The Fatslayer Chronicles

Today's Fatslaying Workout Nothing

Today's Weight 199.0 lbs

*********

I'm coming up to a dangerous time, and I've got to keep my wits about me. First we've got friends staying with us for the weekend (who are big eaters and even bigger boozers), then there's K's sister's wedding on August 4th, and then two weeks later we're camping in Cornwall for a week, with the same friends who are visiting at the moment - it would be just the easiest thing in the world to just fall off the wagon and never get back on again.

I'm patently a gal that likes her routines - when I can plan and know what to expect of every day, when I can predict what I can eat (and when and where), when I can ringfence time for exercising, then I'm fine. But throw a dash of unpredictability in to the mix and I just go to pot and everything falls to pieces.

I'm just hoping that forewarned is forearmed, and that if I anticipate problems I can start to head them off early before they kick my arse.

I can get through this, right?

How hard can it be to make sensible choices in restaurants, to exercise moderation in drinking, to not allow the presence of guests to sanction a slide into gluttony and self-indulgence?

Hell, it can't be that bloody difficult, surely?

Today's Fatslaying Workout Not a bloody sausage

Today's Weight 200.0 lbs

*********

I've gone off the boil these last few days - it all seems too boring and uninteresting and if the truth be told I simply can't be arsed. I've been sticking within 1600 calories but I haven't done a minute's exercise since Saturday, and I keep making the excuse that it's because my toothache is so bloody painful, but that's all it is really - an excuse.

Summer seems to have gone walkabout and I'm too much of a fair-weather exerciser to go out in the drizzle. This doesn't bode too well for winter, does it? Every bloody year I get fit in the summer and lose all that hard earned fitness in the winter. I hate being so damn predictable!

I've noticed that I'm being lazy and unmotivated at work too, so maybe I'm just going through a bad patch and this too will pass.

Sometimes I just resent the time that's involved in keeping healthy - time I could spend reading or writing or doing something else sedentary and couch-potatoey. I get fed up of exercising and writing my food journal and writing self-motivating blog entries - I just want to lie on the sofa and eat Pringles and read Annie Proulx stories and work on my own writing and forget that I need to get my weight down and work on my fitness and do all the other things that will get me to old age if I play my cards right.

The Duracell Bunny freak who has run past my lounge window five times in the past hour is an emissary of the Anti-Christ, and should have the decency to do her demonic activities somewhere else, and not ram them down the throats of folks who are otherwise contentedly dunking their Rich Tea biccies in nice cup of tea.

OK, I’m going now. Maybe if I have another biscuit I’ll feel a little more lively…

 

 

Today's Fatslaying Workout 50 minutes rebounding

Today's Weight Still 199.0 lbs - woohoo!

*********

I realised after yesterday’s post that feeling attractive or unattractive is learned behaviour – and as such, can be unlearned.

 

Presumably an infant has no concept of beauty or attractiveness – it is only as the child grows that she learns to think in such terms, and she derives her self-perception from the actions and responses of others. If she’s told she’s lovely and shown love and affection, she has a greater chance of feeling attractive than a child who is told she’s ugly, and who is treated with unkindness and cruelty.

 

Now I had a friend when I was at University who was at least 150 lbs overweight, but she had the most amazing self-confidence and self-esteem. She was adored by her parents, who had left her in no doubt whatsoever that she was beautiful and attractive.

 

She knew she was fat – how could she not in today’s society? – but it never stopped her feeling sexy and gorgeous. And she never lacked for guys queuing up to go out with her, and it never entered her head to swathe herself in shapeless sweaters and jogging pants – she wore killer heels, deep red lipstick and revealing sexy clothes, and man, she was one foxy, gorgeous chick!

 

She was the one with the throaty laugh and the fine line in flirty innuendo, the one surrounded by guys at every party, the one who didn’t let her size stop her going wind-surfing and white-water rafting. She just knew that she was drop-dead gorgeous, and it coloured every aspect of her life, and enriched it in the most amazing way.

 

I guess large women like her are in the minority. Most fat women have endured some form of parental disapproval or criticism, and it’s taught them that on some really deep level they’re not quite up to scratch.

 

Some must never get over it, and must spend their whole lives feeling apologetic for how they look. Others learn that its just a pile of bullshit.

 

I’ve decided the time for feeling apologetic is over. Hell, I’m going to force myself to feel attractive!

 

So what if my eyes are squinty and I’ve got too many chins – at least my hair and my teeth are my own!  And if I was bald and toothless, what would it matter? It wouldn't make me automatically ugly, and I’d be able to have a profitable sideline in giving Matt Lucas impressions and killer blow-jobs!

 

Heh, every cloud has a silver lining!

Today's Fatslaying Workout 70 minute brisk walk (yesterday); nothing today because I've got a bitch of a toothache!

Today's Weight 199.0 lbs

*********

Yay, 199lbs! I'd better celebrate quickly before the darn scale bounces me back into the 200s.

*********

I realised today that weight loss is not some kind of panacea.

 

By the time I get to goal I’ll have lost around 100lbs, which means I’ll have lost 40-50% of my starting body weight. That’ll be pretty damn good for my health, but it doesn’t automatically mean that I’ll suddenly turn into some foxy chick that feels sexy and gorgeous. I don’t think it works that way.

 

All my life I’ve felt unattractive. Not run-for-the-hills ugly, but definitely, indisputably plain.

 

Of course this could have something to do with the fact that my mom is not one to pull her punches and she always told me to my face that I was ugly. This sounds pretty bad, I guess, but in mom’s defence she would argue that this constituted ‘tough love’ and was designed to make me get my act together and lose the blubber.  She would tell me to lose weight because the neighbours would think I was a lesbian, and she was forever telling me that I’d never get a boyfriend. She was ashamed of me and my sisters for being fat, and she wasn’t afraid to let us know it.

 

Now in case you think I’m wallowing in self-pity here, I’m really not. I’ve come a long way from being that cripplingly shy little girl who thought she was an eyesore, and hey, I’ve had my share of boyfriends and rolls in the hay, so I can see that mom was way wrong on the lesbian-no-boyfriend score.

 

I’ve even felt pretty damn sexy from time to time, I’ll have you know, and even been told I was sexy by a few guys which was pretty good for the ego – but I’ve never had a single minute when I’ve felt beautiful (or even pretty), and I’m beginning to realise that no amount of weight-loss is ever going to change that.

 

I went out and bought Grazia magazine the other day, because there was an article on Dietgirl in it. There she was in all her inspirational glory, looking slim and confident and damn bloody gorgeous! And guess what – she writes a blog entry the following day about how she still feels insecure and unworthy and unattractive. Yep, this lovely, funny, intelligent woman doubts the fact that she’s beautiful!

 

Now, I’d like to think that it’s just fat paranoia that’s making me overlook my own beauty, but sadly it just ain’t true. Unlike Dietgirl, I’ve never been told by any boyfriend that I’m beautiful – and if I’m not beautiful in the eyes of the men who have loved me, patently I’m not beautiful, period.

 

You would think that as an intelligent forty year old woman, this wouldn’t bother me, but – fuck! – it sadly does. Am I really that shallow? Heh, I guess so!

 

I think it’s because I’m realising that I can change some things about myself – the size of my bum and the Buddha belly – but fundamentally I can’t change me.

 

And by me, I mean I can’t transform myself from being shy and plain and unselfconfident and insecure and unfeminine just by losing a few pounds – or even a hundred. Weight-loss will only get you so far…it doesn’t cure everything!

Today's Fatslaying Workout 68 minute brisk walk (yesterday); 64 minute bike ride today (632 cals burned)

Today's Weight 200.05lbs

*********

Time, I think, to sit back and properly appreciate a significant non-scale victory.

 

I think I’ve broken a bad habit.

 

The received wisdom is that you have to do something consistently for at least 30 consecutive days before it becomes a new habit and breaks the old behaviour pattern.

 

Well, I guess I must be a slow learner, because I reckon it’s taken me 130 days instead of 30, but I think I’ve finally got there in the end – I’ve broken my chocolate habit.

 

Until very recently, I was physically unable to enter a shop that sold confectionary and not – at the very least – go and browse along the chocolate shelves. On very rare occasions I was able to leave the shop without buying any, but I found it impossible not to at least have a long, speculative, yearning look.

 

Most of the time, of course, looking usually led to buying, and buying led to eating, and eating led to headaches, which unfortunately didn’t lead to me learning my lesson – I just ate more chocolate and got more headaches and ate more chocolate in a futile and depressing daily cycle.

 

Even on previous ‘diets’ I’d make room in my daily calorie allowance for a chocolate ‘treat’, which I’d anticipate obsessively from the moment I cracked open my eyelids in the morning until I finally took a bite in the late afternoon. As the clock hands approached 5pm (woohoo, choc-time!) I’d salivate uncontrollably like one of Pavlov’s dogs, then tear open the wrapper reverently and nibble the divine contents slowly, trying to prolong the experience as long as I possibly could. The total tantric chocolate experience.

 

An unbreakable habit, right? Wrong. This time it’s been different.

 

In a nutshell, I decided that I was simply going to quit eating stuff that was unhealthy. Chocolate, cake, puddings, fried food, pastry, sweets – all of it just had to go. I figured that with my family history of diabetes and heart disease it wasn’t worth playing Russian roulette every time I ate any of those items, and that just because I could fit ‘em by hook or crook into my calorie allowance didn’t mean that it was OK to do so.

 

Unhealthy crap is unhealthy crap, whether you have surplus calories left over or not, and realising that simple truth was a bit of an epiphany for me.

 

So 18 weeks ago, I went cold-turkey on all that junk.

 

I haven’t touched a bite of any of those foods for 18 weeks. Not a sniff, lick, taste or nibble. I’ve tried to ignore them completely, so that they don’t register on my radar screen at all. The aim was to make those foods the eating equivalent of shagging my sisters’ boyfriends – so far out of bounds that it doesn’t even enter my head to go there.

 

And believe it or not, as a strategy it hasn’t been that difficult -  or at least not as difficult as I thought it would be. I think I’ve found it easier to cut out the junk completely than it was to limit my intake of it. A nibble just used to fire up my taste buds, and make me want more and more, and before I knew it I was back to eating family sized bars of Dairy Milk, and having cravings like you wouldn’t believe.

 

Cold turkey doesn’t get the juices flowing in the first place, so this time the cravings have been minimal.

 

I knew I’d had a breakthrough when I went to Tesco this morning. I stopped by the confectionary aisle for sugar-free dental gum, and I was queuing at the checkout to pay for it before I realised that I hadn’t so much as glanced in the direction of the chocolate. It simply hadn’t registered on my consciousness at all. In fact, the more I thought back, the more I realised that I couldn’t recall the last time I’d lingered drooling in the confectionary aisle. I think I must have broken the habit a couple of weeks ago at least, and hadn’t even realised it!

 

Holy cow, I’m cured!

 

And the best thing is, the 'cure' crept up on me without me being aware of it, and I've obviously been making healthy choices almost on auto-pilot, rather than having to exert loads of time and effort. That's been my aim all along, so I'm well chuffed!

 

So although the scale refuses to budge, I figure I’ve got something to celebrate today – a victory that snuck up on me when I wasn’t looking and that will hopefully have real and lasting benefits.

 

Huzzah for cold turkey!

Today's Fatslaying Workout 65 minute bike ride (672 cals burned)

Today's Weight 201.05lbs

*********

I'm kinda limited on the exercise front, because I refuse to join a gym until I find one that opens at 5am...all the local ones open at 6.30 am, which is no good for me 'cos I like to be at my desk by 6am, and I don't want to have to start going in the evening after work - I see little enough of K as it is, without adding a couple of hours of gym-time onto the end of every day.

In the winter I may have to crack, but whilst its summer and still light enough in the evenings to walk or cycle, I prefer to get myself out into the fresh air.

I step out of my front door straight into farmland, so I have no real excuse not to get out there, and I find that I enjoy exercise more when it's done outdoors. Walking is great, but cycling is better.

Before he became ill, K and I used to compete in mountain-bike races and go on mountain biking holidays in Sussex, the Peaks and the Lake District.

I loved it.

The feeling of strength, speed, one-ness with the bike; the thrill of generating such speeds by my own muscle-power; the burning legs and lungs as I pushed myself up hills; the exhilaration of the descents; the camaraderie of other cyclists; the beauty of early morning rides, crunching through hoar frosts and breathing great draught of freezing air; the thrill when we saw deer and foxes as we cycled quietly through the forest - all of it was magical and fabulous.

Then we quit, and became couch potatoes, and I forgot what I was missing.

Lately we've dusted off our bikes, and we've begun to rediscover that pleasure in flexing our muscles and pushing ourselves to go further and faster and to dig deeper and harder. At first it was tough - my body had learned to resent being challenged, and it bitched and groaned every inch of the way.

But these last half dozen rides have rekindled the flame - I feel fabulous, strong - athletic even! It's such a great feeling - and worth every bit of baboon-butt discomfort!

 

Today's Fatslaying Workout Free weights

Today's Weight 200.5lbs

*********

I'm still not back to the weight I was 8 days ago, and I'm getting a bit fed up of hovering around the 200.5lb to 201.5lb mark - I want to start seeing a number beginning with 1, goddamit!

Unfortunately I'm beginning to see that what I want, and what I get, are apparently unrelated. My treacherous body simply refuses to humbly submit to the goals I've assigned for it, and seems to be dancing to its own tune. Maybe its getting its own back after 40 years of being abused and maltreated.

I've been studying patterns, and I've realised that whenever I exercise, I seem to gain weight the next couple of days. I'm assuming it must be simple water weight due to working my muscles, so I'm trying not to stress out about it.

I know it's not fat weight, because the most calories I've had in any 24 hour period since March 15th is 1600, but it's still frustrating to see the scale being so stubborn. We're in a fight to the death, and I'm buggered if I'm letting a heap of plastic and metal beat me! A sledge hammer lurks in the towel-cupboard just in case one morning I feel the battle slipping away from me. 

I've been double-checking my intake to make sure I'm not allowing calorie-creep to get a-hold of me...I don't think that's the problem, so I'll just have to be patient. Hmm, that should be a new sensation - I've never done patient before!

OK, FS, deep breath - this too shall pass.

Psychologically, I'm doing surprisingly well (today). I've decided I won't consider this a plateau unless I'm still in the 2s by the time I go on vacation on 18th August...if I am, then, I'll deal with it appropriately, sensibly, and calmly when the time comes. I've already bought the enema kit and the laxatives just in case (heh, only kidding!!!)

In past times when I hit a mini-blip I'd have panicked and either savagely cut my calorie intake to below 1000 cals a day or started to exercise like a dervish to try and kickstart a loss. This time I'm just plodding along, chipping away at it a day at a time, keeping my calories at a sensible level (between 1400 and 1600 per day), getting in four or so exercise sessions each week.

So what if it takes me another two years to get to goal? It's not a bloody race, is it? At least I'm still motivated and heading in the right direction!

Wow, I just re-read the above, and I'm proud of myself - I'm sounding so mature and grown-up! Is it just because I'm 40, or have I really learnt something from reading all these weight-blogs? Maybe there is hope for me, after all!

 

Today's Fatslaying Workout 75 minute brisk walk

Today's Weight 201.0lbs

**********

Just a quick post to say that I've cheered up again today - it's amazing what a weekend without going into work, a new Harry Potter book, and a shopping trip that saw me fit into - easily - a non-elasticised size 16 skirt (US size 14) for K's sister's wedding (on 4th August) can do for morale.

Plus, my 75 minute bike ride yesterday and 75 minute walk today must have released some much-needed endorphins - everything seems so much better when I've got a post-exercise buzz.

So Pollyanna's back in the saddle, and I hope she stays there when the working week kicks in - I've got my fingers crossed that she's got a smoother ride ahead of her this week!

Today's Fatslaying Workout 75 minute bike (861 cals burned); weights planned for later.

Today's Weight 200.5lbs

**********

YAY - HARRY POTTER DAY!!!!

**********

Life has been interfering with my weight loss efforts, and I'm beginning to feel uncomfortably wobbly and unbalanced - at the moment it feels as if I'm walking a tightrope, and it wouldn't take much of a strong wind to blow me off the wire and send me tumbling back into the fat abyss.

Contrary to what skinny folks think, turning your whole life around and abandoning a lifetime of bad habits isn't a walk in the park. It takes effort, concentration, determination, money and time - lots and lots of precious time.

Time to write out healthy grocery lists and shop for fresh fruit and veggies on an almost daily basis. Time to prepare and cook varied and nutritious meals (luckily K does this for the both of us!) Time to log food and exercise and analyse the patterns that start to emerge. Time to exercise. Time to write blog entries to keep myself accountable. Time to hit the message boards at 3 Fat Chicks for support and inspiration.

All of that is fine and dandy when the rest of my life is going swimmingly, but when other pressures start to build up, ringfencing the time I need to take care of myself becomes almost impossible. Thats when the cracks start to appear.

For the past month I've been working a minimum of 65 hours a week, and those 65 hours have been incredibly stressful and pressured. I've been dealing with intransigent subordinates, capricious bosses, impossibly arrogant consultants, and an avalanche of work that needs to be done by almost impossibly tight deadlines.

And every day it becomes harder and harder to eat healthily when I'm at work, and then come home and exercise in the evenings. It just seems like too much hard bloody work on top of everything else that's demanding my energy and attention.

I'm incredibly lucky because K doesn't work, and most evenings I come home and he's already prepared dinner. All I have to do is sit down at the table and eat it - and he won't even let me do the washing up afterwards, because he'd rather I concentrated on finishing the work I've bought home with me from the office. The man is a living saint, and I simply don't deserve him!

God only knows what kind of state I'd be in if (like most women, probably) I had to come home and be the happy homemaker on top of everything else. I know instead of sitting down to beautiful salad and protein combos, I'd be eating toast or crackers or something equally fast and trashy. I know, because it's what I've always done in the past when I'm stressed and busy.

So believe me when I say I'm getting seriously worried that I'm heading for a meltdown. I can't afford to be complacent and think that this time it won't happen, because it's happened to me so many times in the past.

Back in 1994 when  - after 6 solid months of dieting and exercising - I was the skinniest and fittest I've ever been in my adult life, I had a total dieting meltdown when K became ill. The stress of his illness and repeated hospitalisations caused a fall from grace so total and complete that I've never, to this day, made up the lost ground.

I've had some half-hearted attempts to get back in shape in the intervening decade, but something has always come along to derail my efforts - the constant worry about K's health, the self-imposed hike up the career ladder because I've got to earn enough for two, the guilt that I'm getting healthy when K's health is deteriorating.

All of those excuses have eventually and inevitably caused me to throw in the towel, because, frankly, it just seems too bloody hard to keep plugging away at something so self-indulgent for month after month after month, making painstakingly slow progress, and still having so far to go to after all that effort.

So yes, I admit it, I'm scared. In fact, scared just doesn't cut it. I'm absolutely bloody petrified that I'm teetering on the brink of a dieting freefall.

So far I've not slipped food-wise, but each day the motivation to get off my arse and exercise diminishes a little more. I'm lucky to get in 4 exercise sessions a week now, and yet I swore to myself solemnly that this time I'd make time to exercise every single day.

Christ, there's no bloody hope for me at all when I can't even keep such a simple promise to myself, is there?

So - at least as far as exercise is concerned - I'm starting to slip, and I'm scared I'm going to slide all the way back to the bottom. I've never - not once in my entire life - been able to stop myself in mid-slide. It's total bloody freefall, plummeting like a stone, every single time.

I just don't want that to happen to me this time, because my body just can't afford many more of these reversals. I never just quit and maintain, you see. I quit and immediately start regaining all the lost weight at an alarmingly precipitous rate.

And every time I fall, it becomes that much harder to pick myself up at the bottom of the abyss and start the long climb back towards the summit.

I'm so in awe of you ladies out there, you Dietgirls,  YoYoGurls,  Scale Hos,  Megs and all the rest of you (you know who you are, right?) who slip, fall a little bit, then somehow manage to stop, regroup, recommit and recover before you've lost all that hard won ground. I want to be like you! I want to know what it's like to stumble and get back up again, instead of stumbling, falling and staying down.

I want to grow up and be like you!

**********

I'm sorry this post is so whiny and negative. What was I saying yesterday about being a naturally positive and buoyant person? Maybe I should take that back. Today at least that confidence and optimism seem misplaced - I feel like I'm just gritting my teeth and hanging on for dear life at the moment!

Today's Fatslaying Workout Nothing - 14 hour workday.

Today's Weight 201.0lbs

**********

In the way of thin people everywhere, my mom has A Theory about what makes people fat. It's not a particularly original Theory, but its one she trots out regularly, usually when she's invited her sister round for coffee and she's feeling ashamed and embarrassed at having produced three such galumphing great girls as me and my two sisters, in contrast to my aunt's beautifully slender progeny.

Her Theory is that we're fat because by and large we're placid, happy, contented women. This means that although we've 'let ourselves go' and are a dreadful blemish on her child-raising credentials, at least we are not vindictive sour-faced little bitches. (This is never explicitly articulated, of course, but my aunt knows exactly what mom's getting at.) 

According to The Theory we lard-arses have lower expectations, which means we have lower stress levels, which means we are destined for fatness because we burn less calories than our frustrated, anxious, uptight, skinny-arse counterparts. And though this leads to atrocious aesthetics, it can also be seen as A Good Thing.

To illustrate her argument, she points to my aunt (discontented and scrawny), my two cousins (moody and emaciated), my fourth sister (fiercely competitive and slender), and herself (simmering with repressed rage, and skinny). That's all the empirical proof she's ever needed.

I've heard The Theory all my life, but I've always been a bit sceptical about it. Not all fat women are jolly like Dawn bloody French, are they? Surely at least some of us are moody and miserable?

But I was thinking about it today at work, when I had to read the riot act to a couple of my staff for being so whiny and disgruntled whenever I ask them to do anything even slightly out of their usual routine.

If moaning was an Olympic discipline, these two women would have a cabinet full of gold medals. To say they whinge just doesn't do them justice - they've raised feeling-hard-done-by to an absolute art form.

Both of them burn with self-righteous indignation whenever they're called upon to do some work. I can practically feel the flames of malcontent licking round my ankles whenever I ask them to lift a (beautifully manicured and twig-like) finger and actually start earning their not-insubstantial salary.

So is it just a coincidence that both of them are painfully, bone-breakingly thin, or is mom on to something?

If mom's right, terminal frustration and discontent have burned away their fat stores, and allowed them to emerge phoenix-like and fat-free from the flames.

I, on the other hand, am usually pretty happy and even-tempered. I can't recall a single time that I've had an honest-to-God temper tantrum, and my default mood is one of reasonably buoyant and positive optimism. I'm not saying I never get ratty or irritable, but there usually has to be a pretty good reason for me to be in a bad mood.

And according to mom, that's always been the case. Whilst my skinny sister cried up a storm for the first three months of her existence, and nothing could ever mollify or distract her, me and my tubby sisters were sweetness personified. Apparently we rarely cried, hardly ever fussed, and could be instantanously pacified by being handed something edible.

Hmmm, d'you think that sounds like a clue?

In almost every childhood photo, we have wide and beatific smiles, and clutch handfuls of sweets, or ice-cream or candy-floss or toffee lollipops.

Lollipop, smile. Smile, lollipop. A match made in Heaven.

Bloody hell, no wonder we were fat and placid - we were probably in a permanent sugar stupor!

 

Today's Fatslaying Workout 1 hour bike ride (yesterday). Rest day today.

Today's Weight 202.0lbs

**********

Happy Bastille Day, everyone!

I've been watching the Tour De France, so I'm feeling all Francophilliac and Gallic. I like the French, even though it pisses me off that the world seems to assume that all English women are as lumpy and stodgy as Lancashire Hotpot whilst all French women are as thin and insubstantial as consomme. They're not all chic and gorgeous like Juliette Binoche, Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Beart, Sophie Marceau and Brigitte Bardot, you know! Trust me, some of them are real dogs - and more pug than poodle if you get my drift.

According to this book we should all be eating like French women and we'd become chic and skinny in no time. Hmmm. My room-mate at University was French, and she ate the average person's total daily calorie allowance every day for breakfast in croissants, pain au chocolates, and brioche. She wasn't fat, but she wasn't exactly built like Audrey Tautou either.

Anyway, back to the Tour de France. I've been watching it, and feeling uncomfortably humbled. Those riders work so bloody hard! And I don't mean baboon-arse-hard, I mean really, REALLY burn-to-the-bone hard! Even watching them is a physical effort.

It dawned on me that I've never really tried that hard at anything in my entire life. I don't just mean exercise - I mean in any aspect of my life, period.

I'm not what you'd call lazy as such - I did the whole college, university, post-grad professional qualification thing to haul myself up the career ladder a few notches and I work reasonably hard at my job - not bust a blood vessel hard, but hard enough to deserve my salary and to earn regular promotions. 

But outside work it's a different story. Outside work I'm just an idle slob.

If the media is to be believed some women go home after putting in fourteen hour days performing open heart surgery and cook cordon bleu meals, clean house to operating theatre standard, knit sweaters, home-school their brood of children, write novels, compose symphonies, study quantum physics, run half-marathons, give killer blow jobs and still manage to cleanse tone and moisturise before hitting the sack.

Me, I just can't be bothered. I figure housework is some kind of Sisyphean form of torture dreamt up by men to enslave women, so I simply refuse to play the game. When the piles of steaming yak guts get too high to ignore I simply sweep them out the back door so that they're out of sight, out of mind, and go back to reading bodice-rippers on the sofa. It is one of life's fundamental truths that there is always more housework than there are hours to do it in, so I've given up feeling guilty about it and embraced failure instead. Besides, the bodice-rippers are much more life-enriching.

I just like lying on the sofa and vegetating, in the same way that some people like having sex orgies and others like climbing Everest in a pair of flippers and a tank-top. Whatever floats your boat. I'd like to be able to say that I have a burning urge to do triathlons every evening before dinner, but the truth is that if I had my own way I'd never willingly raise a finger to do anything sporty and energetic - not unless my life depended on it (which of course it does).  

Duh - do you think this explains why I've been fat my whole life? Man, is it really that simple? If so, I'm vindicated, 'cos it's obviously not my fault - I must have faulty genes or something! A leopard can't change its spots, so pass me that bodice-ripper and some chocolate, pronto!

According to this article, there's certainly some truth in that assertion.

So fundamentally you can't change your nature - any more than you can change your nationality. So whilst I may read the books that tell me to aspire to eat like a Frenchwoman and dress like a Frenchwoman and live like a Frenchwoman, I'll never BE a Frenchwoman....so what's the point in feeling bad about it? 

Today's Fatslaying Workout 30 minutes rebounding; 15 mins free weights

Today's Weight 202.0lbs

**********

If I've got to drag myself out of bed at half past four in the bloody morning to get to work for a 6am meeting, the least the scales could do is show me a nice low number not a 1.5lb gain!

Okay, so I didn't eat or drink anything at all until 8.30pm yesterday (yes, I KNOW that's bad for me, but I was BUSY!) so I can't possibly have gained real fat, and my poor mistreated kidneys are probably hanging on like grim death to what little liquid I gave them yesterday, so I've probably gained water weight, but that's not the point. I wanted a shiny happy stress free start to the day, 'cos I knew it was going to be a bitch from 6am onwards, and the bloody scales just had to go and throw a spanner in the works.

Anyway, I tried to learn from yesterday's fiasco, when by 4pm I was eyeing-up my colleague's discarded banana peel and tangerine hand-cream because I was so ravenous, and today I did my best Martha Stewart impression (but without the criminality) and made myself a wholesome egg sandwich on granary bread and took a bag of apples and oranges to work with me...but of course I was rushing round like a whirling dervish and didn't have time to eat anything, and now I'm home I'm past the hunger stage, and can't even face a slice of toast. 

And I'm supposed to be exercising in ten minutes! Three hundred calorie days might be perfect for the Calista Flockharts of this world, but I've got to start getting my eating act together during these manic working days, or my health is seriously going to suffer and my weight loss will stall as well.  

I couldn't sleep last night cos I couldn't switch off from work, so I passed the wee hours in my favourite pastime - feeling for bones. I like to do this noctural bodily reckoning, and it's much more entertaining that counting sheep (get your minds out of the gutter, people! Heh). I reckon if I were blindfolded and had to pick out my own body by mere touch from a mound of other bodies, I'd be able to recognise mine pretty niftily. (Yeah, I KNOW my nerve endings would give me a hint, but work with me here for a second, OK?)

Anyway, I took stock last night, and I'm pretty damn sure my hip bones are emerging from the primordial swamp at long last, so something good seems to be happening. On the other hand, I couldn't swear to finding any ribs, though I was feeling for upwards of half an hour, so maybe it's just wishful thinking. When I start feeling ribs I'll know I'm really making headway.

I reckon I've lost quite a bit of fat from my stomach, but I've still got enough blubber there to give an elephant seal a run for his money...I grabbed a couple of handfuls worth, easily. But hell, at least it's solid fat nowadays, not wibbly wobbly jellified fat like in the bad old days. So that's got to be a good thing, right?

Oops is that the time? Where did the evening go? I've got exercise to do, so I'd better get my (baboon's) arse in gear!

 

Today's Fatslaying Workout Nothing

Today's Weight 200.5lbs

**********

No exercise today - I’ve been walking around like John Wayne since yesterday’s epic bike ride – my arse feels as red as a baboon’s at the moment. How attractive I must look - it's a good job Kim loves me!

 A short entry today because I'm just too tired to sit at the computer. I've been doing really long days at work, and they're really knackering – I worked 66 hours both last week and the week before, and it looks as if this week isn’t going to be much of an improvement - I did a 14 hour day today, left at 8pm and have a 6am meeting tomorrow. Oh joy.

When I get home I’m too drained to do much more than eat dinner, and my exercise plan is really suffering. I HATE it when work erodes so much of my personal time – even on an average day I’ve been leaving the house at 5.30am and not getting back home until 7.30pm, and it hardly leaves me any free time in the evenings at all. I guess I ought to start asserting myself more at work and leave at a decent hour (especially since I start upwards of 2 hours earlier than my boss in the morning). Boy, I am such a sap!

Unfortunately accountancy is one of those professions where your commitment is (wrongly) judged by the amount of hours you work, and so any desire to keep my hours below 55 a week would be seen as being a slack-arse.

 Anyway, enough of the self-pity – since when did feeling sorry for yourself ever solve anything?

So the plan for tomorrow is to get home by 6.30pm and to get at least an hour's exercise. I don't want to get into the habit of having more than two free days per week, so having had a rest day today, I've got to get back on the exercise treadmill tomorrow. No more excuses - what are they gonna do, sack me?

Today's Fatslaying Workout 1 hour 45 mins cycle ride

Today's Weight 200.0lbs

**********

Right, that's it, I've had enough of being intimidated or embarrassed because of my weight and lack of fitness. I refuse to be ashamed any longer!

I went out for a cycle ride, planned my route, packed enough water for an hour's exercise (it was roasting hot) and set off in the shorts of shame.

All was fine until just before my customary turning round point, when I passed a group of spotty youths hanging around a village green, who acted as if it was the most bizarre and hilarious sight in the world to see a woman cycling.

They whooped and hollered, stood in my way in the middle of the road, commented (loudly and at length) on the size of my arse, and generally made a nuisance of themselves.

And what did I do? Leap off my bike, don my Wonderwoman cape and give them a good telling off for being so ill-mannered, and send them home with their tails between their legs?

Hardly.

Nope, in true heroic Fatslayer fashion, I kept my head down, and put the pedal to the metal to get the hell out of Dodge. Then, as if that wasn't cowardly enough, when I came to my turning around place a hundred yards further up the road, I chickened out from turning round and running the gauntlet again, and instead I struck out on a road that I'd never been down before, in a direction that was unfamiliar to me, with unknown hills and hazards and an uncertain destination.

Idiot, thy name is Fatslayer.

An hour and a quarter later, knackered, saddle sore, thirsty and mad as hell at myself for being a yellow bellied coward, I finally cycled back up my garden path.

My heart rate monitor tells me I burned off 1100 calories, which is a small consolation, but I'm madder'n hell at myself for allowing a group of teenage dickheads to dictate my actions.

NEXT time (and there WILL be a next time, unfortunately, since there is something tediously inevitable about the ridicule of teenage boys) I'll be brave...honestly!

 

Today's Fatslaying Workout 1 hour walk; 30mins free weights

Today's Weight 200.0lbs

**********

I had to go to London for a meeting yesterday, and the trains into Liverpool Street were running just fine, and the underground too. The emergency services have done an awesome job. I figured there wasn't any point staying away from public transport out of fear or intimidation - if your number's up, it's up and there's not much you can do about it - and judging by how crowded my tube was, most Londoners seem to have the same pragmatic mentality. Nothing imprisons people quicker than fear, so it was good to see so many people just going placidly about their daily business. To my mind, fear is more of a threat to our way of life than any terrorist organisation - we mustn't lose our sense of perspective.

I hope this doesn't lead to an anti-Muslim backlash in England, or a mindless knee-jerk rush to give up more of our civil liberties. The government will ruthlessly exploit every sign of public fear or weakness to press forward with their dreadful ID cards, their disgraceful anti-terrorist legislation, their shameful anti-asylum policy...and before you know it we'll have given up our most precious freedoms in the spurious pursuit of homeland security. The alacrity with which ordinary people seem prepared to cede total power to the government never ceases to appal and amaze me.

**********

Anyway, this is supposed to be a weightloss not a political blog, so I'll climb down off my soapbox now.

**********

It dawned on me last night that one of the reasons I have a problem with my weight could be because I’m just so common.

Allow me to explain…

My boss (who is very nice, and who I followed from my old job to this one) took me out last night for a belated birthday meal, to a fancy restaurant famous in this part of the country. Now, I don’t do ‘fancy’ – my idea of a nice meal out is a char-grilled chiliburger and chips, or a steaming great bowl of pasta followed by chocolate mousse and ice cream. So it was with some trepidation that I set foot inside the restaurant, feeling under-dressed for the occasion in my jeans (she told me we were going to a pub – how was I to know she was planning a surprise) – maybe if I’d been wearing my pink kitten heeled sandals for the occasion (still sadly sitting in the shop) I’d have felt more comfortable, but I wasn’t, so I got off to a bit of a shaky start, confidence-wise.

Anyway, I ordered grilled peppered tuna steak for a starter (a safe bet, I thought, ‘cos I love tuna), and poached halibut and fresh veggies for my main course, and tried to ignore the fact that I was about to be served with £70-worth of food. We each sat there with our ‘Make Poverty History’ wristbands on, and I couldn’t help but wonder how many bags of maize could be bought for £70 and how many African children it could feed….but the meal was my boss’s treat, and she eats there regularly, so I felt churlish thinking that even if the food was gold plated it wouldn’t justify a £70 price tag. I couldn’t stop thinking it, but at least I didn’t say it, which is probably a step in the right direction.

Anyway, the starters came out and my tuna was raw! At least, it’d been flash-grilled on the outside, but inside it was all pink and squidgy and soft and wet-looking. Oh yuk. Yuk, yuk, yuk. I was just about to call the waitress back and tell her mine was raw, when I saw my boss tucking into her own tuna (equally raw) with much lip-smacking gusto…so I figured it must just be me being common, and that was how posh folks ate their fish. Me, I like my tuna well done, like a true English person…you can leave all that fancy sushi-eating malarkey to the Japanese, thank you very much. You don’t get sushi in a fish-and-chip shop, and that was how I got my introduction to fish, and nothing’s gonna convince me raw is better. Not that I’m narrow-minded or set in my ways, you understand…

So anyways, I pushed my £25 piece of raw tuna round my plate (thankfully it was a tiny portion) and tried to cover it with the one broad bean and the shred of samphire that comprised the garnish so that it looked as if I’d ate some of it, and I began to wish I’d ordered something non-fishy for my main course…like a ham sandwich or something (heh heh).

Thankfully my boss seemed oblivious to my pickiness, and after what seemed like an age, the plates were cleared and the main course arrived. More raw bloody fish! The halibut (again thankfully tiny) was poached in milk and piled into a small island in the middle of a huge serving bowl, with four solitary capers and four carrots the size of a newborn infant’s pinkie finger strategically placed at the four points of the compass. WTF?!? Those couldn’t be the ‘veggies’ surely? And what about the chips and the tomato ketchup - heh heh only kidding, but you get my drift. This wasn’t food. Food is hearty and substantial, not bloody modern art! Maybe this is what I’ve misunderstood all these years?

Suffice it to say, I left the restaurant ravenous, having made a valiant effort to pretend the food was delicious. When my boss paid the bill - £185 for two starters, two main courses, one dessert (her), one sparkling mineral water (me), one glass of Chardonnay (her) I nearly cried on her behalf – what an outrageous waste of money for something so disagreeable! I had to remind myself that at least she’d enjoyed her meal (she ate every scrap) – and of course I was sparkling company (yeah, right). She’s going back there again tonight with her husband, so obviously it’s just me that’s a fussy cow, and who wouldn’t recognise good food if it jumped off the plate and bit me.

The whole meal, including bread rolls and desserts would comfortably have fit onto a modest sized dinner plate, with oceans of room to spare, so I guess that’s how the Paris Hilton’s and the Victoria Beckham’s keep their skinny figures – they don’t eat enough to keep a sparrow alive! As it was, I tucked into a plate of toast when I got in, which just goes to show that you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear and that I'm destined never to fit into a size 0 outfit. What a bloody shame, huh?

There's not much to say today, is there? It's all just so bloody senseless and pointless. Most of us ordinary English folks are as anti the Iraq war and the exploitation of the Middle East as the average Muslim is! Surely all the anti-war demo's prove that? The argument should be with our government, not with innocent folks just trying to do a decent day's bloody work.

On a selfish note, my sister and my best friend are safe (they were at Liverpool Street when the 2nd bomb went off), but I had to wait 6 hours before I could get through to them, and I felt literally sick with worry the whole day. The anxiety, and watching the news bulletins, was like being transported back in time to Birmingham during the IRA mainland campaign, and waiting for my brother to come home when his favourite drinking haunt was bombed. The thoughtless bugger didn't come home for three days, 'cos he was recuperating from his (minor) injuries at his mate's house, and then he just sauntered in as if disappearing for three days during a bombing campaign was normal behaviour. My mom couldn't make up her mind whether to hug him or throttle him!

Ring home, people!

Today's Fatslaying Workout 45 minutes rebounding

Today's Weight 202.0lbs

**********

Woohoo, I got a lot of compliments on my weight loss today! I had to fish for them a little bit, but I figured that sometimes folks just need a nudge in the right direction. Anyway, after my little hint the compliments flew thick and fast, and I wasn’t about to feel bad about them just because they weren’t exactly unsolicited. I’m obviously a shameless hussy. But, darn it, I’ve been feeling good about myself, and my clothes have been getting huge, and my cheekbones are getting all pronounced and Michelle Pfeifferish (I wish!) and I’m pretty damn sure I felt a bit of a rib this morning – and no one was commenting at all! Maybe this was because I’m so obviously reluctant to discuss my weight loss efforts at work, and I go all scowly and frowny when the subject’s raised, but Jeeze, can’t a gal mix her signals and be inconsistent?

Talking of too-big clothes (we were?), this is becoming a problem for me at the moment. My leisure clothes still fit reasonably OK, but I’m an accountant, so casual clothes at work aren’t really an option. I started a new job on 31st January, so I bought about £500 of new clothes for work – suits, blouses, jackets etc. Now they’re all way too big, and I’m reluctant to buy any new ones. I like my clothes on the baggy side, but the outfit I’m wearing today is flapping round me like a mu-mu, and if I was caught in a strong gust of wind I’d take off and there’s no telling where I’d touch down again.

I guess this is one of the very few drawbacks of successful weight loss. While I’ve still got another 70-odd pounds to lose I don’t want to go and buy a whole new wardrobe of clothes…but there’s no way those that I’m currently wearing will tide me over for more than a few more weeks.

I’ve also got a wedding to kit myself out for, ‘cos Kim’s mom is getting married on the 4th August. I’ve been window-shopping and am toying with the idea of doing something uncharacteristically frivolous and girly. I’ve seen a to-die-for pair of pink kitten heeled sandals, that would look gorgeous with a linen suit. The problem is that I’ve never worn stiletto heels before (even 1” ones) so I’m worried I might make a spectacle of myself by walking like a trainee drag-queen. I’m usually more of a boots or trainers kinda gal, so for me to buy something so feminine would be totally out of character, and I’m already blushing at the thought of how people may pass comments.

But I’m trying to break out of a rut, right? Time to be brave, ditch the mu-mu and get me some of those foxy pink sandals!

Today's Fatslaying Workout Nothing - too lazy!

Today's Weight 201.5lbs

**********

I have one of those little page-a-day desk calendars that gives you a piece of ‘good advice’ every single day of the year. My parents bought it for me for Christmas, as patently they think I’ve never received enough advice from them in the past. Yeah, whatever. Anyway, today’s little homily has got me thinking, ‘cos it says: ‘Never ever pass up an opportunity to dance.”

Hmmm, now dancing is a bit of a sore point for me. My elder sister Linda loves to dance, and when she was in her late teens she’d put on her Motown records and bop around the room on Saturday afternoons, pulling me and my other sister Jinty up off the couch to be her dance partners. Jinty must’ve been about 4, and I must’ve been about 2 when this started, and I recall we used to have a hella good time. Sometimes I’d get so excited I’d pee my pants, but that’s a whole other story!

I reckon we were about this age at the time...

I'm the one in the blue hat and specs, my big sister Jinty is in the orange. Our chaperone is our mega-big-brother John (our hero, who passed away last year). Any excuse to show this photo, which is always makes me smile. Notice I had fat rolls even at the age of three, and this was probably the last time I ever wore a bikini!

Anyway, suffice it to say, this was just about my all-time favourite way to spend an afternoon, and I used to shake my little booty and jiggle and wiggle my hips and sing along to my heart’s content, without a jot of self-consciousness. I was a model of uninhibited abandon…until the day my mom commented that (unlike Jinty, who had ‘natural rhythm’ and ‘the voice of an angel’, and thus took after her) I was a ‘hopeless’ dancer’ and ‘totally tone deaf’, and therefore must take after dad. [Needless to say, theirs was not a match made in heaven].

Boy, parents can just kill your confidence, can’t they? D’you think they teach these put-downs at ante-natal classes or something? All I know is that all parents seem to have them in their armoury, to pull out when their offspring are exhibiting any evidence of self-assurance. But I digress…

Anyway, after that one off-hand comment, that I’m sure my mother forgot almost as soon as she said it, I stopped dancing and singing. I didn’t sulk about it (uncharacteristically), but I just stubbornly refused (also uncharacteristically) to be swayed from my decision. I’d sit on the couch and cheer on my sisters and laugh like a drain to convince then I was happy being a spectator, and from that day to this (36 years or so later) the only other person I’ve only ever danced or sung in front of is Kim (and even then I have to be plied with copious amounts of alcohol, and I’m still as inhibited and shy as a nun at an lap-dancing club).

So now, after reading today’s homily, and reading posts like this I’m wondering what I’ve been missing out on all these years. I fear my life has been greyer and duller because of this ridiculous inhibition, ’cos I’ll let you in on a secret - I love to dance! I love the way it makes me feel alive and sexy. I love how it makes me feel happy. And that's just in my own living room!

So I'm thinking that maybe my life might have been enriched if I'd thrown inhibition to the wind and gone clubbing instead. I could have got myself groped in dark corners by desperate pimply youths, and how ego-boosting would THAT have been? I could have danced round my handbag with the rest of my generation, doing my Olivia Newton John grooves and pretending to be one of the Pink Ladies. Damn, 'cos I let my bloody mother get to me, I've missed out on all that FUN!

But I guess I shouldn't blame my mother, 'cos I guess I'm just one of life's inhibited people. I've never been a joiner, never had the assurance to dance like nobody was watching.

Take exercise as another example. I’m one of the few women in my age bracket who’s never owned a pair of leg-warmers and matching sweatbands. I’ve never areobicced, stepped, pumped, toned, flexed, legged-bummed-or-tummed, salsa’ed, yogaed, callanetted, circuited, or otherwise done any form of exercise that has necessitated the wearing of a pair of pants outside a leotard in the presence of other people. What exercise I’ve ever done has either been with my ‘significant other’ (cycling, squash, tennis, walking) or on my lonesome (swimming, gym-work, rebounding).

I was always too shy, too afraid to make an idiot of myself, too worried people would look at me and snigger.

I've realised I'm missing out by being such a shrinking violet. I need to expand my horizons and get in touch with my sexy, sensual side. I want to (quote) "touch my own spandex-wrapped ass in front of other people". I want to bump and grind and get jiggy with it! Hell, I want to stop sitting on the sidelines, and leap into the heart of the action!

Have you ever read the poem The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock ? It's my all-time favourite poem, and I suspect T S Eliot wouldn't have worn leg warmers and joined an aerobics class either. Well, more fool him!

Well, it's time to dare to disturb the universe! I'm going right this minute to check the Yellow Pages for belly-dancing classes - I've always wanted to have a bash at that. So what the bloody hell am I waiting for.....?

Today's Fatslaying Workout 56 minute brisk walk.

Today's Weight 201.5lbs

**********

The scale's being very compliant at the moment, so I suspect it's trying to lull me into a false sense of security. It'll wait until my guard's down and then shiv me in the ribs, you just wait and see. I don't trust it an inch, so I'm taking today's reading with a pinch of salt the size of Gibralter. I've been suckered that way before, and now I'm older and wiser.

**********

I spent the whole day yesterday watching the Live8 Hyde Park gig - bloody marvellous! When the Ethiopia-Famine-to-Cars-Soundtrack film came on, I cried buckets the way I always do, and when that stunning young Ethiopian woman walked on the stage, so many tears rolled off the end of my chin that I had to go and change my Tshirt.

One happy ending, amidst such tragedy! I know you have to focus on the positive, and even one life saved is fabulously worthwhile, but Christ, what a waste of a generation, and what a long way the world still has to go. But there wasn't a dry eye in our house when that woman walked on stage, so you have to admire the sheer theatre if nothing else.

I sooooooo wish I could be in Edinburgh on the 6th...I'm totally convinced that direct action and peaceful resistance can move mountains, and I'd love to be actually there taking part. I've had to satisfy myself with writing to Tony Blair, and signing all the petitions...I'll do better next time, I swear.

I had one of those totally self-hating mind-fucks yesterday when it occurred to me (re-occurred to me, actually, as this is a common thought-pattern for me) that my current weighloss attempts seem obscene when viewed against the backdrop of 30,000 people dying every day in Africa. I thought, Christ, I'm a grossly overweight, self-indulgent, privileged, pampered western white woman worrying that I'm too fat, when millions are starving in Africa...what the fuck is wrong with me? Where the fuck is my humanity?

Cue a bout of acute self-loathing, before I managed to pull myself back together with the following thought - will quitting my diet and getting fatter and fatter make the gulf between their condition and mine any less wide? Will destroying my own health make the imbalance any less obscene? And of course the answer is no.

Hard as it is for me, I've got to start realising that it's not a crime to want to be healthy - that just because fate randomly selected me to be born into the privileged first world (for which I'm exceedingly grateful!), that it's not a sin to want to make the best of my opportunities to live well. I've lived with an irrational guilt about taking care of myself all my life - which manifests itself in self-defeating behaviour such as refusing to go to the doctor's when I feel unwell, ignoring injuries, eating crap - and, frankly, it's done me no favours at all. The form of twisted methodism that underpinned my upbringing, and which inculcated the belief that any form of self absorption is sinful, is bloody hard to shake off though - I've been trying for 40 years, and I look as if I have a hell of a long way to go.

**********

Anyway, enough already! My sister is coming for a visit this afternoon, for only the second time since I moved into my house 13 years ago. Obviously we're a close family, heh heh! She's just moved to Cambridge (70 miles away) so maybe we'll start to see each other a little more regularly - hell, we may manage twice a decade, or something! We're going out for lunch to a place that serves huge portions of food, so I'll have to choose wisely. If I make good choices I should be fine, 'cos I don't have a huge appetite - quantity has never been my problem, it's the quality of my choices that has always been my downfall. Time to see if I've really learned my lessons this past 16 weeks...

**********

Update

I chose a grilled tuna steak with pineapple, roasted veggies and saffron rice for dinner, and unfortunately didn't enjoy it at all, though grilled tuna is usually one of my all-time favourite meals. I left maybe half of the rice, a third of the tuna and some of the veggies, and then had an ice-cream sundae for dessert (naughty, but I felt hard-done-by after my poor choice of main course, and so I argued to myself that I deserved it ). I left around a third of the sundae too, so hopefully I'm within my daily calorie allowance.

Today's Fatslaying Workout 56 minute brisk walk. Rest of the day spent watching Live8.

Today's Weight 203.0lbs

**********

I am humbed and awed by the kindness of strangers. For my whole life I've been struggling with my weight, and by and large it's been a private battle. Kim is hugely supportive, but always has the slightly puzzled air of someone who's never had a weight problem, and therefore can't really understand how hard it can be - he wonders why this issue isn't done and dusted already, and can't get his head round all my backsliding. My parents believe that criticism, not support, is the best motivator, and then wonder why it seems to have the opposite effect than the one they intended. And as for flesh-and-blood friends, I seem to have a penchant for picking skinny ones, who can't empathise with any of the frustrations and emotional upheavals of a long-term weight loss programme.

This is where cyber-friends step into the breach.

The selfless support of the online weightloss sisterhood is just amazing. (I say sisterhood, 'cos we gals seem to have pretty much cornered the dietblog market. But you guys that are part of the community know I'm making you honorary women for the purposes of this post, OK?). Reading my blogroll is a daily touchstone for me - every day I find something inspiring, uplifting, enriching in the collective wisdom of the other people out there who are struggling with the issues that I'm struggling with, and doing so with humour, resilience, guts, grit, compassion and unflinching honesty.

Trying to turn your life around, and win a life-long war is sometimes mentally and emotionally draining - not to mention physically knackering when you're pushing your body to it's limits. And it can be a private, hidden, shame-inducing war too, as we plaster our brave faces on in public, and downplay what a big deal it is 'cos we don't want folks dwelling on just exactly what it is we're fighting. Knowing that there are others out there in the same boat, who will rally round to to cheer you up when you're feeling down or shake their pom-poms when you've a small victory to celebrate can make such a huge difference. I'm so grateful to the people who share their victories and setbacks with the rest of us - they've thrown out a lifeline, and are helping others to follow them down the same path.

I'd like to say a special thank you to Wendy. You're about 5000 miles away from me, but your insights and support have helped me so much these past few days. Your comment on my last post was so insightful, but I don't think I'd ever have seen that for myself. Maybe for someone else I'd have had that insight, but I don't think I'd have cut myself the same slack. I literally cried when I read it, because I'd never looked at in that way before - I've just seen 'failure', not 'learning experience'.

I'm just so close to this and I've been feeling like such a hopeless case. Sometimes (often!) it's hard to gain any real perspective on it. I've been going around these last couple of days thinking "What's the matter with me? Why am I such an idiot? Why can't I do something so simple?"

And the truth, of course, is that weight loss and maintenance isn't 'simple' at all.....it's complex and time consuming and takes guts and willpower and dedication.

I've been focusing on all the backslides and thinking it proves how useless I am - whereas maybe I should have focused on all the times I hauled myself back into the saddle and showed a little bit of faith in myself, despite my past backsliding record. Because giving up is the easy part - pulling yourself back from the brink is the difficult part.

And there's no doubt that I've learned lessons along the way - back in '93 I wrote despairing entries because I'd only lost 2lbs that week. I was eating 800 calories a day at one point so as to maintain my 3lb per week loss average. I was exercising for 4 hours a day. Now, a few attempts further down the line, I'm taking a much more sensible approach. I'm chipping the obstacle out of my way rather than trying to leap it in a single bound, and I'm sure that in the long run I'll be better for having taken a slower approach. Maybe I needed to be 40 before I understood exacty what needed to be done - I'm a slow developer!!

So thanks, Wendy, and thanks all you other bloggers out there. You've all helped me so much, and I dread to think how much harder this would be without the laughs and support. Every one of you is a shining star, and you should feel pretty damn good about yourselves!