Realistic ways to lose weight permanently

I hate diets. Diets are designed to force people into focusing so much on what they are eating that it stops being food and starts being a science project.

I have tried a lot of diets in my life, low-cal, low-fat, low-sugar, low-carb and one insane starvation diet where I drank lemonade made from maple syrup, lemon juice, water and chili powder for a week.

They all worked when I stuck to them, but you could force yourself to stick to a diet of twigs and pond scum and it would work.

I worked for a company that made fitness equipment back in the BC days (Before Children). It was a common practice among the women of the office to ask the various sales managers, fitness experts and marketing gurus for a gym program to use in the office gym.  I was no exception.

One trainer gave me the best program I have ever had, easy to stick to, involved no special training or equipment, needed no crazy food plan to follow.  I refused to follow it, didn’t think it would work, thought he was being facetious.

It took 6 months of him repeating the plan every time I asked for it to finally sink in. I didn’t need to do stupid diets or kill myself in the gym every lunchtime; I finally accepted his advice as sound.

Eat less. Move more.

It took a further 5 years for me to follow the plan properly, with some help from Paul McKenna’s hypno CD and a healthy dose of psychotherapy for other issues.

I have stopped thinking of some foods as “bad” and some as “good”.  Food is food, some tastes better than others, and some have more nutrients, some less.  Some are just pure fat, salt and flavour enhancers (mmmmmm) but it’s all just food.

The hypno CD helped me to stop and listen to my body and to SLOW DOWN when I am eating.  It made me more aware of the food I was consuming, and therefore I enjoy it more and tend not to inhale it in order to get on with the next thing.  It also helped me to stop eating when I had had enough, and to be able to leave food on my plate.  I have now learned how much I need to eat and put less on my plate in the first place, so I don’t tend to leave anything now.

The psychotherapy helped me to start shedding my guilt-baggage I carry around, and the less guilty I feel about stuff, the less I focus on food either to comfort eat, or as something I have to feel bad about enjoying.

I am also getting better at being more active in my daily life.  I am not very good at following a consistent exercise program (I mean, who is?!), but I am pretty good at looking at the clock and going “oh, I’ve got 10 minutes before I have to be somewhere” and putting on some music to dance around the room.

I have two 1kg weights in my bathroom, and before my shower if the kids are playing nicely, I do 50 reps of something – tricep raises, bicep curls, squats or leg raises.  It takes 5 minutes.

I walk around when I’m on the phone; I squeeze my bum muscles when I am sitting at the computer; I tap my foot when we’re driving in the car (thank goodness for automatics!); I play tag with the kids and jump on the trampoline when the weather is nice, in the 15 minutes between finishing cooking and putting the plates out for dinner.

My weight loss is slow, and I am currently at a plateau but I have lost 15kg since Hakopa was born, and he’s 15 months old now. I am about to do a 10km walk which should bust the plateau and I am fitting into my size 14 jeans again.

I feel fitter and the more I do, the more I feel like doing.  It’s a positive feed-back loop and it can only get better.

To summarise, here are my top tips for changing your guilt-riddled food-obsessed mindset into one of enjoying food and exercise again:

1. Stop denying yourself things, but don’t buy crap regularly.  If there is no food in the house that you do not have to cook in order to consume (other than fruit), then you can’t eat it.  I get my chocolate fix once a week when I fill up the car with fuel.
2. Share your food.  Half a chocolate bar is still chocolate (mmm, smooth creamy chocolate), but you only eat half and your husband/child/best mate will think you’re really generous for sharing.
3. Cook a new recipe once a week.  Trying out new tastes, textures and ingredients gives you enthusiasm for food and new ideas for eating better quality meals.
4. Eat as much fruit and veg as you can possibly manage without turning your insides to liquid.
5. Fidget.  Skinny people don’t sit still.
6. Drink a full glass of water before every meal.  I am rubbish at sipping a glass of water while I am eating, so I down half a pint as quickly as I can then get on with the food.
7. Fill 50% of the available plate space with fruit or veg before you add the protein and carbs, and eat that first.
8. Keep a full fruit bowl out on the bench and put the crisps and biscuits out of sight.  I have my fruit bowl right by the computer, so it’s easier to eat an apple than get off my bum and rummage in the cupboard for TimTams.
9. Dance every day, and sing too.  Put on something that makes you think happy thoughts and sing like you’re on x-factor.
10. Love food, love yourself.  You do NOT have to feel guilty for enjoying food, food is ACE.  It is brilliant and lovely and tastes like rainbows and happiness.  Food keeps us alive and we are lucky to have the choice between the chicken wrap and the Mega Burger, unlike a large proportion of the world who have to survive on ½ a cup of rice a week.  We are blessed with bountiful, beautiful, glorious, delicious food, and it is a shame to deny yourself the pleasure of good, tasty, high quality food (and some shit that just tastes good).  Eat it, savour it, take your time over every mouthful and remind yourself why you LOVE this stuff.  Share your joy with friends and family, cook elaborate dinners for your mates and show them how much you love them and your food.

Eat less; move more.  Love food; love life.

I’ve always admired the will-power of anorexics

Ever since I was about 16 or so I have had disordered eating habits.  Not an eating disorder per se as I have never had an official diagnosis, but non-normal eating – binging, making myself sick, overdosing on laxatives, eating tissues to fill my stomach, fad diets, drinking salt-water and purgatives, to mention a few.

Before I left the UK for NZ, I was working at a place where you got free food.  Yes. Free. Food.  Chocolate, crisps, buffet lunch, hot meals.  Mana from heaven.

I suffered.

Had I been single and living alone, I would have been fine (and saved a fortune on grocery bills), but I had dinner with Tareka every night, so I couldn’t have more than a sandwich for lunch without piling on weight.

I overate.  I ate everything in the staff kitchen that I could.  Then I felt guilty and started taking laxatives.  Then my work started to suffer as I was running to the toilet so often, I had to find a way out of this hell of my own making.

I had heard of websites created by anorexic people (mainly girls) who wanted to maintain an anorexic habit but didn’t want anyone to find out.  The movement was called Pro-Ana (as in Pro Anorexia).  I wanted to be thin.  I wanted to stop eating the fabulous food that was under my nose, tempting me, forcing me to overdose and then punish myself.  I wanted to be thin so badly that I thought starvation was my only option.  All or nothing.  If I can’t eat some of the nice food without going berzerk then I would have to stop eating it all together.

I found a site called Project Shapeshift and went trawling through the threads to find out how to be anorexic.  I joined up and poured out my pain and misery online to a bunch of complete strangers.  I was hoping for punishment; to be suitably chastised for being fat, disgusting, weak and unworthy.

What I got was love.

People posted messages of support, of sympathy and empathy and even horror stories of how awful it was to be truly anorexic.  I found people struggling just the way I was, and people who had learned to live with their eating disorders but still be fit and healthy.  People who reached out across the anonymous void of the internet and showed me I was not alone, that I was among friends.

I have been part of that community for nearly 7 years now.  The site has changed a lot over the years, not least in part to a massive schism in the founder members of the group which rocked the long time participants to the core, and forced a lot of people to take sides.

Those of us who carry on are still struggling with our demons, but still supporting each other.  I have met 2 or 3 of them in the flesh, and spoken to a couple more on the phone.  I am hoping to meet more over the next year or so, and I consider a lot of them to be truly great friends.

I went in search of a way to destroy myself and met people who only wanted to help me.  The internet gets a lot of press for the bad stuff, and the uncontrollable nature of it all, but don’t forget that there is a lot of good to be found as well, if you look hard enough.

I love therapy

So I had the first of six sessions with a clinical psychologist on Monday.  Now for those of you that don’t know me, I suffered from clinical depression as a teenager, which came to a head when I was in my first year of University, culminating in some fairly severe self-harm; thanks to some utterly wonderful friends having the guts to tell me I needed help (thank you guys, you know who you are) I ended up on Prozac and having counseling.

Counseling was the best thing I ever did, it saved my life and my sanity, but I think I stopped going sooner than I should have, as I never really quite resolved the issues of my teens properly.  However, it gave me the ability to sense when the black dog is at my heel again, and take myself off for more counseling when I need it.

Since moving to NZ and having children, I have resolved a lot of my issues with the support of my wonderful, patient husband, but I know I still have a few things to deal with.  I tend to get bogged down in the mire when I am sleep-deprived, so it was this that took me to the doctors recently.  She suggested anti-depressants, but I know a lot of my depression is better dealt with by talking to someone, rather than drugs, so I asked if we could hold off on the pills until I had completed the counseling and then take it from there; my doctor was very supportive.

There have been a lot of ad campaigns in NZ recently about mental health, and that it’s OK to admit that you’re not OK, and to seek help, so it was my good fortune that there is a free program through the Primary Health Organisation enabling me to have 6 sessions with a clinical psychologist.  This is one step up from counseling and exactly what I need, as I have done a lot of talking and reasoning about my issues, but I am at a stage where I need to learn practical steps for coping when I am in the situations that trigger my depression and anxiety.

At my first session we went over my history, and the reasons that brought me to counseling this time, and my psychologist concluded that I am a master of avoidance.  I have to admit she is right, I do everything to avoid the situations that cause me the most stress, but in avoiding confronting them, I end up dreading them and getting more worked up and anxious about what might happen.  She has set me a task to do before our next session, in which I need to list the pros and cons of avoidance, in order to show me that, while there are a lot of benefits to avoidance, there are a lot of reasons why avoidance is damaging to me and my relationships.

Rationally I know that avoidance is not good, but I will need a lot of convincing to show me that the benefits of confrontation outweigh the benefits of avoiding it.

Onwards and upwards

OK, we have BabyM back in her cot and she's sleeping a lot better, both during the day and at night, so hubby and I are beginning to feel human again.

I have my first potential customers for Usana, which is very exciting, and I've started getting some advertising out in the local area, so I hope this is the start of it taking off.
I've finally got rid of the broken Sizzix machine that was sitting in my spare room and looking malevolent, and I've almost finished knitting BabyM's new hooded scarf SO I think I am getting somewhere with my projects at last.
While I'm in knitting mode I'll be using up all the odds and ends of wool I have to make a batch of toys for sale, so I'm hoping to have them underway this week. I'll be posting info once they are ready.

The start of something

OK, so I've started ANOTHER web thing to keep updated. The thing is, I want a website, and I am not tech-savvy enough to create one, so I thought a blog with links is the next best thing. All the sites I regularly frequent are in the links section, so feel free to browse and find out a bit more about me.

I am a Stay At Home Mum and I'm always looking for ways to earn a little bit of income in order to pay off the mortgage a bit faster, so I've been looking around for home businesses and potential projects to do this with. So far, I have signed up with Usana to sell health and beauty products (see link), and I'm working on a parenting resource pack to help busy parents make the best use of their time.

I've also been getting into arts and crafts, and will be putting some of my pieces up for sale via email. I'll post pictures and prices here, and if you're interested in buying something, email me.

I also do a lot of voluntary work around my child (soon to be children!), where I run a Mainly Music group, chair the Toy Library Committee and attend various playgroups and coffee groups. I've been gathering a lot of useful parenting advice over the last couple of years, so please feel free to ask me any questions and I'll see what I can do.