New Year, (too much) New Me

Mmm, Christmas.


Goose. Roast potatoes. Cypriot baked cod. Fishcakes. Curry. Enchiladas. Chocolate. Cheese. Red wine. White wine. Beer. Champagne and steak for breakfast. Cake.

The list goes on…

So yeah, I put on half a stone in December. Not really surprising, given that I started eating whatever the hell I liked when we went to Germany on the 10th and then, well, carried on. What is surprising is that I’m really, really struggling to care.

My clothes still fit: this is probably because they were all much too big before and are now merely a bit too big. I still feel good. I think the reason for this is that a disproportionate amount of the gain seems to have gone to my chest. Having shrunk to merely ‘large’ it is now back to ‘WTF?’ So while I’m probably definitely slightly bigger all over, I have retained my proportions.

This calm feels weird. I tried on some jeans in Fat Face (the irony!) over the holiday: the 12 wouldn’t go over my thighs and the 14 wouldn’t do up. Rather than enter a shame spiral of ‘OMYGODI’MSOFATNONONONO!’ I thought “That’s stupid: I’m clearly not a 16!”

I should probably try and lose the half stone. But at the moment I’m really struggling to be bothered. So: the plan of action (these are not New Year Resolutions; I don’t do those):

• Exercise at least 3 times a week. I have started the programme from The New Rules of Lifting for Women, so will probably be focussing on weights twice a week, with a session with C to make up the 3rd.

• Eat less ridiculously. I’ve already reined it in a lot since Christmas, in that I am no longer living on cheese and chocolate with occasional big piles of meat. I realised that I’d been Doin It Rong on about the 4th of January, when I thought “I’m hungry… this feels weird… WTF? I haven’t actually been hungry for about two weeks!” Yeah. Not great. However, I’m probably only down to an average 2,000 calories a day. I should probably be eating more like 1,500-1,800.

• Not miss things, or make social occasions shit and miserable, because I’m worried about my eating. I was totally doing this before Christmas, and looking back it was REALLY STUPID.

This is busy season in my job, and unlike in some earlier years I’d like to come out at the end of March less exhausted, fat and spotty than I started, which means that eating properly and exercising need to be squeezed into my limited leisure time. I’ve filled the freezer with home-cooked food, and scheduled workout sessions several weeks in advance. I’m also working on making getting to bed on time a priority, although that does seem to cause more domestic friction than it should.

All this means I may not have much time for blogging over the coming weeks, but I’ll do my best.

What are your goals for 2011?

Reverb10 Day 5: Let Go (and some actual discussion of weight loss issues)

"What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why?"

I think I just broke up with WeightWatchers.


I’d already documented my issues with the ProPoints plan. To be fair to the new plan, I had been struggling for a few weeks before that, but I’d ascribed it to general malaise and half-assed plan following. When I was once again using my whole ass, as Homer put it, the failure was harder to take.

So, as I said last week, I decided to take my trainer’s advice and eat a bit more. After a week of aiming for 1,500 calories a day I feel more energised. I’m sleepy better. I am noticeably (to other people) less stressed. In short, I feel so much better that I wouldn’t care if I wasn’t losing weight, as long as I didn’t actually gain.

But I’ve also lost about a kilo. In a week. I am certainly not complaining about that.

This feels sustainable. I had got to the point with WeightWatchers where the idea of doing the programme for a second longer than I had to made me despair; as a result every tiny gain or plateau felt like a catastrophe. This feels much more sustainable.

So I didn’t go to my meeting today. It felt odd. But I also didn’t panic about feeling a bit bloated this morning, or try to wear clothes that are as light as possible. And I didn’t spend this afternoon in my usual Tuesday post-meeting rewarding-myself mini-binge, either.

I’ll still go to the odd meeting, even if it’s just the five a year required to sustain my Gold membership. I’ll still stick the little key on my 10% keyring when I finally decide that I’m done, and I’ll certainly collect the little gold stars for maintenance every year. I may turn back to WeightWatchers if I need to lose significant amounts of weight in the future. But right now? Well, WW, I’m afraid it’s not you, it’s me.

Hurrah!

I am a healthy weight. When I stepped on the scales yesterday they read 10 stone 2lb, which gives me a BMI of 24.8.


I know it’s only just under 25, and that BMI is a dubious measure anyway. I am not finished yet; I don’t feel that this is my happy weight. But still…

I am a healthy weight! I have never been able to say that as an adult before.

It makes me think, too. I read a post recently – I’m afraid I cannot for the life of me remember where – on acknowledging how far we’ve come. I think I quite often forget to do that. When cursing about being not quite being able to get into size 10 trousers, I forget the morbidly obese 18-year-old who thought she’d never be a size 12. When I complain that I can’t run a 10K in under 70 minutes, I forget that once upon a time I couldn’t run 100 yards.

I haven’t reached my weight or fitness goals just yet. Here isn’t a place I want to stay long. But here was once a place I never thought I’d make it to.

I feel strong now, and confident. There are nine weeks till Christmas (eek!) and I have 9lb left to my goal of nine and half stone. Let’s see how close I can get.

Culinary highlight of the week: Sunday’s roast chicken and vegetables. More specifically, the roast potatoes, which were easily the best I’d ever made.

Some things go wrong, others go very very right, and I still can't write good titles

I’m sure that my few readers have abandoned me in disgust long since, but just in case anybody would like to know, here’s the story of the not-quite three months since my last post.

Eleven days after it, on the 29th of July 2010, I drove to the Big City where I used to live after work, to go to the dentist. I was a bit miffed when I got there to discover that they hadn’t bothered to tell me in advance that they were no longer offering NHS treatment. NHS dentists are at such a premium in this part of the world that I would happily drive 40 miles to get to one, but private dentistry I can get round the corner. I haven’t been back.

Anyway, I was in a bit of a mood when I left. Since the Boy had previously said that he’d make dinner, I phoned him to tell him I was coming back. “Call me when you get to junction 12 of the motorway” was his response. This was unusual, but since it’s about ten minutes away I figured that he was trying to time dinner to be ready when I walked through the door (I have given up on doing that – there’s always a traffic jam and then something ends up overcooked or cold. But I digress…). So I did.

When I got home, the house was immaculate, there were candles burning, and the Boy was clutching a little square box.

Oh. My. God.

We’d talked about marriage, so the question wasn’t totally out of the blue, but the timing was a beautiful surprise.

I said yes.

Then we went for dinner at our favourite restaurant. I had mozzarella salad, he had seared tuna, we shared a rare chateaubriand and a huge bucket of chips. We drank champagne and Languedoc and babbled about the future like excited children.

The next day, Friday, we went to a wedding and told his family. The day after, we went to another wedding and told mine. On Sunday we had 1st of August raclette with my mum and dad (it’s the day we conveniently remember that we’re Swiss in order to eat too much cheese). On Monday we drove home after enjoying fish and chips at a favourite haunt in Glasgow, where I was very touched that the waitress remembered and congratulated me, despite my not having been there for about five years.

I didn’t lose any weight that week, somewhat unsurprisingly, nor really for the next four or five. August brought a new set of people to see every weekend, each of whom wanted to celebrate with us. Which on the one hand is lovely, but on the other does lead to excesses. The month culminated with a three-day weekend where we invited everybody over for a six-mile country walk during the day followed by a party in the evening. Both events were lovely, and we were incredibly touched to see so many of our friends – 21 over the course of the day – turn out to celebrate with and congratulate us.

Looking at my spreadsheet I can see that I gained half a pound that week, bringing me back to half a pound down from the weight I was that day I went to the dentist. September was supposed to be the ‘getting back on it’ month – the partying was over and real life (and wedding planning) were back. Plus there was the 10K coming up.

Ah. I didn’t mention the 10K, did I? After running one in mid-July, I got all excited about running again and persuaded the Boy that we should enter another, on September 12th. It was 8 weeks away, plenty of time to train!

Or, as it turns out, plenty of time to, er, not run for seven weeks. I had been doing plenty of other exercise (just not quite enough to do more than hold steady against August’s excesses) but was still feeling pretty apprehensive.

Anyway, I digress. September. Back on it. Nose to the grindstone. Etc.

Yeah, not so much. Lose, gain, lose, same, same. Net loss for five weeks – 1lb. Net loss since P-day – 1.5lb.

Gah.

I’m getting pretty damn frustrated. This week I did everything right - ate my points, exercised five days out of seven - and was really expecting to lose. When I got on the scales and saw 10 stone 5 again, I’m afraid I cried.

At a WeightWatchers meeting.

In public.

Crap.

My Leader, possibly in an attempt to get me to stop bloody crying, decided that the solution is to ‘take the pressure off’. She’s moved my goal weight to 10 stone 4, the very highest it can be (and, by my maths, actually just outside the healthy BMI range, but never mind). I have mixed feelings about this. I originally set my goal at 9 stone 7 because I wanted getting there to be a genuine achievement, and for it to be a weight where I would be happy. If I got to 9 stone 9 or so and felt that I needed to lose more than another couple of pounds, I would have dropped it. As it is, getting to Goal will be a bit of an anticlimax, because I know that 10.4 will not be a happy weight for me. I have a very small frame and should probably be nearer nine stone than ten, but won’t know until I get there. All I know is that I am not comfortable with the amount of excess flab I am currently toting around.

On the other hand, Goal = free meetings = £20 per month to spend on something else, and there is no reason why I can’t keep losing weight.

So, my resolutions for this week:

• Exercise every day. I aim to do some kind of workout every day in October, and have bought the 30-Day Shred DVD to facilitate this.
• Track properly and fully (ie without strange cryptic notes), so that if I get on the scales next week and it’s all gone wrong again I have something I can show my Leader and discuss.
• Not go nuts on Saturday, when we are going to a wedding fair (free samples) or Sunday, when we have a tasting booked with our caterer (free whole meals).
• Drink 2l of water a day.

I am also aiming to blog at least once a week, on Wednesdays. There may also be other posts on an ad-hoc basis, but I need a minimum structure to work to.

I hope you all have good, successful weeks.

A long, long time ago...

... I wrote a post about goals for April, before merrily jetting off on a two-week holiday.

Which, thanks to that bloody volcano, turned into a three-and-a-half-week holiday. As somebody pointed out, some people are in the Big Brother house for less time than that. And with 10 of us together sometimes it felt a bit like Big Brother. But I've finally made it back to soggy green Britain, so let's see how those goals shaped up (warning: contains excuses):

Early April goals

• Try to exercise 3 times a week for at least half an hour.  Yeah... not so much. There was always a good reason not to go for a run. Like "I'm sleepy: I need sleep." "I just ate breakfast.:" "It's 2pm. It's too hot." "I'm already drunk." Verdict: entirely own-fault FAIL.

• Improve my swimming. It was not actually that hot, at least in the first part of the holiday, and at the beginning of April the pools hadn't had a chance to warm up properly. My non-mobile breaststroke didn't keep me warm enough and I can't swim at all when I'm shivering. Verdict: partially climate-imposed FAIL.
• Get some serious R&R. Sat in the sun, drank about 2831457 brandy sours and generally did some hardcore relaxing. Verdict: WIN. 
• Eat reasonably.  Er, yeah. About that. Cypriot restaurants believe that a vastly overfed customer is a happy customer. We kept eating Meze, which at times felt like the steak-eating contest Homer Simpson got into with a trucker. Most of the party put on an appreciable amount of weight after being there for nearly a month. Verdict: OH DEAR.

Late April goals

• Gym/other exercise 3 times a week. I managed to break my big toe on the day we were supposed to come home, in a manner so boring I won't repeat it here. I'm yet to find any exercise other than swimming that doesn't hurt, and my issues with swimming are well-documented. Verdict: excusable FAIL.
• WeightWatchers.  Wasn't in the country.
• Blog 4 times a week. Didn't have a computer.
• Get 8 hours' sleep a night. Well, I certainly managed that one.

So, in short, the only goals achieved were, er, the ones that involved not doing much. Still, the circumstances were exceptional. May will be a month of achievement!

I would highly recommend Cyprus as a holiday destination, though, although perhaps not for 25 days... And if you do go, I can give you some truly wondrous restaurant recommendations!

April Goals

My April splits into two parts – for the first two weeks I’m on holiday, then it’s back to work and the daily grind (albeit a new daily grind) for the rest. So I’ve made separate goals for each part to acknowledge this

Early April goals

• Try to exercise 3 times a week for at least half an hour. By exercise, I really mean running as there won’t be a gym available to us. We do have a swimming pool in both lots of accommodation but I swim so badly that I’d die of chlorine poisoning before I got a meaningful workout. Which brings me on to...
• Improve my swimming. The Boy tried to teach me breaststroke in Turkey last year. I’d like to try and master that and maybe be able to swim a length of breaststroke (in our weeny villa pool) by the end of the fortnight.
• Get some serious R&R. It feels like a long time since Christmas. I’ve been through an audit busy season since then, with no time off to speak of, and I am exhausted. I look forward to spending a reasonable amount of the next fortnight doing absolutely sod all.
• Eat reasonably. It’s a holiday. We’ve already discussed my, erm, issues with Middle Eastern/Mediterranean food. But neither of those are excuses to go totally nuts. Sure, I’m going to eat some things I wouldn’t normally have, but there’s no reason to do that at every meal. 

Late April goals

• Gym/other exercise 3 times a week. I’ve been matching or exceeding this one every week for some time, so it should just be a question of getting back into it post-holiday.
• WeightWatchers. I aim to go to my first meeting in the week of the 19th. Watch this space...
• Blog 4 times a week. Posting here really encourages me to think about my actions and choices, so I want to commit to doing it more in the hope of upping the mindfulness quotient.
• Get 8 hours’ sleep a night. I’ll be starting a new job and establishing a new routine. That should be a chance to give a decent night’s sleep the importance it should have, and hopefully make holiday relaxation last a bit longer.

What are your goals? What do you think about when you’re setting them?