Back on the Wagon….ish!

Long time no see……again! The good news – I am doing really well with consistently logging all food on myfitnesspal and I mean ALL food. No matter how bad it is or how much it takes me over my allocated calories. I haven’t had a weigh in since I started my consistent logging and I don’t intent to for a little while. This is about developing a healthy habit as opposed to getting fixated on the weightloss. Logging makes me stop when otherwise I would have just carried on with a massive binge and so far this has meant that I have not gone over my weekly calories that I would need to maintain my weight as it is. Anything less than this and I should lose; slowly, but a loss at that and for now that will do. Habits, habits, habits!

And the Epiphany is……

It’s been a while. I know. Various reasons; work, a period of what could probably be described as high functioning depression but I would rather just call one of my prolonged black moods. Not that I would ever be ashamed to have depression or anything like that it’s just that I feel that sometimes the term depression is used to describe something that isn’t actually depression. At the end of the day I could still get out of bed and go to work and do a fair decent job. It was the out of work time that I was struggling with. Anyway, I digress. So yeah, lots of things getting in the way of keeping up with this blogging lark I was determined to stick too.

The title of this post is what lead me back here again. I was reflecting after reading yet another self help type of book around weightloss (Pete Cohen – see picture). I was doing the usual thing where I think about the reasons I have such unhealthy habits. It lead me to have a look back all the many lists, pictures and reflective writing I have compiled over the last few years as I have worked my way through various self help programs. I re-read a piece of writing I had done for one of them that detailed a day in the life of the perfect me. Literally from getting out of bed in the morning to going to bed at night and how I envisaged the life I would lead as the perfect me. I had even extended it to write about a weekend day in the life of perfect me and each bullet pointed activity was accompanied with a positive visualisation statement. When I wrote it, I wrote it with a skinny person in my mind. I still want for the life I wrote about; organised, motivated, active, in control. That hasn’t changed, but reading it I realised that apart from the bit about fitting into size 12 clothing, the rest of that life I had written about I could forge for myself no matter what my body size. The only thing/person stopping me leading that life is me.

This wasn’t the non-epiphany though! This was just the train of thought that lead to my non-epiphany. I then continued to think about the reasons for why I have such a messed up head. Now, I don’t want to sound like a complete loon but I often have conversations in my head that I imagine are the sort I would have if I went to see a psychologist or counselor. Part of my one way ‘conversation’ was me thinking about how I have a whole host of reasons for why I am like I am. Parental rejection, childhood bullying, failed relationships, failed dreams, life crises; none of them individually are anywhere near horrific but collectively have had an impact on me in some way. During my ‘conversation’ though I could acknowledge that these life events may had all contributed to my disordered thinking patterns but none of them actually made me go ‘ohhhhhhhh! Thats it! Thats the key! Now I know, I can start solving the problem!’

That’s when it dawned on me. Most of my adult life I had been waiting for an epiphany. I read A LOT of weightloss success stories and they all detail that moment of great realisation, that turning point in their life, the one event that made them sit up, take stock of their life and shed a shitload of weight. For most of my life I had been waiting for this moment to happen to me. I kept thinking that if I just keep trying; getting back on the weightloss wagon time after time, eventually it would just happen……And then it did. I had my epiphany. What was it? The epiphany is….there is no epiphany. I’m waiting for something that is never going to happen. I am waiting for my miracle and I don’t even believe in miracles. Rather than the glowing light emanating from the world around me and the sound of a chourus of angels that I had imagined people had during these epiphanies, I was left with this sinking feeling. Like a loss, a grief, a depression. Like I had finally let go of a dream I had been harbouring for many years. Similar to how I felt here.

Sadly this non-epiphany has not sparked my motivation to begin a new weightloss regime, nor has it given me the desire to leap on to the cross trainer. Frankly I’m not sure what to do with it. I’m still mulling it around in my head. I do however have this sense that it maybe an important and large step forward in a path of a thousand steps so I’ll just keep mulling it over and see what happens.

Damn You Post Work Snacking…Damn You!!

I’m really struggling with breaking this habit of going straight for the fridge and grazing before my tea when I get in from work. This one is going to take a bit more work and a bit more time to break unfortunately. I’ve been trying to shuffle my food about so that I’m not starving when I get in from work and therefore less tempted to hit the fridge. At the moment my meals plan out like this;

• 8 am porridge and cereal topper or granola and banana with milk and a cup of coffee
• 12.30 wrap with hummus, ham and salad leaves or chicken with leaves and peri peri sauce
• 3.00 if I’m hungry I have a yoghurt or piece of fruit before leaving work
• Between 5 and 7 some sort of tea which varies day to day

Looking at this I think it would probably help if I included a piece of fruit between breakfast and lunch and then add in some more protein with my fruit/yoghurt after 3. Maybe a hard boiled egg, chicken pieces, I don’t know, or maybe some nuts! Ou now there’s a thought. Right I might get a fruit and nut mix and give that a go. I love pecans, or maybe a smidgin of peanut butter on an apple, low GI so should regulate my blood sugar. I also think a lot if it is to do with me not drinking enough water so thats a future habit I am going to try to tackle.

Future habits that  I want to tackle are

• Stop picking my spots!
• Drink more water
• Cut down on my caffeine intake but this is a BIG habit for me to break as I have coffee running through my veins! I LOVE coffee!
• Stop this post work snacking
• Develop a regular exercise habit
• Focus on the task at hand until it’s completed and not get distracted
• Track/plan my food religiously
• Reduce portions – e.g. when having a piece of toast I would normally have two so reduce this to one, only have two roast potatoes instead of my usual three etc etc

There’s probably loads more that I have thought of over the last few months and have then forgotten about but these are the start! I have still managed to keep up with the breakfast habit, I’m doing well with making sure I eat some sort of decent lunch instead of diving in the biscuit tin but for now I’m going to keep plugging away at the post work fridge raiding and hope that some more practise and time will help me crack this one.

 

 

Habit Update

Still going strong! Not one day of breakfast missed! Slight downside, I have put on 2lbs. I have a number of other possible reasons for this, I have started a new contraceptive pill, I weighed myself the morning after I had done exercise the night before (water retention???), I have also started making sure I eat lunch every day (only a healthy wrap though:- 1 wrap, table spoon of low fat houmous, two slices wafer thin ham, lettuce leaves). Other than the addition of breakfast and lunch I haven’t changed my eating in any other way. I am not giving up on my new habits though as I believe thay are both healthy ones. I need to introduce a new habit to combat this one I think. I’m still not ready for the introduction of regular exercise, I need lots more practise with the habit breaking/forming needed before I tackle that one. I think the new habit will be tracking what I eat on myfitnesspal. I find I naturally restrict my intake if I am tracking and I’m more aware of what I am eating therefore I won’t be able to make excuses like the ones above! So, 5 minutes a day, tracking on myfitnesspal, everyday. Thats it. New habit!

New Habit Number 2

I have cracked the breakfast habit. 14 whole days and not one breakfast missed. This one was actually easier than I thought it would be. It just required me to find something that made it simple; porridge pots! I have also  this week invested in some of these granola pots for a change. I usually chop a banana in the porridge and I plan to do this with the granola too. Yum! I do intend to eventually graduate from pot based breakfast and just buy and prep stuff in an actual bowl from scratch. However, for the sake of getting me into the breakfast habit these have been a lifesaver, if a bit expensive!

As a result of my success and relative ease at introducing this habit I feel that it is the right time to try a new habit. As mentioned in previous posts, I usually try to make too much change far to quickly resulting in failure early on in the process. Whilst my intention is still to only introduce a new habit each month, owing to the ease of the breakfast habit and how much I feel it is now ingrained in my morning routine, I don’t think it will be detrimental to introduce another small habit. I still think introducing an exercise habit is a fair way in the distant future so, to try to keep working towards the weight loss goal that was my original aim, I will keep introducing diet based habits for now. This new habit is going to actually be the breaking of a bad habit. I have fallen into a really unhealthy routine when I come in from work. I start to pick at foods, put toast in, eat babybel cheeses, basically snack an anything and everything even though I am going to be eating my tea in about an hour! So by the time I eat my tea I’m not even that hungry and end up eating for the sake of eating. This new habit/breaking habit is basically going to involve the following; do not eat between walking through the front door when I get home and having my tea. If I am hungry before I leave work then I can have some fruit or a yoghurt. That’s it. Very simple and on the back of breakfast success I have full confidence I can do this!

David Attenborough and Naked Mole Rats…..

I don’t have anything in particular to say tonight, I just fancied a ramble about random stuff. I think it’s because my boyfriend is working nights this week and usually by Wednesday I start to feel lonely. When he’s on nights we literally see each other for all of ten minutes at half three in the morning when he comes in, I wake up and we have a bit of a chat. Having only lived in my current location for 3 years I also haven’t really reached that stage with any of my friends where I can just ‘drop in’ unannounced for a brew/chinwag etc and my really close friends and family are 120 miles away. Anyway, you unfortunate folks are going to have to put up with me whilst I satisfy my longing for company!

First topic of one way conversation. David Attenborough. What a legend. I am sat here watching his Africa series and yet again he has succeeded in amazing me with the wonders (and they truly are wonders) of the natural world. I love nature and science in general. It is one reason I ended up becoming a Science teacher; oh how I regret that! But thats a whole other blog post! Anyway back to Attenborough and naked mole rats. I love these little critters! They are one of the ugliest little things on the planet but for some reason I find beauty in ugly creatures. Its such a shame I can’t view my own body like a naked mole rat! They look like a penis with legs and teeth. It will be a sad, sad day when David Attenborough dies. I can’t imagine life without his programmes. Lets not think about it.

On other completely different topics, work is ridiculously busy and stressful at the minute. Its usually pretty busy and stressful anyway but wow, it’s gone into overdrive lately. This is mainly due to the fact I have an external verifier coming in next week to check I am correctly running the course I am responsible for. If I fail the visit the school won’t be allowed to run any of the courses offering this qualification in any other subjects so its pretty important that it goes well. As a teacher it’s fair to say you spend term time in a constant state of medium to high stress and only in school holidays does your stress level tend to drop to a lower level. By constant state I literally mean when you get home (more work to do and bringing work home with you mentally as well as physically), when you go to sleep (I regularly dream about work and wake up with a panicky feeling), it’s the first thing you think about when you wake up and I am even planning my day on my drive into work. I have to admit that I am a perfectionist and if I do a job I give it 100% so teaching is difficult as it’s the type of job where you physically can’t do everything 100% and your to do list is never empty. There’s always something else you could be doing. I’ve still not decided if it will be my lifelong career and is a question I have been ruminating around my brain for a while now. For now though I will plod on with it.

The first thing that happens when work is particularly busy is that my diet suffers and my god it has suffered lately. I am however, trying not to get too stressed about it as this makes it worse and the whole thing becomes self perpetuating. so I am riding it out in the hope that it will pass as work settles down. My next diet related habit I am going to introduce/break is to not eat when I get home from work before my tea. This has become a really bad habit that happens as a result of habit and not because I am at all hungry. The breakfast habit is still going strong and I am starting to feel a real sense of achievement with this one.

Right, back to David and his naked mole rat!

T’ra for now!

Starting A Fresh

When ever I begin any sort of diet or lifestyle change it tends to pan out like this; plan eating, vow not to eat rubbish for the next year, at all, ever, exersise 30 minutes 3/4 times a week, endless calculations in my head ‘if I lose 2lb EVERY WEEK FOR THE NEXT 54 WEEKS (!) then by x date I’ll be y weight, throw all the rubbish food out of the cupboards, reaquaint myself with myfitnesspal and the blog, declare smugly to everyone I meet that I’m on a diet and self rightousely refuse the biscuits as they are offered round. This goes on for about 2 (exercise)-6 (food)weeks dependent on the current state of my willpower until I get bored, run out of resolve and It ends up falling by the wayside and I give up. I then get annoyed, don’t think about it for months, crap food and habits start to creep back in and before you know it BOOM! Back to starting weight and then some. The cycle starts again.
Today I’m going to break the cycle. I’m making one small healthy change to my life that I realistically can keep. I’m going to eat a healthy breakfast every morning.
They say it takes 21 consecutive times to consciously stick to a change for it to become a new habit so in a month I will be back to add a new habit and so on until I have changed everything about my lifestyle I want to change. If I don’t manage it in a month then I stick with that habit and don’t add another. A simple plan that I think is more realistic to fit in with my busy and hectic work dominated life. Lets go!