The Lard Arms

Food-wise and post-abstinence - what am I doing?

Someone emailed me today and asked me whether I was still trying to do abstinence. Here's what I replied:

"No.  I am not trying to do abstinence, even though the scales-junkie space in my brain is telling me it's the only way forward!!!

I am doing salads, salads, salads.  And packs.  With the clear aim of making these my last packs.  And a few diversions...

BUT what I haven't done is get organised.  Imagine!  Coming here (I'm on the move again!) so suddenly has made me realise I have to plan beyond salads!

So last week was zero fat yoghurt for breakfast (with some granola that my mum left).  Or a pack.

Lunch was a pack.  With friends, lunch was salad and cottage cheese and...about six mouthfuls of pasta.

Dinner - usually a salad.  Protein = cottage cheese (NOT gone bonkers this time), M&S grilled chicken (3 for £5)/Quark, I had mozarella last week (off piste) but IN the salad and I made it last more than one meal.

I have absolutely steered clear of sugar but you know I have eaten crisps and had some booze on Saturday night.  But then I had a salad, even though we both wanted anything but.

I have wanted a Starbucks for days now but am worried about consequences.

Oh, and I did start having pitta breads but...they had to stop. Low GI or not.   So last night I just had salad.  Loads of salads from M&S.  

If I want to eat and it's not physical, I am picking on the M&S chargrilled chicken. This is filling me up (from a tiny amount) and taking away the urge to eat volume.  The pitta bread was doing the opposite.

Oh and on Sunday night, when I felt so so so ill (pain, nausea, etc etc) we went for a drink after cinema. I had diet coke, which calmed the nausea.  And all I wanted was something bland.  Really bland.  In the end I had pasta BUT my husband made me share a portion with him.   But that was a case of identifying very clearly and precisely what I wanted and eating it.  You can imagine the focus!!!  I had a much better night's sleep, TBH.  Although right now that is all relative since I am not really sleeping brilliantly.  But it did the trick."

I often forget how obsessed I was during Route to Management 1, which was from August 2007 onwards. And I really was.  Going to the supermarket was a major mind-f**k.  Sorry for the language but it did bad things to me - mentally, physically and emotionally.  Pacing up and down the aisles, agonising which protein was appropriate, yet going bonkers with caffeine and sugar from Starbucks!

You'll see from the email that, weight-wise, I am not where I want to be.  BUT I accept that from a health perspective, staying on a VLCD would not be ideal now. I need to learn how to eat in a healthy way (that won't aggravate my condition) and find an exercise routine that also won't make things worse for my skin/stomach.  Today, for example, I read that people who start using anti-histamines regularly, pile on the pounds.  

Anyway, the one thing I really want to document here, right now, is the realisation that I actually need very little food. But, boy oh boy, is my mind telling me the opposite.  I think it comes from my pathological and intense dislike of very thin women who are obsessed by eating like birds.  The dislike, of course, came from my own very out of control relationship with food.  Or my greed!  It was just easier to project my own inadequacies onto them.  Shame on me!

Escapology

Soooo...ever since the surgery (apart from the Michelin-starred v. McDonald's diversion), I've been trying to feel...better. Mentally, physically and emotionally.  But it just hasn't been happening.  

I don't know why.  I've been good on the food front.  I've been trying to recuperate.  But today...today I just went AWOL.  The pain situation is getting out of control again, which is slightly alarming, too.

My husband and I have been living separate lives (not deliberately) and it's been quite challenging to get used to each other again.  Today we went to see local friends who have recently had a new baby.  Their first child.  On the way home, we stopped for a quick drink.  I'd been up since 6am, having had less than five hours' sleep (the insomnia since the op' has been horrendous).

Suddenly, I just longed to be spontaneous.  And escape.  I didn't want to think about how life hasn't worked out quite as I envisaged.  I didn't want to think about the fact that we are really displaced in the town where we live ie NOT in London and we cannot sell our house in these credit-crunch times!  I didn't want to think about the fact that my dog is far too close to the great kennel in the sky for my liking and currently more than 200 miles away.  I didn't want to think about the fact that I wanted us to be a family of more than two adults.  I didn't want to think about the fact that 2008 was my annus horribilis.  I didn't want to think about the fact that I feel completely and utterly lost and the medical future is not bright but totally terrifying.

Our friends, with their new baby, are planning a new life abroad.  Their new life, as a family.  I felt so old. And so unwell.

And that's when I realised; I didn't want to be spontaneous.  I wanted to escape.  From my own life.  

In the absence of sugar, I've gone for liquid cake - 3 bottled beers (Budvar and Peroni).  And it hasn't even touched the physical pain.  Hmmm.

Time for a rethink.  Again.

At war... with ourselves

My last post made reference to me being my own worst enemy, to being at war with myself.  Peridot agreed with that sentiment (how we do that self-sabotage thang) and wrote about it on her blog, too.  

Here's what really stood out for me:

"Weight seems a constant war I am fighting with myself - and if you fight yourself you're always losing. Of course that should mean you're always winning too but somehow it never does feel like that. The war is exhausting and stretches on and on into my future in a bleak and hopeless sort of way."

Well, of course, those are words that I can totally understand!  But here's the thing - every time we eat something that is for any other reason than physical hunger, we are doing ourselves a massive dis-service. But here's what I also know... when life is operating at full-tilt, super kind thoughts (about our own wellbeing) are not close at hand.  They really aren't.  Sometimes they really are missing in action.

The last time I was at this phase (so called Route to Management with LighterLife), I was strung out on caffeine and sugar, adrenaline (massive draws on my own reserves) and working really, really hard.  I was spiking my own blood sugar levels any which way.  I was, literally, a bundle of nerves, held together by stimulants.  I wasn't actively exercising (as in going to the gym) but I was running around, cycling up and down the hill to our Bed and Breakfast and friends tell me now that I looked haggard at the time!  And 10 years older!

Peridot mentioned the whole weight loss thing being unfair.  Well, yes it is.  The simple truth is that once you have carried a few extra stones, your body will gain it back in double-quick time, given half a chance. Exercise isn't a choice - it has to become an everyday activity, as well as food intake...or control.  That is where Beck comes in, as in Dr Judith Beck.  Even though I have still not opened the book since my operation, I know that she is going to be part of the armour in the war against myself.  Have you noticed how I still haven't got very far with Beck?!  But she is on my radar, she really is!

The urge to eat (well, let's say self medicate with food) can sometimes come on so quickly that before we know it, we are several slices of toast/cake...whatever it is...further on in the process. And we didn't even notice.  

I don't want to be at war with myself, I really don't. (I really do want to master TypePad because this line formatting is driving me mad!)    Anyway, I digress.  I wish I could say with certainty that since I know salt and vinegar crisps are really bad for me (from my health's point of view - the M word, not weight point of view) and therefore I won't have them anymore.  Not so.  Because I don't yet know how to make that a reality.  Ditto any other savoury snack that you can think of that is so heavily processed yet...tempting!

What I do know is that I cannot go through another year like 2008 and end it, 3 stone heavier and really wondering what the hell was so worth eating that it meant I would have to spend at least three months in 2009  doing abstinence all over again.  And not even manage to lose all the weight again.  With hindsight, I can say one meal stands out - my husband's lasagne that I ate after my miscarriage.  That really was worth it.  Every single mouthful!  It wasn't just food, it was comfort food when I absolutely needed it.  A close second was a burger at Byron's in London. That was also totally worth it and again, I absolutely needed it!  But two meals out of how many thousands?!  

So, as I slow down on the VLCD packs and increase my 'real' food intake, I am acutely aware that what I also need to do is be my own cheerleader.  I need to have me on my team (!), supporting me every step of the way.  What I absolutely do not need is to be my own worst enemy, something I have been really good at for many years.  As Peridot says, "if you fight yourself you're always losing".

And that, dear readers, really is how it is. 100 per cent.

Good Friday?

So, for the Catholics amongst us, today is a sombre day.  If you've been cutting things out for Lent, you're on the homestretch.  If you are a traditionalist, you'll be cutting back on food anyway (it being Good Friday) and you'll be attending a very gloomy Mass.

I once made the mistake of convincing my husband to come to Mass - on Good Friday - forgetting just how sobering the experience is.

Anyway, anyway, this is an important time for other religions and one of my closest chums has come home for Passover.

But of course, you may be wondering what has this got to do with weight loss?  Probably not very much. Unless you've having (as I have done for years and years) the annual debate in your head about wanting an Easter Egg but absolutely NOT allowing yourself one, only to have a chocolate frenzy at some later date.

Since Tuesday's appointment, I've been trying to work out where I go from here - food-wise.  I finally got down to 10 stone 13 so was definitely definitely squeezing myself into the "normal" BMI category.  

I didn't go crazy with the news ie announce here that I was back in the zone.  Because this time round- Abstinence 2 - everything is different.  This time I know that this is only the very beginning of something much longer and more challenging.  

If you follow a VLCD, you should really ease yourself back - very gently - into the world of food.  It can be a minefield.  I can honestly say, with hindsight, that last time I started Route to Management, I was most definitely NOT in an adult state.  I had no idea what I was doing and no idea of what lay ahead.  But I thought I did!  I really did!  This time round at least I know that I know nothing!

Ever since I did Route to Management in 2007 (and viewed my efforts as a spectacular failure because I fell off the wagon at the first hurdle ie first meal!), I have been wanting to do it again.  Properly ie perfectly. Because by doing it perfectly, I figure, I can learn some proper skills about eating healthily and maintaining my weight.  But it is never going to be perfect.  Not unless I want, at least, another 3-4 months of social isolation.  That is not necessary for people following a VLCD but, for me, I found it was the only way that worked.

I went onto the LighterLife website and couldn't believe how much it has improved!!!  It's much more user-friendly AND supportive.  Dare I say it, in terms of tools, it's as good as the Weight Watchers website, which I had recommended to Lesley?  I found all my weights had been logged onto a graph - imagine - all my LighterLife weigh-ins plotted in a curve.  And I didn't have to enter them!  It has weekly shopping lists for Route to Management.  It has all the mind stuff, which is just as important in the weight loss journey.

If you have done a short burst of abstinence (say, one month), you can re-introduce food more quickly in a condensed version of Route to Management.  It's a 10 day programme.  You can spread it out to 20 days, if you so desire.  Or longer, I guess.

So, just as you can spend as long as you like doing Route to Management - learning to handle different foods, repeating particular weeks if you found them tricky or you feel you didn't get your head round the learnings - I am figuring that I can make the shorter version work for me.  This time round, my motivation is very different.  It's about my health.  BUT, I'll be honest, the mind games are JUST the same.  And just as hideous.  But this time round, I'll be taking Beck with me, every step of the way.

Festive Greetings Everyone.