Dictionary definition: “Birthday Hangover” – that period following a birthday, or other large celebration, when there is still a surplus of good bad food hanging around, and due to you being a nice girl / boy, you’re manfully making your way through it, rather than throw it away and waste it. This hangover period will mean that, despite all the best intentions of eating healthily, you’ll frequently get slightly waylaid by the odd bag of marshmallows (which, incidentally, turn out to be pure evil despite their innocent, whiter-than-white appearances) and that tempting little box of French Fancies.
My birthday hangover, fortunately, or unfortunately depending on which way you look at it, coincided with a period of great stress and instability, but also a period when I was running round like a loon doing quite a lot of heavy lifting. For that reason, and probably that reason alone, it didn’t take as great a toll as it could have done. The “unfortunately” of the situation was that the stress and instability “excused” me into allowing myself to indulge in all the things I knew I shouldn’t be. Slapped wrist.
And then finally comes the end of the Hangover. This occurs when you make one small mistake too many and get fed up of it, and just start hurling the offending items of food into the bin. Waste be damned, I freely admit I don’t have the willpower to leave them sitting around the house and not attack them like a ravening hoard of locusts …. and if it comes down to a choice between in my belly (and on my hips) and in the bin, then it’s a fairly easy choice to make in the end.
Other than that, my eating has been ….. ok, I guess. Take away the added points of my Birthday Hangover mistakes, and the rest isn’t so bad. It’s not fantastic either though. For one thing, I could really do with cutting my booze intake back again. Easy enough to address though. For another thing, as much as I love Nature Valley bars, one of those, plus a morning skinny hot chocolate from the Starbucks in my new office, pretty much demolishes a third of my points for the day. Not big and not clever – because I’m not getting a lot of value for my points.
Good news though – I am ready to address those points! Nature Valley bars are finished, Alpen Lights are in. I’ve bought more fresh fruit, and I’ve stopped attacking the wine that’s in the fridge. And I’ve even made the grand step of introducing myself to my new running territory!
Yes – I have braved the minus temperatures to go and explore. And like all things in life – the things you procrastinate about and try and put off – once you’re fleeced up and out the door and running, the pavement just unfurls peacefully beneath your feet, and you find that the run you dreaded is flowing past pretty effortlessly. Just shy of 6km’s of satisfying me-time. Feeling strong and fluid pretty much the whole way. It turns out that my local loop around the harbour is probably about 5.5km for the basic route – which is mostly away from the road and unexpectedly quiet, with just the odd detour on to the road, or through some slightly spooky night-time ship yard. Options to extend exist in both directions – in the summer there’s the promise of the countryside paths out along the Avon to explore, or a for a challenge I could work up through Ashton Court to come back over Clifton Suspension Bridge and down through Clifton Village. Always lots of options, but most importantly, that great first run back makes me think that night / city / winter running doesn’t suck as much as I thought it would.
Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with the fact that I regularly seem to hit “quiet times” when I hover at a weight for a while instead of actively losing. I think that’s where I am right now, but since I’m hovering within a lb or so of my lowest weight ever, and staying consistently below that barrier weight of 12st 6lbs it took me so long to crack through, I’m not too worried. I’ll pick up momentum again sometime soon and edge down a little more. Into those last 10lbs. Into the 11’s. It’ll come when it’s ready, and I’ve lost the anxiousness to achieve X weight by Y date. I’ll get there some time, and it’s just about improving just a tiny bit at a time.
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