Add to it the plague of slugs and, even worse, huge swarms of wasps and there is definitely the feeling we have all stumbled, regrettably, into a low-budget horror movie. Or one of those 1970s films about the Old Testament, in which they all wear rather too much blusher (I'm not talking about the women).
We have had about 10 wasps from the swarms actually make it into our house each day.
Ok, so it may not sound all that apocalyptic to you...but you've never seen me around a wasp.
We haven't got along ever since I sat on one during an interview for school.
There is something somewhat...inappropriate? undignified?...about the woman in whose hands your entire academic future rests holding you while you sob unconsolably and swabbing at your bum cheek with antihistamine.
Luckily I was only five.
Since then, I have kept my contact with the little buggers to a bare minimum.
This approach offered the added bonus of being able to avoid camping trips.
I've heard they don't have showers there.
On this occasion, however, I didn't have much choice other than to face the wee monsters. I was extremely proud of myself that I managed to pull myself together and shoo them out of the house in a swift and efficient manner. As befits one who is an adult, now, and has others to consider (cats).
During the whole sorry affair there was only one minor screaming incident. Regrettably this occurred just as the postman walked up to the open window to pass me my bills. I think the fact I was still in my pyjamas only added to the picture.
Still, I have definitely made progress. I am thinking I am not afraid of wasps anymore.
Sadly, neither are my cats. They do not seem to associate playing with those lovely buzzy stripy things with the hissing and yowling that goes on for half an hour afterwards. 'Mummy,' they whine, 'Mummy, who is this horrid Invisible Man poking at us with needles?'
Yep. My kitties are a bit thick. But then, so am I. As my husband will attest.
A couple of weeks ago, one of my best friends from high school got married.
I would love to say I was anticipating the event with joy. It would suggest I am a normal, decent person and friend.
However, my real feelings were something more along the lines of dread, angst, panic, horror...
I am sure some of you know where I am coming from.
You receive an invitation to a long-awaited event. Yes, yes, it will represent the culmination of a close friend's happiness, but that isn't the point, really, is it?
The point is that it is going to be packed with people you haven't seen for the last five years, and to make it worse you will have to wear a dress.
So, it's safe to say I was not in the best of moods in the car on the way to the ceremony. Not least because we had spent a frantic morning trying to get the brakes on the car fixed in time actually to go.
Nothing like sitting around the car shop in a silk skirt that makes you look like a small green blimp. Whilst accidentally almost stealing someone's dog.
I won't go into that...but I will offer this one piece of advice: If you are fat, never wear a tulip skirt.
Ahem. Anyway.
Finally, the brakes were fixed, we were sitting in the car, rushing inexorably onwards, headed for our terrible fate.
At least we were dressed up for it.
I opened up the invitation, out of sheer boredom (OK, so maybe I am exaggerating the blind terror a little).
I had a read. Laughed at their middle names. Checked the details.
Ah.
Whoops.
I had got the wrong date. We were a week early.
OK. Now this is where I get a bit miffed. Because no one in the car would believe me. They just couldn't accept that even I could be that stupid. Ah, but they were wrong.
Once the invitation had been passed round, and general exclamations of incredulity shared, we turned around and headed back home. Everyone was pretty peed off. My Dad, who had spent his morning ferrying us from one appointment to the next, because of the car. My husband, who had driven the 250 miles to get us to the wedding in the first place. And was going to have to drive it again tomorrow. And the next week.
And me? Well, not exactly. Sure, I pretended to be annoyed. It was only polite. But inside? A secret, warm core of glee. Because I didn't have to go to the wedding...for another whole week.
A reprieve. A stay of execution.
And, what was more, I had had the lucky experience of, as it were, a flash of my future.
I knew how bad this wedding was going to make me feel. And now I could do something about it.
There was a lot I could do in a week. Lose half a stone...tone up my stomach...get rid of that sickly pallor from too much Domino's. Buy a top that didn't reveal three inches of bra.
And anyway, that was next week. I could spend this afternoon shopping/barbecuing/at the pub...anything, in fact, that didn't involve bad food/speeches/spending three hours talking to a complete stranger about current affairs, while he stared down my top.
In fact, everything was going to be great.
Fast-forward...same day, same place, a week later. I am sitting in the car, hair gleaming, makeup perfect, nice flat little tummy...
...yeah, right. I hadn't managed to lose weight in the six months preceding the wedding...so naturally I didn't do it in a week. No...I managed to find a friend's party to go to instead of the wedding. There was nice food. And vodka. So I thought 'well, one more day won't make a difference', and then I carried on from there.
I did manage to buy a new shirt. But, in general, my stupidity didn't actually get me very far. Having said that, I actually had a pretty good time at the wedding. My friend was so happy. The food was good. The bloke next to me didn't stare down my top.
Although given his general personality, I think that had more to do with my carefully positioned napkin than anything else.
And my husband loved all the driving.
When I got home, I was in buoyant mood. I thought the worst was over.
But I was wrong. Because, obviously, several hundred people had taken photos of all this.
And they were all over Facebook the next day. So even people who (blessedly) weren't there could witness my humiliation.
Weddings. Who needs 'em, really? Just pure, ritualised torture.
Ah well. It could be worse.
At least there is a full year before the next one.
So, I have noticed lately a lot of my blogs haven't been weight-related. Does anyone know of a good site where I could just do a regular blog, in addition to my blog here?
I know of several but it seems to be hit-and-miss whether you make friends on them, and the friendship element is what I like so much about EP. I'd be grateful for ideas .
On that note...here is another blog completely unrelated to weight issues .
I had to laugh the other day at the eejits in my home city of Birmingham.
For those of you in the US, that's Birmingham, England (our second largest city), not Birmingham, Alabama.
You could easily be forgiven for not knowing that.
But the same can't really be said for the leaders of Birmingham itself, can it?
This summer, Birmingham City Council learned the people of the city had met their recycling targets a full year early.
They wanted to let everyone know.
So they printed up 720,000 leaflets.
They posted one out to every household.
Well, naturally, some bright spark was going to notice.
Yep.
The picture on the front was of the wrong city.
Some whizz at the council had Googled himself up a lovely pic of Birmingham, AL.
To make things worse, the fools decided to try and cover it up.
By declaring the picture was just of a 'generic skyline meant to symbolise an urban area'.
Ahhhh. I see. It wasn't meant to be Birmingham - any Birmingham - at all.
Pure coincidence.
Hmm. That was going to fly.
I couldn't help but notice, though, there was one aspect of this story that was ignored by the press.
It is here, I feel, that the true idiocy lies.
Birmingham City Council decided to recognise city residents' hard work in recycling...by printing out three quarters of a million bits of paper .
I'll bet you have one. On paper, on your phone, in your head. Maybe all three at once.
It's good to have a list. It means you won't forget all those important things you have to do.
No, they will always be there, in black and white. Quietly menacing. Pricking at your conscience when you take a break. Swelling, multiplying throughout the day. And the week.
And the year, if you are anything like me.
Well, I am bound to change the filter in the vacuum cleaner sometime. Surely?
A To Do list can be a really useful tool to help us manage our lives. But sometimes it has the opposite effect. Our lists become a millstone around our necks. Life becomes one long series of chores, one after another after another. And the worst thing? We never, ever seem to get done. At the end of every day, we have always achieved a little - or a lot - less than we planned.
We start each day (against all experience) in hopeful mood. Today, today is going to be the day we get all those things done.
I won't bore you with the 20 million other things I could put on that list. You know what they are already.
And then we get to the end of the day. And we haven't done it. Again. We feel like Big Fat Failures.
But we are stuck. We don't know how to make ourselves...do better. So we go to bed miserable, and wake up the next morning stressed, and start the whole sorry rigmarole over again.
If we're this bad when we are trying to be organised, what on Earth would we be like without our lists?
But hang on just a minute. Isn't there something about all this goal-setting that is...well...a bit depressing? Go on. Take a look at your list. Is there any chance it's a bit...long? A good way to judge it is this - would you give it to your friend, as a model of how to spend her day?
For those of us who are of a perfectionistic bent (and so many of us here at EP are), a Too-Long To Do List can be a real problem. Instead of helping us get more organised, it can actually stop us achieving our goals. Here's how:
You get up. You look at your interminable list. You add a couple of things you remembered in the night. You worry you might have forgotten something.
You worry about the order you are going to do it in.
Eventually, you start doing the first few things.
And then you panic. You can't face it all.
You think you're lazy. But you're not. You're panicking because there is way too much stuff on that list to get done.
You aren't a machine. You're a human being. However much you want to, however necessary you find it, you are never going to be 100 - or even 70 - per cent efficient. Things are going to go wrong. And sometimes, you are going to blow off doing something just because you can. Or because you're stressed. In short, your To Do list is never going to get done. And that is really hard to accept. Because it is absolutely vital that those things get done, right?
Errr...well. Did you finish your list on any day in your life so far?
But you're still alive, right?
Let's think about our diets. So many of us have defined rules for how we are going to eat:
No more than 1500 calories. No soda. No bread when we eat out. 5 portions of fruit and veg a day.
But what happens when we break one of these rules? Say our slim friend wants to go for cake.
Do we brush ourselves down afterwards, say, 'no biggie' and carry on? Or do we get pizza for dinner because we 'blew it now anyway'?
Do we even get that far? Or do our rules stress us out so much that we call for the pizza just to shut up the voice in our heads yelling 'I can't do this'? After all, if we overeat, the worst will already have happened, so we can stop worrying for a bit.
And we can always start again tomorrow.
Now look at life without those rules: You go out for cake with your friend. That is a normal, social thing to do.
You go home. You don't plan to skip dinner. It doesn't matter that you had those extra calories - it is a rare enough event. You cook a normal, healthy dinner.
Maybe the next day you are up 0.2lb on the scale. But if you had the pizza? And ice cream? And wine? Maybe 2lb. And you'd feel really demotivated, too.
Lists of goals are great. They help us know where we want to go. But if you don't feel successful, it is worth considering the possibility that the problem lies with your lists, not with you.
If you are setting goals, they will work best if they are just small improvements on what you already do. Then when you meet them, you can try something new.
And always remember that rules are guidelines. They are there to work for you - not the other way around.
There are many self-help books available on how to make goal-setting work for you.
Reading them is number 472 on my To Do list.
But here is a different idea. Today, instead of a To Do list, why not try making a Done List?
Seriously. For one day, forget what you think you have to do and just live your life. Over the course of the day, jot down everything you actually do. It can be quite liberating. Even if you think you've achieved 'nothing', you can look back and see that you actually did quite a lot.
Strangely, making a Done list might even help you become more productive. It is easier to start something when you don't have the pressure of the next 100 tasks building up behind it. You know you can stop at any time - which can actually make you less likely to do so.
And I'll bet you won't forget any of the really important stuff, either.
You can decide what you want to do with your day - rather than feeling pressured by time.
You can feel proud every time you achieve something - rather than guilty because you didn't meet some impossible standard.
You can reclaim your leisure time for relaxation and enjoyment - rather than spending it worrying about what comes next.
Most importantly, you can start to re-evaluate how you measure your life and your achievements.
You can stop simply moving from one task to the next, and start living instead.
Dazzling sunshine, blue skies, lush greenery, golden beaches.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, just to let you know, here in Cornwall, it has been raining for the past five weeks. Yep. Every. Single. Day. And pretty much all day, too. Whoever told me it can't rain in one place for more than four hours...you were wrong .
It's not just your normal rain either, oh no. It's torrential, tropical-downpour-type rain. I have just finished pulling up all the plants in my garden which have rotted from the ground up.
So this year, along with the rest of the British population, I expect, we are having to get our summer in different ways. Fake ways.
Eating summer veg from the farm shop, looking at holiday brochures for next year, reading gardening books to get some ideas for when we can finally get out there.
It's working. It's making me feel surprisingly close to nature. And I am hoping this explains some worrying developments in my psyche. Or maybe I'm just going mad. Either way, there is only one way to describe my general air at the moment.
Tree-huggy.
Yes, along with everyone else, I am being swept along on a tide of enthusiasm for all things environmental.
In Britain, the obsession began last New Year. The government obviously decided it couldn't go on ignoring the Greenhouse Effect any longer. Just like all the scientists had been telling them for the last 20 years, it was causing problems.
Not least the rain.
I spent the first few months of 2008 ignoring it all, feeling vaguely superior. Who were all these people suddenly reusing their carrier bags? Bit late, wasn't it? I had cared about the environment since, like, forever.
But after some thought, I had to ask myself exactly what I had actively done to help the planet in the 14 years since the school 'Environmental Club' I started in Year 9 folded due to lack of interest (I was the only subscriber). Why wasn't I reusing my toilet roll/wearing hemp/erecting a mini wind turbine on my shed?
I had to assume it was because I didn't really care, anymore. I had become depressingly middle class.
I mean, I recycle, but these days...it just seems like that's not enough.
So then I felt guilty. But not quite guilty enough to do anything. No, all I needed was to assuage the guilt by coming up with something - anything - I already did to help the planet. Then it would all be OK.
I knew where to start looking. Yep. Food. I am good at that.
I quickly found my niche, settling on one of the environmental buzz areas of 2008. 'Seasonal eating.'
The idea of basing your diet on locally-produced, seasonal foods.
Lately, everyone has been spending a lot more time thinking about what goes into their mouths and how they choose it. And seasonal eating is a part of that. It is great. It lets people link up their new-found concern for the environment with their other obsession of the past few years...health.
Here is the basic principle: Who wants to be responsible for however many billion tonnes of CO2 are released by the plane importing your baby sweetcorn from Thailand in the winter? You'd have to recycle a lot of loo roll tubes to make up for that.
No, it's so much better to eschew Sainsbury's (and other evil corporate giants) in favour of a quick trip down to the local farmers' market, where you can grab yourself some lovely organic...cabbages. (It's always cabbages.)
It's healthy, it's politically correct, you can have a nice walk there and back...and you get to feel all self-righteous at the same time.
In case you hadn't noticed, it seems I am still feeling rather superior. I have to admit, I sit at my desk and laugh at all the simple souls heading off to the farm down the road to buy some overpriced beetroot or something.
Bah, I say. Bah! Fly-by-nights, the lot of 'em! Seasonal eating? I've been doing that for years.
Seriously, I may be woefully inadequate on many environmental playing fields, but this is one arena in which I really shine.
I always, but always, plan my meals around what food is in season.
In summer, in Cornwall, despite the weather, there is a glut of local produce available. And I always polish my halo and make the most of it.
To that end, last week I had four ice creams, a cream tea, five beers (they always taste better in the pub garden), fish and chips, three Pimms(es?), strawberries and cream and a barbecue.
Yep, seasonal eating. It's great.
OK, so my way of doing it might not be exactly orthodox (the cod and chips certainly doesn't come recommended by Greenpeace), but it has definite advantages.
Less cabbage, for one.
In fact, I plan to carry on my campaign in earnest for the rest of the year.
Autumn - delicious hot puddings, hot chocolate, Halloween candy, Bonfire night toffee apples, baked potatoes and maybe some candy floss.
Winter...well, where to begin? Thanksgiving dinner, at least two weeks of Christmas treats, New Year's feasts and Valentine's chocs.
Spring will bring hot cross buns, Simnel cake, Easter eggs, birthday chocs.
However. I am seeing a problem here.
Is this seasonal eating...or more seasonal cheating?
Because many of these foods aren't...exactly...healthy. And when does it stop?
All these celebrations make it so tempting to give up on 'the diet' for a while. After all, it isn't forever. But then it becomes so easy to make excuses - 'There's no point starting straight after Christmas. Wait till New Year's...Well, I know I've only been going to the gym for three weeks, but I'll just get Valentine's Day out of the way and then get back into it. I can always give chocolate up for Lent...Ok, so I ate all my Lent chocolate in one go at Easter...but never mind, summer is coming soon. All those salads...'
But as you can see from my week's menu above, summer can be pretty tough. And that doesn't include your summer holiday, which, in terms of food, doesn't even count, really, does it? Summer is actually about the worst time for many dieters. Well, excluding Christmas. But by then you're in your winter woolies, so you can ignore the weight gain...until the New Year parties roll around again, that is.
We kid ourselves the gorging is going to stop after just this one event...but it never does. And all this eating can make us feel really horrible and actually stop us enjoying the season. Add in all the other foods which regularly tempt us - takeout on a Friday night after a 'hard week' , anyone? - and it is no wonder so many of us struggle to make much weight loss progress through the year.
So we are back to the age-old dieters' dilemma - how to enjoy ourselves and still lose weight? Because no one wants to be the person who has no fun at the barbecue/the party/whatever.
And the answer, as I see it, is good for us and for the world we live in.
Yep. It's that other buzz word again. Moderation.
Don't deprive yourself. Have a small amount of the treaty stuff. Enjoy it...and move on.
So many of our seasonal treats can actually be tasty and good for you. Do delicious strawberries always have to be smothered in cream and ice cream? Do those just-picked corn cobs, bursting with juice and sweetness, really need to be drowned in butter? (Ok, maybe the answer to this one is yes, but you get the general idea).
In fact, this all sounds so fantastic I am going to sign up to that organic veg box scheme right now. I am sure it can't be that bad. Winter isn't just about cabbage. There's also kale, and curly kale, and kohl rabi and...yeah, it is just cabbage, isn't it?
But seriously, there are so many ways we can use our healthy local produce in new ways. We just have to be a bit creative.
We get the best of both worlds - enjoying the season and losing weight.
I can't remember whose blog I read this on...but it was a 'fill in the blanks' kind of exercise. The exercise told you what kind of word you were supposed to fill in...and you picked your own.
It was meant to make you feel all good and powerful, but it didn't do that for me, as you will see from my answers.
But what it did do was give me something to think about. It helped me identify feelings I need to work on.
So here is the sad truth:
If I woke up one morning suddenly adoring my body, the first thing I’d do is dress up and head out to a dance club with friends.
I’d allow myself to eat ________favorite indulgent food________ when I felt like it because I’d know that moderation,
not deprivation or overindulgence, is the healthiest way to go.I couldn't think of anything. I cannot imagine ever being able to control myself around indulgent foods.
I’d exercise to have fun and keep my body healthy, (rather than lose five more pounds, or to work off last night’s dessert, or this morning’s binge), so I’d stop _____dreaded exercise ending in "ing"______ and ______favorite heart-pumping activity______ instead. I actually like and hate running at the same time. Even if I were slim, I wouldn't give it up.
I’d finally be fearless enough to ______something you are afraid to do______, and I wouldn’t feel self-conscious or bad about it, and anyone who would look down on me is just a/an ___________insulting name____________ anyway. Couldn't think of anything.
When I get home, a romp between the sheets would be __________glowing adjective__________ because I wouldn’t be bashful about ripping off my clothes. Hell, I bet it would be better than that scene in ___steamiest movie you've ever seen__. Actually, I bet it would be pretty crap and I would go and cry afterwards, like I always do, because I have always hated the way I look, fat or thin. And my boobs are disgusting.
This is where I gave up : )
Can you ladies tell it's that time of the month again?
Yesterday went well, I kept with the detox despite an unfortunate craving for some tiffin bars .
I enjoyed it and already look and feel much better today, plus a lot of the bloat is gone on the scales - 2.25lb.
I do feel a little fuzzy from the sugar withdrawal, with a slight headache. It is not as bad as the migraines and exhaustion I had the other times I quit sugar! I barely eat it now so I think that helps. It is more that I am not doing well at making decisions, everything just feels a little dreamlike.
I also did the other things on yesterday's to-do list as much as it turned out they could be done.
Anyway, I am off away for the weekend for a wedding so will be back on Monday. I have a vast amount to do in the four hours before we leave, but I am not really motivated to do it. I guess we shall see!
Have a happy, healthy weekend - set some little goals and stick with it.
There are only so many times you can make and break promises to yourself before you have absolutely zero trust in yourself. And that means misery, self-hatred, and no hope at all.
If we make promises to ourselves, we need to work a little bit harder at keeping them - by at least taking baby steps towards carrying out our plans and achieving our goals.
I have been doing this for the last 14 months and I have come so, so far.
But lately, I have been breaking a lot of the promises I have made to myself.
And the result?
To make myself feel better, I have tried to redress the situation by making more and more extravagant promises.
And that won't work.
Because if we are going to keep most of our promises to ourselves, we have to be very, very careful about the promises we actually make.
We owe it to ourselves to take careful consideration of exactly what we will and will not expect of ourselves.
Example - at some point, I am sure almost all of us have sat down at the weekend and made a shopping list, with meals carefully planned out for the whole week. This week, we assure ourselves, we are going to make up for all those ready meals we used over the last seven days. This week, we are going to be a domestic goddess.
It all feels really good at the time. Really hopeful.
But when we get to Tuesday night, we are already completely knackered from two days at the office or taking care of our home and family.
Suddenly, creating bruschetta/Delia's roast veg lasagne/homemade muffins from scratch doesn't seem like such a manageable prospect after all.
We try to persuade ourselves to have a go, but in the end we throw up our hands, switch on the soaps and dial for a pizza.
Which, on the scale of dietary/financial/goddessy transgressions, is a lot worse than a microwave chicken tikka.
And then we feel we have failed.
But we can't bear to think about that. So we immediately make all these plans to do even better next Tuesday...we'll gather up our willpower, and make that meal, and maybe even sort out the spare room cupboard as well.
But perhaps what we should be doing is having a good hard think about what has happened, instead of pretending it didn't happen at all. We could learn from this experience and accept we are not a failure, we are just human beings with reasonable limits. Next Tuesday night, maybe we'd be better planning a jacket potato and salad.
Of course, we don't do it. So we end up dialling the takeaway every Tuesday for the next year.
The same sort of sorry story often applies to dieting. If we can't stick with 1500 calories one day, why on earth do we plan to eat 1000 the next day to make up for it?
We won't do it. We will be miserable.
We will end up saying 'I'll start tomorrow' for the 365th time next New Year's Eve.
We will really mean it, but that doesn't mean anything.
It is crazy.
Imagine the things you might say - probably have said - to a friend who is caught up in this kind of cycle. We would not want them to be so hard on themselves. We would know they were setting themselves up for failure.
So why do we set different standards for the most important person in our world - ourselves?
Ahem. Anyway.
This is a week to take control and start keeping a few promises. Because what is the alternative? Seriously. Think about it. Where will we be in a year?
I am making some promises to myself today for the next week.
I won't get it perfect. I won't meet all of the goals I set myself. I hate that, and it scares me, but I might as well admit it now and get it out of the way.
Perfect is not a part of this world. It is never, ever going to be a part of us. Even if we meet our goals, we won't be satisfied. We will think of new goals.
That constant drive for self-improvement is just part of being a human being. What we need to do is harness it for our own good, use it, but not allow it to control us.
Anyway. At the moment, calorie counting is not working very well for me. I am not enjoying feeling restricted in the amount of food I 'can' eat. And I obviously know I can eat more, because I do. I took the plunge and weighed in - have a look at my chart . I have regained 10.25 pounds and now have just over 3 stone (43 pounds) to lose.
So I am going on a detox - for one month from today, until August 30th.
This will sound worse than it is - this is actually how I used to eat for years, how I like to eat when I am not all sugared/caffeined/cheesed up.
So, for me, it isn't an unrealistic promise. It is a promise to set me free (cue soppy music and puking noises).
I can eat as much as I like from the following list of foods:
any vegetables except regular potatoes
any fruit
any beans and pulses
brown rice
oats
quinoa
other wholegrains that aren't wheat or bread
soy milk
soy yogurt (unflavoured)
fruit smoothies and juices I have made myself
dips like houmous and guacamole I have made myself
olive oil
vinegar
lemon juice
black pepper
herbs and spices
tomato paste
dried fruit
nuts
seeds
water
fruit and herbal teas
Yum. I am looking forward to this already. I am really looking forward to not having calorie limits so I just don't have to think about it.
It makes me laugh because if I had tried to promise myself this a year ago, it would not have been realistic. At that time, I was so addicted to sugar it was crazy. All I could promise myself was to go a day without it, and that was hell.
So I have come a long way!
I have also made a new budget today. One that is actually reasonable enough that I can stick to it and enjoy life. One that actually takes account of what money I have, not what money I want. (Yeah, by the way, that really doesn't work ).
I also want to apply for some jobs in NHS administration today (that's hospital admin for those who don't live in Britain).
I also want to book a haircut and eyebrow wax. I have a wedding to go to on Saturday and at the moment I look a bit like a yeti .
I do have a lot of other things I want to get under control. But that is enough for one day, I think! Whatever else happens, happens.
So, today, take good care of yourself, be kind with what you promise yourself, and work on being nice to yourself. Have a bath, watch a movie, heck, have a facial if you have more money/more time/less scary clothes on than me.
Someone just told me if I don't have the things I want in life, it is my own fault. She told me to 'TAKE CONTROL' of my life and go out and get the things I want.
Now, on some level, I know she is right. I don't keep my promises to myself a lot of the time.
But my first thought was 'Take control? I can't. I just can't do that.' Followed swiftly by 'It's not my fault, not really.'
I can make a great list of the things that make it so hard for me to 'take control'. My upbringing, my depression, my anxiety disorder, my perfectionism....I could go on and on.
So...what I have been trying to do is work on those things, bit by bit, to improve how I face the world. I have been doing that. It has been slow, but I have been doing it.
And now my friend has said to me I have a choice. I can start now, plan what I am going to do, and do it.
And I feel helpless when faced with that.
But I have had the same dreams for the last five years. And, though I would say hand on heart I have tried my hardest every single day, all I have seen over the last five years is those dreams recede further and further, so some of them are now impossible and it doesn't feel like I will ever achieve the rest.
So? Should I be able to 'take control'? Am I simply weak? Is it all my own fault? Am I way too easy on myself?
I got up this morning and was so frustrated with myself. In the first six months I was doing this, I lost 40 pounds.
But the next 8 months have been a different story. I now weigh the same as I did at the start of December. When I think about where I planned to be this summer, I want to weep. I am STILL feeling gross. I am STILL in the position of feeling embarrassed at parties/weddings/the beach.
Then I read this on Gwynn's blog:
I don't think there is some emotional reason that is causing me to not want to move past this weight range but I do think that I have learned exactly what it takes to maintain my current weight. I have grown comfortable with the way that I have been eating and in many ways I have grown comfortable with being a size 16. In order to make it to goal this is going to have to change!
Let me tell you, LOTS of little alarm bells started ringing as I read this!
Because this is how it is for me. I am maintaining my weight...this has been hard for me to realise, because I feel like I am overeating. And I am, I guess, because I am significantly overweight.
I also don't hate the way I look now to the extent I can't live with it. But at the same time, my weight still distresses and limits me and damages my health.
So I can actually be PROUD: because I have maintained the same weight for 8 months. I have never done that, I have always fluctuated wildly.
Plus...it probably means I don't have to be that strict to start losing again. Just some small changes...not perfection.
But thanks Gwynn for a sudden realisation and a kick up the backside!
An example...I am sitting writing this in 2-year-old jeans (wrong size) and a pretty summer shirt (bleach spills on the sleeves).
For me, this actually constitutes dressing up...I have a visitor coming round.
But if you stopped by unexpectedly (and please don't, it would only embarrass us both), nine times out of 10 I would be in a fetching mix-and-match selected from ketchup stained pyjama bottoms/oversized terry towelling pants/a Topshop vest circa 1996 (three sizes too small)/my hubbie's £3 Primark trackkie bottoms that shrunk in the dryer/his ancient dressing gown/one of various t-shirts he won at fun runs/one of his old work t-shirts (sexy mud brown with concrete stains).
Actually, make that 10 times out of 10.
Just to make sure you have this straight, these are not examples. No, these are pretty much all the options.
Looking at the provenance of most of this exquisite wardrobe, it is actually a wonder my poor husband has any clothes left. And that he hasn't left me, come to think of it.
In fact, these are all items he has judged and condemned as unfit to wear.
I do sometimes dress up. If I go to the store, I put on something slightly better.
Though I tend to keep my head down and pray I don't bump into anyone I know. I once had to hide behind the fish sticks to avoid my old boss.
My personal grooming also leaves a lot to be desired. I mean, I do all the basics. I am clean (mostly), I shave my legs, I cut my toenails.
But it has been a long time since I cracked open the nail polish.
Makeup tends to consist of a swipe of mascara before I go out.
And just don't ask what your bikini line looks like after you go at it with your husband's hair clippers.
I wouldn't recommend it.
And definitelydon't tell your husband.
I do make an attempt, sporadically.
I blow-dried my hair. On Valentine's Day.
When I went to my mum's, I took the opportunity to give all my clothes a spin in her Posh Washer. It was great...for the span of about two whole days I could actually make out the colour of my trousers under the cat hair.
It's not even that I don't possess any decent clothes.
I go shopping every so often and buy some lovely stuff. I wear it with pride for a few days, then it all somehow seems to sink to the bottom of the laundry basket where the posh knickers live.
After stewing there for a few months, it gets eaten by those gremlins that munch half the socks, and it's back to the pyjamas until the next shopping season.
Don't get me wrong. I don't want to look this way.
It is truly amazing how much I don't want to look this way.
I sit on the couch and watch the beautiful young things on the telly, and remember how I used to be one of them. I make plan after plan for a radical transformation. But it always comes to nothing.
Why, why, why? I ask myself.
There are several reasons. I shall compile a nifty little list:
1. The Chameleon Complex. People tend to adopt the clothing style that is most common where they live. It isn't conscious, always. But what you see on the street every day tends to be what you pick out to wear.
So when I lived in Leeds, I was a fashion queen.
But now I live in Cornwall. Fleeces, waterproof trousers and walking boots abound. And being covered in mud is completely normal. No one even looks at you strangely at work.
2. I am Intimidated By Fashion. The kids today don't wear the things we did. How do they put those outfits together? Where do they get the money? And why are they all so darned thin?
3. I Just Can't Be Bothered.
Doing anything well takes time.
And I am getting old.
I am more than happy to spend hours and hours trawling websites selling plants, or cushions, or Handy Little Gadgets You Never Knew You Needed. But these days, I simply cannot bring the same enthusiasm to clothes shopping or face masks.
4. I Am A Perfectionist. I don't have the cash to look like a movie star. So why bother? (Honestly, I truly believe this).
5. And this is the main reason...
I. AM. FAT.
Or should that be I Am My Mother's Daughter.
As many of you know, I grew up with a wonderful Mum...who happened to have a serious weight problem. She yoyo-dieted her way through my childhood - 100 pounds on, 100 pounds off - over and over again.
Whenever this happened, we could observe an odd phenomenon.
When Mum was slimmer, or losing weight, she looked fantastic. Really fantastic. She made a huge effort with clothes, hair and makeup. She is, today, by far the most glamorous and good-looking of all her friends.
But when she was overweight, it was a different story.
I can still remember some of her various 'oufits' - much like the ones I now wear round the house. Her bobbly gray trousers and oversized red and yellow t-shirts. Her ski sweatshirt. Her 'curtain trousers' (don't ask). Day in, day out, she wore the same things, not buying new until the old simply fell apart.
Her hair was unstyled except for the most upmarket of events.
Cosmetics bought for Christmas - or even free samples from those snotty makeup women - were always put carefully away, still wrapped, 'for a special occasion'. But they never came back out.
And as a little girl, I watched, and I learned.
And, eventually, faithfully, I adopted my mother's habits, right down to putting away my Christmas cosmetics and forgetting about them.
I, too was saving them for a special occasion. The best special occasion there was. The only special occasion, in fact, that I could imagine.
I was saving them for When I Lost Weight.
And I would bet my bottom dollar my mum was doing the same thing.
So why didn't I just get on and use the bloody sachet of Vosene out of Good Housekeeping?
At the time, I really didn't know. Saving those things was just something I did. But, goodness knows, blogging gives plenty of opportunity for a bit of self-awareness, and I know why now.
I wasn't using that stuff because I knew there was no point.
Why wear my Christmas makeup when I'd just spent the whole of December stuffing my face? A sparkly top and a bit of body cream wasn't going to disguise the great, big, ugly mess that was me.
Nothing was going to.
Because I Was Fat.
I Was Disgusting.
And, unlike all those lovely L'Oreal girls, I Was Simply Not Worth It.
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. What a horrible attitude. What a load of absolute b*******.
Hard to change, though. I am still struggling under those beliefs. I am working on it, one thing at a time. But I haven't got very far.
As you can probably tell from my wardrobe.
I can proudly say, however, that this year....drum roll please...I had used up every single little pot of Christmas cosmetics by March.
I am now working on the rest of my look.
Because, if I actually own a nice shirt, maybe I won't say no again the next time someone asks me on a night out.
Maybe I'll go out and feel a teensy, tiny bit closer to OK about myself.
And maybe, just maybe, I'll start to feel I actually have some semblance of a life, spare tyre or not.
My visitor isn't here yet. Who knows, before she arrives I might even slap on a bit of blusher.
Because I'm Worth It.
And, more importantly, I don't want her to think I died.
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