Beep beep beep, this vehicle is reversing....

More pics from the weir at the bottom of the village. Above is the view from the nice garden. Below is some more Millennium statuary on the bridge.

The nice garden again.

I'm a cow and trying to "encourage" Minty to swim. She has no fear of water but won't go out of her depth. So I pushed her in!. She doesn't panic just turns round and sploshes her way to the edge. I'm hoping she'll take to it soon as Shelagh loves swimming.

She's not very happy with me afterwards though!! "Why did you do it Mum??"

Just a quickie to say that I've managed to stop the rot and get rid of the few extra lbs which had adhered themselves to me in my fortnight of madness.

Actually, although the behaviour wasn't good, it was not nearly as bad as it could have been and I have managed to stop it earlier and undo the damage quicker than I would have done in the past, so even the bad times are better. This is probably the way of it now.

So, I'm back at my starting point (again) and I'm determined to actually lose some weight. Exercise is great but it is diet bootcamp which will do it. No treats, no wavering, no bread. Just sucking it up and going through the Beck motions ALL the time.

One of the Beck chapters spoke to me and has proved quite helpful in defeating the urges to snack: it was talking about adopting a "no choice" mentality. When you want to eat something; instead of bargaining with yourself and trying to work it so that you eat something, even if it's not what you want, just acknowledge that dieting sucks; that you want it but you can't have it; that you're doing it for a good reason and then shrug and say "oh well".

She gave a little story about a boy (her son I think) who was on a very strict diet to control his epilepsy and who couldn't eat all sorts of things for years and years during his childhood and who never wavered. When he wanted to, they would just talk it through and then do the shrug and the "oh well" thing and move on.

That has been really helpful for me. The acknowledging that it's not easy but that you're doing it for a reason. The shrug and the life sucks sort of fatalism of the "oh well". It helps me anyway.