Hate To Exercise

Delicious – disaster

June 2021.

I’m at the lakes. (if you’re not familiar with UK – the region is Cumbria, and yes it’s full of lakes)

The hotel serves fabulous food. There are no scales in sight. I’ll eat and drink what I want and however much I want. I won’t think about my weight, or my diet, or my food regimes. I’m just going to have some fun. It’s nice and I also think it’s good to have breaks from diet and exercise regimes, otherwise it’s all too easy to take it extreme. It my sound stupid and ridiculous to some – but one of my fears about going on extreme diets in the past – was the fear that I may literally take it to far and fall into bulimia or anorexia. I don’t know what’s worse – and eating disorder that stops you from eating, or one that takes you to the fridge every five minutes.

Actually when I first heard that overeating is also a form of an eating disorder I was surprised. That was years ago now, and now I know more about it – me and rest of the society. My eating habits, until recently were definitely verging on the overeating side of things, and it must have been during the biggest bouts of my depression that I gained all that extra weight – deluding myself that i wasn’t fat. I was. I really was. According to medical records – I was obese. I’d say – fat. Now, finally, I’m just a bit chubby.

Digressing. Again. So – I’m in the lakes, surrounded by yummy food, and I’m going to enjoy myself; and I’ll deal with the effects when I get home. Actually, I did go on a massive walk on day 2 – to stretch out my legs. Beyond that – we shall see.

Right now I’m just happy to be seeing people in the flesh – and what’s more, people that aren’t just the local shopkeeper – but my friends and family, whom I haven’t seen in so long, I almost forgot what they look like. Stupid pandemic.

Epilogue:

Day 4 in the lakes – my body is beginning to shut down.

OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s evident that after 4 days of stuffing my face – and I do mean literally stuffing my face, with bread, cakes, chips, red meat – my body is saying enough! My home cooking these days involves very little processed food, hardly any seasoning or sauces, and the portions are much much smaller. Or rather I limit myself to one course at dinner not 4! So after 4 days of consistent and ridiculous overeating my body has had enough. It started to feel bloated and uncomfortable and a clear signal that I need to wind back down to my home eating regime for the reminder of the stay-cation.

One thing is for sure though, I’m not getting back on scales for at least a week after going back home. No point annoying myself.

Steady as she goes……

June 2020

Last few weeks I have been so busy with some changes in my life I’ve had no time for exercise of any kind. Too busy running around sorting other stuff. The latest developments have also made it difficult to monitor the food intake – which means monitoring the weight was going to be a problem. The first couple of weeks of my new world, any idea of food monitoring and sticking to any kind of food regime totally felt out of the window.

However, I’ve not spend the better part of last year working so hard and losing all that weight only to gain it back. So as soon as I was able to take a breather in the latest venture I re-focused my attention on my food. Not exercise – just food. Exercise was going to be a no go – because between work and then spending my days on painting and decorating, there was simply no time for anything else. Any thoughts of losing more weight to get to my next target goal also fell out of the window. It was going to be a challenge just maintaining my current weight.

It turns, because I was so good with my food over the last 12 months now, and I have managed to develop something of a habit – cemented in my head what foods were ok and which ones to avoid, maintaining my new weight didn’t turn into as much of a chore as I expected. My daily weigh-ins help tremendously. I will not advocate these for everyone – it is simply what works for me.

I have to admit that some years back, my daily weigh-ins became a nasty compulsion that wasn’t doing my mental health any good. It was an obsessive behaviour, driving bad attitude and unhappy feelings and thoughts. These days, my daily weigh-ins serve a different purpose – they inform my ideas for daily meals. I have by now, long come to accept that the scales will move up and down, sometimes by ridiculous numbers – but it no longer bothers me. I know understand that there are about 101 reasons for these changes.

It is the bigger picture that one should focus on – the trend that the scales are setting over a period of time – in my case I think about it in 2 week chunks. If over a period of 2 weeks my weight has been creeping up steadily – then I know I need to fix exercise and food. If it’s stayed the same – then I have no problem and carry on as it. If it’s going down – well, that’s a party, but it’s not a disaster if “them scales” haven’t moved down.

Right, where was I? Oh yes – trying to keep my new weight. So yes, my now almost ‘habit’ food regime, that still permits me biscuits, chocolates, bowls of creamy pasta – has helped to maintain my new weight, through some very busy, non-exercise weeks recently.