Future perfect

Oh dear, it’s all a bit heavy weather at the moment.  And of course, heavy me.  I looked back at my numbers and essentially I’ve been faffing about in this stone bracket for about a year I think.  I need to get down another stone bracket (and another and another .... repeat ad lib to fade).  And I feel better if I’m on course and not mucking about – Monday evening, at the end of a long starve day, I felt... I don’t know, powerful?  In control?  Determined?  Yes, all of those.

But as we know, dear Reader, it’s the non-starve days where I mess up.  Yesterday was a challenge; today has been a challenge.  Yesterday as a strict-diet-but-not-starve day added an additional potential spanner in that I had to travel for work (nowhere exciting or exotic) and stay in a Travelodge.  This posed two problems: one, the only food nearby was a Toby Carvery (*shudder*) or a Burger King.  Now, I’ve not been to a Burger King for years, but onion rings and a fat burger issued something of a siren song (yes, I’m totally thinking of singing burgers now...  Surreal.).  Two: being away from home overnight somehow is a trigger to ‘treat’ myself to chocolate and/or cake.  Reader: I bought a low calorie chicken salad and some fruit from M&S before getting the train (almost missing the train in the process and only finding out later that I was on a breakaway half of the train which was suddenly going elsewhere.  But that’s by the by). I even had to go to a petrol station right by the Travelodge (remember what I said about not exciting or exotic?!) and only bought a bottle of water.  If there was any justice in the world, I would have a spectacular loss just for this.

But there’s more.

Today would ordinarily be a starve day.  But with an early start and a work thing away from the office – a work thing with much pressure and many snacks – I knew my usual routine would be hard to stick to.  And then a friend happens to be in London and we’re meeting for a couple of cocktails.  Well, there it is, right there, I might as well eat freely (and plentifully) and starve tomorrow, right?  Wrong.  I’ve eaten frugally – if somewhat randomly – in a kind of semi-starve day and will still do a starve day tomorrow.  I’ll probably be steaming drunk on a couple of cocktails but there we go.

I suspect though that I’m not going to have a good result on the WI tomorrow – only one proper starve day plus evening cocktails tonight is likely to lead to a mean and vicious Scales of Doom tomorrow.  But I feel kind of proud of myself – I just can’t sustain that if my weight doesn’t go down.  We’re likely to be going to Canada in late September and I’d really like to be out of this stone bracket, through the next and into the one below that.  I know.  But I can’t help but hope for this just the same.

PS Canada- we may be going to Nova Scotia for some of it AND (if there are any other Anne Shirley fans out there – she’s the patron saint of all ginger girls with overactive imaginations) we may even go to PEI!  I am actually ‘squeeee-ing’, if only on the inside.

The numbers game

Yesterday: cups of green tea = 1 (down from 6), temperature in office = 32 °C (measured but climbing), number of umbrellas in bag = 0, number of torrential showers caught in = 1, number of loose paving stones that sent a tsunami of dirty water over me from above the knee downwards = 2, number of expensive haircuts ruined by rain = 1.

It was not a good day.  It was a Monday. Nuff said.

Oh.  Those numbers.  Well, I’m still gently ricocheting between 2lbs over the half stone mark to 1lb under it.  I really need to make progress down into the next stone bracket – I’ve been in this one since February.  I’m still finding it hard but trying to rein in.  Today for example is a Dieting B day (not starve but not weekend) I’ve just eaten some pickled onion Burton’s Daily Fish n Chips (123 calories) and I really want to eat another bag.  I’m telling myself that I must wait for 20 mins and then see if I still want them.  Ssssh though – I’m not going to have them then either.  I’m also eating out tonight with a friend in Wahaca and I’ve researched the lowest calorie options.  And the colleague – and friend – who buys a steady stream of snacks for the team is on leave for 2 weeks so I don’t have to resist/succumb to those. 

On the negative side, I had booze twice at the weekend.  I usually have 1 aperitif and share a bottle of wine (making sure I have the lesser share) just once a week.  On Sunday we had (extremely delicious) English fizz.  This was a kind of reward for making it through a family lunch – in-laws.  And that’s not fair as they’re mostly very nice but my MIL picks the worst places to eat so we knew what to expect.  The waiter was like a cross between Basil Fawlty and Manuel.  He kept leaning on my shoulder as I was seated, or punctuating his exclamations by swatting my arm.  He even managed to spit on me.  We had a tussle over the right way to lay a table (he was wrong) and he brought serving plates of food from which he – quite literally lobbed – food on to our plates in a jumbled mess.  And it tasted as good as it looked -  Seren would have been appalled.  I left a lot of mine and palmed my pudding off on to P.  The best thing was the After Eight at the end.

Let’s see where all this takes me to on Thursday WI.

Not waving but drowning

Yes, okay.  I said I’d write twice a week.  I said a lot of things.  And, as we know, the way to hell is paved with good intentions.  Although I’ve never quite understood why you don’t get points for at least trying.  Harsh.

Overall I’m holding steady.  But underneath that top layer is a whole mess.  I’m doing well at the stave days, am wildly erratic on the other weekdays and putting on too much at the weekends.  I have got to get a grip.  I’ve not achieved anything since the beginning of the year and I am not at a weight where a bit of faffery would not be a disaster.  I’m at a loss to know how to hold myself to account – the blogging twice a week was supposed to do that and look how well that went! 

It is the time of year where we do extra long hikes but frankly, this has never made an iota of difference to my weight and I don’t see why this would suddenly change.

Every night I tell myself firmly that there will be no deviation – but I’m not achieving this sufficiently often to have any result.  What to do?  I’m fresh out of fresh ideas – other than digging deep and sustaining the period of resolve into waking hours.

Wish me luck, determination and godspeed (I typed this wrongly as dogspeed – which I like the sound of other than that my mother’s dogs are Labradors and not therefore a good example in terms of greed).