And so, we have just recorded the latest episode of MiddleAgeShed, and I have reported my progress - none! Stayed the same at 11.4.0. Anna asked me - as usual about my commitment, as usual I said I would do something or other - which this week is to write down what I eat, and as usual as I come off the phone I already know I will fail.
She asked me what I was frightened of; she asked me why I dont do what I say I am going to do; she asked me why I say I am going to blog 3 times a week and then I dont....
Quite right that she asks those questions - however uncomfortable they are, or however I try to laugh them off.
Did anyone watch "This Week" this week? Well there was Michael Portillo, Andrew Neil and Diane Abbott talking about taking responsibility for your own life and about the speech the David Cameron leader of the Conservatives made this week, and how essential it is to make your own decisions however difficult it is etc etc.
They spoke about various problems - the person who has 5 children in a 2 bedroom flat...and yet when the local authority supplied the flat there were two in the family...and then about obesity and how your weight is your own responsibility. However, it seemed to me that there was a deafening silence at this point from Diane Abbott, with all the talk about personal choices and responsibilities it seemed there was a pink elephant in the room in that she is obviously pretty overweight...
In my own mind I seem to wrangle with this problem daily and go from denial to self pity, from making a joke of my weight, to feeling uncomfortable enough to not want to go and socialise!
Anna doubts my commitment, and she is right to in one sense and wrong in another.
I do have commitment in terms of my weight in the sense that if I didn't I could easily be the person who spirals upwards into oblivion. However, I am also the person who has struggled with this issue for the last 33 years! I am not the person who has put on weight for a specific reason after having been slim, and therefore knows what slim is like. The person who maybe has had a baby and lets the weight go for a couple of years then gets it off again.
Thats not me.
I have never felt obese, (although technically I probably have been or am) and I have never ever felt slim.
I have always been in the middle. There are plenty of folk fatter than me, and plenty of folk thinner than me! Mrs Average Porker. Mrs Average Aged Porker. You see them everyday, everywhere. They dont let their weight stop them from doing what they like, but their weight means they are never as good as they would like to be at many things. They like to wear lovely clothes but they are never completely happy in them as they dont look as good on them as a slim person!
I dont like being Mrs Average anything. I like to do my best in whatever I set my mind to do. I like to live life to the full. I love to work hard, I love to play hard. But I am used to being Mrs Average Porker.
To be truthful I dont really believe that I am supposed to be slim.
Even looking ahead over the next few weeks, and imagining a life without chocolate, wine, quiche, beer, icecream and cake seems so awful. I love eating. I love chocolate, and wine, and quiche and beer, and icecream.
I also love to play tennis, to walk, to cycle, to swim. I am fitter than many other periods of my life. Maybe I need to accept that in this area of my life I am Mrs Averagely Fit Porker and get on with it.
Or, maybe I need to steal some of Anna's commitment to make proper changes, - not just pay lip service to this diet.
The success so far?
This podcast and Anna have enabled me to face up to the issue more regularly and it has enabled me to consistantly be slimmer than I was before.
This podcast has enabled me to get fitter than I was before.
The failure so far?
I am not anywhere near my original target weight of 9 stone 10 lbs which seems more ridiculous now than when I started.
I am nowhere near 10 stone 7 which is what I consider acceptable for me.
Action points
1: Work on the self belief
2: Work on the self belief
3: Work on the self belief
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