Baby Steps

I've been trying to pull my thoughts together for this post for a while and it's been a real struggle.  Partly because I'm wrestling with the guilt that comes with marking your line in the sand and then completely failing to jump over it, but also because I'm failing to put my finger on the precise reasons why I'm failing so spectacularly.   Fail fail fail. Epic fail.  So I'm going to get straight to the point.  Deep breath and dive in.

For the past couple of months, I've been eating whatever I want with glorious, gleeful abandon.  Crisps and sweets and chocolate and everything in between.  Except that you come to realise that what you're really doing is desperately cramming food in your mouth, trying to.... I'm not sure really.  Trying to avoid dealing with emotion?  Trying to keep myself safe in my cocoon of fat so I don't have to try?  Trying to committ a slow drawn out suicide by coating my arteries with a cheese flavoured layer of sludge? All sounds a bit melodramatic, doesn't it, but bear with me, this train of thought may be on the verge of pulling into a station.

There are any number of reasons excuses for the way I've been eating.  I could write a giant boo hoo poor me blog post about how hard it is to be me.  Except, really it isn't.  I've strolled my way through life, always taking the path of least resistance, rarely feeling really strongly passionate about anything.  Please don't misunderstand, I love my friends and family but sometimes I realise that days or weeks have gone past without me speaking to them and I hadn't really noticed, like the time had just folded from one spot to another.  Most of the time I feel disconnected to the point that I now have to make a concerted effort to accept invitations to go places.  My first instinct is always, without exception, to decline.  Even if it's to see people that I love or to do something fun.  I'm not sure why it should be this way, but it is.

So sometimes it all seems a bit pointless and of course the easiest thing to do is not to try and make it all mean something, but to drown it all in a sea of crisps and other assorted snack foods.  As a result, I've actually put on weight since I last posted. Oh the shame of it.

I can't think of the bigger picture at the moment because it's making me freak out and dive for the crisps, so for now I'm settling for making better decisions for myself, one at a time.  So for example, today I decided not to go out to the snack van and buy crisps. And I didn't do it.  I know that I'll need to deal with my wider issues at some point.  But right now I'm taking baby steps in an effort to head in the right direction, because I figured out that it's not about big declarations and goal setting, it's about the thousands of little choices that we make every single day. I think that's progress of sorts.

I think we're at that station now, please feel free to get off.  Sorry that this post is a bit of a downer.  I hope you had a chuckle at my last one to make up for it.

Four reasons to love holidaying in Madeira

I'm back from my holiday! And didn't I have a lovely time? Yes, yes I did.

I'd heartily recommend Madeira to anyone.  Especially a slightly plump thirtysomething that likes to lie in the sun.  There are several reasons for this.

1.  It is very sunny. We had pretty much 28c sunny weather every day. Verrrrry nice.

2.  98% of the other tourists there are retired which means that..

3.  Even if you're a bit fat, you still look better in a bikini than the vast majority of the other people there and...

4.  Even if you don't, it doesn't matter, it's not like you're on the pull; they are all pensioners!

There's nothing like lying in the sun surrounded by many old people (bless them) to make you feel like a glamorous young thing.

Unfortunately I got back to reality with a bump this morning when I weighed myself and discovered I gained 6lb over the course of the holiday.  Oops.  I mainly blame the amount of wine that I drank.  Much more than usual, but I was on holiday so I'm not going to beat myself up over it.

Back on track - I plan to lose that weight over the next couple of weeks and then full speed ahead. 

The Start

Soooooo. I weighed myself this morning and tipped the scales at 13st 1 1/4lb (yes, my scales measure quarter pounds - may use them to weigh a burger at some point). While this is not good, it's important to know where I'm starting from and from here the only way is DOWN.

So here's how it's going to work.  I'm going to weigh myself every Tuesday morning and will record the results here. I'm not going to provide exhaustive lists of everything that I've eaten.  That shit gets boring reeeeeaaal quick.  That said, I will at least initially note down my food - you'll soon see that I eat about the same five things over and over again, anyone else do that? :)

I have an app on my phone that I'll use to log my food - I've decided to take a simple calories in / calories out approach - no forbidden foods, no food groups excluded.  I want this to be simple and most importantly sustainable long term.  I also need to increase my activity levels - despite general perceptions I don't actually spend all of my time running / swimming / single handedly saving the rainforest.

In addition to the weekly weigh in, I'm going to measure myself when I get home this evening (as suggested by Tina) and will update these metrics monthly, so hopefully I should see some progress there even if the pounds aren't coming off as quickly as I'd like.

Which brings me neatly to my goals.  I'm not yet at a place where I know what success looks like - how I will know when I'm finished.  I don't know what my final goal weight should be, other than I have a vague hankering to be a size ten.  I don't know if that is possible (have you seen my hips?!).  So for now, I'm going to set an initial goal of getting down to 12 stone, which I hope to achieve by losing a fairly steady 2lb a week.

Finally I want to thank everyone that took a moment to comment here or on my Facebook or sent me a message.  The outpouring of solidarity and support literally reduced me to tears last night. It's great to have you on board and hopefully we can inspire each other towards our goals (whatever they may be!) along the way.

All comments are welcome and gratefully received.

I'm fat and I want to talk about it.

My last post sparked quite the conversation on Facebook. It is clear that people don't want to risk offending or upsetting their fat friends. It is also clear that there is no such reticence when commenting on the weight of slim people.  It's perfectly ok to comment that someone is too skinny, but if a fat person so much as mentions their weight, it's a cause for panic. Our society is effed up.

Anyway, there is an unexpected side effect to my last post.  I can't believe that I was so clueless that I didn't notice that I was pinning my colours to the mast.  That I was (in a public forum) stating that I am fat and I want to talk about it. So I've been called on it. And have been offered support which I'm going to take.  Starting from tomorrow I'm going to use this blog to chart my progress from fatty to slinky hot babe.  I'm going to weigh myself tomorrow morning and will post that weight here as well as more details of what my goals are and how I plan to achieve them.

I'm not going to post every blog entry on Facebook, so if you want to follow my journey and support me, then I suggest that you follow me here on my blog. There's a button on the right of the page somewhere.

Tonight I'm drawing a line in the sand. It's a start line and tomorrow morning I cross it and start the race. Hope to have you on board for the trip.

The F Word

I finished reading How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran at the weekend. LOVED it. It resonated on so many levels, but one of the things that really hit home was what she had to say about being fat....

"Is the word 'fat' making you wince when you read it? Does it feel like I'm being rude, or indelicate, to say it? In the last two generations, it's become a furiously overloaded word - in a conversation, when the word 'fat' appears, it often alarms people, like a siren going off and prompts a supportive, scared flurry of dismissal  - 'You're not fat! Of course you're not fat! Babe, you're NOT FAT!' - when the person is, clearly and undeniably, fat, and just wants to discuss it"

If I had a pound for every time I'd had a conversation like that.... no, scrap that, if I'd LOST a pound for every time I'd had that conversation, I'd never have to have it again, because I'd no longer be fat. I mention to a friend that I'm on the wagon (again) and that I'm trying to lose weight (AGAIN) because I'm too fat. This is always met with a wall of denial. "Don't be silly Amy, you're not fat" "Oh pfft, you're fine as you are".

I've never been entirely sure whether people react this way because they think that's what I'm asking for. That I want them to reassure me that I'm not fat at all. But the point is that I AM. I am 5ft 7 and weigh in at 13 stone. I know that I'm not Biggest Loser material, I'm not looking to cut myself in half, but at the same time, there's no denying that both my health and my self image would improve enormously if I lost 2 - 3 stone. So, aiding me in my denial is really not want I'm asking for here.  If I mention the fact that I'm fat, it's because I want to have a conversation about it, to be open about it, to admit it and to try and move on from it.

Even before reading Moran's book I'd started to wonder whether a lot of people respond with denial because they feel uncomfortable that I have confronted them with my fatness or they're bored with me trying to lose weight (AGAIN!!) and don't really believe that I'll ever get there.  I've had a conversation in the past with one (size eight) friend where we were discussing my latest effort to lose weight and a few minutes later she OFFERED ME A BISCUIT. I'm sure she didn't mean to, but she may as well have said "Give up Fatty, there's no point in trying so you may as well stuff your face with a Garibaldi or two and stop going on about it".  It's like the F word had reacted with chemicals in her brain, creating an immediate ring fence to block it off and make sure that it didn't surface and try to mingle with her other thoughts. Was it a panic reaction? A frantic internal conversation "Oh God, she said the F word, what should I do, shit, what should I do?! OFFER FATTY A BISCUIT! Fatties love biscuits, it'll make her forget the whole thing". Or was it just a thoughtless throw away offer? I'll never know, I've never called anyone on these things, just let them slide.

And if you think that the F word is bad, how about I crack open the big one, the O word.  I'm overweight.  At one point in the not too distant past, I was obese.  That's the biggest O word of all, the one that you can't mention in polite conversation, like a fat version of the C word, you know the one I mean. It's still a giant taboo, even though it is quite literally a modern plague - why can't we talk about this?

There are only a very few people in my life that don't immediately deny my weight.  One is my friend B. She (unlike many of my friends) is not a natural size eight.  She has to work to keep herself to a size that she is happy with, and sometimes her desire for a glass (or three) of wine when she gets home from work is stronger than her desire to be a hot slim mama.  So she gets it.  She seems to understand that I'm not asking for sympathy and she therefore doesn't give it.  She understands that I'm asking for HELP and just drags me to the gym with her and gets me to crack on with it.

I'm not asking for sympathy.  I'm not asking anyone to help fuel a delusion that my weight isn't an issue, because it is and believe me I'm able to delude myself about it plenty as I'm reaching for the fourth packet of crisps out of the multipack.  It might not be an issue to you, I know you're my friends and you'd love me if I were the size of a house, but it is to me, alright?  

I don't have a conclusion to this post.  No magic bullet that'll stop me from being fat, or that will stop you from being uncomfortable when I mention it.  I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts on this subject, regardless of your dress size....