I’m back

Good grief, it’s over 3 months since I last posted. Hopeless.

Not really sure what hapened, other than “more of the same” if you read my last few posts. I just got frustrated with myself, and kind of bored of saying the same thing.

Anyway, I am a little re-invigorated these last few weeks. Not made any great headway to speak of, BUT – and this is a first  – I haven’t put any weight back on since I stopped losing it. That’s a big plus for me, because I’ve been a lifelong yo-yoer, and that’s a bad thing as we all know.

I’ve entered the Yorkshire 3 peaks challenge on 20 June, and I’m going to give it a crack. I don’t really expect I’ll be able to finish it, but I’ll give it my best shot, under prepared as I am.

I haven’t been exactly binging (much) these last 3 months, but obviously eating much too much sugar or I would be losing weight rapidly, and I’m not. I am still eating more conciously than I used to, and having far less excessively-sized meals. I think that’s helped me hang on to my meagre improvement. I have beeen doing regular short walks too, and this last weekend made the most of the sunshine and headed for the hills in the Lake District. Probably did 15-20 hours of good solid hiking (including a lot of standing around gasping for breath, admittedly).  And you know what – it’s FUN. I urge anyone who’s never tried it to get themselves some good boots and get out there, it does you a power of good, above the neck as well as below.

Total weight loss this year now stands at 20lbs of which 17 was in January!. Not much really, when you have probably 140 to lose. But it’s a start, and I’m on the move again.

Off the bottom

Finally I have a positive update. Much better day today. Have avoided sugar and eating between meals completely. Can’t say it’s been easy, but it’s done. Walked to the station but forgot to change back into my bootd before leaving the office so had to get the bus home, which was disappointing as I was looking forward to the walk. But all in all, a very good day.

One thing I’ve re-focussed on today is eating only at the table.  I let that slide in January when I got confident, but I think it’s more important than I gave it credit for. It’s not so much the meal that you eat in front of the tv or wherever, as the overall idea that eating is an event – not something you should do while doing something else and not thinking about what you eat.

I must be near the bottom now

… because I don’t think I can go much lower.  Yesterday was the culmination of two weeks heading mostly down a slippery slope. We had a buffet and some friends round, and I can’t even remember what I ate but I know it included pretty much a whole Pavlova and a whole bunch of other sugary stuff. I slept 10 hours last night too – I hardly ever sleep more than 6. I think that’s the sugar. This morning my wife, bless her, took all the remaining cakes and biscuits with her in the car when she went out.  She even remembered the caramel squares from Thorntons, with their crystallised sugar which (like meringue) is pretty much crack cocaine for me. As those went in the bag I felt a little cry of anguish inside me, and almost stopped her from taking them.

It’s hard to believe that less than 3 weeks ago I felt in almost total control with food, was losing weight nice and steadily, and really looking forward to a summer where I’d be several stones lighter than last year. Now, hear I sit, back in my fatter jeans, like a pathetic washed up junkie. At least that’s how I felt last night and first thing this morning. I’m getting a bit more of a grip now. I don’t like being the person I was yesterday one bit. Today will just be hour by hour – I have to fight back somehow.

I still don’t understand me

It’s all a struggle at the moment, and I’m very frustrated. Bad habits that I’d stopped without any problem in January are back with a vengeance. Yesterday I ate a normal sensible breakfast (porridge/fruit/oj), a restrained and delicious business lunch – declining desert – and all was going well. Then I missed my train which created a potential derailment problem (for me, not the train) and decided to have dinner in McDonald’s while waiting for the next one. But still, I was restrained, sort of. After a battle with myself I avoided ordering anything sweet.  This, I thought, was a seminal moment and highly encouraging. And yet, just before I went to bed, I scoffed 4 mini sponge cakes, three hobnobs and a packet of crisps, in a matter of 5 minutes or so.

Why why why why why why why??? I can’t begin to understand this. I wasn’t hungry, wasn’t suffering any particular cravings, and was on my way to bed. There was no problem at all. And I got no noticeable pleasure from the food either. Maybe I was slightly frustrated with my day, maybe I was slightly annoyed by my self-destructive behavior in staying up so late again for no particularly good reason. But then again, maybe I’m over-analysing everything. Maybe I’m simply insane.  Sometimes I really think I might be, in a little way. I’m not dangerous if you meet me on the street or anything like that, and in most aspects of life I’m quite rational. I’m capable of supervising my children without losing or killing them, I even manage to run a business. But with food I actually seem to self-harm, just as much as a teenage girl who stabs herself repeatedly with scissors.

I don’t even have a theory, much less a conclusion. But I’m suffering from compulsive eating again this month when I thought it was a thing of the past. Today wasn’t too bad, but that’s mostly because there was nothing sweet in the house bar the last mini sponge cake and a dozen jelly beans, all of which I ate before lunch. Also had 3 bags of crisps and grazed at the children’s chips when it was their tea time (but not mine). So really no improvement in behavior, just less opportunity to misbehave.

Tomorrow’s another day. My goal for tomorrow is simple to walk to the station and pay attention to what I eat. I’m not even going to try and restrict it, because it won’t work in my present frame of mind, and nothing fails like failure.

Square 2:)

Goals achieved yesterday, and actually had a very good day food-wise, 3 sensible light meals and only sweet thing being a small shortbread slice at lunchtime.

No walk so far today and it’s nearly dark. There’s just toooooooo much good sport on TV.

Square 1

This week has gone from bad to worse. After letting go at the weekend, instead of picking up where I left of on Monday I’ve just slipped further and further back to my old ways. Yesterday, my diet consisted of a full english breakfast, a donner kebab and chips, 3 cadbury’s creme eggs, a crunchie, and a slice of coffe cake. In other words a big bucket of lard and sugar.  The only slight hint of any positive progress was that I didn’t (quite) finish everything at my two meals, but that really is clutching at straws.

I’m worried that I’ve now had three days of “fresh start” that has lapsed into complete failure. This is a familiar pattern from dieting days, and one I am desperate to avoid. So today’s goals are just

a) Have a proper breakfast, i.e porridge/fruit/OJ – tick

b) Walk to the station & back. Done the first half, and difficult to get out of the walk back now. No reason to either, the weather is fine & mild, and I’d rather walk than take a bus any day.

Not setting any other goals today. Tomorrow my goal is to have a decent walk, at least an hour, and eat slower & more conciously, and that’s it. I need to get some success chalked up.

Weekend away

This weekend we left the kids with my Mum and went away to a hotel. I knew this would be a big test of my reformed eating, and I failed with flying colours. In the end I decided to not worry about it as I had the sense I was just going to ruin the weekend without achieving anything if I did. So I decided to settle for using it as a learning experience.

What have I learned? A few things.

1. Hotel breakfast buffets and newspapers are a dangerous combination. The buffet encourages too much food on the plate, the paper stops me eating conciously. Reading the paper is part of the pleasure of being away – with young children and a busy work life I never get to do it at home. So my lesson is that I have to recognise I probably won’t eat as conciously as I should, and therefore concentrate on what goes on the plate in the first place. This is the reverse to my usual aim, which is not to worry about what goes on the plate as I try to eat conciously and stop when no longer hungry.

2. Drinking makes me eat more. Hardly a revelation I guess, but worth reminding myself of this one.

3. I’m not sure I really enjoy drinking all that much any more, beyond a glass or two of wine with a meal. Maybe I should knock it on the head, I don’t think I’d miss it much.

4. Set menus in chinese restaurants – probably most restaurants – result in a ridiculously large amount of food being served. I was full enough to stop after the starters, but ploughed on through two more courses because I didn’t want to ruin the night by being a misery.

5. Despite anticipating it and telling myself not to in advance, I still grazed the danish pastries while at the breakfast  buffet filling my plate. Pathetic. Must do much better.

6. England may actually be worse at cricket than I am at eating sensibly.

Let it snow

This week I have discovered a new form of excercise – shovelling snow. We have about 8-10 inches at the moment, and on Tuesday the kids stayed home and I got quite a bit of excercise building a snowman and an attempt at an igloo (not very successful). Then this morning I had to clear a path down the drive for my wife to do the school run, with a silly little shovel not designed for the purpose – that was hard work.

Walked to/from the station again today, and also had walks of over an hour on Sunday and Tuesday, so I’m having a good week for excercise already. Will probably walk to station at least once more this week, because it’s easier than digging my car up! Not quite so good for food, slipping back into snacking and deserts quite a bit and portion sizes may have crept up at the odd meal too. It hasn’t been terrible, but several biscuits a day kind of thing. One day was much worse – Monday I think. Today has been better. Been struggling to catch up with work all week and when I’m chasing my tail like this I can easily drift into a short term mode where nothing but surviving the day matters, and then I lose motivation. Also missed my proper breakfast Monday/Tuesday – that always mucks my day up. Porridge rocks!

I’ve been staring at red things a lot following my last hypnotherapy session, which are supposed to increase my motivation. Is it working? I don’t think so really. I’m also struggling with the hypnotherapy MP3 this week, have abandoned it part way twice because I just couldn’t get into it. Maybe it’s just got too repetitive, or maybe I’m just in the wrong frame of mind.

Ordered my Swingball on Ebay on Sunday, still waiting for it to show up. Not that I would get much use of it just now with all the snow, which doesn’t look like going any time soon.  But I still want to get my hands on it, it’s another positive step.

More Hypnotherapy

Wow, just got back from my hypnotherapy session, which today was quite an experience. We did much deeper hypnotherapy today, and it felt weird (in a good way). The best way I can describe it is when you feel semi-concious in the night while dreaming, and actually think you are awake until you realise you can’t move. I lost touch with my arms completely, thought they had gone totally numb, but they came back bar a slight tingle as soon as I was brought round.

The main purpose of the session today was to talk to the different “parts of me”  – the one that still wants to eat chocolate and the one that is working on changing my lifestyle and getting me fit. I had to give them names, which felt a bit silly, but once we’d got past that it seemed to flow naturally enough. So now we have (fat)  Fred the chocolate man, and (Slim) Jim the new lifesyle Guru, who have agreed to work in harmony to help me achieve my goals. Fred, apparently, is a well meaning but slightly misguided soul who just wants me to have a bit of fun to break up my long working days, and thus far has only been able to think of eating confectionary as a suitably short diversion. We have decided to try and find some other diversions instead, preferably onces where I can expend a bit of energy as  I get so fidgety sat at my desk all day long.

The main conclusion of the session is that I’m going to buy a swingball set for the garden. The good thing about having kids is that I can pretend it’s really for them so I won’t look like a complete nob. Then instead of going to the kitchen for a biscuit I can go outside and whack the ball round for a few minutes. I think this could help a bit, I have never grown out of the simple pleasure of hitting or throwing a ball, but I never get to do it as I am all grown up with responsibilities, and my kids can’t throw more than a few feet yet or catch anything other than colds. I may also buy a punchbag for when it’s raining, or when I’ve just spoken to someone from the public sector, or British Telecom.  Ideally I’d like a little home gym, but don’t really have the room. Don’t really want it cluttering my office, and the remainder of the house is full of childrens toys & clothes, and my wife’s shoes.

We also re-enforced all the messages we did at the last session. And a new thing that Wanda did was try and plant in my subconcious a message that every time I see the colour red it will increase my determination. Will be interesting to see if that works, though I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be aware of it if it does.

I’m very motivated at the moment, which I was even before the session today but even more so now. Feeling quite confident too. I’m starting to really believe that 2009 will be the year I change my life for he better. And not in a “I must believe it for it to work so I’m going to say I believe it” kind of way. I’m philosophical too. I know it’s very early days, and after 30 years of being out of control and more failed attempts to change than I could possible count, the form book clearly says I will still be fat in 12 months. But this time, I may just defy the odds. In fact there’s a thought. I’ve read about people putting bets on themselves to lose weight, I wonder if I could do that. It would be a great extra incentive:)

Making headway

Today was good. I’m fairly sure my staple breakfast is key to everything. When I have a good start the rest of the day falls into place more. Today I had three light meals, did allow myself a slice of cake after one and a mini ice cream after dinner, but haven’t eaten anything at all between meals. Had a walk to the local town and back too, and for the first time I actually strode back up the hill to my house with some purpose. I attacked it. It’s no longer a challenge simply to put one foot in front of the other and make it to the top, I’ve moved on a stage. I’ve taken an important step towards my fitness challenge, and it feels really good.

I also weighed myself  for the first time this year. I wasn’t planning on doing this but I needed some confirmation of my progress after a couple of not so great days. I’ve lost about 15lbs since mid December, probably almost all this month. My bad breath problem seems to be under control too, don’t know if it’s the mouthwash or whether it’s just cleared up by itself.

I have another hypnotherapy session tomorrow, which I’m looking forward to. It’s not midnight yet and I’m leaving my tax return and all the other stuff I should have done by now and prioritising looking after myself. I’ll get the return done online tomorrow with any luck, and if I don’t I’ll just pay the fine.  Sorting my health out is more important, so I’m going to bed, not a little elated. Life is good.