The dreaded binge

This past Sunday I went on a work night out with some of my colleagues and our tech reps who come in at weekends as specialists to save my behind when I know shite all about Panasonic TVs or why Bowers and Wilkins T7 bluetooth speaker is made up of hundreds of honeycomb shapes. As frequently happens in situations where many people will be eating/ drinking together, what followed the initial organisation stage was a whatsapp argument about the venue for sustenance that went on for days. Mr Bowers and Wilkins finally made the executive decision of T.G.I. Fridays. Dun dun DUUUUUUN.

I've got nothing against T.G.I. Fridays - in my youth I was quite partial to a Cheesy Bacon Cheeseburger after my starter of mozzarella dippers- but T.G.I. Fridays is quite literally the WORST PLACE you can go on Weight Watchers and probably just about any other 'diet' going. To elaborate on this point I have listed the best and worst options and their points below. As a frame of reference to those not on Weight Watchers, I'm on 39 points a day, I weigh 17 stone 3lbs and am 5 ft 6 tall:

The best thing you can have on the menu is...Garlic Ciabatta Bread, Plain (a starter) at 12 proPoints. Alternatively you can have a quarter of the Loaded Potato Skins for the same 12 proPoints.
The WORST thing on the menu is...the Double stacked Jack Daniel's Monterey Burger, a bargain at 78 proPoints. That is literally twice my daily allowance. But I hear you, go for something real- I'm not going to have the double stacked version. So the single burger is 57 proPoints. Huh. Interesting.

Why are you so delicious?

Now, before I left home I thought long and hard about this. Florence, I said to myself, you've started well in this new year. Let's not do anything to jeopardise the consistent weight loss you've been experiencing. And so, I did the sensible thing. I got white girl wasted on fruity cocktails laced with popping candy and suddenly all concept of 'good' and 'bad' disappeared. I somehow managed to maintain a cool head long enough to order a steak. But instead of holding back on the chips I polished them off and 1.5 of my friend Alice's mozzarella dippers...another bargain at 34 proPoints for the entire starter sized serving...

Damn you and your fabulous fruity friends.

I know what you're thinking. Surely you left it there? Nope. As I downed my fourth tequila shot with a Smirnoff ice chaser (5 proPoints per bottle- I now know...), I had at no point slowed down the caloric intake. In fact I was long past caring and ordered a serving of cheesy chips to really polish off my evening.

This is not intended as some kind of binge shaming exercise but rather, is important to talk about because most people will have done something similar at one point or another. And that is absolutely okay. I feel no guilt in what I did. I had a great time. According to my fitness tracker I will have danced off most of those empty calories and I have worked really hard today to get myself back into the healthy swing of things. And it's this that people tend not to do after a binge. The initial feeling is unadulterated guilt, followed by self loathing and then starvation for the rest of the day.

Today's salvation.

Instead, today I did what I felt sensible. Having obliterated 33 of my daily points before even waking up, I had a green juice at Alice's house filled with spinach and fruits and flaxseeds and some nuts- after the evening's escapades I was also by no means 'hungry'. When I got home I had a peppermint tea to settle my, very unhappy, tummy and about a gallon of water before a long bath and a short nap. My mind and lack of sleep do not go well together. My lunch time salad was filled with greens, lean meat and some pulses for extra protein and fibre and my Chicken noodle soup worked in multiple ways. 1st it helped to heal my soul- I hear it's good for that, 2nd it was light but filling with plenty of vegetables, some lentils and my wholemeal pasta and 3rd I'm hoping it'll help keep the cold at bay for a little while longer. Tomorrow I shall be back in the gym, which I'm dreading as I cannot currently move without my muscles rebelling against yesterday's leg day and as I confessed the levels of overeating to Jemma I feel confident some very high intensity work is coming in the morning...

Accurate depiction of me today. Ow.

Basically, this blog post has been good for me as I can visualise just what the 'damage' was. This, I feel, is important because it's all a part of the accountability that I have adopted since losing weight. It is also important to me because I know there are many out there who have done, and will continue to do (we're only human) the same or very similar things who beat themselves up about it no end. To those people, I say don't. Tomorrow is another day and continuing to fret about stuff in the past is simply allowing negativity to live rent free in your mind. And frankly, life's just too short for that.

New year's resolutions. Moisturise me?

They say that you should start the new year as you intend to go on. So perhaps it's telling that I  rung in the new year with a weigh in, before a cup of green tea around 10:30 before promptly falling asleep watching Sex and the City. According to my shiny new health and fitness monitor, I had 129% of my required sleep last night. I woke up feeling rested and ready to take on the challenges of the new year.

Before I go on, let's talk a bit about last night's weigh in. And this is where I go a bit boast-y. I lost 2lbs. TWO POUNDS, the week of Christmas. Now, not only is that cool because I start the new year on a high and I achieved the inconceivable- losing weight over Christmas- but I ticked off two of my goals on my super amazing spreadsheet. 6 and a half stone AND over half way. As of last night I have lost 92 lbs and have *only* 91 lbs to go. Considering that I am hoping to finally get into the green BMI class this year starting the new year over half way there is an enormous confidence boost. It also means that, finally, the pounds to go jar of beads is less full than the pounds lost. This is something that I hoped I'd see but don't think I ever fully realised the possibility. The loss also means that I am continuing on the consistency I talked about last week that is oh so important, I think, to my continued success. If nothing else I want to strive for consistency. Even if it's only half a pound a week, a loss is what I'm aiming for.

Pretty even Stevens

So now let's talk about THIS side of the new year. I started the day with another cup of green tea and my course of multi-vitamins, glucosamine and evening primrose oil before my cheats eggs Benedict of a slice of seeded bloomer, ham and a poached egg and I'll be heading to the gym to see Jemma in about half an hour. I am determined that I will start off this year as confidently as I ended the last and despite my feeling in the past that new years aren't actually a 'new start', it's just another day, I can't help but be filled with a sense that this new year IS the start of something new for me. It's, hopefully, the start of the last year I'm in the red or orange areas of the BMI chart but it's more than that. I don't think I've ever started a year so positively. Sure, I've forgotten to buy a new calendar so my wall still thinks it's December, but I have a job that I love, a degree course I am enjoying so much, my health and fitness that I'm as enthusiastic about as I've ever been and I'm only 8 lbs away from 100 lbs lost. Also, going into kilograms for a moment, I'm under 10 kg away from my weight when I was...14? Shortly I will literally be taking up less room than I did a decade ago.

So I need to think strongly about new year's resolutions. I've kind of touched on it above, but this year as well as continuing my journey to lose weight, I want to start looking after myself much more. More water, more consistent exercise (marathon training takes full effect at 2pm this afternoon), seeing the physio/sports masseur to keep my muscles supple, ensuring that I'm getting the nutrients I need from my food- even if it means that I wait for 10 minutes making a poached egg rather than just having a bagel that takes a minute and a half in the toaster- and taking supplements to keep my joints in good working order whilst they take a pounding getting ready for 26.2 miles in May, and beyond.

But more than that, I'm going to start coming into my final body and that needs some care on the outside too. I've only touched on this before but one of the biggest things I think about when it comes to losing weight is 'will I effectively just be an enormous bag of loose skin at the end?' I'm borderline obsessed with it. When I see women who have lost considerable amounts of weight my eyes instantly fly to their underarm area. I've looked through pictures on the internet and spoken to experts who try to suggest strongly that at my age it should mostly bounce back but this year, and especially as I move closer to triple digits I'm going to take a lot better care of my skin and I'd advise you take out shares in bio-oil cus I'll be going through the stuff like nobody's business.

But any way, I'm wishing everyone here a happy, healthy new year. I'm going out to get what I want, I hope you do too.

 

Taking stock of 25%

As a retail professional...ahem, I know the value of 25% off. For example, if you came into my department and saw ONE DAY ONLY, Macs 25% OFF you would probably lose your shit because suddenly a Mac is almost the price of a 'normal' computer...almost. So, you can perhaps imagine how I felt last night as I was checking over my weight loss spreadsheet and noticed, quite to my surprise, that I had lost 25% of my original body weight. That's a quarter of a person gone. More than that, you can (again) imagine my surprise when I realised I had hit said milestone nearly a month ago. That's right, major goal post hit and I never even noticed.

So I figured, now that I have resolved some rather unfortunate computer issues (ironic, I now work in computers no?), that now was the time to really take stock and have a little blogging session whilst I procrastinate over reading about criminal and civil culpability. So here goes:

The last 9 weeks have had me on a high weight loss wise. I'm averaging about a pound and a half a week which is more than okay by me. They recommend a 1-2lb weekly weight loss for healthy, consistent and maintainable weight loss so being slap bang in the middle of that is pretty good. More than that, I had convinced myself that the slowing of my weight loss had just been an inevitable part of the weight loss machine. People start to slow down the more they lose so it was fine that I wasn't even averaging half a pound a week in the (literally) 12 months between September 2013 and September 2014. Something interesting I realised after doing some quick maths the other day (dangerous, I know). In the last 12 weeks I have lost 22.5 lbs. In another 3.5 lbs I will have lost more now than I did in that entire year long period between Sept 2013 and Sept 2014. That has to count for something.

I haven't had a gain in 10 weeks which is doing wonders for my positivity and there is a very real possibility that I will hit 90 lbs lost by Christmas. There's only 2.5 lbs to go and with every pound I move away from that dreaded 75, the more confident I get that I'm not going to get stuck again. As of last night's weight watchers meeting I'm less than a stone away from 100 lbs which is quite frankly unbelievable. I think, somewhere inside, I never thought I'd see triple digits and yet I can practically touch it it's so close now.

Simon Pegg and I, we understand each other.

So let's talk a bit about my current mental/emotional state shall we? I've spent a lot of this journey banging on about how important it is to be in the right head space but I haven't, in all honesty, been practicing what I preach. I've been a bit mean to myself at times really and I have spent so much time in the not so distant past criticising myself for rubbish losses rather than celebrating the fact that my weight is dropping, that is a huge ask for my body and yet every time I push it instead of just crapping out and giving up it tries to stand up to the challenges I have given it.

Yesterday, when I was with Jemma between double whips of the battle ropes I saw the light. I started this journey knowing that there were things I wanted to do when I was at a better weight. Theoretically, by the time I run the Milton Keynes Marathon in May I will no longer weigh too much to get on a horse. I will never again have to worry about the seat belt coming off on a roller coaster again...thank you for that experience theme park that shall remain nameless, I'll be able to take helicopter flying lessons. By this time next year I will, hopefully, be within touching distance of my goal weight and I will never again have to worry about the things I'm limited in doing because of my weight. And that, ultimately is why I'm doing this. I have already reclaimed control of my fears, I feel unstoppable and for the first time, probably ever, I feel like I can see the end of the tunnel. And I couldn't be more pleased.

I paint my own reality

The other night I had a bad dream. I wouldn't call it a nightmare, I didn't wake up in cold sweats or screaming or crying or anything like that. I just remember waking up thinking, oh- that was annoying/upsetting. This dream was a weight watchers meeting. My usual leader Sue was there but it wasn't the normal meeting place and I didn't recognise anyone else in the meeting. Very strange as my weight watchers meeting is like a mother's meeting where there is always a hubbub of people comparing weeks, swapping recipes or complaining about the looming Christmastide. I got on the scale and to my horror had gained 12 lbs in a week. Despite my leader affectionately smiling at me and saying we'll get back next week I came out with every excuse in the book. I said it was the wrong 'time of the month', that I had tweaked my gluteus minimus (not even the big one, the teeny one directly in the middle of my right butt cheek) and couldn't do exercise, that I'd been too busy at work to track.

In reality though, the last three weeks I have consistently hit my 'lowest weight ever' and am showing no signs of stopping. Tracking at work has been fine, I take between 15 and 20 thousand steps a day just stomping to and from the stock room at John Lewis, I still go to the gym every week- not as much as before but the fact that I haven't just given up all together with work and study is a good thing- and my positive mental attitude just keeps getting better and better. In fact, I can't help but look at the positives right now. It's coming up to my most favourite time of the year, I got 97% in my first law assignment, I've lost 81.5 lbs and I'm loving my job. So what gives? Why would I be having bad dreams?

Definitely the cause.

I'm not exactly full of answers for that but thinking about it as I sat down to write this blog post, and I'm not sure why I focused on the bad dream other than I wanted to update people in how everything is going, I can't help but think that my subconscious was having an 'alright, feel good now but remember there are MILES to go before you sleep' moment. Which is true. I do still have 101.5 lbs to go until I hit the goal I've chosen for myself. But instead of giving into my subconscious fears- that I haven't been aware of since getting back on track 6 weeks ago- I'm going to try to focus on the good.

Instead of thinking 'I've STILL got over a hundred pounds to lose' I'm going to focus on the fact that in 2 lbs I will be past the 100 mark. Never again will I have a triple digit number to lose and that feels pretty damn good. In 2.5 lbs I will have lost 6 stone. That's like 2/3 or 3/4 of some of my friends' body weight and definitely more than most of my friends' children weigh. I won't have just lost the proverbial baby weight, I'll have lost your average preteen. I'm going to think that with every pound I lose I'm pushing back the clock to a point earlier in my life. So much so that as of right now I can't remember how old I was when I last weighed 17 stone 13.5. But I can guarantee you, I was no older than 16.

I've spent so much time thinking about how much time I've lost by being overweight, things I couldn't do, things I was too afraid to do and with every loss I can feel a little bit of fear and a little bit of resistance to new things melting away with the fat. Ultimately this has reminded me that there will always be things that will try to drag you down, including yourself.  Sometimes I am my own worst enemy and I know that. It's what you do with that information that matters. And I for one am not going to let the little voice in the back of my head that thinks I'm going to fail beat out the little voice in the darkness that says try again tomorrow.

"I don't paint dreams or nightmares, I paint my own reality."
― Frida Kahlo

I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.

Three weeks ago my brother and I went to the opening ceremony of the inaugural Invictus Games. For those of you who are not in the know, this is a sporting event where injured and ill servicemen and women from all over the world compete in a format very similar to the Paralympic Games. Those of you that know me will know that I have an enormous soft spot for our armed forces and as such I jumped at the chance to buy tickets to go and be apart of these games. What I hadn't anticipated is just how inspired I would feel.

Those of you who were regular readers of this blog, I apologise for not writing in over four months. I also apologise to any one who I have inspired for seemingly giving up after a first year undergraduate called me fat whilst we were on excavation together. If this made anyone feel alone or frustrated or worried that I fell unceremoniously off the bandwagon, I'm here to tell you that I didn't. But I very, VERY nearly did. The final weeks of university were hard. I took every opportunity to spend time with people that I could and as such I struggled to lose any weight. Over the months that followed I had a wedding to go to, birthday parties to attend and more than one barbecue to contend with. Every time I fell down I'd pull myself back up by the bootstraps and recommit but unfortunately this only really happened for a week and then I'd fall right back down again. Finding out that I hadn't got onto the postgrad program I wanted, severe tendonitis and plantar fasciitis resulted in my having to pull out of the Great North Run and then the death of my beloved (albeit ancient) cat caused me to slip further and further into the hole I was digging for myself.

Every day I would put more shit into my mouth and every day I felt physically unwell. My skin was sallow and greying, the rest I had been prescribed for my ankle left me weaker than I'd been in months and restless to the point of distraction and I have never wanted to track less than in those few weeks. I thought about giving up every. Single. Day. And then I went to the Invictus Games. And I saw individuals who had had limbs blown off, been shot through both hemispheres of the brain and had even been put in a body bag before the weakest, tiniest signs of life were noticed. These, truly extraordinary, individuals were competing at the highest level of athleticism and the fact that they stood their before us, proudly displaying their injuries and turning their disabilities into capabilities shocked me to my core. Here I am, in the prime of life and I'm giving up because it's 'too hard'.

Don't get me wrong, losing weight is incredibly hard. At this point in my life losing weight, or rather maintaining the commitment to lose weight, is the hardest thing I have ever EVER done. And yet, I know that this mission CAN be accomplished. The GB team captain David Henson, a double amputee and the gold medal winner of the 200m sprint, said in the BBC documentary prior to the opening ceremony that real legs are great things. And here I was bitching and moaning about a sore ankle. I resolved that I would return home and make a change because if these titans could return from such tremendous adversity and be winning gold medals and setting new records then I could certainly bounce back from all that I was struggling with at the time.

The time since then has been difficult, I cried in the kitchen to my mum because I was so frustrated to have been where I was months ago and no amount of motivational speeches gave me the confidence back that I had at the beginning of the journey, and yet I plodded on. I'm 9 lbs back on track but I know that it is still early days. However, as painful as it may feel and as frustrating as it certainly can be, the only failure will come when I turn off my scales forever and stop caring all together.

What I do know is this:

'I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul'  Invictus William Ernest Henley

And it is MY fate to succeed. This fight is not yet over.

Return of the...something or other.

Dear readers,

I would like to start this blog post with an apology. My brother Jeffrey brought to my attention the fact that I had not written a new blog post in nearly a month. A month...has it really been that long?! Well, after signing in this evening I saw that I have, indeed, not posted anything since the 22nd of July. This is not exactly the continued blog progress I had hoped to see. The truth is, I've simply had writer's block. I have not fallen off this mysterious bandwagon that people like to mention and have, in fact, continued to lose weight am past my 10% and am no longer within the 300lb bracket. YAY. I suppose, in my own special way, I didn't want to write about those things because they're just not necessarily that interesting. How quickly everyone would turn off if every post was 'today, I lost two pounds and exercised till I vomited' would make my head spin. I want to inspire people, motivate people and entertain people and so I don't really like just giving a blow by blow account of what did or didn't happen in a particular week. But finally, yesterday, a topic of genuine interest (that I know a fair bit about myself) came up.

What do you do when you just don't want to go on any more?
Now, this is not some melodramatic throwing of the arm above the head to say 'I simply can't go on' this is a very real issue, that happens to many people with many of the challenges in their life. You'll hit the wall, and it really isn't as simple as going 'Ok, wall down let's keep going'. When you hit a weight loss plateau or you simply get out of a rhythm with yourself, it can be incredibly difficult to keep going. You can start making excuses that 'next week' I'll be good or, if you're me in 2009, somehow manage to completely miss the fact that you've gained nearly 4 stone in 8 months. My best friend Sarah and I have had a few conversations about this. She wished that she had somehow managed to motivate me or give me the kick up the arse that I sorely needed but it simply isn't that way. Had I realised that I'd been undoing the good work of the last year and 2 months that probably would have been enough, but when you lose your motivation, are resentful to the plan or simply stop caring; all of the gentle prodding and motivational speeches in the world are not going to get it back.

So what do you do when someone wants to throw in the towel? I have no idea. It's not your job to motivate someone and when they get in that thunk THEY have to claw themselves out of it. And this, can be devastating to watch. I imagine it must have been borderline painful for my family and friends to see the girl who had worked so hard for over a year to lose 75lbs just stop trying. To see the things that this new lifestyle had brought me slip away into non existence as my apathy to my weight increased day by day. With every pound I gained back, I lost a little of the person I had started to become and it wasn't until months later that I clambered back on that scale and saw the damage. That, I remember vaguely, was a less than comfortable feeling. Seeing that old weight on the screen apparently caused a mass exodus of all of the healthy skills I'd developed and I went into a cycle of not eating, eating only fruit and then binge eating in one form or another. Gone was the exercise and, despite the fact that I am a generally happy person, for that brief period; gone was my self respect. I managed to recover it at the LighterLife meeting where I was told that I 'couldn't possibly be happy' but for that couple of weeks I was so disheartened and unhappy about what I'd allowed to happen that I lost my confidence. It was months before I was brave enough to start a weight loss plan again (online-I couldn't face my old leader Natasha) and, with my heart no longer fully in it, I failed.

You see, it really isn't as simple as going 'oh dear, bad slip-I'll go back to my meeting this week' it can be a total and utter debilitating blow to your pride and sense of self. I never want to get back to that point. This is why, as I've said before, simply pushing myself into meetings every week is of the utmost importance. Did I gain a pound this week after my birthday...yes, do I care. Slightly. Will that stop me from maintaining my positive mental attitude, starting again fresh and seeing what happens this meeting. No. I, for one, am tired of starting again. And the only way that I can prevent that is to STOP QUITTING.

To finish, I'll end with my two new mantras.

'If it doesn't challenge you, it doesn't change you.' Weight loss IS a challenge, it is not easy and no one (or I hope no one reading this at least!) believes it to be as simple as a couple of mathematical equations. But change does not come over night. Nor should it. This is a process of progression and change on every level of my being. This is not just a change in my mass and no one should expect it to be so.

'NEVER give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway' -Earl Nightingale
I know this seems simple but I'd never thought of it this way. The time will pass, and does pass, regardless of what you choose to do with the time. I, for one, would rather be making the changes now rather than getting to the SAME point in time three years down the line and seeing no change.

And finally, an oldy but a goody.
'Never never never give up.'- Winston Churchill

'