Sunday 27 April 2008

Z weighs herself (4)

It's not long since the last time and I've lost a pound. Measurements the same, but my new trousers are feeling a bit loose. I ate a fair bit on holiday, because it's impossible to know just what's in restaurant food and it just looks picky if you turn down everything in a sauce or with a trace of sugar. I ate vastly virtuous breakfasts though, with dry bread or rolls, plain yoghurt and lots of fruit and fruit juice. On the last day I had a pudding with lunch (creme caramel: I'm not using my own computer so I don't know how to put in the grave accent) and an icecream later, which really threw caution to the winds, but I didn't care much by then. When I arrived at my daughter's flat, at about 10.30 pm, only having had a sandwich on the plane, I ate a small pack of Twiglets; again, bad Z, pfft, don't care.

I've been biking around like a keen person since, which has been hard as I'm really tired and don't have much energy, but I didn't want to sit around in case that icecream started to lodge itself around my hips.

I'm boring myself, as well as you. Sorry.

Saturday 19 April 2008

Done hiding.

I'm not a person that looks fat. I have broad shoulders, and a huge chest. I have thighs a rugby player would kill for.

Really, I do.

But you know what? I am a fat bastard. Really, I am. It's spread right across me, and it becomes more apparent, the less exercise I do. I am fucking huge.

I am 5' 6", and I weigh about 16 stone 7lbs. Maybe more. Maybe less, but if it's less it's because I have lost muscle.

Why am I being damning?

I just broke the bed. Not at the screws, either – I broke the bed where I got on it. It's a bit fucked. It's a really beautiful bed, and fundamentally it will be fine. Be the bit that the slats attach to, that's fucked. Right now it's shored up by books, but after a trepidatious start, I thought I would not lie on it at all after fucking it.

Seriously, who's so heavy their fucking bed breaks? I am!

I am away for the weekend, and next week work is mental. However, this is such a fucking embarrassment that... I don't know. How humiliating for your wife to wake up after what, four, five months of marriage, to discover her husband is such a fat fucker he's killed the bed?

Really, I feel like a total twat.

Tuesday 15 April 2008

I can't help but notice...

...that it's April, and I am still a porker.

A happy porker, but a porker nevertheless.

In about six weeks, I will have a demanding gym companion, which will help my motivation - he's young and enthusiastic, and hopefully I can get him (and by association me) into some good habits.

He's already been running, with a top distance of 9 miles and a bit, which is excellent; he's also noticed that since running, and subsequent weight loss, the teenage lay-dees have been noticing him, too, so he's keen to keep it up...

And like I said, it will be greater motivation for me. And he's a really lovely kid, for wont of a better word, that I've known since he was three.

Should be fun!

Also, I am determined that I shall do the London Marathon next year; I had to go to the marathon expo for work, and frankly it was all a bit upsetting, knowing I wouldn't be part of it.

Also on the plus side, a couple of well-known running shoe manufacturers seem keen to support me, which is a huge help as shelling out £80 for shoes every couple of months is… Well, it's hard!

I'm rambling. The diet is great, all I'm lacking is exercise as it's deadline week. I'm drinking less and life is generally good. Just minor tweaks and it'll be even better.

Still porky.

Wednesday 9 April 2008

Z weighs herself again (3)

Not much change, which isn't too surprising as I've been too busy to use the bike as much as usual and we've had house guests for 3 weekends.

A bit off the measurements - 36, 27, 39.5. No change in the hips then, damn. The change in bust size must be mostly around the back as my cup size is still the same - it won't stay that way, I suppose, which is a pity.

10 stone 3 lbs. A pound and a half down in 5 weeks, which sounds unimpressive but, as I said a couple of weeks ago, I'm taking a long-term view and I'm quite happy with that. Still going the right way.

Since I'm going to be on holiday, if only for a few days, the weekend after next, I won't have any expectations for next time.

Tuesday 8 April 2008

Z hits the shops*

I went clothes shopping today. I wanted a pair or two of trousers, for my trip to Madrid next week (bloody hell, is it as close as that?) and the ones I've got really are too big and the nicer ones will be too warm as well. I had a meeting in the centre of Norwich, so I trotted along to the cashpoint afterwards, because I had no money on me at all and couldn't even pay to get out of the carpark, and Laura Ashley was opposite and had a sale on.

So, in I went and investigated size 12, short, and tried on 2 pairs of summer-weight trousers and, um, five tops (did I mention that there was a sale on?) and bought all but one teeshirt and they fitted nicely, but will still be fine several pounds down, so will suit until the autumn. I may need an odd skirt, but that's my summer wardrobe done. Virtuously, I paid with my debit rather than credit card - that's only virtuous because the Sage pays my credit card bill, because, well, he adores me and all that (and well he might ;-) ) and likes me to enjoy myself, hem hem.

Anyway, I haven't bought that size for several years, so it was fun. I haven't measured myself recently because I was feeling a bit porky, so it was good to remind myself that I actually am smaller than I used to be.

*plural, because I bought a pair of shoes afterwards.

Saturday 5 April 2008

Hunger and thirst

I have always been very doubtful about the claims that we are all dehydrated. I think it is a word misused in the same way that 'allergy' is. Real (clinical) dehydration is not the same thing as what quite often self-styled 'experts' describe as dehydration, usually without any tangible evidence or explanation as to exactly what they mean by it.

There are a couple of things that particularly irritate me. One is to make people think that a guideline about how much water to drink is an absolute instruction, so that they almost obsessively take their bottles of water about with them, sipping away however inappropriate the place, and preferring to slug out of the bottle even if there's a jug of water and glasses on the table, so that they can measure their intake.

Another is the ludicrous advice that your body does not know how much it needs. "If you become thirsty" they affirm, "this is a sign that your body is already dehydrated. You must drink before you are thirsty."
If you substituted 'hungry' for 'thirsty' and 'starved' for 'dehydrated' (oh go on, then, 'eat' for 'drink' too, if you are being pernickity), it would be apparent that this is complete rubbish. The reason that most of us are overweight (and awfully sweet of you not to gloat if you're reading this and you aren't) is that we eat when we're not really hungry and we don't stop when we're full. So why are we told to learn to 'read' our bodies regarding food, but to override the signals from our brain regarding water? If you offer a baby or a small child too much food to eat or more liquid to drink than it needs, it refuses the excess. An animal drinks when it's thirsty and not before. There's nothing more delicious or refreshing than a long draught of water when you are hot and thirsty.

There's a third annoyance, I realise, which leads to a fourth. When 2 litres a day was first given as a recommended daily amount of fluid, the scientist who said it said quite clearly that this was total fluid and included what liquid comes in food. This message didn't come across and people were told that it had to be water. Not soup, not juice, not tea, even a squeeze of lemon juice was suspect - unadulterated water was all that would do. Any other liquid was dehydrating and was a negative influence. This is obviously rubbish. The hydrating property of liquid is not eliminated by adding something else to it, even if that something does, like coffee or alcohol, have a dehydrating quality in itself. It may slightly reduce its hydratingness, but it does not dehydrate you. Some people drink no water at all - do they die of dehydration? Not if they drink several cups of tea, a few pints of beer, or whatever, a day they don't.

In addition, some smartypants soon thought that if 2 litres a day is good, then 4 litres must be better and started to recommend a glass of water every hour. There is such a thing as overhydration, and people have died from it - usually, it must be said, when their bodies have lost all sense of moderation because of the amount of Ecstasy they've taken. Too much of anything is not better than a healthy amount. I have read, too, that valuable trace elements can be flushed out of your body if you drink more than you need, which is the other side of the 'flushing out toxins' claim.

I do think that, if you work in a modern office which, as most of them are, is kept overheated in winter and air conditioned in summer, you need to keep up your fluid intake. I don't work in that environment, but when I'm in such a place I find I become thirsty, and headachy if I don't drink enough. I also think that too much coffee isn't a good thing, and I don't drink squashes and the like and don't think that too much fruit juice is good for you, so yes, water is the thing. But if you aren't in an office and you aren't out in the sun and you aren't exerting yourself much, you don't necessarily need as much to drink as if you are.

And it varies day to day. A few days ago, I found myself making mug after mug of herb tea all day and I drank a pint of water in the evening too. Yesterday, on the other hand, because it was just the way it went, I had two mugs of coffee and a mug of tea, and a quarter of a pint of water before I went to bed (because it was all that was in the glass and I wasn't going downstairs for more) and that was all. I pinched the back of my hand and the skin was elastic and my pee was normal, so I wasn't concerned. I may well want to drink more today to make up for it, however, and this will be fine. It'd be different if I had a kidney problem, for instance, and my body could not so easily regulate itself, but I don't.

Then there's the suggestion that we often eat when we're actually thirsty and that we can't tell the difference between hunger and thirst. No I don't. Yes I can. It may be the case with some people, and there are certainly some who drink water to quell hunger pangs - they are often the ones who obsessively diet to the American size zero. This is not healthy either.

This brief article was in The Times a couple of days ago - I've put a link but have also printed it in full.

Troubled waters
There is no solid evidence that drinking eight 8oz glasses of water a day improves skin tone, aids dieting, prevents headaches, flushes out toxins or improves wellbeing. In research for the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology Dr Dan Negoianu and Dr Stanley Goldfarb found no study to support the claim.