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.

Still here!

I have been extremely rubbish about blogging, but there is a proper post on the way in the next day or two... honest!

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?

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.

Normalising normality

In one of the Two Fit Chicks podcast, a listener submitted the Blogger News that she had borrowed a ‘normal’ friend’s coat and been able to do it up.

I understand that victory. My two closest friends are much the same height as me and are much the same size as each other – I can remember how I felt when I joined them at that size and could finally experience the clothes-borrowing that was part of everybody else’s adolescence but which my lack of size-22 friends had denied me. We wear each other’s dresses and coats from time to time, and I still think “Hey, I can pass for normal!”

‘Pass’ is the key word there, because I very rarely actually feel normal.

I am sitting typing this in size 6 shoes, size 14 trousers and pants (which are both too big) and a size 10 jumper. My feet are exactly the average UK size, I believe, and since I’ve heard on several occasions that the average British woman is a 16, my clothes actually put me in the smaller half of the female population. The only, ahem, outlying item I’m wearing is a 30H bra.

But I still feel fat. In a lot of ways my mind still thinks I weight fifteen stone. It’s as if being morbidly obese, as well as leaving empty fat cells scattered across my body ready to absorb excess calories and reinflate, has left that space in my brain empty and dormant, just waiting for something – a look (real or imagined), a remark, a pair of jeans that don’t quite fit – to swell it into the full-blown mental scream of OH MY GOD I AM SUCH A BLOB LOOK AT ME LOOK HOW VAST I AM EWEWEWEWEWEW! My self-esteem is stretched and damaged and weakened in the same way as the skin on my inner thighs. And neither the clearly not-that-fat woman in the mirror nor the kind words of those close to me can repair it. "They're just saying that," I tell myself. If they know me well, it's kindness. If they don't, it's politeness. Which is stupid, because if I take that to its logical conclusion the only people whose opinion I can listen to are those who know and dislike me... WTF?

I worry about what all this crazy means for the future. I've long ceased to think that my life will be perfect when I lose weight - mainly because it's pretty damn good now (and I appreciate how lucky I am to feel that way most of the time). But the thing I do look to weightloss to improve is my self-esteem, and the rational part of my mind suspects that the irrational part may never be happy with my weight. I think I need to start working on my body image in tandem with working on my lifestyle.

One of my big goals when I started this journey at New Year was to wear a bikini by the pool in Cyprus. I bought it ten days ago. If I can find the courage to wear it, and feel comfortable in it despite my not-actually-totally-perfect body, I think that'll be a real step forward for me.