I lost weight until September 2007 with no probs really. Then I went on a 3 week trip to New Zealand and gained 5 kg. I lost it again by Christmas but after that my weight bobbed around as I started to struggle with binge eating. The picture in my avvie was taken then. I didn't know how to handle the binge eating issue. I kept trying and I'd come on here and rave on for a while, then binge again. I got sick of myself talking about the same thing when I wasn't making any real progress with my actual weight. I'd eat well for a week or two but I was down to 70 kg (+/- ~3 kg), so a day or two with binges would cripple the loss. Also, about the time I left here I had a lot of incidental stress in my life. My mum moved from her home into a place in some units for old people near me, and didn't cope with the move well. I got caught up in trying to help my daughter prepare for a dance competition (which I stressed about a lot more than she did). Also, I started working in a temporary job that I found very challenging. And at some date in amongst all that I found myself coping with issues related to a friendship that had been bothering me for a while. It ended arse up and left me grieving and guilt ridden. I stopped coming here about then.

I didn't give up on my goal to be healthy, but I thoroughly lost my way. I found information thin on the ground but I did try to use whatever material I found about binge eating. I tried spasmodically to find a way to make it work again - usually with the most success during school breaks. Sometimes my trying was purely intellectual - just hunting for relevant information. Now and again I'd find something that I thought I could apply and work through it, but mainly I just learned more about what I was doing, and made some spasmodic progress with my emotional issues. I had a couple of patches where I lost weight but it was mainly all gains.

I found out fairly early on that CBT is the therapy for Binge Eating Disorder, though at first I hadn't had it long enough to qualify as having a disorder. Umm. You are supposed to have had the behaviours for 6 months before it's a disorder. So when I first got it, I could see that I didn't fit the criteria. Plus, the sites I saw didn't offer much in the way of strategies beyond seeing a professional. At that time I couldn't see the need. I probably could have been helped and recovered faster if I'd seen someone back then - but maybe not - it's not necessarily easy to find the right person to be a helper. Also, not long before I started posting here again I read something Steve quoted : [I]"for every one person who is clinically mentally ill in this regard, there are thousands who are sub-clinically fucked up"[/I] [url]http://weight-loss.fitness.com/541165-post66.html[/url] and I thought yep that's me. Sub-clinically fucked up. For some reason I found that to be a helpful idea. I guess I was clinically fucked up for a while but before that - not technically and now also - not really. I'm not sure how the way I ate in years gone by fits in with me being a binge eater. I recall patches of eating in a binge like way, but I didn't fight it or become so distressed about it, and I didn't try to analyze what I was doing. I did perceive trying to lose weight as stressful though - which it wasn't really when I first joined here, and which it isn't again now.

Recently, one on-line trail led to me to a [URL="http://www.livinglifetothefull.com/"]site[/URL] where they were offering on-line self help using CBT - not for bingeing - just for whatever was wrong with you that CBT might help with. I got so unreasonably cranky with the process while I was trying to register, that I took it as a sign of subconscious resistance against a change and registered anyway. I was cranky with every step I took on the site. No way could I relate to the example of they gave of how someone with anxiety might behave - until a lightbulb moment a couple of days later. And it did help. I think what I learned there was what I needed to know.

I'd already made some progress before that. My husband suggested we could do without having chocolate in the house, I agreed. A couple of days later I started writing about my weight again, though not here. Oddly, it turned out I started writing consistently again, on the two year anniversary of the first time I registered here, which was also a major turning point. Also, as far as I could tell from using my unreliable scales, I weighed about the same as I had back then. Had I paid myself out enough? I thought so. I can't say I'm over the binge eating now, but when I started writing again on November 28th, I went back to something like the stage I was at last summer, with good patches where I thought I was over it, and then be a relapse of a day or two - Christmas didn't help. However, it was different to last year in that overall I have lost weight. So far in 7 and a half weeks I've lost about 5 kg (11 lb), I think. It blipped up and down again over Christmas. Better than that, I've made heaps of progress with the anxiety that I figured out was the main underlying problem with my binge eating. So now with a combination of having fewer moments where I want to binge - partly from dealing with my life better and partly from eating better - and better strategies to manage any binges that sneak in there, I reckon I'm in promising shape. From my reading I believe it's right to notice and care about the frequency and severity of binges and see it as significant that this has changed, despite the fact that I'm still not fully over it.

The way I eat now is nowhere near as strict as it was two years ago. I don't want it to be. I don't want something that will fall apart on me the moment I have to adapt to different circumstances. So I don't worry about measuring my food strictly against the plan I started with. Also I don't exactly count calories either. I have a good rough idea of what calories I'm getting from last summer when I tracked them. Now I just sort of know what's ok and what's better and try not to stress about the whole thing. I have an idea that counting carefully might not be good for a binge eater. Different eating disorders have a bit in common and some people think the way to deal with them should be similar too. Just at the moment I don't even think much about food and I like that. I just try not to go too long without it, and to eat a high fibre carb (not too much though), some protein and some vegetable every time I do eat. When I started again, while I was still teaching, I would eat a piece of fruit mid-morning and have a mini-meal when I came home. Now it's more like 3 meals, and sometimes something extra between lunch and dinner. I try to take notice of how hungry I am to decide how much to have, and I've stopped trying to make myself eat a bunch of vegetables regardless of how awkward it is. I still eat enough, but I'm trying to control my tendency to go overboard with things and to NOT eat past the point where I'm hungry (no matter how much protein it says to have on the old plan and even if the mountain I'm eating, is vegies :) ).

I'm exercising right now more as an attempt to control my stress than to help my body. I know I need to step that up, but I don't want to start freaking out about how I can't fit it in properly. I just want to keep pushing towards developing an early morning exercise habit so that I can start doing something I can maintain.

I'm weird I suppose. My weight is not that far off the beginning weight I had when I started here, but I don't feel like I'm at the beginning at all. I feel like I'm already working on maintaining a decent weight rather than losing it. I believe if I get myself properly oriented towards that and get my mind in order, I will naturally lose weight. That's how it's been so far. I have no idea how far down that will take me. For now and in the future, my focus needs to be on not binging. If I get back to 66 + 5 kg and can't go lower than that without binge eating then that's probably where I'll stay!

Sorry folks for yet another long post ... I'm starting to think that's turning into another overindulgence.

Anxiety and binge eating (II)

Lots of things make me irritable. I just spent this entire afternoon, trying to deep breathe and relax my muscles to NOT build up tension in my body and I still swore at the woman who tried to pinch my parking spot (she didn't hear me), and stomped around the kitchen in a fury when my husband stuck dog meat in the bowl I had next to me and was about to use to cook cabbage in. But I feel good now ... Really good. I absolutely am making progress.

I am feeling exceptionally positive right now.

I keep thinking that all the things I know about binge eating now, must have been things I already knew before. Possibly, I could go back to what I wrote a year or more in the past, and find all the things I know that relate to it, already written down. I do keep coming across things that I have previously looked at, which seem to be pointing straight to what seems like a revelation now. But I don't remember having these thoughts before, and I don't remember seeing anyone else say what I think now. Again, as with my own words, others have said things that point straight this way - but I didn't hear what they said as meaning this exact thing. Maybe it was because I didn't think of myself as having a problem with anxiety and maybe it was because I didn't recognize that I even had a problem with binge eating until around this time last year.

Here's the anxiety and binge eating summary (so far). I can influence the amount of anxiety I have a lot. I can try to change the issues that stress me (useful, slow and difficult), and I can try to deal with the issues that come up in a way that doesn't increase my anxiety (useful, quick, repetitious). I can do things that reduce it. When I reduce it enough the binge eating goes away.

:) That's a short story so short that it seems almost untruthful to me because so much is left out. Still it seems like a revelation to me just now.

Binge eating and anxiety

I'm really happy now. I feel I've made more progress with taking control back from the binge eating, and the process I'm using to do that has benefits all of its own, whether I binge eat or not.

Did I talk about this before? That's the downside of keeping a spot where half my ideas are out there and half (more than half), in draft.

It's getting more and more clear to me that my eating has been impelled by anxiety - that is anxiety at the level where it's a bit of a disorder. I don't know what that level is called - a level where a professional might help, and yet isn't necessarily required?

So anyway, I've been working on doing things in my life that help deal with sources of anxiety for me. For example, I'm getting a lot more order in my home. This helps! However, that sort of path isn't as new to me as the other tack I'm taking, which is to accept that some situations will occur that are liable to trigger anxious responses in me, regardless of how I try to control my life - so I need to try and zap the anxious responses in myself as the stress comes to me and have a way of handling that stress, so that it's not feeding the anxiety I've had.

I followed some on-line trails a little way back which led me to a CBT (Cognitive Based Therapy) site. I wasn't looking for something about anxiety because I wasn't paying much attention to the fact that I had a problem with anxiety. I just was aware that CBT is the therapy often suggested as relevant for eating disorders, and I saw a link to this site which helps people try to get some self help from a CBT perspective for whatever ails them. The site wasn't about weight loss. At the time I visited I barely took in what they were saying, but I paid enough attention to influence what I've done since.

I took a few things from the site.

1) If I'm suffering from anxiety I'm liable to irrational thoughts.
(Who me? I thought - and then the next time I was writing here, I wrote one down. It wasn't exactly a thought, more like the translation of my feeling into thought, and then I could see just how irrational it was.
It was this thought: If I stop worrying something bad will happen. I understand that there was some logic involved in what started that feeling, but I also get it that by itself, that idea just won't hold up. When I wrote this down a bunch of stuff fell into place. I had been told before, that this is what people think when they are suffering from anxiety, and that they need to just stop thinking that. This was some time ago, when I was also very anxious, without realizing that I was. OK. Last time that information turned out to be correct. This time it did too.

2) If I'm suffering anxiety I may be irritable and cranky with other people and push them away from me, despite the fact that I need their support.
(Who me?) I'm one of the good guys aren't I? If I'm cranky it's because I'm extremely provoked by a succession of provoking incidents and provoking people!!
OK. Maybe I am irritable.

3) If I'm anxious, doing relaxation exercises a couple of times a day might help. Yes. They only relax me while I'm doing them, but apparently afterward they will help keep the general level of stress I feel at a lower level - like the lower stress will linger a bit.

Geez I was resistant to that idea. My response was that I didn't want to drop my guard and let less anxiety in, because I had to stay anxious to protect myself. Also, I didn't need to listen to a relaxation exercise, because I was already very good at relaxing my body very fast whenever I wanted to, but I just didn't want to. So I didn't concentrate on the exercise. LOL. I did hear something about flowers though.

So I don't know if focusing on the physical relaxation components and doing them slowly might offer me something extra or not, because by now I always speed through it, always am amazed at how limp my body has become and how automatic the responses are now and always feel that it's very pleasant. So I did it that way - my own way. And I added some flowers to the end of my routine - because I do like flowers. It was nice. I did it some more sometimes because I liked it.

And then I really did become too busy and caught up in Christmas and it's stresses, and various commitments - and I followed up other issues on-line, and I was reluctant to put a heap of extra time into the anxiety/binge/weight area. So I guess I found some materials I'd need to shore up a bit more of the path ahead of me - but actually I wasn't pushing forward on the path itself - I took a couple of steps backwards. Small back steps though, because I wasn't sweating them. Yeah, I ate worse, yeah, I was showing anxiety - but knowing I could see where to get more of what I needed to deal with those things kept a lid on how bad it got - plus you know - I really was starting to realize that stressing less - even stressing less about what I needed to do to control my bingeing and weight issues, really was paying off, so I kept not stressing about it as much as I could.

Stress comes though. Stressful situations crop up. That is totally unavoidable. Not everyone finds the same situation causes the same level of anxiety though. That point is the one I've been working on and making progress with in a new way.

I haven't felt motivated to do relaxation exercises twice a day. I don't know whether I ever will. I've done some though. That was better than none.

Also, more recently I've done my instant relax repeatedly, whenever I've thought it might be a good idea. I guess this is a bit like deep breathing, which is hardly a secret technique for quickly lowering physical stress, however, it's more than that for me, and I don't think I could do it as effectively as I do now, if I hadn't practiced it slowly, many times in the past.

Then another piece in the puzzle (scale in the wing?), came to me within the last couple of days.

I have deliberately pushed myself to do something that I thought would be worthwhile, but involve some stress. The reality of it maxed my stress in a major way. I guess that was part of the reason I did it. I felt anxiety whenever I thought about going back to a forum I'd been a part of and thought going back might help me neutralize it. Well, it did, but not instantly, not before it raised my stress levels through the roof. It was full on, throbbing pulse in my neck, sick feeling in my stomach - massive. Even writing that is bringing the physical symptoms back a bit. So for that, I used some repeats of the quick exercise. During one day, I did it so often, frequently just using part of the process that it started to get a bit automatic, and without thinking, I did it when I got a kid stress attack. Bingo. It was the magic scale.

I started looking for that one before I started this blog. I'd seen the habit I had of imagining the chocolate as the stress came in, or grabbing for it as the stress came in. Was it obvious to you that I needed a stress reducing habit to replace it with? Not to me, not then. I just saw that I was trying to balance some pain with some pleasure, and looked for an alternative pleasure I could imagine or obtain which wouldn't make me fat! Occasionally I'd have ideas of what that might be. I even got excited by the thought that I could use a focus on the beauty around me, photography, art, this blog. I thought well, I couldn't necessarily enjoy those things at the time I had a hassle to deal with, but I could insert the idea that I WOULD enjoy them in the evening or weekend, instead of thinking that I would eat chocolate. This kinda worked a bit. At any rate, at times I would move past the instant thought of food when I got stressed. However, I was still getting stressed. These past couple of days I realized that if I insert the destress routine while I'm being bombarded, if I have the idea that the right way of reacting to ridiculous behaviours by children is to be physically unemotional (despite recognizing the behaviours for what they are), then the stress gets deflected before it gets started. I simply have less stress by not letting the events trigger physical stress patterns within me, or by releasing that stress as soon as I notice it.

I'm sure this post is a mess. But it's a mess about a good important thing. I really feel like this is a piece (a scale), I needed.

I always felt that I would get to this spot one day - I felt like I was moving toward it - but I did not know what was the thing in this place. That's very strange really, because at the same time, I don't think I've said one new thing. I don't see much at all that hasn't been said before or that I didn't already know. Only, when I get the mess sorted out of the words here - I really do think - for me - this IS NEW.

Also, when I link it to binge eating, to the way it makes my impulses to eat badly just fall away, then I truly think it is saying something I do not believe I've seen everywhere else.

Maybe it's too new. Maybe it won't stand the test day to day? Remains to be seen. It's working. That matters. Whereas once, I could have lined up three bulldozers worth of whatever mental push I had against a binge and the binge would have marched through them, now if I get it early enough, I can exert a pinky push and it goes.

Plus there's the Holy Grail - the ideas that will interrupt a binge once it's started - turning on destress patterns in my body.

I so am not going to try and link this to hormones tonight! Of course it does. I fully recall that that stress hormone, whatever it's called - cortisol? promotes eating. Why did I not understand this in the way I do now, before???

Am I imagining that this is a new idea to me? I know I often think I'm realizing something new then read what I wrote years ago and find out that I already knew it then ..

Okay, this is just another scale I know. Nothing works by itself - but what a scale.

BTW - "kid stress attack" = sudden uncontrollable gush of stress to the head, provoked by unforeseeable infuriating behaviour on the part of a kid.

Posting / Creating drafts

It looks like I barely visit here. I haven't posted here as much as I intended to, but I've written a lot more here than I've posted. I love that actually. I love being able to go to just one place that has patches of my ideas that I thought were ready to put out here, and also being able to come here to just keep other relevant information and to just blurt out whatever is on my mind without having to consider whether it's something to publish or not. That's all in one place. Very cool.

I want to shift this blog though. Ever since I decided that, it's had an impact on what I do here. A negative, do less impact. I know it will take a big patch of time and a head of steam to make the move and right now, what I have of that I'm turning towards ordering and making the most of my every day life.

I just love this youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Zd8ekEIWlc

Happy New Year.

Binge eating

I see a lot of information out there about binge eating disorder. I see very little about binge eating separate from that. I don't even see much about the disorder aside from "See a professional". If you are reading this, believing you have a disorder and you can see a professional, then follow the professional advice. Don't read my blog instead.

I felt lost when I started binge eating and recognized that I was. I had done it in the past without recognizing that it was anything other than undesirable eating. When I started binge eating again after around of year of eating well, I didn't even know a name for what I was doing. Then I worked out what it was called. Then I started on the net looking for what to do. I could NOT find out. This is important.

At that time I didn't fit the criteria being used to describe someone with a binge eating disorder. I'd already previously contacted a psychologist about my eating and at that time it turned out to be an expensive waste of money. I'd also contacted a dietitian and found I had to sift her advice for what I needed from her (ie take what applied to me and helped, and ignore what would have made things worse for me). So I did not feel inclined to go back to a professional.

I guess when I write this, I have in mind that maybe there are other people who are like me in that they are seeking free internet based information and contact to help with binge eating, and that, like me, they may have found it hard to get that. I think that this blog might head in the direction of meeting that search.

I am still working out how I will use this blog. I have made no attempt at all to have anyone else look at it, and I doubt they have. I still wonder about exactly what I will do with the whole thing though. It helps me. I see that abundantly - but to what extent should I even try to direct it outwards?

A big mac, fries and a diet coke

Nah. I don't do it. I don't care much for Big Macs. I'm not used to having an extra piece of bread in the middle of my burger.

It's a bit of a running joke though isn't it? Someone fat orders high calorie food at the same time as they seem to be trying to limit their calories by choosing a low calorie drink. Ha ha.

However, although I see that there's a mismatch there which looks funny, I don't think it's the wrong thing to do.

I just see changing from drinking high sugar softdrink to low calorie soft drink as a butterfly scale. A change for the better. Water instead of soft drink would be even better. A wholemeal roll with lowfat beef and a side salad - even better. A mountain of french fries, a large shake and a couple of extra burgers with it, even worse.

While we're trying to change from bad habits to good habits we ourselves need to see all improvements for what they are and hang on to them. This is both a daily thing and a long term thing. In a day, we might have an impulse moment that we respond to and eat something we regret. That needs to sit in a bubble. It needs to be separate from the rest of the day. Acknowledging regret is one thing, deciding that this mistake confirms us (me), as someone who isn't worth taking care of, and then being careless about the rest of the food that day is another step back and a much bigger one than the first.

We all understand that changing a fat, awkward person into slim, agile person isn't going to happen overnight. Also, changing bad habits into good habits isn't going to happen overnight. They each require butterfly scales.

Butterflies and binge eating

Today I was in a shopping centre looking at clothes with my daughter and I noticed that they were selling tiny bracelets for a charity called "Butterflies". It is a charity to support people with eating disorders.

Hmm.

This is a totally random connection to my blog. I am writing the blog because losing weight is an important issue for me.

I chose the name because I like butterflies. It was only this year that I saw photos of glasswing butterflies and that seemed to me to be quite lovely - they looked amazing, and I liked the name. I thought it was perhaps not all that well known though, so I wondered if I might use it for myself sometime as a username. I didn't use it here though. Those butterflies live a long way from me, so I figured I wouldn't be able to use photos of them - and yet the idea of having a name linked to butterflies was kinda stuck in my head by then.

Butterfly scales

A butterfly has tiny scales linked to each other all over its wings. These tiny but rather complex structures help give the colour and potential iridescence of the wing. Also, together, they are what makes up the wing's surface - so they allow the butterfly to fly.

I see all the small pieces of information and the separate days where I take time to reflect and write here as being like butterfly scales that will eventually allow me to live with more freedom and more beauty.

Weight loss can be seen as simple. Just consume less calories than you use and you will lose weight. That makes sense. Seeing it as simple is a reasonable perspective for some people. I guess they would say I just need to decide to fly. However the reality for most of us is that we need more detailed information than that, and turning information into useful knowledge and applying it, will take involve many smaller details, and small steps. They don't have to bog us down, but will be needed.

At any rate, I had no idea about this charity when I named the blog. It seems strange to me that on a day when I'm considering labelling or tagging the blog regarding binge eating, that I should see that the name links to this charity.

Of course not everyone really sees binge eating as an eating disorder but it can be. Also I'm aware that aside from those with an actual disorder there are many others who wouldn't be classified as having a disorder but who are troubled by binge eating. It's both a mental and a physical problem. It can result from both mental and physical issues and it can cause both mental and physical issues.

I write here more often than I post.

I find writing here helpful. I just don't always have time to turn what I've written into something ready to publish.

Writing for myself

OK. I've been thinking too much about writing for other people. That's ok. The idea of writing for other people is a good one. Only writing for other people takes more time and more revision. Whether I have time for that or not, I need to write for myself. I need to keep the focus going. It makes a genuine difference. Writing little things about how I want to change my fat is energizing, and diminishes my feeling of wanting to eat a bit extra.

Even a little patch like this is helpful.

Piece of cake

Today I was teaching 5 year olds. First of all the day started with a discussion of the fresh baked Christmas cookies a mum had brought in for her new girl daughter to offer round after fruit time, and there were enough for teachers too, she said. We needed to check who could and couldn't have them. (What about me I thought - not big cookies - I've been pretty good - I can have treats sometimes if they aren't big ... I didn't decide.)

At morning tea time we sat in a circle. The children were eating pieces of cut fresh fruit and I got out my banana. It was a huge banana but there were lots of black bits in it, so I thought that by the time I left them all out, it would probably turn out to be the right size. I was just biting around the second mushy patch when the teaching assistant turned up with some cake on a plate. It was another teacher's birthday and she'd sent us a piece each. Did I want mine now or later? Now this is not ordinary looking cake. It has swirls of slight colour variations and of things that aren't straight cake. I was instantly in impulse eating territory.

Having already wondered and pretty much decided to eat a cookie, part of my barrier, my "No thanks" habit, was already damaged. The now or later question also tended to go round that. Any way, I said, "Now". I put the banana away. It had heaps of icing though, so I peeled that off. Then just as I started eating it, I wondered, "What kind of cake is this?" The first impulse had been "Looks yummy". Now I was remembering how amazed and horrified I'd been when I checked the calories on caramel mud cake. It did look a bit like caramel mud cake too. Well, it was a small piece and I definitely wasn't eating the icing. I checked the calories in mudcake from The Cheesecake Shop back in April just before my weight war collapsed - Boston Mudcake was 685 calories for 1/12 of a cake.

Well it wasn't as big a piece as that, and actually it's the sugar spike I'm more concerned with right now, the thing that might knock my whole plan around. Should I have treats from time to time, including food that is shockingly high in calories? I think so. But even then it should happen in a way that's not likely to start spikes and falls in my blood sugar. Cake should be a small piece attached to a meal. It should be something decided on, not eaten on impulse. It should be enjoyed. It shouldn't be eaten awkwardly and lead to instant regret. This piece of cake did cause instant regret!. Anyway, I was thinking that though there's sugar in the fruit, I think oranges and apples might be considered low GI, and I saw something about low GI foods helping minimize sugar spikes that might be caused by other foods so I ate a couple of pieces of orange and a couple of pieces of apple. I didn't really know if that would make things better or worse. I crossed my fingers and did it with good intentions. (I don't usually eat their fruit but I felt a bit urgent about it, and the kids were about to give up on eating what they had.)

Good news. I had an okay day. I ate a normal lunch. I came home and ate a normal snack - though with more sense of hunger than usual. I ate a normal dinner. Afterwards I did feel a bit hungry and had half a tub of yoghurt. Then I watched a tv show and felt a bit hungry. I told myself I shouldn't take notice of that hunger though because it might be related to mucking up the food. Then I noticed how sleepy I was and thought it might be related to being sleepy. Also, watching tv has sometimes made me want to eat (though usually without feeling hungry). I didn't act on the feeling of hunger. I decided on an early night. I coped, yet again with an hour of tv without eating. (I feel proud of that. I used to just binge with tv, or avoid tv. Being able to watch, and not get frantic is a really good sign for me. Also, I like being able to to watch sometimes and my daughter and like to share a show with sometimes, which is what I did tonight.

I feel a bit more empty and a bit smaller round the middle today. Maybe I am.

Summary: I ate a piece of cake. It tasted good but I was sorry I did. I don't think it was a good choice to eat it when and how I did.

Also, though I didn't eat them, there were Christmas cookies! It's an awkward time of year. I really don't want that to mess up what I'm doing. I don't want to try and avoid every temptation or say no to everything though. I want to be able to just have one little thing maybe and say to myself that when I do that, I'm choosing the sustainable path.

I did actually lose weight, in the lead up to Christmas last year. I think I may have lost some of it a bit fast - but maybe not. I did lose it though. I was on the equivalent of my lowest weight on Christmas Eve. Christmas though - I overate, and let myself feel overfull and then I kept going on the leftovers at our house - and then I gained, and then I thought I needed to lose it superfast. It was a pain. That's what I don't want. I don't want the erratic eating. I don't want to eat till I feel overfull. I don't want to have the attitude that I better eat it while I can. Making the most of opportunities to eat is definitely a mind set from my worst eating self, my binge eating self. I didn't do that today. What I did today, and the way I did it was ok, in itself. It could be a negative, though, if it set me up to repeatedly have immensely high calories snacks, or if it was a trigger for me to try to make up for eating it by going without the food I need to sustain control.

Amazing how many words I can devote to one piece of cake. I really never got over reading that figure of 685 calories per piece!! Some "food" is just so full of fat and sugar that it's crazy. It really does have to be dealt with carefully.

Time to exercise

Day 14

What a great article I found today. What a great blog I should say - but there was one entry I want to talk about here and put into practice soon.

I need to exercise!

I haven't exercised much since I started eating properly this time. I need to.

I want to exercise, because it will make me feel good and because it will help me lose weight and because it will help me to be healthy. Also, and very importantly, I am aware that almost all people who lose significant amounts of weight and keep it off, do exercise for at least an hour every day. I think this is important.

The National Weight Control Registry is an American research project which is tracking what's happening with more than 5,000 people who have lost significant amounts of weight, and kept it off over a long period of time. I can't think of more appropriate research than that, to help me find what things will be most useful for me to maintain whatever weight loss I achieve. There are a few things most of these people have in common, but one thing stands out as happening with the biggest percentage of them. A huge ninety percent of them exercise, on average about an hour a day.
So I reckon that means I need to.


When to exercise?

I was exercising quite a lot when I lost weight before but I never had a stable routine for achieving that. Finding the time for it was was always something I had to work at, no matter how motivated I was, or how much I was enjoying the exercise.

Repeatedly I said to myself that with the obligations I have, there was only one healthy way I could be sure I would get some of my exercise every day, reliably and automatically. I would need to wake up earlier and take time for it before the rest of the routines and efforts and events of the day began.

I was very much in a situation where eating well became a routine. (In fact it was bouncing out of that routine that started my problems - another story.) While it was working I would find that in difficult and stressful times my food routine was a support to me. It didn't stress me to eat well, it helped me. I believed that my exercise should be like that too. Exercising was something I found helped deal with stress - but sometimes, and often repeatedly, fitting it into a busy tiring day was just a bridge too far, and it didn't happen.

I didn't even think it would be good to make it a regular part of my after dinner routine. Immediately after eating, would be a problem because I'd be physically unable to get the exercise intensity I sometimes wanted. Food is best eaten after exercise not before.

Most of the evening, I wanted to have time available for things that might come up within the family, for the kind of relaxed fun that can come from having some uncommitted time, and for other obligations that came up from sometimes working as a teacher.

I didn't want to try to fit it in by making sure I did it before bed, no matter how late it was. Exercise helps good sleep, but not if it happens to close to bedtime. I believe that would be a recipe for insomnia. So sometimes I have exercised during the evening, but I thought that trying to make it a goal to always do it, would turn it into a turn off - something that would undermine my intention to make my changes stick.

How to wake up?

I've said before that I think for me to achieve a healthy weight I need to get enough sleep. Now I'm also saying, that I think I need to wake up early. So I've had this ongoing issue of thinking I really ought to start going to bed earlier, but I've never got anywhere with that. Also, on the odd occasion I have managed to wake up early enough but I haven't converted that into the beginning of exercise. Most often I find myself automatically and tenaciously clinging to my pillow as long as I can. I have had a lot of practice at going to bed late, knowing I need to get as much sleep time as I can, then being disturbed, and yet managing to stay in bed, sleeping, as long as possible, and that's what I do. I also seem never to have changed from the time when my children were babies and I developed the tendency to fall asleep at the drop of a hat regardless of my physical circumstances. I've had the odd night of bad sleep because I've had issues on my mind, but that's not the norm for me.

I have also, over the years, had other times when I've thought an early start would help me have a better life. I've tried more than once to just set an alarm and make myself respond to it. At one stage I booked automatic wake up phone calls to a phone in another room. I knew I would get up for them, because I would never be sure what they were until I did answer, and because a phone call early in the day tends to make my heart race a bit and wake me up. Yet, I repeatedly answered the phone and then fell asleep again.

Today, I read the most amazing article. I hadn't read Steve Pavlina's Self Development Blog at all before. Today I found it fairly early in the day and ended up glued in my seat reading.

One entry was just so relevant to this topic!! It's called How to get up right away when your alarm goes off. I was really intrigued to see the title and really excited to read the article. He says that to get up earlier, people usually try to use the two methods I've just described, (the ones I've tried to use myself) and that they both don't work. Wow. He didn't say I needed to be more disciplined. He said, that when you wake up your brain is all fussy and sleepy and isn't working properly and so it doesn't follow through on the good decision you made previously when your brain was working. I'm reading it going YES! That's me, that's what happens. That's exactly what I worked out!! But that doesn't mean I'm doomed. This guy says he was just the same, but he had worked out a way round it which he used and now he gets up early every day, no problem.

He reckons he practiced getting up straight away when the alarm went off, during the day. He did it over and over to condition himself into automatically responding to the alarm that way. It makes sense to me. I can't do it right away - I have two days work - but I AM going to do it. I think this is the missing idea I needed, to be able to make this change. I might need to make sure I'm not desperate for sleep when I start to try the daytime practice too!

Okay it might not work for me. I have a different lifestyle and different obligations ... but it might!!


Food was good again today. Very similar to yesterday. I got a bit antsy during the morning - perhaps I needed my mid morning snack - perhaps it was just an emotional thing because I thought I should do tons and tons of housework and I didn't want to do any. Whatever the reason, it turned out to be something I could wait out.

Another scale

for Monday 8 December 2008

Day 13

Today I ate ok, again. I'm happy about that. I had a normal breakfast, a cappuccino for morning tea while I was out with my son, a ham sandwich, carrot and pear for lunch, a big, late afternoon tea of almonds, a ripe banana and half a capsicum, and a dinner of spaghetti with a sauce made from tuna, tomato, olives and herbs on some baby spinach and with a half a capsicum, and half a carrot.

I fell asleep after dinner for a while. When I woke up I had the feeling that dinner might not have been enough. I decided it wasn't the time to act on that feeling though. I didn't quite have the sleepy blahs - I did have the sleepy deception though I reckon and I wasn't taken in by it.

I spent a long time looking up and updating my references for weight loss today. I also wrote a lot this evening about what I think went on when I was binging this year, and about some of the things that I believe were steps which helped me get back on track. It's all too much for one blog, and some of it, maybe needs a lot of revision before I publish it.

So this is it for today. I'm working on it. I'm happy with how I'm going. I should exercise and I haven't and I should have been in bed long ago, but I'm doing ok.

Scales

Day 12

Well I'm trying not be too scale oriented here. I associate that with going off the rails. By that I mean a sort of binge-purge cycle. I don't throw up. I just oscillate between behaving OTT trying to lose then OTT eating uncontrollably.

However.

I did jump on my dodgy home scales a day or so after I started this, and they showed my weight as a bit over the amount I recorded here. I can't remember exactly what. I'm bad with numbers. I tend to remember what they mean to me and not what they are. Also, I try to forget what I see on the digital scales I have at home because I know they're unreliable. They're probably roughly right. If I'm losing they will tend to show a lower figure one month to the next and so on, but that might show a variation of 2 kgs in 2 minutes! So if I'm losing and I see a lower figure than I've seen all week, I figure, I'm getting a bit lower - but I try not to take any one figure to heart. Also, I know those scales weigh me a bit higher than the scales at the health club and I think the health club ones are more accurate - they're a proper beam balance.
















So I didn't record my start weight as lower than what I saw so that I could fudge what I weigh. I just wanted a bit of consistency - I tried to use figures that correspond to what I actually weighed previously. Bottom line - today I got on them again, and according to my dodgy home scales and dodgy memory, I must have lost at least 2 kg so far, maybe more. And even though, I don't want to get too scale oriented, I was happy. It's too soon to measure the weight loss by clothes I can now fit into!

Dance Concert

I wrote this on Saturday night - but I was too tired to edit it then.

Saturday 6 November 2008

Day 11

Tonight my daughter had her annual dance concert. I love to watch this, but though it's become easier over the years, I still feel a fair bit of stress leading up to it. I enjoyed it a lot, but I feel more comfortable now that it's over.

I woke late, so I had breakfast late, then I wrote this.

Today I got up and organized my breakfast and started typing this, and told MrKaf that it was too soon to turn my egg off, and then after a while girlKaf said it was time to take her to dancing, so I got up and into the car, thinking, "Oh damn I didn't get the petrol last night," so all the way there I was a bit worried about the petrol and went straight to the petrol station afterward ... but the petrol wouldn't go in because MrKaf had already filled it. So I drove home and as I got out of the car I thought, "OMG the egg!" ... but he had already turned it off. So I went to him and said thanks and he smiled and wasn't cross with me. (I don't know how much longer he will be patient though.)

I don't think I have Alzheimers. I reckon I've always been like this. I explained it to someone today as congenital chronic vagueness. I'm just worse when I'm a bit stressed. Sometimes I can shrug it off. Sometimes it makes things hard for someone else and then I get quite anxious, and I that causes more trouble. Hopefully this patch will ease off now? Or at least, I might just work my way through it without getting too down on myself, and making things worse.

I ate the egg with some cherry tomatoes. Then I was pretty busy for a long time. I realized I needed to have lunch before I left for the shops, but I really didn't have time any more. However, I thought Sushi might be a good lunch I could buy while I was out. I looked up the calories before I left, ~ 270 for a 6 piece pack. I thought that would be ok. As I went to the bakery before I ate the sushi, I had a sample of something healthy - and also a sample of a fruit mince pie. That was so sweet that I made sure I ate the sushi straight afterwards to make sure I didn't spike my blood afterwards. I had an apple with me but I never got around to eating it.

By the time I got home, it was time to start helping my daughter get made up for the concert, and organizing an early dinner - so lunch and dinner were a bit close together. I had bought lean pork chops, which we had grilled, with boiled potato and some salad. I bought pickled ginger with my sushi but I didn't have time to eat it, so I put it on the salad. I think it might be a nice thing to add occasionally for a different tang - a bit like capers are. Then I didn't have time to eat all the salad, so I left half for when I got home from the concert. I had some grapes then too. I took some almonds and a banana with me, but after the odd timing during the afternoon, I didn't feel like it this time, even though I'd be grateful to eat them at intermission during the dress rehearsal on Monday.

Tonight was a bit odd for being a clear contrast with the last two years. Two years ago I weighed much what I do now and had just started my weight loss. I was very very careful with my food the whole day of the concert because it was a sort of interruption to my eating and I wasn't sure how to get it right. Last year, I was heaps thinner, but I had already started having problems eating well. I indulged in an icecream at the concert, and it turned out to be old with a stale cone - so then, I still wanted a good one. Also, I remember eating heaps of low calorie lollies while I was at the concert. It was a bit of a stressful day but I don't think that was why. The why should be a topic of its own though - presuming I can ever explain it. I feel a lot more comfortable about what I'm doing now. I feel like I'm eating well, but coping easily enough with changes to my routine, or with forgetting to do things in a way that exactly fits the programme. Also, I am not panicking if I end up being hungry for a little while. I try to avoid it, and I try to fix it, but I'm telling myself that it's not that big a deal and that I'll be ok - and so far I have been.

Cracking up! (Mark II)

Written: Friday December 5 and Sunday morning

Day 10

Once again, I had a day which was rather overwhelming, and in which food seemed a side issue. Fortunately, it was a side issue which was controlled, and I'm quite happy about it. Breakfast was routine, lunch was routine. I did manage to include a vegetable in each again. After I finished teaching in the afternoon, I also managed an afternoon snack before I went on to the rest of the day. Thank goodness for that, because the rest of the day needed fuel! I had a piece of toast with Vegemite (I don't bother adding butter or margarine any more), a carrot, and a handful of almonds. For the evening meal I had some take-away Vietnamese - a little steamed rice and - a mild chicken curry with coconut cream, and some prawns/squid and veges. My guess was that the coconut had made the fat level in the curry a bit high, but I didn't have heaps of anything. I still felt a little hungry afterwards, but I figured that might just be because I ate quickly. Later on though, I was feeling a bit hungry before bed, and I decided that might be real hunger, not emotional, so I had some weetbix, with soya milk and preserved peaches. I know Vegemite and Weet-bix are well known brands to Australians and mean nothing to some people for elsewhere, so I'll post some pics.

Vegemite.

An iconic Aussie food. A very salty, yeast based spread. It's black. The flavour is intense, so it must be used sparingly - smeared on. The calories are neglible. It is a source of B group vitamins. Apparently it is not likely that anyone who first tries it past the age of 6, will ever develop a liking for it. In the UK some people eat a similar spread called Marmite. However, for most devotees, one cannot be substituted for the other.










Weet-bix.

A cereal made from whole wheat grains, rolled, then formed into rectangles. There's not much else in it. Once milk is added it quickly becomes a kind of moosh - but to my mind it's not an unpleasant moosh, the consistency of porridge. I add preserved peaches when I eat it these days, and I use soy milk.

Weet-bix is a brand name. I usually buy a similar biscuits, in a cheaper brand, but I noticed tonight that the cheaper one has a few extra calories and a lot less minerals, so I might swap.
2 weetbix = 1.5 serves of complex carbohydrate (20 gm) 4 gm fibre and 107 calories. It also contains some vitamins and lots of minerals.
I love it because it's filling and healthy, and when I'm eating well it seems sweet, plus it's yummy and comforting.

This is what I wrote about Friday, on Friday:

Today I worked, did some washing,partly cleaned the kitchen, shopped, rang the bank, had a long fight with my son, drove him to a concert, ran out of petrol on the freeway, bought two lots of takeaway food, and watched Miss Congeniality.

You would think I would have learned to think about whether I have petrol or not, and to have a routine for getting it, but actually I go through bad patches with remembering small important things and this is one of those times. (The petrol gauge is either vague or doesn't work, but I should be able to work it out.)

It was still light when the car started to conk out. We weren't far from the concert venue which was near an off ramp. BoyKaf said he'd run. I made him a map, which he glanced at, and then he ran off and had disappeared by the time I had finished ringing the RAC on my mobile. Then I just waited there with the littleKaf until the guy came.

I was a bit stressed while the car died, because at first the car wouldn't go fast enough, but I didn't realize why, then I could tell it was dying, but I had to get past an on ramp, before I could get to the emergency lane. Only, the cars that were a few cars behind me, were trying to use the new lane to pass me, and to change lanes for the next exit. It was a bit scary. The spot where my car eventually stopped was right where the cars looked like they were headed as they changed lanes, which was a little unpleasant also.

When the RAC woman asked me for my mobile number I could only remember the first four numbers. I was going, "0403, um... 0403 ... " She said they would send someone as fast as they could - within the next 90 minutes!! I listened to littleKaf tell me a story about someone who deliberately swerved towards her and her friend and beeped a horn while the girls were crossing the next local street to our home, and then when I said, "OMG did I hear you properly he did what?" (or words which meant that to me), she said "You never listen to me!" and got cranky. She must have been pretty hungry by then, because we had been intending to go buy her dinner when the argument started, which was 2 hours earlier... I rang boyKaf after 10 minutes and he was fine. He'd found his friends and was eating Subway. Anyway, the RAC only took about half an hour.

Then, even though I told littleKaf we were going straight to top up the petrol and then buy dinner, I forgot to get petrol again, and we went and ordered Vietnamese food from a place manKaf and I used to go Before Kids. I didn't order by phone in case littleKaf wanted some and she said she couldn't tell without seeing a menu. But she didn't. The manager recognized me and smiled and said, "Hi. You have not been here long time." (Meaning: "First time I saw you I was still in high school. Last time I was getting married. Now my daughter in high school!") While we were waiting for the order we walked to a Subway, where there was no real queue, but it took us 10 minutes to get out because while she was trying to tell us the price the girl kept pressing some buttons over and over and then she said, "Sorry, just a minute," and went and got another girl who did the same thing. The man after us, just gave up and called out to them that he was leaving the money, and put down some coins. So then we worked out our charge and left the money too. The girl was making someone else's order by then. She just smiled at us and said, "Sorry. Computer broken." So off we went, and had a spat about nothing. We got back to the car next to the restaurant ... and I turned off the headlights. We collected the other food, which despite the manager's good memory had turned from cheap and delicious for dine in, to pricey for take-away, with mangulated squid.

But Miss Congeniality was good. I like Sarah Bullock.

And boyKaf came home in a good mood at a good time and said the concert was not as intense as he thought it would be, which was a pity,he said, but that it was really intense, and that Alex's band (the one I'd heard), was really good.

So again this was a high stress day which did not lead me to pig out! Yay!

Too tired but doing the food ok

Day 9

Tonight I am amazingly tired. I think this is from going to bed too late, and also because I stand up a lot on Thursdays.

I fell asleep sitting in front of the computer earlier this evening, then went and slept on my bed for 20-30 minutes. I have been very aware today that this sleepiness sparks an impulse to not be bothered eating well, and the tiredness tries to persuade me that I "deserve" a little sweet treat after working hard. I have been ignoring that thought. It was a thing I was aware of and knew I had to wait out. That was good. I had the sense that if I waited the tiredness would go and the impulses would go. The tiredness hasn't gone yet, but the impulses did.

After work, I did have a big snack before I shopped , and I'm sure that helped a lot. I don't think I have a good handle on what to eat for an afternoon snack yet. Today's was maybe too much. I had a slice of bread with some Vegemite on it, a handful of almonds, and a tub of yoghurt. The day's calories would be ok for weight loss at my current weight. Without detailing them, I'm not sure if they would be good enough for weight loss if I was already 26 kgs lighter.

After dinner I had the feeling my meal ought not be finished yet, but I just drank diet soft drink and waited and the feeling went. I think it's cool that it went away, even though I was watching tv and feeling so sleepy. Last time I lost weight I felt like those things were really hard to cope with and so I would avoid them. While I was gaining weight drowsy times and tv times, would be times I'd often eat mindlessly. At the moment, they are times when there's an issue, but it's ok.

Right now I'm in a battle with my 15yo son over what he wants to do on Saturday night. I think what he wants to do is dodgy, and also that it's wrong because he was told repeatedly reminded that we expected him to come with us to our girl's dance concert at that time. (Asking him to do what we're doing is like a 3-4 times a year thing. I don't think we're that hard on him. He's quite fixated on his other plans though. He wants to spend time with a girl he's keen on. So this is a new stress. I was ready to go straight to bed, when I found out more about it. My blood started charging around again of course. I am still sleepy though. Maybe if I go to bed I will fall asleep anyway, and get a better start on tomorrow. The early night possibility is gone, but it could at least not be too terribly late.

In short. I thought my food today was acceptable. Normal breakfast, skipped my mid-morning snack because I had yard duty, normal lunch, big afternoon snack, proper evening meal - nothing that don't think is ok to eat. I did aerobics for 20 minutes, I walked heaps while I was at work. No proper exercise before or after work though. I'm overtired. I let myself run out of water while I was outside for a long time at work today. Probably a 2/5 day? On the other hand, I'm up to Day 9 of eating properly. Between April and now, the most I actually managed was about 14 straight days of not eating rubbish. That14 days wasn't exactly great eating though, because I don't think I was eating enough. I was trying to kid myself that I could drop a bit of weight quickly and then start to eat properly. I don't know how I can be sooooo old and yet still let myself try that, when it has caused me problems so many, many times in the past.

At any rate, these aren't no stress times for me. I want to know that and remember it. These are times with plenty of stress, and plenty of mistakes, but I CAN get my food right anyway.

I need to blog about weight loss!

Wednesday 3 December 2008

Day 8

I've gone past the first week! Well I have skipped two days of weight loss blog. I have been eating just the way I think I should. But I had other things I urgently wanted to record. I've posted them here now. I think writing is helpful to me in itself - but by today I was finding things a little harder, and that may have been because while writing less, I was also thinking less about getting the healthy things right. I haven't done anything about exercise for the last three days - and that is a bit of a sign. Also I've been forgetting to take useful food with me.

I'm still finding that I'm having hard patches in the day, usually while I'm out, and skipping snacks and not prepared for lunch. It's hard to choose wisely while I'm in a shopping centre full of the smells of fresh food, almost all unsuitable, and I'm hungry! Yesterday (about the time I was forgetting to pay anyone for the $80 worth of bags I walked off with), I just passed by the food. I figured my house was between where I was and where else I had to go, and I'd remembered I still had leftover corned beef, and some nice dense wholemeal Vienna bread, so I stopped there and made myself something before I went on.

Today, when I'd finished shopping, instead of going home tired and hungry, I stopped in the food hall and bought something ready made. I had to be careful with the choice. I actually went to the bit they were calling "Fresh and crunchy", where there were lots of sandwiches and rolls and so on with salad and stuff in them. They must have had 30 things ready in the window and they all looked good - but only 3 were on wholemeal (=wholegrain) bread! I chose one of them. White might have worked ok, with the fibre of the veges and some protein in it to slow down absorption - but it's still more of a risk than wholemeal, and by eating something away from home, I figured I was already taking a bit of a chance. Also I got a cappuccino. I took a moment when I saw it put on a plate to think about how big it was. It really was a large roll!! It looked about twice the size of the kind I've weighed in the past and decided were a good size, so I asked them to wrap half and took that home. It turned out to be a great afternoon snack later, and I didn't have to worry about messing up my sugar levels and making it hard to stay on plan. I felt better for the break too. The half roll seemed a bit small by itself. I had another coffee and a couple of apricots when I got home. It all worked out fine this time, but I can see I need to be a bit more careful.

Today I went to the doctor to get a new script for something else and he decided to check my blood pressure. It was 115:78. "Quite athletic!" he said. I think he was surprised that it was so good. I was a bit nervous!! I think that 78 is up a bit from what it was while I was slimmer and fitter.

Cracking up!

This is what I wrote on Tuesday 2 December, 2008

Day 7

Today I bought 3 pair of sheer to waist FunTan average stockings, 2 packets of hair clips, a pack of 3 hairnets and a new can of hair spray. At dancing this afternoon, we collected the hair ribbon thing littleKaf left behind at the theatre last night. [smilie=icon_redface.gif]

After I took my girl to school today, and because I had no preserved peaches to go on my weetbix I went shopping for the peaches. Of course I bought more than I went for, as ever, and I browsed a magazine but I ended up leaving my shopping trolley when I got to the checkout, because I suddenly could not remember turning off the egg I was boiling. At first, I just thought, I really should check, but by the time I got to the carpark, I had pulled off my thongs and started doing the closest thing I can do to a run. I was somewhat reassured not to see a plume of smoke from my patch of suburb, but I was about to turn into my street before the comforting memory of turning the egg over in the water and thinking that it would keep getting harder with the heat OFF came back to me.

So I went back to the shops. I went to 3 extra shops to try and find hair nets, went home, finished breakfast at about 12:00. Then I drove Sequin City for the stockings, hairnets and extra hairclips.

On the way back, I went to another shopping centre to try and buy my sister a Book Seat. It's beanbag for supporting a book without holding it.



http://www.thebookseat.com/

They're about 12"x12"x6".

I rang first, because they'd run out of them at my local s/c. They had what I wanted. I reckoned $40 each was a bit much, but I am bereft of ideas and I knew I might not be able to get them if I waited for inspiration in vain, so I picked up two - another for my other sister, and carried them by the top of the plastic bags they were in, to the cash register. I waited to be served, then I remembered I wanted a battery operated candle for my mum. The assistant was lovely and took me to find them, and showed me how they worked, and replaced the batteries in one, so I could see how bright it was, and I took it to a gloomy corner to check, and left thanking her for being so helpful. I trudged back to the other end of the s/c. I was pretty tired by then. I'd been a bit too excited last night I suppose, and hadn't gone to bed when I should.

When I got to my car, I wondered why the people in the shop hadn't put the beanbag things into proper bags. Funny, like saving the planet, but they usually ask first - and what did I do with the docket?

Yep. I had walked out with $80 worth of very bulky Bookseats.

I didn't have the time, or the heart to walk straight back with them. So I now I will have to take them back tomorrow. If I had accidentally left some little thing in my shopping trolley I actually wouldn't bother, but OMG. This would guilt me out. I don't need that. And how lovely to give my sisters gifts I'd nicked!

Anyway, it occurred to me about then that I probably wasn't exactly up to par today, and that maybe I should get a bit more sleep tonight!!

Dress Rehearsal

On Monday, amongst other things, I left the lid undone on my poptop water bottle and put it in my hand bag. My nice green notebook that I wrote about on Sunday was a bit soggy around the edges! I hope I can still open the book!! (Those waterbottles are magic though - more about them another day.)

This is what I wrote on Monday.

Monday 1 December

Day 6

Today I had a crazy busy day.

I will spare you the details about what it's like to be a relief teacher taking knowitall year 7s and teaching 3 different instant science lessons in different rooms with a trolley full of equipment that someone else has prepared. (One detail - it was a lot easier to push it with the brakes off - which is the way I did it at the end of the day after someone released them for me...)

After work I went to try and buy my girl spare stockings for her full dress rehearsal tonight for her dance concert. We went to two dance shops and they had both sold out of the ones we needed, and with her dinner to get, and make up and hair to do, we didn't have time to go any further away. (I know I left it a bit late to look for them - but it was semi-excusable, she had two brand new pairs a week ago and only 3 dances tonight).

Anyway, we didn't get them but she stayed calm and happy and put all her make up on, and asked me to do the tricky bits and check the things she'd done. She listened to my advice and didn't yell at me (for the second time in a row while she was getting ready for a performance!!). She did her hair and put the headband in that she needed for the first dance (which was the second on the programme). I was feeling very relaxed.

This time last year we had 5 costumes including a gigantic frilly tutu, and heaps of little bits for each costume. I had a separate garment bag for each one, with a label showing all the bits - maybe 6-8 things that had to be remembered for each dance, and a fast costume change for one (frantic - heaps of things to change and one short dance to do it in).

This time, it's just three nicely spaced dances, the same hair piece for all of them, one hair trim for each. An all-in-one costume for two of the dances and a two piece for the other. We put everything in one garment bag. It was just too easy. We hopped calmly in the car and drove off, a little later than planned but in plenty of time and I'm thinking how lovely she is, and we got to the venue (which we estimate at 30 minutes from home) and she got out of the car and said, "I forgot my shoes." That's like her whole shoe bag.

I said, in a calm voice, "Okay, I'll just have to go back. You go in." "Yes," she said, also in a calm voice. "The shoe bag is in my room under the desk and will you get my headband too, that's in the bathroom." (I haven't asked her why she took it off again.)

So I start driving back. It's quite some distance - only quick because the theatre they use is in the sticks and the traffic is low. I start driving, then think that it would be faster if someone was driving from our house towards me and my husband agrees to meet me half way, and I ring a friend back at the concert and tell her what's happening, and find out that the timing is so tight I have no hope of being in time for the first item and cross my fingers that someone else will fix it. I think about things like how I should have had a check list anyway, no matter how organized she is, and no matter how simple it seemed, and how I can get there fastest. Two phone calls later and my husband and I manage a rendezvous in an industrial area with only a 1 minute wait between our arrivals. (Go MrKAF!!). He says, in a pleasant tone, "I'd only just walked in from picking your dopey son up. BoyKaf rang me for a lift home," (a lift that he - who is also MrKaf's son - told us he wouldn't need).

Back the other way I drive, racing (not speeding exactly, but racing), and all the way I'm thinking that when I get there she will have missed the dance, and not be crying, just wanting to cry, but when I get there she is on stage, in someone else's shoes and with a miraculous spare headband (why would anyone make a spare headband?). Crickey.

And she didn't ladder her stockings until just before the third item, and they wear fishnets as well so I couldn't even see the hole from the audience, but she did manage to do it in front of the same mum who is always in the dressing room, stressing, and who had already fixed the shoe/headband debacle for us, and who said, "No spare stockings... That's something else you need to remember." But I forgive her for that, because she got my girl on stage. And littleKaf smiled beautifully through all the numbers and moved the way I wish I could.

Also, I just love to watch the dances. Only one of hers is all that exciting this year, but she has a bigger role in them than she used to get, and lots of the other dances make me smile and some of them take my breath away. I have friends dancing in the adult tap, hiding under pink wigs. A lot of the little ones are children I've taught (who've learnt so much so quickly), some of the grown up girls have taught my daughter and the babies always forget what they're doing and steal the show. And at the end everyone comes on the stage a bit at a time till it's full.

It's all very exciting. When we came out there was a tiny sliver of moon in the sky and two stars right next to it. It looked just like a smiley face, except a bit sideways.



I told littleKaf that a bad dress rehearsal means the real thing will be great - that it's a rule. But actually I didn't think it was such a bad dress rehearsal. I feel happy.


You can't stop the beat!!
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9Rlp1zrBl4g&feature=related

After she read that, a friend showed me this lovely poem by Yoko Ono.

Dance in your dream.
Hug your mother.
Hug your father.
Make them hug each other.
Hug your sisters and brothers.
Make a family circle and dance together.

Dance in your dream.
Go out into the street and hug everybody you meet.
Tell them how beautiful they are.
Dance together.

Dance in your dream.
Hug all the trees in the world
Tell them how beautiful they are.
Dance around them.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaB2ShM1OoHCMBNI4SNRhr4uO_IZg5zG0NZacgwiOJuLowTHNGQsK6W4JicktXaU2KlMSQvD-NovwnDbm0Lr1FKoJypyj5HoCBLJz46pqChBoflhGBHB5X2insuJJJqQlzFw6LvCSJIAA/s400/image143.jpg

My notebook and the torte

Day 5

I wrote a piece of this blog while I was out today. I'd taken my daughter and her friend into the city to go shopping.

A lot going on in my mind right now. I have a moment to sit down- really I want to eat lunch but it's a little awkward to do that for a minute. I'm glad I have a fair sized notebook to write in. It's about A5 size.

The day I bought it I was working, yet again, on ideas on how to get over bingeing. I was writing a few things based on ideas from a book about bulimia, which had been kind enough to suggest that the ideas might apply to binge eaters. I say kind enough, because if it hadn't made that comment, I would just have thought that there were no books at all in my local library that could help me, despite a multitude of books about eating problems. I did get a little help from the book, perhaps partly from the idea that this was something I could try to work on by myself, but also from the ideas in it.

Anyway, when I saw this little notebook with a tree on the front made from the words "for life", I thought it was a sign that it was made for me. Since then, the binge eating work fell by the way (resting, not forgotten), but though the book was a little bulky to carry around, I kept it for moments when I wanted to jot down ideas for a project, or for to do lists, and shopping lists and whatever.

I was thinking recently that as writing on-line was a big help to my last weight loss and as I'm planning to use it a lot this time, I need a back up for when I can't get on-line and this book would be handy for moments like this.


















I got up late and ate breakfast late. I started getting ready to come shopping about 11:45 but had a few things to fit in first and remembered only at the last minute, again, about lunch. I grabbed exactly the same things as yesterday, and figured there'd be a moment sometime when I could eat them. I'm so glad I did.

It turned out that not only was there the normal issue of being hungry and wanting some food and most of the options being bad ones, but today was worse. I used to spend a lot of time in the city when I was younger. I worked there for 7 years, and before that I constantly walked through it to change buses. It looks a lot different now, and most of the store names have changed. But then we walking down Hay St. It was after 2:00 and I was getting really hungry and right there, was The Forum coffee shop - still there after all this time. It was back in the days when a coffee shop was run like a little a la carte restaurant that I'd go in there, latest novel in hand and sit in an old fashioned booth, snug as a bug in a rug, and read, and order and read and eat. No need to queue or give anyone my name or carry a stick with a number on it, just snuggle down, read and be brought yummy food. And the thing is. I used to eat some nice sandwiches there, but I also used to eat the most wonderful torte. Continental torte they called it. Layers of sponge and custard and cream and a pastry base with profiteroles on the edges. Oh my how it called out to me!!! I was really wanting it but I was also really alarmed thinking, "But but but I am not - I do not want - I do not want to have that life."

I really do not want the life where I eat what I feel like, and that controls everything else about me, and cripples my body.

At any rate, we went passed the coffee shop, we ended up in a food hall and I sat at a table writing, waiting for the girls to bring back their unappetising food. I did dip my carrot in my daughter's gravy for a joke (it was a good joke in context of the conversation), and it tasted pretty good! So I did it some more. That tinned tuna sandwich tasted as wonderful as anything I could have bought there. I was really happy with it. The writing helped too. It quickly helped me calm down and feel less frantic about eating, and less interested in the multitude of food on offer around me.

Scary sleepy blahs and a little walk near home.

Day 4

I am so tired right now. I don't really remember doing so much, that I would be tired like this. Also, though I ended up going to bed late, I still slept for 7 and a half hours last night. However, I had other late nights previously, I shopped a lot today, and did a bit around the house. Also, it was fairly warm today and I think that made me feel a bit sluggish. I drank a lot of water which helped. I've had enough food for the moment, but within the last hour I've had a snack (a tin of baked beans, because I thought I'd have to wait a while for dinner) and a meal (because I didn't have to wait a while for dinner - a mild seafood curry with rice). Overall that's made the hour a bit high in carbs.

This is probably the trickiest moment I've had so far. It's about 7:10 pm. I've had my evening meal early and I've briefly dozed off in front of the computer. I read something a while back about Days 4-5 being the hardest for people coming off sugar, but I haven't found that to be the case for me previously.

Saturdays have been bad though, and being tired is bad. If I was just sleepy it would be easier for me to talk myself into a walk, and I think that would be my best option for changing this dodgy feeling I have, but my feet and legs are aching again from the shopping. Also, if I go to sleep now, I will wake later, and be in a worse state as far as wanting to eat goes. Right now I don't want to all that much. If this had been last week though, I would be eating now. Tired like this, I don't have enough energy to take a proper interest in anything, so I feel blah and bored. I feel like nothing matters much and my brain's just not switched on. This has been a big issue for me in the past. I recognize this state as being one that has consistently led to me binge eating.

I was thinking though, if I mess up the food now... then I thought, I won't. I won't mess it up now because it's taken so long to get to this stage. The thought of being stuck the way I am now, when I can see the other way so clearly, is a powerful idea.

When I first started eating badly this year, I would find that I'd mess up, fix myself up, mess up again, still be able to fix it again, and I got a bit blase about being able to get back on track, because I could and would manage it, for a few days at a time. I was even pleased at the idea that I'd learned how to do turn things around. Previously, I'd been thinking it was something I might not be able to do.

Also, I'd already lost so much weight by then, that I was convinced I couldn't end up as fat as that again. I guess I thought I had wriggle room - that the worst that would happen, was that I would be a bit fatter. I wasn't persistent enough and eventually I felt I had no control at all over my eating. It's taken a long time to feel that I can turn that round again. Now I have no kind of wriggle room of any kind! Trying to get dressed is really painful. It's bad because I don't like how I look, but what really bothers me more, is that my stomach is in the way and presses on my lungs when I try to reach down to pull on pants, and socks and shoes. I can't breathe properly, and I can't reach properly. I can't stand that. Maybe that was what helped me to change last time at this same weight. I've noticed that it's only recently become quite as bad as it is. I suppose there are particular physical limits for various things and I've crossed one. I'm not quite sure of my weight. I put it on that chart in my first post, but it was an estimate based on the crummy scales I have at home here. However, they are showing a weight that I reckon is close to what it was when I started 2 years ago, and my feeling about how I feel, and what I think I look like, is similar. Therefore, my weight must be around the level that's considered morbidly obese. Morbidly. Like a death risk.

At any rate, the good news is that even one day of eating better, makes me feel more healthy than a bad day, and I know that eating well for a few days will help a lot, and eating well for a few weeks will help heaps. It will take a long time for me to be happy about my clothes again, but much less time, for me to feel more physically able. Of course there's an exercise component needed too.

And more good news. Typing this has taken me through the sleepy blahs. I feel a lot more normal and in control again. We have daylight saving, so there's quite enough time left for me to go for a bit of a walk before dark. I'll take the dog. That will make her happy. Also I'll time myself. That will make the walk seem a bit more useful to me for the future. I can't imagine walking too fast.

I almost let myself walk out for an afternoon of shopping without eating lunch. That would have been a real problem. Fortunately, at the last minute I noticed my tummy was empty and took time to grab a pack of food which I ate on the way. I made a sandwich with the flavoured lite tuna. It was really yummy. I haven't had that for ages but I expect I'll have more again soon. It would be a handy thing to keep with crackers in the glove box of the car too.



I've had a nice walk now, good for focusing. I had to muck around with the dog's ear cream before I went, so I left at 8:20 and the streetlights started to come on. I guess that's a bit late in some ways, but I could still see and I loved hearing all the little frogs croaking all round the place. I was so sure one of them was right near the path, but it must have been one of those glass bodied frogs because there was nowhere for it to hide, but I couldn't see it. A couple of houses had put up their Christmas lights too. One of them is just a cascade of colour.

Tonight the walk took 30 minutes. (Not 29 or 31! How weird.) Straight to the nearest park, then through the school, through a teeny patch of bush (which I love because I get to crunch on the fallen wattle leaves and it reminds me strongly of my happy childhood), down to the rec centre (15 min 15 secs), and then around the edge of the oval and home.

I've done that walk many times, but not since last summer - or maybe even earlier than that. I was very conscious of what was different. 30 minutes is slow. My joints felt fine but my tummy felt bloated. I just felt much too aware of it sitting out there in front of me, somehow attached, but totally superfluous and weighty. I don't remember ever stretching to a full stride and noticing my thigh fat bump against my belly fat before either. Not nice.

First Walk

Day 3

Today I went for the first bush walk I've had in a while. My husband and I went with our dog into an Open Space nearby. It was a short walk - not very energetic but a step up from no walk and no exercise, which is what I've been getting recently.

The bush always seems to have something happening. The spring flowers are done but there will be various trees blooming over summer.

These yellow banksias will be blooming for a while yet.





















There was a little blue tongued goanna near the track too, but he didn't like us staring at him much, and waddled off.













I spent quite a while working out what I can do with this blog. I believe it will be an important element in making this weight loss happen, mainly because of the way it helps me keep focused and conscious.

I ate quite well. I did get preoccupied and let myself skip an afternoon snack which wasn't so great because then I was feeling famished while I was trying to visit places offering poor food choices and prepare the evening meal.

I am going to try a small change to the way I was eating when I was losing weight last time. That time, I was concerned that any deviation from the exact plan I had in mind might make it too hard for me to continue, so I was very rigid. This time, I want to start out more flexibly and I'm hoping that will be a part of the changes that make this more successful in the longer term. I want to be more used to having small amounts of food that isn't too healthy.

My husband and I have had a tradition of making Friday night meals a little more special than the others. I don't know quite what is happening with that now. However, we had some nice fish tonight. I've cut back on that a bit lately because fresh fish is so expensive. Tonight's was crimson snapper I think and cost about $32 a kg.


I let it sit in some fresh lime juice, chilli and parsley while I prepared the veges tonight, then dusted it with flour and fried it in a very little extra virgin olive oil. I had intended to use coriander rather than parsley and I think that's nicer, but I misled myself about what herbs we had.







The other normal healthy aspects of the meal were a microwaved potato instead of fried chips, and plenty of salad.










The elements that were a little less healthy and which I have firmly flagged as "only sometimes" and "portion control!" were, a glass of white wine, 1/2 an avocado in my portion of the salad, and about 5 fried chips. I wondered whether this is too close to the beginning of the change to be experimenting, but the chips and avocado just add calories. They don't tend to make me feel like eating crazily. The wine of course is the more dangerous because of the way alcohol tends to relax inhibitions. (Especially inhibitions that may not be all that firm, like the one I have about unsuitable food!)

I've been taking too long to do this, and am heading late to bed again. I know I can do this to an extent, regardless of how much sleep I have, but I also know it will be heaps easier and a lot more likely to work long term if make sure I get plenty!

Instead of "fast" food

Day 2

I feel happy about what I did today. Yesterday I ate fairly well. Today was even better, and I am not feeling hungry or anxious, just comfortable. I got just a little proper exercise today. I was busy as busy though. Kids, work, kids, husband, dog, shopping, kids, kids, dinner, kids, shopping, kids. (I got some aerobics in because it was part of what was happening where I worked today.) My feet are hurting all the way up to my thighs.

I hadn't realized how late it was before starting dinner either, so my husband suggested take-away. It was certainly an appealing idea because I REALLY REALLY didn't want to be standing up again. However, by then I had been sitting down for a bit and the idea of eating something that would drag me away from healthy food so soon after I'd started was too much.

I hadn't shopped for the meal and I was aiming at low effort, so I grilled some skinless chicken thigh fillets (frozen flat), and added microwaved jacket potatoes, and the only veges I had - carrots and green beans which I also microwaved. When I first jumped up to cook, I was concerned that for me the meal wouldn't have enough vegetables to seem substantial so I added tinned asparagus, and to add some variety for the kids I also added tinned corn. Tinned food can be incredibly handy instead of "fast" food. It gives a lot more control over things like fat and calories. Also it's faster! I was pretty tired and not really on the ball though, so I'd been cooking a while when I realized I didn't really have enough chicken for us all. It's been a long time but I turned my old stand by tinned fish. Tinned pink salmon today. I'm fully aware of how fragile my hold on this thing is now, so missing substantial protein or skimping on veges just isn't an option right now.

Well it tasted great, it was easy and there was plenty of it. It will fit in with the eating plan I'm intending to follow and the calories will be low enough for it to contribute to weight loss. All good.

It's funny how I've snapped back into being bothered putting more effort into preparing better food. I think it's a mixture of being hungry enough to care about it, not so hungry that I can't wait for it (I do snack on veges while I'm doing food prep though), and really caring about getting the food combination that will satisfy me and keep me calm.

Today was a day with an especially low level of time for pleasing myself, so no photo. I did take one of yesterday's yummy, healthy satisfying meal though. This risotto I don't think of it as being super easy to prepare because of the need to stand stirring it. It didn't actually take that long though. It didn't turn out all that perfectly but I was happy with it.



Chicken risotto with salad.