1 lb!!

Warning - this post may contain scenes of geese! There was something so magical about hearing and feeling the flap of geese wings flying just overhead in the evenings as they headed into the fields to roost. Stunning birds. I like this chap below staring right at the camera....looks like something out of Babe!

I saw this lot set off so managed to get my camera out in time to capture the whole flight which went right over our heads.

They reminded me of a squadron of fighter jets or something, very powerful.

Now they're coming in to land, anchors on.

Well, as you might have guessed from the heading, I lost a single lb last week. I could have been all "1lb! 1 measly lb after all that effort!! Why do I bother?? This is all too hard...." etc etc But instead I'm going down the "I'm a lb lighter than I was last week and that means that, despite having a really nice week; going out to the pub every night bar Monday and Tuesday; enjoying life to the full and eating some delicious meals with D, I managed not to gain any weight and indeed, to drop a whole lb."

That's much nicer scenario.

Back around Christmas of last year, I realised that I had gained a fair bit of the weight I lost through LL and, despite a bit of self-denial around exactly how much I had gained, I accepted that. I realised that the situation was not terminal, I was still considerably lighter than I had been at my heaviest, but that I needed to really address the "why", "what" and "how" of my eating and exercising patterns rather than just deny myself proper food and force myself to exercise.

At that time, my goal was extremely modest. I wanted to weigh less at the end of 2009 than I did at the beginning. Preferably more than a stone less but less would do. If I did this through healthy eating and "normal" living, I would have gone a long way towards learning to maintain my weight and even lose a bit and I could see a stable slimm(ish) future for me.

At that time, I turned to Beck and made a fairly sustained effort at working out what I thought about food and exercise, why I ate too much and didn't exercise, and how I might change this. I began the laborious process of monitoring my eating habits and then re-learning new healthy ones and I was having some sucess. Then, as if my magic, but actually through the good offices of Mrs Lard, the TV show fell into my lap. Through the wonders of Sky Real Lives, a highly trained and totally focussed psychiatrist (Dr Steve Peters) peered into my psyche and explained myself to me. It was wonderful. Not only that, he provided loads of helpful suggestions as to how I might deal with me and my eating and my (lack of) exercising forever.

Through the period of the show I lost a stone and a half and I got much fitter.

Then, the filming stopped and I was back on my own. The moment of truth. Have I learned anything? Have any of the lessons sunk in? Well, yes. I am a different person. I think a lot more about what I'm doing. I am more accountable and recognise that actions have consequences. I happily say no to things because now I'm only saying no to food or drink, not to comfort and happiness. Food is not as complicated as it used to be. Yes, there are still residual feelings around food, associated with treats and comfort and love, but generally, I now KNOW that food is just food and saying no to something will not cause the sky to fall in.

So, losing a lb in a week and keeping up my exercise regime while enoying life and working away is a "good thing". I don't have a timetable for losing the rest of my weight, in fact I'm pretty happy with myself as I am, so I'm just going to carry on making good choices nearly all the time, exercising and staying healthy and hopefully at the end of the year, I'll look back and think "I aced that resolution"!

Maybe next year, my New Year's Resolution will have nothing to do with weight?? I suspect it will though but there is hope for the year after....

PS. I've just been told that the show is likely to air on 6 and 7th October on Sky Real Lives. So I won't be on holiday when it goes out after all!!