Monthly Archives: February 2018

How Doesn’t Matter, Right?

In the here & now

Well, it’s day four. And I’m as rough as toast, but that doesn’t take away the fact that it’s day four, not day one or two on a loop because it’s all gone tits up.

Day four, helped along by the Gods of Skinny who figured I might not be trusted to pull this off on my own, so they lobbed a tummy bug in my direction. I’ve been in bed for the last two days, in between wobbly yet often very swift visits to the bathroom. I’ll spare you the detail, and I’ll definitely survive, but I feel like all kinds of crap right now so please excuse the brevity of this post.

If I’d not had the enforced hiatus recently I would’ve just written a note to teacher and made my excuses but I wanted to check in, because I know you’re all out there willing me on, and it matters.

So, my update is that I haven’t eaten anything I shouldn’t have eaten. Which is fucking ironic when you consider that as we speak I have a very much accelerated window between shit going in one end and coming out of the other. Technically whatever I eat isn’t hanging around long enough for any calorific impact to take root and I could’ve gotten away with murder this week, but I haven’t even tried.

Anyhow. Squinting at this with words dancing all over the page isn’t helping, in fact it’s making my headache more pronounced than ever so please excuse me whilst I disappear back under the poorly blanket and focus on feeling smug about getting to day four.

It’s on…I’m just on the sub’s bench. I may try and write more tomorrow if I feel a bit brighter but for now I’m saying g’night 🙂

Day four…just sayin’…

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I Don’t Need To Know

In the here & now

So yesterday was spent in a flurry of activity, in a bid to keep so busy I didn’t have time to get all bent out of shape as the food fuckery screeched to an abrupt halt. I went to bed on Saturday evening having done that thing where I’d shovelled in as much food as humanly possible because the sky was obviously going to fall in on Sunday morning when I woke to my new regime. Yes, I’m raising my eyes to Heaven too.

First day out of the traps then. It was okay, as first days go. I didn’t wake to a sense of excitement and determination, but neither did I wake in a vile mood because the chewing had to stop. I just got on with it, without a fuss. I didn’t feel very well actually, so that helped. There were a few moments in the day where I thought I’ll just…but I didn’t just anything, and all things considered it wasn’t a bad day. I cooked a healthy dinner, and I didn’t snack.

I went to the supermarket and put things in my trolley that I had no desire to eat ’til I popped. Yes, such foods exist, like kale. I bought kale. That’s dedication right there, you’ve got to give me that. I don’t mind it, tossed in a little garlic infused olive oil, with pine nuts and goats cheese but since I can’t really eat any of those things in sufficient quantity to make it taste good, it simply tastes like old feet in a bag.

I’ve  set myself up for the week, I mean I’ve even chopped endless vegetables and sealed them in zippy bags so I can’t wheel out the ‘can’t be arsed when I get in from work’ card.

What I still haven’t done though, is been on the scale. I’ve been on a five week long binge and I’m just not ready for the news it’s going to deliver, you know? This very fragile ceasefire between the part of me that wants to eat all the right things in the right quantities and the part of me that wants to eat whatever the fuck I want might take too big of a hit if my world is rocked by a number bomb. I’m not risking it.

One of my closest friends was empathising with me last week as I talked about pulling myself out of this hole, because she’s put half a stone on in the last six months. I know it’s all relative, and that’s a lot for her, but as someone who could put half a stone on in a fucking afternoon I don’t even need to see the number. I feel bloated, sluggish and unfit. I haven’t gone all the way back to ground zero but I would have got there in the next ten minutes if I hadn’t found a way to apply the brakes. So I know it’s going to be horrible.

The thing is, there are so many other measures that I can’t ignore, like the way my back is killing me, and my ankles go into meltdown when I’ve walked Charlie-dog around the block, the actual number means bugger all anyway. I’ll keep a watching brief on the ones I can’t get away from until the ceasefire is established and holding, then I’ll take the sucker-punch from a position of strength.

Until I feel ready, I don’t need to know. But I’m at least out of the traps…day two beckons 🙂

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And So It Continues…Just One More Day

In the here & now, ,

I’m still trying to find the loose end that’s making my whole self unravel. Maybe I ate it thinking it was spaghetti, I mean there’s so much food sneaking past my lips it wouldn’t be too hard to miss the fact that I’m actually eating myself.

We did a team building day in the office yesterday and we kind of had to draw out our life in ten minutes on a flip chart. The brief was to be completely honest…oh fuck. That’s never going to end well is it, for a girl with no filter?

I drew a heartbeat right the way across the page, kind of like a heart monitor. I put all the things that make me happy on the peaks of my heartbeat and all the things that make me sad at the lows. All my happy things were friends and family, and handbags and holidays…writing my blog and hanging out in these pages. The lows were jobs I’d hated, and general life bleurgh.

I’m so used to being freakishly honest with you lot, it felt like the most normal thing in the world to talk about food too, and how come it was riding the peaks but also lurking in the depths of the lows. The best of times and the worst of times. How it makes me happy but also very sad. How when I’m over-eating I’m happy because I’m eating, but sad at the same time because I’m not in control. And when I’m not eating I’m sad because I’m not eating but I’m happy at the same time because I am in control.

Then I looked around and realised that every other flipchart life story on the wall had life events and career paths. Mine was the only one with cake. And reading all that back doesn’t make me feel any less of a fucking basket case. I was at work, for fuck’s sake. Not here. Here I can say shit like that…probably not so much so in the office, right? Bet they’ll all be locking up their emergency biscuits from now on.

Anyway, that’s kind of how my week’s shaping up.

I’m at the gin festival on tomorrow with my boy…I’m going to make that my last day of fuckery. I bought him the tickets as part of his Christmas present and we’ll have a really good laugh and hopefully try some artisan gins and specialist tonics. I have no doubt that we’ll stagger home on the train feeling three sheets to the wind and food will definitely be consumed so there’s not even any point in pretending that today will go according to plan.

But Sunday, with you lot chomping at my heels and making me listen to good sense…well. I’m going for a reboot. I so want to pull it off and get back to a world where my every waking thought doesn’t involve food. Or even if it does, a world where I can stick my fingers in my ears and ignore the Asshole voice.

Not before time, in fact way overdue…

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Don’t Make Me Do It!

In the here & now, ,

My friend messaged me yesterday morning to ask how my day was going, just as I was contemplating a shrink-wrapped quartet of Hot Cross Buns. It was a little after nine in the morning, and whilst her question may well have been wrapped up in a pleasantry, in our triumvirate of accountability and support we would’ve all recognised the real question as what have you eaten so far today…? Come on girls, tell me I’m wrong.

It seems I was destined not to get a good run at the Hot Cross Buns. I broke open the pack and somehow only lifted two out. Obviously your average skinny girl would break a sweat at the prospect of eating two whole Hot Cross Buns but I’m here to tell you that on any given day over that last few weeks I’d have been all over all four of the little feckers in a heartbeat. But I stopped at two. Which I’m claiming as a victory if you don’t mind, on the basis that it’s a very small degree of change but it’s progress all the same. It wasn’t four. 

I still haven’t been on the scale. I’m just not ready. It’s like this great big shitbird cloud of doom hiding in the bathroom waiting to spoil my day. My old cat used to spread all four legs wide if he got a whiff of even the slightest chance we were about to try and encourage him into the cat carrier and I appear to have adopted a similar mentality where the scale is concerned. I’ll do anything to avoid it. You’re all telling me to bite the bullet and get it over with and I know I should but it’s just not happening.

I’ve at least stopped binging though and that’s got to count for something, right? I’m not doing all the right things but at least I’ve stopped doing all the wrong things on a constant loop. My eating wasn’t bad yesterday, it just wasn’t good. Hot Cross Buns for breakfast, cheese on toast for lunch and then chicken and jacket potato for supper followed by a cereal bar. Yes, way too many carbs and nothing green. But no chocolate. And only one cereal bar.

Well, there was only one in the cupboard but hey I need the kudos. I didn’t haul my ass to the shop to buy more, and last week I definitely would’ve so it’s something, you know?

I get a sense that my world is slowly tipping the right way up in spite of myself. I know I’ve got this massive cradle of support around me and I’m thankful. My mailbox has been off the chart busy this week and I’ve got advice and tips and me toos coming from every direction. What’s been especially lovely is the number of folk in the posse who’ve joined the regular voices and popped up with a few encouraging words for the first time, it’s like you’ve all given each other the nod and together you’re trying to carry me over this rough patch.

Just don’t carry me to that fucking scale…not yet. Don’t make me do it. I will…just not yet.

 

 

 

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Sorry I’m Late!

In the here & now, , ,

Oh my Looooooord it’s good to see you guys! A million thank yous for your patience…I’m just about there by the skin of my teeth for a Monday post…I’d almost forgotten how.

So, for those of you who don’t follow me on Facebook, and might be thinking I somehow fell off the edge of the world in a careless moment, I had an accident and shattered the screen of my laptop, which meant that I couldn’t publish anything. If I could get into WordPress and see the screen of my phone well enough to try and compose a blog post I might have been able to work around it but I couldn’t get the formatting right, the words kept disappearing and in any event, the insurance company said it wouldn’t take very long.

Five days, is what they said. Five days to assess the damage and then five days to repair it.  Five days max. Except it was three days before they even collected it, then a weekend happened. I should’ve known at that point it wasn’t going to run smoothly, you know? I chased twice and after exactly five more days they told me yes, the screen was definitely damaged. No shit, Sherlock…that would account for the big white hectare of nothingness between the left and the right edge then, right?

Just five more days Mrs Tipton, we’ll repair it and you’ll have it back…except five days later some fucking ejit had forgotten to get an authorisation code to go ahead with the repair so it was still sitting on a bench somewhere with a shattered screen. You can probably take your best guess at how pissed off I was, on a scale of one to ten.

To make amends, they offered me a new laptop instead of a repair, which I accepted, with a slightly less sour face. It finally came last Thursday, and I was too giddy for words until I remembered that new ones don’t come pre-loaded with the software that I need and I still couldn’t fucking write.

I had a code somewhere to load the software that I’d bought when I changed my laptop a couple of years ago, but it had disappeared into that safe place black hole along with all the other things I can never put my hands on when I really need them. Long story short, I ended up having to buy it again. It took me hours of angst trying to download and install it because the instructions were not written in ABC language, in fact it might as well have been written in Swahili for all the sense it made to me. But it’s done now, I finally figured it out, and I’m IN.

God it’s so good to be back!! My fingers are tingling and I’m in my happy place.

I’m also in a world of fat. I know. I’d love to say that in my three wordless weeks I’ve been focusing on myself, spending time in the gym and existing on a diet of dust with a side of fresh air, and I’m looking buff.

Yeah, cos that was always going to happen, right?

I’ve been completely under the wheels. I mean don’t get me wrong, I’ve been busy…we all know the devil makes work for idle hands and all. Work has been a little crazy, I’ve started a new business venture which is going better than I might have hoped and I’ve generally tried hard to fill the space I normally reserve for chatting to you guys, but in between all that it’s been like feeding time at the fucking zoo.

I daren’t face the Shitbird…haven’t been near it. I’ve stacked a family sized bag of toilet rolls on top of it actually, so it’s buried out of sight. I can feel my arse following me as I walk around, I mean it’s tragic but even now my head isn’t playing ball. I’m a mess. I haven’t been swimming since the last time we spoke, and the last time we spoke I hadn’t been swimming since…well, it might even be before Christmas.

What the hell happened?

I’m hoping that this is my cue to get my shit together. Now I’m back in that place where I have to be accountable, I mean. It’s like my enforced hiatus from tipping words onto the page signalled a free-for-all in the who gives a shit stakes but I’m back, and I have to make it count…I can’t go on like this with the Asshole steering the ship can I?

I don’t feel ready, that’s the thing. Oh, I’m ready not to be this fat. I just don’t feel ready to stop power eating and I’m really scared that I’m not going to be able to.

Suggestions welcome…  🙂

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