The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl

Cycletta Report

I woke up Sunday morning feeling ready to spew, the usual nervous routine! I choked down a bowl of porridge while trying not to look at Gareth and Gillian's cooked breakfasts... the sight of scrambled eggs and greasy sausages was totally giving me the boak!

Off to lovely Tatton Park. There were over 800 women taking part in Cycletta on all manner of bikes. We started in waves of ten. I did a cheerful "woohoo!' as we whizzed over a cattle grid then down through the park, sunlight streaming through the tree-lined paths. Then out onto the big bad open road!

First two miles were fast and fun, grinning to myself at the visual of chunky me on clunky mountain bike and tiny Gillian on her tiny Brompton folding bike.

Then Gillian says, "We're going pretty fast, don't overdo it now!". Good advice, whoops! I felt awful during Miles 4-6. My rubbish knee burned on every downstroke, I had that shooting pain in my glute and my stomach felt dodgy. I couldn't take my eyes off the bike computer, doing fractions to figure out how far there was to go.

Then a bunch of speedy women whooshed past in the opposite direction, already on their way back to the finish line (part of the course was a loop). They yelled "KEEP GOING!" in such cheery tones I wanted to slap them. Then I got overtaken by a woman on a poncy bike with a freakin' wicker basket!

"Well isn't that just DANDY!" I sputtered to Gillian, feeling really really cranky and lardy.

Then I remembered that I'd vowed to enjoy the moment as it was happening, instead of having to enjoy it retrospectively as I always do with these things! So I had stern talk with self... Dude... you've travelled a stupid long way for this and you have dragged your friend and husband with you, and you trained for ages and people have sponsored you and do you REALLY want to look like a whiny brat... so SUCK IT UP cupcake! Turn this around!

I made a conscious effort to look at the scenery, feel the air on my skin, notice how strong my legs felt, just really ABSORB everything going on... thinking about how good it felt not to be sitting brooding on the couch wishing life could be different.

We got to Mile 9 and I said to Gillian, "Make a note! Mile 9 and I'm enjoying it!"

Mile 10 was a food stop. I really didn't want to stop but I needed the loo. Admired my beetroot face in the port-a-loo mirror. They had lots of crappy chocolate and sweets which I avoided (memories of dodgy stomach at Moonwalk '08!) and had some orange segments instead... lovely!

The remaining 14 miles were BLOODY FANTASTIC. Sure I was dying on some of the hills, I hesitated too long at an intersection and nearly got barrelled by a car, my chain came off at mile 15, I got stung by a wasp at mile 16...

Sample only. Not actual wasp.

...but I felt so alive and kept thinking, enjoy this enjoy this enjoy this. We rolled past quaint pubs, cottages with thatched roofs and climbing roses, wholesome people on horses... and a dead badger. Poor bugger. Oooh, and I even overtook a few people!

"Make a note!" I yelled to Gillian, "Mile 22 and still loving it!"

Finally we were back in the Park! There was a sneaky bit where we thought it was over but there was another half mile loop to go... my knee was sore and I felt like I'd been kicked in the lady parts, despite padded saddle and padded shorts and a naturally padded arse. But then I saw the finish line! I was woohooing like a deranged woman. FINISHED!

Dr G was waiting nearby. "Soooo?"

"IT WAS BRILLIANT!"

He looked absolutely stunned. "Well! Never thought I would ever hear such a positive statement out of you while straddling a velocipede!" Bwahahaaaaa. Smart arse.

I looked at my bike computer: 02:01:39, average 11.8 mph! Sooo much faster than my training... all thanks to lack of Scottish hills + unbridled enthuasism ;)

Then I got a text with my official time: 40km/24miles in 02:10:24 - of course the bike computer paused while I was on loo break/chain fixing/wasp swatting. Still... SO PLEASED with that as the snaily pace of my training rides indicated a 2.5 - 3 hour finish.

Cycletta was a great event, very well organised. It was heartening to see so many women across a wide range of ages, shapes and cycling experience - it was a very welcoming, non-intimidating atmosphere. I'd been really worried after the event lost its closed roads status, but the marshalls made it feel very safe.

But most of all I owe the feeling of safety to The Amazing Gillian. 24 miles is a warmup for her so she just freakin' rocks for coming along and helping me not get run over. Thank you so much comrade! Also have to say a huge thank you to Gareth, for not stabbing me on the training rides. You rawk!

So, I'm really happy with how it went and glad I got over my internal BS and enjoyed it while it was happening!

Afterthoughts...
Three days later I'm still feeling delirious and so fired up to keep going. I want to keep working on my Fear Of The Road and my inability to do hand signals. I also feel a new sense of purpose for getting back in shape - it's hard work hauling so much booty up the hills, I tell you.

It sounds so cheesy and perhaps quite pathetic, but this experience has reminded me that I am worth taking care of. That life is so much better when you treat your mind and body with kindness and respect, not dulling the edges with rubbish food and inactivity. It takes work to feel good, but I'm feeling like I am worth making that effort.

Why has it taken so long to remember this? To really feel it and believe it deep down? I really don't know. But I'm going to roll with it!

Disclosure: I was offered a "media place" on the Cycletta event thus my entry fee was waived. Click here for full details.

ETA: While I added a cheeky link in the post above, I wanted to shout out properly that I raised a few quid for the MS Society. Huge thanks to my family and pals who sponsored! If anyone out there fancies supporting this great cause, here's my link to donate. You can find out more about the work the Society does to provide information and support as well as funds for multiple sclerosis research on their website, www.mssociety.org.uk.

The Gambler

Just advanced warning... I'm really tired today and bordering on delirious so this may not make any sense whatsoever :)

On the weekend I was browsing at a department store beauty counter. A twenty-something sales assistant sprang out from behind a mirror and said, "Can I help you? How about this primer?" She waved a tube in my face. "I think you'll love it. It's great at smoothing fine lines and wrinkles!"

Yeah, thanks very much lady!

This trifling anecdote is the only way I could think of to start writing about the tangled pile of stuff I've been thinking about lately. Ageing and health and relationships and work and meaning and whatnot.

At times I've lived like I had a neverending bucket of time. Like no matter how poorly I treated my body I'd have time to Ctrl+Z the damage. But really, it's only luck that I've escaped relatively unscathed (thus far).

Recently I've been humbled by how fast life can change - seeing how the most healthy specimens can become fragile overnight. We humans are really are so vulnerable. It's left me feeling quite rotten for gambling with my own health so much.

Another thing that's brought clarity was hanging out in Brussels with my Up & Running compadre, Julia Jones (better known as Coach Julia to the ladies she bosses around with her virtual megaphone!). The premise of our meeting was to do lots and lots of work, which we did; but I came away feeling like my brain and heart had been dismantled, scrubbed and polished, then put back together again like new.

I dunno, maybe Julia hypnotised me or something? But hanging out with her makes me look forward to being 50 years old. She is kicking arse. Not just because she finished a freaking half iron man a couple of weeks ago, but because does things with purpose, thoughtfulness and consistency. She lives with the kind of structured mindfulness I've been striving for. She squeezes her running shoes into her carry-on luggage - it wouldn't occur to her not to move her butt on a long weekend away. She orders exactly what she wants and relishes a yummy restaurant meal, but eats lighter and healthier at the next meal without making a big thing of it. She works hard, on projects she cares deeply about, but knows when it's time to down tools and chill out. She gives so much to people, but she knows when to draw boundaries. I admire the hell out of her approach to life.

Does this post have a bloody point, woman? you may be asking. Yes! Sorta! I guess lately I'm feeling very conscious of time passing, and the cumulative effects of my thoughts and actions. I'm seeing this Making Healthy Choices thing in a different light. Sometimes a slice of cake is just a slice of cake, but when scoffed too often cake numbs; it dulls the edges and clouds the thoughts. I'm trying to be more thoughtful about what's going on when I reach for cake and what happens afterwards... both the immediate sugar crash and mood plummet, and the effects arteries years down the line.

Likewise when I choose to lift some weights, or go for a bike ride, or eat a salad... sometimes a salad is just a salad. But when it's bursting with colour and flavour it almost feels like a declaration of intent...

I want to live a long life
I want to have strong bones when I'm an old lady
I want to spend my days doing meaningful work
I want to walk for miles without hurty knees
I want to be a strong, clear-minded partner, friend, daughter, sister, business partner

And I really don't need a £30 tube of primer!

(I could really do with a nap, though :) )

Action before Belief?

Jen's juicy quote yesterday got me thinking about self-belief. I agree with her sentiment that when you truly believe that something is a top priority, nothing can get in your way. It's simple, but as some of you said in the comments: "it's not easy". As Jen herself said, "I'm not there yet either... I'm talking theoretically here".

So how do you get to that point of believing?

I tend to find that action comes before belief. If you're not someone with confidence on tap, I find it useful to do what the lovely LBTEPA said in her comment, "acting as if you believe it". I interpret this as "performing the desired actions as if you believed in yourself" as opposed to pretending you believe. If that makes any bloody sense at all. For example, at this start of this year my self-belief levels were at a dark and skanky low. Even as I started doing tiny, positive things (keeping my food journal, small amounts of exercise, listening to my hunger signals) I had no real conviction that they would do any good.

But I vowed to keep plodding along regardless of what the brain was telling me. So even when the Voice of Doom was whispering, "Wow, you used to be able to do this easily!" in the middle of kickboxing, the idea was to keep going and focus on the action.

Slowly the balance has started going the other way. Momentum is building. The more tiny, positive things I do, even with teeth gritted, the more my brain seems to link the actions together and conclude, "You are capable of good stuff."

I'm noticing this with some of the Up & Runners. The more training sessions they string together, the more positive they feel and the more they start to believe they will get through the eight weeks. This is regardless of how good or bad the session itself was - the victory is simply in the doing. I can see them starting to believe in their own power and it is so, so inspiring.

I find the action-before-belief thing applies to many aspects of life, in large and small ways. Like every time I make an effort to hang up my coat instead of dumping it on the floor, I am slowly changing the tune of "I'm a slob" to "I'm quite a tidy person".

The only exception might be writing. No matter how much action I take on the writing front, the self-belief doesn't come. But I reckon that might just be a writing thing. Maybe if you allowed yourself to believe in your own abilities too much you'd get cocky and a piano would fall on your head. I think with writing you need that wee bit of terror and doubt in your guts to keep you motivated. Hehe ;)

What works for you? Do you have any tips or tactics for cultivating self-belief?

Wow

From Jen @ Perfect in our Imperfections today:

"I think when we get to the point where we really believe something is at the top of our priority list, nothing can stop us. We can find a way around any excuse. We don't need advice, we just need to realize our own power and make our own goals a priority, and then rearrange our lives accordingly. Simple, right?"

I love Jen.

There Will Be Spreadsheets

Happy new year comrades! Hope your 2011 is off to a cracking start.

Things were rather crapful, healthwise, in the last six weeks of 2010. I was about as mindful as bulldozer! While there was some brilliant bits (good times with friends and family, progress on a groovy new web project) but there were also very messy bits - workplace madness, my 6th major cold of the year and the re-emergence of that old self-destructive streak. I dropped the ball completely and just did not have any interest in looking after myself. I took to hiding in the bath tub with the bubbles a foot high so I could pretend I didn't have a body. Next thing my rubbish bin was jangling with the sound of foil wrappers from chocolate coins and the size 18 dress I reluctantly wore for a summer wedding was now too tight to wear to a party. D'oh.

I've come out the other side now after a couple of weeks off work and some time to rest and think. I learned so much in 2010 with the shrink visits and mindfulness stuff - many lightbulbs went off. But I wasn't able to translate those lightbulbs into meaningful, lasting changes.

The missing element was a plan. It's not enough to realise you have work to do - you have to figure out how the hell you're going to do it. Otherwise I could see myself muddling on forever, slightly more aware of why I do the things I do, but still bloody doing them!

So it was time for action. I spent Boxing Day mapping out a wee strategy. I thought I'd talk about the lard-related bits of it on here...

Food Diary
Yeah, that old chestnut! But it works for me. When I acknowledge and document what I eat, I'm thoughtful with my choices and more likely to tune into hunger signals. When I don't, I do okay for a while but then I get sloppy with portion sizes, then unhealthy choices creep in, then it's "quick, noone's looking!" mode, then the slide into all-out denial.

All year the shrink tried to get me to fill in a diary and I never stuck with it. I don't know if it was because a) I didn't want her to see how bad my "mistakes" could be (interesting to seek the approval of someone you're paying), or b) I didn't want to acknowledge what I was eating, because it might mean giving up the fleeting diversion of eating rubbish. Maybe both?

I've realised since, that I just have to buckle down and DO IT, but in a way that suits me. Which leads us to...

The Spreadsheet
The food diary is a Google Docs spreadsheet. It's inspired by the paper Food/Mood journal the shrink gave me, but I'm finding it so much easier to update on the computer or phone. One row per day with columns for meals and observations. The document is shared with a good friend who's on a similar path - we have a tab each and check in on the other's progress daily so theres no scope for slacking off. And so on to...

Accountability & Real World Support
Getting help from a professional is great but in many ways it's an expensive way of talking to yourself. You can dump all your woes in the session, walk out of the office and kind of leave it there and not really do anything with it back in the "real world".

I've always been most successful when I'm open about my eating struggles with those closest to me. My recent strategy of trying to fix things myself and pretending all was okay did not work, and was no doubt unconvincing for my loved ones as I slowly inflated before their very eyes.

So I've had some conversations with my nearest and dearest along the lines of, "Well, obviously I've been struggling a wee bit here. This is what I'm planning to do about it. Do you reckon you might like to buddy up on a food diary/go somewhere healthier for lunch/eat at the table instead of on the couch/etc etc etc?". Simple things, low key support, but for someone who has not wanted to acknowledge what was really going on to herself, let alone out loud to others, it was huge step forward. It had been very lonely on Planet Denial.

Planning
I'm back to the good old weekly meal planning. There's a spreadsheet for that too! Healthier meals but not boring, single spear of asparagus and a glass of air diet food. Normal, everyday food but remembering I don't need a mountain of rice and that toast doesn't have to come in pairs. This is becoming less of a drama each day now that I'm getting back to...

Mindfulness
The mindful eating tools and techniques I'd adopted last year were really helpful. I'd just stopped using them! So it's back to things like: tuning in to hunger levels before and during eating, putting my food on a plate and sitting down to eat it, exercising for enjoyment not punishment, etc etc etc.

Committment
I've got a combination of practical and mindful tactics, accountability measures and support. I'm ready to tackle this now. The black dog is back in his kennel! Unlike a year ago, addressing my eating now is not a diversion - the "designated issue" as Martha Beck calls it - because I've worked on the bigger issues.

That's enough baby steps for now, I reckon. Are you still awake?

Disclaimer: My pal Lainey is always bemused when I put disclaimers on my blog but I should show her the emails I get from folks insisting, "you're doing it wrong". So I'm disclaiming that this is the plan of action I have come up with based on what worked in the past combined with what I've learned since about my wily ways. I'm giving it a red hot go (one week down) and will reassess at the end of the month. Yee-ha!

I'll huff and I'll puff

Man, it truly sucks not being as a fit as you once were. When I was on my way down from 350 pounds, I'd only ever known being unfit. I graduated from last place in school running races to later wheezing up staircases and needing a rest after hanging out the washing. So when I lost weight and walked further and lifted heavier weights, it was all new ground! I'd created a version of myself that hadn't existed before. Shauna Version 2.0 was so bloody amazing compared to the creaky, red-faced model I'd always known.

But now I'm in this new situation where I am looking back longingly at this previous, speedier version. Shauna Version 3.0 is just not there right now.

I'm talking pure physical fitness here - pleeeease don't write to tell me I'm putting myself down. Let me explain.

At the moment I am working on making exercise a healthy, regular habit again. As I said in the podcast on Monday my kickboxing attendence has been very shoddy this year. Partially because of my Zumba love affair but mainly because I was traumatised by my 120 seconds of competition fighting last November. I never managed to fashion that hilarious humiliation into a blog entry.

But anyway! After that girl clobbered me I was terrified of kickboxing for a long while. I felt ill every time a punching glove was waved in my direction. I literally ran away every time Coach said it was time for sparring. Up the stairs and away home, as fast as my trembling legs could carry me!

Months passed and I was down to one or two classes a month. But I was really missing my comrades and punching things. Pads, kick shields, speed balls. Not people, you see. It occurred to me that HEY maybe I could just go to the classes for the friends and fitness and learning new moves... and just not do the fighting part at the end? Why throw the baby out with the bathwater?

(Funny how hard it was to admit that the fighting wasn't for me. You'd think wanting to vomit every time I faced an opponent would have been a clue. Hmm!)

So I was really chuffed about this revelation and rocked up back to class ready for action... only to find that holy crap, I have lost a lot of fitness. Gaining weight has not helped... everything wobbles when I do jumping jacks; a most unpleasant sensation. And I don't have the stamina in my shoulders for long periods of punching. I can't kick nearly as high. My push-ups are wimpy. My once infatigable abs give out after 10 reps.

What is amusing stroke ego-crushing is that in my MIND (o'erbrimming with Comeback Enthusiasm) I expected to proceed as before! I would throw myself into a move and then be stunned (and whining in agony) when BODY SAYS NO. You are not Version 2.0 anymore!

I will admit, there have been some classes where I am fighting not to sob all over my gloves, feeling so angry at myself letting it get this bad. It was hard enough getting fit from a place of complete unfitness, but trying to get fit knowing you once were pretty fit but you cocked it all up? That is hard to swallow!

Especially when your team mates, who were already way fitter than you even when you were fit-ish, have been attending angellically all year and are now even fitter than they were last year which makes your current unfitness even more unfit! Does that even make any sense?

But dudes. I am being very zen about this. I do love kickboxing - I really missed it and I love being back there. When I think about exercise now I am thinking about the habits I want to carry into old age, and punching things is part of that plan. So for now I am just gritting my teeth and getting on with it. Okay I am not really gritting my teeth because I am too busy gasping for breath... but I am sticking with it.

And on that note must nick off for tonight's class :)

UPDATE: I said in the comments below that I had a déjà vu re the "previous versions" of oneself and thought PastaQueen had said something similar before. Turns out she had... whoops! Here is the entry in question.

Scott the Strawberry

These past few months have been rather batty. Stuff that is too personal or awkward to write about in real time. Also, stuff that is too personal and bloody tedious to subject you to.

A healthy eating poster at the local primary school

Basically I took myself off to a shrink. After a year or more of saying I should be able to fix this on my own I thought I'd try talking to an objective person about things.

It was very fruitless to begin with, because I was being very half-arsed about it. There were many conflicting voices:

• Shame and Fraudulent: I'm wasting her time, I should be able to fix things on my own.
• Denial: There's nothing wrong with you; harden the f*ck up whinge bag!
• Hopeless: You've cocked up so badly you're beyond help
  
• Blogging Out Loud: telling "hilarious" stories and not being honest about how crappy things were, in case she didn't believe me and/or thought I was pathetic.

It was three expensive months of not much progress and soooooo much denial. I bawled and/or binged and binged and binged after every session. I was tempted to churn out a few of my "I'm doing great now!" blog posts even when I wasn't, because I felt like I should have been doing better.

But slowly, slowly... light bulbs started going off. The energy saving kind that take awhile to warm up, but still, progress.

Recently I got home from work and went to get changed for a workout. I saw my favourite winter coat in the wardrobe and for some reason decided to try it on. It was so tight that I couldn't get it over my shoulders. I looked in the mirror and the bullshit and denial just fell away. I plonked on the bedroom floor and had a cry for twenty minutes.

Then I thought, Righto, ENOUGH. I got up, put on my gym clothes and did a Cathe weights DVD. I started sniffling again halfway through because I couldn't lift as heavy as I used to, but it still felt like a minor triumph over the "you suck, you're doomed!" voice.

"What has changed?" the shrink asked in our next session. What's changed is that I finally accept that I have work to do. I accept that I need to change the way I think and I accept that this takes hard work. I accept I need to communicate properly with my loved ones and not hide or deny problems.

I accept that I need to build a healthy relationship with food that will sustain me for the rest of my life. I had to buy size 18 jeans recently. I want to get back into my 14s but my approach is different now. It can't be about losing weight so I'll fit into a wedding dress, or have an ending for a book, or look acceptable to promote a book, or to live up to the expectations of certain people. It will never stick until deep down, I want to live a healthy life just for me.

I finally see how damaging the language of shoulds, musts and have tos has been. I see how needlessly worrying about what other people think has steered my actions. I see how hiding my problems has made them worse. Man, it's really embarrassing to realise how you've let things go to pot. Even more embarrassing to see how powerful the LA LA LA EVERYTHING'S FINE denial has been.

But I am writing this with a dopey grin on my face because I feel alive and clear-headed and unburdened. I've just spewed this entry straight from the guts today and feel like a complete WANKER for all the psychobabbly dullness but thought an update was overdue. It's been a very insular, delicate, roller coaster process that leaves you feeling very raw and haggard at times, so hopefully you can understand why the blogging has been sparse. I hope you're well and dandy and thank you, as always, for sticking around!

Happy Snaps

I was thinking about happiness after rediscovering a ranty pants entry from 2006:

For me happiness is sifting through the shitty bits of life and looking for the good things to latch onto. And always making sure you have something to look forward to, whether that's a weekly choccie bar, an episode of The Avengers or an island holiday. Anything will do...

... I have to work as hard at staying happy as I do at getting to the gym or making sure my guts don't explode out of my trousers. It's a habit that I had to learn. You just have to work on it, every single day.

The only thing more annoying than a smug, happy person is when the smug, happy person is yourself.

Begrudgingly I must agree with Me of 2006. My brain finds it hard to hold on to optimism and cheeriness unless I consciously work at 'em.

My personal formula for happiness:

1. Making time for small, everyday feelgood stuff (e.g.: kickboxing, recent gardening addiction)
2. Having an overall bigass goal to sink my teeth into. A purpose!

Without the above I get all reclusive and maudlin. I used to blame this tendency on my weight, but now I know that I can be happy or miserable at any size!

While I was back in Oz in April, I found some old photos from 2001 - the first year of lardbusting. I was amazed at how cheery I looked. But I remembered the moments the pics were taken and realised why I felt so bloody brilliant back then and why I hadn't been feeling so good these past few months. Back then I was living the formula, baby... big goals; simple pleasures.

NB: The captions on these pics say 2000 but it should be 2001. I can't find the originals now, d'oh!

In this pic I was dead pleased with myself as I was down 40 pounds and for the first time in years I'd managed to keep up with my friends on a walk to this park. All the leaves were broon and Harry the Dog was being his usual demented self.

I think I was another ten pounds down here and taking a progress photo. The dopey grin was coz I fitted into a new size 24 jumper. I was pretty freakin' determined.

And six months later, this is when I got my hair chopped off and felt rather foxy. I'd also been swimming and went to a pub, tackling two big fat girl fears. I'd finally realised that I didn't have to let my weight hold me back. That was a gobsmacking revelation. I was pretty much delirious back then!

It's now actually a month since I started this entry and I can't really remember why I started it and now it's nearly midnight (curfew fail!). Sorry this is not much of a weight loss blog in the traditional sense these days; it's more about happiness gain. I'm latching on to the good things and trying to savour them right as they're happening. Yeehah.

The First Taste

I'm lucky enough to have a photograph of the precise moment when I realised I was falling in lurve.

There's a bit in the Dietgirl book in which Gareth is the only non-Aussie at a tea party and bravely volunteers join in a Vegemite Taste Test (page 201, UK ed.). Our friends Jane and Rory wanted to see if I could tell the difference between Australia and New Zealand-manufactured Vegemite so they made up some sample sandwiches.

• Frame 1 - Tentative sniffing of the samples.
• Frame 2 - Shauna takes the exercise very seriously while Gareth seems nervous to dive in.
• Frame 3 - Gareth is a blur of shock and awe as he takes his first bite.
• Frame 4 - Shauna is triumphant after correctly identifying the Kiwi Vegemite, while Gareth reels from the flava.

I felt stupidly happy throughout the whole exercise, marveling at how the seating-arrangements gods had conspired to let Gareth sit next to me that afternoon when there was at least one other chair and a whole floor he could have sat on instead. I stole little glances at his lovely forearms, tried to understand his accent and wondered if it meant something that I didn't want to be anywhere else.

That was August 2003. Little did we know that just a month later Gareth would be a Vegemite addict and eat nothing but Vegemite on toast for a whole week after his PhD grant ran out. Little did we know that 18 months later we'd be married. SUCKAS!

Today is our fourth wedding anniversary and Dr G will no doubt spew at the cheese level of this post but... I still don't want to be anywhere else. And furthermore, Vegemite RULES and is an excellent source of Vitamin B. Hurrah!

How DietGirl Became Not-On-A-Diet-Girl

You may have noticed that I've not really updated the weight stats on my sidebar in a long long time. I keep meaning to explain why, but all I had to show you is fifteen abandoned drafts. The truth is, everything has changed this year; my attitude to this diet stuff. I needed to pull back from the scales and think long and hard about things. There's been so many incidents that screamed to me that after six and a bit years, I had to change my approach to my health and weight.

It wasn't until the lovely Sarah invited me to write a guest post for Elastic Waist that I actually sat down and put the massive changes in my head down on paper. The post is up today. Thanks all you lovely EW folks for having me over.

Update: I've archived the full post below for posterity.

I’d been on a diet for 333 weeks when the pickled ginger stepped in and saved my sanity.

Earlier this year I was on a spring-cleaning rampage when I came across the long-forgotten package. Instead of the usual pale pink, my ginger had turned into a swampish, scummy brown from sitting on the pantry shelf for so long. I’d bought wasabi, rice and seaweed too, with the intention of making homemade sushi, but for a whole year I’d been putting it off.

I’ve got to lose those last ten pounds first, I kept telling myself. If I make sushi now I’ll get bloated and it’ll show up on the scales! I can’t ruin my diet with a carb fest!

But when I found that dust-covered package I sat down on the kitchen floor and actually said out loud, “ARE YOU INSANE?”

After a lifetime of angst-ing about my weight, I finally saw how ridiculous it had all become. I was almost 30 years old, and I’d been dieting on and off through my entire 20s. My weeks revolved around my Monday weigh-in—what to eat, when to eat it, how it would affect my date with the scale. And it wasn’t just the pickled ginger; I had a whole drawer of wacky ingredients and a shelf crammed with untouched cookbooks, waiting for the day I gave myself permission to cook from them. After 333 weeks I knew I had to move on—before it became 666 weeks.

* * *

Way back in January 2001, I weighed 351 pounds. My weight-loss journey began with very negative motivations—I was depressed, angry and so full of loathing that I wanted to hack off my belly rolls with a knife. Even as I made changes to my lifestyle I never believed they’d stick; I didn’t think I deserved any better.

But surprisingly, my self-perception swiftly changed. The more I treated my body kindly with good food and gentle exercise, the more I positive I felt. At first I could only manage a walk around the block or 10 minutes on the elliptical, but I began to appreciate my size 26 body for what it could do, instead of what it looked like. For the first time I looked in the mirror and saw a worthy human being, not just a collection of flaws.

By August 2006, after 291 long slow weeks, I’d lost 175.5 pounds and weighed 175.5 pounds; I’d shed precisely half my body weight. I had the healthy lifestyle down pat, too. I loved my exercise and instead of binging or dieting I finally had a balanced relationship with food. When I took some progress photos in my new size 12 jeans I loved what I saw. I felt confident, healthy, sexy and content. I felt done.

But how could I be done? I still had 10 pounds to lose before I stopped being fat in the eyes of the Body Mass Index overlords. Surely my happiness wasn’t really valid unless I reached that number?

So for the next year that package of pickled ginger rotted away in the pantry while I became obsessed with my goal weight. But the harder I tried the more the scale refused to budge. I grew panicky and impatient, and instead of keeping faith in my tried-and-true formula of sensible eating and exercise, I scoured my old diet books looking for answers.

Finally in Week 333, I stopped and asked myself, What the hell am I doing? Haven’t I learned anything? Why am I torturing myself?

For six years I’d battled to achieve a balanced approach but now I’d fallen back into my old, obsessive ways. And what for? I was fit and healthy. I liked my body. I finally liked being me. But my weight fixation was making me lose sight of all those positives.

So the moment I tossed that rotten ginger into the trash I tossed my diet mentality too. No more number crunching, no more ritual weigh-ins and no more Last Ten Pounds. I decided to just let go and decided to see where my instincts took me.

Part of me worried what would happen if I didn’t obsess about my weight. How would I stay healthy without all that angst? Without the fear of a weekly weigh-in, would I go wild and wake up in a sea of candy wrappers with chocolate smeared across my gob?

But I didn’t. Instead life got a helluva lot more interesting once I ditched the scales and dieting. I carried on being healthy. I started yoga classes, something I’d yearned to do for years but had put off in favor of workouts that burned more calories. I went for long hikes in the Scottish Highlands with my husband. He’d been asking me to join him for ages but I’d turned him down because he always took sandwiches to eat on the summits and I fretted that bread would screw up my weigh-ins.

These days I’m not afraid of a sandwich. And I exercise purely for the joy of it, not to make my body more pleasant to the masses. Instead of thinking, “These are things I must do to lose weight,” I now believe, “This is just how I live my life.”

I don’t know where the scale will end up, but after 333 weeks I’m not wasting another minute worrying about it. I always thought the prize would be seeing that magic number, but now I appreciate that it was never about the scales or the size of my jeans. The true reward was finding peace and acceptance and embracing my own skin, with all its lumps and bumps. It's getting out there and diving into life, instead of sitting around getting old and moldy like that pickled ginger!

You've Got To Hide Your Lard Away

I had this brainwave to make a wee photo album for my sister of all travels. We came to Scotland together in 2003 on a working holiday visa, where the idea is to work work work then see as much of Europe as you can before your visa and/or money runs out.

I poked through a gazillion folders trying to find pictures of us in front of famous landmarks but it was slim pickings, folks. Take the first ever trip we did, a long weekend in Paris. I was so excited to finally be off the couch and seeing the world, but wasn't bold enough to want photographic evidence of this newfound adventurousness. Every time I got the camera out I'd think, My hair sucks. I need a new bra. My head is enormous. My body is revolting. And it was hot and my face was red so I told myself, I'll just come back here some day when I'm smaller and better dressed.

So all I have are a few dodgy shots with my noggin lurking in a corner.

Even as I lost more weight I still kept hiding. On the rare occasions I let Rhiannon take my picture, I'd bark orders, "Make sure I'm just in the corner! Don't go below the waist! Actually, don't go below the chin!" Or I'd try to hide my body behind statues or trees or sunglasses or hats.

We went on a tour of Russia and Scandinavia in 2004 and I nearly keeled over from Photophobia. Every seven seconds in front of another church or museum someone would shout, "GROUP SHOT!" I'd fight my way to the back row and hide behind the tallest bloke. So despite having been desperate to see Russia my whole life, I only have two fuzzy, barely-recognisable pieces of photographic evidence that I ever went there.

I would love to go back in time and kick my own arse. DUDE! Why didn't you just GET IN THE STINKING PICTURES!? These were once in a lifetime experiences! Sure I looked like hell while travelling, but most people do, especially when you're on a budget.

I know I have the memories in my head, but there's something special about having a souvenir photo on your desktop or mantelpiece. I'd kill to have a decent shot of Rhiannon and I together in Red Square or Reykjavik. We worked long and hard to afford those trips so it's sad not have captured the euphoria and relief on our faces when we finally got there. But at the time it didn't feel like I'd be collecting memories, I just thought I'd be documenting FAT FAT FAT!

My favourite picture from our travels is this one from Estonia in 2004, that Rhiannon took without my knowledge. I look like a clown but I'm clearly not thinking about the fact my jeans were a snug size 18. I'm just thinking, "WOOHOO. Life is a hoot."

Every time I look at it, my resolve is strengthened to just jump into photos then laugh if they turn out dodgy. I'd rather have a dodgy photo of a happy moment than no photo at all. Half the joy is looking back and sniggering at your bad haircuts and questionable taste in fashion. I no longer say "I'll come back another day when I'm skinny", because the moment is already happening... right then and there!

So this is a call to any fellow Photophobes out there. Don't scream! Don't hide! Don't put yourself in a  corner! After all, you don't have to post the pictures on the bloody internet. They can gather dust on your hard drive, ready to make you smile and spark your memory when you're old and grey.

Freaky Friday

Thanks so much for your rockin' comments and emails, groovers! You have no bloody idea how much I appreciated every single word. I've sent my visa application back with a metric tonne of extra evidence, so now we play the waiting game. Cross your fingers and toes and eyes that they'll be satisfied this time! :)

Okay, life is generally a wee bit batshit crazy right now. I had a slight freakout in the gym this morning, swooshing away on the Arc trainer, "What am I doing here? I don't have time to be here! There's too much to do!", rah rah rah. Exercise is not having a soothing effect lately, it just seems to wind me tighter and tighter. So I am going to do more soothing stuff, like yoga and outdoor walks.

It's interesting to really listen to your body and give in to its demands, instead of trying to bully it into doing what your brain wants it to do. Which has long been my problem. The body is saying, "Dude, be gentle with me" so I am trying to listen. And it's also saying, "Don't fill me full of chocolate, dammit. You think you want it but you dinnae need it, hen."

I am so freaking proud of myself for not using food as a coping mechanism. When I got off the train in London last week having just found out about the stinking Visa Situation, my brain was screaming "CHOCCCCOLATE! GIMME CHOOCCCOLATE!". But my sister was there and we got on another train to our Indulgent Spa Hotel. We shared a Berry Cheeky Nakd Bar and I talked about my worries instead of burying them in cocoa.

Remember when Rhi and I went to Lisbon last year? I gained 6.5 pounds due to my pre-holiday, holiday and post-holiday feasting. Last year I had resigned myself that this would always be the case on holiday, there was no way I'd miss out on yummy different foods. But now I see it doesn't have to be that way. This time I was more choosy about what I ate, often sharing things with my sister so I'd get the idea of a dish without needing to eat the whole thing. I got the thrill of something new without the remorse.

I was pretty damn gobsmacked by how well I handled things, considering I was a total stressmonkey. And this week is going well too. Was gagging for a giant block of Green & Blacks for lunch yesterday but had a mega bowl of stir-fried vegies and tofu instead and it was strangely delicious. I'm not even trying to lose weight at the moment, I really don't give a shit... I'm just trying to do enough good things to make me feel healthy and happy. But I can tell from mirrors and clothes that I'm holding steady. Exxxcellent.

It's finally coming together, people, after all these years. I am learning the fine art of moderation. I am dealing with my problems instead of distracting myself with a good old binge. The urge is just not there anymore. I can tell you it really sucks to actually feel shitty feelings instead of masking them with chocolate, and I'm sure I've been a total whiny weepy biaaatch to live with. But life sometimes features raw edges and rough spots and crappy days and you just have to embrace it all. I'd much rather a little stress than return to the bad old days of sitting numbly on the couch with half a kilo of cooking chocolate.

Lumps and Bumps

Hidey ho, old chaps! I'm on the train back to bonny Scotland after my couple of days in the ye olde English countryside. I've been massaged and manicured and now I'm ready to get back to reality.

Have to admit I'm feeling a wee bit fragile right now. I don't know if many of you read my non-fat blog, but we found out on Wednesday that my permanent residency application has been denied. Basically when you marry a Brit you get a two-year temporary visa then after that time you have to prove you're still a red hot legitimate married couple so you can stay together forever and ever in your British love nest. If they don't think you've proved it, you're oot, baby!

And whaddya know? The Home Office thinks me and the good Doctor G ain't the real deal.

I have been through all the emotions over the past few days. First the knee-jerk reaction on my blog and generally feeling sick to the stomach that anyone could question our lovely wee relationship. Then anger because I know we filled out that goddamn tedious form properly and sent the correct documents. Then came a hysterical kind of bemusement because the rejection is just plain absurd and there is absolutely no logic behind it.

This was followed by my old friend PANIC, because this really could not have happened at worse bloody time. Like there is a good time for these things, but anyway. Everything is happening all at once and the pressure is a wee bit overwhelming.

You know those moments where everything builds up and you have to decide whether to sink or swim? Well, I allowed myself to splash around in the panic pool for awhile but now I've calmed down. I refuse to fall in a heap. I've got my lists and plans and thought out how to deal with everything logically. And I know me and my Scottish Companion are the real deal, thank you very much; so we will get this sorted.

. . .

The massage was nice, by the way. No paper pants, just strategically placed towels!  I was too chicken to take off my undies but there were no major Fat Girl Freakouts.

It was bizarre how knotted my body was. There were great lumps of tension in my shoulders and arms and even in the palms of my hands. When she kneaded my back it felt like there were marbles under my skin. She even said my scalp was all stiff. Urrgh. Rather painful at times but still enjoyable!

I couldn't seem to switch my brain off. This may sound bizarre but the whole thing made me extremely emotional. I kept thinking of my Skinny List and how I felt about my body way back when I wrote it in 2001. I always try and downplay how much the lard-busting process has changed me, I don't know why. Perhaps a little embarrassment that I got so big in the first place, or defensiveness coz I'm "still the same person". But with a strangers hands poking and prodding the body that I used to feel so ashamed of, I couldn't deny how much has changed. It was a strangely powerful moment, like the past six years rolled past my eyes in a Rocky-esque montage...

Shit shit shit. I dunno what's wrong with me at the moment, I keep getting teary at inappropriate moments and the dude sitting opposite is looking at me funny. So I will sign off and gawk out the window instead. And I hope this entry doesn't come across as self-pitying in any way. I am slightly scared but quietly determined. Keep calm and carry on, as they say. Hope you are all well :)

All Change

Dudes! I'm almost to scared to admit this, but I am kicking arse at the moment. Shhh. Don't tell.

Late last year I was banging on about my impatience to get to 75 kilos so I could say I was Done then just get on with the maintaining:

"... after that... I refuse to expend any more energy on numbers... Once I hit 75kg I am going to make my goals entirely about fitness, and if they result in the the scale going down that will be a happy accident... I will let it settle where it wants to and let the fit of my jeans be the measure of what shape I'm in.

I just want my goals to be completely removed from the scales. It will be about building muscle and getting stronger and leaner and healthier. I want to learn to ride my bike without wobbles and take up yoga and get to a point where I can swim laps for half an hour. I just want to get on with it, continuing my healthy lifestyle. I want to take it further and push harder... because that's how I live my life... not because I'm trying to lose weight."

Rant rant rant. I basically concluded that all that would have to wait... until I got to the elusive 75 kilos.

But then the lovely Beckie left a very thought-provoking comment which you can read here. This sentence grabbed me:

"You said you wanted to change over to just fitness goals. Is this after the finish line? Why not help it get you to the finish line?"

Oooh, indeed! Why wait for the finish line? The fitness stuff is what I like and what makes me feel challenged and productive. So when I wrote out my goals for 2007, Get To 75kg was at the top of the list but the rest of it was about shifting my lardy arse. I have changed my focus to fitness NOW instead of waiting until goal.

Even though exercise has long been a big part of my lard busting efforts, the main theme has been the weekly weigh-in and reporting the results of said weigh-in to the blog. It was starting to drive me MENTAL. I was putting all this pressure on myself to "get results" each week so I'd have some good numbers to report. I was getting impatient that it was taking so long. As much as I was enjoying my exercise, there was an underlying feeling of "wonder if this will help my weigh-in this week?". Because as much as I talked about inches lost or push-ups pushed, it somehow didn't seem quite as valid as pounds down.

Finally I asked myself, Why am I going mental over this stupid number? I was starting to see 75's in my dreams! You know, like a 7 and a 5, walking hand-in-hand through a meadow. Don't get me wrong, I can't wait to hit the number, just so I can say gleefully, "Finiiiished!". But getting impatient and stressed about it was actually counter-productive -- I seemed to be getting further AWAY from goal.

So that's why I made so many fitness goals for 2007, because the sweaty stuff makes me happy. I was really inspired by fitness bloggers like the amazing Kek and her supreme buffness. She has given me so much advice and inspiration to change my focus. All my efforts are now with improving fitness in mind, not weight loss. It's early days, but already feels much more satisfying and positive than focusing on a weekly scale result. Instead I'm obssessed with doing those stinkin' pikes or going up a level on that awful Arc trainer machine at the gym.

You have noticed the weekly exercise plans there in the sidebar. I've now followed them faithfully for a month! I've not missed a single session - no excuses, no half-arsedness! Lots of hard work and stinky gym clothes. I feel more determined and my eating is settling down into something sane and sensible. And sustainable.

I am still weighing myself daily. It was fluctuating wildly for a couple of weeks there and I was getting angsty, as though the numbers cancelled out all the goodness of my eating and fitness efforts. But now I am learning to see the scale as just another tool in my belt - a general indicator of a trend as opposed to a machine that dictates my mood for the day!

So basically what I daydreamed about doing when I hit goal, I am doing right now. Living like a boring old healthy person, getting fitter and letting the scale do what it wants. And whaddya know.... enough, simply by not focusing on getting to goal, I am actually inching closer to it! The scales are creeping down, my jeans have eased their death grip on my thighs, inches have been lost... and I feel a helluva lot more sane.

300 Weeks

In the kick ass October Rules post, Fat Blogger also mentions an old entry from April 2005 called God I Hate Being Fat. It's one of those entries that attracts a tonne of Google traffic, and over a year later the comments thread is still buzzing with people venting about how much they hate themselves and hate their fat. It really is a fascinating, heart-wrenching, horrifying but ultimately inspiring thread, in no small part to FB's encouraging comments throughout.

What struck me most were the commenters with large amounts of weight to lose, and the overwhelming sentiment that it's too hopeless, too much, too bloody impossible. It made me want bawl because I understand that feeling so well. I just wanted to write a wee something today for anyone out there who's in that position.

I remember how it feels to truly loathe yourself. I'd grab handfuls of flesh and want to hack it off with a knife. It seemed like there was no way out of this lardy prison. Even when I did finally get up the nerve to start fighting the flab in 2001, I still often felt I was in a hopeless situation. In some ways it was worse, because I now knew the cold hard statistics - 351 pounds, with at least 185 of them to lose.

I've told the story a million times before how after a month  I decided I had to start exercising. I only managed to shuffle to the end of the block before my lungs wheezed and rattled in protest. I remember thinking bitterly, What was the point of that? How is walking fifty metres ever going to add up to anything? What's the point of any of this?  It's never going to get any better.

But -- *insert soft-focus montage of the past five 3/4 years, sweat, tears, caramel shortcakes* -- as we all know, these seemingly tiny changes do add up over time. And the more little changes you make, the easier it gets, giving you the confidence to you make even more changes. And the more you do it, the more you feel good about yourself and those negative voices are hushed.

I know the numbers can be overwhelming. I know it feels like an impossible mountain to climb. But if it seems too much, don't try and fix everything all at once. Don't try some fancy diet. Just pick one thing this week. Walk to end of the street and back. Cut out the teaspoon of sugar in your tea. Just try one tiny little thing for seven days. Then when you've done that for a week, add another tiny little thing for the next.

I know this approach is not quick enough for some. Where's the gobsmacking results? Where's the meal replacement shakes and the deprivation? Where's the dramatic statistics? I'm always having people tsk-tsking at what I eat - whether it's some toast or the occasional chocolate - and saying things like, "You'll never get to goal eating that! Carbs are bad! Last year I lost 20 pounds on Trendy Diet Of The Month, why don't you do that? ".

Never mind that the person usually has put back on those 20 pounds plus more. How can you say a diet Works if you gained the blubber back? I'd rather enjoy real food and take longer to get to goal in my slow-ass bumbling way, than crash and burn on a Trendy Diet and wind up with even more pounds to lose. 

Sure it sounds BORING to take it slowly. But just add up all the time you've spent losing and regaining pounds on Trendy Diets. How many weeks or months would that be? Imagine if you'd used that same amount of time to lose half or one pound a week? Would you be heavier or lighter than you are now?

I was moaning about my own excruciatingly slow progress the other day. I've now been Busting Lard for five years and nine months, which is roughly 300 weeks (fark!). And I say roughly, coz I am shite at maths. And now for some statistics:

300 weeks
78.3 kilos (172 lb) lost
A paltry average of just over HALF A POUND (220g) per week.

But... imagine if I'd gone the other way? What if I hadn't changed anything? What if I'd maintained my addiction to ice cream and cheese n bacon rolls and family blocks of Cadbury's Black Forrest?

Right before I started the Lard Busting in 2001, I was gaining weight far more rapidly than half a pound a week. But for arguments sake, let's just say I'd gained at the same rate I've losing for the past 300 weeks - half a pound a week.

I'd now weigh 237.5 kilos. 523 pounds.

Who knows what I'd be up to now. Maybe I'd be in a golf cart, trundling off to the shops; or in a crane, being lifted out of my house by the fire brigade; or just a plain ol pine box. It's kinda scary to think about.

So if you think a pound or a half a week sounds too slow, or if you think your walking around the block or switching to wholegrain bread or doing twenty squats or increasing your veggies isn't going to amount to anything... don't worry. Be patient. Don't give up. Take all the freakin' time you need. Sure, it might take 300 weeks or more. But at least it's 300 weeks in a healthier, happier direction.

The Deep End

I'm going to take swimming lessons!

In the last two years I have re-learned to run and re-learned to ride a bike, so now it's time to face my ultimate fear and re-learn to swim.

Swimming is associated with so many traumatic memories and body image issues, not to mention the fact that I have always completely sucked at it! But I am just in a Fear Facing mood right now, so I want to conquer this one once and for all.

Also, winter is sneaking up again so I want a new exercise that will keep me motivated but won't be murder on my knees. My father-in-law contacted his friend who's a swimming teacher and she's up for teaching me, so tonight I'm going to call her and then I'll go forth and buy some swimmers and then I'll get my chalky white arse back into the drink.

Consider this my public declaration of intent. Feel free to hunt me down and thrash me with a branch if I don't follow it through.

Before long I will have the complete set of Triathlon skillz down pat! Of course, it would have to be a very special Triathlon for the Chronically Hopeless:

SWIM - Frenzied dog paddle across the council pool.
BIKE -  Ten minutes in a straight, flat line because I'm still scared of hills and corners.
RUN - Actually can we make that a walk, since my knees are cactus? A slow, shuffling walk.

Och, you gotta start somewhere.

Just to explain my current arse-kicking frame of mind. I had yet another revelation on Friday. In brief: I am chicken shit!

This was brought on by the whole Television Thing. When I was initially approached about the Sky News story I completely freaked out and said No! I had nightmare visions of my big mug on the telly and panicked. What if they made me climb into my fat jeans? What if I looked hideously fat and everyone laughed? What if what if what if?

I got off the phone and told my colleagues about it. They were amazed that I'd said no, saying it would have been a nice opportunity. But I came up with a dozen reasons why I shouldn't do it, concluding with, "I'm too fat to be on television."

An hour or so later it all sank in and I thought, "Oh god, what have I done? That would have been a fab opportunity. You. Bloody. Moron!"

In the end, thanks to the lovely Emma Robertson (journalist extraordinaire who wrote The Scotsman article last week), I managed to get back in contact with Sky on Friday morning. They wanted to do the story straight away! FARK! Thanks to my faffing about the day before, there was no time to angst over wardrobe choices. Luckily I have the best colleagues in the world. Not only did my boss let me nick off for a couple of hours, my mate Alex drove me to the shops so I could get a top that didn't have lunch stains on it, then drove me into town. What a legend. At the last minute I ran to the chemist and got some nail-polish remover and rubbed off two weeks of crusty, chipped nail polish, which was just as well since they did some close-up shots of me typing! Note to self: Be less slobby!

It was all over so quickly. I was so nervous I thought I'd throw up, but the Sky people were lovely. They just plonked me onto chair, asked me a few questions, had me do the pretend typing then I was all done! Cool.

On the way back to work I kept thinking about how much I have changed since the fat fighting started, but also how much I haven't changed. My reaction to the whole media madness last week proved how in many ways, I am still holding on to my fat. I am still letting it hold me back, even though so much of it is physically gone. I am still using it as an excuse not to push myself. I am still scared.

I don't want to be like this any more. I am tired of doubting myself and being timid. I know I have made real, albeit slow progress towards accepting that I've changed and declaring some ambitions (such as the book project). But sometimes I still feel like an Apologetic Fat Girl, afraid of making a noise and taking up space.

On Friday night I decided to write an entry for my other blog and finally "out" Dietgirl. I had a good cry as I wrote. It took me two more days to work up the nerve to post it. I barely slept all weekend, knowing I'd kept a massive external and internal transformation a total secret from some really brilliant friends around the world, for really demented reasons. But when I finally did it, it was like the last big cloud had been lifted.

So now I feel like I am finally being honest, to my friends and to myself. More accepting. No more hiding. It's time to push forward and work harder. To live a little less in my head. To stop clinging to the old excuses and not be such a chicken.

And that's when I figured I may as well learn how to swim again, while I'm on a roll!

How To Let Go

Sometimes I wonder if I am a positive person, or if I am just faking the lifestyle of a positive person. Can you consider yourself a positive person if you have to constantly remind yourself to be positive?

I've been hiding from this website because I feel like a fraud. People sometimes write to say I am honest and inspirational and determined and positive, and I feel guilty as I've not felt like any of those for a wee while.

Over the past month I tried to dilute how bad this injury crap has made me feel, so not to come across as a self-pitying whiner. But last week it all boiled over and I was not a nice person to live with. I stomped around, mentally composing entries full of anger and frustration and general woe. I stopped short of actually writing them, because after a few hours and perhaps some perspective from the Scottish Companion, I'd simmer down. I'd sniff out the positives like a truffle pig, then go back and edit out all the venom.

Then on Saturday around 3AM, I finally sat down at the keyboard and exploded! In the textual sense. About 800 words of pure rantage.

I knew I was being irrational and I knew other people had terrible diseases and all manner of proper tragedies. I knew that I had lost perspective on a trifling sporting injury. So I ranted to imaginary readers, begging them not to write and tell me to get over it or I would just cry. And as much as I'd appreciated everyone's medical advice and exercise tips of late, I wasn't looking for that today. I just needed the world to let me vent. RAH!

I'll go through the rubble of the entry and give you a quick summary.

First I wrote about how the lack of exercise was making me feel down. I'd been off "full schedule" for over a month. I missed the structure it gave to my days, I missed the sense of purpose, the sweat, the spreadsheets. Most of all I missed the happy chemicals in the brain.

Then came a dozen paragraphs re my frustration at not being able to take advantage of the good weather and ride my brand-new bike.

And how it's all my fault because I neglected the knee for almost a year.

And how I've been consumed by anger at myself for not listening to my body or my head for so long.

How I valued the opinion of others above my own my brain and pain, because I assumed they knew what was best for my body more than I did, since they were skinnier/smaller.

How I therefore started exercising again too soon and caused further damage.

How didn't take myself or the pain seriously.

Like how I never went back to the physio I saw last June, because in my fat girl paranoia I felt like I was wasting his time. After all I was just a fat chick flirting with exercise, not a legitimate sporty person. How could a big lump like me possibly have a real injury?

Hmm, what else?

How I was frustrated because I'd gained a pound. Only A Pound but that meant yet another month had ended with no progress, making three months with no significant loss.

How these last 6 kilos are proving the most difficult and stressful than any of the other 70-something already gone.

I almost edited out that sentence, as I don't want to insult people who have far more left to lose. Five years ago I would have killed to be where I am now. But as someone who has filled the shoes of Staggeringly Obese, Obese, Still Pretty Fat and Almost Healthy Weight all for extended periods of time, I can honestly say this stage is somehow the most overwhelming and frustrating of all.

Thankfully for anyone still reading, I ran out of steam after that. I hit Save Draft and headed for bed, not before seething with bitterness until about 4AM.

Saturday morning I got up and forgot about the computer. I ate banana on toast, watched the MotoGP qualifying, kissed the Scottish Companion goodbye, then hopped on a plane for London.

A ridiculous seven hours later (thanks to the joys of public transport delays), I was walking through Hyde Park. Previously I'd only been to London in the winter, so I lapped up the grassy breeze, the trees, the rollerbladers and roses; the kamikaze insects splattered on my sunglasses.

Quite simply, I could feel my body and brain finally begin to chill the fuck out.

There's something about being in the Big Bad City that always brings perspective. All those people from all over the planet, so busy busy busy getting on with all kinds of lives.

I caught the train back home yesterday, for variety. It was the most blissful four hours I've spent in ages. No computer, no phone and a quiet, near-empty carriage. Just me and the sandwiches, grapes, trashy magazines, Gareth's iPod and a tiny wee bar of Green and Blacks chocolate.

Looking out the window at the English countryside in its green and glorious Englishness, I decided it was time to give the boot to all the crazy anger and anxiety I've been dragging round for weeks.

I even sniffed out a few positives from this injury debacle:

1.  It's a learning experience. I sure as hell won't ignore my body again.

2.  It makes for a small, albeit tedious sub-plot in the Dietgirl story.

And speaking of which!

3.  The enforced rest has given me more time to write! I met my self-imposed deadline for May of completing the first draft of 2001. I cut it a wee bit fine by finishing at 11.45 PM on May 31, but I did it! Baby steps actually work!

I've also dragged out my old pedometer. Walking shall be my main exercise until the knee improves and I will obsessively count my steps, cannily satisfying my need to be obsessive about numbers.

Maybe this is what being a positive person is - the ongoing management of the way you react to life's little challenges. You can shit your pants for awhile, but then you try to sift through the shit and salvage the good stuff. I mean, surely no one is positive about everything straight away? Don't you have to mull it over awhile and then decide how you'll deal with it? Or maybe there are genuine 100% cheery optimists out there, always on duty. If so, I'd like to punch them all in the face.

Epiphany Shmiphany

Holy guacamole. Thanks for all your responses to the grand epic What Do You Do For A Living post! You all rule the school. What a great read, eh? So many inspiring, thoughtful and funny posts. And people have taken such wild and wacky paths to get to where they are. That's both reassuring and motivating!

So who's out there? You're a diverse bunch. To name a few - we have lawyers, teachers, accountants, stay-at-home-mums, administrators, students, nannies, librarians, bank tellers, PR gurus, academics, social workers, journalists, and even a former Karaoke Sound Engineer.

Why was I being so bloody nosy? I was curious about your lives and work and how you handle things. Thanks a bazillion, folks. Your answers gave some much-needed perspective!

Just so my Anonymous Colleague commenter is reassured and no one dobs me into HR - I am perfectly happy with my current job :) I've just been thinking about what I want in the loooong term.

I've particularly pondered how I continue to (mis)manage my spare time - my apparent inability to get things done and make any headway with my plans. While the Scottish Companion can work like a madman all week yet manage to work on his album in his spare time, I go to work then just faff around at home.

Yesterday I got a cracker of an email from lovely reader Ellen K, who told me how she's a web developer by day but in her spare time pursued her true lurve - woodworking! She completed a two year course and now does all sorts of cool stuff like teaching. In other words, she is just bloody doing what she loves! She made it happen. She is balancing the day job with the stuff that really floats her boat. She sent me a photo of her working on a piece and she looked so bloody happy and content, just truly in her element. Brilliant!

So when I posted those questions on Thursday I was just CRACKIN' UP, baby! My gnawing dissatisfaction bubbled to the surface and I was panicky, weepy, scared. I was positively wallowing in overwhelmedness.

Once I'd calmed the hell down, I realised with a clunk that I've been here before! I felt exactly as I had at the start of my lard-busting journey. Hopeless, powerless, desperate, cranky, trapped. Just like we all bloody know dieting is simply calories in calories out, I know writing is a matter of picking up a pen - yet I've been feeling paralysed. People gave me sound advice, told me what's worked for them - yet to me it sounded complicated and impossible. I was looking at university courses, retreats, self-help books... the equivalent of a last ditch crash diet or miracle pill. I was looking everywhere else for the answers except within.

Then I remembered something I wrote in Erin's book:

"I always thought there would be a great epiphany.  I pictured it like the opening credits of Highway To Heaven – big fluffy clouds would part, sunbeams would stream down, and perhaps Michael Landon himself would descend. As cherubs plucked at harps he would say unto me, "Now is the time, Shauna. Now you will finally go forth and lose your lard."

I'm doing the same thing now, but swap "lose your lard" for "do some goddamn writing!".

Just like with the fat, there will be no writing epiphany. There is no Great Moment - just a moment when you start doing something about it. And if you can string together lots of little moments, that's when you start to get somewhere.

Basically I need to apply the same approach as I did to the Fat Busting. Why was I successful with the Fat Busting this time when I failed so many times before?

• I had a plan.
• I was committed to changing my current habits.
• I made myself accountable.
• I made the task my number one priority.
• I broke a large and overwhelming task into wee chunks. Baby steps!
• I figured out what worked best for me.
• I had a clear belief that I could do it.
• I made a firm commitment to see it through, no matter how long it took.

I currently have: None of this. Yet I've been acting surprised that I've not produced anything!

Actual current status: No specific plan, no baby steps, no accountability, no prioritizing. No freaking self belief at all. And just like the weight loss parallel, I've been vague and secretive about my ambitions in case I fail and/or suck.

Righto. What am I doing about it?

I'm applying the Dietgirl Tactics! I am currently working on a proper plan and goals. I am going to shuffle round my writing priorities so I stop getting sidetracked. The moping stops NOW. No more being secretive in case of failure. Did that work for losing weight? Nooo. Wide-scale accountability starts now! I am going to write a book about these lard busting adventures. I don't care how long it takes and how much it sucks and if it never gets published, I just want to do it.

I will work on the self belief thing. That took a wee while to get going with the Fat Busting too, but I will get there.

Please don't think this is a fishing expedition. It's not an entry coercing people to say, "Woohoo girlfriend, you're a great writer!". Because this isn't about writing ability, it's about the ability to get off your arse and do something with that ability. And that's the ability that I've been sorely lacking!

Apologies for such a dry and humourless entry - this is really just me needing to think out loud. But it's also me thinking out loud IN PUBLIC like a weirdo raving lunatic at a bus stop, which is what made the difference with the Lard Busting.

. . .

Today I did a few things I've neglected for ages. Ginger has been updated at last with two little entries. I also tackled my email backlog. I started with some folk who wrote LAST AUGUST. I am sorry. And I know there were more emails that I lost forever because I didn't log into my old Hotmail account for too long and all my messages, (ie four years of Dietgirl correspondence) just bloody vanished. I am really really sorry if I never got back to you! I still have a few more emails to go but I am getting there.

Just so you know, please don't ever hesitate to write, whether it's to say hello or to ask for advice. I may not get back quickly, but I read every comment and every email gets a Reply To label put on it and I do listen and respond as soon as practicable. Sometimes it takes me awhile to figure out a thoughtful answer. But don't ever think no one's listening or no one understands or that your comments are unwelcome. I have lost some weight but I still struggle with the same issues all the time and can feel just as alone and frustrated at times.

Croikey, I've been writing all bloody night. If you slogged your way through this whole indulgent tosh, you have burned approximately 65.8 calories, woohoo!

Minor Identity Crisis

Dietgirl visitors were curious about the reactions I got back in Australia. I was approximately 20 kilos lighter and three sizes smaller than when I left in 2003, so it was a decent difference. Everyone was really sweet about it. I got a few "Oh my god look at YOU, you're so SKINNY!" kind of reactions which are always fun. I also got a lot of incredulous shaking of the heads and little smiles, "You're looking great, you know. Really really really great!" Which is a really polite way of saying, "Holy CRAP you were fat before. I didn't want to say anything at the time but I was worried you might explode! So what a relief to see you somewhat deflated!"

I was reunited with my precious gang of high school buddies at the Aussie wedding. It's now ten years since we left school, and we're scattered all over the countryside. It was incredible to hear what everyone's been up to, some of them have some really interesting careers. I hadn't seen many of them for five years or more so they didn't know what I really did for a living. I just sprouted some self-deprecating jokes about my glittering secretarial career. But then one of my closer friends piped up, "What about your writing? What about the Cosmo story?".

"Oh yeah," I mumbled, "That."

"You wrote a story for Cosmo?" said one of my mates, "Wow!"

"Yeah..."

"So what was it about?"

"Umm..."

Here's the thing. In the first five years after I left high school, I soared from a sturdy size 18 to bursting out of a size 26. During those five years I was one depressed/ depressing anti-social mofo, outwardly happy and jolly for awhile but then descending into full hermit-mode. I kept in touch via email and phone, but for the most part managed to physically avoid my old friends during my very fattest days. I hid away until a wedding in 2002, and by then I'd shrunk back into a size 18/20, was off my pills and was once again a functioning member of society. It was like the Dark Days™ never happened!

"Welllllll, this will be news to you all, but after we left school I got really honking hugely overweight!" I blurted. "And then I lost a shitload of it, wrote about it for a book, then Cosmo picked it up and asked me to write an article, and that's about it really!"

"Cool! That's fantastic!"

"Ah! Yeah."

That little incident has been stuck in my mind ever since. I can't stop thinking about the past ten years - all the things my friends and I had done, and the fact that my decade was dominated by my goddamn fat. I spent the first five years accumulating ridiculous amounts of it, then the next five obsessed with making it go away. Sure I had some interesting travels, and even had a decent career back in Australia -- but when it came time to summarise a decade of achievements, the overwhelming theme was my bloody weight.

Then there's the writing thing. I've know since I was in kindergarten that all I wanted to do was write. And this year I amazingly got paid to write and saw my name in print a few times - the most incredible rush you can imagine. But again, it was about the fat. I am proud as punch to be published, but there's part of me that is both amused, frustrated and embarrassed that I had to become obese in order to find something to write about. That I had to lose half my body weight in order to write something publishable.

It feels so awkward when old pals ask, "Are you still writing? Have you got anything published yet?" and I have to explain this whole stupid saga about how I got fat and blogged ("What's a blog?") and blah blah blah. It doesn't feel like a legitimate achievement. I mean, I've always been uncomfortable to class losing weight as one of my "achievements". It only reminds me that as a pampered Westerner I had the luxury of being able to "achieve" obesity in the first place. And to earn some cash by writing about it somehow feels even more ridiculous.

Most of all it just makes me think, what the hell have I been doing for ten years? And all the years before that, even when I was six years old, when everything I said or did I was tainted by my weight.

All these questions are churning in my head.

What do I want to write about besides fat?
What are my hobbies aside from losing weight?
What do I want to do with my life?
What do I want to be able to say I've achieved when my friends meet up in another ten years?

Even though I moved to Scotland and had adventures, I still feel like my life has been too much about my weight. I must have buried my personality in the food I binged on, but I don't seem to have found it again as I've lost weight. While my husband is madly into his music and motorbikes and whatnot, I struggle to list any true hobbies of my own. Blogging? Body Pump?

What's most annoying is that while I am so fucking sick of my life being about my fat, I am still overweight and my jeans may just slice me in half  today. Almost five years and I've not finished the job.

The glaring absence of Dietgirl entries since I returned from Oz is due to me wallowing in this minor identity crisis; and generally being a sullen, dejected and apathetic little shite. Homesickness hasn't helped either. But I've realised I need to find a balance between getting to a healthy size and GETTING A LIFE. I need to figure out who I am and who I want to be apart from That Chick That Lost Heaps Of Weight. There is so much more to me than that, and it'll be fun trying to work out what that is.

Okay, enough of this navel-gazing wankery. Someone from work could be reading.

Crotch Bib and Camping

"So do you want beans in a tin, haggis in a tin, or beef tongue in a tin?"

"Arrrgh!"

We were going camping and were at the supermarket getting provisions. The Scottish Companion had become obsessed with the great outdoors over the past month. First he said he needed a new sleeping back coz his old one smelled like "Man Fumes". But he ended up buying two. And a tent. And a camp stove. SC works from home, so by the end of the week he is always going bonkers with cabin fever. When I get home on a Friday I just want to sit on my arse, but he is itching like mad to get out of the house. So last weekend I reluctantly agreed to go camping with him.

It wasn't til we were at the supermarket that I began to get excited. I wanted to buy one of those dinky disposable barbecues so we could grill some vegetarian sausages into charcoaled stumps. I wanted to roast marshmallows over a roaring fire. I wanted to make a damper. Food food food. Food makes everything so much more interesting.

But we ended up in the canned food aisle, deciding on a tin since we were only away for one night and had limited equipment. Good lord, you can buy some awful shit in a tin. SC chose a Vegetarian Balti Curry which looked absolutely honking. I almost went for the Weight Watchers Ravioli until I thought what sort of ravioli comes in a tin? but also ravioli is too posh for camping. After reading some labels and tossing aside trans-fatty candidates, I settled on Beef Stew. Mmm mmm.

Earlier that week I'd thought, "We're not going anywhere this week, absolutely nothing is happening! I have a perfectly empty week ahead so I'll be able to have 7 Days Of Perfect Eating. Woohoo!". Then this camping thing had come out of the blue and now I'd forgotten that and was giddy with the Eating Potential of the trip.

But I had a realisation right there in the supermarket aisle, that there is really no such thing as a Perfectly Empty Week. Something also comes up. Whether this is a spontaneous camping trip, a birthday cake at work or a quick drink with friends, there are always little situations happening that you haven't planned for. So it dawned on me yet again that that horrible phrase "Lifestyle Change" is really true. I would have to keep reading labels. I would stay hyper-aware of what I ate. I would have to assess each situation individually and make the wisest choice. All these little things that crop up will keep on cropping up, they're just life happening, NOT opportunities for wild abandoned eating.

My beef stew really looked a lot like dog food and didn't taste that much better, but it was a modest choice and was so much fun heating up on a dinky camp stove while being attacked by midges.

...

I finally figured out why models are so skinny. Coz they bloody need to be.

Before the Vegas Wedding, my  sister and I brainstormed on How To Look As Skinny As Possible in photos. Shoulders back but relaxed. Sucked-in gut. Arms held slightly away from your sides so they looker smaller don't splodge out all over the place. Body turned ever so slightly and putting one hip and leg forward. The Vegas photographer did our photos in less than ten minutes, barking out, "Stand here! Face that way! Smile! Kiss!" I totally worked it baby, moving seamlessly through the poses. So the photos turned fine, my body arranged pretty well considering my dress was so bloody tight that flesh was threatening to spill at any moment.

So I naively hoped the Grazia photo shoot would be just as rapid fire, but it actually took three hours because firstly, they weren't a production-line Las Vegas Wedding Chapel, and secondly, they needed pictures in a whole different bunch of poses. Dammit. Once the hair and makeup was done, I was leaned against the couch while the photographer did some test shots. I tried to look casual as I arranged myself according to my sisters advice. The photographer started shooting and I grinned or smiled or looked "mysterious" or "knowing" or "flirtatious" as requested. I doubted any of my expressions really varied but she said I was doing great. Woohoo! This was going to be a piece of cake.

But then I had to get on the bed. Oh dear. It was a vast four-poster with a luxurious purple satin cover. Now please do not leave comments saying I am putting myself down here, because I am going to state a fact. Anyone with a bit of extra flesh knows there are a very limited number of ways you can arrange your body in a flattering light. Standing upright is one. Actually that's about it. Once you're sitting or laying down, you don't have control and things start flipping and flopping around.

"I'm not sure this will be a flattering angle," I squeaked nervously. The photographer told me not to worry and got the makeup artist to try the pose while she adjusted the lighting. The MA, gorgeously slim, jumped onto the bed and landed delicately on her side, leaning on her elbow. her elbow. Perfect. Then it was my turn. The bed groaned as I clambered on and tried to replicate the pose.

Quite often when I'm laying in bed at night on my side, I grope my hips in the dark and feel the bone and say, "Ooh you're getting so skinny! Oh yes you are!", and ignore the fact that the sideways positions means the three-tier wedding cake of my boobs and guts all falls down and pools on the mattress. This was how it was at the shoot. I sucked in as hard as I could but my flesh combined with the folds of my clothing made it all very awkward. The photographer told me to relax but how could I relax when I had a severe case of Crotch Bib?

(This is what the Scottish Companion calls the curious phenomenon whereby when I sit down there always seems to be this huge bunch of fabric in the crotch area of my jeans and trousers when they're getting too big for me, and since I am a slobby eater I always end up dropping food there, hence Crotch Bib.)

These jeans were new and not too big, but they sat on the waist and not the hip so the fabric puddled when I lay down. Yet somehow I could feel the breeze on the top of my arsecrack. It was all going pearshaped. I fussed and clucked and tried to smooth everything down. I was beginning to see why there had been a huge rack of these jeans on sale for £20, needless to say I have not worn the ill-fitting mumsy bastards since. Every time the photographer asked me to move my hand one inch or tilt my head ten degrees, my carefully arranged clothes would go sproing! and I'd have to yank my top down over the Crotch Bib. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. A similar thing happened in the next pose, the Come Hither On The Chaise Lounge.

It was such a relief to see they ended up using the flattering Upstanding pose, the very first bunch of shots we'd done. I know how to best arrange my flesh!

The article was actually like a photographic montage of How Dietgirl Has Tried To Disguise Her Body over the past decade. Hiding behind the wedding bouquet in Las Vegas. Hiding behind the cake at my 21st birthday party. Hiding behind a brick wall at university. Heh heh heh. And I was still trying to hide now, with the dark jeans and the wrap top, but it's nice to be at a point where you only need clothing for camouflage instead of brick walls.

. . .

Get a load of lovely Nicole here, she is getting hooked on a running! Hehe. You know I do read bazillions of blogs, but I read them sneakily via Bloglines so I don't often get to comment. So in case you wondered if I am big snobbypants, just know that I am actually lurking and watching you closely like some perve in a raincoat.