So you generally read my posts a day or so after I’ve written them, for a couple of reasons, Firstly I’m left with a horror – after it happened once – that I will sit down at my keyboard, flex my fingers and then completely fail to receive any words down the pipe from my head to my fingertips. Fortunately it hasn’t happened beyond that one time, and whilst I acknowledge that some posts are better than others, generally I can hit the 500 word quota I set myself without too much of a problem…I often canter into another of couple of hundred if I’m really in the mood to chat.
The second reason is that I like to reflect on what I’ve written…I am the queen of tweaks, a word here, a bit of punctuation there. Often I can’t quite put my finger on what it is that’s not right so I’ll pop the post back in the oven to bake for a little bit longer and then serve it to you the following day after I’m satisfied that it’s done as well as it’s ever going to be. Even an armchair psychologist could identify my in-your-face ‘be perfect’ driver eh? Yessir, that’s me all over.
So whilst the likelihood is that you’re reading this on Monday, or maybe even Tuesday, in my world right here right now, it’s Sunday morning. And I love Sunday mornings…pottering around the kitchen in PJs shadowed by Charlie the dog – ever hopeful of food – rather than the Monday to Friday up-shower-dress-out rush job. It’s the one morning in my week where I really think about what I fancy for breakfast, and have time to enjoy what I choose.
So, after careful thought I decided today I would have a small tin of tuna (3 points) mixed with some low fat soft cheese (2 points) sprinkled with Aromat and spread over a couple of salty crackers (2 points) with a cup of tea. It’s going well right up to the point where I take the crackers out of the little cellophane packet, and one of them is broken. When I say broken, I don’t just mean it’s in two pieces…two pieces I could manage. If whoever baked the cracker had put it in a mortar and pulverised it with a pestle before tipping it carefully into the packet made for two it would have struggled to be in more pieces than it was. The two-cracker packet was in fact one cracker and some big crumbs.
Food rage! It was the last packet in the box. My cheese and tuna combo was mixed and waiting in the dish ready to be spread carefully on two crackers. And I’m looking at one cracker and a pile of mush. How much do you hate it when that happens…? I ended up tipping the bits into the tuna and cheese mix and spreading the whole lot onto my one remaining cracker. Now I know that logically I’d eaten the same amount of food…except I hadn’t. I felt cheated. I felt like I’d had one cracker. The asshole’s opening gambit was to eat four, we’d agreed on two and now I’d ended up with one plus crumbs. This is not my happy face…
I have a friend who insists on eating broken food, you know she’ll even root through the cookie jar to find one with a corner knocked off. Her skinny girl theory is that she gets to eat the cookie but every missing corner is a few calories less and it all mounts up. My fat-girl wiring sees me lining up all the cookies so I can pick the biggest, or the one with someone else’s corner stuck to mine, so I can maximise the cookie experience but still say I’ve only had one.
Except I never do have just one, obviously. But that aside, comparing the two mindsets is a big fat clue in itself as to why she’s a skinny string bean and I’m not. If I’m going to think like a skinny girl, maybe I should lay off the corners too, right..?
Hello, Kid! Here i am with yet another delayed-action 2 cents’ worth. Like you said about writing … takes a couple of days. i read & laugh & sniffle, & generally let your words percolate.
An aside: the ‘comments’ sure do line up in the wake of several of your posts! Please, don’t ever feel like a piece was flat, just because 30 enthusiastic paragraphs didn’t explode out of us & crowd your beleaguered website.
You are conscientiously tapping out the regular instalments. It helps me every day, every week, as i do the work, adjust my attitude & focus, rejoicing in the wheels rolling along under me. No pressure!
How are you weathering the doldrums – inevitably coinciding with having the challenge of the past weeks safely negotiated, a 10+ hour flight, & the empty packet of vacation days. Our thoughts are going out to you.
Cheering, Fleury
Aw cheers Fleury…yes I’m grand thanks, I got over the return-from-holiday-blues fairly quickly. Being tipped headlong into a crazy busy work schedule helps, and writing to you guys every day helps too, it’s as much a joy for me as you I promise. I have to edit my word count or I’d send you all to sleep on a daily basis!
I usually keep a “bar” in my purse, you know, a candy-like healthy-ish protein bar. On occasion I have an emergency hunger crisis where I actually have to eat the bar that has been ferried about in my purse, floating in the midst of my hairbrush, wallet, baggie of medicine for every possibly malady, baggy of pads and tampons because I have lots of daughters who aren’t always prepared, and of course the usual coupons, receipts, hair clips, lists, paint samples, and loose change. And, when this bar is melty and stuck to the wrapper, I feel ripped off. Cheated. I still have to count those calories, so sometimes, shh, I lick off the wrapper. Anyhow, I know how you feel.:) And unlike you, I never edit anything, I just type it and hit the “post” button. If I think about anything too long, I will question it to death, and will never ever print anything I write.
Della
Ah you wrapper-licker you!! I’m so glad that’s not just me.. 🙂
Weirdly wired me would have taken the largest bits of the broken cracker and spread the mixture on them and topped those with crumbs, and then eaten the whole one and its mixture after so i would feel like i had a bunch of tiny, small crackers and one huge one.
And seeing the inner voice as a child and gaining its cooperation can work wonders. There’s a website about that here http://www.cluborganized.com/?utm_campaign=Web&utm_source=innerkiddies
The lady majors on getting organized, but also on losing weight, all while getting the help of that inner voice instead of fighting it. It’s interesting stuff.
Thanks for that Mimi!
Love this – I can totally relate – isn’t it interesting how differently skinny brains think? I don’t think I’ll ever be able to train my instincts to ‘skinny’ – but I can fight my ‘fat’ ones LOL
I’m celebrating today [without treats] as I’ve lost my first 5% on WW – yay me 🙂
Tracey I like that idea – did you have plateaus before you started doing it?
That’s fanTAStic Cherie, well done lovely lady…top achievement, I just did a little dance by way of celebration! x
Oh we need video LOL – thank you – I danced a little jib myself 🙂
I’m a great one for hoovering up the cracker crumbs and kidding myself that it’s not a full serving when in fact it’s probably a lot more. I know to be successful at this I have to be accountable for everything that goes in my mouth and that goes for crumbs too. LOVE aromat, the stuff of my childhood. I haven’t seen it on this side of the pond but will now go on a search!
oh it makes everything taste amazing…I eat a fair amount of that really uber low fat cream cheese, you know the stuff that looks like cream cheese and spreads like cream cheese but tastes like wallpaper paste? Aromat totally transforms it!
I was thinking again about you confronting your inner asshole and how well that is working for you, when I just remembered reading somewhere about someone with a very different but related method. They saw their whiney, cranky, annoying inner voice as a small child who needed love and attention and nurturing so that it wouldn’t be so demanding. It was the part of them that represented being scared and neglected. So her response was not to say “I hate you, shut the f*ck up”, but “What can I do to make you (ie me) feel safe and loved without giving in to unhealthy demands?”
Interesting, no?
It’s definitely an interesting perspective, and one that is fairly well documented I believe…I should maybe do a little research 🙂
I love this! This is the thought process. Thank you for writing what is in our heads. And I crack up when I think ‘ what the H is Aromat? from across the pond 🙂
Hello, thanks and welcome to the posse! Aromat is a really tasty seasoning, I’m a bit of an addict! It’s made by Knorr and I think you can get it over there..? D x
Exactly ‘what is in our heads’
But this NYer also wants to know what aromat is LOL
I hate broken crackers. I really do. To go through the trouble of making your lunch and then to have a broken cracker. That would send me on a tizzy. Every week or so, I try a new thing with my nutrition to keep my metabolism guessing. Today I ate high protein, low carb. Tomorrow and Tuesday I’ll go back to my normal eating. Wednesday I’ll try the high protein, low carb thing again. I don’t like to give my metabolism any kind of reliability so it doesn’t decide to stall. I don’t do well with low carb, which is why I can’t do it two days in a row (I get a brain fog and feel weak). But I do think my body weight responds well to low carb. So, if I were planning a cracker for one of my meals and it was broken, yeah…I’d be super mad.
It’s great when you find something that works for you…a food plan that is as individual as we all are is definitely the way forward 🙂