Hungry Hippo

I had decided to just have a good, plain vanilla week this week as a move away from adrenaline fuelled biscuit consumption.  But things weren’t going swimmingly with the daily WIs (as you know) and as my goal currently shows on the Libra app as “N/A”, I thought I’d slip one starve day in.  Reader, that day is today.  Because Monday is so sucky anyway, why ruin another day?  It makes sense to me anyway.

I thought you might be interested to see what a starve day consists of.  You might not be, but I always find what other people eat on a diet fascinating.  Which may say more about my weirdness than anything else I suppose.  I suspect that I’m over the magic 500 calories but truth is, I don’t know and I do not think I could eat less.  As it is I feel very odd indeed.  Admittedly not helped today by being on day 3 of a migraine, only intermittently controlled with strong prescription medication.  So, feast your eyes on this little lot:

·         Cappuccino – normal sized rather than American bucket size

·         2 Alpen light bars to be eaten emphatically not together but at the point at which I feel I might keel over – and with as long a gap between as possible

·         An apple

·         A packet soup thing SW is keen on – a Mug Shot – has pasta bits in.  That’s dinner

·         A low cal jelly if possible

Sometimes I cave and have a second apple or piece of melon.  There’s the odd cup of green tea and usually a Pepsi Max.  I’m not counting those...

Will be interesting to see what Scales of Doom say about this tomorrow. I know any sudden drop (and by drop, I mean a gentle downward hill rather than a plummet.  Alas) will be artificial and it will even out when I return to normal dieting on Tuesday.

Unhappy Scale

Sorry for radio silence.  Yes, I’ve kind of fallen off the wagon, no, it’s not as simple as that.

I suppose in many respects I have.  Or at least I am being dragged along by the wagon.  First week post hols I lost 1lb.  I was disappointed.  Then work went crazy.  Absolutely insane.  I wasn’t eating properly as I didn’t have time to so much as heat up a carton of soup, let alone run out for a salad.  I didn’t even have time to drink anything (alcoholic or otherwise... although....) during the day, other than a couple of coffees which were brought to us to keep us going.  And biscuits.  Many, many biscuits.  I don’t even much like biscuits but the combination of hunger, adrenaline and long, long days was lethal. 

And I drank more over the weekend than I would normally do, just to decompress a bit (whilst also having some work to do.  Well, not literally while I was drinking I hasten to add). 

I hoped (pause for hollow laughter) that skipping meals would even out biscuit consumption.  Reader: would you be amazed to know that this was groundless hope?  It took no little mental resolve to get on Scales of Doom – and I found I’d put on the lb I’d lost.

Right, I thought to myself, time to stop the vicious circle.  And having downloaded Happy Scale on my ipad (thanks team!) and Libra on my phone (because I have a particularly crappy android phone) I thought I would force myself to do something I really don’t want to.  Something that some of you have confessed addiction to.  I would weigh every day for a week.  A nice, purposefully empty week, devoid of any kind of social engagement.  My rationale was that this would get me back on track.  After all, my overall statistics are dismal and I’d really like to see them improve – even if I see very little difference in my appearance.  At the moment it declines to say when I would reach my goal, only saying something akin to ‘a bloody long time, love’.

Imagine my dismay, dear Reader, when a solitary day into my grimly determined routine, I find that I have put on an additional 1.5lbs.  Yes, welcome to my day.  My scale may be happy but I am not. 

From feast to famine (a quick, incoherent update)

So, I’ve gone from eating gleefully off-piste to a starve day.  What a crashing return to earth.  Whether I’ll make it through the day on starvation rations as well as a mere 3 hours of sleep remains to be seen though.  To be fair, the holiday eating, whilst not frugal, wasn’t too bad – Canadian portions are not like US ones for instance, and it wasn’t a foodie holiday.  But a lot of wine was consumed (yes, by me).  Some strenuous exercise in the mountains (literally, actually) in cold temperatures too.  Nevertheless, I had to steel myself to get on Scales of Doom today.  I thought I’d put on 7lbs, realistically and from previous experience.  I tried to brace myself for going up a scale bracket – although, of course, there is no way to accept this.  As it was I was thrilled that I put on 3lbs.  Yes, I know that’s a lump of chub but it could be SO much worse – and has been in the past.  Of course, it could still be sneaking its way on but I’m hoping that this is the voice of pessimism rather than wisdom.  That’s 1lb a week.  Really not so bad.

But back on the diet I go.  I’m determined to get the 3lbs off and blast trudge through to my 2st loss and then down to another stone bracket.  Hopefully by Christmas.  For the time being, I’m sticking with SW plus 2 days of starve days a week.

Although I’m pretty hacked off with Slimming World.  I really only continue to subscribe so I can see the weight loss chart but when I emailed to find out how to take a holiday from paying, I was told I could not as you can weigh in from anywhere in the world.  Quite apart from taking issue with this, WHO takes their bathroom scales on holiday with them??  And if you went to a class, you wouldn’t expect to pay.  If anyone knows of an app that does the same thing in terms of a graph, table and predictive line, please let me know and I’ll cancel my subscription.

I’m not quite all there (mentally, I mean.  Physically as discussed I’m slightly more there than last time) due to jet lag and not being well, so excuse the dullness of this post.  However, in summary, we LOVED Canada.  We saw bears (grizzlies), coyotes and eagles, trekked on mountains, white water rafted in the cold rain, went up in a sea-plane, cycled a disused railway on top of (another) mountain, went to a craft beer festival with Mounties and did the wineries of the Okanagan.  And that’s just some of the highlights.  It’s so beautiful, so spacious and so friendly: my commute this morning seemed more brutal than usual by comparison.  We barely scratched the surface of British Columbia and are already planning on going back next year.  Who knows, maybe we’ll end up there permanently.  I bought a pair of Canadian cowboy boots (with the blurb: “for the fashion forward cowgirl”) which ought to guarantee my emigration success.  Yeehaw.