Back to the smoke

Of course, we left Cornwall in blazing sunshine - Saturday (and Sunday) being beautiful weather, sigh. It made it all the sadder to leave with the sea so blue and the fields so green, all bathed in golden sunlight. I'm glad we stopped via my mum's in Kent as I think the rural idyll of Cornwall back to grimy East London might have been too much of a culture shock!

We'd had very mixed weather in Cornwall - it didn't rain all the time but it did rain every day (except Thursday and Friday) and the showers were extremely sharp and er, wet. I was out on a cliff path on a walk in one shower wearing jeans and came back literally dripping after only 10 mins outside. Luckily our cottage had an Aga which was impressive for drying clothes over (even if bf got slightly hysterical about the heat it kicked out ("It's TOO HOT")!). I got a bit obsessed with the kitchen actually- an Aga, granite worktops, slate floors and a butler's sink - and am now feeling rather as if I am slumming it back in my own kitchen (with none of these things!)!

But the saddest thing of all is that in one and a half weeks I put on 10-11lbs. Which will take me a minimum of a month and a half to lose. It's depressing, however much of a positive spin I try to put on it and I feel incredulous that this sort of weight gain is even possible. My clothes are too tight - including bras (ouch) - and I am sitting here typing in my 'fat skirt' and a t-shirt from before LighterLife as it's the only one which covers my expanded belly and I feel thoroughly frumpy. AND we didn't have fish and chips once (lack of opportunity gentle reader, not willpower (as if!)! But we only managed 2-3 walks (9 miles, 5 miles and 3 miles respectively - the latter although hilly hardly counts) and I did have a clotted cream tea several times (mmmmm delish). We mostly ate in in the evenings as we were a long way from anywhere and ate a main meal at lunchtime - we went out to lunch somewhere nice (read 3 courses) twice and there was also the fabled Fifteen meal. Which was expensive but wonderful - delicious food, not too much that you felt overly full even after 5 courses, amuse bouches and coffee and weeny chocolate and a sublime view - we watched the sun go down over the sea as the tide revealed more of a golden beach. I thoroughly recommend it if you have a spare couple of hundred quid! By contrast, I also went to the Heston Blumenthal Little Chef for breakfast on the way down to the West Country and it was rubbish - I had a bacon sarnie and the bread (white sliced plastic) was stale and unbuttered and the bacon was fatty. Bf said he liked his full English but I wouldn't bother with it again. The coffee was indifferent to poor as well.

What I didn't do this time was sneak chocolate and sweets - I snurfed the biscuits the owner left but I wasn't sneakily buying sweets/chocolate to eat first thing or last thing when I could steal a solitary moment. I did this on both similar holidays last year with my mother and with bf. I also avoided cooked breakfasts since my recent Suffolk weekend proved to me that I actually don't like them (we were only out for breakfast one day and I had fruit, muesli and yoghurt which I thoroughly enjoyed and had mainly granola and yoghurt in the cottage). A question of small mercies? Too little, too late? Maybe.

I did have carbs for pretty much every meal so I'm hoping that my usual diet of little or no bread, rice or pasta will help knock a bit off a little more quickly than my usual snail-pace but it's definitely set me right back to the scary side of uncomfortable. I'm trying not to let it depress me (therein lies the siren call of the evil sugar illogically) but just to be determined to get on and back on track. I also think there has to be a learning point for my upcoming walking 10 -12 days in Wales with my mum and the lab pack. We will at least have to walk, irrespective of the weather, for the dogs - and that cuts down (mercifully) on time spent in tea-shops eating cake and staring at the rain - but I think that a piece of cake during the day on a walk has to mean no pudding in the evening beyond fruit or else I'll be in an even worse state than I am now. I tend to let the treats spiral out of control and then it's cake and ice cream and possibly more all in one day. And I clearly don't have hollow legs, sadly. Stumpy, yes, hollow, no.