An Epiphany

I had somewhat of an epiphany today. I had my session with Margaret and I expressed to her something that I have been feeling this past week or so. I have been doing really well. I am holding to the rules and I am losing weight, and it's been absolutely painless. I haven't missed anything and I don't feel deprived at all. It's pretty amazing, but still . . . inside I have held on to this little niggling fear that all of a sudden this might stop working, and that I will wake up one morning and the whole plan will be out the window and that all of a sudden I will want to be eating and eating and eating and that will be it . . . I'll be back to my former ways and gain back all the weight that I have lost. (23 pounds to this point folks, yes 23 Pounds!!!) I suppose realistically that is a fear that anyone would have at one point. How many diets have I been on in my lifetime, and how many diets have I gone off of in my lifetime and felt a total failure at. Well, they come to the same amount and totally are in my face every time I look in the mirror . . . I have had a bit of an afraid of failure mentality these past few weeks and today I stared it in the face. I came to realize that ( and here is the biggie, the ephiphany as it were) if I can't trust myself, then how can anybody trust me. I have to have faith in my self if I can ever expect anyone else to. And yes, perhaps I will have a bad day once in a while, but that is not the end of the world, or the end of my success, it's not even a failure . . . it just means that I chalk it up to having been a bad day and I put it behind me and I continue to move forward. I don't have to be perfect. A blip in the road, doesn't mean the end of the road. It doesn't matter if the road I take to my goal is totally straight (which road in life is ever totally straight?) it only matters that I keep heading in the right direction. I did not get fat overnight, and I will not be thin overnight. It doesn't matter if it takes 1 year, or 2 years or even longer than that to reach my goal. It only matters that I keep heading towards it. After all, life is an amazing journey. This is only a part of it. Success is in the perception and from where I'm standing, any step towards freedom from the chains of food obsession is a step in the right direction, whether it be a baby step, or a giant step . . . just keep moving forward, no matter what, and I'll get there in the end. ☺☺☺☺☺ (Yes, I'm smiling!) I will continue to celebrate my progress and accept it for exactly what it is. Hot damn! I'm a winner!

8 weeks in, or is it 9??? Who's counting!

It is hard to believe now that I have not spent my whole life eating the way I do now, but the mirror and the scales tell a different story. Never mind, I am on track now and the future looks very bright indeed. I have lost a total of 21 pounds now and it has been relatively painless. My food tastes better than it has in years. I am enjoying every mouthful. I probably haven't enjoyed food this much since I was a child. I am also eating whatever I want to eat . . . amazingly enough though the things I used to love (or thought I did) are not nearly as tasty now, and to be perfectly honest I don't miss them one bit. I crave exercise. I know! That sounds mad doesn't it??? I actually feel like something is missing from my day unless I get at least half an hour of exercise in. I cook for a living, and I cook beautiful food, but I have no desire to eat any of it . . . none of the cookies and cakes, or anything else. I also cook lovely things at home for my husband . . . but they too have lost a lot of their savour for me. I am getting more pleasure out of cooking them and looking at them. I do taste at home, after all I do have to eat . . . but I am now able to control myself and leave it at a taste. I would say that the portions on my plate have reduced themselves by probably 2/3. I was eating way too much and snacking far too much inbetween meals. I bet I ate almost constantly, a smidgen here and a smidgen there. But it all added up. I'm quite proud of myself and I have to say honestly I can live with this forever.

But . . . there is still a little part of me that is afraid that all of a sudden the old me will jump out and bite me in the arse and I'll forget all that I have learned and worked so hard to attain. Will this fear ever go away? Or maybe this is healthy. Maybe I should not be too confident? Or is that my old insecurities speaking??

I listen to my cd every morning before I eat breakfast. I listen to the rules I have on my ipod at work every day, several times, just to reinforce things. My clothes are definitely getting looser and I am looking forward to the day I feel confident enough to go out and buy some new ones, but not just yet . . . I have a long ways to go and I don't want to waste money on new clothes until I am in desperate need for them! At least two of three sizes down please!

My mom is proud of me. That makes me feel pretty good. I have always wanted her to be proud of me, and always somehow felt a bit like a failure, despite all the good things I have done. When I go home to Canada next year, they will all see a new me and I will enjoy showing myself off. Is that bad? I dunno, but it's something I am looking forward to anyways!

I am so proud of Angie. Despite being chairbound she is doing so well and I applaud her for it. I know how difficult it must be. She spurs me on and inspires me. Did you hear that Angie? YOU INSPIRE ME! There I said it. Now I must dash and get ready for work. xxoo

Can't quite believe it!!!

I got weighed 3/4 hour ago and 2.3/4lbs has gone. Now is where I try and keep my feet on the ground and my mind focussed! I feel like telling the world but I have to remember I have chosen to only get weighed 2-weekly so this is a 2 week loss. Never mind - it's a loss - YIPPEE!!! I am trying not to think "If I carry on like this.......".

It just shows that despite what the slimming club said about "You're not eating enough, that's why you don't lose it." (I never could get my head round that argument), I WAS eating too much, more than my limited mobility was able to get rid of. Now I don't eat until I feel hungry - not even if the clock says it's lunchtime - and then only in accordance with how hungry I am.

I still find it difficult to recognise the full up feeling so I am giving myself smaller portions on a smaller plate.

BUT I CAN DO THIS!!!!!!!!

Sunday 16th August

Big test of my resolve today. At lunchtime I at a little scone and a piece of chocolate cake. Oh, I did enjoy that chocolate cake but the scone was horrible. I don't know who made them but if it had been me they would have been straight in the bin!. ~As I said goodbye to my friend, whose "at home" charity event I was at, I mentioned how lovely the choc cake was, thinking she - a wonderful cake maker - had made it. "Tesco's finest" she chortled. Remind me not to go near Tesco's. I hope this won't show on the scales next Thursday.

Another friend called this morning reporting back from her hols ...........in Cleethorpes! Needless to say, she was NOT here to show off her suntan. She brought me a jar of stripy mint humbugs, which I shall have great pleasure in giving away to someone who likes them. Last year's jar is stiil around here somewhere!

After a lifetime of failing....or did I?

I have always had trouble with my weight - up, down, up, down. At school I was always the fat kid in the class who couldn't hope to be as pretty as other people. My mother often would say - in so many words - how she was embarrassed buying clothes for me. Coming from a family of thin people didn't help either. I remember a little ditty my dad used to come out with: "Little Fat Anna, She Swallowed a tanner, and squashed it into a threepenny bit". Oh I'm sure he never meant it cruelly but that's the way it sounded to me. I cringe now just writing it.

And yet, you know, I wasn't that fat - just not as thin as the others! Just this afternoon I have been looking through the big box of photos we have acquired during our 38 years of marriage. I was not fat. I wasn't ugly either. In fact I was quite pretty; not striking, you know, but not mirror shattering either. Guess what else? As I picked up picture after picture I was thinking "I don't remember seeing this photo." I never would look you see. If it had me on it I didn't look at it.

Since the End of April I have lost 17lbs with a well-known Slimming organisation, which is grand but I was so bored with their regime and the amount of money it was costing me that I decided to give it up and try something else.

I have been a counter of calories all my grown-up life and I knew calories insideout. Over the years I've learnt a bit about nutrition too so what the calories are made of is also important to me. I became a decent cook, so what food tasted like was equally important. Things were getting complicated!

Then I got disabled. Or rather the disability I have had all my life (that's for another time) progressed considerably and now I am mostly in a wheelchair. The ultimate complication for a slimmer. It's like being tied up in a corner. You can't do the exercise that every single 'diet' always harps on about. No walking, jogging, cycling; not even any crawling. And nobody was able to present to me a plan for getting round this, so I decided to have a go myself.

Last Thursday was my final weigh-in at the slimming club and on Friday I 'filed' them. I don't want to say just now what my plan is - I'm not exactly clear myself - but it involves most of the things Minerva has been talking about: Keeping a food diary, eating when hungry, stopping when full, not letting myself get keeling-over hungry, drinking plenty of water - and learning to like myself.

Sounds daft doesn't it, but I wouldn't mind betting most fat people have that problem. They don't really like themselves much. I think we tubbies fall into 2 categories: we're either the life and soul of the party or we're the wallflower in the corner who wouldn't say boo to a goose. I've been both in my time. I was a wallflower in my teens, in my 20s and 30s I've frightened more geese than you've had hot dinners and from mid 40s until now I'm back to wallflowering. But it won't do, my weight is getting in the way of the little mobility I have. It may not sound so bad to you when I tell you I am 10st 9lbs (149lbs) but at 4ft 8ins tall it's way to much.

So there you have it . I'll try and check in each week and let you know how it's going and what I've been doing.

Allegra, x

And so it goes . . .

I've had a pretty busy couple of weeks. I was away on holidays for two weeks, and then getting back into the swing of things at work. I'm happy to say that I managed to survive my holidays and not gain any weight during them. I had a lovely time. I ate exactly what I wanted to, I even had pudding most nights and an Ice cream cone. I did do a lot of walking and I expect that the exercise didn't hurt at all.

I have noticed a few things.

One, the foods that I used to really look forward to eating . . . things like chips, and chocolate, fried chicken, etc. They don't appeal to me anymore at all. I had schnitzel whilst we were on holidays and it came with big plates of chips. I had a few of the chips and half of the schnitzel and the salad and I was happy and content. One day, the day before we left for our holidays, we had some KFC. It was bloomin awful! I couldn't eat it. I had to pick off all the coating and then could only eat the meat. The coating was always my favourite part, but now it just tastes horrible. One night I asked my husband if he would pick me up a cadbury's blizzard thingie at McDonalds . . . he did. I had two mouthful's and it felt like the entire insides of my mouth had been coated with lard. It was bloomin awful as well! Not sure what's going on, but I like it!

Two, that if I continue to eat after I have realized I've had enough, I don't feel good at all. I actually begin to feel a bit ill, and very uncomfortable. We were out to dinner at the home of some friend's last evening. They served the plates already dished up. I don't like it really when people do that. I would prefer to serve myself . . . that way I can take just what I want or think I can eat. I ended up having to leave 2/3 of it on my plate as I just could not finish it. I really enjoyed the first bits of it, but then I started to feel full and was only eating to be polite. It didn't feel good at all. I felt almost ill. I had to excuse myself and apologize to our hosts, saying that I was full and couldn't eat any more.

I weighed myself this morning and I am down another 4 pounds. So that is one stone and 4 pounds. I feel really good about that. I am doing very well I think, very well indeed.

Oh sure, I am a bit afraid. What if it suddenly stops working? What if I suddenly want to go out and gorge myself on a pizza or something? Will that be the slippery slope that leads to my demise?

I am so used to failing at diets that I am a bit afraid that this might fail too. I have to be honest about my feelings though, and I have to acknowledge my fears. I just keep moving forward and doing the things I need to do. I keep telling myself, this is not a diet. This is a life changing plan that I can live with for the rest of my life, that I must live with for the rest of my life.

Can I live with being able to eat whatever I want, as long as I only eat when I am hungry and only eat until I am satisfied? I think so! This is very liveable. No bad foods, only bad habits.

I do find that my tastes are changing though, and for the better. I now crave fruits and vegetables . . . not crisps and chocolate. It is a fabulous change and I feel really good about it. I really do.