This is the post I wasn’t going to post. I began writing it on Monday morning and decided it was too… I don’t know, just too something. Then, though, I remembered that when I committed to this project, I promised to be honest with you and, more importantly, with myself. Besides, if I’m experiencing these issues, maybe you are too. Also, there’s not a lot more boring than someone whose plan is perfectly executed… except, perhaps, someone who is constantly complaining and making excuses about why it isn’t working – and I’m in danger of falling into that category this week.
So, without any further palaver, how did I do last week? Not great.
On the plus-side:
- 10,000 steps a day – a daily walk plus an extra online session each day, eg Les Mills Combat, or a GFWR (Get Fit With Rick)
- Alcohol-free days – 3
- Just one resistance session (an online Body Project), but I did incorporate hand weights in a couple of GFWR workouts. I also had a couple of hours in the garden, which, I believe, counts.
Again, though, food let me down. To be brutally honest, I’m having massive issues getting my head back in the game food-wise.
I began well, with a food plan for the first five evenings and a diary entry. While I stuck to the plan regarding evening meals, that was where it ended. Highlights on the menu this week were:
- Nigella’s oven-baked Chicken Shawarma (I had it without the wrap).
- Recipe Tin Eats’ Hot and Sour Soup (always a favourite in this house and as good as the one in Din Tai Fung). Also, at just 216 calories a serve, you get a lot of flavour for your calorie buck. Try it. Please.
- Steak with tomatoey, garlicky, green beans and sweet potato baked in the air-fryer
- Julia Busuttil Nishimura’s French-style Braised chicken with baby gem lettuce, leeks and peas (It’s behind the SMH paywall, but you can usually access a few free articles a month). This one is delicious (if you haven’t tried braised lettuce, why not?), and if you remove the skin from the chicken thighs (which I did), it makes for a very healthy dinner.
While I’d budgeted in advance for my Friday morning croissant, I hadn’t budgeted on Saturday morning’s post-walk Welsh cake or Friday night’s Thai dinner out. This wouldn’t have been a problem in isolation or on an otherwise healthy day. What made it a problem was the unbudgeted, untracked, and unthinking grazing that took place last week.
I didn’t plan lunches or breakfasts, and as a result, grabbed sandwiches or grazed on leftovers I’d found in the freezer, few of which did me any good. Then there were the snacks. None of it sugary, but all calorific and carb-heavy. If I had written it all down (which I didn’t), the calorie total would have been frightening. Because I didn’t write it down, I can pretend it didn’t happen.
Plus, in the middle of it all, on Wednesday, I had one of the messy meltdowns I tend to have once, sometimes twice a year.
I’m not sure what triggered this one. Perhaps it was standing on the scales and seeing the sort of gain I’d expected to see after we’d got back from Vietnam, but had congratulated myself that I didn’t see. They must have been calories in transit because the whole lot of them landed. At once. Seriously? I hadn’t had a beer all week, and you give me this???
Then I saw a photo of myself where I looked as though my boobs were spread halfway across to New Zealand, and accidentally watched a video the tour guide had taken of the three of us walking across a busy street in Hanoi. In it, I had the sort of waddle I usually only associate with people much older and much fatter than me, and move far less than I do.
Additionally, I’m struggling with my current novel, not because I’m blank, but because I’m putting an unreasonable amount of pressure on myself to improve with each book. I’m also working on new covers and blurbs for my original rom-com series, and it’s reminding me how I thought that by now, at book no. 16 (or whatever it is) that I’d be making a living from my books – and, spoiler alert, I’m not.
Whatever the reason, it was enough to release the self-critics that usually live just below the surface, waiting for the tiniest of opportunities to come out and whisper sweet nothings in my ear, about how I’m not good enough, with a myriad of variations on that theme.
Now, before you say I’m being too hard on myself (and I’m closing comments so you can’t say that), and that I’m feeling sorry for myself, and that I’m making progress in my fitness, you’d be right, I am. Since I began this project back in November, my resting heart rate has decreased, and my heart rate variation has increased (both of which are good indicators of improved fitness). Additionally, I can now walk for longer without my back complaining to me to stop.
But this project isn’t about that. Yes, improving my fitness is a goal, but I have a bucketload of weight to lose, and regardless of how fit I am, continuing to drag that weight around with me continues to put strain on my dodgy back and the joints already dodgy from having to drag it around.
So, while I can congratulate myself for exercising my way to losing the couple of extra kilos I put on in England and not adding any more to the scales while I was in Vietnam (before a couple did actually find their way there during the week), the fact is, at 58, I can’t keep saying yes to whatever I feel like (my default position) and just exercise more. I already exercise a couple of hours a day and, quite frankly, am not prepared to do more. Plus, more will only add to the pressure on my dodgy back and my dodgy joints, all while keeping my weight steady when the aim is to lose it.
So, we’re back to the drawing board.
On a writing podcast earlier in the week someone said that if you wanted to give up smoking you just don’t put a cigarette in your mouth – and the same goes for not eating the wrong things and for sitting on your butt and getting your words done. And you know what? Theoretically, that’s right, but if you say as much to me right now, I’m likely to throw something at you. My brain doesn’t work like that, and this is, after all, a head game. Plus, as Edina said to Saffy in Absolutely Fabulous, something like, “surely darling, if it’s that easy everyone would be doing it.”
Yes, I do need to get over myself and get on with it, and I do need to get my head back in the game, but this is something I generally have to reach the bottom of (usually the point of the meltdown) and then find my way out of. And that’s what I’m doing now.
So, to everyone who would usually comment or reach out in a message, thank you, but please don’t. Please don’t. This post isn’t a cry for help or some sort of validation – I don’t need to be told I’m doing well, being hard on myself, that my writing is worth something, that I am worth something. Logically, I know all of that – my brain just needs to catch up on that from time to time.
Another thing I know for sure is that I’m well supported and that support is coming from a wonderfully generous place. The thing is, I need to listen and quiet the noise in my head before I can listen to anyone else. So far this week, it’s been better and will continue to improve. I simply need to come up with the strategies that I know work for me and implement them. And seriously, how hard can that be?
Until next time…
And Anyways... 