This blog is real...

So I could lie and pretend all was well in the weight loss department.

The truth - Nope...

This is HARD. When I started my next phase, I forgot that this weekend (just gone) was a holiday that went on for 4 days. Holiday = holiday food. The result is more like this:

I am enjoying being honest. I have a diet buddy who I share my successes and failures with. I have found it cathartic to be honest with her when I am going wrong... e.g. yesterday when I ate 2 ice creams and today when I ate a cream cake. I have had so much guilt and shame over eating things I shouldn't in the past, that I have found being open about it when I am eating so-called bad foods (they are not bad, they are foods that are treats and should not constitute the largest part of your diet if you want to get all your nutrients) to be novel and take away some of those shameful feelings that I am bad, wrong, failing...

I went out today and bought a lot of fruit and vegetables. I am going to make some fresh juice tomorrow and on Thursday I hope to make a nice soup and have more juice... flush my system with some vitamins and minerals and get back on the wagon.

If anyone ever reads this blog, especially if the person reading is a person who has struggled with their weight, I want them to see reality... that this is hard, that it's not an automatic thing - e.g. you start 'dieting' and lose weight and this continues till you hit your target weight... some people do manage that and some people don't. If I wrote how amazing I was doing and there were no slip-ups or hard patches, I don't think I would really be dealing with my 'food issues'.

Anyway, I am still of the mindset that if I could get back to exercising it would definitely help offset where I am slipping up with my food. I have decided I am also going to focus on this. Anything is better than nothing right?

Given Up - Focusing on my relationship with food

I have been physically quite 'extra' unwell the past few weeks and I am mentally struggling. I have a lot of things I am processing in my mind about my life that have nothing to do with my weight. I need to change so many things and make decisions about situations in my life and I find that all takes guts and time and energy. I am very tired and pretty fed up with the situation as it stands and I don't really know what to do, where I am going or how to get there. As a result, I feel quite depressed.

I am still conscious of my food intake and what I am eating, so I am keeping somewhat of an eye on it. I reckon I am eating about 1,500-1,600 a day on my 'looser' days and 1,250-1,450 on my more controlled days. I have logged on and off over the past month. I haven't lost more weight since I last posted weight loss. Exercise is still challenging due to the not feeling well and I have only managed walks here and there. If anything, I would love to change this aspect - if the weather was nicer and the sun was shining, I could imagine myself getting outside... but it's been flooding here and so grey (am sure this does not help my mindset).

At the moment, I am aiming to either stay the same weight or perhaps lose if I can get a deficit. I am logging on the days when I feel like it and not bothering on the days when I don't. I am not going to waste time and energy on worrying about logging when I could be using that energy to do something else. I am hoping that being kind to myself and being less obsessive about the whole 'diet' and 'exercise' regime will actually allow me to revisit a more structured regime  in a few weeks or a month or two. I don't know when, but I want to get back there.

AIMS -

So my biggest aim is to not gain.
To be able to be comfortable with what I eat and not to be so hung up on everything.
I don't want the emotional state to result in comfort eating or eating without thinking.
I want to deal better with my situation from a food perspective... perhaps to focus on repairing my relationship with food, so it is not the enemy and neither is it the friend - it just is... fuel, that I enjoy, but that I eat because I need it, not because my life is a mess and/or I feel down.

Dealing with disappointment

One of the things I am learning to deal with is disappointment.

I feel disappointed in myself this week because:

I feel as if I should have been able to 'control' myself better.
I feel as if I have wasted about 1 week when I could have been losing weight. (Not sure if I have or not as it's my not weighing week).
I feel as if there is not much point trying when I may end up putting it all back on.

A lot of these feelings come back to my need to totally control the eating/diet/logging situation or else completely fall off the wagon and give up. I find it frustrating that I am a total all or nothing person. I either am committed to the program, or I am not. There's not 'partial' with me. I find the whole idea of this all or nothing to be totally disturbing because I cannot see how it will work when it comes to the idea of maintenance. Does it mean that I have to be forever on a diet and forever logging?

I would be lying if I said I have not thought about the fact that I may not lose more weight and I may not reach my goal. Weeks like the one that has just passed lead me to that kind of thinking. 17.25 pounds in and I can feel that the novelty of logging, calorie counting and being in the weight loss/diet zone have completely worn off. Now it is a chore. This completely flies in the face of the fact I have lost the weight and my clothes are falling off me etc. Shouldn't that be a motivator in itself? Why isn't that enough to keep me from straying?

These feelings and situation are totally compounded by TOTTM - it's a difficult time for me. I have dreadful, really excrutiating periods with what seems like some kind of endometriosis/interstitial cystitis going on. My hormones are all over the place and the PMS runs pretty rampant. Being able to control myself in the face of this has proved too much. I just ended up giving in and eating what I wanted.

The part that really irks me is the fact that I have been dilly-dallying around this 165ish weight for a while... I feel that by now I should have moved on and be well away from it, but I know that if I am not careful, all this extra eating and not exercising is going to see me back at 165 and pretty much ready to throw the towel in.

So yes, I am disappointed and I am frightened. I don't want to be this weight... I feel really uncomfortable.

Struggling & TTOTM

This week has been a TOTAL nightmare...

It's TTOTM and I kinda went crazy and have not been within my calorie allowance for the past 4 days. It's not a complete disaster - I have been having between 1,500-1,700ish calories and apart from one day, which was my day off, I have forced myself to log so that I can get an accurate picture of how much I am consuming. I do feel proud of myself in a warped kind of way... for actually logging even though I know I was not within my allowance at all. The sad thing is that most of the extra calories have gone on cravings - chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate, cakes, dates, a granola bar... not all bad, but still not ideal.

Today I have been pretty much bed ridden for the whole day... in severe pain. So no exercise to even out the extra consumption. I am hoping that once TTOTM is out of the way, I can go back to my 1,400 allowance and stay within it.

Going Around In Circles

I ate 1,525 calories yesterday and 1,423 today. Yesterday was disappointing. I ate way more than I realised. It's embarrassing to say, but I didn't actually realise how much I had eaten till I logged my final meal on Calorie Count. Today was less of a mess, but I still ate more than I should. While some might say: "it's only 23 extra calories", it's still more than I should have and that means I have had 3 days in a row now where I have eaten more than my allowance.

I truly hope this is just a symptom of the holiday time!

I am still struggling with my swollen thigh. I am intending - thanks to a friend's suggestion - to do a juice fast starting tomorrow evening after dinner and running into Tuesday. I am not sure how long it will last. Maybe only 20 hours, maybe 24 or more. I find a juice fast helpful at times to reset the acidity level in my body and just clear out old 'gunk'.