Confessions...

A friend of mine shared a quote on Facebook the other day that strongly resonated with me, for all the wrong reasons. It was supposed to be humorous, but, in me, it sparked a deep-seated guilt. The quote went like this:~ “ I didn't want my family to judge me so I walked past them with 2 cookies on my plate and 4 in my pockets”  Pretty harmless, eh?  We’ve all done it haven’t we?  Well, probably, yes. But for me, and possibly for others like me, it triggers shame and remorse at the many, many times that I have employed devious and subversive methods to distract from and disguise my terrible eating habits. Since I have embarked on my new, healthier lifestyle, my husband has  bemusedly enquired, on many occasions, how I have managed to gain the weight I have, as he has rarely witnessed me gorging on food and snacks that amount to the calories that must contribute to my size. There is a reason for this.  I do not have underlying health issues that affect my weight, no underactive thyroid or side effects from medication. The answer is quite simple. I have indulged in my worst eating habits when there are no witnesses present. I have eaten in secret, in the safe sanctuary of denial. It seems a little ironic that being fat can hold any form of secrecy. After all, by our very presence Fat People are extremely overt. We stand out in the crowd, are still the subject of ridicule and “harmless” ribaldry; we have to buy clothes in “specialist” shops; the “obesity epidemic” is constantly up for debate. And in all this, as our bodies are getting larger, our self-esteem is getting smaller.  It was very hard not to enter a fast food restaurant and wonder if onlookers were watching me with disapproving eyes; as I hauled my bulky frame through the supermarket I would contemplate whether others are reviewing the contents of my shopping trolley with critical eyes; when I browsed through a clothes shop that does not cater for my size, looking for items for my daughter, I considered whether the assistants believed that I am deluding myself.

It is this very conspicuousness, I believe that can drive folks like me into conducting our shameful, compulsive behaviour behind closed doors, or in deceitful and subversive manners.  And, like any addict knows, compulsion goes hand in hand with shame, and shame breeds denial. Therefore the problem does not go away, it just gets hidden deeper and deeper and more difficult to tackle.

For me, the true antidote to Secrecy is TRUTH. But it is a hard and bitter pill to swallow. It requires courage e to admit our transgressions, for if we do not admit them, we cannot acknowledge them. And if we do not acknowledge them, we cannot change them.

So, as part of my Campaign of Truth, I am going to purge, to confess some of my “Food Sins”, in the hope that I will never choose to repeat them again, and will learn to think more healthily.

So here goes….

•         I have, indeed, hidden cookies in my pocket whilst carrying others on my plate
•         I have gorged on cakes, trifles, ice creams etc and then carefully concealed the empty packets so that my actions are not discovered.
•        I have bought food “for the children” which never reached their hands.
•         I have “looked after” party bags for my children on the front seat of my car whilst we travelled home from friends’ celebrations and then feigned empathy at my offspring’s  disappointment that somebody “forgot” to include the cake or sweets, whilst surreptitiously wiping the icing from my mouth.
•         I have concealed chocolates  in my desk drawer and waited for the office to clear before consuming  my stash.
•        I have waited for my husband to go on night shifts and for the children to go to bed before scoffing an entire tub of ice cream.
•        I have entered chocolate shops, pretending that I was purchasing a selection “for a friend”, going to the extent of “umming” and  wondering out loud what “they” would like in a theatrical effort designed entirely to ensure that the shop assistant would not suspect that I would be going home and stuffing my own face with the whole lot in one sitting.

My husband used to have a “Magic Toblerone Bar” he kept in the fridge. This bar, of which he would occasionally consume one section at a time, had the mystical property of “magically regenerating” every now and then.

My other half has an excruciatingly irritating and completely alien habit of only eating what he needs and then putting the remainder back in the fridge 

The next time he indulged a craving he would return to the fridge, anticipating, perhaps, six segments left, he would discover, curiously, that  the entire bar would sudden be whole again. How could this be?? What witchcraft was this?

Well, I’m sure you’ve guessed….Yes, Dear Reader, this poor unfortunate blogger had failed to resist temptation again and, lacking the self-restraint demonstrated by her spouse, consumed the entire bar  in a very short space of time. This left me with a conundrum…whilst my husband might overlook a segment or two missing the next time he fancied some triangular Swiss confectionery, I couldn’t imagine that the absence of an entire bar would go unnoticed. Therefore, I had no option but to traipse to the nearest chocolate retail establishment and purchase a replacement so that suspicion could be evaded. 

Of course, in the early days  (as, after all, this was not a one-off scenario. Oh No!) I was sloppy, and merely replaced the partially-eaten bar with a whole one. 

But, once I was rumbled, I got wise.

 The next time my compulsion got the better of me, I did, yet again, venture out and obtain a replacement. However, as my deceptions grew deeper, I learnt to remove a number of segments before returning it to the fridge so that it resembled exactly the previous bar prior to consumption. It was the Prefect crime and I had become a Criminal Mastermind.

I did not, however, restrict my nefarious activities to Toblerone bars. Other victims of my misdemeanours included several Terry’s Chocolate Oranges, a number of large Dairy Milks and, on one particularly debauched and shameful occasion, one of my children’s’ chocolate Advent Calendars. All had to be replaced similarly.

Whilst I can see some humour in this situation, the underlying pathos in all of this is not lost on me. These are the desperate actions of a desperate individual too lost in their addiction and denial to seek a way out and escape to a healthier lifestyle. No matter how contrived and complicated my deceptions became, no matter emotionally and mentally draining it was to construct and uphold these masquerades, I was more prepared to sacrifice  that part of my soul than to invest  the same amount of energy into redressing my own wellbeing. It wasn’t the Toblerone that needed regenerating, it was my skewed self-esteem.

If I were to read back the last few paragraphs and replace the references to food with references to alcohol or narcotics, they would not be out of place as part of the rhetoric of alcoholics and junkies.  The issue is the same.

So how am I addressing this? Well, I am still most definitely a work in progress. I am grateful right now that the benefits of the weight loss and health that I am enjoying are far outweighing the momentary sensation that I feel when I place something sugary on my tongue. I just need to continue to reinforce that in my head so that the “default” thinking switches to self-love and not self-delusion.

I know, for a fact, that the above list of confessions is not definitive nor exhaustive. Those few examples are just ones that popped into my mind as I considered my blog. Do I feel better making these confessions? After all “confession is good for the soul”. Well, in a way, yes I do. I don’t feel fabulous that they occurred in the first place and I am frustrated that I am still battling with the consequences of these and many other actions. But at least these secrets are no longer festering inside of me, as damaging as fat and sugar to both my body and soul. Now I must forgive myself. And forgiveness is only possible once a wrongdoing has been admitted.

I was wrong. I was stupid. But I’m trying to change that.

Wish me luck…..

Making it work

After my mega-blog last week, there is not a huge amount to report at the moment. I’m really pleased to say that the weight loss is still progressing nicely, I have now lost two and half stones in the seven weeks since I started this venture. Two weeks ago I was disappointed to have “only” lost two pounds, and, rightly so, I was berated heartily by my peers for complaining about it. In most diets that would be a commendable loss, however, having been used to weekly losses of four, five or six pounds, I felt a wee bit robbed. Sensing my despondency as I stepped off the scales, my on-the-ball consultant asked me where I was in my monthly cycle, and it just so happened that my period had started on that very weigh-in day. I was advised to maybe attribute the small loss to that phantom- “water retention” and continue on plan, as, with luck, the scales would set themselves right the following week when my hormones had stabilised. What had really frustrated me was that I was only one pound short of reaching the two-stone goal. Now, unlike other slimming groups and clubs, I am not rewarded with stickers, rosettes or fridge magnets, however it is still nice to mark a milestone, and the fact that I had fallen so close to the target was a distinct blow. No matter how hard I try and focus away from them, numbers on the scale and in my weight loss record still dominate my psyche. I really hope that, one day, they will not matter so much. Anyway, I resolved to keep going. In the past, even a slight “setback” like this would have the potential to catapult me into the self-pity pot and I would feel compelled to “cheer myself up” with food. If it had been a weight gain it could have escalated this course even further and this has been known to propel me into “fuck it mode” where I give up on the diet altogether because “it obviously doesn’t work”. Ah, denial…it is so much easier to apportion blame than to take a good hard, honest look at yourself and face facts. A young lady I know, who does my nails and has become a good friend, has recently featured in the media as she has lost a very impressive 13 stone, going from a size 28 to a size 10. She achieved this through Bariatric surgery. Although this isn’t my method of choice, mainly because, unlike her, I am not 22 and have a family to consider which could be impacted by my undergoing risky surgery, I have come to commend her courage and tenacity in the past year in which she has lost this weight. I say “come to” because, I am ashamed to admit that, at first, like many,  I considered this method of weight loss to be “cheating”. Reading through the newspaper articles about this lady on social media I have noted that there are plenty of others who still share this view. Naturally, as is the curse of internet anonymity and subsequent “trolling” much of the negative comments have been delivered with such vitriol and scorn that it makes my own skin crawl, but I cannot deny to myself that I used to share the basic sentiment of distrust and derision aimed at those that have achieved a goal that I, truly, have craved but felt unable to achieve. I have touched on this subject before and I am learning, more and more, that the only way forward to a new, better place sometimes involves breaking through barriers. Barriers that you have built up yourself. It’s all part of a self-protection mechanism, as the saying goes, the truth hurts, and it is a natural human urge to avoid pain. So we protect ourselves from short term discomfort as a knee-jerk reaction, unaware that the long term problems can be far more damaging. Thus, I make excuses, lie to myself, apportion blame and accuse. I need to stop this. Now, when I remove   the scales (excuse the pun) from my eyes and see things for how they really are, I truly understand. My friend has not “cheated”, she has endured a year of discomfort, invested a lot of money; she has had to completely review her habits – for life – and taken considerable risks to achieve the result. And she has been rewarded for it. It has been an incredible journey and she needs to stay on this path for the rest of her, hopefully extended, life. That is no faint achievement. It deserves commendation and praise, not sneering and criticism.  I’m a big fan of Harper Lee’s popular novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird", with its iconic quote: ““You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”. This is very, very true and promotes compassion for one’s fellow man. However, do not forget to include yourself amongst humanity – get to know yourself totally inside and out – warts and all, then show yourself true compassion by being truthful and frank, nurture what is really good for you, and you might stand a chance of being a better you.  Anyway, back to the weight loss. After my “disappointment” I continued along the “good” path, stuck to plan and refused to be disheartened. At the following week’s weigh-in, I harboured a little fantasy of “wouldn’t it be nice to have skipped the two stone mark and gone straight to two and a half stone?”. Of course that would have entailed an eight pound loss which, even though I dreamed of it, seemed a very unlikely possibility. Well, Dear Reader, sometimes dreams do come true. To my utter amazement and delight those magical eight pounds had, indeed, melted away and I was two and a half stone lighter. Of course, I’m not expecting this to happen every week, but it’s nice to have that moment at least once. Talking of expectations, I’m still working on addressing my fear of failure. All the time I am doing well I battle with the inner voice that tells me that this success won’t last, that I will eventually fall off the wagon, that the “honeymoon period” won’t last and I will, one day, end up back where I started, or even worse. So I am trying to look at things differently. And here are my thoughts. Instead of focusing on where I made the same mistakes in the past, I will concentrate on the areas that I am approaching differently. I have lost considerable amounts of weight on previous diets and, while I experienced short term success, I am coming to understand that I didn’t learn new habits. Reducing calorie intake has the obvious result in weight loss but it is the sustained changes in behaviour that determine long term results. A famous quote attributed to Einstein (although not confirmed) is “ 'The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”. And in every other diet, I was doing the same thing – cutting calories but not replacing unhealthy options with healthier ones. And in certain diets, I wasn’t even practising portion control as certain plans permitted ‘unlimited’ and ‘free’ foods. This was great for me at the time, I could gorge on what I liked amongst the free items, safe in the knowledge that weight loss was imminent. However, as the weight dropped I should have tempered the quantities. And instead of opting for the ‘free’ meat or pasta, I should have gone for the better options of fruit and vegetables. But I didn’t have to – the diet told me it was ok. And when I fell off the wagon, as I inevitably did, I hadn’t learned to reduce what was on my plate, therefore counteracting any other items that slipped under my knife and fork too. On the path I am on now, I am realising that I have to be stricter with myself if I want to permanently undo the results of my non-discipline. It goes back to the “no pain, no gain” scenario. It’s all well and good promoting diets as “extra easy” or full of “free” food if the dieter does not have an addiction to sugary, fatty food, as I believe I do. These plans work for folk who approach with a modicum of self-discipline and who can sensibly adhere to healthier options. Unfortunately, this does not seem to suit my personality at all. I have exhibited an addictive personality for as long as I remember and I will indulge that wherever possible, using sneakier and more self-deluding methods as I degenerate.  As a teenager I used to work in a pharmacy in a dodgy part of town frequented and occupied by the local junkies. A number of these had attempted to address their drug habits by seeking help from the doctor who prescribe methadone to replace their heroin use. They were supposed to come to the pharmacy for a daily prescription of a controlled amount of methadone, which would gradually taper off and, theoretically, reduce the need for opiates. But of course, the addicts were smarter than that. They would turn up only once or twice per week, allowing the supply of methadone to accumulate so that they could binge on it and get the ‘hit’ they needed. No doubt they were supplementing their addictions with other substances in the interim also. And, unsurprisingly, they were destroying themselves. Now this may seem a bit of an extreme example, but to someone of my disposition, being offered a selection of ‘free foods’ within a diet plan is akin to telling a junkie that they can’t have heroin but they can help themselves to as much methadone as they like. The effects may take longer to establish but the results are eventually the same. And you never learn the discipline that you need. This, so far, is why things are different on this plan. Of course, I still have the right to deviate, but if I deviate I cannot justify it as being “allowed” because it is “free”.  Right now, nothing is free, if I want to succeed and stick to the programme I have to have only what and how much the plan tells me to. I have to weigh and measure, I must restrict my intake. Plus…and here is the big thing…I have to eat vegetables and salad or starve. There is no alternative to lunch, no lashings of pasta nor piles of lean meat. It is salad or nothing. And I have to say, I’m getting used to it. My consultant jokes that, in my earlier blogs I referred to green, leafy vegetables as  “ the devil’s bogeys” whereas a few weeks later they had been downgraded to mere “rabbit food”. Now that’s progress.  I have mentioned on more than one occasion that I have spent most of my life being “veggie phobic” but, underneath it all was a deep regret that I didn’t have the courage nor resolve to eat them. I even considered finding a way to get hypnotised to force me to like them. Other diets offered me the “get out clause” of continuing to avoid them in favour of other “free foods”, but, now my choices are severely limited. I need this discipline. I need to go “cold turkey” and replace my drug with another substance entirely, one that doesn’t promise a “hit” of any kind, but nurtures my body. And I hope that “rabbit food” will one day become something I actively choose and enjoy. I am getting there…I have been out for meals on three occasions and chosen, and more importantly heartily consumed, a healthy salad each time. Maybe there is hope for me this time… Another change to the other diets I have chosen is my increased consumption of water – this definitely fills me up and I am seeing and feeling many health benefits already. In fact, water has replaced my excessive intake of diet fizzy drinks, in particular Pepsi Max. I definitely used to use diet drinks to satisfy my craving for sweetness (I have always had a very sweet tooth) when I felt I needed to deprive myself of something more sugary and I reckon I was, at the very least, bordering on addiction to diet drinks, too. I have recently read articles on the dangers and side effects of the artificial sweetener, aspartame. It was a very scary read indeed! The list of health issues is quite extensive. Of course this could be considered to be scaremongering but I have to say, I believe that diet drinks were having a detrimental effect on me. I have always suffered from migraines which were exacerbated by my hormonal cycle, and I have always been paranoid about keeping medication on hand to avoid suffering the debilitating pain and nausea of an attack. It occurred to me recently that I have not suffered one migraine episode since I gave up aspartame seven weeks ago. And migraines are a well-documented side effect of this substance. Furthermore, I don’t seem to suffer the same cravings for sweet things I used to since I weaned  my taste buds off artificial sweeteners. So those are the, frankly radical, changes I have undertaken. I do hope I can make these part of my life from now on until the end of my , hopefully now extended, life. One last thing before I sign off. I have also been taking 20 minutes of exercise on the exercise bike at least five times a week for the past few weeks. All those excuses that I “didn’t have the time” turned out to be utter rubbish. Most nights before bed I would catch up on iPlayer or YouTube videos before I went to sleep. Watching these would inevitably reduce my sleep time by 20 or 30 minutes per night. Now I just stick my tablet on the bike and pedal away while watching them during the day. That way I benefit not only from the exercise but also from extra sleep. I started off by managing 10km in the 20 minutes, now I am doing 11km in the same time, so progress is happening!! In the back of wardrobe a fortnight ago, I found a discarded impulse buy - a pair of exercise “Hot Pants”. These are neoprene leggings designed to make you sweat more, and they certainly do, especially in a south-facing conservatory during a heatwave in July! They take a little effort to wriggle into, but I guess that’s just extra exercise! My husband laughs when  wear them as they make a disconcerting swishing noise when I walk, but he’s grateful that I can’t give him a fright by silently sneaking up on him whilst wearing these fashion horrors. So that’s it for another blog. Let’s see what the next few weeks bring. Wish me luck……