Breaking Free

Time

One of my main "excuses" that I use to myself about why I haven't yet broken free from what's holding me back is Time.  Not enough time.  Time pressured.  Cash rich, time poor. 

Sometimes this is true : there are days when I can't get to my gym because I am either in the office all day and out in the evening, or else because the gym is shut (Sundays and Bank holidays, annoyingly).  In that sense, the logistics of time mean that I cannot achieve a specific task - exercise at the gym.  However is that excuse really good enough to hold water ?  Surely I could get up earlier, go for a walk, do a home exercise DVD?  Some of this is more to do with priorities rather than time.

The truth is that I find it easier to take the cheap, lazy, comforting and easy path - which involves (perhaps) staying in bed an hour longer in the morning and not exercising;  eating a takeaway pizza rather than cooking a more healthy meal; buying sweets or chocolate when I'm bored. 

The alternative path - to cook more at home; to plan meals a week in advance; to read about nutrition and understand my body's needs; to get up early for exercise or to go out for exercise in the evenings instead of slumping on the sofa - takes a lot more time, energy and effort.  And yet this is the path that I have to take.  It's hard.  Breaking free from any addiction is hard - and my addiction, to comfort eating, is socially encouraged in some ways.  Still I'm determined to do it.

Falling off the wagon..

So it's been a while since I updated my own blog.  This is mainly because I was so fed up with myself.  Somehow I just lost my focus over the last month and failed to lose any weight at all - I also did very little exercise and didn't focus on healthy eating, so maybe it's surprising I didn't gain more weight !

I did have a series of minor things that went wrong and that distracted me - some health-related, some at work, some personal.  Although these were annoying and at times, tiring, I've had a lot worse in my time to deal with.  So why did I fall off the wagon so much ? or why did I allow myself to be distracted ?

I need to get back my focus and drive, to get in touch with my determination.  I can be clear, determined and focussed in relation to work and to many other parts of my life.  It's a case of prioritising my focus on breaking free from what holds me back.

day 1 - the manifesto

So this is it.  Day 1 on my first-ever blog.  Inspired somewhat by the fabulous Pasta Queen blog which I've been reading for a while now, I felt it's time to make my own efforts.

So how fat am I ?  See the About page for ongoing details. I'll be hoping to update that fairly regularly.  Let's just say, fat enough that it bothers me. Really bothers me.  Not just "oh she's a little plump" but quite a lot more.

And why do I want to lose weight ? Well for one thing I'm never going to aspire to be particularly fashionable or stick-thin.  A size 14 would be wonderful.  So I'm not doing this for purely cosmetic reasons (though I would have to say, there's a whole load of nicer clothes available for people less than a size 16..  obviously above that size there is an assumption by clothes retailers that you lost your brain cells with the increase in your fat cells, consequently all the clothes are nasty. With a frill down the front if you're lucky).

I'm doing this because there's a whole load of misery and unhappiness to do with compulsive over-eating and eating for the suppression of emotions, which I want to be able to process and then let go of.  If I'm upset, then I'll let myself BE upset - rather than eating a packet of Jaffa Cakes and then feeling even more upset with myself.

I'm doing this because I want to feel happy with my body and the way it looks.

I'm doing this because I don't want to waste any more of my thoughts and energy on negative self-blaming comments in my head.  It's just food - so I want to remove the emotional link that's been there in the past.

So my plan is very simple - to exercise more, and to eat better quality food, ideally higher in protein and lower in carbohydrate.  As I'm a vegetarian, this does mean I have to think fairly hard at present about what I can eat.  However I'll be adding some new options to my cooking as I've just acquired Rose Elliot's book :   The Vegetarian Low-Carb Cookbook.

This is going to take some time - perhaps 24 weeks if I stay on target, in practice perhaps 6 - 8 months as no doubt there'll be times when life gets in the way of healthy eating and exercising.  My challenge to myself (using this blog to spur me on) is to make sure I stick with it.