The most important lie I ever did tell.

Dear Diary,

I have a confession to make. Last week, I lied about my weigh in. I lied to myself, I lied to my daily record and also anyone who asked about how I'd done that week. The truth then, is that I gained a pound. I told everyone I'd lost a pound. I didn't even do a little lie and say I'd stayed the same. And as I stepped on the scales on Wednesday and saw that I had lost that pound and another two, effectively bringing me to the place I would have been had I actually weighed in as 17 stone 2 last week and lost another pound, I started to question why I had lied in the first place.

Here's what I figured out when I really thought about it. Over the last few months I had managed a greater level of consistency than I had every achieved before on weight watchers. That consistency has been so very important to me in driving me to keep it going and I think that I was scared to let myself slip, even a little- even if I then rectified the situation the next week. I was also wary of the fact that in gaining a pound I went back a step in being over my half way mark. So I lied. I actively told myself- you lost another pound, that pound meant that my daily points allowance changed to 38, that pound meant that I hadn't dropped the consistency, that pound meant that I believed I was still going the right way and consequently that pound meant that I continued to lose this week. As such it felt like the most important lie I could tell myself at that time as I didn't put myself down once for gaining that pound.

However, I have no way of telling if I would have done as well, worse or better if I had owned my gain when it happened and, more importantly, I failed to stay honest to myself and the plan. So I resolved as I saw my weight drop to the lowest I've ever been, again, that I would always be honest in the future. If I can be honest with my tracker about what I'm putting into my body, if I can own the bad times with the good, then I can certainly afford to accept the gains with the losses because it's a part of life that actually helps to increase the value of the loss afterwards. Simple maths to demonstrate what I mean:

If I had actually weighed as 17 2, my loss of a pound this week doesn't seem as impressive as the three pounds I actually lost to bring me to where I am today.

In retrospect that first gain in months was important to me- it showed that one blip is not going to screw the plan up and that I can pick myself up, brush myself off and keep going.

So, whilst it felt like an important lie to tell myself at the time, I will not be repeating this practice. I'm 94 pounds in, I don't NEED to lie to myself to know that I've got this. I just need to persist.

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.

 

Goal by next Christmas

Recently in my life I've been thinking a lot about the past. It's, almost certainly, something to do with the time of year. It's around Christmas and New Year that people, or me at least, start to reminisce and  sentimentality is rife. For me this came about in the way of a flash back to me 4 Christmases ago. I'd started to really gain the weight back, after I lost 75lbs last time, and I'd just started a Christmas job- incidentally working for the same company I've come to make a home with this time around. Now, if you'll allow me to paint you a picture, I was squatting down to tidy up thousands of iPad cases after a (charming) teenage girl had apparently had an argument with them all and her victims lay at my feet, and the feet of more than a couple of would be customers. As I was replacing the bright pink belkin click in case I suddenly remembered myself in a not so different position trying not to cry from the agony in my feet as I put pack after pack of christmas cards back on the shelf. After trying to crouch down to do it in a more professional way I gave up and ended up sat on my behind much to the chagrin of some of my colleagues.

I started thinking about how much my life has changed from losing weight. I'm hella strong, I can be on my feet for 8+ hours with barely an ache and I felt no sense of sarcasm today whilst buying my new running watch in preparation for marathon training starting in earnest on Monday. I say without  a hint of sarcasm because in the past whenever I bought exercise gear I always did so with an enormous sense of irony. Lols, the fat girl is buying running shoes. Go home, you're drunk.

And so this got me really thinking. In January this year I wrote a blog about new years resolutions and how I don't make them. I have actually changed my tune but that's coming in a separate blog post in the next week or so. In that post I said that realistically 2014 was never going to be the last year that I was overweight. However, it is very possible that 2015 WILL be the last year I'm overweight. And I have never, ever, been close enough to be able to say that. Of course there is still a lot to do, 85lbs in just over a year is not something to be sniffed at but even if I'm not all the way there being that close can only be a good thing. I worked out last night that the last 11 weeks are the most consistent I have EVER been at losing weight. The most I'd managed before was 5 weeks loss at a time.

So as I come into the new year I'm not anxious about the fact that ultimately little will have changed by the time another year has gone by. This year's the year that everything changes. I honestly truly believe that, but I'm thankful for the last year and a half for even making it possible. I think now about the 11th of September 2014 when I nearly gave up, the day I made myself go to my weight watchers meeting to stop the downward spiral that was taking over. As I go into 2015 I think of all of the optimism and all of the opportunities that will present themselves to me as I continue to change my life. And maybe this time next year I'll be thinking about the things I couldn't do now that I'll be able to do then.

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

Fat in Love. Age rating 18.

Dear all.

In today's blog post I am FINALLY going to cover a topic that my friend Rachael mentioned to me oh, about a year ago. However, it's going to be discussed in two parts. First just a discussion about 'fat sex'- not the logistics- and then I'm going to talk about the search for love as a plus sized woman. So hold on to your hats kids, who knows where this is going to go! In fact, the more I've written the more convinced I've become that this carries an age rating 18. You have been warned.

The conversation that ultimately planted the seed of fat fetish, feeders, BBW (big beautiful women), and just fat sex came about from a Channel 4 documentary on 'My Big Fat Fetish'. The show follows the trend, particularly on the internet, for fat based pornography, images of bigger women eating or being fed and the impact on their health and personal relationships. If you have a spare 50 minutes, it's a fascinating insight and I would certainly recommend watching it. After a cursory glance at one prominent erotic literature website I can tell you that there are over 800 stories when I simply keyworded 'fat fetish', when I got even more specific this goes into the thousands. The titles also got increasingly disturbing so proceed with caution should you go on a journey of discovery like myself...ahem. A leading fetish site (I've been all over the internet so you don't have to- unless you want to, in which case 'right on'), again after a cursory keyword search, brings up a total of 1008 fat related fetishes. So basically, what I've learnt is that the umbrella term 'fat fetish' is big BIG business. I've also learnt that women (in particular) will go to extreme lengths to please their customers, including sitting on individuals for a fee and having feeding tubes shoved down their throats in a desperate effort to fit in to the next size bracket. Whilst many of the individuals portrayed on Channel 4 are more than happy with their bodies, the effects can be devastating. One of the guys who got sat on in the documentary complains of breathing issues and the woman he paid to do so is house bound and needs to be cared for entirely by her son. I'm a big believer in different strokes for different folks so I would never EVER dream about telling any of these 'artistes' that they shouldn't be doing what they're doing. These are just my observations from researching this topic.

Charming. Thanks for that Urban Dictionary.

The one thing that I kept thinking was, why is fat pornography different to 'normal person' pornography? The equal rights activist in me is screaming that fat porn stars should be capable of taking part in more of the 'normal' stuff (what IS normal anyway?) rather than having to go to more and more humiliating, degrading activities because that is currently the primary medium in which they can be seen. Again, if people want to be fed whilst sitting on customers then I will defend your rights to the end of the earth, I would just like it to be possible for women (and men, though much less frequently) to not only be pigeon holed into this very particular kind of market that often actively discourages women from changing their lifestyles for the better if they want to- like I said, BIG MONEY!

But going back to the whole 'normal' thing, a second Channel 4 series explains that fat sex, much like sex between disabled people, the elderly and even gay sex is abnormal. Now, I thought that we would be progressive enough to accept, even encourage the above between consenting adults but when watching the show a couple of years ago I couldn't help but take the message that if you're in one of those groups that your sex life deserved a separate show from the people having the 'normal' sex.

So now, let me tell you about the search for love as an overweight person. This is all my own opinion and conjecture and I speak for no one else. I have been told by people I know, people who love me, that the only thing wrong with me is my weight, that if I lost some weight I'd have the boys banging the door down (not a euphemism, mind out of gutter please) and that when I get to my goal weight I will be a quote 'stone cold fox'- I think that's good?!? A question I'm asked frequently is 'when are you going to start dating again?' and the truthful answer, the answer that probably demonstrates key self esteem issues, is that I don't think I'd want anyone who wants me where I am now. I have, in the past, given up on my own dreams (including weight loss) as a result of ex boyfriends which I refuse to let happen again, my body is (hopefully) changing consistently so what someone's attracted to now will hopefully not be that way within a number of weeks and, in part, because of the way that fat love/sex is portrayed in the media I question people's motives for demonstrating interest in me. In addition, the kinds of guys I'm interested in can only be said to be currently 'out of my league'. Exhibit A:

He's just so beautiful.

Personally, I have never been attracted to a plus sized guy-that may be wrong of me but it's in the biology and there's naught any of us can do about who we're attracted to, or not as the case may be. That being said, even when I do get a demonstration of some interest I refuse to believe that this could ever be genuine and brush it off as someone messing with my head. And here's the rub. Will that ever go away? Will I EVER, even at my goal weight, marathon runner fit, think that someone could be genuinely interested or will I continue to turn down drinks, roll my eyes or just leave the room to avoid the situation even if it is the scorchingly beautiful brooding man currently staring at me from my computer screen. If it does, I'm definitely going to need more cats...