T for ‘trying’ – and my greatest achievement

I apologise for the silence on this blog. I’m not too sure what happened. I guess it’s a combination of ‘everything’s going well, not much to write about’, ‘no time to write’ and also going away for a few days.

The good news is: I’m definitely back on track and things are easy at the moment. I just hope it will last. Last time things were going so well, it lasted three months (from January to March), my record! Maybe this time it will last four months? Who knows...

I’ve even lost a few more hundred grammes – 700. I’ve checked and that’s the weight I was in March, so it’s not a major achievement in itself. Between March and now, I’ve been oscillating between 76.3kg and 77.3kg. But I know that if I carry on eating like I’ve been eating, the weight will come off, slowly slowly.

But for me, it’s not such a worry any more, it’s not the main issue. I think the fact that I’m staying more or less at the same weight while eating anything I want whenever I want and however much of it I want is an accomplishment in itself. I know that I have to sort out my anxiety eating first, before the weight comes off for good. At the end of March/beginning of April, it all went wrong because I became anxious about a visit from a distant family member and I felt the pressure of having to be perfect at everything: the cooking (especially!) , the ‘taking them out’, the ‘entertaining them’, the way I dressed, the way I talked. It was just awful.
However, amazingly, after that person left, I managed to relax again, and when the next visitor came (at the end of April) I stayed relaxed, very aware of my feelings and my (potentially erratic) eating. This led to my greatest achievement so far: I joined my husband and the visitor (his great-aunt) at the pub but didn’t eat anything.

Nothing at all!

I had eaten breakfast quite late because I had gone for a bike ride first thing that morning, so when we got the pub at quarter past 12, I wasn’t hungry in the slightest. I had been soooo annoyed with myself for letting the previous visitor ruin my eating patterns that I was adamant I wouldn’t let this one do it to me as well. I said I really wasn’t hungry and apologised for not eating with them, but ‘really, I can’t, I’m really not hungry’. And then, when we went for a stroll in a National Trust park and at quarter past 3 I was getting quite hungry, I had a scone when they had a cup of tea at the park’s tea room.

I felt sooo strong after that! It was exhilarating, to be able to do the thing I most dreaded: not eat while others are eating, and vice versa.

I have noticed on this journey that if you’re willing to try something just once, this thing (whatever it may be – for example, stopping as soon as you’ve had enough, or listening to your stomach to find out exactly what you want to eat) becomes easier the next time you do it, and you wonder why you haven’t tried it before.

Try it!