The Late News

So experts are always blathering on about how walking burns as many calories as jogging and doesn’t get you quite as minging, so I’ve been trying to incorporate it into my days – which is not easy when your home, work, and preferred supermarket are all within a one hour radius of each other. For a city, Aberdeen is betraying pedestrians something wicked.

Anyway, with me starting university and all, I thought that the best idea to combat the inevitable spread of essay-arse would be to walk there. And how long does it take to get to Aberdeen Business School, exactly? One. Hour.

Bastards. The thing is, I’m time poor in the extreme and I only perform one function. Once I start studying again I’m going to have to pick up some part time jobs as well, to contribute the minimum £500 every month we need for rent and bills.

Still, sacrificing two hours every day to walking will have the double effect of reducing the size of my rear at the same time as ensuring I’m so poor that I won’t be able to afford food anyway. Result!

The Secret Life of Flab

Aside from the party on Friday night, I’ve had a very successful week. To a certain extent, aside from the alcohol, even Friday wasn’t that bad – the pizza, sausage rolls, garlic bread, etc. were all homemade (not by me, I might add. There’s a lot to be said for living with a chef) and even the chocolate crispies were fat free. Best not to mention the quarter tube of pringles I devoured in a fit of wasted munchies though. Ho hum.

Food of the Week: Expensive muesli with fresh strawberries, blueberries and rice milk.

Exercise of the Week: Wii croquet? Certainly the way we play it beats the pants off the real game. Also, I have a hankering to try proper golf but not the money.

I’m so much better at this whole not eating thing when I’m not at work. Three more weeks until freedom and hopefully an end to obesity! I’d like to just be plain overweight by September. Stupid BMI tyranny.

The Five-Day Famine

No, I haven’t drowned in my own lard, or a vat of Green and Black’s 70% chocolate for that matter. Life’s been rather hectic recently, for no discernable reason. It all started last Thursday when my Wii arrived, and I’ve rarely been off it since – to say nothing of the dire “bowling shoulder” I’ve managed to acquire – ON BOTH SIDES. What I never managed to achieve on paper – my ambidextrous scrawlings are illegible – I can do perfectly well whilst chucking a shiny pink ball at computer generated pins. In short, I’ve spent all my time playing computer games. Aggressively.

On the upside, my shoulders and back look slightly more defined. On the downside, they hurt like a bitch.

My Wii Fit is due any day now, which is just as well since the weather has faded to grey and horrible once more, and I’m going to need a break from the interminable boredom of the gym. Which, speaking of, I’m going to tonight. M is finally cautiously optimistic about his back having healed so we’re off for a fitness assessment (aka humiliation on a plate) as a starting point.

It’s not been a famine, unfortunately. Whilst I can’t quite figure out what we’ve actually been eating – on account of there being nothing but fruit and slightly wilted salad products in our fridge – apparently we’re well fed. Of course, it could just be an illusion from all the tea we’re drinking. I had sixteen – count them, SIXTEEN – cups on Saturday. Blame it on the writing.

I’m slowly phasing out the bad things in my diet, too. Toast for breakfast is being replaced by ridiculously extravagant muesli and fruit; lunch is perfect as salad and fruit; dinner is still basically at the mercy of the boyfriend – whose tastes run exclusively to meat and two veg - until I summon the energy to cook for myself. I’m considering returning to vegetarianism since wholewheat pasta with vegetables is cheap and nutritious, and more importantly, I don’t object to living on it (see: first year at university).

No weigh-in for me. I hopped on the scale on Saturday morning to be confronted with 246lbs, followed by 134lbs, followed by 190lbs, none of which is remotely close to my actual weight. I’m guessing the scale either needs a new battery, or it needs to be taken back.

As far as good feeling goes, I’m a lot less lethargic (also possibly due to the tea) which is nice. Maybe this time next week I’ll be able to actually get out of bed before 8am and not feel like death, at which point I can start incorporating workouts first thing. That might have to be limited to Wii Fit. I’m not sure I could handle Pump It Up! dance choonz at that time of the morning.

Gym-Phobia

Blast. I appear to be gym-phobic. Not exercise-phobic, don’t misunderstand. It’s just that Aberdeen is experiencing an unprecedented heatwave at the moment and I can’t bring myself to hole up in another dingy, air-conditioned warehouse to slog my guts out. I do enough of that at work (well, not physically, otherwise I wouldn’t be so hefty).

Instead, I’ve been dragging the boyfriend (I will eventually get around to calling him by his proper title, the fiance, when I get used to it) to the beach every night after work. Monday we played a round of mini golf followed by a 1.5 hour walk along the sea front. Yesterday we played more mini-golf, did a bit of walking, and then played two games of bowling. I’m not sure whether these really count as exercise, but since we were doing them enthusiastically, I suppose they’re at least more valid than sitting at home watching telly.

Tonight he’s purportedly doing a bed build which means we’ll be home late, tired and cranky. I hate being poor. I really do. On the upside, he’s just landed himself a new job so this will be the last week of builds. No more late nights, and no more takeouts when we can’t be arsed cooking. Sounds good to me.

I was reading over my old diet journal – the one where I had obsessive borderline anorexic tendencies – and was appalled to notice how quickly things spiralled out of control. One minute I was pootling along at 1000 calories per day and an hour of exercise…the next I was down to 98 calorie salads (which I would subsequently force myself to vomit up anyway), 6 pints of water, numerous headache tablets and neverending crunches performed at 4am when I couldn’t sleep for the sound of my stomach eating itself. The worst thing about it is, I’m wondering where on earth I got all that motivation from. Sometimes in my darker moments I occasionally wonder how much easier it would be if I was single. Until I remember how unhappy I was. What kind of a life is it when the most important thing, the most time consuming, is a number on the scale? Not one I want to live again, that’s for sure.

Anyway, I’m pinning a lot of hopes on September. I’m applying to places like crazy for active part time jobs (including the bowling alley/mini golf course which I frequent so often I should be given a free guest pass) and once I have more free time I’ll be able to fit in more exercise. That, and when my brain is being stimulated I’m a lot happier, and thus don’t eat from boredom. Work is a big stumbling block for me. When the most fun thing I do all day is ramble about my love handles (why are they called love handles anyway? No one has ever lifted me by them, loving intentions or not) you have to know you’re in the wrong place.

Also, why does celery make me feel sick? I’ve had an orange and a bunch of celery sticks for my lunch – due to bad planning – and now I feel sick. Why can’t things like crispy chili beef and chocolate Hobnobs make me feel sick? Then I’d be a lot less inclined to eat them. Oh for a perfect world…

Getting ahead of myself

Oooh I do annoy myself sometimes. After the last post my inner dieter automatically interpreted a 3lb loss as license to act like a complete and total porker. What did I have for my tea on Saturday night? Half a tub of sweet popcorn at the circus.

Um…HELLO? I love popcorn, but I’ve never stooped to actually having it as a meal before.

In addition, the mothership pulled out of legs, bums and tums on Sunday morning with a nasty bout of gastric-band-exhaustion (the kind of exhaustion you achieve when unable to consume more than 200 calories a day with the recent tightening of a gastric band) and I was too chickenshit to go on my own.

Sigh.

It’s going to be a right royal pain in the bum to even maintain my loss, let alone improve upon it this week. As partial pennance last night for my slovenly diet ways, I sentenced myself to eating cabbage with my tea (instead of tatties) - and how about it, I actually quite enjoyed it! Now if I could only break my recent obsession with homemade bread I might be in the clear.

Tonight’s plan is to eat green things and go to the gym for some unspecified amount of time. I’m building beds for profit tomorrow (a workout in itself) so I have to make tonight count. Too bad I feel so tired I could just happily curl up in a corner and snooze my way to 2009.

An excellent start!

I’m down 3lbs this week! At first I thought it might be a fluke, but then I realised that what with all the baby steps I’ve been making since last weekend, they’ve added up quite well – and I’ve hardly noticed. I’ve actually managed to exercise my intended three times this week already: walking on the beach on Monday, weights and stretching on Wednesday, and 20 minutes of an exercise video on Friday. I’ve also been making healthy choices with my meals – even if my portion sizes aren’t down pat – and learning to plan ahead. Like when I knew we were going to have takeaway on Tuesday night (due to late working hours, etc) I had a very light lunch and no snacks throughout the day to compensate.

Because I couldn’t stay off the scale this morning, I’ve decided to make Saturday my weigh-in day. I know it’s an unusual choice given that people usually go wild on Friday nights, but I figure it’ll serve as a deterrent and a good prod to make the non-working hours of the weekend as healthy and wholesome as possible.

Saturday Weigh-In 1:

• Start weight: 220lbs
• Current weight: 217lbs
• Weight lost: 3lbs

So, here are my post weigh-in goals for the coming week:

• Cut down portion sizes by using small plate/bowl instead of large.
• Increase water intake to 6 pints per day.
• Increase exercise to 4 days per week.

In some ways this kind of approach frustrates me, because at any other time I’ve undertaken a “diet” I’ve worked out every day for at least an hour, and cut down my intake to sub-800 calories. This seems far too easy by comparison. But it’s something I can stick to. 1200-1500 calories is comfortable, and 20 minutes of exercise 4 times a week seems like nothing at all. I’m obviously going to increase the workout time as I get further into it, but 20 minutes is a step up from the nothing that I was doing before.

For now, I’m going to clean the house, do some balance ball crunches and get ready to go to the circus!

Baby Steps

During a particularly boring day at work, I scribbled down a vague plan of short, medium and long term changes I’d like to make to my lifestyle which would have the pleasing cumulative effect of slimming me down.

Short term goals:

• Reduce plate size to small.
• Gym/exercise 3 times per week.
• Eat 5 portions of fruit and veg per day.
• Drink 4 pints of water per day.

I can claim success on only two of those counts so far. Thanks to my recent obsession with fresh fruit salad, carrots, celery hearts and iceberg lettuce, I’ve been scoffing down almost exclusively fruit and veg lunches, along with veg-heavy dinners. As for the water, I’ve been managing an average 4-5 pints every day this week.

The other two, however, need work. I have an extremely expensive gym membership that has been lounging around unused for a good 3 months now, which is appalling considering how badly my finances are suffering during this credit crunch. My contribution to it this week is to book and go to a legs, bums and tums class with my mother on Sunday. I’ve had the membership since February, but haven’t yet been to a class because I’m a chicken. What will they think, I wonder, when they see my sweaty red face, and big lumbering body at their class? Why is this porkasaurus here, they’ll ask, why isn’t she at home eating all the pies? Ridiculous, I know.

The other stumbling block has been the size of my plate – or more accurately, the size of my portions. While in theory I know what a good portion size is, I just haven’t gotten to the fine art of cooking what I need, instead of more than. Add to that the fact that my boyfriend overserves and you’re looking at trouble. Having said that, I’ve cut my portions down considerably since last week, and they’re due for a further cut this coming week, so I’m at least making progress.

Once I have these goals nailed, I’ll move onto my slightly loftier medium term goals. For now, my next challenge is how to cut down on the damned mashed potato that we seem to serve with every evening meal.

Begin at the Beginning

Who am I?

I am the lone porketeer, conspicuous in my determination to preserve my online anonymity – picture aside, since half of my face is obscured by a handy stuffed devil which I am symbolically attempting to eat. More mundanely, I am a twenty-one year old administration assistant and soon to be masters student who is fat. And like so many others of my ilk, I’ve decided that the path to world domination/being slightly less porky lies with blogging about the journey. So here I am.

What are my goals?

I have never experienced many of the things that other obese women have. I’ve never had to get a seatbelt extension on a plane. I’ve never experienced breathlessness walking up a flight of stairs or tying my shoes. I’ve never had a tug-of-war conversation with myself over a chocolate bar or a piece of pie. I’ve never broken down in tears in a changing room when I couldn’t find anything to fit me. But as it stands, I am a UK size 16, languishing near the bottom of the “obese” BMI category, and for the first time in my life, my ankles hurt. They hurt from lugging around extra weight that I don’t need. And that worries me.

So my goals are thus:

• To transform my ungainly 220lb and 5’10″ body into a much svelter 160lb mean machine through healthy eating and exercise.
• To actually learn to enjoy exercise instead of loathing it.
• And finally, to see if I can learn something about myself along the way.

Why now?

Despite not suffering through my weight, it’s always been a lifelong obsession for me. Both of my parents are overweight and both are obsessed about it. Throughout my childhood they swung wildly between binging and strict starvation-exercise regimes egged on by one another. For most of my life I’ve had no idea what a truly healthy routine should consist of.

As a consequence, I’ve flirted with diets throughout my life. My first and third years at university were characterised by excessive weightloss, followed by unbelievable weight gains. Now, a year after I graduated with a degree in psychology and anorexic tendencies, I’ve finally figured out that being healthy doesn’t include a binge-starve cycle at all.

My original start weight was 252lbs around this time last year, but I lost 32lbs from a variety of crash diets and other unhealthy means. Since the weight didn’t go back on, I’ve decided to include that loss – mostly just to see how far I’ve come!

Also, as I mentioned, my ankles hurt. The pain isn’t excruciating, and I’m far from my highest weight, but it is unexpected. I do a desk job. I get a maximum of 3,000 steps per day under my belt. My body has no reason to be complaining unless it’s down to the stress of my weight on my bones.

When am I planning to reach goal?

The simple answer to this is, when I reach it. My initial goal is 160lbs, but that may be too heavy for me, since I’ve deliberately set it above my “ideal” weight as defined by BMI. I have a large frame, and I value muscle over skinniness, so traditional assumptions based on BMI would probably see me shooting for an impossible goal. I want to be able to maintain my new weight, whatever it ends up being, and not having to workout for hours at a time whilst living on a few lettuce leaves. Life’s too short for that kind of torture.

How am I going to lose the weight?

Finally! I’m glad you asked.

After having experimented throughout my life, I’ve discovered that I am a typical lazy fat person. I am the very definition of the stereotype, the couch potato who stuffs down crisps and junk food whilst vegging in front of the tv, piggy little eyes glued to the screen. If it were up to me – and it has been up to me since I moved out of the parental home four years ago – I’d spend most of my day near horizontal. I give fat people a bad name.

On the other end of the spectrum, once I gain focus, I can be extremely tenacious. And I mean to the point of obsession. At the height of last year’s dieting madness, I was surviving on less than 500 calories per day, and 5 hours of sleep. I worked a physically demanding job at a cinema which required me to be standing/sweeping for up to 12 hours at a time, as well as studying for my finals, partying every night and going to the gym as often as I could manage. Needless to say, the weight dropped off. But at the same time, my hair had started to fall out, I hadn’t had a period in 3 months, and I was hollow with hunger. I was a wreck, albeit a slim one.

So, there are two sides to every diet, and those are mine. As a consequence, I’ve decided not to take the hell-for-leather approach that I usually do, and instead gradually introduce new concepts into my life, as recommended by just about everyone who has ever lost weight and successfully kept it off.

The first step is admitting you have a problem. The second is posting it up for the world to see, so here goes:

Wish me luck!