Choosing a direction

Wow. It’s been over four months since I last posted to my blog. I’ve got to say it’s been a really hard four months too. That’s mainly why I’ve not posted. This blog was pretty much just becoming me whinging. Which is fine to an extent - my IE journey will inevitably have as many ‘downs’ as ‘ups’ - but it was draining me somewhat.

So the stuff that’s happened in the past few months? February saw me get made redundant - and I still don’t have a job now. March saw me turn 30 - the age where subconsciously I thought I’d be ‘sorted’. And April saw me fracturing my elbow whilst ice skating - giving my confidence a good old knock along with my right arm. So where does that leave me here in May? Still nursing a broken arm, still job hunting and feeling overweight and panicky. It’s also less than two weeks until my wedding anniversary - and memories of walking down the aisle in my size 10 gown feeling truly beautiful. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to look or feel that good again (though realistically wedding dresses are unlikely to become a stable feature in my wardrobe).

So here I am. Wanting to sort myself out ‘once and for all’. Standing on a cross drawn in the sand - the four lines pointing to dieting, healthy eating, staying fat and intuitive eating respectively. Needing to make a choice but scared I’ll make the wrong one - not fully confident that any of them is truly doable. The North and South of dieting and staying fat - polar opposites and yet potentially ultimately part of the same vicious circle - scare me most of all. I can’t go back to counting calories and yet I can’t stay here uncomfortable, physically and mentally, in my body. To the East and West are intuitive eating and healthy eating - again, for me, simultaneously synonyms and antonyms. Until now, my efforts in intuitive eating have led to very UNhealthy eating - too much sugar, salt and fat to make me feel good. But maybe ‘effort’ is the key word there. Trying to ‘do’ IE like I might ‘do’ a diet. That’s maybe where I’m falling down. Making myself equally obsessed with food and eating rituals and body image as I was pre-IE. Which makes it not very intuitive at all - just making it an excuse to stuff my face as a way of sticking two fingers up at the dieting industry just because I’m ‘allowed’.

It’s time to take a deep breath and start again. No...not start again...continue on. Making intuitive eating more about the ‘intuitive’ and less about the ‘eating’. Gently, slowly and supporting myself all the way, enjoying the scenery as I go.

Athbhliain faoi mhaise daoibh

The title of this post is Irish/Gaelic for Happy New Year. I'm not Irish but since this post is a combination of my visit to Ireland and the transition to a new year - it seemed appropriate.

S and I have just returned from a four day trip to County Kerry in Ireland. We nearly missed our flight on Sunday. Ryanair had less than half their baggage check-in desks open at Stansted and it was chaos. We just about made it but it nearly killed me having to run all the way to our gate for departure. I'm hoping to move more this year - I'm so unfit and getting pretty fed up of it.

The purpose for our trip was our friends were getting married on Tuesday. The wedding was lovely and a good time was had by most I think. I had a new dress which I loved. However, it was slightly too tight across the bust and once we had eaten I felt so uncomfortable I could barely breathe. I ended up having to go and get changed (luckily we were staying the night in the hotel where the reception was) into trousers, a top and a more comfortable bra. I felt better for having done that but it did leave me feeling fat and unattractive and was the start of me feeling low - this kind of spoiled the rest of the evening somewhat for me and, almost certainly, S. I didn't really overeat and I managed to get to the bottom of what was really going on, which wasn't actually my weight (although I was annoyed with myself for not buying a bigger dress). I still need to work on the real issue - which is basically that certain events and times of the year bring my down because they remind me that my life is not moving forward or changing and it seems like everyone else's is (weddings and births are hard - and given my age, there's a lot of both in my peer group!).

We managed to have a couple of trips out during our stay. We visited the Rock of Cashel, Tipperary (it might be a long way to go but it's not very exciting), Killarney, and Kenmare. We drove part of the Ring of Kerry yesterday and the scenery was breathtaking - just a shame it wasn't summer to enjoy it more fully. Given the hideous exchange rate at the moment, it's worked out a pretty expensive trip, but it was still nice to get a break.

New Year's Eve, we had planned to join the bride and groom and some of their friends and her family in a local pub to celebrate Irish-style. But frankly we were so tired, we weren't up for it. We were staying in a holiday cottage with the groom's brother (a very good friend of ours) and his parents. So the five of us got some takeout and then, after our curry, we toasted the New Year in with a cup of tea each! Party on!

So, now it's 2009. This is the time of year I'd normally be getting out fresh notebooks and listing my resolutions. More exercise and lose weight are normally the top two. This year I'm not going to make those resolutions. I still want those things - I won't deny that I do. I don't like being this big. I don't like being this unfit. But resolutions are effectively rules - and they don't work! Don't get me wrong, there's still a wee part of me that's calculating how much weight I can lose by my 30th birthday at the end of March (at least a stone surely?), but I've decided that if any resolution at all, I'd like it to be that I'm nicer to myself.

Shiny

I realise that my blog does seem to be a little doom and gloom at the moment whilst I'm desperately trying to clamber back up into the saddle of the IE horse.

Positive thinking does help to breed more positive thinking though. One of the things which has helped me in the past has been a positive thoughts journal in which I wrote about either something I loved generally (e.g. a TV show or a favourite product) or something good that had happened that day. I've decided to pick that up again but in the form of another blog which I have called Shiny. It's not directly related to intuitive eating - it's a lot more general - but hopeful it will help with the 'feeling good about myself and my life' thing!

Christmas

Why is it that Christmas just makes me want to overeat? There's always plenty of food around so it's not like I'm going to go without - but I seem to have single handedly munched my way through most of two big boxes of chocolate biscuits. I am one of the people that the stocking principle doesn't do so well for. If it's in the house, I want to eat some of it - regardless of whether there is no chance I could finish it all.

However, I'm actually not beating myself up over the huge amount of biscuits I've consumed or mentally trying to tot up the calories. I know that Christmas is a stressful time for me and right now, this is the way I cope with it. I hope it won't always be the way I cope, but right now I'm doing the best I know how. We haven't been to see family this Christmas so the travelling and going 'back home' stress is not there but there are other stresses. I have been stressed about my mother's approach of buying ridiculous amounts of presents that I don't want and have clearly been given no thought (BIN BAGS ffs!!) - and a part of me that feels selfish for expecting her to act differently. Also, there's the stress of this wedding coming up next week. I love my dress but don't feel I look good in it. We're staying in a cottage with the groom's brother (a good friend) and his parents (who we love to bits) - so it's going to be an 'out of the usual' living situation for a few days, which always stresses me slightly, even though it'll probably actually be fun.

So between that and my period being both due and late, no wonder I was stressed and ran for the sugar!

Top tea and fab friends

Gosh - my posts on this blog are getting further and further apart. I suppose, because it's been a bad year for me in terms of food and body image, I've been reluctant to post here too often. There's only so much moaning one can do and I'm certain no-one wants to read it all the time! This one's going to be a good one though...

Yesterday was the Christmas meet for the Beyond Chocolate forum. Seven of us met in London and had afternoon tea in Fortnum and Mason's. It was amazing!! The food was delicious. We had sandwiches (the veggie ones were sour cream and cucumber; cheese and some kind of chutney; roasted vegetable; and egg) and little cheese and potato tartlets. Then of course scones with jam and cream, and a choice of two little pastries. I had a choux pastry/eclair (which was out of this world!!) and a raspberry tartlet. We also had a glass of rosé champagne each - and a pot of tea of course!! I just adore doing things like this. It was all so civilised and - although I can't afford to be eating in posh places every week - I really do find it so much easier to eat intuitively in these situations. There's no pressure to rush or to force stuff down - and the food is so good with quality over quantity. I ate only two of my four sandwiches and one of my two scones (all the tartlets and pastries though!!). But I enjoyed every bite!

The company was also fabulous. Six extremely fantastic women who are brilliant company. And it was so refreshing not to be sat with women saying "ooh, I really shouldn't" or "oooh, aren't we being naughty?!" at the first sight of the cakes.

I wish I could do that every day!

A summer doing nothing

Well, it's been nearly two months since my last post on here. Partly because I'm too lazy to log in and check out my blog. Also a lot of other blogs I read seem to have become more infrequent in their posting so I don't log in to check so much. Anyway, I've decided to try and blog some more and I'm making it public again.

So, what's gone on this summer in terms of eating, weight and IE. Not a lot. I've gaining and lost the same couple of pounds, my eating has mainly been atrocious and IE has barely had a look in. I did make a decision however and that was to drop out of the Chocolate Fairy training. It wasn't an easy decision but ultimately the right one. I don't know yet what it means for me on a personal level. I don't want to totally walk away from BC/IE because I know it's the right 'solution' on some level. However, I've made less and less effort to work on eating intuitively and I'm feeling more and more down about my weight. I have very little self-confidence and -whilst I'm not going to pretend that being slim solves all my problems - I did feel better about myself.

The idea of hitting 30 and looking and feeling like I do makes me upset. I know my age is just a number and so is my dress size and it doesn't change who I am, but still. I don't want another decade of hating myself and not being able to enjoy my body. I've always been the one on the outside looking in and is it so wrong to want to be able to enjoy wearing nice clothes and to like the way I look? And to want my joints to not hurt and my stomach to not feel bloated?

I need to find a way to make this work for me. And, yes, that includes starting to lose some weight. I've taken a 'weigh loss holiday' for well over a year and the weight's only gone on. Enough now.

Tired of making the effort

I'm so tired. Everything seems like so much effort and I'm getting nowhere fast. I'm so confused as to what I want out of life and too tired to go and get it if I did know. I just wish I could sleep for a year. Except that would be another year gone that I didn't do anything with.

I'm tired of feeling like everything's so much hard work - it's not like I'm juggling as much as most people. I work four days a week (yes I have crappy commute, but still). And that's it. No hobbies, no additional stuff that I do. When I do try it's too much effort.

And I'm sick of eating how I do. I'm tired of shovelling Tescos jam doughnuts into my mouth - even if they are so cheap I can have three and it still be cheaper than a chocolate bar. I feel bloated and my joints ache.

Will I ever have energy - physical, mental or emotional - again? I guess I will, but sometimes it's hard to see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.