Absent without leave

It’s been a long, long time.  In the world of immediacy that is the internet, it’s probably a millennia.  I can practically see the tumbleweed blowing across this page, and the wind whistling mournfully across the emptiness.

We’ll come on to emptiness, fyi…

So, since I’ve been gone, what have I done?  Well, first of all in dieting news (because that is what this blog is about, despite me forgetting this at times), I put on 8lbs over 3 weeks at Christmas.  I have lost that now but it was a shock.  Another shock was weaning myself off drinking more than once a week (and no, I didn’t do Dry January – like January isn’t miserable enough) and thinking that starting the day with a chocolate was acceptable.  Yes, advent calendar, I’m looking at you.  

We’ve booked two trips away – oh, and I have a new job. 

The job: I say I have one, in fact it’s only on paper at the moment.  There’s a long wait to sort out leaving here and starting there, so I won’t be there until April.  And I was offered it in December!  I am terrified.  I have never left a job without being absolutely desperate to escape before.  I won’t say my current job is perfect, but I know I am valued for my contribution, especially with the most senior people here, and that is something I cherish, frankly.  I’m not absolutely sure that at the last moment, I won’t bottle it and refuse to leave.  I practically hyperventilate when I think of it.  But it’s a long time off.  And at the moment it is just me, doing the work of three people in my bit of our wider team so I may get very disenchanted very quickly.

We’re going to the West Country after Easter – this is my birthday present to P.  He’s disappointingly unmaterialistic, which makes him very hard to buy for, but he does like a lovely meal out.  So we’re going to Cornwall, back to Fifteen (one of the best meals we’ve ever had, along with Roux at the Langham).  It’s a long way to go for dinner, but as we’re flying down to Devon, we’re also visiting the B&B in where we got engaged for a couple of nights, as well as a lovely tearoom for lunch in Morewenstow (Cornwall) and a trip to the Camel Valley vineyard.  Weather permitting, we should get two good long walks in – one in Devon and one in Cornwall.

Then we’re going to New York for Christmas.  I did not love New York the one time I went, but I had booked us into a very dodgy bit of Harlem and there were massive protests causing disruption (not about our hotel, though there should have been.  There was old, rusted agricultural implements hanging on the walls for instance.  Or they might have been torture implements, it was hard to tell…).  It will also be different as two of P’s colleagues and their families will be there at roughly the same time – we all overlap for Christmas Day and Boxing Day at least and we’ll all meet up for Christmas Day lunch.  Which is likely to be Chinese.  So it will be very different.  I’ve broken the news to my mother and she’s not impressed.  We’ve yet to tell P’s mother.

But here we are at the beginning of bleak February with Spring just a notion, far into the future, let alone any holidays.  I do hate this time of year – but at least we’re through January.  I’m well and truly back on the My Fitness Pal app, counting all my calories and consistently meeting a daily 1000-1100 allocation.  Much more than this and weight starts to go on.  I am still struggling with moderation – as long as I can count and not have life in the way, I can just about manage.  But days where I have social things, I’m still too prone to think that as I can’t count it, I may as well not count at all that day and have a more lavish lunch and/or sneaky snacks.  I don’t know why I find it so hard.  Other than my appalling lack of willpower, of course.  I am meeting up with a friend on Thursday for a midlife crisis moment (no, no toy boy or motorbike) and we’re going out for dinner afterwards – the adrenaline is likely to lead to wine, which in turn, leads to less restrictive food choices.  It’s just as well that, on the whole, I have a very quiet social life.

This is getting long, so I’ll sign off in just a moment – but I said we’d come back to emptiness.  This is a literal rather than psychological thing (I think), and oh, I’m so fed up of being so hungry.  The band has done nothing for me yet.  I’ve had four “fills” which should stop the feelings of hunger – or rather, partially quell them and I shouldn’t be able to eat large portions.  I think packing on 8lbs over Christmas shows that I haven’t reached that point.  It’s unusual to have no response at all.  Sometimes you initially have that effect after a fill and it settles down a bit.  They’re at the point where I am going to have to have some investigation to see whether I have a leaky band or a baggy pouch.  Both of these sound like something that should be on Embarrassing Bodies (admittedly, I’ve never watched it but…).  If it’s the former I suspect it’s another op.  If it’s the latter, I have to have all the fill taken out and then it de-bags… somehow….  Either way, this would not be good news.  It’s frustrating when it seems like you’re the only person this doesn’t work for.  I’d still have to calorie count – and I am fine with that (kinda) – but I’d like the help we forked out so much for.