Changing priorities

This afternoon I went with my friend Elspeth to see the latest in the Bridget Jones' Diary franchise and I had a bit of an epiphany. Yes friends, Bridget Jones brought around a real psychological evaluation that I'd like to share with you all.

Let's begin by briefly discussing my state of mind for the last...year. It has not been pretty. If I am honest with myself I started beating myself up on the 14th September last year when I attempted the New Forest Marathon. Having come in to this with an incredibly positive mental attitude (despite having lost weeks of training to illness) I was certain that there was no way I wouldn't be able to achieve this and so, when I couldn't, I don't think I ever really forgave myself. Gone was the celebratory marathon and Tough Mudder themed tattoos (unfair on the latter as I did actually complete that and still consider that to have been the greatest fitness success of my life), I stopped running and slowly but surely I stopped caring. My nutrition went down south, my love for activity decreased and I just became overall complacent. Flash forward a year and two days and this has changed very little.

Bridget Jones is remembered for a number of things: big pants, sliding down a fireman's pole and singing 'Like a Virgin' in a Thai prison (to name but a few) but my single most pervading memory from the books is her obsession with weight and caloric intake. Bridget can proudly tell you the number of calories in a small banana and complain about being 9 stone 10 (b***h). First thing I thought of here is, God I hope I never get so obsessed with the number on the scale that I am at that level. Followed by 'F**k, I already am'. You see, I started September with every intention of rejigging my life. I've been doing the yoga 30 day challenge at Sweat Studios and I was meant to be eating well, hydrating well and therefore feeling ALL of the benefits. What has actually happened is I have done the yoga but I have forgotten to hydrate adequately, meaning that I've spent much of the last week either missing classes or feeling like death warmed up because I have such a headache; I have apparently thrown the nutrition handbook out of the window meaning I feel sluggish and overfull ALL THE TIME, and have gained weight. Last time I did the challenge I was dropping pounds on a daily basis. Anyway, that bit is really unimportant. The important bit is the obsession. See, the thing is I really shouldn't KNOW that I've gained weight. I should NOT be weighing on a near hourly basis seeing if I've shifted the pound I gained at breakfast or hoping that a good bowel movement will get me closer to my weight this time last year. I have lost the plot.

I am missing the opportunity to see my body work at its peak because I am completely overtaken by a number on a scale. I go to the gym to lose weight. I go to yoga and operate in blistering heat to lose weight. All I have thought about for months is weight. And as, obviously, that has not been moving in as expedient or consistent a manner as I would like, the way I have been thinking about my weight has become increasingly negative.

And then today, Mark Darcy stepped in. As many of you know, I am studying to become a lawyer and human rights is absolutely where my interest lies. And I'd kind of forgotten that. I'd become swept up with all of my obsession with weight and with the negativity that has been following me around like a bad smell and, quite frankly, I've been fucking things up. Not badly. Not enough to hold me back, but enough for me to notice. And then I remembered the way I was when I was younger and all I wanted in the whole world was to stand on a stage in the West End and play the role of Fanny Brice in Funny Girl or Eponine in Les Miserables. Every thing I did then was in service of my ultimate aim. Which is why, on the drive home, I gave some thoughts to my goals now. Career aspirations obviously include completing my legal degree with as high a degree classification as I can achieve, get a place studying for the BPTC, get pupillage, change world. But health wise, I just don't think that my 'weight' can be the priority. Right now my 'weight' is not serving me. It is holding me back. My aim is to be healthy. To go to bed feeling well and waking up feeling well and able to start the next day. Not feeling like I've put poison in my body that wracks my stomach with cramps at night and waking up feeling like I've been hit by a bus. To be fit. To give my body challenges that it has not achieved (or even tried) before and feel like I can do it. To not feel so lethargic. To not go up the three flights of stairs to my bedroom and feel exhausted at the end. To condition my body so that it is in excellent condition for as long as possible. Not my weight. My weight does not determine any of those things.

So kids, for now at least, I am banishing the scales. I will still record what I eat as a method of accountability but my focus has to be on getting the most from my activity, eating healthily and regaining my balance. But most important of all, finding the positivity that drove me on all that time ago when I first started this. And until then (and perhaps even then) my 'weight' can only hold me down.

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.

When in doubt, count it out.

First, let me start by congratulating myself. After months of only managing to get to a lowest weight of 18 stone 5lbs I have finally broken through my weight loss plateau. I have now lost 77.5 lbs, that's 5 stone 7.5 lbs or 11 silver sevens gone. I want to quickly talk about how I have done this because plateaus, I feel, are the single biggest cause of giving up at weight loss. It makes sense doesn't it? You work effectively for weeks, months even, and then suddenly- zilch, nada, not an ounce. Try as you may, nothing happens. You get dragged into a 'diet', you start taking questionable weight loss tablets and when that doesn't help, bad habits start to sneak back in to your day to day life.

Pretty big plateau that.

So, after one too many nights of complaining to my parents and crying about how exhausting it is to have been losing weight for a year and a half but to not have moved in that last half, I did what I perhaps should have done all those months ago. I took to the internet, that font of knowledge, and typed in 'weight loss plateau'. And without fail, every single page asked 'are you eating enough?' Simple answer, as I said in my last post, was no. No I wasn't. Or when I was, I was eating too much. Basically, despite the fact that some very clever people designed the weight watchers ProPoints system with a precise daily allowance, I was ignoring that advice because, I knew better.

I've now been back to basics, actually eating my daily allowance- like I did in the beginning-for three weeks and after an initial week of stabilizing where I gained half a pound, I have lost 4lbs. Last week I was back at the lowest I'd ever been, this week I am now two pounds lighter. So this is the lowest weight I have been in, conservative estimate, 10 years? I now feel so much more in control and, for the first time ever, I can actually see the weight coming off as it happens. I'm stronger, and fitter, than I've ever been (I'm running the Milton Keynes Marathon in May), I finally fit into the dress options I bought for my brother's wedding in July and today as I was sorting my way through clothes that were too big, the first new look dress I bought all those months ago had to go because it just doesn't fit any more. I think, until I beat the plateau monster, I was reticent to get rid of my over sized clothes because I didn't really believe I wouldn't need them again. As a general update, I will be taking 4 more rubbish bags to the charity shop tomorrow and other than clothes for work, my closet is almost empty...I get to go shopping. YES!

An empty closet is a sad closet.

But perhaps, the best thing that has come out of the whole plateau thing is that I now know I CAN come out of it. That my body hasn't just decided, nope, sorry I'm going to stay at 18.5 forever and ever- you'll just have to get used to this weight as your baseline. So I'm definitely not done yet. Better than that, I now have the facility to help others. Before hand I could share my experiences and make people feel like they were not alone. That we're all in this together and that with the right positive mental attitude, we can achieve anything. Now, I can sit in a weight watchers meeting and not just share 'this week I lost X', 'this week I really struggled' or similar; I can tell the new members from experience that to lose weight, as counterproductive as it might seem, you need to eat and I was lucky to have one lady tell me that until last week she was at the end of her tether and then I said plainly, eat your points.

Go Wildcats!

The system works, it can just be difficult to trust in it. But you CAN trust in your comrades and colleagues because you have shared in their experiences. So, as long as I remember my old mantra 'when in doubt, count it out' -useful for everything from knitting to weight loss and beyond- I should manage to maintain this consistent weight loss. Let's do it to it!

OCD: Obsessive Compulsive Dieting

I have always thought, despite my size, that I haven't had that disordered an approach to food. I'm good at losing weight because, I believed, I didn't obsess over it. I have never been a picky eater (maybe that was the problem?), there are few things on this earth I won't try but I don't spend every minute of every day thinking about food and I do believe that people should be able to have a bit of what they fancy- regardless of beliefs of an afterlife, this is the ONE time we have to get this life right. So yes, I will be having the occasional bit of cheese with a biscuit. With all that said, I realised in the last few days that I have indeed been guilty of disordered eating.

I broke one of my cardinal rules. Whatever you do, do not weigh yourself between weigh ins. And when I say I broke my rule, I mean REALLY broke it. There were times in the last few weeks that I would weigh up to 18 times a day. I'd weigh in the morning, I'd see what I weighed in different items of clothing, pre-shower, post-shower. Before workouts, after workouts. Post pee, post...well, you know. Morning, noon and night I was on the bloody scale. And I began to hate myself for it. If I didn't weigh less than the night before I would scold myself and go obsessive compulsive dieter on myself. 'Right, you will only eat X amount tomorrow to make up for what you've done!' 'You won't eat on weight watchers days and you will become borderline dehydrated just so you can squeeze out at least one pound'- which when you think about it is not representative of how much you weigh at all. And then worse, after weigh in, ravenous I would run to the drive-thru McDonald's around the corner desperate for my big mac and mozzarella dippers. Bad start to what would, almost certainly, be a bad week.

Step away from the scale!

I've been trying the last few weeks to start fresh. I finally managed to banish the scales from my daily routine. But I won't lie, staying the same last week after managing to lose 9 lbs in two weeks was very annoying. So I looked back over my food diaries from the time I started to plateau- after all, I may have shifted some but I am still stuck in my plateau phase. This exercise showed me one, very obvious, thing. I am, and have always been, obsessed with my points. Those who are on weight watchers will know that we are given 49 weekly points. Spread them, save them or splurge them, they are there to make your life flexible. And my secret is I HATE using them. I feel like a failure when I use them, despite the fact that they are there for a very real, very valid reason. A reason that I constantly tell other people wanting to lose weight. This isn't about restricting what you can eat, this is about changing lifestyle. The weeks that I do use my weekly points, I found, were the weeks that I actually lost more successfully. Perhaps because I loosen my death grip on points. But in the last six months a pattern arises. Either, I use none of my weekly points and my average daily intake is actually a couple of points below my daily allowance OR I completely blow the bank and eat out of control way over my daily and weekly points. Obviously, not very healthy.

Now, I've been doing some reading about plateaus and everyone, everywhere says the same thing. Relax. Not every day, but now and then, And when I think about this it actually makes a good deal of sense. Our bodies are amazing things and will do all they can to use the least amount of energy possible. Cheeky beggar. Team that with your body's metabolic rate slowing down from weight loss and a plateau is bound to happen. It's like exercise. If you repeat the same activity at the same level of exertion week in week out, eventually it has less of a result. So to beat my plateau I have come up with a plan. It's still regimented (because I like regimented things) but I'm hoping it will give my body the kick it needs to progress further.

Stage 1a) For three out of every four weeks I will eat up to my points. This means actually up to, I'm not pissing about here- I want to do this properly and that means getting my mind into the space where I realise I've been set a certain number of points for a reason. The points will go down, enjoy the time that you still have a few more to play with for crying out loud.
Stage 1b) One of these three weeks will be what is called on weight watchers a 'Filling and Healthy' week. I need to get these good foods that nourish and fuel your body re-integrated into my daily life and I feel that this is an excellent way of doing so.
Stage 2) For one week of every four I will make a concerted effort to eat my weekly points. Now that's not saying I'm going to force food down my gullet just to do so but I will relax a bit and enjoy everything in moderation- including moderation.

To cheat or not to cheat..?What the hell are double dough pizzas?

This exact plan of attack may indeed need some work. Jemma (my awesome PT who everyone should hire, but shouldn't cus she's mine...) suggested having a day or two a week of eating a bit more rather than one week a month so I will certainly be trying both methods to see what works best for me.

Regardless of which works best, I know for certain that this re-invigoration of planning and preparation will at least get me fully back into the positive head space I have always needed to lose weight successfully.

Until then, I haven't watched Run, Fatboy, Run in forever. So I think I'm gunna go do that.