'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?.

Keep it tight, people

Never fear, I'm still here, and am pleased to report that I have lost two kilos in the last few weeks - work disasters, and travelling, and a renewed determination, coupled with the realisation that I'm going to be 40 next year, to be fitter than I have ever been in my life, have all helped.

To quote fatfighters' guru, Billy Blanks, these are my goals:

1. Get fit
2. Have fun
3. Be strong

Two weeks in...

...and I definitely have a flatter stomach - less bloating as a result of no bread, flour or pasta for two weeks. I modified the idiot-proof diet a bit - for example I drank wine and a bit of tea and coffee and ate fruit - and would, I'm sure, have seen better results if I'd stuck to it rigidly. In addition, I drank nowhere near as much water as was recommended. However, generally I feel a lot better. I've also become addicted to going to the gym; in fact, to exercise generally - not a bad thing to become addicted to, really. This weekend I went on two short but strenuous - i.e. uphill - walks with the Peas. In the past, I've been far too lazy to go anywhere further than the park with them. So not only did I get a bit of exercise where I normally wouldn't, we had a lot of fun together. Fatfighter 1, one of the walks was up Garleton hill - remember that? It was blowing a force 10 gale, and as we got to the top of the tower Joe refused to carry on, while Finn needed coaxed to get to the top, took one look over the edge and demanded to go down again. I must admit, I was shaking a bit afterwards! It brought back lots of memories of childhood walks, Martin Bielby and so on.

How is everyone else doing? I'm feeling a bit lonesome here.

Updates

No one has posted on Fatfighters for ages, so I hope this prompts others to post too! I've recently abandoned all pretence at being on a diet, although I've been exercising diligently, five or six days a week. Absence of Peas' dad to work offshore is somewhat inconvenient. I'm more likely to be found scrabbling under the sofa for lost toys, admiring someone's superhero outfit or trying to persuade a recalcitrant four year old that just because it doesn't have chocolate in it doesn't mean it tastes disgusting, than pounding the highways and byways of East Lothian in my running gear. I'm back on the booze too, though not to the same dangerous levels - and I mean dangerous - as before. Have stopped smoking too...would never say never in that regard, but it's been nearly four weeks since my last fag. Chewing away on nicotine gum seems to help ;-)

On Monday, I shall be starting Neris and India's idiot-proof diet. Fatfighter 4 has been on it for almost four weeks. I'll leave it to her to say how it's going. However, it's making increasing sense to me to cut out or limit carbohydrates. The book suggests doing the most restricted phase - phase 1 - for two weeks, unless you have more than a stone to lose. I probably do, but I'm happy to move on to phase 2 after a fortnight and take my chances, especially as most of my extra weight is around my middle, i.e. quite a lot of me is fairly lean. Well, perhaps not lean, but not too flabby. I've also decided to forsake the scales in favour of the measuring tape. I still don't know how much I weigh, but would guess it's in the region of 11 and a half stone, or 161 kilos.

Will post on progress in about two weeks' time!

Testing!

Just wanted to check this works before I make a new post (blog is still using old version of Blogger).

Want to lose 2kg in 3 days????????

No - it's not McKeith. No - it's not cabbage soup and nothing else. Not even wall to wall step classes.

I highly recommend food poisoning. OK, the side effects are fairly extreme, and heaven knows you're not much fun to be with for a couple of days - but what price being slim I ask you??

Modern suction

Interesting article in today's Guardian about the rise of liposuction. It truly sounds like an absolutely horrific procedure, not to say somewhat pointless, and your body takes months to recover: yet nearly 30,000 people, 92% of them women, have undergone the procedure in the last year.

Picture on the wall

At my 40th birthday party recently my mum had selected a bunch of photos for the wall depicting me from age 0 to 39. It's funny how you forget how you looked once. I was struck by one photo in particular, which showed me, my sister, my brother and my mum outside my aunt's house near Huddersfield. The sun is shining and we're all smiling. It's the summer of 1996, and I'm about to start my final year at university. Fatfighter 1 has met or is just about to meet her future husband.

It's interesting to see some photographic evidence of the slimmest I've been in my life, post-early 20s. I weighed just under 9 stone then, and it's obvious. At the time, I was following a strict eating regime in which I avoided refined carbs, coffee and all alcohol except gin and vodka. I may have mentioned it before - it was recommended to me by a naturopath, when I went to see him about my lack of energy. Iwas also running three or four times a week and going to the gym two or three times a week. I cycled everywhere. I would love to go back to living that way - I mean, I was happy too! - but can't get my head round doing without treats in these days of work and childcare and not much else. Any suggestions, anyone?