Bosom buddies

Who knew a t-shirt could be so weighty?  When I removed it, I had lost 2lbs.  Apparently, it weighed 3/4lb so maybe the 2lbs is a bit of a cheat but I could do with a good result to cheer myself up with - so I’m taking it.  Naked supplication to SoD seems to be the weigh way.  Or maybe it’s just that my nakedness terrifies it into submission (which would be understandable).  Either way, it’s my modus operandi from now on.

This means that I’m now 4lbs off having lost 2st since I started this diet 4 months ago.  It’s been slow – far, FAR slower than I would like – but I’m sticking at it whilst the inching downward trend continues.  But I am contemplating combining it with the 5:2 (ie doing both) at least until my holiday.  What do you think?  I saw an ad which says LighterLife do their packs through Superdrug for 5:2 – and if I were to do it, I think not thinking of or preparing food for those 2 days would help me.  It takes the agonising over food out of the equation.  When I did LL (years ago now) there was a very limited range and the bars (which sounded the nicest) were pretty foul, as were the soups, but it looks like things have changed – it would be trial and error I guess as to which ones were palatable.  I could do it Monday and Wednesday and WI on a Thursday.  What do you think?  I’d really like to boost my weight losses to a steady 2-3lbs a week, even just for the next month and a half....

This week has been aided by skipping a couple of meals, being very strict (as ever) and having little in the way of social engagements.  In fact I went to a work leaving do and drank only water – AND shunned the chips provided.  This is positively heroic, I'm sure you'll agree.  Especially as cocktails were on two for one.  

I’ve cautiously gone back to former bras - every now and again.  When I was wearing them a few months ago, they were leaving welts and bruising on my body.  Not to mention discomfort from mid-morning which turned into actual pain by midday.  They left welts so deep that the skin turned blue.  I bought larger bras but now some of them seem a bit baggy (mainly the ones with fuller cups - my cups are NOT runneth over).  Of all the places to lose – well, not inches but probably multiple - millimetres, I’d have chosen my stomach, bum or thighs first.  It’s true that I have a ridiculously comedy bosom but somehow that helps at least distract from the area from the waist downwards (at least, it does for me as I can’t see past them...).  In the same way I have lots of clothes of descending size, I also have lingerie of smaller (well, mostly back size, the cups seem to stay the same) size: at some stage, I decided I was too grotesque to have matching sets so my current bras are coupled with horrid dreary cotton multi packs.  It would be nice to get back to the size where I have matching knickers to go with the bras.  That's a further size down however and I'm not even wholly confident that my smaller-backed ones aren't going to scar me (mentally and physically) all over again.

Fatloss Forecast

I did meet a friend last night.  I was starving but didn’t eat, just had two gin and diet tonics.  But I don’t normally drink in the week so that's syns/calories that are out of the norm.  I’m meeting a friend for dinner on Monday but will choose carefully.  It should be fine – I’ve mitigated against the G&Ts and will have a careful weekend.  I’d like to hit at least the 4lbs off before my birthday at the end of August when there will be abandoned eating for a couple of meals.  I'm keeping that very much at the front of my mind when temptation beckons.

Ooh la la

It is received wisdom  that a loss is a loss (is a loss etc).  But this is to ignore that some losses are better than others.  Technically I had a loss this week but .... well, I’m only an extra coat of mascara away from a STS with a ½ lb off.  I did say I wanted to get into the next stone bracket and I am.  By ½ lb.  Maybe I need to be more specific in what I want.  So, diet gods, next week I would like to lose over 3lbs.  Please.  I’ve seen scant reward of late for the effort and I’m overdue a bit of payback.

And this, I think, is the crux of my frustration: there’s a lot of willpower, denial and determination on one side and so the balance on the virtual scales here seems as unequally weighted as me and Cheryl Cole on either end of a see-saw.

I did have an incident with French fancies on Thursday last week, following my exceptionally disappointing WI: but I determinedly gave up all syns for the rest of the week, except for wine at the weekend.  But normally I allow myself 4-5 syns worth of chocolate, if I’ve been good.  I was good, I had no chocolate.  I’ve had no chocolate for some time now.  Perhaps that’s why I’m day 2 into a migraine: withdrawal.  I’m dosed to the max on prescription drugs – perhaps they’re to blame for my piddly loss?  Hmm.  

And French fancies?  Really?  So NOT a good use of syns, so NOT a good use of being in a state of penance ever since.  It was definitely a result of being fed up with my - frankly unfair - WI last week.  And there's twisted logic for you.  Merde pour cervelle (me).  Still, to seek out the positives there, I did claw it back and I didn't use it to go 'oh sod it' even that day, let alone that week.  Such resolve is one of those things that I feel ought to be reflected when SoD gives its verdict but is, of course, not.

I know that I need to think of it in the light of ‘if I weren’t trying so hard, what would the outcome be’ which clearly would be me steadily becoming more and more hefty and all the attendant angst this brings me.  Still feels a bit thankless though.  To hit my goal for my holiday I’d have to lose 13 ½ lbs in 8 weeks: clearly not going to happen.  Especially as my birthday is in there.  But, setting that to one side, my next mini goal is to hit 2st off – I have 5 ½ lbs to hit that.  I’m trying not to think that could be 11 weeks away if I continue like this.  Or more, gulp.  And in fact, given that my holiday is 8 weeks away, I could easily be rather heavier in 11 weeks time.  And... STOP.  I can feel myself being sucked into that spiralling vortex of confusion and panic.  A step at a time.  Or a huge leap, in the case of 5 ½ lbs. 

So just to recap, diet gods: 3 lbs loss (+) for the next 2 weeks (at least); thereafter we’ll re-negotiate.  Please.

Fatloss forecast:

Nothing to stop me having another good week.  I have a meal with a friend tonight but have already told him I won’t be wanting wine (migraine sees to that) so will just pick something innocuous from the menu.  And it’s leaving drinks next Tuesday but I’ll be on mineral water – especially since it’s the day before WI.  Next week better just be the week when SoD smiles on me, that’s all.

Green on red

In the red corner (red is for ‘stop’, dear Reader) is the fact that it’s coming up to that time of the month and that I had rice for dinner last night (yes, I know you’re supposed to be able to have rice on SW but hmmm.  Hmmm, is all I’m saying).  In the green corner (and I won’t insult your intelligence, dear Reader, by spelling out what green is for) I have been so, so, so, so, SO good this week.  AND I have skipped a couple of meals.  AND I’d had a haircut – that’s got to weigh the scales in my favour.  I wanted a decent loss this week – 2lbs + ideally – as I am teetering on a stone’s cusp.  A single solitary lb would have me down to the next stone bracket. 

I approached SoD with feelings of hope diluting my usual trepidation – I knew I’d done the work and so, I told myself, I had nothing to fear.  Right?  Wrong.  Nada.  Not a sausage – not so much as a cocktail sausage’s worth of effort rewarded.

You may recall that I said we were dogsitting.  Well, she’s not been well and has been on reduced rations – and more digestible ones.  She’s clearly hungry.  Even by Labrador standards, poor dog.  Last night P said “Who do you think is hungrier?  You or Lily [dog]?”.  Well, all I know is that her portion sizes are larger – and she is smaller.  That’s all I have to say on that matter.

Reader, I was cheated.  There is no doubt about that.  I’d take it up with the diet gods but their customer service sucks.  It means that this week will be harder. I find it harder to maintain discipline and resist temptation when I feel that doing so isn’t paying off for me.  All I can say is that there better be a significant loss next week (I’m talking 3lbs+) in order to make up for this.  And so, I grimly set my teeth, tighten my belt (well, obviously I can’t do that literally) and set off for next WI.

Fatloss forecast:

Again, a quiet week ought to mean that the Green Corner triumphs, pummelling Red into meek submission.  But Green needs to get its finger out – it has the tools, now it needs to up its game.  I’d better stop there on the metaphors.  Team Green though.  Always

Wanted: one wagon upgrade

Usually when there is radio silence on a dieting blog, you know it's because the dieter has fallen off the wagon into a vat of chocolate or (insert naughtiness of choice).  Not me.  Not on this occasion anyway.  Sadly SoD (Scales of Doom) does not seem to comprehend this.  

Two weeks ago I put on 1/2 lb and was trying to keep my cool - and then last week.  Well SoD was causing me much angst by saying I'd either put on 1/2 lb or up to 1.5lbs.  Reader, I couldn't bear to enter it in my SW weight loss thingy.  Cowardice?  Certainly.  We'd had a night out (a 6 course lobster and scallop themed evening with the most delicious raspberry souffle for pudding and mini doughnuts with coffee as well as the other four or five pescatarian mini courses) but I'd been pretty strict to try and accommodate this.  What I don't get is that the rules are supposed to allow for some deviation - ie you're allowed a certain level of lassitude in the shape of "syns" -  (that's deviation, not deviance) and still produce a loss.  This doesn't necessarily seem to work for me.  I cannot see a patten in my losses and this erodes my confidence in me, the diet and the fact that I might ever be less than a blob.

More of that pattern later.

I had a dull old week socially but still had no real confidence that this week's WI would come up with any result.  But I lost 3 1/2 lbs.  I am cautiously very pleased but I am also perplexed and would really like to understand what the actual f*ck is going on.  I have weeks where I lose very little, the odd week where I have a gain - and then, randomly the very rare week when I lose a chunk.  Is it stating the obvious, Reader, to say I'd like more of the de-chunking weeks?

Which brings me to the pattern.  Or rather the embodiment of chaos theory that is my pattern:

Wk 1:  -5 lbs

Wk 2: -1 ½ lbs

Wk 3: -1 lb

Wk 4: -3 ½ lbs

Wk 5: - ½ lb

Wk 6: -4 lbs

Wk 7 : +1 ½ lbs

Wk 8: - ½ lb

Wk 9: -1 lb

Wk 10: -1lb

Wk 11: -1lb

Wk 12: -1lb

Wk 13: STS

Wk 14: +½ lb

Wk 15: we're pretending this never happened (but + ½ - 1½ lbs)

Wk 16: -3 ½ lbs (from week 14)

Yes, I've been on SW for 4 months now.  I've lost 1½ st and an extra ½ lb.  No-one could say I was speeding along.  I think, pending some sort of miraculous acceleration, I will not make my target for my holiday.   And that's not target weight - that's unimaginably far off, I just mean the target I wanted to achieve before holiday.   It's 10 weeks to go - and one of those weeks includes my birthday.  I would say that 10lbs is veering from realistic to optimistic - the 14lbs is an impossibility.  Of course, squelching the idiotic little voice that continues to hope is more difficult.

Then of course I will put on whilst on holiday so the next target will be to lose that.  Then it'll be stone increments - both actual stones and stones off - until I get to the point when I feel like I shouldn't carry a placard, apologising to the population at large about my appearance, which is 3 stone away.  Then on to 'target'.  This could take years.   If at all.

Someone I follow on social media - not because of the dieting thing - has lost 2 ½ st in 10 weeks.  She has less to lose than me.  I am very pleased for her but I would be a liar if I said I was not envious.

I need a nippier, more streamlined wagon.  Go faster stripes would be nice.

Fatloss forecast:

Well, I have a big fat zero in my social diary for this week.  We're dogsitting my mother's geriatric Labrador so evenings out are, well, out.  This ought to lead to a decent loss next week but who knows?  Not me.