More fucking mind games
Today's Weight 201.5lbs
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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.
