Heaven

I think I might actually have died and gone to heaven. I'm in bliss. After a somewhat longer than expected train journey to get here we were informed that Eurostar are going to give us free return tickets as compensation - flipping brilliant since the delay was on an overnight train and we were all busy sleeping and chilling and barely noticed it!

Our chalet is lovely and the staff are really friendly. Once we'd dumped all our bags this morning and been presented with our ski gear, we bombed out for a quick mountain descent on wide blues before lunch. Blues are steeper than I remember them around here, but much fun was had. We stopped for crepes for lunch by our chalet (yum - crepes with apples in calvados and caramel sauce!) and I'd had a quick confab with the chalet staff re my skis because my left one popped off 4 times in the morning, we yomped off again for another couple of hours of non-stop action. I'm totally in love with my 149 Rossignol twin-tips in retro fluoro 90's colours that are both girly and co-ordinate with my jacket - winner!!!! Light, flexible and forgiving and absolutely great.

We came back just as dusk was starting to be greeted with home-made scones with jam and cream - also very tastey. After a quick wind-down, a hot shower then out to the hot-tub on the deck under the stars. We're just back in and chilling in the living room - sprawled on a sofa by the log fire listening to the click of pool balls in the background and waiting for what smells like a pretty tastey dinner.

Food this week will be a challenge as we get a full breakfast every day, cakes in the afternoon and a 3 course dinner with wine every evening. So far my appetite seems to have deserted me a little bit - I ate on the journey yesterday but not excessively, and today I really don't have much inclination to go back for seconds at the cake table or raid my cake stash in my bag. I did look at my little "fear notes" this morning, but that was it.

Fab day and looking forward to an awesome week. Xx


-- Posted from my iPhone

Location:Le Verney,Bourg-Saint-Maurice,France

Hauling my ass back on track

Yes, my lovely little readers, I am glad to report that I did not abandon you to wallow in the pit of food and guilt I found myself in over the weekend, but rather to go find the ladder and get the hell up and out of it!!!

Interestingly, the form my own personal ladder took? My iPhone. I know, it's curious isn't it.

Since I couldn't stop eating, and going over my motivations wasn't enough to halt me either, I tackled it from the other side and started considering why it was I couldn't stop. What I was afraid would happen. Since I was at work at the time, I scribbled my thoughts down on my post-it notes as I had them.

Four little bullet points later and I realised that my "fears" were a pretty feeble set of excuses to keep stuffing my face. Like opening up the attic from which big scary noises are coming and finding it's actually just a bunch of bloody squirrels (true story - we have a very noisy squirrel infestation in out loft. Well we used to - now we have some squirrel traps and not so many squirrels thanks to Mr Pest Control Man. I digress).

Once I'd done my fears, I re-scribbled my immediate motivations to eat right.

And a funny thing happened. Up to that point I would have sworn blind to you that I was starving hungry that afternoon. As I read over my little list and digested it (excuse the pun) my hunger disappeared, and with it a tension I didn't even know I was holding.

When I got cranky again about 15 mins later, I read it again and got the same effect. Calm.

So I could have the list with me at all times, I typed the list onto the notes section on my iPhone. I always have it with me, so my list is just a screen-tap away. Discreet and comforting (why does that sentence sound like an ad for ladies' feminine hygiene products??? Lol).

Since then I seem to have made my way back to a bit of healthy-eating sanity. The original post-it is in the front of my work notebook and I can glance at that or my phone when I need to re-centre. Working so far. I feel in control and less bloated. And better still I feel like it'll be a useful tool to help cope with next week (more on that in a second).

Want to know what was on my list?

Fears:

• Being hungry.
• Missing out.
• Boredom.
• Feeling negative emotions - or even just feeling any emotions.

Benefits of eating right:

• Feeling strong.
• Feeling in control.
• Losing weight.
• Achieving a goal I've set.
• Feeling attractive.
• Clothes fitting better.
• Feeling successful.

That list is my saviour.

I've had another funny week - at work Monday and Tuesday but long journeys due to motorway closures. Then it snowed again, pretty majorly and I couldn't go anywhere yesterday so I worked from Jon's sofa instead as he was stuck home too. We managed to get the car dug out this morning and then my flatmate and another friend pushed me free, so I'm back in the office for the last day as I'm off skiing in France tomorrow!!

We're catching an overnight train from London to Bourg tomorrow and we hit the slopes Saturday as long as we have no weather delays - fingers crossed for me please!!!! We're spending the week in a luxury chalet which is fully catered so that's going to be a bit of a challenge. On the other hand we should be out skiing all day everyday with any luck. I've got morning lessons booked so that should force me to shift my ass out the door every morning. :-)

So in summary, I'm a lot calmer and feeling much better, I'm looking forward to my holiday and my weight's back down a couple of lbs in time for weigh in tomorrow. Much better.


-- Posted from my iPhone

Guilty face

I spent most of the weekend feeling like I was in an emotional washing machine. I can't decide, therefore, whether it was a good thing that it was a busy weekend and I've not had a lot of time to dwell on things. Everytime I did stop it all caught up with me.

Thank you so much for your supportive comments on my last post - I wasn't looking for sympathy or validation particularly - I knew I'd dug my own hole and jumped, and I knew I was in the wrong - but I appreciate your support more than I can say none-the-less.

So where did that leave me? Still not eating fantastically. I start the day well, and it tends to come unravelled in the evenings at the moment. I'm still tracking and I haven't gained anymore. But I'm not happy with what I'm eating.

I have been fairly active though. Friday I finally got my ski lesson at the Snowdome. Wow - does losing weight make a difference!! I was a little nervous beforehand in case I hated it, and found it hard, but my most excellent instructor Dave took me from right-back-to-basics to paralell turns in the space of our hour together, and I didn't want to leave the slopes at the end.

Friday evening I went to meet loads of friends at the pub and ended up stumbling home at 11am the next morning. I had just enough time to have a shower and lunch before driving to Bristol to meet for a date. Nice guy but no chemistry there (prob not helped by my brain spinning at about 1000mph by that time), but I hadn't the heart to say that straight out when he asked if I'd like to meet again, so I'll have to deal with that at some later date. Joy.

Saturday night I watched films with the guys and fell asleep on their sofa, before waking up and crawling home at 4am. Yesterday I caught up on cleaning, which helped me feel a bit more balanced, and in the evening we celebrated my flatmate's birthday. An early dinner out at Ask (very restrained menu choices) and then we hit the park for a giant game of hide and seek in the dark and the snow. It probably looked pretty funny to any passers-by to see 17 fully grown adults pegging it across the park in the dark while one person counted to 100 in the bandstand with their hands over their eyes. In fact probably as weird as watching 17 people climb out of a fir tree when the last person lost the game of sardines. Good times and an original way to have fun before trooping off to the pub to defrost over vodkas and champagne. Fair to say I wasn't feeling spectacular this morning. Actually, I was also feeling shattered because I stayed up late watching tv - stupid.


-- Posted from my iPhone

Melt down

Crap, crap, crap!!

I don't know what's wrong with me, but the past couple of days I seem to have gone into free-fall melt down.

After one good day's eating, it went bad again. I'm struggling to get through the days without messing it up. I taking each day as they come but my weight's wobbling around back up between 12st 11 and 12st 9. I'm desperately trying to find equilibrium.

On top of that I'm making stupid decisions elsewhere in my life. My spending's out of control, my home is total tip which makes me feel unbalanced, and 8 days in to the New Year I made the mother of all bad decisions with a friend of mine, which I'm scared will wreck several friendships - I don't know what I was thinking but apparently my need for affection over-rode all the warning bells. I don't feel good about it and right now I'm carrying quite a lot of guilt round with me.

Bloody hell - I need to pull myself together and get a grip.

Finding my WW's legs again

Control!! Hellooooooooooo! Nice to see you again! I've missed you so much!

Oh yes - I've found that little thing called self-control, I'm back on track where I should be. We had a fab walk out on the hills yesterday, hiking up to the top of the Beacon in the snow which was a foot deep in places. The boys and I double-timed it up there which was pretty hard work as the paths had been sledged so smooth at some points that every footstep up slid back as far as you'd just stepped, but we'd started out quite late so needed to make best use of the remaining light. We had fun in the snow when we got to the top - I made snow angels and we took action shots of us jumping into the drifts, before practically getting blown off our feet when we got right to the mapping point at the summit.

We had quite a rapid walk back down in the failing light, before going for an impromptu sledging session down the last steep, steep set of S bends. Great fun, followed by a hot chocolate in the pub on the way home - it felt like skiing already - can't wait for that, and only a week to go!!!!

Today I've had another snow day, but working from home this time. Actually, I'm a bit hacked off, as I spent 45 mins trying to clear the car and get it dug out this morning to go to work, but couldn't get the car loose of it's snowy grave. So I set up camp in the living room and got down to work - but my boss seemed to take personal exception to my non-appearance in the office, like it was something I could help. I wouldn't mind so much, but it's a bit of a double-standard when she's currently out of the office because her little girl's off nursery again. It seems that it's perfectly ok for her to take time out all the time for her kid, but god help me when I can't get through 6 inches of snow to drive 26 miles to work. Grrrrrr!!!!

So, it's not been the best day work-wise, but my food's gone well. I'm on target with my points, and I had a little play around on the Wii Fit mid-afternoon, just to give myself a break and move around a bit.

I've got to go downstairs in a bit and try and dig the car out properly this time (shovel required) as I really need it tomorrow. Both because I think my boss might actually go spare if I don't get in to the office tomorrow, and also because I've got my re-booked ski lesson at Snowdome tomorrow, and they won't move it again if I don't make it. Incentive indeed!!

Weigh in tomorrow morning, but don't be surprised if I don't report anything, as I'm fully expecting it to be way up. It's been pretty up all week, and I realised TOTM was here again this morning, so I don't expect it to be pretty. I'm working now on having a good week before skiing.

Finally, I couldn't decide whether I was happy or sad earlier when I got an email from the race organisers for Saturday to say they're delaying the race until next month as the Forest of Dean is unusable at the moment. I'm a bit sad in one way, but I'm still woefully unprepared to be able to put in a decent time at the moment, so the extra 5 or so weeks are a god-send!

Not dead.

Hey guys,

I'm back after my brief period of being AWOL over New Year. And I feel like I've put on about half a stone in that period. Actually, that's not far off - I feel bloated and ugh, but I'm back on plan, and I've been tracking for the last couple of days even whilst I've not been eating brilliantly, so I've not completely fallen by the wayside.

New Year in Scotland was amazing. We got hideously drunk on champagne on New Years Eve, and most of the rest of that night is a bit of a blur ... much like the pic below (which is in fact my friend Jon spinning hyperlights in the dark sometime in the small hours of New Years Eve - cool, huh?)



The hangovers on New Years Day were truly atrocious, so we decided to blast them away with some crunchy-snowed, frozen-bog-hopping, heather-strewn, blue-skied walking. It was gorgeous out, if a little treacherous under foot (proven by the fact that I went flying twice on the ice), but exactly what we needed, and we returned 3 hours later just as dusk was falling feeling a lot more human.






We had another walk on Saturday, down to the beach this time, and again it was lush to blow the cobwebs away. Interestingly, that walk is also a lot easier than I remember it being, as the bloody big hill on the way back seems to have shrunken considerably since the summer! The only minor problem we had, was that we were halfway across the direct route through the marsh before we realised it wasn't quite as frozen as it appeared!! There were a few rather tricky moments where we did some strategic hopping around, accompanied by some unexpected cracking noises and cheerful swearing as a foot disappeared into the mud, but it was all part of the fun and games.

Since I'd been eating whatever the hell I wanted over Xmas, I started tracking again straight away on Monday - can't say that Monday and Tuesday were good eating days though, due to long days at work, lack of food in the fridge and a lot of snow fouling everything up yesterday, but at least I was honest and tracked it all. Today is a snow-day, so I'm taking the opportunity to refresh the fridge and get back on track properly.

Exercise-wise I got to it on Monday night - since it was too cold and icy out to run, I went to the treadmill and trudged out a (very slow) 5k on the treadmill. No stopping at all. 40 mins of straight up running. Good stuff. Didn't get anything done last night other than walking to the pub for dinner when I finally got home from work and playing in the snow on the way back, but I'm going to go for a walk in the snow later today.

I'm also supposed to be going to the Tamworth Snow Dome for a ski-lesson tonight, and I don't know if I'm going to be able to get there with all the snow, which I'm gutted about. We're off skiing the weekend after this one, and I really wanted this session to re-find my ski legs (as I've been snowboarding the last couple of years and have had to change due to injury). I'm also gutted because if I miss it, that's £80 of cash down the drain!!!! Booooo!

On a final note - I had a good realisation yesterday - I was filling in my booking form for my ski-hire, and for the first time ever, I didn't feel embarrassed about filling in my weight, which was pretty cool. 79kgs? I can live with that!

A whole New Year!!!

Yikes - it's 2010 already!! I appear to have been caught on the hop - I meant to post a round-up of 2009 before the year ticked over but somehow missed the boat.

This morning my head hurts a bit, courtesy of champagne straight from the bottle last night. Good start to the new year!!

So. 2009. The year started with a silly challenge from Jo for us both to get fit and healthy - which meant losing about 5 stone for me. What a ride. Here were my highlights from 2009:

• Joined Weight Watchers, learned to eat healthily again and lost 4 stone.
• Started exercising with more purpose and re-learned the place of it in my life.
• Taught myself to run - was running just over 5 or 6k by the end of the year.
• Went on a mighty 5 holidays to cool and exciting places - snowboarding in France, exploring in Oslo and Croatia, adventuring in Scotland and windsurfing in Egypt.
•Gained some confidence in myself as the weight dropped away and I found that I could succeed at things if I put my mind to it.
• Had a go at singletrack on my mountain-bike and discovered I liked it ... despite occasional falls in the mud.
• Wore a bikini - success!!
• Started the year wearing a size 18-20 - I'm sitting here this morning in a 14.
• Learned to beachstart on my windsurfer and use the harness.
• Decided to stop whinging about being single and started Internet dating.
• Learned to feel a lot better about my life and started making plans to do all the things I haven't done yet but want to.

Which brings us neatly to 2010. I have lots of hopes and dreams for this year. Some new resolutions to make and goals to achieve.

For a starter I want to finish my 2009 resolution. I'll break this down into managable chunks to achieve. I want to get to my Weight Watchers goal which is currently 11st 6lbs. I have a mini-goal to get sub-12st first. Then I want to find a weight I can be happy at for the long-run. More of a challenge as this means finding a compromise between getting to my "perfect" weight, e.g. skinny, and something realistically sustainable. I aim to try and find a point where I'm content with my body. Airy-fairy goals indeed.

More tangible - I want to run a 5k and maybe a 10k race of some sort. The January 5k is in some doubt at the moment as I haven't run for one reason or another in the last couple of weeks, but if not that one, then a later one. It WILL happen.

Now I've started exercising regularly again, I'm going to stick to it and aim to enjoy a variety of activity throughout this year. I am going to keep going to a yoga / Balance type class at least once a week though to strengthen and protect my back and other miscellaneous fucked-up joints.

And there's the big stuff. A little while ago, I mentioned big life changes that I wanted to make. I've been planning and thinking quietly and ideas are slowly forming. I'm taking a career break in 2010. In September this year I'm quitting my job and jumping on a plane for Australia. I've decided I need a challenge and something to achieve. I wanted to do something physical as I was never the sportiest person. So I'm going to spend 6 weeks training to be a windsurfing instructor. That should be a challenge!!! I'm also going to spend a bit of time travelling down the East Coast and then either New Zealand or Tazmania. Not sure which yet.

I've also got lots more holidays coming up in 2010 before that.

So that's me. An exciting year ahead. So much to look forward to and achieve. I can't wait to begin!!!

But first, I'm just going to finish with this hangover ....

-- Posted from my iPhone