Dear Cupcake,

I have been experiencing a new phenomenon this week - a heightened sense of consciousness about what I am putting into my body.

As DH is working away from home during the week for the next wee while, I have realised it is important for me to keep busy and motivated in order to avoid sitting on the sofa watching TV and mindlessly eating in order to comfort myself and relieve the boredom and loneliness.

Hence my full on walking program - I have made a point of coming in from work, getting changed and heading down the park with my dog. Thanks to http://www.mapmyrun.com I have been able to confirm that the route we take (which is a loop) is a little over 4 miles. Despite my pup’s short legs, we can get round it in about an hour. It feels like a good workout and it helps me switch off after a day in the office so as well as physical benefits I feel as though my state of mind is improving too.

Although I would be the first to admit that I am a bit of a thinker and a worrier I find that when I am walking I hardly think about anything. Maybe the words to a song, maybe a brief mull of something that has happened that day. But mostly I am looking at my surroundings, watching my dog run around looking for sticks, listening to the birds - its all very relaxing even though I can feel myself heating up and getting a little - dare I say it - sweaty?

When I was out walking on Wednesday I actually found myself planning a new route for my next big cycle run this weekend! Having just purchased a special ladies saddle online (wider, softer, designed for the female nethers) and a pair of cycling capri pants with built in padding I am looking forward to their arrival next week  so I can head out unbruised!

Without realising it I have started to take my exercise seriously and want to prepare for it properly. And part of that preparation - like having the correct equipment  or clothing - is ensuring my body has sufficient fuel onboard.

I’m starting to see meals as a balance of protein and carbs so that I have strength and energy; drinking water so that am hydrated; eating fruit and veg because they fill the plate and fill me up.

Not that I think this way all the time - yesterday DH and I went into town and I had a slice of cheesecake with my coffee because it looked nice and I was hungry and we thought coffee and cake would be good.

But its a start right ?

A new weekly feature designed to encourage accountability over waffling - I am actually going to start logging my weight here. Then start charting it.

But this week - as I am exhausted - I’m gonna keep it plain and simple. This morning I weighed in at 159 pounds. This 4 pounds down from where I was when I started this blog.

Am I happy with this ? I suppose so - yes- when I see it in terms of a total 4 pound drop but it is harder to stay excited when the journey to get there is a slow slog with little to look at on the way.

But I shall be happy with this so far and keep on blogging and logging to ensure accountability.

I’m proud of my activity levels this past week - I’ve managed a 4 mile walk every days since Saturday so  thats 20 miles so far! And a 17 mile bike ride on Monday too - my butt is still killing me! The more I do the more encouraged I am to keep going.

See you next Wednesday….

Dear Cupcake,

It has been one of those weeks which has seemed to fly by but when I look back to this time last week, it seems like an age ago.

Last Monday we flew back for my Nan’s funeral set for the following morning. We were staying in a small hotel a 5 minute drive from the crematorium as mum was very worried about traffic and being late. She has been very stressed in general since she got the news about her mother. She’s not a very emotional person; not very good at talking about how she feels and so I think this is why it demonstrates itself in other ways (she has suffered with IBS for 20 years and episodes are worsened by anxiety.

At the service itself there was a palpable sense of relief that Nan’s suffering was over and that she had gone to a better place. She had a stroke about 8 yrs ago and her health has gradually deteriorated since, and six years ago we lost my grandad – they had been together for 70 yrs and it was something she never really got over.

There was a small wake afterwards – we’re a small family and it was nice to catch up with my cousins who I haven’t seen in the last 6 years. My aunt had brought some photos along and we passed them round. One of my Nan when she was about 25 has stuck in my head ever since. She is holding my aunt as a baby, and is standing next to my grandad. She looks very serious; her brown hair slicked and styled like they did in the late 1930’s and while my grandad is smiling, she looks as though she is less happy to be photographed.

It has stayed with me because while it is clearly my grandmother in the picture, it is not as the woman I new, with her silver hair set in rollers, her large framed glasses, her strong hands covered with liver spots, the skin of which fascinated me as a child because it had lost its elasticity. and didn’t spring back when it was pinched. My nan. But the picture was of a woman younger than I am now, holding her first child, at the start of world war two. Her name is May.

And it struck me how little I knew her and knew about her. And for that I am truly sorry.

By midday, the tea and coffee was finished and we hugged, shook hands and went our separate ways and back to our lives apart from each other. I’m not sure when I shall see these cousins and my aunt and uncle again now that nan has gone. She was the link in a small but disparate family. Isn’t that the strange thing about family – that we are connected by blood but that often isn’t enough to make us close.

Thank you cupcake for indulging this post about non-food related items. But I needed to get it off my chest.

Dear Cupcake,

This has been a long, bad, sad week.

My Nan passed away quite suddenly last Friday. Yes she was in her 90’s; yes we had been told she had taken a turn for the worse - but it was still a shock.  And living as far from home as I do it has been hard not being able to be with my mum at the time when she has lost her own.

The funeral is next Tuesday and I am flying home to be there.

I think the shock and grief have knocked my body for six as well. I have been laidlow with a terrible cold which has left me without any energy - yesterday I slept all afternoon so heavily that I physically couldn’t open my eyes. I’ve all manner of aches and pains in my back and hips now that I am paranoid it is developing into something more sinister (I do wish my overactive imagination could be put to more pratical and fruitful uses than fretting needlessly!)

I don’t mean to sound so sorry for myself - I’m exhausted again and dreading Tuesday.

I’ll be in touch again next week….

Til then….

Dear Cupcake,

I miss you. Right now I am really missing your company. I can’t think of anything I’d like to be doing more this evening than sitting on the sofa, the fire - well to be honest its kind of just smoking at the moment but its showing roaring possibilities - and a lovely little cupcake, complete with butter icing an inch thick, and sprinkled with sugar, erm, sprinkles.

Chocolate icing, pink icing, vanilla icing, chocolate chips…..

I’m not feeling my motivationally strongest today. It’s no one thing, rather a combination of smaller things mounting up and just leaving me exhausted, crumpled and grabbing despairingly and with disgust at my rolls of fat.

Last night my mum called to tell me that my grandmother is very ill. She’s 93 and lives in residential care. I haven’t seen her in 3 years because she had trouble recognising me as her granddaughter. I think we both found it an upsetting experience, and I know that now she is even having trouble recognising my father. Apparently she is deteriorating and we should expect the worse possibly in the next few days.

Work has been bizarre and stressful because of some playground bullying antics of one girl towards her boss and those around her. It is a very small office, only about 20 of us in total and the atmosphere has gotten gradually more tense and unbearable over the last few weeks. The epicentre appears to be one girl in particular who is vicious in her bitching in a way that I find upsetting and have had to leave her company a couple of times. I try to avoid her in general but the place is like a pressure cooker at the moment and the backbiting and sniping is getting to me.

Lastly, my stomach has swollen up like a pumpkin. Ooh how depressing I hear you cry, sweet cupcake. Well it is - in so far as it usually a sign that my monthly guest is on its way to town. Which since we have been trying to have a baby for 2 years without any success is just little dig in the ribs and excuse to feel a bit sorry for myself.

As I drove home from work tonight, feeling a little teary, I thought about coming home, lighting the fire, having a glass of wine, and maybe just maybe popping over to the shop to pick up a “treat”.

But since the traffic was quite so slow, I had a bit of time to think about it all and question what it was about cake that I thought would make it all better.

Of course the answer was “nothing”

So how would it make me feel, if not better. And the surprising answer to this little bit of self analysis was “add to my sense of self-loathing and lack of control”. I can’t control what happens around me, I can’t control what happens to my Nan, I can’t make my colleague change her behaviour, and I can’t do anymore than I am doing to get pregnant (we’re under the care of medical specialists on this one). I might not even be able to choose how I feel about all this. But I can choose how I behave.

Thinking about all your lovely tasty icing options before, I actually felt really sad for feeling that for even a brief moment (or half an hour!) that that was  my answer; to make myself feel worse! Where is the sense in that?

I don’t feel any better about the things above that are bothering  me. But in understanding my reaction to them a little better I can stop myself from falling deeper into the hole.

So whilst I may still have a glass of wine later, it will be to enjoy the wine, not to salve any hurt. And i the meantime, I will sit by my fizzling fire and finish my cup of liquorice tea (the maddest thing - its naturally sweet!!)

Dear Cupcake,

Did you miss me ? It’s been a while since we spoke; things have been busy and you know how easy it is to let friendships slide a little when that happens.

Well, by and large I have not missed you! Is that a bit harsh? Its just that sitting down to write to you this evening it strikes me that I haven’t craved your company that much at all over the past week. That’s what I call a breakthrough.

Not that I haven’t hooked up with some of your relatives of course - there was that chocolate mallow bar I stuffed into my face before doing the grocery shopping yesterday in the fear that it would be at least an hour til I could get home and make a start on dinner. And everyone always says that shopping on an empty stomach is a bad and generally expensive idea.

Well my choice may not have been the best but I must say that it had an extra affect on shopping. My “healthy snacking” has, as might be imagined, gotten a little out of hand as my complacency about the concept has started to set in.

Complacency must be one of the biggest hurdles we can face on our journeys - we see a small improvement and think the changes are working so take our eye of the ball - or at least I do!

And the worst of it is anewday already warned me (nicely!) from her own experience about the perils of substitute products. Thus I should really have had my eyes open a little more wide in the granola bar aisle. Last visit to the supermarket, I conscientiously picked up each box, looked at the nutrional profile and walked away with the one which looked like the best option and very diligently added just one per day to my “snackpack”.

More fool me!!! The CORRECT choice would have been to have left the darned things on the shelf altogether.

NOTE TO SELF : YOU DO NOT HAVE THE WILLPOWER TO EAT / NOT EAT THESE THINGS SO CHOOSE SOMETHING ELSE INSTEAD!

Thanks to the chocolate mallow bar which proved to be sickly sweet and ultimately a bit gross, I wasn’t much in the mood for “treats” (because that was how I was categorising the cereal bar snacks - shoulda spotted that as a flaw) so having reviewed the packs again, I decided I was to full of sweet stuff to stomach any more and left them all on the shelf.

How mad was I to think I could continue to lose weight (or rather start to lose weight) by adding sugary snacks to my diet instead of cutting back.

I since went on to read an article about granola bars not being as healthy as they seem and suggesting cheese and crackers (in moderation LOL) as a safer bet.

My lesson is learned cupcake. And it was thanks to the cloying nature of one of your relatives that I woke up and realised your distant cousin ain’t much better than you are.

The traffic on my way into work sucks. When the kids are back to school (it has just been mid-term) the coomute lengthens from 20 - 25 minutes to anything up to (and occasionally over) and hour.

To. Travel. 10. Miles.

What is that about?

But today as I sat at lights, passing the 10 minutes it took me to crawl the final half mile into the carpark I watched a guy on a bicycle whoosh past me on the inside and I thought “I can’t wait til I can do that”

And then I checked my reflection in the rear view mirror just to make sure it was still me.

Dear Cupcake,

I bought a bike today! We went in to have a look and got an fanatastic deal on one so this afternoon I spent an hour cycling round the park, following my husband, enjoying the view as much as the scenery!

Eat my dust cupcake for I am a biker! And to make you even more disgusted at how far apart we have grown (and I more proud of how my eating habits are slowly but surely changing) - I ate a carrot to stave of the hunger pangs til I had cooked dinner.

Unbelievable…..but darned tasty!!

Dear Cupcake,

Sorry for not dropping by all week. It’s been an unusually busy one but I am pretty happy with how I have managed to stay on plan.

I can’t believe the difference a little preparation the night before makes to my eating the next day. It feels like I am eating less although I am nibbling throughout the day. But what I am choosing to put into my body is so much better than what I was eating before.

Unbelievably I am eating a carrot or two on the commute to the office. Maybe have a low cal yoghurt when I get to my desk. 10am tea break I have a bowl of porridge with fresh fruit, and with some sliced peppers or cherry tomatoes to keep me going thru the rest of the day, lunch has shrunk and dinner portions are more under control. Its like a mini miracle!

In addition to this new habit I have undertaken a bit of challenge on the exercise front. But rather than scare myself silly by aiming for the big end goal, I am breaking it up into smaller bite size goals. The first one is going to sound a bit odd so let me put it into some context!

Myself and my lovely husband (LH) went for a bit of a cycle at the weekend - he on his super new bike, me on an old bike from the back of the garage. It was a gentle run, but after about 20 minutes the brick like nature of the bicycle seat started to takes it toll on my somewhat rounder nether parts. Eventually I started to ache and hurt in places that really a lady shouldn’t - its not like when you get cramp in your calf and can rub it vigourously to make it better. If you know what I mean.

So goal number one - breaking the bigger goal into bitesize pieces should now make sense:

1. Obtain comfortable seat for ramshackle old bike until such times as I can afford a nice new one.
2. By end of April be able to cycle to and from my office at least once a week (approx 10 miles)
3. By end of May be able to cycle to and from work at least twice a week.
4. Mid June - undertake a two day cycle trek of 150 miles.

Bitesize

Portion control and habit are helping my weightloss goals. I am hoping the same approach will help me acheive my health objectives also.

Fingers crossed … but not while cycling.

Dear Cupcake,

Roni asked this question on Wednesday why do you want to lose weight I had thought the answer to this was pretty straight forward - d’uh so I can be thin.

But for some reason the question has played on my mind. Because it is not as simple as thin = happy. If it was, then 5 years ago when I weighed about a stone and a half less than I do now I would have been a happier person. Yet I wasn’t.

The worst of it is that I didn’t even realise how much thinner I was then until saw pictures of myself several years later. And I felt shocked. If I am honest, I think I looked too thin.

I am 5′4″ and currently am weighing in at 162 pounds. In the summer of 2003 I weighed 143 pounds. I’m unhappy with my weight because I gain mainly on the belly. Like my mum. And she has NEVER been happy with her weight for as long as I can remember.

So perhaps I want to slim so I don’t end up being 65 and complaining about my weight or shape without having done anything about it.

Maybe so that I am not apple shaped.

Maybe so that any children I may have some day are not warped by my relationship with food.

Maybe…

I have thought about what it was that made me so much thinner 5 years ago and it is the two easiest most obvious elements to weight loss. I ate less and I moved about more.

I ate less because I was back at college, money was tight and I lived alone so I could please myself more or less. Food was not about sitting down to the table with my then boyfriend (now husband) it was just about having something to fill me up.

And I moved more because I would walk to class and into the city. Because I couldn’t afford to run my car, and because walking was a great way to fill time.

Then when I finished college and moved to the same town as my husband I took a job in a shop where I was on my feet all day and had to walk briskly as part of my daily commute. Food again was basically fuel except for the evening meal when hubbie and I could sit down and toast the day.

So what changed - when did the extra pounds start to creep on. The key change was taking an office bound job where most of my work was carried out at a desk. Almost immediately 6 pounds latched onto my belly. And since then it has been a slow upwards climb until I peaked last week at 164. Now getting below 11 stone seems like an enormous struggle and I fear sliding over 12 stone and never getting back.

So maybe I want to lose weight so I can be in control of myself and my eating.

When I feel that struggle hanging over me, when I see the scale move even slightly in the wrong direction I feel helpless and full of self loathing. Unfortunately somewhere along the way my psychology has been wired to desire cake or chocolate as a salve for the pain. More and more it feels like a quick fix and is less satisfying then ever before, possibly because I’m aware with every bite, that I am going to feel even worse and more out of control in about 10 minutes. So why do it? It’s almost like I can’t help myself, or that I don’t deserve anything better for myself in life. As though self loathing is all I truly deserve.

I am enjoying writing to you dearest cupcake because for the first time in 33 years I am making myself accountable for my actions and facing up to what is behind them. I’m not necessarily proud of myself, but I am starting to think I could be.

Because I think the answer to Roni’s question is “I don’t. I don’t want to lose weight. What I want is a healthy relationship with food, a healthy perspective on my body, and a healthy active lifestyle. These are the things which will make me happy, give me confidence, make me feel sexy. If along the way a few pounds drop off then I shan’t complain, but that should be a by-product of the former. What I want is to accept myself, and live the biggest fullest life I can.”

Dear cupcake, I am sure we shall have many more conversations such as this over the coming months and years, but my hope is that over time, my voice will be much louder than yours.