Monday 15 June 2009

Z gets back on the scales

...and is pleasantly surprised. I haven't weighed myself for ages because it hasn't been convenient - with my Victorian scales in the porch, one can't do the early morning weigh-in in the nuddy which, let's face it, is the only one that counts. And, as either I'm going to spend the morning wall-building or I'm in a hurry, I either wear jeans (heavy) or don't have time. Anyway, today I did, so I put on a summer skirt and a teeshirt and came down to weigh myself before going to wash my hair and dress in wall-building clothes.

9 stone and just under half a pound. Yes, I'm surprised too. That's 27 pounds I've lost since the start of this. You might think, and you'd not be wrong, that this is not a vast weight loss in 19 1/2 months, but as I've said before, it's not the speed of the loss that matters to me so much as its continuation and its permanence. The really good thing is that I've not been really dieting, just eating carefully, and in a way I really can sustain, and yet I must have been losing about a pound a month, which is absolutely fine. I've been feeling that I'm a pretty normal weight ever since I got to 9 1/2 stone, which is why I've been fairly relaxed - it's been frustrating that I'm so relaxed but, and I think this is the reason so many diets fail, you can't pretend about it. If someone says "I really should lose weight" then they aren't going to, however porky they are.

I've been too busy to get on the bike as often as I'd like - if I've got only 20 minutes to do the shopping there's no point in spending 15 of them cycling, but I have been very active, mostly in the garden. I'm sure it's the activity that's tipped the balance.

Now I've lost weight, I've got really flabby thighs. Hm.

Sunday 7 June 2009

Z muses

I went to a wedding yesterday and received compliments on my appearance and weight loss (this is so double-edged, as it so evidently means "gosh, now you aren't nearly so fat as you used to be!). And today, a friend whom I see regularly asked me if I'd lost more weight because it looked as if I had.

So maybe I'm doing something right after all.

Still haven't actually weighed myself though - that is, I occasionally pop on the bathroom scales, but I rarely have my contact lens in when I'm in the bathroom and they are old scales with a wobbly needle, so although I can see that I'm still the right side of 9 1/2 stone, I can't tell by how much.

Anyway, the more I think about it, the more sure I am that a lot of us who want and need to lose weight and eat healthily and take exercise simply eat more than we realise we do, because we've been doing it for so long that we don't notice. I've been observing people and, on the whole, the slender ones stop eating when they've had enough and the fat ones clear the plate. The fat ones pour cream onto a gateau which already contains whipped cream. Having been on holiday with a group of people recently, I couldn't help but notice that if they had cereal, they put more in the bowl than a standard portion. And the little individual jars of jam were scraped clean - a thin person used the amount needed for the roll. So, if you asked each of them to keep a food diary, even when they wrote down the same thing, one of them would have eaten much more than the other, and been quite unaware of it.

The thing is, I think I've got to understand what not to do if I want not to put weight back on. It's all right when you're dieting - you just avoid what you're supposed not to eat. But it's so easy for the quantity to creep up. And it is all right to have the occasional tasty extra - but again, 'occasional' can easily become several times a week.

Friday 5 June 2009

Not given up yet

I'm still alive, and I'd post if I had something to say. My weight still stays pretty well the same, and I still know that I'm eating to not put weight on rather than to lose it. It's a bit desperate in that respect - I sort of think that I'm going to have to resort to eating hardly anything for a couple of days to lose a couple of pounds and then revert to normal for a few weeks, and do that every month. But I know that crash-dieting is silly and pointless - it's just to kick-start, I suppose.

At this time of year, at any rate, it's easy to eat loads of fruit and veg and not bother about much else. Except, you know how it is. I was given a box of Bendicks Bittermints the other day. Now, how can a girl resist that? I don't even want to. I don't care. A year ago I would, but that was a size ago. I have no ambition to be less than a 10 - indeed, I don't know if it's possible without being really thin. I would like a smaller waist and smaller thighs, to be sure, but the hips are fine.

But I mustn't relax. I'm not dieting for how I look, but to stave off a new hip as long as possible. If only there were a more immediate cause and effect. One needs a reward. But virtue is its own reward, isn't it?