Boobies!!!

It's back to underwear talk today I'm afraid. This time we're moving due North of the last pants conversation - ladies - I'm talking bras. Specifically sports bras.

Now lets face it - with a few notable exceptions (Pamela Anderson and the other bootyful, but amazingly gravity defying beach babes of Baywatch) nobody wants to see breasts flying untethered during exercise. It's inexcusable.

For a start, it's a health hazard - flying objects that could result in concussion or eye-removal for either the owner or other unfortunate people in the vicinity. And it's distracting - when you're trying to concentrate on your own moves or technique in body combat or spinning - you don't want someone else's assets to continually be drawing your eye - jumping up and down (literally) and effectively screaming looooooook at me. Haha - you've tripped over now.

(And on a side note - I've said it before and I'll say it again - women of the world - if you're spinning - pleeeeeeeeease do not wear low cut tops - I do not want to see your cleavage wobbling and juddering around, and generally nearly falling out of your top across the spin circle from me for the duration a class - PUT IT AWAY!!!!)

Let's face it - as far as sports are concerned the firmer the containment the happier I am. If the ancient Chinese habit of breast-binding was still around I would probably happily advocate it for the gym!

I last got measured about 3 months ago, and was disgusted to be told that my chest size had gone up from a 38 to a 40. Now in all fairness, I hadn't previously been measured in a very, very long time so given the weight I'd put on over the years this wasn't unreasonable. Since then, I've noticed that lots of my bras are fitting better, and my sports bra isn't offering nearly as much support as it used to. The ladies have been running a little too free for my liking the last couple of weeks - I hadn't really noticed until I started Body Combat 3 weeks ago, but there's nothing like spending an hour each week punching, kicking and jumping around in front of mirror to bring the point home!

So - to maintain a status of non-hypocrisy I tootled along to M & S last night. Since I knew I'd changed size, but not really what to go for I asked the lady if she could measure me quickly. Her verdict? Chest size - about a 42. Cup-size - around an E cup!!!! I looked at her in total disbelief, and I think she caught that as she hastily said that it wasn't always right and what was I wearing as I stood there. A 38d, which quite clearly fitted perfectly. The sports bra that was too big was a 40c.

What, I ask you, is the point of a measuring system that is so wildly inaccurate??? Had I not been so flabbergasted, I'd have let her go and get that size so I could have had a really good giggle about ridiculous it would look.

Anyhoo - I've now got something in the right size, and I took it out for a run last night to try it out. Whilst the bra might have been ok, my legs felt like bloody lead - which I think is the effect of not running at all regularly over the last month. At least I still made it round my c. 20 min loop, but I felt bloody slow doing it.

After this morning's eat-everything-in-sight moment, I think my appetite has just about calmed back down to its normal level. However, I'm still fighting to not over-ride my appetite this afternoon. I'm always like this when I'm even vaguely bored, and there's food in my vicinity - doesn't matter that I can clearly answer the question about whether or not I'm still hungry (no) I still sit there eyeing up what's available. It doesn't help that I'm pissed off and frustrated today. Lots of stuff going on at work, and I put on a brand new skirt this morning that I've been waiting a couple of weeks to wear until it fit properly - did it and the zip promptly spontaneously combusted beyond repair, so I had to physically rip it apart to get the damn thing back off again.

At the moment I just can't wait to get safely to the end of tomorrow and finish for a week.

Today I shall mostly be talking pants

I felt sick last night until about 8 o'clock when I got back from spinning. Driving home from work in the car, I was actually going hot and cold, and wondering if I'd got blinking swine flu.

Still, I made it to spin, sweated out about 2l of water, and then went home and collapsed. Not literally, just in as much as I had a complete energy melt-down.

I couldn't decide whether I wanted to eat, or still felt off, and if I wanted hot or cold, or sweet or savoury, so in the end I stopped over-analysing and just finished off the soup - figured I could use the vegetables.

So after a horrible day's eating yesterday, I'm back on track and feeling a bit more human. Luckily, yesterday's bad decisions were just about covered by my daily points plus exercise, but it left me feeling so gross, that I'm grateful to be planning and eating fresh food and fruit today.

For my next trick - I'm going to talk underwear. Why is it, that when you get smaller you think about buying smaller sizes in everything except your undies?? They are totally the one section of my wardrobe, that I have thus far paid no attention to, accept to intermittently acknowledge that my bras are fitting more comfortably.

I think it's because everything in there is stretch fabrics and close-fitting, so it takes a much longer time for it to become obvious that things are getting to big. However, I spent a large chunk of Sunday trying to figure out why my clothes were doing odd things and my knickers were continually shifting to undesirable destinations, and finally sussed that the problem was simple - they've got too big. Or I've got too small. Whatever. Take it from me - close (oh alright - snug) fitting skinny jeans and knickers that are too big do not a good combination make.

So that's another pile of expense that I'm looking at. And extra upsetting because pretty much all of my underwear is in nicely matched sets (sorry if this all too much information but I'm feeling the need to unburden myself of my latest gripe), and I clearly can't afford to go buying all new sets of matching undies every time stuff gets too big. Not that I actually ever manage to co-ordinate myself into wearing said matching articles at the same time, but it's nice to no I could if I wanted too. Kind of like socks. Suppose I should be grateful that they're not getting too big too.

Harumph.

The confessional

Okaaaaay - here we go.

Forgive me, my dear beloved body, for I have sinned mightily against you this weekend. And I'm sorry. I truly am. Especially when you so kindly rewarded me with a loss this morning! I mean seriously - dude, you're too nice to me! I promise to be better to you this week.

So, I wasn't the greatest this weekend. It started out as a very minor transgression on Friday evening, and pretty much got progressively worse as the weekend progressed.

Friday night, I went to dinner and then the cinema with Jo. Dinner was all planned out in advance - job done, and I didn't have dessert as we were just too damn full, but I did have a small portion of pic'n'mix at the cinema. And I don't even know how to point that, so I put it down as 4. And I finished the day about 1 point over.

Saturday, I was incredibly lazy. I slept til 11am and eventually dragged my lazy ass into town to go shopping. I bought a motivational tool for the summer - the dreaded bikini. My currently lardy arse is nowhere near ready to be inflicted on the general populace as yet, and sadly I'm not convinced it will be by the time we head to Croatia at the end of next month, but maybe for Egypt in November ... who knows! I also bought a going out top from Warehouse (Warehouse!! I actually fitted into a fitted top from Warehouse!!! Will wonders never cease??), and some Bio-oil.

I keep hearing about this stuff as it's meant to be amazing at helping old scars and stretch-marks fade, preventing new ones, and also seriously rehydrating skin and maintaining elasticity. Without getting too much into the nitty gritty, I'm very conscious that being an Apple body type, a lot of my excess weight is carried around my stomach. I obviously want to get rid of this as I head to goal, not least because of the health pitfalls of excess fat carried around the internal organs, but I'm also really conscious that I don't want loose skin left behind. So the Bio-oil is to help boost the skins ability to recover as I lose weight - it might not work, but at least I'll have beautifully moisturised skin!

Anyway, I digress - back to the confessional. On Saturday night, I got domestic. It was red pepper and parsnip soup this time. Messily executed and nearly messed up several times, but a really delicious result. Then after a bowl of that, I had my dinner - scampi and sweet potato wedges. Then I went to watch a film next door with the boys. And then, at midnight, I joined them for dessert. Treacle tart and double cream. I shared one of thos little individual tarts with Sid. And I didn't have enough points. So probably about 3-4 points over for the day. Stupid.

Which brings me to yesterday. Oh dear. Yesterday I went to Wembley with Jo to see Take That. As it's a 3 hour drive in each direction, this entailed much eating out. First there was a pub lunch - roast beef. Not a massive plate, and all freshly cooked and not too greasy at all, but roast potatos and Yorkishire puddings don't taste that good without at least a little oil involved. Then we stopped at the service station just outside London, and had cake (or Sunday lunch dessert as we like to call it) from Starbucks. Then there was the concert, and much avoidance of fast food (yay), until we left, traipsed about half an hour back to the car, got ourselves out of London, and realised we were starving, so stopped at the same services on the way back and succumbed to McDonalds. It could have been worse - I deliberately just had the burger and no chips. It could also have been infinitely better.

Here's the alternative menu I could have had - I thought about this last night, and thought damn my feeble choices. Salmon insteead of roast beef for lunch. Which wouldn't have had Yorkshire pudding, and probably no roast potatoes either. Probably about 8 points instead of about 12. A skinny muffin instead of carrot cake - 5 points instead of 9. And if I had to have McDonalds - chicken nuggets instead of a Chicken Legend - 4.5 points instead of 9. Instant saving of about 12 points. Foolish, foolish child. Learn from this!!!

So what positive points from this week? Here's the highlights:

• I tried two new classes and enjoyed them both, and I'm looking forward, like properly looking forward, to doing them again this week.
• I managed to pack the scales away for a few days. Being honest - by yesterday morning I was so paranoid because of my bad eating that I got them out to check, and they'd actually gone down. So I think I should trust my body a bit more, and the scales a bit less, and I'm going to try and keep them put away a bit more this week.
• I'm out of my 10 day rut - I lost 1.5lbs this week - I'm happy with that.
• I tried a new recipe for a healthy soup, and it was really, really nice. Next time I might even make less mess making it!

I'm back eating sensibly again today. I woke up this morning, absolutely raging starving, which is something I hate about the day after eating really shittily. That's subsided now though, and in fact I'm still feeling super, super full from my lunch. It might have been healthy, but I think there was just tooooooo much of it, and I felt really uncomfortable for about an hour afterwards. Still, it should keep me going happily til after spin tonight. I've swapped classes again, so this will probably be a super-quick class tonight full of races, sprints and penalities for the losers - eeeeeeek!

PSYCHE!!!

I think my scales are trying to psyche me out. Really. I'm not paranoid I promise.

I stepped on them this morning, and instead of squealing at me to get the hell off them, they said congratulations, you magically lost another 4 lbs over night! What? Did some come along and cut off part of a limb when I wasn't looking? That can't possibly be right. So I stepped on them again. And again. They said what? You think we're lying to you? We're hurt - as if we'd do such a thing!

I'm convinced the punchline will come tomorrow when I step on them and they yell SUCKEEEEERRRRR!!!!!!

So, aside from scale-related conspiracy theory paranoia, life ain't too bad. We had a lunch buffet at work yesterday. As usual, I think the catering staff misread the lunch request and thought there was another "0" on the end of the number of attendees - can't think why else they'd send up enough food to feed a small country of starving Africans. And all of it about a million calories a mouthful. Even the fruit skewers came smothered in hot chocolate sauce. Thank you catering staff, for successfully sabotaging my day. Really. It's much appreciated. I'll be sure to send you a Christmas card. Arseholes!

It also worries me that it is senior management's opinion that hard work deserves to rewarded with food. Seriously - we can feed ourselves, guys, you don't pay us that little. Give us something helpful. Money's always good if you're really stuck for ideas!!

After work, I went with my Dad to the theatre to see the fabulously smutty stage version of the equally fabulously smutty tv show 'Allo 'Allo. Until you've seen an gay Nazi lieutenant walk in on an English spy dressed a policeman apparently humping a French cafe owner, who is in turn apparently humping a blow up doll of Hitler, you've not lived, I tells ya! Yes, it's silly, yes, it's deeply un-PC (but who the fuck cares?), and yes, it's funny. Although it feels a little wrong to be sat laughing at things like that next to my Dad. And jokes about flaps and big choppers. But he was laughing harder than I was, so I figure it was ok!

And that was yesterday. I saw my flatmate briefly as I was running out the flat (late as always), and apparently we're talking again. By which I mean we were both super-nice to each other because we can't be bothered with confronting awkwardness. I'm so super-nice I even gave her my last two French Fancies. Does it get any nicer than that. Hmmm - use of food as a peace offering ... probably another habit I should cut!