Tag Archives: blowing the budget

License To Mess About.

In the here & now,

This week was always going to be a challenge. I travelled a couple of hours south on Monday afternoon to meet one of the teams I support for a working dinner and overnight stay followed by a full day’s training course. After a night in my own bed last night I’m away again today and overnight this evening for another working dinner, and this whole day will be catered in the same way yesterday was catered. A tasty hotel finger buffet with an un-specified take-your-best-guess calorie content.

So, fertile ground for head fuckery, right? Especially as I appear to have scored the biggest own goal ever by shouting from the rooftops on Monday that I’m cool with averaging half a pound a month weight-loss because it’s all tickety-boo and going in the right direction. Somehow, between then and now, my Asshole Voice has interpreted that as having a licence to mess about.

I started the week with fabulous intentions following a great weigh-in on Sunday. I got up at stupid o’clock on Monday morning so I could fit in my hour swimming before most people had eaten their cornflakes because I knew I was travelling later and didn’t want to miss my work-out. I ate a carefully planned breakfast and a carefully planned lunch, then drove down to a hotel in the Midlands to meet my colleagues for a carefully planned dinner…that’s where it all went a bit tits up.

I’d preserved enough calories for a decent dinner, having checked out the menu ahead of time on-line. I was enjoying a small pre-dinner glass of Merlot in the bar, when some bright spark suggested eating out instead of eating in the hotel, and the whole team jumped on it like it was the best idea ever. Shit. I hadn’t planned for that…oh well, panic not. I can adapt my plan. It’ll be fine.

We ended up in a restaurant with mainly burgers, pizza and pasta on the menu. I was the lone fat-girl in a sea of middle-aged men, and I was caught in that no-man’s land between despair and actual fucking excitement that genuinely I might have to say knickers to the diet because really, what choice did I have? I tried to be sensible and order a diet coke, which turned out to be diet Pepsi and I can’t stand Pepsi, so I opened my mouth to ask for a glass of water instead but it somehow came out as a large glass of red wine please.

I passed on the appetiser, but my colleagues ordered a bunch of sharing platters and before I knew it, two beer-battered cheese sticks and a loaded potato skin had joined the large glass of red wine in front of me.

I’d ordered the least calorie-loaded option that I could find on the menu – it was chicken, or at least I think there was chicken somewhere inside those deep-fried breadcrumbs loaded with ham and cheese and served with a side of fries. The thing is, after my third red wine of the evening it didn’t seem too terrible, you know? I mean I’d lost three and a half pounds last week, and we’ve already established that my average is half a pound a month so I’m seven times ahead of myself already…fuck it, on that basis I can relax a bit, right? So I’ll tell you what, let’s have all that and dessert too.

I woke up yesterday morning with indigestion and a heavy heart…I mean come on. So obviously I had a lean breakfast and stayed away from the lunch buffet…oh no that’s right I didn’t do either of those things. I ate bacon and eggs for breakfast followed at lunchtime by two mini cheese and onion pies, some divine onion bhajis and a plate of roasted vegetables which were slathered in oil, plus two cookies and a handful of wrapped sweets.

What is wrong with me? I wrote a fucking blog post on Monday bemoaning the fact that for every two steps forward I take one step backwards, and the ink’s not even dry on the page before I’m undoing all the good work of a three and a half pound weight loss by nose-diving straight into the first temptation I can find. I’m genuinely speechless.

I did make amends with myself when I got home last night and took myself off to the pool. I swam for an hour and chuntered to myself the whole time as I swam back and forth about what a dickhead I can be sometimes.

Today is a new day. But it’s another fully catered one with a big dinner this evening, and I’ll have no opportunity this time to out-swim my fork so I’m going to white-knuckle through on a wing and a prayer because I’m worth more than half a poxy pound.

Come on, focus 🙂

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Stepping Off, Chilling Ma Boots

In the here & now, ,

I didn’t mean to worry y’all by going AWOL on Friday. I’m touched by the number of emails I had over the weekend asking if I was okay…I’m fine thanks, I promise. I spent the whole of last week feeling knackered and slightly disorientated after immersing myself in the writer’s workshop over a long weekend, before going right back to work on Monday, and then having to co-facilitate a two-day workshop which required me to stay away from home mid-week.

I staggered home on Thursday and cobbled together a post for Friday which didn’t pass muster at all when I read it back the next morning, so I had a mini-meltdown and binned it. I can give you a brief summary if you like…I was mainly trying to justify an unfortunate incident with a plate of garlic bread which one of my colleagues had ordered ‘for the table’ during a working dinner last Wednesday evening, and most of it ended up being eaten by yours truly…yeah I know. Don’t say a word. 

I was trying to justify it to all of you and myself on the basis that I’d been away last weekend and therefore hadn’t had time to go do a food shop, so I’d already ruined my dieting day by eating the stodgy catered lunch instead of taking stuff with me.

Then at dinner, the garlic bread got plonked in front of me without a rightful owner, and it smelled all kinds of awesome. And because I’d had a dodgy lunch – not to mention the three glasses of Rioja I’d drunk before dinner which were undoubtedly influencing my decision-making – I decided I may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. So I ate the garlic bread followed by a juicy rib-eye steak..uhuh.

Now, I was pushed for time last week, my schedule was crazy. However, we all know that the whole fucking supermarket is just a click away these days, and judging by the number of parcels Amazon deliver to my door  I clearly know my way around an on-line shopping cart, so not having the time to do a food shop and using that as the reason for my wobble was a totally made up bollocksy excuse.

On reflection, I think I was just tired. And I know my thought process can turn to shit and my willpower can take a direct hit when I’m tired. I looked around the table and saw everyone tucking into garlic bread and I got an earful of the Asshole voice with his puffed-up outraged sense of entitlement that every fucker else was having it so why couldn’t I, you know?

Apart from that one incident last week I put in a textbook performance, but the garlic bread cost me dear when I crossed paths with the Shitbird Scale yesterday…just one pound off. I deserved it, and there is no excuse. It might’ve been a two pound plus week if I’d not eaten my own bodyweight in something I shouldn’t have gone anywhere near.

Still, I parked it the very next day and I’ve been on it like a car bonnet again ever since. Thankfully, garlic bread isn’t a trigger food for me, it just happened to be delicious and there. Sometimes it feels a lot like I’m taking two steps forward and one step backwards, but I guess that’s just life, right?

I didn’t have the energy – or the time – to start from scratch on Friday, so I had to step off. This weekend has mainly been spent chilling ma boots and recharging my batteries, in between walking a bit and swimming. I even hit the gym – not the Kingdom of Pain, I’m not signed back there yet by the physio – to do some hardcore physio on my knee, which is getting stronger all the time.

This week, I shall mainly be staying away from garlic bread 🙂

 

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Has Anyone Seen My Spear?

In the here & now, , ,

I’m still in the hole.

On Sunday I managed to reset, and I went to bed feeling like a food survivor. I was pre-occupied with the thought of food all day but although I succumbed to the trifle, I trod carefully and acted like I had mud stripes on my forehead and a spear in my hand…I was a warrior, digging in and ready to fight one food battle at a time.

Monday was going to be my sugar-free ground zero, remember? It was a great plan, only I accepted a piece of apple cake at my Godmother’s wake, which had been baked by one of her good friends. Her friend’s need to find comfort through feeding people fitted hand-in-glove with my need to seek comfort in eating what she’d baked. The scones were good too, in case you’re wondering.

At that point I dropped my spear, and it was all downhill from there. As if the apple cake and the scone hadn’t done enough damage, my boy and I had promised to take mum out for lunch afterwards, and although I’d deliberately suggested eating at a great restaurant which has one of my favourite healthy menus, I went and ordered a dirty great gourmet burger with sweet potato fries, which wasn’t helpful.

I had a word with myself, and agreed to forgive the false start on the basis that Monday had been a particularly emotional and difficult day, and maybe I’d expected too much of myself under the circumstances. I made a new plan to start over on Tuesday.

Which I did. And it was all going really well until I hit lunchtime, when the wheels came off again. I allowed myself to be seduced by the idea of eating the same as the girls in the office who were visiting a local deli to pick up something good, and I almost broke my neck to join in. That, together with the five cookies I ate mid-afternoon meant I hit suppertime with barely any calories left in the bank, and bang on cue another fuck it moment happened when I went all out and cooked a calorie-laden supper for me and my boy.

Followed by ice-cream.

I’m going through the motions of saying I’ll reset again today. Except already I can hear the Asshole in my head pissing himself laughing at my intention to win back the upper hand. Whatever, whatever, whatever…let’s see you try, bitch.

I know where the booby traps are. I have to travel up to Scotland this afternoon on business. Three hours each way on a train with a trolly service and a buffet car, and I’m overnighting in a hotel with a room service menu. It’s got fucking disaster written all over it and I feel massively, helplessly out of control.

I’m home late tomorrow and then…then I’ll have a golden window of opportunity to reset the dial properly, since I’m going to be forced down the road of nil-by-mouth from twelve o’clock midnight.

My knee surgery happens on Friday morning. I imagine when I wake up afterwards I’ll feel as rough as toast due to the anaesthetic, which usually knocks me sick and I won’t feel much like eating. Nor will I be able to drive, so hobbling to the shops to buy Haagen Dazs isn’t going to be one of my options. So, here’s the plan.

When I get back tomorrow evening I’ll do a healthy food shop, which I’ll be stuck with until I’m mobile again. And that might take a while. There’s no point in asking my boy to bring me naughties since I have already formally appointed him as the fun police and no matter what tactics I might wheel out he’ll point blank refuse to help me wrap my chops around anything I shouldn’t be eating.

This isn’t me giving myself licence to throw caution to the wind for the next forty eight hours by the way…if I can find my spear, I’ll crack on with the business of being a warrior. All I’m saying is, if I can’t there’s a plan B.

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Coming Home To Roost.

In the here & now, ,

I had to take my mum to the fracture clinic at the hospital on Monday. I swear, her right arm looks like it belongs to a six foot tall navy blue body builder, it’s so swollen and bruised. My mum is tiny, I mean she can’t weigh more than about eighty pounds, so right now it probably outweighs all her other limbs put together. The doctor was fairly happy with her progress though, so I feel a bit more able to breathe, and a bit less strung out.

By the time we’d done the rounds of doctor/more x-rays/doctor/made-to-measure-sling lady, almost four hours had passed, and we were starving. Actually, that’s not strictly true… I was starving. Mum doesn’t have much of an appetite these days, and she’s so fed up at the moment she probably wouldn’t have even noticed if we’d skipped a meal. Like that would ever happen on my watch, right?

We agreed it would be nice to eat lunch together in the hospital canteen, which has a fabulous salad bar. I parked mum up at a table in her borrowed wheelchair and went back to join the line. Boxed salad for me, tuna sandwich for mum. Oh, and the puddings…sugar free jelly for me, and an off-the-chart awesome hand-made coconut slice with jam and pastry for mum. Oh my god, that coconut slice looked so moist I could’ve wrung it out, no doubt about it. There were about ten slices on the cake stand, and I wanted to lick every single one of them as I walked past.

Now, picture the scene. Mum, after half a tuna sandwich, was feeling quite full, and she didn’t want the coconut slice. She wanted the jelly. I may or may not have been able to predict that scenario in advance on account of the fact that 1) mum really loves jelly and 2) she’s not really that big on coconut.

Buying it was okay though, right? Look at this innocent face…it wasn’t for me. It was a treat for my mum. Except if I’d paid attention to what was really going on as I handed over eleven pounds thirty for my tray full of booty, I would have known immediately that the jelly was for mum and the coconut slice was for me. Of course it fucking was.

I tried to sigh and look disappointed, as I agreed mum could have my sugar-free jelly. I was prepared to let it go and take one for the team, or at least that’s what I was desperately trying to make my face say as my insides started breakdancing behind the scenes at the thought of all the coconut and pastry and jam that was coming my way.

I ate it. I ate every last moist coconutty crumb, and I’m here to tell you I was transported to heaven and back again right there in the canteen. It was the most awesome thing I’ve ever tasted. What I wanted to do was go buy the rest of them. Every last succulent slice. But I didn’t…I stopped at just the one.

And you know what, stopping at one is fine, I mean yey…go me.  Except one is all it took to tip me into dieting quicksand. Let’s face it, it was always going to, wasn’t it? That generous slice of heaven was loaded with sugar, and now I’m loaded with sugar, which means my inner sat-nav is trying to steer me towards disasterville. Again.

Sunday was so-so. Monday’s coconut slice was compounded by an un-calorie-counted chilli for supper, and yesterday there was an incident with an unplanned frittata at lunchtime, not to mention delaying tactics at the office engineered by yours truly which pretty much guaranteed I’d miss the exercise class I’d been planning to go to.

That’s the sound of wobbly wheels right there…looks like my anxiety is coming home to roost in the form of self-sabotage. Just for a change.

Today is a new day. It was just a blip. I’m not putting pressure on myself to be perfect.

Yes, you are…

No. I’m really not.

It happened, get over it and move on, right?

 

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On Guard Against The Afters

In the here & now, , ,

So, I’m reliably informed that The Afters are coming for me, which is what Vickie calls it when you’re past the crisis and the urge to go rogue sneaks up on you without warning. I’m taking no chances. I might not have expected it, but that four pound loss on Sunday was hard-won, especially  when you consider it in the context of what was happening in my life last week, right? I’m doubly determined that the fuck-up fairy is not going to creep up behind me and make off with those four pounds like a thief in the night. So I’m on guard, 24/7 against myself.

I can feel her lurking. I had a bad day on Monday when the reality of life without one of my special people started to bite, and by mid afternoon I’d eaten breakfast lunch and dinner, with a handful of snacks thrown in for good measure. I was at least six hundred calories over my daily budget. I managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by forcing myself to cycle down to the Kingdom of Pain and back – a very hilly eight mile round trip – and doing an hours’ worth of boxing whilst I was there. I brought it home on the nose, but only just…it was a close call.

I did a similar thing yesterday. By late afternoon I was in deficit, having eaten a big lunch and grazed through the afternoon. It was another tough day and seeing my mum so broken and missing her friend sent me hurtling towards Snacksville at warp speed. I pulled it back by going to an unplanned circuit training session last night, which meant that I ended the day with a few calories in the bank but again it felt like I was teetering on the edge.

Today, I’m determined that I’m not going to dance to the tune of that same upside-down fuckery. I’m done with the white knuckle ride. I am working out tonight, but I’m determined to walk through the doors of the Kingdom of Pain with a dinner’s worth of calories ring-fenced in the bank for afterwards. That means dinner and any additional healthy treats can come when I’ve earned them rather than spending my food budget up ahead on tick, and having to sweat my way back from the cliff edge.

I’m exhausted. For the last few nights, any hope of sleep has disappeared as soon as my head hits the pillow. I’m worried about my mum, who’s elderly and very fragile, and not in the best of health herself. I’m trying to sort out a funeral and I’m worried about holding it together long enough on that day so I can deliver a eulogy which is worthy of my Godmother. Most of all I’m grieving. It’s a killer combination and it’s fucking grim trying to hold it all together full stop, you know?

When food has always been your person, or the blanket that you wrap yourself up in whenever life takes a pot shot, finding a new way of processing stuff which doesn’t involve medicating with food sucks till the end of time. Despite logic telling me that five family bags of cheese balls and a Daim cake wouldn’t actually make me feel any better, it doesn’t stop me from wanting to give it my best shot. I won’t go there, but for the love of God I want to.

I just keep telling myself that this too will pass.

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