How exciting! I am coming to Melbourne at the end of January, so if you want to catch up for lunch or dinner leave a comment! There is already a group of bloggers and ex-HBC girls I know that are keen, so if you are around let me know!

Great reading over at Ash and Chrissey’s blog, and go welcome Anonymous Obese Woman who could really do with some support!

Hard lesson for today but one that I have to deal with…

I am now at Week 4: Respond to Sabotaging Thoughts. And there have been plenty of those over the past weeks!

Beck asks at the beginning of the chapter “How are your weight-loss efforts going so far?” and the answer is GOOD. If I go off the initial weight that afternoon at S’s office, I have lost 6.3 kgs. I think it’s more about 5kg to be honest but I am still thrilled with this. In fact, I officially congratulate myself on this loss! It was not easy, it took dedication and energy that I had to work very hard to find. I had to put myself first. I had to say no to eating the way my internal petulant 2 year old wanted to. 

To get myself as focussed as I was for the first chunk of weight gone, I am going to

1. Print out the reasons I want to lose weight and leave one in my bedside table drawer. I am also going to write them as a note on my mobile in case I leave home without reading them.
2. I am going to track my food every day
3. I am going to start wearing my pedometer every day and make it to 10,000 steps now my knee is feeling so much better.
4. I am going to focus on eating slowly and mindfully – been a bit of shovelling and not listening to my body going on around these parts!
5. And most importantly…I am going to keep doing the exercises in the BDS and move on with it instead of doing a classic Beetricks thing – stopping processes and progress because I feel as if I haven’t completed something perfectly. My whole life has been like this – instead of just finishing something to the best of my ability on that day and moving on to the next part I stop and think “this isn’t perfect” and beat myself up and think “I must re-so that!” Instead what happens is I get disengaged and my interest wanes seriously. So now, in the interest of not beating myself up, I am moving on!

Day 22 – Say, Oh, Well, to Disappointment

Beck talks about answering the voices which bitch and whinge about not being able to eat certain foods. I know I have a streak of the rebel in me and when I am faced with food I want to eat I usually flip the bird or feel sorry for whatever I have just had to put up with and eat it. I rarely feel bad about it afterwards. I am defiant or think “I deserved that”. You know what I do deserve? To be at my goal weight. I may feel like I am nurturing myself somehow in the long term all I am doing is hurting myself.

I went to a 2 day teacher’s conference last week and didn’t really want to be there. I learnt some new stuff and it was largely beneficial but I had to give up a lot of my time to attend and “rewarded” myself by eating a tonne of stuff at morning tea and lunch. The food provided was outstanding but if I had read this chapter I could have looked at the cakes and said “Oh, well.” It’s a strategy I think I will be able to employ because being tough on myself doesn’t help, but having a bit of sympathy for myself sometimes does.

Beck writes something which made me laugh - in the section “what are you thinking?” at the end of that day she writes

Sabotaging thought: I don’t want to accept the things I have to do. Dieting should be easier.

Helpful response: I have a choice: I can struggle with what I have to do and feel bad, or I can accept that this is the way  it is. It doesn’t mean that I like it. There are many things I don’t like in my life. I don’t particularly like paying bills. I definitely don’t like getting up as early as I do for work. I don’t like straightening the house. But I accept them. I don’t struggle with these tasks, so they don’t cause me much discomfort.

Um…is there anyone else out there that doesn’t do any of these things regularly and has an internal argument with themselves over every little thing they have to do that they don’t want to???

I feel such a great sense of relief blogging about the friend fuck-up. It’s not the first time it’s happened to me and it’s reassuring to hear that others have had the same experience. I lost my two best friends when I went overseas as a result of 2 separate fights – one I reconnected with earlier this year and we came to the conclusion that the shit we were both going through was too intense and we couldn’t handle being around people who knew us too well. It was a terrible time in my life and I pushed everyone away – the sympathy and care made me unsure that I was strong enough to make it through. The other friend however really fucked me over – and after having years to reflect on it from time to time, I now have a clearer belief that there was nothing I could have done.

Something Kada wrote made me think…”They probably feel very threatened by you.” This I think is true. I do have a very full-on personality, and both the girls (can’t call them women!) have similar personalities, with one big difference. I do not shy away from the truth. It can be right there, and even if it’s hard I can look it in the eye. That, I think, is the key to some of my friendships ending over the years. When someone does something shitty, I point it out. Not in a mean or bitchy way, more in a matter-of-fact way. I can’t let things slide. And that may not always be convenient or comfortable, but it is me and there’s nothing I can, or want to do about that.  

Do you know how long it’s taken me to get to this point? Years. Years of pain and insecurity and tears and doubt. And I won’t go back there for anyone.

Today, unbelievably, I got back into the BDS with a bang. I didn’t feel miserable, I didn’t think about food all day. I didn’t eat any shit that floated by. I followed my eating plan – hell, I even MADE one this morning! I dug out the reasons I want to lose weight and read them (they haven’t seen the light of day in weeks). I planned what to eat tomorrow. I feel back in control.

And all because in my mind I let go of situations and people I can’t change…

Am going to read Chapters 19 – 22 again in BDS.

I have had a hard time for the past couple of days – no weeks, actually. I have been struggling on through but last night I had a moment of clarity and have woken up this morning knowing that I owe it to myself to move through and on.

The situation that has got me down has involved two friends of mine. Although they aren’t connected in any way, I feel incredibly let down however after much reflection can only conclude that both of them have problems that don’t involve me. In the first situation I can honestly say that I really regretted that the friendship is over…but more than that, I felt pissed off that it was. It started when I was really hurt and overreacted to a comment made by this friend, then offered a full explanation outlining why I was so hurt. That involved me dropping my guard (not something that common) and confessing all my fears and insecurities. What response do I get? None. Dumped as a friend on Facebook, blocked from her blog – incredible. Doesn’t a heartfelt apology and an explanation account for anything? And I also think – is that all it takes? All the support I gave, all the advice I gave, the hours I worried about this woman and thinking of solutions to her problems, the time I took to care, and one bordering-on-bitchy episode can make her throw that all away? She invited me to her wedding not a month ago! Why invite someone to your wedding if you are willing to throw them aside so casually? I keep thinking what I would do if I was in the same situation, and a comment I made was taken the wrong way…I would be so mortified that I had hurt someone I would be straight on the phone. I have no problem admitting when I am in the wrong or apologising when I have unintentionally hurt someone.

Second situation – ‘M’, a woman I work with who I have developed a (mostly one-sided) friendship with since I began working there. She has problems and because I am compassionate and have a talent of solving problems she has often turned to me to listen to her. For hours and hours I have listened. I have given advice. Again, I have cared. I have looked after her son (she is a single mother with a fairly absent father) so she could take a short term contract job outside school because she is desperate for money. I drove 120km over 4 weeks and gave up 24 hours of my life looking after her child so she could take that job.

I told ‘M’ something that was bothering me at work in confidence. I pointed that out – IN. CONFIDENCE.  She promised. I needed to bounce the idea off someone who had been in the school longer than me, teaching longer than me. Then, less than 10 minutes later she marches into the staff room and tells the people it concerned. They go off. Ok, you know what – I can handle the fact that she told them and got me into trouble. It’s my own fault for trusting her (should have recognised that she wasn’t really a friend) and if she would have said “You know what? I fucked up. I’m real sorry.” I would have got over it. But instead, she tells me all I am concerned about it popularity and what people think of me. She made a judgement call to tell those people and it’s her business. If I don’t want to be her friend anymore she understands, but she doesn’t want to lose me. And then – THEN! She spends the next 2 weeks ignoring me! Refuses to look at me, won’t talk, the works. The woman’s 40. She too has decided to throw aside the friendship and I have done nothing to her. I have supported her. She let me down.

Look, I know this reads really bitchy and needy and I am sure I am going to get some nasty comments. Some of you are sure to be thinking I should have moved on weeks ago or that writing about it is inappropriate. *shrug* The thing is, I don’t deserve it. I caught myself lamenting on both situations and thought “Bloody hell, this is not your problem!” Is my self-esteem so low that I care what these people think of me? Yes, a bit. But I am determined to not let it be something I care about anymore.

There are so many people in my life that care about me and love me. I have had arguments with them, sure, but we have never been so unforgiving. And these are the people I want to spend my time with. I have friends I haven’t spoken to in months…and that has to change.

The pain I have felt concerning these two situations has effected every aspect of my life, even my BDS work! That’s not on….I’m moving on.

I started writing this on the 10th, and am only just getting back to finish it now – on the 18th! Bit crazy around here at the moment – marking and report season. Still, the food has been good – only a few days where I have slipped back into my old habits and gone to work with no idea of what the fuck I was going to eat! I have largely avoided junk and have hardly overeaten at all. Still, after reading Nancy’s Blog tonight I thought “crap! I have to keep doing this!” because on Day 32 Beck talks about Prepare for travel! And I am going overseas at the end of December and do NOT want to come back with all the weight I have lost hanging back off my big old arse!

This morning’s weigh in was 106.9kg – very surprised by that. I thought I’d stay the same. My pattern for weight loss seems to be loss one week, constant the next. I’m happy with that…

On the get-knocked-up front, it’s on the backburner. I don’t want to risk getting sick considering the sheer bucket of money this trip is costing us! I am also keen to see what happens at work next year so let’s wait a while…and honestly, I’d love to be under 100kg when I get pregnant. And stay there throughout the pregnancy.

Anyway without further faffing on, here’s –

10.11.2009 – Day 19: Stop Fooling Yourself.

Yikes. I really needed to read this now!

“Dieters have an amazing ability to delude themselves with food” Beck writes. And that is exactly what I have been doing for the past couple of days. I was very sick on Monday (and before anyone screams PREGNANT! it was the opposite of that!) and was throwing up all morning so three lots of breakfast went down and up before one stuck. I then ate whatever I thought I could keep down for the rest of the day and kidded myself that because I had eaten so little it didn’t matter that it was a lamington and a “slither” of cheesecake. Since then, I have been sneaking in the odd lamington at work and while it isn’t as bad for me as one of those fuck-off muffins, and even though I would still be within my calorie limit for the day (there was a few days not much else was eaten) it still isn’t good for me.

So tonight I went and cooked over a kilo of tangerine tofu and will get back on the planning food bike.

Day 20: Get Back on Track Ok. No worries. Easy to see what I’ve been slipping up 0n - planning and grocery shopping. Both the husband and I have been too busy but it’s a non-negotiable, isn’t it? Day 21 is weigh in and accept the numbers – no worries there. As long as it’s gone down a bit (even 100gr!) I am happy. If it goes up I am not too worried – just look at what I’ve been doing and see why – the answer is always staring you in the face!

Here’s my dilemma.

I’ve already asked Soulmumma but anyone would think she’s busy at the moment (tee hee) so I’m putting it out there. I am starting to try to get pregnant but I have a big trip overseas planned from the end of December till the end of January. Would you put off trying to get pregnant in case you had the morning sickness from hell or just push on (no pun intended) and see what happens? We are doing a bit of travelling and I am worried I’ll be so ill I won’t enjoy myself. Of course I don’t expect to be lucky enough to get pregnant in the first few months of trying but with that 35th birthday looming I am reluctant to put it off.

Also – does the amount of pain you suffer when you have your period point to what type of suffering you will endure with morning sickness?

Opinion, mums out there!

Edited 10/11/2009

The decision has been made for me – the husband has said he really wants to wait in case I am spewing my ring up the entire time. And since he never has an opinion on anything, I have to respect it! I may have morning sickness, I may not – but I don’t want to risk it. I’m a bit sad about it and paranoid too to be honest because I fear I am going to have a hard time getting pregnant (fat and old). I know, I know, this may not be the case, but better than thinking it will be easy, hey?

Thanks to everyone for your comments, they mean a lot. And those of you that have told me how excited you are that I will soon be breeding are very special cases indeed…because if I was 10 – no, even 5 years younger I wouldn’t be having this conversation with any of you! LOL! No, seriously…I really feel as ready as I’ll ever be. As long as I don’t think about the implications too much.

I’ve been having a quiet crisis this week and I’ve been in denial about it. Day 17 was all about ending overeating by doing an exercise where you leave something on your plate. And I could not – would not – do it. I have been doing pretty well with keeping the food diary and couldn’t see the point of doing this exercise at home when I had counted the calories into my day. I have been pretty precise (for want of a better word, oh I don’t know, like obsessed!) when filling in my food diary and after all the effort I had been to I just didn’t want to leave any food behind! I would be under my calories for the day then! And I had worked so hard and sacrificed so much to get it right! No, I decided I would have to do this exercise when I went out to dinner, because I didn’t count the calories then anyway.

Of course, what was really going on here in the back of my mind was I just plain didn’t want to do it. It wasn’t fair that I had to do this! I like food! I was already sacrificing so much! I had already put in so much effort! And so I went out to dinner more than once and didn’t do it. Japanese is so expensive! I don’t want to! And so it went, on and on…

I was troubled that I couldn’t do this and pissed off that I was expected to. I couldn’t progress through the BDS without doing it – I knew it was something that was important. I knew I was on the cusp of discovering something very telling about myself. In the meantime, bad food and habits started to sneak back into my day. Instead of practicing Day 16’s NO CHOICE I was eating a little square of Toblerone here, pouring a glass of wine there. I wasn’t planning my food at the beginning of each morning and there was no reasonable excuse why. I always know if we are going out to dinner that night, and I still should be writing what I will plan to eat. Being vegetarian, there isn’t usually that much variation in what I order. I was not planning my food so as I ate that square of Toblerone or drank that wine I could say “Well, it’s not NOT on my plan!”

So on Friday night I finally hardened up and did it. We went out for Indian, and I left half a precious roti on my plate and only drank half my beer. I kind of cheated because it the roti was a bit cold but I still did it. I will have to practice it again. Was it as bad as I thought it would be? Unbelievably, kind of! I hated it! I am pathetic, I know, but I knew when I felt that shitty about it that there was definitely something else coming up. I came home and read through the next few days of the BDS…

Day 18: Change Your Definition of Full

And here is why Intuitive Eating will never work for me – my idea of how much I should eat to feel comfortable has never been developed properly. I have overeaten since I was 7 years old and I really loved the feeling of being really full. If I didn’t feel that I felt hard done by. I should be able to eat whatever the fuck I wanted to! (The common theme in my life starts to emerge) However, I have done really well with this over the past 2 months or so (since before starting the BDS). After reading the Gabriel Method I started listening to what my body was telling me but I still couldn’t follow through and only eat as much as I needed – I just didn’t know what that was, and even on the occasions that I did, I could easily talk myself into eating more. The biggest problem I had was overeating when we went out to restaurants but together the husband and I have worked hard to overcome that, ordering less food each time we went. The test for if you have eaten too much according the Beck is asking yourself “Could I easily go for a moderate to brisk walk?” immediately after eating. I can safely say now that the answer to that is yes. On the occasions where I have eaten a little too much I do not feel happy at all!

Have to go and do some marking so more later…

Amazing how the idea of tracking food and listening to yourself goes out the window when you are stressed and unhappy. After a happy morning blogging here yesterday, it all went downhill…and I ended up having a hard day, but even though I was having a little “I don’t want to!” tantie I have sat down this morning and planned what I am eating today. I have packed the stick blender, the coffee grinder (to grind my fresh LSA at work) and the ingredients for a banana smoothie. I have planned what work I have to mark before I come home. I have planned what I need to do tonight before I go to bed. I didn’t want to do any of that…but it’s necessary. And come 8pm tonight, I will feel better for having done it.

Will come and write more on BDS later…

Just a quick update before I run off to the Dr about the dodgy knee which has really been depressing me quite a lot over the past week!

Yesterday was a challenging day – the women I work with really do my head in, two of my classes were off the planet and I didn’t have any food to eat at home. I hadn’t recorded what I was going to eat on Calorie King when I fell out the door on the way to school. Normally a day like this would have seen me eating a dreaded chocolate muffin from the canteen, diet coke and a heap of other crap at the Melbourne Cup afternoon tea. But I didn’t. I wasn’t perfect but I was good! A friend got me a roll from the health food shop up the road for lunch and we shared a square of  gluten-free carob cake which I really, really enjoyed. At the Melbourne Cup afternoon tea I didn’t have any champagne but I did have four jatz with eggplant dip. But the biggest victory came later!

I am small-child-sitting for a friend one night a week at the moment and last night he wanted me to buy him some ice cream to eat with his blueberries (on sale at the moment at W00lies, peeps!!). Without thinking too much about it, I bought my favourite chocolate ice cream and we travelled back to his place to settle in. I got him some in a little bowl, and thought “I could have a scoop or two of this”  and didn’t. I knew it was there, I could have easily have had some – but I didn’t even feel like it. I really felt like that Carob Cake at lunch and am glad I got it, but the ice-cream? Couldn’t have given a shit about it. And that to me is proof that the Beck Diet Solution is working. And I am more grateful than I can say. :)

Only weighing myself once a week and forgot to post last weigh in…

• Start weight: 112.7kg (weighed in the afternoon so ‘real’ weight probably about 111kg?).
• Weigh in #1: 108.5kg
• Weigh in #2: 108.4kg (not worried about this one – at least it went down!)
• Weigh in #3: 107.3kg

Happy with how it’s going…funnily enough the only reward I can think of for losing weight is to go somewhere I want to eat! Vegetarian Yum Cha here I come when I weigh 105kg!

Have had to struggle to keep my mind from the friend situation and accept that if I haven’t heard a response now I probably won’t. And while that’s sad, I also read over the message I sent her and think “I did all I can.”

Melbourne Cup today (not that I care I’m afraid – don’t even watch the race!) and I won’t be eating any of the food that’s put on in the staff room. I really want to be under 105kg before we go overseas in late December (it’s 2.4kg and 8 weeks away so should be totally doable) and if possible I’d like to be really under 105kg and come back at the end of January under 100kg. I know there will be more temptation over there as we meet up with friends we haven’t seen for years but this is for life and there will be situations like this again and again.