Pages

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

The month of calorie tracking/money saving

Hello to all out there in blogland. I have been a little busy with the music side of my life lately and now that things have settled down, I felt it was about time I wrote another blog entry. It'll have to be a quick one because it's 2am, give or take a few minutes, and I should be getting to sleep.

My news is that after the choir concert on 20th July, I had one of the many light bulb moments in my life. I had SUCH a good time that day and it was an exhilarating thing to be a part of. But it was also mind-bogglingly exhausting and I'd be lying to myself if I didn't admit the reason why. Yes, it would be exhausting anyway because of the nature of what it was, but give a 46-year-old body an extra however many kilos to lug around all day as well as doing all the other stuff and it's no small wonder why it barely scrapes through the day. So it inspired me in a good way - to once again work on what the blog title says, building a better version of me.

I seem to do OK with pretty short-term goals in blocks of four weeks, so that's going to be my measuring stick. Each block of four weeks I'm going to have a particular project or projects in mind and for the whole of the time, my goal is to do as much of that activity as I can and all my projects will be related to health/self-esteem/general life improvement.


The goals for the first block of weeks are the dreaded calorie counting (ugh!) and generally reducing the amount of extra food I buy i.e. do a shop and use what I've bought and that's it, thereby helping me save more money for a holiday and other expenses. So far, thanks to a fantastic little application on my phone called My Fitness Pal, the calorie counting is proving easy peasy! I really grew to hate doing it in the bad old days of Calorie King, having to log onto a desktop computer and go through all that rigmarole. Now, due to the wonders of smartphones, it's SO easy. And I don't even care about getting things exactly right. It's more just to keep myself honest and feed my body better as part of self-nurturing. I've got a very doable calorie amount to work with at the moment (one of the extremely few upsides to being this size, I suppose) and I'm not having problems sticking to it. And it's not a surprise that because the food side of things is going well, the money side is going pretty well too. That is so not a coincidence. The trouble is, I really get into major denial about that fact but it doesn't make it any less true.

As for what I'll do next month, I don't know. I may go for another month of the same or I might do something different But there will be a project!

Till next time, hasta la vista, baby!

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Shopping sucks sometimes

There are times in life when you just wish you could wave a magic wand and instantly change something in your life. I had one of those days today. I wanted that wand to make me a size that's in all clothing shops.

In a little over two weeks I have a performance I have to be in with the choir. I need clothes, specific clothes for certain bits of the concert. The main things I needed to get today were a long black skirt and 3/4 sleeve top or a long black dress. I went to every possible shop I could think of to find these things, and I had absolutely no joy. Not only that, every item of clothing I tried on just looked dreadful. Nothing like a look at all your wobbly bits in dressing room mirrors to give the old self-esteem a healthy wallop. :( I know I am supposed to accept and love myself where I am now. I'm trying, I really am. But in situations like this, it's not easy. Right now I'm feeling just awful about myself. I intensely dislike how I look at times. I'm very tired and grumpy, too. I'm not sure if this is part of the depressive illness, which seems to have reared its ugly head lately. But I feel huge and uncomfortable and blahhhhhh and at the same time I am filled with inertia and fear. Quite the dilemma, and one with which I am all too familiar.

I'm going to write something now and I plan to revisit it in the future. Right now I feel so very uncomfortable in my skin. People like Craig Harper are always talking about being prepared to get uncomfortable. I think what I am facing is a choice between two different sorts of uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable feeling yuck and horrible in your own skin and feeling every single item of clothing you try on looks appalling and you look like a beached whale in it. It is also uncomfortable not eating food that you think is going to make you feel less "blahhhh" when you are having a bad day. The choice is mine. Do it or don't do it. It's that simple.


PS No offence to whales - they are really beautiful creatures. But they are meant to be that big and I'm not!

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Are you there, blog? It's me, Debbie...

Well, I haven't written in this blog for a LONG time and I swore I wasn't going to do this again. I checked - the first entry I wrote in this blog said it, actually. I said I was sick of starting blogs whilst feeling motivated and good and then stopping them when things got tough. But I seem to have done this exact thing again - oops. Well, never mind. I've realised again what I've been doing and I want to write stuff again. I know I find it therapeutic and it still makes interesting (and revealing) reading when you go back over stuff. However, I have changed the title. It was called "Deb's Last Chance Saloon" but thinking back now, that does seem very negative and final so now it's called Building a Better Me, because that's what I'm trying to do. I am a work in progress. I hope to always be that.

Now, what I do in this process may or may not involve weight loss and if it does, great, but that's not the point of the exercise. I'm actually doing it to try and repair my self-worth above all else. I think my missing link ALL along in weight loss (or lack thereof) has been self-worth. I've only ever been able to succeed at weight loss to any degree, in the past, by building myself up into a big ball of hatred and anger against myself, against the world, against my mother and grandmother who possibly had a fair bit to do with shaping me into the person I am now. This lasts a certain amount of time and then it burns out. Once that happens, I'm left feeling confused and wondering why I am doing what I am doing. And it's no good telling myself that losing weight is for my health and longevity. When you feel like you're a piece of primordial slime, are you really going to care if you kick the bucket earlier than you should have? Why should you bother trying to save the life of a person you often despise? And I probably haven't really been conscious of this thought process at times I have failed. I've just gone back to the "default setting" of believing my failure was entirely due to my being weak and pathetic and unable to control my demons. Which, of course, is incredibly unhelpful and does nothing to promote resilience or any desire to hang in there and keep working, chipping away at things.

So for now, my first project was to write a new entry and change the blog title to something more suitable. Job done.

Until next time, here is a hopeful picture...