The Lard Arms

You Win Some, You Lose Some

Our Bedroom...

Today I found out from glancing at the newspapers on sale that Ulrika Johnnson is pregnant again with child number four and father number four. Here's the link: http://www.hellomagazine.com/celebrities/2007/10/30/ulrika-jonsson-baby/I think Ulrika is a few months younger than me and do you know what? Today I thought, blimey, I'd settle for one child with one father. It did make me feel a bit sad and a bit of a failure; not least because I'd like to know Ulrika's recipe for success, if you can call it that.

Today, I have clocked up over 24,000 steps yet the furthest I have walked is down the High Street and up the hill back to the B&B. The rest of those thousands of steps have been taken...in the house.

I was on site for 6.20am and spent two hours cleaning the bathroom and windows in the house. Not the glass of the windows but the surrounding areas. And it's not because the house is big, it's just VERY dirty.

Today, the builder came, the plumbers came, the painters came, the electricians came (a surprise visit because we still have disco lights - they keep flashing!) AND the kitchen fitters turned up.

The builder ALMOST finished everything on the list! Certainly enough to be ready for the carpets tomorrow and for us to move back in.

The painter discovered he must do the whole of the downstairs ceilings again and some of the walls - he's a perfectionist and drives his team of painters v.hard. He will be coming back on Thursday when my husband's family furniture is coming down from the North East. What is slightly worrying for me is that when I spoke to the removal company, they said there is enough furniture to fit an 8ft x 8ft room; where is it all going to fit??

The kitchen fitters could not do anything apart from take some of the rubbish away. They are coming back on Friday morning when our own belongings are being brought back out of storage. That should be fun.

The plumbers fitted the shower screens after the builder modified them and managed two toilets. They must come back tomorrow for the bath and for snagging.

There are no chairs in my house at the moment so I was on my feet for almost 12 hours, making tea, making decisions, keeping the boys in check and generally ensuring that the jobs got done. By 2.30pm, after two foodpacks and an apple, I was ravenous and exhausted. I knew what I wanted to eat - an egg sandwich. So I went to Starbucks, as its egg sandwich is quite tasty. Of course, I should have left it at that. I had that and a skinny latte - no problem but after the sandwich I was still hungry (although if I had had a power nap - ha! - I probably would have stopped). I then went to M&S and stocked up on supplies for the chaps on site - teacakes (special offer), mini bites (chocolate cornflake cakes and flapjacks), jaffa cakes - even cheaper, and another sandwich for me (low fat chicken wrap) and some crisps.

If I am tired, I've got to realise that NO food, absolutely NO food in the world, is going to satisfy me because it can't. If I need sleep, sleep is the only thing that is going to stop any sort of craving. But what do you do when you CAN'T sleep (on the job) but need to get through? Well, I'll tell you what you don't do and that is go on the prowl for food. I managed to sample every biscuit going, as I served up tea and teatime treats for the guys.

The only thing that I can say is that this was NOT bingeing; this was not an out-of-control, I-can't-help-myself, I-am-going-to-cram-in-as-much-food-as-I-can episode. This was, my God, I feel so crap, how can I feel better? Default....food.

It's like the indigestion thing of those early days of Route to Management; reintroducing food NOT on the plan equalled indigestion, big time. What did I do to stop it? Eat some more!!! Like that's going to help.

So I was doing SOOOOO well, trying to ensure I got to Friday, clean and serene and then boom! But it's fixable; I came home early and am determined to be in bed for 8pm, unless my husband is super late. As it's the B&B, our kitchen is right next to my bed so it's not as if I will be able to sleep through his arrival back here!

The only downside to all of this full-on activity is that I might not be able to make my Management class tomorrow. I really want to go but if the carpet fitters don't get done, I can't leave them unsupervised with the plumbers!

Tomorrow I must be on site again before 6.30am; I have to empty two huge filing cabinets that are in one of the rooms so that the carpet fitters don't complain too much. I've also got to clear another room of rubbish.

What the house and I need, right now, is a detox so that we can be clean and serene. Ah yes!

Mrs Lard's Observations - no. 19

I still don't feel any different; not really. I am more or less holding my weight loss but my brain has not caught up with my body. I look different, yes. No two ways about it and today, out of interest, I looked really old. I saw myself in the mirror and thought, "oooh, that is NOT a good look - how can I rub out all the creases in my face?". That's a downside to weight loss, the plump/fat face looks younger!

Anyway, I write down my weight, morning and evening, after my bath (pm) and as soon as I wake up (am). The chart (A4 bits of paper stuck to the wall) sits in the bathroom. I note the figures, in a detached manner, every day but tonight, I stopped and thought, for a second, about the implication of the figures. At the B&B no one sees them but if I were to put the scales (and therefore the chart) in our bathroom, any visitor would be able to see my weight. And would I mind if they saw what was written down? No, I would not! How extraordinary is that?

I can't say I am proud of my weight but I am definitely not ashamed any more (of it). For so many years, well, all my adult life and beyond, I have hidden what the scales said - from myself and certainly from anyone else! My husband had no idea what I weighed and I remember when he found out while I was doing Foundation on LighterLife. I was mortified. I think I was in the 12s (stones) by then. It wasn't helped by the fact he was going on about a baker's dozen....

So, I don't feel any different, I haven't absorbed the fact that I am 9 stone something (top end, obviously) and I am just busy getting on with being a size 12. Last week I bought some new, much-needed thermal underwear. My old stuff was hanging off me and was ridiculous. I didn't get excited about getting size 12, I just felt very matter of fact about it all. It feels right - actually, I think a size 10 would feel perfect but that's not going to happen until I can train/tone in a gym.

I keep waiting for a moment when I think, "wow, I've done it" but until I am back, in a normal context, I guess it isn't going to happen anytime soon.

One Day Down. Four To Go.

I was on site for 6.30am. Yes, I was.

Today the following was supposed to happen:

builder one was due on site to continue finishing
kitchen fitter was due on site to finish
plumbers were due back to plumb in toilets, the bath, a shower and shower screen
painters were due back in to continue.

Here's what happened:

builder did not show up until the afternoon and unannoucned (builder two promised to call so I could be back on site when builder one arrived)
kitchen fitter was holed up at home due to motorway standstill
plumbers fitted one shower and walked, saying that they would not fit shower screens - after they had drilled the holes in my expensive tiles (they are back tomorrow but builder now has a problem and so do I!)
painters continued.

Last week, if this had happened, I would have been freaking out. And eating. Anything and everything.

Here's what happened:

I went down to the house for 6.30am, not having eaten breakfast and I forgot my foodpacks. Doh! I did manage carrots and apples, though! Instead, I drank a lot of tea. When the builder was a no-show, I went back to the B&B, ate an apple en route, and continued packing, cleaning and had a foodpack. Hot chocolate. I had another foodpack (banana) about three hours later.

I had an apple mid-afternoon.

Tonight about 7pm I had a mushroom soup, in the house, with my second hand blender (lost the first one, bought another and then blender no.1 showed up!). I was proud of my organisational skills - managing, at last, to have a blender, to hand, at both sites. I then went to pilates 8-9pm, came back to the house, ate an apple and waited for my husband to pick me up. We discussed the latest plumbing crisis (ha!) and got back at 10.15 pm.

I could have gone to bed without eating; I was tired. Instead, I had half a carton of Waitrose's Tuscan Bean soup and a FAGE Greek yoghurt with honey. I shall finish the evening with a Lemsip.

I have got aching limbs, a full head cold and I am shattered. Last week I was SOOO angry, upset (about everything) and lonely (husband not in a forgiving mood) and...ashamed. I ate for Britain so obviously not THAT ashamed! My overwhelming emotion was terror/fear.

Today was tough but not so scary. I think I am resigned to the fact that even when we get in, there will be problems. There were WAVES of addictive desires (for food); each time it happened, I did something different. I did cleaning. I did emails. I did blogging. I supervised 8 men in my house!

I stayed strong. I want to be able to hold my head up high at the end of the week when we have moved in. I want to feel I have earned my champagne. Of course, ultimately, I want to feel back in control.

Monday has been a good day, even though my house is still a building site. Aaaagggghhhhh!

PS oh yes, the scales are going up again. This cannot be a trend...

How Low Can You Go? For Liz.

Liz www.conn76lighterlife.blogspot.com/ asked me a question this week and I thought I would answer it via the blog with links back to www.minimins.com, as it's such a fantastic forum.

"It is reassuring to read about your new desire for healthy food stuff. It is only a few weeks before I hit management and it is occupying my every thought! I have the Paul Mckenna CDs and need to get listening to them again.

"...., do you know if 'they' dictate when you can start RtM or is it up to yourself?"

As far as I am aware, LighterLife doesn't dictate when you can start Route to Management (RtM) but I think they encourage you got get to a healthy BMI (25 or under).

I used Sarah's (Cerulean) vagueglorious.wordpress.com advice as my gauge and it worked for me:

www.minimins.com/lighter-life-forum/19105-management-question-cerulean-other-long-term-llers.html

Here's what Sarah wrote:

"The other interesting thing ... is that my counsellor (who has been doing this since the programme began) actually advises getting to BMI 22.5 and THEN losing a couple of pounds short of whatever you lost in week 1 (your glycogen load) as this is the weight that you will regain in management. Now of course some people don't need to be BMI 22.5 and as a slim person you may have a lower glycogen load than you did as a morbidly obese person, but she observed that her people that got through management tend to fluctuate by about 7lbs. So the lesson is not to expect to lose another stone in Management. I think that some people refer to Management as 'refeeding' because of this suggestion as some clients go quite low and gaunt before finally getting their glycogen back. Apparently my theory about dropping your BMI to 20-21 to shift any remaining problem areas before gaining a few lbs is also pretty sound.

"Interesting."

For those of you who are interested in the stats, here are my BMI figures for the past few weeks since jumping the Development ship:

(For context, my starting BMI with LighterLife was 34.3.)

I hit the magic 22.5 on 2 August 2007.

Then it went:

22.7, 22.3, 22.7, 22.2,22.2,22.4,22.8,22.5.

There is much debate over at the forum about what's the right weight and whether, at the end of Development, most of us are too thin! Imagine! Until I start going to the gym and start toning, 22.5 is right for me, or even a bit lower, to be honest. As soon as my weight goes on, it goes straight onto my stomach, so I may still be slim but with an attractive pot belly. Nice!!!

So, Liz, I don't know if I have answered your question but, for me, anything below BMI 22 would be too low and anything about 22.5 is too high. But that's for my body and my body shape; none of us is the same.

Good luck!

No Excuses!

This time, next week, I hope to be in my house, reunited with my dog (it's been TOOOOO long). My mum is bringing her up and that means the closest thing I have to my immediate family will be in one place, in my home!

Judging by my husband's current mood, I think Friday night - our first night in - will not be a happy one. There will be boxes, there will be unpacking, there will be chaos (our furniture and 'stuff' come out of storage on Friday). Saturday will be more of the same. BUT by Sunday night, I hope we will be toasting something!!!

I'd like to ensure that I feel I have a good week behind me; the past few days have been absolutely awful food-wise and I don't want it to continue. I've got into that addictive eating cycle, no two ways about it. I'm not feeling very well - aching limbs, head cold, etc - but that's no excuse.

So, somehow (although I don't know how!), I've got to 'dig deep' and manage the mother of all weeks on the house, manage myself, manage my relationship with my husband (not in a happy state) and not lose the plot on any front.

I want to feel that I've earned next week, if that makes sense. I'm not demonising particular food but I've got to stem the way I've been going. I want to look back at this final week (a bit like the final week of Development) and feel I did the best I could.

As Tony Robbins would say, I need to be outstanding. Errr...not sure about that but let's see! Have a good week, everyone.

Third Time Lucky?

Now, I've got to be 100% honest and say that this post has not been inspired by me but by fellow Dietgirl fan and LighterLifer, Sandra kiwirevo.livejournal.com/ whose blog I caught up with this afternoon when I should be clearing out my loft ready for the final push (I had to switch painters as the first lot have done a crap job!). I am so easily distracted.

Anyway, Sandra has signed herself up for National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo - www.nanowrimo.org, which kicks off on November 1 2007.

In short, you agree to write 50,000 words by the end of the month, which should be more than enough copy to submit to an agent or a publisher.

My expert friend introduced me to nanowrimo two years ago and I thought it was such a great idea for those of us who respond to deadlines. I have a love/hate relationship with deadlines. My expert friend and I used to live near each other and both work from home so we based ourselves first in Cafe Nero and then in Starbucks, directly opposite, which had huge windows onto the street. I used my husband's old PC laptop, which had a battery life of about three minutes and surprise, surprise, I gave up after about five days. My expert friend continued! I also had a work crisis, which provided the perfect excuse to stop. I realise if I had been really committed, I would have done 50,000 words.

Fast forward a year and I roped in my mother! We have had an idea for a novel for AGES and decided we'd try a two hander. Guess what? I dropped out and blamed whatever it was that I could. I think the cloud of depression was hovering pretty low, which may be the reason.

So, THIS year, and what? The house will be more or less ready. I've even got my own work/writing space. My mother will be here from November 3rd. Could this be the year I actually finish something? After all, Chris (livelifelighter.blogspot.com) - massive welcome back, by the way - is always commenting that I write TOO much! One of my goals in Foundation was to write a book. I never wrote the goal down, of course, but we discussed it in class. Like Foundation, which I never thought I would finish, I was too afraid to commit to another goal that I thought I would fail to achieve.

I know I am really messing around with Route to Management BUT I haven't given up, I really haven't and however much my crooked thinking is trying desperately hard (and sometimes with success) to trip me up and sabotage my efforts, I am hanging on in there. I still can't get my head round the fact that I have lost the weight. And most of the time, I really don't feel any different. The point of me saying this is that LighterLife could be something I could succeed at (there will be gasps of frustration, I know but you know what I mean);if I can nail Route to Management, I might have done something that I never thought I could. And I need to translate that feeling into other areas of my life. I can't let the old patterns of quitting (or crooked thinking) when the going gets tough. I need to sit it out, ride the storm and let the feelings pass - be they addictive cravings for food, feelings of being totally overwhelmed. I need to start accessing my adult state on a regular basis. LighterLife has given me a glimpse of who that adult is.

So, fellow bloggers - if you think you've got it in you (and my guess is, as a blogger and a LighterLifer you have) - why not check out National Novel Writing Month www.nanowrimo.org?

Happy writing and big thanks to Sandra for reminding me.

An Apple A Day

I don't know how it has happened - well, I do, I am NOT doing LighterLife Route to Management right now - anyway, tonight I had my first apple since starting the regime.

This is an extraordinary fact but it was well worth the wait. It really was.

I also had a bowl of spinach, which was equally delicious.

It has been a chaotic day; most of our possesssions that came with us to the B&B are now back down at the house, still boxed, since the house is being painted and we risk knocking the paintwork while it is drying. Food-wise it's been another bad day...until now.

This continum of poor eating made me doubt whether I could get back on the straight and narrow. I have eaten through stress, anxiety and exhaustion. I even ate two doughnuts today, something I am really not that into! They were in the house and I just wanted to blank out how overwhelmed I was feeling. No need for a thought record; I ate those doughnuts because I wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. And I wanted to have some energy, however false.

After our friend moved us, my husband took him and his wife to the pub and I looked after their baby at their house. I really didn't want to go to the pub because a) I didn't want to drink and b) I was worried that I would have one, which would snowball into two or three and then eat even more food I didn't really want.

Ultimately, we bought some not so healthy pizza from Sainsbury's (we had half each) and walked up the hill.

I delayed gratification (hooray), which was no bad thing. My husband was all for getting a takeaway, which I said we could not afford!

Three things have struck me today; first, healthy food genuinely DOES seem more enjoyable - the texture, the flavour, the intensity. Second, if I blog, I feel more accountable and, I think most of you know I'm an Apple Mac girl. And third, I definitely have food obsessions that seem to be all ecompassing for a while and then...they pass. I don't know, with the latter, whether it's simply that, right now, nothing is off limits. Not really. When I move back properly into the house, I am going to do Week 4 or 5.

I had put on two pounds by this morning; I am aware but not alarmed. If it continues past next week, I will have to really pay attention. And take action. Although, one of my Foundation friends had a bad week and by the following week, she had rectified the damage - just by following the Route to Management.

The one thing that I am really frustrated about is that when I was organising the move today, it made me realise that I did the last move in abstinence. When I was overwhelmed, I listened to Paul (McKenna). What a shame I couldn't be so organised this time around.

Awareness is one thing; action is another. So I must not just be aware of this off-piste eating but I must take action, as soon as I can.

So, an apple a day really is the way forward. For all sorts of reasons.

Mrs Lard's Observations - no. 18

There's only so much crap food that you can eat...

Well, after two days of poor eating - and I mean very poor - no routine, no nutrition, no 'yummy' factor, etc, I have found myself craving healthy food. (I'm in the middle of moving house and finishing the house build.)

Today I ate some crisps and wondered what it was that I really wanted and, bizarrely, it was a carrot. I think carrots could give me the mouth interest that I am craving - crunchy and challenging.

I also ate some biscuits and realised that I wanted fruit - something clean, sweet and crisp.

So now the sense of deprivation is for things that will do my body good rather than food that will give me zero nutrition, undo the months of work on LighterLife and adversely affect my self esteem. After all, post-off-piste eating, I usually feel my self-esteem sink further.

This is a distinct change from the days of abstinence when ALL I craved was junk, particularly sugar.

This is progress!

"I've been experimenting with bread"

That was something someone said in a Management meeting but, to be honest, that pretty much summed up yesterday. I ate bread to get me through. A lot of bread. But something strange happened; I didn't bloat up. Very strange! Maybe I am just so tense that I am not even breathing properly. And I also drank a lot of tea, which is upping my milk consumption.

I did the financial reconciliations so now we know the worst. It's really not great but, in the great scheme of things, it's not the end of the world. It's fixable. Not easily, not immediately, not without a lot of sacrifice but it IS fixable. I am trying to be rational and get a grip on the situation. My mother has been fantastic and incredibly supportive.

My husband is just making cheap gags (no pun intended, honest) at my expense and I just have to take it. I've had a serious sense of humour failure but, I think, that's probably been the case for a very LONG time!

So, I used food to calm me down and keep me going. It's not a good strategy so there are simply no excuses. I started packing yesterday, too, which didn't help with the anxiety eating. I can see our decluttering (to sell on eBay) is going to take a LONNNNGGGG time. There's so much stuff we really don't need. My fear now is that it won't fetch much money, either!

The lack of 100% nutrition is also starting to show; I'm coming down with another cold/throat infection - I can feel it. I keep telling myself that I just need to get through another week.

My builder has talked about him not wanting to fail at the final hurdle (with the plumbing situation) AND that's exactly how I feel with LighterLife. I can't have come THIS far and then blow it in one week. Yet that could happen.

Today I've eaten biscuits as I managed four different suppliers, kept them topped up with tea and coffee and tried to be positive.

The one thing that I realise, now, is just how unsettled I have felt - for such a long time. The constant to-ing and fro-ing between the B&B, the house, friends' houses to work and keep warm, basing myself at internet cafes (until the financial crisis hit) when the other options were exhausted. I am longing to be based in one place. I am really hoping that it will help. The house still feels and looks like a building site so it's hard to imagine what it will be like next week.

Just like LighterLife, I don't know what the end product will look like!!

Safety in Numbers

Regular readers will know that I think my LighterLife Counsellor is simply wonderful. She is the business. Literally! When I read about other people's experiences, I feel very sad because the right counsellor really does make all the difference. It doesn't seem fair that the LighterLife experience is so distinctly varied (and not in a good way).

Of course, even the best LighterLife Counsellor cannot prevent strained group dynamics occurring; I was SO happy to leave my Development group (in spite of leaving a Foundation friend behind) and I was even more relieved to join a really fantastic Management group. The past two weeks of Management have been simply wonderful; there is a lot of clicking and connecting going on and it does feel like a very special place to be. I am determined, however hard the financial situation gets, that this is one thing I am not going to let go - even if I have to do night shifts at a supermarket (super dangerous!!!), I would do it.

Last night we did our usual round up of the week - everyone gets to say what they need to - and we looked at a couple of other issues, too, which I will definitely write up on here.

I was determined not to cry but I did. Ironically, earlier in the day, when I finally had THE chat with the builder, I told him how stressed I had been and he was genuninely shocked. He made me promise not to cry anymore, particularly over the plumbing situation. So, I broke my promise to him (he checked with me this morning whether I had managed to keep my word) but it was necessary. In the Management meeting, I talked about how ashamed I felt at having put my husband (and my mum) through this and how, at the end of the day, I genuninely didn't know how to handle it. My LighterLife Counsellor said health and finances are big scary issues when they go wrong. That made sense.

I got two very good pieces of advice (actually, I got a lot more than that from other group members) but first, my LighterLife Counsellor advised me to feel the feelings and THEN do something about it. Noted. One of my (new) Management friends advised me to demonstrate to my husband that I was on top of things (excel spreadsheet, reconcilations (of the figures) and a legal letter about one of our Party walls and the damp). So far, I have done the figures and now I am going to do the letter. I am also packing (our stuff gets moved out of the B&B on Saturday with help from a friend), working and trying not to eat too much!

Before my meeting yesterday, I met my expert friend for tea, as it was her birthday. Three weeks ago, we agreed, we had a lovely day together (on my birthday) and for reasons I can't discuss here, both our lives (well, you know mine!) have changed dramatically, with long-term implications and not seemingly for the best. I am hoping that, next year, we will look back and laugh but right now, we can't! I told her the situation and she insisted on paying for tea; I felt so ashamed (again!) that she had to buy her own birthday treat! She reminded me, sharply, that if the tables were turned, I would have done the same. And, of course, I would.

I put on one pound (well, 600g to be precise!) and I was ok with that. All things considered.

Last night was a turning point (in my life); in the past, I would have made a big drama of such a situation but NOT really dealt with it. I would have eaten and drunk myself into oblivion so that I didn't feel the feelings. And I would have internalised just as much as I was externalising, if that makes sense. Instead, I said how I really felt, I cried but, more important, I said it in front of other people. And they didn't judge me, they didn't criticise me - there was genuine empathy in the room. And that, lovely readers, was worth its weight in gold.

I feel genuinely fortunate to have such great support (here, in cyberspace and in real life) through this rollercoaster ride that is LighterLife and my house/life transformation! And I definitely don't take any of it for granted. Not one bit.