Binge triggers

I went to bed with plans for the day - I'd get out of bed before midday, vacuum the carpet like I've been wanting to do for over a week, go to the doctor and walk home, and manage to eat all the 17 Day Diet meals.
Yeah, nor so much. I woke up just before midday, but getting up proved a little harder, in no small part because I took my laptop to be last night and there's always distraction online. And I needed a little recover time after my shower; instead of seeing the doctor I made an appointment for tomorrow, which is something, and I've rung work to let them know I won't be in - I'm certainly feeling better but from a pretty low base line and there's just no way I'd be useful at work - on an average shift I walk 13,000 steps and I doubt I could manage that, let alone the actual work, and I'm still having episodes of uncontrollable coughing.
So what did I manage to do? I finished yesterday's turkey for breakfast and steamed cauliflower and asparagus with over baked cherry tomatoes and salmon for lunch. And then I read an email from my sister in London, asking me to delay my trip until next year, which my mother's been prepared to do at short notice in the past. Apparently my recent presence disrupted my niblings (niece and nephew), made her life more stressful and hectic, and didn't ask her if the last trip was convenient, let alone this one.
As it happens, though I'd be less inclined to going to Europe as often as I do if I didn't have family there, the last trip was because of a biannual conference in the Netherlands that I presented at. I did also go to a conference in England that, while interesting, was predominantly so I ha a tax-deductible reason for visiting London as going so close and not popping in felt rude.
My next trip encompasses three conferences, two in London and one in Manchester. The conferences fees aren't refundable, just like my flights, train tickets and hotel, all of which I got at a reduced rate for booking early. I can quite easily not see my sister, or at least not often while I'm there, but I did ask if I could spend a night there and leave my suitcase for a couple of days, as I've got a day seminar near them and then leave that night for Manchester. I can book another night at the hotel but they won't hold my luggage overnight, let alone for three days, so I'll have to take that with me, which is doable but annoying. I'm feeling quite grudging about the presents I bought my sister and her family, and pleased I didn't buy her the new phone and tablet I was thinking about getting her.
I'm more sanguine than I was initially, but getting from pissed to less pissed and a little amused was aided by the ingestion of a packet of Lite'n'Easy crunchy noodle snack and several sweet things; to whit: a Choo-choo bar, a mini Bounty, and an entire box of Toffifee, which I don't even like that much. The good news is that I'm still under my notional daily calorie aim (per Calorie King),and even factoring that in I've only averaged 850 or so calories a day, but I'm pissed that even knowing what I was doing I still swallowed my emotions instead of finding a more productive response.
I'm old enough to have moved past from this kind of stimulus-response behaviour. I like to think I can manage these kinds of ingrained reactions but I'm starting to think I need a professional to help give me the tools to manage better. I've had several annoying family incidents in the past week - my sister calling twice after midnight because she hadn't printed out vouchers for the holiday to Rome I arranged for her on behalf of my mother until the day before her flight; my father calling twice early in the morning because my mother couldn't work out how to use her CashCards even though I set the PIN she wanted, wrote it down where she asked, and went through it with her before she left; got three texts late last night from my mother's friend asking me to contact my brother in the US to make sure he was ready for her arrival today (that would be three texts back, two emails and a phone call to my brother); and a text and phone message from my aunt this morning, worried because she couldn't get on to him, followed by a message from him reassuring me he was fine, which I wasn't particularly concerned about as we spoke last night, when he called because he couldn't contact my mother in Rome and wondered if she was okay. It's really no wonder I've decoded not to add news of my pneumonia the angst that is my family dynamic.
They're not going to change any time soon, so I have to. Otherwise this cycle, which has repeated for as long as I can remember, will continue and I'll be fat and swallowing my emotions for the rest of my life. - Alex

This is where I'm at.

The last couple of months have been busy ones. A recurrent back injury flared up and my ‘bad’ knee decided to compete for attention. A bathroom renovation that was supposed to be a straightforward job, wasn’t and dragged on and on. School holidays saw the house over run with teenagers panicking over party costumes and VCE subject choices. Following up placement options for my autistic son took way more time than anticipated. And both the oven and the dishwasher gasped their last.
As usual when life gets busy and I’m time poor, the first thing to go by the wayside was my exercise regime. Since my last dvd review I’ve done no structured exercise at all. 30-60 minutes was just too hard to squeeze in and forcing time to myself seemed a bit indulgent and if I was going to indulge it was in sleep not exercise.
As for my eating patterns, the last fortnight has seen me eating with my children so I’ve been having something every three hours or so whether I feel hungry or not.
I still have trouble knowing when I am hungry. Very occasionally (once or twice a week) I have hunger pangs but most of the time-nothing. I simply can’t believe that my body never has need of food. So what’s going on?
In an effort to find out I headed to the library in hopes of finding some literature to explain the science behind the intuitive eating theory. They have a few books but most are heavy on how and light on why. One book I did come across was the No Diet Diet. I thought this sounded like it was on the right track so I had a flick through. While it is not what I was looking for I did find it interesting. It seems to be all about breaking habits (not necessarily dietary related) rather than focussing on the traditional food/hunger/exercise aspects of weight loss.
I must admit I find it very difficult to see how not watching TV for a day or sitting in a different chair can lead to weight loss. Sure, if you were the type of person who ate mindlessly in front of the telly you might get a result. But what about the rest of us?
So I decided to do a little experiment and follow the 28 day plan as outlined in the book and see what happens. Yesterday was day one and my challenge was to go a day without watching TV. This was not exactly a challenge for me since I don’t watch that much TV to start with but it was the first step and I did it. Today’s challenge is to write for 15 minutes. The authors suggest starting a diary. I thought this would be a great opportunity to resurrect this blog. I was going to recommence my lifestyle change today anyway. Part of that will now involve reporting on my daily activities as per the book and weighing in weekly. According to the book I should be losing a half to one kilo a week. Hmmm, we’ll see.
And speaking of weight, my extended period of time out has led to a 1.6kg gain. Not a whole lot over a couple of months but the sort of slow creep that could see me ballooning out over time. So nipping that in the bud won’t be such a bad thing.
Well that’s got to be 15 minutes, until tomorrow….

How I got here

I was always skinny as a child and thin throughout my teens. It was only in my twenties when the break up of a long term relationship coincided with a commencement of shift work that I first gained weight. I ‘blew out’ to a size 12 (oh to be that ‘fat’ now) and made my first half hearted attempt at dieting.
But I was never much of a cook and didn’t have the inclination (or the patience) to count calories and keep food diaries so it’s not really a surprise that within a month I’d given up. I pretty much forgot about my weight and it remained stable for the next few years. Or at least I assume it did. I never weighed myself in those days, so all I can truthfully claim is that my clothes still fit.
It was only when I started having children that my weight slowly crept up. Four pregnancies in as many years left me considerably heavier than I’d ever been before and my post natal check gave me a number to go with it-82kg. And so began over a decade of attempted weight loss.
I lost and regained the same 12-15kg annually, plateauxing for months at a time and never seeming to get lower than that magic 82kg.
Then a few years ago during a routine health check my doctor informed me that I had gained over 20kg in 18 months and weighed over 100kg. This would have been a shock in itself but we could find no reason for the gain. My lifestyle had not changed, my diet and exercise habits were the same as they ever were and test results for a variety of potential causes all came back negative. In fact the blood test the doctor ran showed me to be not only within the healthy range for cholesterol etc, etc, but a little on the low side. The cheeky bugger even checked to make sure he was looking at the right records-he simply couldn’t believe I could have gained so much weight and still be healthy.
He came to the conclusion that I had messed up my metabolism with years of dieting and told me to simply stop it. He suggested that I give away dieting for good and start eating as much as I liked of whatever I fancied, whenever I was hungry. He strongly suggested a healthy breakfast within half an hour of waking where practical and a litre of water a day.
His reasoning sounded good but I was not ready to completely let go of the diet mentality. I continued eating small, healthy meals at regular intervals and increased my daily exercise. Doing so has led to me losing most of the unexplained weight gain. But this time around I want more. I want to get rid of the excess once and for all. So I have decided to take his advice (only a few years later).
Since Alex has made a similar decision to get fit we are going to do this together. She has opted for a more structured method than the one I am using and I think it will be interesting to compare the results we achieve.-Lynn

A new beginning - again

In 24 weeks my family will be together for the first time in just under seven years, for my brother's wedding. The last time my parents and I (who live in Melbourne, though not together), my younger sister (who lives in London), my youngest sister (who lives in Colorado), and my brother (who lives in Massachusetts) were together was at my UK-based sister's wedding in Spain.
I love my siblings, and I'm thrilled at the idea of a reunion. I get to see my London sister most years, and I actually saw my brother for two blocks of time in 2009 (when he came to Melbourne and then when I went to the US), but before that it had been a while. My baby sister I also saw last year, after a two year gap.
However, when friends see photos of my siblings they very often say "Wow! You don't look anything alike!" Which isn't exactly true - my brother and youngest sister have the same colouring as me, and although my younger sister's colouring isn't the same, she has similar bone structure to my other sister. In fact, both my sisters look in some lights like our mother.
Here's how we look different - my siblings are all taller than me (my brother's 6' 2", my sisters are both around 5'7" and I'm 5'5" if I stand very straight), and they're all in the healthy-to-lean weight range. I? Am not.
In fact, only if I lost half my body weight would people feel the need to come up to me on the street and force feed me chocolate. I've long seen myself as fat, even when (as I look back on the few photos that survived my self-hatred-fuelled adolescence) I was slender.
Of course, that was in no small part thanks to years of bulimia. I (mostly) managed to stop the purging part by my final year of high school, though my current home is the first in which I've never used self-induced omiting to manage stress. The binging component proved more tenacious, and as a consequence I put on around 30k in the first six months after leaving school and was utterly miserable, which somehow went unnoticed by my mother. And in the years that followed I rounded that up a little further.
Although I've been within about 10% of my current weight for the last two decades and change, I've had enough. So, using this upcoming wedding as an impetus, I'm going to lose 25k between now and the middle of July.
I'll let Lynn write her own introduction, but we're going to be spurring each other on! - Alex