A party in your mouth

This Is Why You're Fat is one thing ... but the pictures on Fuck Yeah Peanut Butter are truly mouthwatering. (Except for the Chocolate Bacon Peanut Butter Cup. Why does everything have to have bacon in it? And I must say, I've tried Reese's chocolate and it, like Hershey's anything, is an abomination.)

Big issues

This review of books about obesity in the New Yorker is well worth reading for the fascinating information it extracts from the books under review; about how people eat more when they're given more, and accordingly how waistlines have expanded in proportion to supersizing by fast food chains; but also touching on the radical fat acceptance movement. It's something I've pondered about: examining my own attitudes to people who are fat. Isn't it everyone's right to be whatever shape they want to be?

This Is Why You're Fat

My fellow bloggers may disagree, but if ever I am feeling hungry for no reason (ie greedy), all I need to do is visit this website and I will receive an instant sobering reminder of just how disgusting fatty food really is.

This week's star turn: A triple bacon cheeseburger with deep fried patties as buns.

Cafe Pacific

I have stumbled upon the perfect weight loss formula: go to Taiwan and restrict yourself to eating only in one of these restaurants. Eureka! You will find that your appetite heads for the hills. Actually, just one visit to Modern Toilet should do the trick.

Crunch time

You know it's crunch time when.........your size 14 trousers don't stay closed any more, and you have to wear black knickers in case your zip's down without you realising.

Yes, it has come to the point where I need to decide either to lose weight, or to start buying size 16s. It's tempting to go for the latter, because my joyful eating approach, referred to in a comment on another post, is most enjoyable. Unfortunately, it coincided with my decision to stop drinking - or at least cut down drastically - and stop smoking (ditto). I have developed an addiction to evenings spent watching Prison Break and eating Thornton's special toffee.

I lost almost two stone going to Slimming World, but have put all of it back on, and some. I liked the SW approach: if you choose a green day, you can eat as much pasta, rice, potatoes and noodles as you like. The emphasis of the diet is on keeping fat, sugar and bread to a minimum. However, the thought of going back to that diet fills me with an apprehension of boredom...I do so like my Prison Break and toffee diet, and it has kept me off the demon drink.

As for exercise, I cancelled my gym membership because I stopped going when I had a bad back, and couldn't face returning once my back got better. I've been trying to do my (sort of) interval training, but I'm so unfit now that it's more interval than training.

Something has to give, and I suspect it's going to have to be my beloved Thornton's. It's just that I need to have something to look forward to in the evenings, once the boys are in bed. Natural yogurt and berries, or any other healthy "treat", just doesn't do it.

I'll post in a few weeks' time, once I've settled on a possible solution.

How to get ahead in advertising

Apparently new research shows that, would you believe it, most women don't actually like the images of skinny white women which are used to peddle fashion to us. We'd rather see a model who, while beautiful and glamorous, looks more like us: not just in terms of shape but age and race too. In other words, more accessible; achievable, not impossible.

Sadly I doubt this will make any difference to the fashion orthodoxy which is that only emaciated women look good in fashion. Start designing some clothes that look good on normal sized women, then. We are the ones who can afford to buy it.

One interesting footnote which will come as no surprise to anyone who's ever lived in Hong Kong: "Aside from women aged under 25, who were less likely to object to an abundance of young, white, ultra-slim models, and Chinese consumers, who actively preferred them, most of those surveyed felt positive towards the brands that used the more diverse models".

Gloop

Gwyneth Paltrow ("Gwynny") has started a mawkish website called "GOOP" (and there's fun to be had working out what the acronym stands for: Grindingly Obvious, Overbearingly Prissy, perhaps?). I've signed up for the weekly email, naturally, and have suffered through Gwynny's tips on what to wear (just a little Dior is so chic; the fashion section is called, acquisitively, GET), how to get into LA's best restaurants even if the chef's not a personal friend, what to give as a gift (cashmere socks!) and how to cook for "the holidays".

This week's tips are for detoxing after one ate too much in said "holidays". Having followed Gwynny's tips to the letter, of course, including those to-die-for chocolates and the massive turkey, one now needs one's personal nutritionist to advise one on the best detox diet. And here's Day One:

DAY ONE
7am (or upon rising): Glass of room temperature lemon water
8am: Herbal tea
10am (breakfast): Blueberry and Almond Smoothie
11:30am: Coconut water*
1:30pm (lunch): Salad with Carrot and Ginger Dressing
4pm (snack): A handful of mixed pumpkin and sunflower seeds
6pm (dinner): Broccoli and Arugula Soup
*Make sure that the coconut water has no added sugar. Fresh is ideal but the brands Zico or Vita Coco are readily available.

Than this, I got no further. Is it just me, or is it not thoroughly depressing? But as if this were not bad enough:

NEXT WEEK
Next week my fitness guru, Tracy Anderson, gives us an exclusive video to get our butt in shape for the new year!

I can hardly wait, Gwynny. "Our" butt (whose "butt" is that, exactly?) sorely needs it.

'tis the season to be jolly

Or not.

Last night I was at my first Christmas party of the season. It was quite a grown up do, lots of couples, with kids, wall to wall bankers and mums who got to know each other through their prenatal classes. In short, not so much that I could identify with.

Anyhow, at late o'clock, after a fun few hours, a friend and his partner turned up. We started chatting. A couple of minutes in she cut me dead with:

"So, when are you due?"

Aha. Great to see that 3 solid months of seeing a personal trainer has had that impact. And no amount of well meaning friends ("it's because you have a glow about you", "it's because you have big tits") can quite take the sting away from that comment.

The mirror crack'd from side to side

I think I might have the opposite of anorexia - my problem is that I don't realise I'm fat. I'll be carrying on happily, thinking I look fine, and then all of a sudden, out of the blue, I will see a photo of myself or glimpse myself in some sly mirror and all of a sudden the thought will hit me: is that porker really me?

It's no bad thing, of course, to be generally happy about my appearance most of the time, but I do have to confront myself head on in the mirrored lift to my office in the morning, which as I've remarked before, is broadly similar to being forced by the harpies in What Not To Wear into a 360 degree mirrored box to take full, appalled stock of the state I'm in. However, I've developed avoidance tactics as time has gone by, which basically means looking up at the ceiling.

I also maintain, although I have no scientific basis for this assertion, that digital photographs make you look fatter than you really are, just as TV cameras reportedly add pounds to your weight.

I will probably continue in blissful ignorance of how much I've let myself go until my clothes start to burst at the seams and I will be forced to take action. In the meantime my "glamorexia" problems will continue unchecked.

A refreshing honesty

But maybe it's not ironic.

One to watch

No posts in a very long time, I know - but I've been inspired by reading this article by Kira Cochrane in the Guardian. She sounds like a sensible woman.

In my dreams, I have a plan....

Hello all

Off work again with another stomach bug, but i thought i would share with you the upside of my predicament (left). Yes, OK, maybe I can't risk leaving my appartment/sofa, my social life is horrendously compromised and it does get a bit boring to be honest, but i think you'll agree that the upside is worth it, no?

So, my goals going forwards (and as I'm charging towards another thirtysomething birthday, this is after all the time to set goals) is to balance weight/socialising/work life/home life......you know the usual......

x

Slim pickings

First of all, WHERE IS EVERYONE? Can we suppose that everyone has lost the weight they set out to lose? Or have you all discovered, as I have, that sharing one's dieting trials and tribulations with others is a sure-fire way to put a stop to one's efforts? I've held off on writing anything about what I've been doing because past experience has shown me that once it's "official", I can't stick to it any more. I have no idea why. However, what I am doing now is having some level of success. I intend to write about it on return from my trip to Japan in early August or, if I can wait that long, in September, at the end of the parliamentary recess.

In the meantime, anyone care to indulge, I mean divulge?

Head Stuff and Haggis Suppers

Haggis supper. Monday night. BLECH! Felt like crap after eating it, slept badly, felt like crap all day, still feel like crap. So that's that.

Now, head stuff. My lack of bloggage is due to my lack of dieting. I read back over my year's worth of FF posts and cried at all the promises and hope I had when I started because I am none the nearer achieving what I wanted.

But about two months ago, I read this book. I cried a lot at it as well - never have I been described more completely.

I may also have mentioned this book before as well. A little more head stuff than the Janogly book, but worth a try.

I can't recommend these books highly enough, really. Even if you don't think you binge eat (and I didn't), the advice is pure gold. In the first month after reading them, I lost 5lbs (still off, most of the time) and about 7 inches all over.

I am not going to evangelise any more, partly because both books tell you not to. But if any of you do read them, it'd be great to be able to talk about the ideas.

Recreation myth

An update on FF2's progress. The exercise: exercising religiously five or six days out of seven. Mainly the gym - at least an hour, doing a combination of cardio, stretches and resistance - but also a bit of running/walking outdoors. The diet: abandoned the IPD, and the booze abstinence, but have not been overdoing it, with the exception of the odd chocolate binge. I rarely eat fatty food (I wouldn't quite say I hate chips, but I eat them perhaps about twice a year). Most of what I eat would be considered healthy. I eat refined carbs three times a week at the most. Yet, despite all the exercise - a minimum of six hours a week - and the healthy eating, I'm not shifting that tummy bulge. It's very, very frustrating.

I always believed that you could eat what you liked, within reason, as long as you did lots of exercise. Not true. For me, at any rate. Is it my age? Is my metabolism? I wondered whether the Prozac has affected my ability to shift weight. Fed up with not feeling much, emotionally - even if I feel like crying, I can't - I was going to see the doctor about gradually coming off the anti-Ds. Perhaps that'll help with the weight loss too. We shall see...

Any thoughts, anyone?

Yummy bunny

Bunny love

On the other hand, the Guardian is also testing Easter eggs.... I am planning to go to Great in Pacific Place tomorrow to buy everyone in my team one of these (can someone add a picture of a Lindt chocolate bunny in gold foil for me? I can't seem to do it on my computer at home. Don't take it from this site, which is all about IP infringement!), which are made out of the most delicious chocolate.

Maybe I just like it out of nostalgia, because someone puts one in my Christmas stocking every year and it's the only time I ever eat chocolate first thing in the morning. Somehow the taste encapsulates the excitement I still feel on Christmas morning - the best part of the day, before anything actually happens. A chocolate bunny, eaten in glorious chunks, followed by Claire's home made almond croissants and a glass of ruby grapefruit bucks fizz by a roaring open wood fire - do things get any better?

Brought to book

The Guardian has road-tested some of the latest diets. Sorry to those of you currently trying it - Neris and India get a kicking and is accused by a nutritionist of "not [being] a balanced and healthy sensible eating diet".

The Japanese one definitely sounds worth a try. 7 kilos lost in 4 weeks can't be bad. Brown rice sushi, in Hong Kong, though? You're kidding!

High Maintenance

Hello all. My weight has now dropped to the dizzing lows of below 10 stone - a figure (literally) not seen since my teens. Would like to report some miracle way that this has happened but no. Combination of food poisoning (repeatedly - once a month I can't eat for a couple of days - maybe I have worms??), fruit for breakfast, no snacking, more exercise AND I think probably most importantly being happier have all played their part. Now the key issue is keeping the bloody weight off. Like share prices it's important to realise that weight can go up as well as down...

FF1 has "helpfully" suggested that I chuck out all my "fat clothes" (not that she was ever that rude about them when they fitted me like a glove) and embark on a spending spree of truly heroic proportions to replenish my wardrobe. I think it's courting disaster (sartorial and financial) and it's a solution driven by her shopping needs.....

Any advice, fellow fat fighters??

And it started all over again...

OK, so I only managed three weeks on the Idiot Proof diet. But they were three full weeks with no cheating and no forbidden food. All in all I was over the moon that I had managed that. It showed me that I can do it.

I fell off the diet in spectacular fashion after an accidental night out in Edinburgh's fleshpots and never really managed to climb back on. I suffered a lot of pain in my legs, back and shoulders that disappeared as soon as I added some more carbs back into the diet.

Having said all that, I am quite happy with that kind of eating and don't really want to go back to eating troughs full of white pasta, rice and tatties. I rejoined Weight Loss Resources, but I suspect that most of my future calories will come from protein. I must do this; I really really really want to do this. I want to wear my Monsoon frocks this summer.

PS: How does one change one's name then? I see that I am the sole remaining fatfighter... can I be someone else too please?.