Day 14

Unfortunately, something I had yesterday tripped my intermittently sensitive gut and I had a couple of unhappy early morning liquid experiences involving pain, reactionary nausea, involuntary tears (of the liquid rather than ripping variety) and rocking on the loo, but though a little sore the next day am okay. I used my slightly delicate morning state as a reason to eschew a vigorous workout today, but went for a walk in the afternoon after my delivery arrived.

I’m quite excited about the week ahead, which seems quite salad-filled – tomorrow I’ve got a salad and chicken wrap, Saturday’s Hokkien chicken noodles is much more of a cold salad with pasta than the hot dish I pictured, and on Sunday I’ve got Thai fish cakes with Asian slaw. This is also the first week that has multiple days where no specific country or cuisine is mentioned: so far we’ve had Thai, Turkish, Tandoori, Hawaiian, Moroccan, Greek, Hoisin, Thai again, Asian (admittedly a region not a country), Vietnamese, Mediterranean (another region), Greek again, and Asian twice more.

On the downside, there’s an item missing – the multigrain muffin for Monday’s snack (with peanut butter and honey, though I think I’ll substitute jam). I thought about buying a packet of muffins and freezing them, but I’m trying to have fewer additional groceries. At the moment I’ve swapped out the soy and linseed roll from Saturday’s snack, which is meant to accompany a bowl of tomato soup. As Sunday’s a work night, and I’ll be having all the lunch and snacks together, I think I’ll be fine without it.

My rather pedestrian, Aussie breakfast today was that old standby, porridge with a handful of sultanas, topped by a fresh portion of stewed rhubarb and raspberries, sticking to the research from Real Age reporting that less variety results in a smaller intake. The theory seems to be partly based on a response to the cafeteria diet theory (that the more options one has the more one eats, thanks to the experience we’ve all had of being too full for any more of X but still having room for Y), and partly because eating out of rote rather than choosing a meal reduces our appetite. As I wrote on Tuesday (day 12), that’s one of the things I’ve found unexpected but useful with Lite’n’Easy – I have at least as much variety as I had when I was responsible for all my meals, but I don’t need to do any thinking about it apart from the five or ten minutes I spend once a week ordering the food online. Particularly now I’ve started sorting the food on arrival into frozen and refrigerator bags for each day rather than leaving them in the “day 5 – lunch, freezer” way they’re packaged. Stacking them in the freezer in order means I just have to reach in and take the closest one to me; in the fridge I line them up in a shopping bag with day 7 on the left and day 1 on the right.

It’s interesting that I’m going to some lengths to keep my Lite’n’Easy journey private or secret. Even though I live alone, I’ve been tidying up as I go so a casual, unexpected visitor won’t see any traces of Lite’n’Easy in the kitchen and, as I’ve mentioned previously, I repackage my meals before going in to work.

I remember that when I first got glasses, at the age of eight, I linked them with being fat. I’m the eldest daughter of a woman who’s had a lifetime preoccupation with weight, particularly her own, that persists even though she’s almost seventy and currently in the best shape of her life thanks to a combination of regular aerobic exercise, yoga, weight training and forgetting to eat. I know that my eating and being fat is in part a way of rebelling and exercising control, and many’s the time that, though I’ve recognised the connection, I’ve watched myself leave her after a distressing event or argument and eaten food I didn’t want without being able to stop it. For me, part of that is also maintaining a near-universal façade of being happy with my size, and to an extent that’s true – the size I am now fits the mental picture I’ve had of myself for most of my life, and even though I started this current leg of my life journey at my heaviest ever weight, I’ve still been within about 15% of it for the last twenty years. But I also have fantasies about being ‘normal’ weight, not necessarily because I think my life will transform into perfection – I know I’ll still be me – but because I have no idea what it’s like. When I was thin, in my teens, I thought I was fat, and I destroyed pretty much all the photos of myself, so I have only a handful of pictures of what I looked like then. I can’t visualise what I would like at, say, eighty kilos let alone sixty-five.

My siblings are all thin, and I really like the idea of being able to show people pictures of them without the intake of surprise and the almost required remark that they look so different – two of them are also brunettes, with similar facial structures, and as my sisters (though one a blue-eyed blonde and the other a hazel-eyed brunette) have an increasing resemblance as they progress through their thirties, I’m well aware the surprise is because they’re thin. And though I always make a light-hearted joke about it, I’d like to hear something else instead. I’d also like to see my family’s response, and I’m interested to see how our family dynamic would change. Though, as my siblings all live overseas, the dynamic’s already quite different.

Of course I’m also interested in the health side of things – I want to be fitter and stronger. But that’s really a secondary gain, along with the fact that I know I’ll seek health care more readily when I’m not concerned that my weight will be attributed to the symptoms. I don’t have any chronic health issues, and since I stopped seeing a horrible GP almost twenty years ago it hasn’t even been mentioned by a health practitioner unless I’ve brought it up, but I’ve read horror stories, and being sent off for thyroid function testing (in the absence of any symptoms of hypothyroidism) not once but three times when my presenting issues were wholly unrelated, does have an impact. I’m currently overdue for a Pap smear, breast exam and routine blood work, including the iron studies I think my recent shortness of breath warrants, because since my old GP moved to the other side of town about a decade ago I’ve only gone to multi-practitioner clinics. It’s very exposing, seeing a doctor for the first time, and while I’m happy to do it for a work certificate or to get antibiotics for a persistent chest infection (or, as embarrassingly happened a few months ago, cellulitis), I’m loath to for ongoing care. Which is ridiculous – I certainly know better, and I believe many of the poorer health care outcomes for fat people is because of this very issue. Like many people, though, I can hold two incompatible concepts in my head, which is how I can both champion size acceptance and want to be considerably thinner.

I have told three of my friends about Lite’n’Easy, including Lynn, of course. I like having a couple of people I can discuss how I’m going with, and the husband of one of my friends is thinking about trying it too, so she’s very interested in my reports back.

Which brings me back to today’s menu. So far my microwave has earned that long walk bringing it here entailed, as there were two components that needed reheating. Lunch was a cheese roll with caramelised onion chutney, which I teamed with the vegetable patty that was supposed to be an afternoon snack, adding a few spinach leaves for freshness. The rolls are far smaller than a standard hamburger bun, but as my appetite is being reshaped I found it perfectly adequate and quite tasty. I think I’d have a problem if I was on the 1500 calorie program, but hopefully that will change.

The fruit-filled snacks were an apricot muesli bar, an apple, and the optional (aka 1800 calorie program) “apricot snack pack” that was a handful of dried apricots. The optional element also included a reprise of yesterday’s Asian rice bowl. Dinner was also a reprise, as I had the lasagna last week - the vegetables were fine (carrots, beans and a little cauliflower), and the generous serving of lasagna was delicious. - Alex