Friday 26 September 2014

Food for thought

 I’m always wary of referring to anything as ‘ironic’ after poor Alanis Morrisette had scorn heaped upon her for not understanding exactly what irony is.  Which is apparently not raaaaiiiiinnnn on your wedding day.  Tsk.

Having said that, there’s some mischievous entity at work in my life at present.  I have started on the injections.  Good news: really not painful.  Bad news: make me feel sick as a dog.  Well, we’ll come to that unfortunate analogy later.  But pretty much nauseous all day.  These are, I hope, side effects that should last no longer than 2-3 weeks but on day 4 that seems a long way off.  As my mother said brightly ‘well, it’s not so bad if it makes you lose weight’.  You can see where I get a twisted view of food from, right?  But no, this is not how it’s supposed to achieve that aim.  I really don’t want to feel so sick I can barely eat until I’m a size 12 (or whatever).  Even if that were possible.  And here comes the irony bit (or whatevs): the only food I can eat is plain and carby.  The advice is even to eat plain carbs if you feel sick.  Carbs are not a great choice for a diabetic (and this is first and foremost a drug for diabetes).  Last night I ate 6 skinny fries from my colleague’s plate for dinner; lunch today is looking like Ritz crackers.  Hmm.  What is a carb-free alternative?  Nausea and chicken breast do not work well together.

Still, after a weekend away, it’s good to have ricocheted to the other end of the spectrum.  Actually it wasn’t too bad in terms of outright gluttony but did cause a 2lb weight gain.  I think.  Having made the momentous move to get back onto Scales of Doom, I really do need to record it somewhere.  The previous week I lost 2.5lbs.  I would hope the weekend gain is long gone after several days of barely eating.  Not very sustainable in the long term, I continue to avow.

The weekend was nice.  It’s just...  Well, we’re going through a rough patch.  Not with each other but with family stuff.  The most serious of which is that my FIL is, to put it bluntly, dying.  The cancer he fought off 4 years ago is back and brought a mate this time.  They’d started treatment for the first tumour (or second I suppose) before they found the other.  The treatment made him feel absolutely terrible and he didn’t want any more; the second tumour made that academic in any case.  He’s at home now and it won’t be long.  He’s a lovely and sweet man and I will be very sorry to lose him which is slightly subsumed by my concern for my husband and how he must be feeling.  He’s been characteristically stoic and brave but has moments where the grief just erupts, understandably.  I hurt to see him so hurt.

And to ice that particular cake, we come back to the ‘sick as a dog ‘analogy.  One of my mother’s Labs has just had to be put down (yes, whilst we were away).  From nowhere SHE got tumours and within 2 days there was nothing else to do.  My mother is distraught and I’m very upset – both from hearing her sobbing and from missing our very sweetest dog myself.

Finally, I visited my grandparents’ grave on the way back from Devon and put some flowers down.  I still miss my grandmother terribly and that was yet another unpleasant reminder of loss.


P and I are agreed that the only thing you can do is wring every moment of pleasure from life.  Balancing hedonism with dieting is not an easy task – well, factoring in 24 hour nausea does balance it a bit, the food and drink part of hedonism seeming unattractive at the moment.  But it’s something to think on.  We’re planning holidays.  Next year.  At the moment we're living from moment to moment, waiting for bad news.

Wednesday 10 September 2014

Feeling needled

My extremely sterotypical mad prof has prescribed me a diabetic drug which should/could help me lose weight.  The fact that I AM diabetic is incidental as they think I'm too thin to fit the criteria for it on the NHS.  I bet I'm not actually......  Yep, totally not too thin.  Anyway, I have to pay for it privately - the idea is to try it for a few months and then if it makes a difference, use that as ammunition with my GP.  Not sure it will work since this is the practice that wouldn't give me antibiotics after I'd had sinusitis for 2 months and was weeping with the pain.  They seem to get off on saying 'no'.  But there's no point in worrying about that until I find out if it works.

One immediate flaw with this is that I have to, gulp, inject.  Into my stomach (or thighs).  I don't think they've come up with a needle long enough to penetrate the flab but I had my lesson today (no actual stomach was bared) and I start after a long weekend the weekend after next.  On the basis that it can make you feel sick initially and I don't want to waste that time feeling sick.

And of course, my body's stubborn refusal to drop any weight.

Actually I have just gone to weigh myself for the first time in - oh, some time.  I saw what she wrote in kilos on my form and in trying to work out my BMI (this is the criteria), I thought I must have seen it wrongly.  Or worked it out wrongly.  Or something where it was wrong.  But it's not.  Admittedly this is at the end of the day but I am a stone over my heaviest pre Lighter Life weight.  I can't quite believe it.  That's almost 5 stone heavier than my lightest weight, 2-3 stone heavier then when I got married and heavier than I've ever been.  I'm so shocked and upset I'm actually shaking.  If I'd eaten junk for the last year - and lots of it - I'd understand it.  I haven't.  My usual daily diet is yoghurt and fruit with 2tsp of nuts for breakfast, a salad for lunch, and soup or fish and veg for dinner.  Fruit for snacking and a coffee a day.  Where am I going wrong?

No wonder I can't climb stairs any more without gasping for breath.  I guess the self-loathing will help me to jab the needle in.

The teeny-tiny silver lining is that she thought my BMI wasn't high enough: "I can see from looking at you".  It's way, way high enough.

Monday 1 September 2014

Checking in

Okay, hands up, I used to run a sneaky blog post off at work.  Believe me they got more than their lb of flesh (regrettably not literally).  But since the new job, I haven't been doing this and blogging has got a lot harder.

The new job btw is going well.  I'd forgotten what it felt like to have people want my advice, listen to it, follow it and appreciate it (professionally speaking) - and it's so liberating!  My work confidence is returning and I cannot work out why I stayed in that awful place for so long.  People continue to leave there in droves btw...

Also, I feel like I'm not achieving anything with the dieting.  I'm sorely tempted to try SW as Linz is doing so AMAZINGLY, brilliantly well.  But... well, it's all the 'eat 5 Muller lites a day' thing.  I don't want to eat chemical rubbish (although I DO want to be slim.  Or slimmer).  I guess I'd try the 'Red Days' as I don't want to be eating a lot of carbs (I save those for booze or cake).

Speaking of which....

Booze: I passed my Advanced Wine Course with a Merit.  I thought I'd failed so was extremely relieved.  I THINK this means I'm now of sommelier status but I may have mis-read. I will probably go on and do the diploma but it's a massive commitment an I need to think carefully about a couple of issues.

Cake: I had a birthday free cake.  Yes, that is a birthday sans cake.  You may take a moment and mourn with me.  We'd ordered some but they were wrongly delivered before we went off for a week away in Suffolk.  And there are no cupcakes to be had in Suffolk.  Not even for ready money.  Instead we went to ITV's Britain's Best Bakery and had an extremely indifferent iced bun.  Not.  The.  Same.  I'm still not over this - can you tell?  The cakes we'd ordered were from our wedding cake maker and sounded delicious.  I can't even re-order as she makes specific flavours each month.  September's (P's birthday month) do not sound nearly as delicious.

We did some long hikes too and I did have birthday blinis and (of course) champage.  But the Asti I got to go with those cakes languishes sadly in the fridge.