As terrifying as it may be there are many benefits to going public with the decision to lose the equivalent of a baby elephant in body fat and get active. These include receiving shed loads of books, recipes, introduction to very cool people, advice, tips (keep ‘em coming..I’m going to try everything you suggest) messages of support, sympathy, empathy and more than a few piss takes (which make me laugh, and laughter uses calories). For me it’s proving to be a HUGE motivational driver – tempted to eat that after eight mint? Absolutely not, because the very thought of having to post a blog where I don’t lose weight, or worse PUT IT ON is enough to send me scurrying for a stick of celery. I highly recommend that if you have even the smallest ego or pride then go public with your goals.
This week I was laid low with a horrific ear infection which rendered me pretty much immobile for the first few days (YES!!). Just as well because last weeks adventures with the power plate resulted in quite a bit of pain. I’m told this is a good thing, shows it worked, but its really not much fun when you feel like you’ve been beaten on the backside with a rolling pin for FOUR DAYS!
Here’s a few of this weeks highlights….
- I was born to live in The Ham Yard hotel. And they serve fabulous breakfasts.
2. Someone told me that smoking is causing me more harm than being overweight. She said ‘if you really were serious about your health you’d give that up immediately’ (I said ‘you can fuck right off’..in my head). Clearly she was right, its unarguable logic – but I remain convinced that if I embarked on healthy eating, exercise and stopped smoking AT THE SAME TIME I would a) want to kill myself, b) want to kill everyone else, c) fail completely. So I’ll wait until next year.
3. It really is amazing what the universe will deliver you when you put stuff out there. This week I met THE ‘weight loss guru’. Amongst many tips, which I’ll write about in the coming weeks, he talked about the ‘voice’, your own inner voice that tells you that you’ll fail, or that you can’t do something. Or in my case the voice that tells me I really REALLY need a packet of crisps or I’ll die. He suggested visualising this voice as a duck, which you can name if you want to. It disempowers it and makes you recognise it for what it is, a stupid voice. I decide to embrace this so whenever that voice starts whispering I can tell myself to ‘shut the duck up!’. What’s not to love.
4. Claridges Hotel makes amazing desserts – at least they LOOK amazing. I had a stare off with this one.
5. I met one of our team GB Paralympic gold medal winning rowers – she’s amazing, truly inspirational. She’s registered blind and was told when she was young that ‘You can’t do that…because you are blind’. She flipped the ‘can’t’ to ‘can’ and has done pretty much everything. I reflect about all the things I can’t do because I’m fat…and momentarily panic that my only real excuse for not flying long haul in economy might disappear with my weight.
6. Somerset House has some seriously cool eateries. I had Pumpkin soup with one colleague and watched another one eat this..*sighs*
7. My youngest daughter was thrown and an early 11th birthday party by my twenty something daughter and her mates (I was tempted to frisk them for drugs and alcohol – and that was just the 11 year olds). It was a Domino’s Pizza and Chocolate Cake party, so I politely declined to join them. My husband later found me in the kitchen sniffing empty pizza boxes. `
Outcome – I lost 2 pounds.
My next five blogs will be posted from Australia. If anyone knows how to rack up 10,000 steps on a 24 hour flight please let me know.
52 in 52 