Monday, March 30, 2009

Shrink-wrapped

Well, it's shrink time again tomorrow, and I'm wondering what she'll make of my past fortnight? What might she say to me? For starters, I guess I've done some good things. While I still don't have my eating anywhere near under control, I've been better. Which does not sound much, but I figure at this point that I'll take any small improvements. I've been doing some exercise for my mental health. Not as much as I have been used to, but some, and I want to increase that because I need it. I have proved beyond a doubt that it makes me a happier, calmer Deb than I am when I don't do it. But I'm still gripped by my catastrophising fears that whatever got me this far in my weight loss is gone forever, that I no longer have any "mojo" and I'll end up being 300kg next time and needing to be forcibly removed from my house by a forklift. I do realise this is highly unlikely but, hey, everybody needs a hobby, and it would appear that worrying about things that will never actually happen is mine. *sigh*

I'm still in a most peculiar headspace and I'm not quite sure what to do about it. I feel like I don't know what my place in the world is any more. Maybe it's part of being this age and not having kids. You are automatically excluded and on the outer with quite a lot of the female population because kids are a big part of anybody's life, which is as it should be. So you tend not to want to hang around "kid" people because you just can't relate on the same level and it's too hard sometimes. It was OK when I had Zoe because I could sort of be a kid person, even though she wasn't my child, but now it's back to how it used to be and it's made making new friends a bit more challenging.

As far as work goes, I know I don't want to do what I've been doing for much longer, but thanks to the shrink I've been coping OK with my job by thinking of it a bit differently i.e. means to an end, every day I do it is one less day I have to do it. I think what I really need her to help me with this time is what to say to myself at that crucial moment when I feel like I want to emotionally eat, because right now there is very little fighting going on. The sort of thoughts I have are, "What the hell? Who cares if you do it? You've got no partner/boyfriend, you could be the size of several small houses and still do your job in your little room. What is one more day like this going to matter?" And they're really not very compelling reasons to walk away from the car and not go to the shop. I can't really even use the, "But this is about your health" one right now because in all honesty, while I'm this unhappy and distcontent with my life, the thought of extending it for years and years is not exactly appealing, I hate to say. And then I get all guilty for feeling like that because I should be grateful for the gift of good health.

So, you see, dear blog, I'm still caught in a bit of an emotional maelstrom at the moment. I'm sure I'll eventually climb out, because I've been here before even in the last few years of my JOURNEEE!, but it is taking a little longer than I'd like at this point.

See you anon. xxx

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Small victories

Just stopping by, dear blog, to report that I've gone two whole days without extra junk food bingeing. Hey, it might not sound like much, but if those two days can turn into four, then six, then a week, then two weeks, that's how habits get changed. And I know this means I can do it again. :) It doesn't mean I've eaten perfectly for the past two days. I've done pretty well, though it's been a bit erratic and here and there. But my aim was not to get the extra crap, and I haven't, so that's a great start! Let's make it three tomorrow!

xox

p.s. I have to face my PT tomorrow. EEEEEP!

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Hmmmmmmm....

My name is Debbie and I am a food addict.


There, I've said it.


Since I started this blog and made the decision to withdraw quite a lot from my cyber weight loss world, wow, has it been an interesting ride. I'm not going to say I've kicked goals in weight loss and done really well. Quite the opposite, in fact. Going to a dietician was (and is) a great idea in theory, as is learning to eat like a normal person going forwards so as to avoid having to calorie count, weigh food etc for the rest of my life. The execution so far, however, leaves a lot to be desired. See, I've developed this bad habit of every day, at a certain point, going out and getting crap food. Because nobody really knows about this, it's been quite confronting to come to the realisation that so much of what I do still revolves around people-pleasing. The other day I sent an email to my PT explaining I haven't been wanting to go to the gym lately because I feel ashamed and embarrassed that I've been stuck around the same weight for nearly a year now and I don't want people to be looking at me and wondering why I think it's OK to weigh 115kg for the rest of my life. Of course I don't think it's OK, and who knows - probably NOBODY thinks that and it's all in my head. But the end result is the same - I think that unless I'm at least making an attempt to lose weight, I'm not good enough, I'm not worth being round, I'm a bad person, etc. And while I know exactly where this thought pattern comes from, I'm not interested in rehashing the ancient history behind it all. It is what it is. I'm only interested in what will move me forward. And what that is is me losing weight FOR ME. Not so people on a bulletin board will approve of me and tell me nice things about myself because, let's face it, none of that matters if I think I'm a piece of crap, does it? Not so my PT and people at my gym will think I'm amazing to be able to do what I do at my weight. Not so my parents aren't on my back about my weight. I believe what I've done so far has been partly because I wanted to do it for me, and yet there is still that people-pleasing element to it that needs to be eradicated. And right now, with feeling so lonely and yucky and down on myself, I haven't had the stomach for a fight, so I haven't been fighting this urge to go get junk food cos it's the highlight of my day. That's just fricking sad if it's true. So as of today, I hereby state that I'm better than that and I CAN beat this. There is no reason for me to have this addiction. There surely must be other ways to cope with loneliness and boredom. Today, I'm not going to the shops for crap food. My God, it's going to be hard after so many weeks like this, but if I can beat gambling I can beat this. I'm going to be climbing the walls shortly and I'll get REALLY hungry, but I have to be honest - I've gained a few kilos in the past few weeks and I'm not liking the feeling of extra weight around my middle, the extra sluggishness creeping in. I'm just not going to go there. The junk food in the world will still be there - I'm just going to moderate my intake again like I have done for most of the past couple of years. It needs to return to its proper place in my life and not be a focus. I can do this. I am incredibly strong when I want to be. And I DO want to be.


Thanks for helping save my sanity, dear blog.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Riding along on a pushbike, honey!


Well, here it is - the new bike I'm going to buy, I decided today. It's a Malvern Star Atlantis hybrid. I've been looking at bikes on and off the last few weeks, sat on lots, kicked a few tyres, and nothing has felt as instantly right and comfortable and "me" as this one. It was love at first sight for me and my arse. :)

All this has come about because I'm not going to be able to keep the little red Repco for much longer. My friend wants it back, so next time I see her I need to return it. Meanwhile, my new bike is going to have the gear on it I want, such as a pannier and a simple trip computer. Since I'm never going to be a Lance Armstrong wannabe, and I haven't got the space (or the money!) to have one each of mountain, road and hybrid bikes, then a hybrid seems like the ideal compromise. I want to be able to use it for fitness AND for incidental exercise/riding to the shops for a coffee in the morning. I want to be able to carry a few groceries on it sometimes.

But the other reason I'm doing this is because I saw my new Dr Nutcase/psychologist the other day and the main thing I took away from it all was the need for thought reframing. My task for the next fortnight is to, rather than getting up in the morning and thinking, "Oh, crap, I've got to caption. God, I HATE THIS! I can't stand it for ONE MORE DAY!!!", which only leads to me feeling even worse about my situation, I need to think, "This is a means to an end while I improve my financial situation and make other positive changes to my social life." Or, "Every day I do this is one less day I have to do this." And the other thing is EFMH - Exercise For Mental Health. Exercise is also a means to an end. If it helps me get fitter and lose weight, those are side benefits, but the main reason I need to re-commit to it is because it makes me feel better about pretty much everything in my life. And I'm not going to do it because it wins me approval from others or because I'm trying to impress anyone, etc - I'm doing it because I must, because it's going to make day to day life easier for me. And there is no higher purpose than that for me at the moment. That is THE biggest thing.

But today I also decided to recommit to starting to put food back into the proper place in my life. At the very least, it's not to be used as a reward to get me through a day of work. There has to be other nice things I can do for myself that don't involve eating.

Till next time, dear blog...

Deb xox

Monday, March 16, 2009

I slashed a tyre

Hmm - OK, this is not good. Today's been a big challenge for me - that's no secret. I just read back over what I wrote earlier. But as far as meeting the challenge head-on and kicking it in the butt, ba-bow. I didn't succeed. :( This is how it went down. I have spent most of the day in a really bad mood. I wish I knew if it was PMT. It could well be, but I must be going through some kind of crazy pre-menopause thing because my cycle is up the creek (and this is on the Pill, mind you!) and I have no idea when I'm going to have a period next. Fairly sure I haven't had one for about six weeks now. Not pregnant, natch. Anyway, even if it's not PMT, I probably have more than enough stuff to put me in a bad mood anyway, what with the hating the job thing, because that's something that you're stuck with for quite a large proporition of your life. I was finishing off a program before, and there was THAT urge, the one I spoke of in the last entry. The one that was telling me, "This utterly sucks, and you've got four more days of it this week. Oh, God!" I looked deep inside my soul and I asked myself if there was any really good reason why I shouldn't just do what I have been doing lately and get some crap food. And I couldn't think of one. :( Maybe I didn't try hard enough. Maybe I just didn't know what to do instead. But I must find some sort of cure for this ongoing, day to day unhappiness, because at the moment it seems the best I can manage is damage control i.e. not gaining weight. It's not good enough. But then, maybe the point is I shouldn't say stuff like it's not good enough. Maybe I need to be a bit more accepting and realise it's only a couple of hours out of what could otherwise be a really good week. It's a mere speedbump, a small one. I read a really good analogy the other day about the "throw the baby out with the bathwater" mentality. It basically said, "If one tyre on your car is slashed, do you then go ahead and slash the other three just because the first one got slashed?" Of course you wouldn't - you'd work on fixing the intial tyre that got slashed. I really want a positive side to this, because the temptation to throw rocks at myself is really great right now.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

ARGGGGGGGHHHHH!

I guess the great thing about blogs is that they're wonderful tools for venting. It sometimes doesn't even matter if no-one reads it - it's just good to get whatever is stressing you out down on paper.

I've had an epiphany in the last couple of days. I've been using junk food to make myself feel better about my job. You know what made me realise it? Today I'm having one of those days where I could scream, I'm hating what I'm doing that much. The disclaimer, as always, is that I recognise I'm better off than lots of people, at least I HAVE a job, I should be grateful, blah blah, but please indulge me for a moment. I've been doing this home-working thing for nearly four years now, but it feels like 10. If I were to lose my job tomorrow, I'd be devastated, but only because I'd have to work out what the hell to do about my finances. Not captioning? That would be a piece of cake. I'm so over it. So, my pattern the last month or so - which, in the way of habit-breaking, has become very clear to me now I'm attempting not to do it - has been at a certain time every day, I leave the house to go get some crap food. Not usually such a huge amount, because I physically can't eat as much as I used to even if I try (and I sometimes do, with somewhat disastrous consequences at times), but enough. I'll either eat this before I start, or save some to eat while I'm working. There are days when it's all I have felt I have to look forward to. Man, that sounds tragic, doesn't it? It's been the only thing I can rely on that will make me feel a scintilla better about what I do.

So, now it's not available to me, I've really started hating my workdays again. I'm working so slowly today, I'm practically at a standstill. I've set myself a goal of three programs, but at this rate IF they get done at all, they'll be done by midnight. And the thing is, if I really sat down and concentrated they could be done in around 2.5 hours each. But I'm two days ahead in deadlines, so there isn't that urgency to force me to do them.

All this probably makes me sound like the world's worst employee, and there have been times in the last few months where I really haven't been a very good one precisely because I'm so depressed and sick of feeling trapped in this little room, sitting on my butt with no human contact. My work literally only contact me if I do something wrong or if they're sending me my work allocation. So, last year - I hate to admit this - I deliberately sent things back late so they'd be forced to acknowledge my existence in some way. That makes me sound like a 2-year-old having a tantrum but, honestly, would an occasional phone call to see if I haven't died be that hard to manage?

I'm bored out of my brain, I'm hungry, I'm hot and sticky and I do NOT want to be doing this. :( I wonder how much longer I'll have to? I guess the answer to that lies in my own hands only. But, Universe, if you're listening, I'm putting it out there - save me!!!!! Help me work out what the hell it is I'm supposed to do with the rest of my life. I know it isn't this. I just don't know what it IS.

If you'd read my first blog, it should be pretty clear why I eat now and why I need to work on this. Food is fuel. It isn't something you should use as a drug to make you feel better because you're unhappy. Yet, this is just what I keep lapsing back into. And round we go again.

*sigh* I'm still feeling positive, but this day feels like it's not going to end any time soon.

Deb xxx

Saturday, March 14, 2009

It's life, Jim, but not as we know it...

Well, my first foray back into the blogosphere hasn't gone so well! I just laboriously typed out a huge explanation as to why I'm back here, and the universe has seen fit to tell me I'm a bit too verbose and eaten it all up! Eeeeep! So, I guess I'd better summarise why I'm blogging again, what's brought me to this point, and what's up with the title.

I started a personal transformation at the beginning of 2006. It started off as being about losing weight, which I've done - I've got rid of about 44kg, give or take, of the 70+ I need to lose. However, my relationship of 8.5 years ended halfway through last year, and since then, I'll be honest, I've been a bit lost trying to come to terms with the huge change in my life. I haven't really felt like being too conscientious with diet and exercise, so I just haven't really done it with much enthusiasm. It's probably some sort of miracle I have managed to be around the same weight in the nine months since then, but I'm starting to feel again like the time for standing still is over and it's time to move forward. However, the moving forward is going to be a far different moving forward this time around, one which has my future happiness and completeness as a person as its centrepiece, not something I hope will just work itself out when I'm thinner. It would be nice if life really were like a weight loss ad, where you can fit into size 10 clothes and suddenly all your problems magically disappear and you skip off into the sunset a fulfilled, deliriously happy human being simply because you can wear a bikini on the beach. Well, pardon my French, but what a load of bullshit. Life isn't like that. It never was. Losing weight has no magical properties. It may help your confidence. It will, in all likelihood, make you feel better physically in terms of being less tired and less illness-prone. It might bring love into your life if you're single. But to me, the bottom line is that if you're not happy and things in your life are wrong, losing weight is so superficial that you are quite likely to get where you're going and think, "Well, doesn't this suck - I went to all this trouble, and I still think I'm a pretty worthless human being. I'm still trapped in a dead-end job that I hate. I still have no social life and no-one to love me. What was the point?" And there's nowhere to go from there, really, except back to slow death by chocolate or going out of my way to make my diseased gall bladder explode from eating foods I know I shouldn't. So, the upshot of all this realisation is that I've been neglecting the psychological side of my weight loss for a long time, and I can't do it any longer. I don't want to end up at goal weight and still think I'm a piece of primordial slime. I don't want to wonder why I bothered doing it, because good health is wasted on a person who hates their life and themselves. And there is no point in waiting until I'm a certain size to do things I want to do, or to go out and have fun, etc. Life truly is short, and I feel I've wasted far too much of mine already.

My new approach to things is extremely radical compared to how I've done things thus far, but it absolutely has to be this way. It's so true that if you keep doing what you've always done, you will keep getting the same results - I am living proof of it! So...

1. I'm not weighing myself any more - my dietician is going to do that for me. As far as I'm concerned, I have no scales. My clothes will tell me what I need to know. I need to do the right things and trust that I am and not obsess about it all. And for someone who tends to be a daily weigher, this is HUGE.
2. Though I've gotten this far by counting calories and weighing things obsessively (again - this is a recurring theme in my life), I'm not doing it any more. I am currently writing down what I'm eating and when in a paper diary because my dietician asked me to so that she can see how I manage the plan she gave me, but that's it. I'm not going to add up amounts, weigh bread and milk, etc - I'm going to trust whatever instincts I surely must have developed in the past three years. Again, the thought of this is incredibly scary for me, and yet, unless I want to spend the rest of my life weighing, measuring, counting, obsessing, this is how the way forward must be. Normal people who don't have weight problems - they DO NOT DO THIS! I don't want to do it either. There has to be a way to get back in touch with my physical body, to listen to it and have it tell me when it needs feeding. When you calorie-count rigorously, you tend to eat the same amount every day. When I think about this, it's nuts. There are days when the same amount of calories seems too much to eat. There are other days when I'm so hungry in bed that I can't sleep until I get up and eat something. To me, at least, it would make more sense to eat less when you feel you need less and eat more when you're genuinely hungry. So why don't I do it? Well, I'm going to do it.
3. I'm going to escape from my home work prison, somehow. I've applied for a second, casual job which will not only help me clear my debts, but add some badly-needed structure to my life. If I can't find a paying one in these difficult times, I'm happy to learn on the job in a voluntary capacity until I can find what I want/need.
4. I'm going to stop existing like a troll in cyberspace. OK, for now I'm stuck doing my home job for financial reasons, but that doesn't mean I have to spend the rest of my life on my butt staring at a screen cos I'm too frightened to leave the house and interact with actual human beings in real time. It's no way to live and it's slowly destroying me. When people ask me to go places, I'm just gonna go. I'm not going to let my fears dissuade me.
5. I'm going to see a psychologist as of next week and really, really work hard at fixing my broken brain and thought processes. So much of my self-sabotage and bingeing and destructive eating stems from really poor self-esteem and negativity. Since I don't want to take drugs for my own anxiety/depression issues, the only solution is to confront them head-on. But I'm not just going to talk about the past and my childhood, etc - the time for that is long past and nothing is going to be different no matter how much it's discussed. I'm going to get into meditation for my own inner peace and mental health. I have such a busy brain that gives me no peace because it's unstimulated. I'm going to stimulate it with a new career down the track, but I'm also going to give it some much-needed time out with relaxation, breathing, etc. I absolutely have to do this because, again, my anxiety/fear/depression are also major eating triggers and they don't need to be, at all.

Well, that's it for now. I just can't wait for Life 2.0 to truly begin. Life 1.0 was good in parts, but it really needed a major overhaul and upgrade. Life 2.0 - the better version, without a doubt. L'chaim!

Deb xoxo