. We find it difficult to grasp the idea that one extra brownie won't make as much difference as a plateful.
Our self-imposed eating restrictions have left us feeling deprived - after all, the natural human drive is to eat - so we want to eat lots to make up for it. And, somehow, overeating makes us feel better about...overeating.
This brings us back to something we have all been told many times.
Yep. Dieting can make you fat.
That August night when I tried on my school uniform, I wasn't fat. If anything, I was slightly underweight.
Who is to say if my mum was right? Perhaps I would have become overweight if I kept eating so many snacks. No one knows. What is clear, though, is that trying to restrict food intake can lead to disordered eating.
Scientists have found the response of extreme overeating when a diet is 'broken' occurs almost universally. It doesn't happen because there is something 'wrong' with overweight people. Studies have shown the response even in test subjects who are not overweight and have never previously dieted.
More studies have revealed dieting is intrinsically linked to the development of eating disorders. In those - rapidly disappearing - areas of the world where beauty isn't strongly associated with thinness, people don't go on diets. In those areas, eating disorders as we know them simply do not exist. Period. I am not just talking about anorexia, bulimia. I am talking about plain, old-fashioned comfort binges, too.
Clearly dieting can be very bad for us. So this brings us to the question...how do we go back from unhelpful food restriction to controlling food intake using normal hunger signals?
I hope you aren't expecting a good answer here. Because for those of us who are firmly stuck in the dieting cycle, it is easier said than done. I am sure we have all tried it. Fed up with the failure of so many 'new starts', we throw up our hands. 'Humans weren't meant to diet,' we cry. 'From now on, I'm just going to eat when I'm hungry.'
Sounds great, doesn't it? And it all goes OK. Until lunchtime. Then the worry sets in. Did we eat too much? Or maybe too little? What did our co-workers eat? Cakes? That can't be right.
We get so stressed we eat two cakes. But it's OK. We remind ourselves two cakes is not as much as a plateful. And we keep going. Maybe even for a few days. But then? Binge City.
The sudden change is too much. We don't know how much we should be eating. We don't understand when we are hungry or full - guilt, deprivation and long habit have muddied the waters. We are worried weight loss will be non-existent, or just too slow.
And without our familiar restrictions in place, we just can't stop eating.
So what do we do?
As dieters, we are rigid, all-or-nothing, perfectionistic. And that just doesn't fit with the world we live in - or our natural state as human beings.
So perhaps, to meet our goals, we need to move, slowly, towards a different approach.
Whether we choose to manage our eating using a diet plan, our hunger cues, or something in between, we can all take small steps towards being more realistic, willing to compromise and flexible. Towards making decisions about what we will eat from hour to hour, not weeks in advance. These are the things that will help us make rational decisions about food.
It will take a long time, but hopefully in the end we can all learn to see food as fuel, to be topped up according to our bodies' signals - and, occasionally, just because our friend bought cake. We can learn to be less focused on our weights and more on our lifestyles. We can learn to make eating less prescriptive and more instinctive.
In short, we can learn to eat like we were meant to.
Well, I stuck with it yesterday. I almost didn't. After dinner, I became ridiculously obsessed with the thought of Nigella's chocolate brownies, to the extent I nearly went to the store at 9pm and bought the stuff to make them.
I was able to remind myself that I don't want to feel the way it would have made me feel.
Normally, that would mean I would wake up the next morning feeling bright, well and hopeful.
I don't. I just feel like it is such a long haul. I have no confidence about it.
Maybe that is a good thing, it might keep me on my toes.
I am planning a longer blog later but I will leave you for now with this fact I found out yesterday:
American people spend way, way more each year on diet books/pills/exercise videos etc than the US government spends on education, employment and social services put together.
Ugh. I am so fed up. Sick and tired of weight and life. Well, they so often go together, don't they?
I have now gained 15 pounds - more than a stone - back. That's a third of my weight loss gone. I am starting to question what kind of motivation I really need to do this.
I have heard American Olympic competitors get $1 million from the government for a gold medal. Perhaps it's an urban myth, I don't know. But what I do know is that if someone came to me and said, 'Aha! Rachel! If you lose those 47lb in the next six months, I will give you the cool sum of one meeeeeeeellion dollars', I would be off the couch and onto the treadmill faster than you could say 'Run, b1tch, run!'.
Anyone want to offer?
No matter what psychological problems I have around food, and goodness knows there are a lot of them, the fact remains that if someone offered me cold, hard cash to lose my weight, I would do it. So there is a question of motivation there, as well as ability.
You know what my so-called best friend said to me this weekend? She said, 'Look, Rachel, you need to be realistic here. You have to accept you are probably always going to be overweight.It's not that bad. Everyone has a vice. We need them to help us through.Some people drink, smoke, shop, gamble, whatever.Your vice is food.
Look at your mum. She has yo-yoed all her life - and not just a little. No, she has gained and lost huge amounts of weight. You grew up with those habits. You grew up eating about twice the amount you should be, you grew up learning food = happiness, you grew up learning food was all-or-nothing.
So food was destined to be your vice. It is always going to be.It's not that bad. Plenty of people are overweight, and happy. You just have to reset your standards. Make the rest of your life good, and accept you can't control what you eat.'
Seriously, what do you say to a 'friend' like that?
Sod off, probably.
But the problem is, I can't do that. Because the person saying all those things? Me.
My little inner voice. The one that is supposed to be on my side. Is it right? Is it really trying to help me? I don't know.
I am sitting here picturing that future. And, sure, it would probably be OK. The trouble is, I don't want it.I want to give being slim another shot. And I know it is complicated, I know weight and the rest of my life are intricately tangled together - and, frankly, are in a mess - I know my perfectionistic nature gets in my way, and I know the more I want to lose weight, the more I eat.
I know I have tried every way of dieting, tried not dieting, tried a year and a half of therapy. I know I have extremely advanced binge eating disorder. I know, statistically, I don't have a chance in hell of losing weight and keeping it off.
I know when I say 'I am going to do this' it means nothing. I know I am about the most unmotivated I have ever been.
But there are also a few other things I know.
I know the way I eat is a recipe for sickness. I know it makes me completely and utterly miserable.
I know the more off track I go, the harder it is for my husband to stick to his own health plan. Not to mention the effect it might have on his career. What will clients think of a personal trainer who couldn't even get his wife in shape?
Basically, I know I just plain do not want to be one of the 95 per cent of people who regain all their weight.I mean, wow, just the thought of all that work I did on my thoughts and habits being for nothing at all.
I know I am never going to be perfect. But it would give me a big boost to say 'Look, I set a goal, and I struggled, but I reached it - because I wanted to, so I refused to give up'.
I know I cannot with any confidence say what the outcome of this will be. I know I probably shouldn't start another diet plan, because they never work. But I cannot go without a diet plan at the moment. So I am just going back to the only thing that has worked for me up till now:
2000 cals per day, making up any calories I go over by the next day. No bingeing even if I accidentally overeat. No starving myself because it is 'essential' I lose the weight I have regained before seeing any of my friends.
No sugar, alcohol or caffeine.
Half an hour of moderate exercise every day. Maybe I'll train for an event.
If tempted to overeat, I have to wait 1 hour and then rethink.
No more 'one more day won't count'.
And most importantly -
Get back into therapy and stay there.
Keep working on separating my eating from the rest of my life - whether I feel 'successful' in one shouldn't have a major affect on the other
Will I stick to it? I don't know. I expect I will for the first few days. Then I forget, you see, how overeating makes me feel, and I only see the good side. The so-called good side, anyway. Because really, the only good thing about it is that I can stop worrying for a while - the way I see it - because the worst already happened. Which isn't a good side at all.
So it is back to trusting myself to make the best decision for me, at the time - which for me is always 'do not overeat'. Because it never makes things better - only much, much worse.
I need to sort my life out, too, particularly financially. If I want to do some of the things I want to do, I need a new job and I need it soon, and I need to curtail my spending. Who knows if I will do this or not? There won't be any major problems if I don't. Just more mediocrity, I guess.
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