Weigh In - Week 4

Truth be told, I'm feeling a bit all over the place at the moment, but we'll get to that in a second.  Despite fearing that the weekend had cocked things up a bit and that I'd wobbled a bit on Wednesday, I had 4 good days this week and actually turned in a good result:

2.5 lbs lost.

That means I've lost 3 lbs in total since starting back on Weightwatchers, and more importantly for me from a mental point of view, I've just dipped back into the 13 stone bracket, which feels like progress made.  I suppose 3 lbs lost in 4 weeks isn't magnificent in the scale of things, but I'm happy with it because it's steady progress in the right direction and comes in spite of holiday and quite a chunk of socialising.

In terms of non-scale victories, because I tend to forget how important it is to acknowledge those too, I've just had takeaway and actually stopped when I was full and before I'd gluttonously devoured the whole thing ... and put the leftovers safely in the bin.  Good girl.

Aside from the positivity with the food, I'm having quite a battle with myself to stay happy and bouncy at the moment.  I had a meeting with a recruitment agency in London at the end of last week, which left me feeling very up and since then .... nothing.  Which has left me on the way to feeling very down.

Truth be told - without a job and no one beating down the door to employ me, I'm feeling rather pathetically lost and a bit of a failure.  Logically, I realise that I only saw the agent last week, and have only been back in the country 4 weeks, the second of which I was back out the country again, but logic doesn't seem to be featuring too heavily in my feelings right now.  I'd naively expected it to be super-quick getting employed, and this uncertainty is preying on me.  

Looking back, I was thinking that it had always been speedy and easy in the past, but then when I took the rose-tinted specs off I realised it probably just looked that way because I was always employed (or travelling) during the period I was looking so probably didn't realise that there was indeed a delay of a couple of weeks, and whilst I have been extremely lucky with the number of interviews that I've been offered jobs from in the past, there have been one or two times when I haven't been immediately successful.  Plus I need to keep reminding myself that I'm trying to break into a new field, as I move away from permanent to contracting, so I'm potentially up against people with more relevant experience than me, and I just need to let my recruiters do their thing and and be patient whilst they do it.

In an attempt to stop myself wallowing my way into some really crappy, negative feelings, I've been doing a couple of things.  Firstly, I've prepared myself to be ready to interview and work as soon as something comes up by spending a bit of time reviewing my work wardrobe and updating it as appropriate.  Clothes are armour to me, and especially when I'm feeling a bit uncertain about the weight I'm at currently, looking good makes me feel more positive and confident.  Plus it will make packing easier in the event of a rapid move to London.

Whilst doing that, I've also been having another massive review and declutter of the rest of my belongings, which whilst slightly stressful and frustrating at the time, is massively cathartic afterwards.  I've started with my whole wardrobe and have binned some stuff as well making a (growing) pile for the charity shop.  I literally went through every drawer first and tried stuff on, assessing whether it fitted, was shabby or had holes, and of course whether I liked it.  That left me with a pile of stuff that is currently too small and is to go in storage for later (I'm going to try stuff on every half a stone or so) and a much larger pile of "current" wardrobe.  Thing is - I looked at the current stuff and really didn't feel inspired by much of it, so I got a bit stricter with my criteria.  

I set myself up to go through that pile and make a 3 second, instinctive decision about every item - either I loved it / wear it frequently, or I'm a bit "meh" about it and it joined the charity pile.  That was an eye-opening exercise I can tell you: probably another 1/6th of the pile joined the charity items.  I'm going to give it a couple of days and then do a quick review to make sure I'm not chucking out anything I shouldn't be, but I think that answers my problem with my wardrobe!

Clearing my wardrobe was another item to do on my "35 before 35" list, which is satisfying.  Next up, I want to go through my other belongings which are all still in the blue Ikea bags I moved them home in and sort those too.  And whilst I'm waiting around for employment, my flatmate-to-be Jo suggested I see what else I can do on my list without bankrupting myself.  Good plan.