Crazy Cat Lady Chapter 5 - Trying to recover from the pandemic

SusieT

I am not much help about the all or nothing part with money and food, but please be kind to yourself.
If you think it is a control thing and that you need to do the weighing to "be good", then could you do a chart and weigh yourself at set times twice a week (e.g. Sunday evening and Thursday morning), and give yourself a green tick or a smiley sticker for only doing it at set times? I have no idea if that would work, but it may give you a visual record of you being good and perhaps help your subconscious to see what we can see here? 

f0xh0les

How big is your FunElm store?  2 hours is like a  whole trip to 1kea, but at least that has 3 floors, a cafe, and a travelator ride.   I might have been found trying to make a noose out of the curtain tiebacks after 45 minutes.   Bet it did wonders for your step count though, so it was a trip out, light exercise, and a morality tale about spending £225.

Maybe you need to brain dump because you are getting ready to tackle these things,  writing stuff down does not make it easier to do, but it does kind of bring a bit of order to what you know, or think, you need to do.   You are recognising repeated  patterns of behaviour.  It is uncomfortable, but you are not hiding from it.    So well done for that.

I wish you could get a good talking therapy counsellor, but they are few and far between from what I have heard, does your school have a counsellor for the kids? Maybe they could point you in the right direction - there has to be some kind of compensation for having to work face to face through the pandemic.  You should be on spa sessions and massages  on your 'frees' (though not in the PE hall with basketball going on around you). 

Also if your Quack recognises you are obese, he/she/they/zee/ can give you a free trial to either WW or SW for 12 weeks.  After 12 weeks you will know if it is going to fit in with your life as it is now, and if you are going to give it a go, or if you are not in the right headspace to do it at the minute.  Plus, you are out of the house one night a week for a whole hour!!  Another bit of non-work routine.  A bit of accountability once a week at the scales might be better than stressing out and weighing yourself after every meal. 

Hope you manage to get out for your walk, there are 8 weeks til the clocks go back, and once it is dark at 6pm and the rain is lashing against the windows, you will be glad to sit on your bum on the sofa and crochet and we will all applaud you for it.

slm6002

Maybe get your best friend / mum to take the scales away and only go to hers once a week and weigh yourself.  Or get DD to hide them and only bring them out once a week.

Cant help re diet as i am very overweight and lack exercise.  If only were as easy as they make it out to be to loose the weight.  Like you i'm not stupid and know what I need to do but motivation / self control / life and energy all get in the way.  

f0xh0les

It takes a huge amount of mental energy to lose weight.    That is what they don't tell you.

Buffythedebtslayer

f0xh0les said:

It takes a huge amount of mental energy to lose weight.    That is what they don't tell you.

I agree, thinking about everything you put in your mouth is time consuming, tiring and stirs up all kinds of feelings. I had been doing calorie counting and it kinda works but I get really funny about being hungry or eating food that might disagree with me and in the end what I decided is that I want to feel better and be able to do more so I walk and I drink water and once I go back to work I will sleep more regularly and eat better but I only mean in terms of eating fruit and veg and have one meal from scratch and have a takeaway every two weeks. I will Keep it simple. As I aim to do with so many parts of my life. 

I also think you are hard on yourself - teachers generally are  

Happy Crocheting, you know the work will sort itself out 

XXXX 

beanielou

2 hours in Funhelm~~eeeek.

WinterWarrior

Dieting is hard, managing money is hard, tackling unwanted behaviours is hard! I feel you, I’m sure we all do ☹️ I had a small pity party today and I think we are all entitled to them, it does seem to help. 

I’m jealous of your funhelm trip! 

crazy_cat_lady

Morning all
I didn't say enough really about the funelm (not fun at all) trip. I'd had enough after 20 minutes but bestie is a real 'look at every single thing in detail' kind of shopper. She really should go shopping with dd because they know what they are talking about and get a lot of pleasure from matching and co-ordinating things, whereas I write a list of what I need, research online then get either online or go to the shop. I spent a whole £1.50 on a reduced canvas print of a cat which I quite liked.
Thanks everyone for your kind words about my roller coastering mental health. I worry that I go on about it too much but I also think that mental health issues are still far too swept under the carpet and taboo so I like to be as honest as I can. I have a huge amount of self awareness but my self loathing is right up there too, and as you say f0xh0les - it's mentally draining thinking about food all of the time, and planning being good and labelling things as good and bad. A few people have told me to bin off the scales now so I think it might be about time... I suspect I might need a decent talking therapy session - we have a good bloke at work through occupational health but we're only allowed six sessions at a time. Might be a good starting point, although I'll have to explain to the Head that my mental health is affecting my work.
In other, more positive news - I finally started writing my exam stuff last night. I have procrastinated for days over this but finally got on and made a start. Trouble is I now have lots running through my mind and I need to get it down in print in some kind of order. Tried to make myself go to bed early, but lay awake until after 2am and then kept waking up having some very bizarre dreams. None of that tonight. I got up at 8am and was out walking by half past. I've done 6km so am really hoping that will lead to a better night of sleep tonight. Fingers crossed.
As for other plans for the day ahead - visiting my mam, more writing and maybe one or two episodes of New Amsterdam.
Have a good day everyone.

beanielou

Happy Sunday.
Always good to talk about our MH.

foxgloves

I've been both kinds of shopper you describe @crazy_cat_lady - & I know which one resulted in me spending oodles of money!
I've had weight issues of one kind & another since the age of 14 & would definitely say that you need to get out of that mindset of being 'good' or 'bad'. A more reasoned way of looking at this would be that if your goal is to lose weight, then there are behaviours which will help you get to that goal & others which will hinder progress. Any behaviours which re-enforce self-loathing defo come into the latter category. Hopping on the scales every day or multiple times a day is utterly self-defeating. Our bodyweight can fluctuate a lot depending on how much we have had to drink, what sort of food we ate over the previous day, etc. The scales are a useful tool to see how weight loss is progressing, as well as letting us know that we have shot off in the wrong direction & are gaining rather than losing. That is all they are. From my own experience, I would suggest that if you are serious about reducing your weight, then choose a morning to weight yourself. Do this first thing, naked. Note your weight. Now ask your daughter to put the scales out of sight in the bottom of her wardrobe or somewhere you'd have to invade her space to find them & not to bring them out until the same time next month. If you still weigh the same, then you'll have to accept as we all do, that your energy burn has not exceeded your energy intake. Being realistic is key here. Neither you or I or anyone else gained our weight in a month. Pre-menopause, I could drop 12lbs to a stone in a month if I put the effort in in. Now, I have to put the same effort in to lose 1lb a week. So instead of saying 'I will be x lbs lighter by this time next week', just acknowledge what you currently weigh & your goal is to weigh less than that in a month's time. Your walking will definitely help with that calorie deficit - I often feel envious at how well you've got on with that, as my ankle has been too rubbish for much walking in recent weeks - but I read somewhere that weight loss is about 20% physical exercise & 80% nutrition, so it's that old adage of 'you can't outrun a poor diet', I suppose. I do understand where you are coming from on the starving yourself front.....that was my approach to weight loss in my teens & early 20s & just rebounds with feeling you could scoff everything in sight. I do think the self-starvation thing comes from a position of punishment for being overweight. "I don't deserve to eat nice food because I have allowed myself to become too big" etc, but the reality is that there is always something lovely you can eat even when you are losing weight. Years ago, when I set out on my most major weight loss plan to date (6 stones lost, but will freely admit I have struggled in recent years & regained up to half of it on & off), I realised one of my biggest pitfalls was that re dieting, I was either 'doing it' or 'not doing it' so ate accordingly. It was when I found myself on a lunch with colleagues & ordered a bacon & cheese topped burger & chips that I recognised this was happening. You see, I didn't actually want that burger. I actually wanted the prawn salad with a jacket potato but I saw that as a 'diet option'. As I wasn't dieting at the time, I ordered the burger, despite being so over-stuffed afterwards, I could barely concentrate on my meeting! I found this behaviour repeated similarly heaps of times. For some reason, I would opt NOT to have a healthy option, even if I wanted it, because I wasn't actively dieting so could have the less sensible choice! There's some mad psychology going on there somewhere, CCL, so I think I wanted just to say that I am standing with you re weird weight behaviour & perhaps we can help each other with encouragement or a blimming good moan about it now & again. I have lost 8.8 kg since end of Jan (I had Easter to my birthday off) but only half a pound shifted during the whole of August. Still nice to see a loss of course, this is a gradual thing, but defo shows how quite a few extras coupled with a lot less walking due to rubbish ankle has its not unexpected effect. I am feeling motivated for the next couple of weeks though & will not be getting on the scales again until mid-September. 
Take care CCL. You can only do your best. Do it because you are worth it. We all think so on here, so it's time for you to be a bit kinder to yourself & let go of unhelpful baggage, whatever it takes to do so.
Love F xx