Fresh Tracks

Well.

Here we are - I'm sitting on the sofa, a candle burning, somewhat changeable Easter weather outside (it's just gone from apocalyptic rain to sunshine and blue skies in the space of three minutes), a mostly unmolested chocolate egg beside me.  And I've just cancelled my Weightwatchers subscription.

I arrived home from my third and final ski trip of the winter late yesterday evening.  Standing on the scales this morning, I realised I've managed yet another holiday, the fourth since November (which I realise makes me sound insanely spoilt) with either no more than 2 lbs put on or a loss from any of them.

I looked back through my Weightwatchers tracker and I haven't even used it in 6 weeks.  Prior to that I was recording food but already working on the principles of tackling my emotional eating.  And during that entire time my weight has either been stable or dropping - I think it's time to say "I've got this" and trust myself to proceed without the safety net of Weightwatchers in the background.

That isn't to say that I'm not exceedingly grateful to Weightwatchers - it got me started along the path to where I am today, but I'm ready now to venture on to the next bit of my journey and start learning to trust myself again.  It's the next step in unlearning my associations with food being "good" or "bad", in experimenting with my palette and what it really likes again, in becoming a person who eats food because it tasty and enjoyable and I'm hungry, not to soothe some emotions or obey a set of rules that either my brain or society is trying to tell me will make me feel better.

This is me moving away from avoiding foods like mackerel and steak, just because they're heavy on points, and enjoying them because they're full of things that are good for me and they taste damn good, and just trusting that my body knows how to balance everything out.

So yeah - here begins life after dieting.  I hope.

Last week was spent out in the glorious Alps again, back in La Plagne, with friends.  We were so lucky with the weather and snow conditions, as we had bluebird skies pretty much every day, but the snow cover was still deep and in good condition.  It was an absolutely glorious week, from laughing so hard I cried, to stopping for a minute on the piste and realising the woods around me were so utterly silent and peaceful it made my heart do a little skip of happiness.  My nose has a few more freckles now, I have a few more bruises and a possibly broken ski, and a few more happy memories to add to the pile.  Despite the beers and food over the week, something worked as I think I'm perhaps a lb heavier than when I went, although that could be the Chinese takeaway I picked up on the way home last night due to the empty fridge situation.

All in all, it was a success.  Now, I'm trying to make the most of the rest of the holiday weekend, before the holiday blues kick in next week when I realise my next holiday isn't scheduled until the very end of July.  Sob.

Little Frustrations

Lots of things are frustrating me at the moment - situations with items I ordered from the internet that were cancelled and I'm still waiting for a refund on 3 weeks later; my accountants who are being generally shit, which means I have a temporary cash flow blockage whilst I wait for them to tell me what I can pay myself; and it not being quite as easy as it first seemed to get on with resetting my behaviours around food.

I'm still pottering along trying to reset myself from "diet" mentality, which is ... interesting.  It's very hard not to mentally track your food when you've spent the best part of 7 years doing just that.  It's hard not to feel guilt about certain foods.  Well, basically any food that's not a "diet" food.  And it's hard not to just sometimes sit there and eat your emotions.

A lot of the time I catch what I'm trying to do and can talk myself down from it and find another way. But on the 100th time, you don't even realise what you've done until it's over.  Well, probably about every 10 or 20th time at the moment, as I'm still learning.

And oh, Grasshopper, there are so many things I still need to learn.

Still, my weight has remained very stable throughout so far.  The low end of stable.  On days when I can do it well (perfection is not required, so I'll settle for "well" or "good") my weight starts to actually decrease quite steadily, but at the moment I still make enough mis-steps that instead of seeing an overall loss, it's just steady instead.

One thing I do need to remember though, and it's another adjustment to my outlook that I need to make, is that I need to make my focus on healing my eating, and keep any weight loss as a secondary benefit.  This has been my problem all along, that I have made weightless my primary focus when really it was the affect and not the cause.  All in good time though.

Good things from the experiment so far:  I do generally feel lighter of heart, more accepting of myself and also a bit more confident and happy.  That alone is a great outcome.

Also - I survived skiing with only 2 lbs on at the scale to show for it.  Very well done me.

Really - there can only be positive outcomes from what I'm trying to do.  There's no real way for me to lose with what I'm trying to achieve, apart from possibly weight.  So the only thing to do is keep pushing forwards, one step at a time, no matter how many of those steps slide backwards a bit.