Crazy season begins (and Healthy You Challenge check-in)

Down another 1.5lb this week, to 10 stone 13.5lb. It makes me very happy to be back under 11 stone. It makes me even happier when you consider that not only was this weekend a long one, it was the Boy's birthday, involving drinks at the Best Wine Bar Ever, a Thai feast, a birthday tarte aux framboises (because it's the only kind of cake he really likes) and a fantastic barbecue on Sunday. As before I made sure that I tracked everything, and earned as many activity points as I could to try and counteract the Giant Pile Of Food effect.

Hopefully I can keep this up over the next couple of months. We don't have a free weekend until the beginning of August - I'm trying not to think about that as it makes me want to cry a little: although I love socialising I love me some downtime too... As an example, this weekend we have a wedding on Friday followed by a birthday party on Saturday. Both events involve staying away from home, and I'm feeling a little panicked about getting enough exercise in to balance the inevitable excesses. I suppose this is where running comes into its own! I'm enjoying a night off after a 5K run yesterday, and will aim to run tomorrow night, gym on Thursday, possibly run on Friday morning... but not sure what happens after that. All I can do is try and choose the wisest options available to me!

Have good weeks, everybody.

Healthy You Challenge check-in and thoughts on balance

I lost a pound this week, bringing me to a total of 4lb off in 3 weeks.

The rational part of me, the one that knows I can't lose 3lb every week, is very happy with this. This weekend was also a bit of a social frenzy, so I took the principles that I followed last week and applied them a little more rigorously. I made slightly more effort to make sensible food choices, especially at meals where I had a full choice, and thus to save up more points for the moments when I didn't. And even when I let myself slip off the wagon slightly, I didn't go all the way. So at dinner on Friday night, while I did have battered cod and chips instead of the baked fish I'd originally planned, I didn't give in to the little voice saying "Screw it, have a burger!" At lunch on Saturday I stuck to salad. As a result I was able to approach Sunday lunch, a catered event with no choice, without the feelings of dread it would once have engendered. It's all about balance. I wish I could keep track of that more often.

For those of you near a river, punting is a remarkably good strength workout! I hadn't done it for years, and woke up yesterday with my quads especially on fire...

Culinary highlight of the week: a tie. Either the strawberry tart from Sunday lunch (more a proper tarte aux fraises than the Greggs or City Bakeries specimen of my childhood) or tonight's birthday dinner (for the Boy) of veal with new potatoes and salad, followed by fresh pineapple.

That update I promised

So... when I last posted I'd just got back from the island of frenzied bingeing Aphrodite, just started a new job, and was taking stock of the effect of that unscheduled 4-week holiday on my life.

The most tangible (or possible squeezable) effect was obvious when I stepped on the scales at my first WeightWatchers meeting two weeks ago: 11st 5lb (that's 159lb, US friends, 72kg for Antipodeans). Ouch. That's a gain of about 4kg/9lb on my pre-Cyprus weight. I felt (and still feel) remarkably undespondent about it. How often do things like that happen, after all? If I'd gained more than half a stone in four weeks of normal life, I'd be very worried indeed, but it's a bit stupid to get worked up about a circumstance that will never happen again.

I have been enjoying discovering the new Discover Plan that WeightWatchers has going on at the moment. I've been focusing on the Filling Foods (basically lean proteins, vegetables and slow-release carbs) and zero-point foods (mostly vegetables) and have found counting points much less faff than calories. Remind me of this in six months when I'm moaning about it, please...

I lost 3lb in the first week, which I was of course very happy with. I stayed the same this week, but I'm not unhappy with that - a random combination of social events this weekend meant that I ate out for almost every meal from lunchtime Friday onwards, and while I managed to balance some of it with exercise, I hadn't run far enough to make up for the fact that I ate thirty-nine points on Saturday. (I'm supposed to have 19...)

We have one of our patches of frenzied social activity coming up, with no free weekends till mid-June. I'm going to take an approach of trying to maximise exercise, attempting to make wise choices (where possible) and tracking everything. In theory. Because at least then if it all goes wrong, I'll know why.

Healthy You Challenge check-in

I’ve always struggled with motivation on Mondays. There is something about them that taps into my huge reserves of laziness. In audit we’d often spend Monday acclimatising: getting to know the new location, figuring out where the toilets and the kitchen were, trying to remember what all the client staff were called and doing some of the jobs that are easy in theory but quite often don’t actually work... Monday became a nothing day, filled with clockwatching. If the job involved staying in a hotel you’d not visited before there was also the gnawing worry about its potentially being a hideous pit in a tiny place with one option for dinner. (The job has given me an understanding of the purpose of chain hotels: you know exactly what you’re getting. I’d rather have the certainty of Premier Inn adequacy than the potential for either luxury or filth.)

It feels odd to be writing in the past tense, but it’s necessary... because yesterday was my last Monday in my current job. Thursday is my last day. Throw in the impending holiday and you have a thoroughly end-of-term mindset which has an unfortunate impact on my eating choices. I went out for lunch on Monday with a friend and had a burger... because the burgers were two for one and I needed to save money. This did not, however, force me to choose the cheeseburger over the chicken – I did that myself.

Then I grabbed a bar of chocolate from the office tuck shop – 240 calories of it. No particular need for it, a nagging craving which I justified as PMS. I’m on hormonal contraception: I don’t get PMS any more. And who are these excuses even for? It’s all very silly. Still, I have more or less managed to get back on track since.

The weekend got off to an excellent start. I was able to go to the Saturday morning Body Pump class for the first time in ages, and then I went for a run. I initially set the treadmill for 20 minutes, but wanted to get to 30 to prove to myself that last week was not a fluke. I made it, and thought “I can do 31!” At about 34 minutes I realised how close I was to 5K, so I kept going... and ran 5K in 37:30. Not a great pace, but a start... I was inordinately proud of myself, and celebrated with a soak in the hot tub and a steak sandwich for lunch. Not too unhealthy: we bought very lean steak and used oil spray to fry it and the onions, and had a big salad to go with it. Mmm, cow.

Dinner (after an afternoon of sedentary pursuits and kitchen-cleaning) was roast chicken with parsnips (roasted in honey and mustard), new potatoes and broccoli. Hugely satisfying and, again, not that unhealthy, with the dry-roasted chicken.

On Sunday morning we woke up fairly late, thanks to the hour that was stolen from us in the night (Curse you, BST!) and had a leisurely breakfast. The sun made us think of taking a walk, but by the time we actually got off our arses the weather had deteriorated so we went to the gym instead for a gentle bit of cardio – both of us were feeling a bit stiff after Saturday’s exertions. We then spent another quiet afternoon and evening at home, which was really nice and exactly what we needed. I did manage to make up some Thai-style sweet potato soup, in imitation of the awesome lunch I had on Friday from a cafe near work. It worked pretty well. Unfortunately I didn’t consider the effect that buying white sweet potatoes would have on the colour: the original was a pretty orange; mine is a nasty shade of greenish beige. Still tastes great, however.

No scales this week. I have decided to ignore them as a movement in the wrong direction (or not ‘enough’ in the right one) would ruin my mood and my enjoyment of holiday foods for days. I’m not planning to go nuts, but I do want to be able to enjoy the things I wouldn’t get at home without obsessing over 200g here or there. I intend to start at WeightWatchers the week after we get back, so will try to limit myself to the weigh-ins there.

Healthy You Challenge check-in

I asked for the scales back this morning, after some deliberation on whether that was a good idea or not. I didn’t experience the giant PLATEAU-BUSTING weight loss I’d secretly (and stupidly) hoped for, but I did lose the Evil Pound from last week, so I’m back to 67.8kg. I’m pleased with that, considering the social whirl since Thursday, which was the last time I weighed myself. (It feels so long ago!)

Friday was a normal day of normal eating, since I’d ruled out having two down days in a row ever again. I went for a pub lunch with my colleagues, and had fish and chips as I’d planned. The fish was delicious: the chips were disappointing enough that I was able to leave some. (Most uncharacteristic.) I compensated for this by having homemade Super Soup for dinner (billions of vegetables + no added fats of any kind + most of the contents of the spice cupboard = always win, always different). We were meant to go to the gym but both felt too tired and rubbish, so we enjoyed an evening of chilling on the couch instead.

Saturday we got up, enjoyed a bowl of porridge (with my latest idea for masking the taste of oaty sludge livening it up – apple sauce!) and coffee, and then headed to London to meet some people to watch the last games of the Six Nations. Our destination was the Eagle Ale House, recommended as a place to watch rugby, and it didn’t disappoint. We rocked up at about 1, and asked if they were doing food. “No, we don’t do food on match days,” was the response. “But if you want to go out and get something you’re more than welcome to bring it in.” Northcote Road is a treasure trove of the sort of pointless and poncy specialist shops you only see in certain places*, and that includes overpriced artisan food in abundance. I enjoyed a beef, rocket and parmesan ciabatta followed by an insane cake which seemed to be a caramel shortbread for people who didn’t like shortbread and wanted to replace it with MORE chocolate and caramel. The boys enjoyed what the Times recently claimed were the best sausage rolls in the world (or possibly just London, I don't remember or care) followed by a different beef sandwich and a tartelette aux framboises for the raspberry-obsessed one.

Lunch was vastly improved by being able to eat it indoors sitting down, so thanks pub! Other than that the pub was notable mainly for its wide selection of draught beer (not enjoyed by me due to designated driver status) and very friendly staff.

Wales won, Scotland won! Happiness in the SoupDragon household. Most people had gone by the end of the second (Scotland) game, and the three of us who remained decided that actually we wanted dinner more than to stay in the pub for France v England. So we headed over to Putney and enjoyed a ridiculously vast Lebanese feast for £10 each. I adore Middle Eastern food of any kind, and become a total pig when faced with it... am slightly apprehensive about how much I may eat in Cyprus.

Then we headed for home, and I must say that being able to go home, rather than sleep poorly on somebody’s couch, makes this sort of trip ten times more enjoyable. It was very nice to wake up in my own bed on Sunday morning and enjoy more porridge with the last rugby game. This confirmed that we’d made the correct decision the previous night as, like so many of England’s games this year, it was eye-wateringly boring!

We visited friends for Sunday lunch, then I helped make table settings for their wedding while the boys had a Call of Duty marathon. Home, tired, dinner, bed. Damn, another week.

*Painswick, Cotswold village extraordinaire, is a case in point. It has two or three shops, one of which is devoted to the sale of wooden toys. I'm sure that makes the residents feel much better about the lack of anywhere to buy sensibly-priced food... See also Northleach, Nailsworth, Clifton, Newton Mearns, Crouch End and sundry other corners of the country.

Healthy You Challenge check-in: I gave up drinking for *this*?

Warning: this post contains some bad language and several instances of petulance.


Today did not begin well.


Today began, as usual, with the scales. The scales didn’t tell me anything I wanted to hear. The scales told me that I’ve gained 400g (that’s a pound, for the metrically-challenged amongst you) not just since last week, but since yesterday, bringing my weight back up to 68.2kg.


I should take that shiny “10kg lost” badge down, really.


This has been a shitty week stuck on another plateau, despite my sticking to my programme. Here are the calorie counts (and exercise) for the week:


Tuesday: 1,985 and an hour’s skiing
Wednesday: 598, half an hour on the Treadclimber, 45 minutes of weights/strength
Thursday: 1,786 and a Body Pump class
Friday: 502
Saturday: 1,646
Sunday: 1,018, 40 minutes of weights/strength and 12km on the treadmill for a total of about 900 calories (Yes, 1,000 is not 500, but this is not a one-pound-gain-level fuck-up)
Monday: 1,786

I’m really at a serious loss to figure out how that translates into this:


Tuesday: 67.8
Wednesday: 68.2

Thursday: 68.0
Friday: 68.2
Saturday: 67.9
Sunday: 67.9
Monday: 67.8
Today: 68.2


I do not believe this to be the result of my body going into starvation mode. Anything I’ve ever read about this phenomenon suggests that it won’t kick in till you get below 1,000 kcal a day, and last week I averaged about 1,330. Given that my RMR is only in the region of 1,600 that’s not that low. And the whole point of the alternate-day thing is that your body isn’t supposed to notice that you’re not eating much.


Well, mine certainly hasn’t noticed.


It’s not muscle. The scales measure body composition and that has not changed. I suppose it’s probably water, but really, I am so over this shit. I am so over the stupid crap my body likes to pull where I have to struggle and struggle and suffer to lose one ^&*$”@# pound that I can then put on again by looking at food. I appreciate that I should be focusing on the health benefits of being more active, but to be honest right now they’re not massively in evidence: I don’t really feel any fitter; I still sleep appallingly; my skin’s still crap; I’m still permanently stressed and exhausted (thanks work!) - the weight loss was really the only result I was seeing. So I’m into the weight loss; so I like to see the scale going down: does that make me a bad, an immature, a less complete person? Does it bollocks.


I’m going on holiday in two and a half weeks. I wanted to get to 65kg by then. On the 2nd of January that looked like a sensible goal. Even last week it seemed perfectly achievable. But thanks to this random, apparently groundless regain it’s not going to happen. And that makes me want to kick things, scream and punch the wall. Perhaps that makes me a bad, immature person.

I know I’m supposed to love my body. I know I’m supposed to respect it for what it can do and not beat it up for what it can’t, but there isn’t much it can do. It’s clumsy and malcoordinated. It can’t even run 5K. All it appears to be good at is taking non-existent calories and converting them into all-too-existent fat. Compare that to my mind, and it’s not hard to see why I think of my body as the weak link in this particular chain. I try to treat it well: I give it the right quantity of food and make sure it gets plenty of exercise and enough sleep... and this is how it repays me? I gave up drinking for this?

I don’t really know where to go from here. Giving up obviously isn’t an option. I could try changing to another programme, but nothing else I’ve tried has worked even this well. The idea of going to a WeightWatchers meeting sets my teeth on edge, and I don’t think that doing the programme alone would work any better than plain calorie restriction. The GI diet and similar programmes which rely on your being able to judge satiety also won’t work – I’m perfectly capable of getting fat on low-GI foods because I’m still learning about portion control. I suppose I’ll continue with ADF, because the only alternative I can see is going back to where I was, and that appeals even less. But it does feel as if I’m having to fight very hard just to stay still.


So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Healthy You Challenge check-in

I weighed in yesterday morning at 67.8kg. I’m getting tantalisingly close to 66.8kg, aka 10 and a half stone, aka my lightest ever adult weight. (Achieved for one week only during my last month at university, the week when I went to my WeightWatchers meeting in sub-fusc and the leader told me how proud she was of me for coming straight from an exam. I was back up to 10st 10lb the next week, then there was celebration, graduation, and a graph that kept going up for about four years...) My current weight feels like Thursday: I can almost smell the delights of the weekend next mini goal, but unfortunately there’s some highly inconvenient work to do before I get there.

I learned a valuable lesson this week. I learned that if the pattern of alternate days I’ve got into doesn’t match some social event, and I need to alter it, I really must not do this by having two 500-calorie days in a row. We had people coming for dinner on Sunday night, so I needed that to be an up day, but Friday was a down. Friday was fine, no more than usual hunger levels, but Saturday... oh dear. By about lunchtime on Saturday I was fit for nothing but lazing on the couch, and by bedtime I was ready to eat the pillow and plagued by serious thoughts of bingeing. Lesson learned, and I feel a bit stupid because really, how difficult was it to work out that eating 500 calories for two days in a row is not a clever idea?

On Sunday we went shopping as I needed a dress for a friend’s wedding, and had lunch at Zizzi. We split some of their truly fabulous garlic bread with cheese, which got me thinking about the Two Fit Chicks podcast on goals that I listened to while driving home a few days ago: Carla said that you should be mindful in your actions, and always ask yourself “Is this behaviour going to take me towards or away from my goal?” The answer will sometimes be “far, far away!”, and you will sometimes do it anyway, but you are at least acting mindfully. I ate that garlic bread fully aware of its potential effects on my weight-loss curve, but I enjoyed every damn bite... And to compensate slightly I had prawn linguine for my main course rather than one of the cheese-laden or beef-heavy options.

Dinner was roast chicken: dry-roasted for fat-reduction after reading a Nigel Slater article in the Guardian recommending the method. It worked really well: the chicken was still beautifully moist and the skin lovely and crisp. It probably helped that I’d bought the most expensive chicken I felt I could afford – not sure you’d get such good results with one of the 3-for-£10 specimens Tesco also had. For dessert we had homemade gingerbread and custard... the custard was bought, slightly to my shame until I tasted it. Pudding Place make better custard than me, and I don’t mind admitting it!

Monday was uneventful. On Tuesday I had a super-beginning skiing lesson at our local dry slope. We only did very basics (go, stop), but it was highly enjoyable and I have booked in for a beginners’ course. The lesson showed me some of the mental progress I’d made. Skiing was an activity I’d tried a couple of times as a teenager, and found that my weight, inflexibility and lack of fitness rendered practically impossible. So for every task the instructor set us (except, perhaps, putting on the skis) there was a little voice in the back of my mind saying “You can’t do this! You tried! You can’t! You know you can’t! You’re going to fall over and make an arse of yourself!” But I was able to say “Well, I’m going to try. And even if I do fall over, well, so what? It would be a whole lot less embarrassing than refusing to try sliding down a very gentle five-foot slope, wouldn’t it?” I did try. And not only did I not fall over, I was probably one of the better ones in the group – turns out skiing is far easier when you’re not obese. Therefore I have a message for that little voice: SCREW YOU!

(That one tiny lesson took me further than I’d managed to get any of the previous times, so in future lessons the “I CAN’T!” at least will be based on fear, not actual experience. I find that makes it easier to fight.)

Healthy You Challenge check-in and some musings

Weight this morning: 69kg exactly. That's 1kg down on last week. Of that, only 100g is muscle, which is a statistic I'm particularly pleased with, as I'm trying to lose as little lean mass as possible. Of the 8.9kg I've now lost in 2010, only 1.1kg has been muscle, and my muscle percentage, as measured by our body composition scales, is creeping towards 40%.

It's not been a bad week, food-wise. The Boy went away for the week on Saturday, so on Friday night we ordered a valedictory curry. We'd planned to split a tandoori mixed grill, which our (surprisingly good for a dinky village) local takeaway does very well, and a portion of chips, and I'd planned for them and eaten a smallish lunch accordingly. The Boy decided that he needed a bit more food, so ordered a curry too, of which I had a few mouthfuls, and I'd forgotten the mixed grill came with a naan, but little damage was done. I was particularly pleased with the moment when I dunked a bit of naan in the bottom of the mixed grill's box, was about to put it in my mouth, and then looked at it. Really looked at it, and said "I'm about to eat a lump of bread dipped in oil. That's not the sort of thing I do any more," before putting it in the bin. Progress is made...

On Saturday I got up at a truly horrible time for a weekend to take the Boy to the station, before coming home for a big bowl of porridge (my standard breakfast) and a Body Pump class. I love Body Pump. I'm hoping that if I keep it up I'll end up like the forty- and fifty-something women in my class with the fantastic bodies and the ability to lift weights that make my jaw drop slightly. They are proper inspirational.

After Pump I considered going for a run, but the class had left me tireder than usual (probably due to the ridiculous hours I worked last week) so I headed to the supermarket to shop for this week. I am shockingly lazy about cooking for just myself, so I stocked up on healthy easy meal options to stop me falling back on toast...

Sunday I'd planned to go for a run on the treadmill, but after 2.7km I just wasn't feeling the love, so I swapped to the cross-trainer for another 300 calories. Then I headed to the town to meet a friend for lunch and shopping for a dress to wear to a wedding in five weeks. After that we came home and enjoyed pasta with freshly made tomato, chorizo and bacon sauce - NOM. I was vegetarian until about three years ago, and I have no idea how I lived without bacon and chorizo.

Yesterday was pants, frankly. Today wasn't much better. I fully intended to go to the gym tonight, but I'm just too tired and too inertia-ridden. So I'm letting myself spend the evening in my PJs reading, knitting and blogging instead. I'm not moving,  but I'm not eating either, after the Thai curry I had for dinner (more NOM - well done Tesco).

While I was rummaging in the can cupboard looking for soup yesterday I found a tin of chickpeas I didn't know was there, so I think that my contribution to this week's Outside The Box Challenge might just be some hummus. More on that later I hope!

(Belated) Healthy You Challenge check-in, and some thoughts on thoughts

I have spent the last three weeks on a plateau, bobbling around 71kg, never moving more than 400g either side. Fingers crossed I've got going again, as I weighed in at 70kg on Wednesday morning. I was very excited as that means I've reached my first mini goal! Next stop 65kg, I hope. Here are my stats

All time heaviest: 95kg
2002 WeightWatchers start weight: 90kg
Weight on 2nd January 2010: 77.9kg
Lost in 2010: 7.9kg (or 17lb)

I don't have a specific goal in mind. 65kg would be around the lightest I've ever been, but would only be just inside the 'healthy' BMI range for my height. (I am sceptical about BMI, but that's another post). I am also trying to get fit, and am trying to focus more on size than weight. Which brings me onto the other topic in the title: the mental aspects of weightloss. MargieAnne commented on my last post, and exhorted me to ensure that I learn to handle stress, and make the decision not just to lose weight, but to be that weight for the rest of my life.

It's early days yet - it's not been two months - but I do feel that this time I am in a better place mentally than I have been for previous weight-loss attempts. Moving in with the Boy has reduced the living-out-of-a-suitcase aspect of my life massively, removing a substantial cause of stress. I have time and space to think about and plan my food choices, and I have ample space to prepare them (if not always enough time...). But I think the biggest change is that I have tried to address not just the fact that I overeat, but why I do it. There are two major influences for this: the Beck Diet Solution book (as harped on about in a previous post) and the vast range of healthy eating blogs I have taken to reading.  I won't say I have dealt with my stress eating, but I have become aware of it. And I'm getting there: I've had a frankly terrible day at work, and came home craving biscuits and cheese and granola and all the other wondrous things in the cupboard. Instead, I've read some blogs, and written this post.

It's a long road, but I'll get there.