I have had an up/down kind of week. I started well, getting my daily lunchtime walk in on Monday and Tuesday but with rains pelting sideways and my shoes with a split in them and me without replacements until they get delivered at the overnight couriers’ leisure, I was never going to get out on Wednesday or Thursday. Friday was ok though. I walk around the industrial estate where I work. It’s full length pans out on Google at around 2 miles. I can cut it 3 ways – The Short One, The Mid One and The Big One. This week I managed the Mid One all week except Monday when I did the Short One. The evenings weren’t much better either. Only a couple of half arsed attempts at doing 10 more minutes on the treadmill aren’t going to help.
Look – here is the real news – I got depressed about all the new stuff happening in my life. I don’t want to have to do all this. I want to eat pepperoni pizza and chip-shop chips with lashings of salt n vinegar. I’m a fataholic and I’m having a bad week. This is how it is when you go through this process I guess. I’m not going to lie to you, I’m no angel. And I don’t want to hear people being all smug either.
I got on the scales on Saturday for a sneak peek at what the weight was likely to be on Monday because I was feeling particularly energetic and lively. It read 123kg. I was very happy and bragging to a colleague about how I was going to impress come Monday. When I got on the scales this morning it read 124kg. No bits thereof, just 124kg.
Hardly the great big fanfare for that I thought. Last week was 124.3kg. All I have lost is 0.3kg – So what was it that let me down? Well there is only ever one answer, it was my mouth. It opened and ate food. Specifically bread. I binged on granary bread on Saturday and Sunday evening. Also I got very interrupted sleep by staying up late worrying about my weight and my fatty liver problem that the doctors haven’t even begun to investigate more than a month after the tests. So I ended up being peckish again at around 11pm. Being a fataholic is a vicous circle – it would seem.
People will probably say that you’re on a diet, be positive about the loss, don’t obsess over the size of it. Well that’s half the problem. Portion control is a monster I find it hard to control and dominate. Let me explain;
I make a salad with sufficient ingredients for 3 people to have a dinner plateful and be more than satisfied. My wife will eat one, because she is trying to support me in my endeavours. The other one will go down my throat. I love salad. Don’t misjudge me as a fataholic who is troubled by an inability to eat certain foodgroups. I can eat everything bar liver and tripe. So what do you think will happen to the 3rd serving? You guessed it. I fail to get the “thud” that signals to my brain and belly that I have had enough. So I throw the 3rd and final serving down my throat as a second helping without waiting for 20 minutes for the other portion to get down there! By the time I get half way through it the fish and lettuce gets too much and I want to stop. But I face yet another layer of the fataholics onion – the unwillingness to leave food on the plate.
I got depressed about something else too. Here’s an admission that’s difficult to write about – I was lacking fruit today. I didn’t do the shopping for food this weekend and I lost some control over this rudimentary part of my life. I kept nagging my wife to check if certain items were on the list. Anyway – this morning I had to have cereal or toast for breakfast and so I had micro-porridge. I normally put two round tablespoons of porridge in a bowl, cover it with a visually learned amount of milk and nuked it for the normal 2+ minutes. My diet was knocked out of whack only by a lack of planning on my part, (I cannot blame anybody else). I began to crave sugar badly by around 11am. The supply of ready fruit at work was limited and I was deep in concentration with my work so I failed to graze like I normally do. By the time my lunchtime walk was due at 1pm I was seriously hungry but I went on the walk and rushed the Big One. The reason I did this is because I knew I was craving sugar and I was going to have some turkey, veg and sauce to quench the cravings along with some yoghurt but I didn’t get to the shops and I ended up having 2 pieces of granary toast and a double helping of Oatso Simple. I was carbohydrated up to my eyeballs. By teatime the sugar low was becoming extreme and I craved food like bananas, melon, etc but all I had was satsumas and apple. Their sugar was not doing it for me and I went to the snack machine at 5.30pm and took a chocolate bar. I ate it like a hamster eats, furtively and worried of exposure. I told nobody (until now) and hid the wrapper. I was eating on my own. I know that anybody who is close to being an alcoholic should never drink alone. I honestly believe it is no different for a fataholic. It was a very bad thing to do, the fat content alone was 19% of the normal man’s GDA. But I know that I would have been able to avoid the temptation if I had the right kind of food supply readily available. Then I got home and punished myself with two large portions of salmon with a green salad, laced with chickpeas and pasta, (just how I like it). My guts are in turmoil. My head is churning the disappointment in myself. I must get a grip of myself. I must sort out the early day, the mid day and the 5pm period to be able to cope with the evening. it’s past 10pm right now. I am not hungry, I ate so much salad in order to not be hungry at this time. but next to me is an empty fat free yoghurt pot and a banana skin. And an unopened punnet of grapes. I have had far too much food, (albeit good food), and I am not in the mood to walk anywhere let alone over to the treadmill. I need to learn that food is not my friend. I should not cuddle a choccy bar if I want to beat this addiction, this habit. I don’t need to diet. I need to pay attention to what I am eating and do regular exercise. Hopefully writing about it is having a calming effect on my anxieties. It feels kind of right to write. I hope you find this educational in some way and that if you want to discuss anything with me I can be contacted through this blog thingy. I want to get through this on my own merit, but any support will be gratefully recieved I can assure you!
So there you go. The true tales of what it’s really like to be me – a recovering fataholic.
More next week.
