After a good week, a bad day.

It occured to me last night that the dogs were looking like yetis and there is no chance to get them to a groomer before Christmas now so I got out the dreaded scissors and set to. It's only a holding job so didn't go too close but I think they look very pretty, if a little lopsided!!

Shelagh...(watching telly while I try to photograph her for posterity!)

Minty...

Shelagh again with her big glamourous eyelashes highlighted...

I don't know what prompted it (thought record to be done there methinks) but I had a gluttonous evening last night. I stopped on my way home and bought 'stuff' to eat (there being nothing in the house) and I pretty much ate it over the course of the evening. I'm not going to go into details but, although I wouldn't say it was a "binge", it must have been heading that way.

It's weird though, I wasn't in a particularly negative mood, or down or unhappy. I just didn't feel like going out in the rain to the pub and fancied a night in front of the fire with the dogs having some food. Also, what I ate was very selective and I stopped once I'd had (a little bit more than)enough.

So, I'm not feeling particularly down on myself this morning. I recognise the pattern, of course, but my priority is to make sure this doesn't continue and that I get some exercise. There's no point in beating myself up. Actually I quite enjoyed my evening and although I feel a bit stuffed this morning and know I've set my dieting plans back a few days, it's not the end of the world.

As I lay awake in bed this morning, before getting up (I love Saturdays!), I tried to analyse my eating from the night before. I could feel the beginnings of self-loathing coming on; the "why did you have to do that you silly fat cow" thinking. But, I consciously decided to get up and walk away from that chain of thought. What I did was no worse than having a few too many glasses of wine and I wouldn't beat myself up for that. It's no worse than missing a session at the gym and I wouldn't think I was a failure for that. It's just one of those things and I need to deal with it.

Beating myself up at this point would be counter-productiveso I'm not going to . Hence the early morning blogging too.

Going back to the "pattern" I mentioned above. That is, when I have a certain amount of sucess, fell better about myself, relax and start to stray from whatever regime I'm following and ultimately come off it early. Not going to happen. I've built flexibility into this regime for precisely that reason. I'm not on a route march to the finish here, I can take detours and slow down if necessary but I must always, in my heart of hearts, know that I'm still on the journey. And I do.

My behaviour has changed even thoug there are still things I don't like about my eating habits but I'm going to continue to celebrate the positives and try to avoid the negatives and I'm not going to hate myself if I fail once in a while.

I've got a good actuve day ahead of me today. I'm taking the dogs out for a long muddy tramp this morning (weathre rubbish unfortunately). then I'm off to the football. Wednesday are playing Bristol City which is hardly a glamour tie but I feel those terrible seeds of hope. It's the worse thing you can do as the supporter of a crap football team, start to hope and even think that your team might win! I suspect we're going to be pegged down to size after a decent run-nette.

Then, home and straight out again to a carol concert in Castleton (http://www.derbyshire-peakdistrict.co.uk/castletonchristmaslights.htm) to meet up with some friends. I mentioned Castleton a few weeks back and it really is lovely and christmassy at this time of year and the concert is great too. It's held in the biggest of caverns and it's called "The Devil's Arse Sings!" so there's no problem getting kids to want to come along! Our local brass band are playing so I'm looking forward to it.

So, downstairs for a sensible LL breakfast then off for my walk. Have a good weekend everyone!!