I felt hungover and tired yesterday, and didn't sleep well that night, but do you know what, I couldn't give a shit!
I've been so wrapped up in my own projects at the moment, take No.1) my body facelift No.2) my play, plus the fact that work is really busy at the mo... and then add to that Joe's own endeavours - his mammoth race in 2 weeks which has taken him away from me on weekends - last weekend he did 188km and 4000m of climbing in the yorkshire dales! and you have a recipe for strangers!
so actually, it was really nice to just chill out for an evening, you know? We went to the pub, ordered mussels to start, which were yummy, we shared a portion and I managed to avoid the lovely breadbasket that came with it. Then for our main we had sirloin steak and I asked the waiter to swap my chips for french beans *polishes halo* :-D Joe was really impressed, so much so that he told me, which was sweet and meant a lot. He said he's been very impressed with how well I've done and how controlled I've been. For example, on Tuesday night I came home after rehearsals having not had dinner beforehand... they had sat down with pizzas (a rarity in our house and always something like 'sainsburys taste the difference super-duper thin crust something-or-other' :-D) but I didn't have any! *considers whether that qualifies for a second halo...*
The thing is though that I actually don't have any desire for food like that anymore. It's actually quite odd!
If I've not had time to make lunch at home and have had to go down to our canteen and get something there it will invariably be from the salad section, perhaps with some poached salmon fillet or a grilled chicken breast too - and none of the salad items I buy have mayonnaise... I look at the sandwiches that are out (which are always yummy waitrose ones!) and they just seem to have lost their appeal to me! I have no desire at lunch to eat a doughy stodgy sandwich with some sort of processed meat and mayonnaise etc... it's a most strange, but not unwelcome, phenomenon!
So yes, anyway, back to my first point before I went off on a tangent...
I had a lot of fun on Wednesday, and I don't regret it a bit, even with the hangover!!
See the way I look at is that I want this journey of mine - to lose weight and shape up - to be my last! I want to get to a point where I look and feel really good and then stay at it, forever! Obviously there will be times when I put on a bit of weight, indeed as you get older you cannot help but make gains... but I never want it to be anything as substantial as it has been over the last couple of years - over 2 1/2 stone is an awful lot for me!
However, the only way that I can make this experience a permanent one is to do it realistically, with all that that entails.
Some people can completely change their diet and lifestyle, and perhaps they need to, but I don't think it's something that I'll be able to maintain if it's too restrictive, and too much like hard work to continue with indefinitely. If I'm honest with myself, if that's the case I'll just not bother! Besides, what's the point?
Although at the moment I'm rarely drinking (to put this into context, Joe and I used to drink at least a bottle of red wine between us every week night and then more so on the weekend), I'm not going to say that I'll stop entirely. I do go through periods where I don't drink at all for a few weeks, it's something that I've done for a few years now, but I've never thought that I'd never drink again because it's something that I enjoy and definitely not something that I see as a problem in my life... although perhaps that's why I have periods of abstinence... to remind myself of that? it's a tricky one... I recently learned that my estranged biological father drank himself to death four years ago, it was a sad end to a frustrating search. My stepfather drinks too much, I think my own mother does too, but just to keep up with him, lol. It's a tricky one indeed.
sorry I've gone off the point again, hmm. ahh yes, sorry I'll try and summarise properly
if my new lifestyle is not something that I can realistically see myself maintaining over a very long period of time then I don't think it's worth undertaking.
since I was 12 I have dabbled with diets and disorders and the result has always been that I get back whatever I lost, with interest, and I want to break that pattern... hence the Broken YoYo
so I am approaching this with caution, and respect, and apprehension, and very small baby steps because I feel like this really might be last chance saloon for me. I'm 30 years old for goodness sake, I have a teenage son!! I really need to learn how to eat properly, it's about bloody time really.
I don't want to lose all the weight I want to in a month... I don't want to resort to stupid methods for fast results only to find that they're just not sustainable.
I want to change forever, embrace this new manner of thinking about food and myself, and move forwards, and never look back.
I want to be a good mother to my son, that's been my biggest concern for his entire life, not doing the best for him and him looking back when he's older with a sense of regret and unhappiness... I know this fear is brought on by my disappointment in my own parents, I have never met a more selfish pair of people (sorry). They live in the same city as us but have never made an effort with my son. My Mum hasn't cooked me dinner since I was a child.... simple things eh? Even when I was a single mother for so many years, they weren't there for us. Still, it is them who will suffer for not having the relationship with their grandchild that they could have had. I have seen more kindness and selflessness, and genuine affection from Joe's parents in the short time that i've known them then I ever have from my own parents, they treat me like their own daughter and I am so grateful to them for that. But then that also results in my being resentful towards my parents as it only highlights plainly and painfully their shortcomings.
eughh!!!!!!!
this has turned into some self pitying diatribe!!!!
pathetic, keep losing my point
I was trying to say that simple things like eating dinner together with my family is very important to me, pretty much because I never did it with my own. We all ate at different times, me when I got back from school, my Dad when he got back from work and then my Mum whenever she got back later that evening... even at weekends we didn't have meals together, I had appalling table manners (as pointed out by one of the friends of my Mum's I used to get shipped off to during the school holidays, grr, it's amazing what sticks with you throughout your life eh?)
So for me it's important that we all eat the same thing, which is easy as I do most of the cooking :-)
I don't want to follow a diet plan that eliminates the rest of my family... So I'm not going to start cooking meals that are so far-fetched and elaborate that my son won't eat them (which would probably be tough as he does eat just about everything, and yes that includes salad and green vegetables, he's good like that :-) ). But if it's too complicated it won't be something I do often, it won't last, and it'll be a waste of money and time.
So I'm trying to make changes to my diet that are going to become permanent, but not difficult to maintain. The worst thing in the world for me would be to get to my final goal and go... "err shit, so what can I eat now?!!" and be terrified that I'll have to 'watch what I eat' in a negative way, for the rest of my life for fear of gaining a pound!
I want to instill good and worthwhile principles into my every day eating habits, I want to learn good habits, I want something that's going to last. I don't want a faddy diet, I don't want something unsustainable, and I don't want something that my family can't share with me as they are the most important things in my life.
and so, in the same vein, I want to be able to let loose sometimes, but within boundaries that I have learned and put up on my own. Yes, on Wednesday I drank too much red wine... BUT, I didn't eat the bread and chips, I didn't smother my steak in high fat sauce... and, most importantly, the next day when I felt a bit rough, I didn't immediately go to our canteen and grab a bacon sandwich which would have been the perfect panacea for the old me.
no. I'm going to enjoy this and it's going to be something that I do for the rest of my life. It's going to take a while, and I'm not sure if I'll ever be entirely free of the diet demons that have plagued my life for the past 18 years, but I'm going to get there and I'm not going to feel guilty when I overindulge once in a while, because I know that I'm on the right track and nothing's going to shift me off it.
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