Day 19~ Target Day At Last !(Now Can I Go and Eat?)
Posted by Tess Egerton in 
Finally, on day 19 and the beginning of December I have reached party day and my target’s end. The advent of all things Christmassy heralds the advent also of one more female taking up less space in the bus queue! Or at least I hope so.
My day of starting well and weighing immediately hasn’t quite worked out as I’d planned. A late rising and a sprint to the school gates in my pyjamas with two bleary -eyed children wasn’t quite the image I’d had in mind for party-day kick-off. And so the day has unfolded in similarly chaotic fashion.
Having visited various pamper parlours for substantial party improvements, I realise by midday that not only do I feel like a formula 1 racing car being worked on from all angles, but I have neither eaten yet or weighed. Very helpfully, the previously lost weighing scales tumbled out of the shoe cupbboard this morning with several hundred weight of wellies. So at least I have my old friend back to taunt at me digitally as I balance on one leg to appear lighter.
The moment of truth has finally arrived. It’s only been three weeks dieting, but it feels like three months. Three weeks of no hard cheese ( how ironic!), sugar mice or chocolate oranges. The truth in the beauty of abstinance awaits me….
Yes!! It’s a good reading! Not quite full target, but only 2.2lbs or 1 kilo away from my imagined result! The scales happily announce I’m not so much Ten Ton Tess as ten stone Tess. Fantastic! The flags are duly put up and the lap of honour begins! I feel I should crack open a drink to celebrate, but there are balloons to collect, venues yet to decorate, and babysitters to organise so I fall into abstinence mode once more.. for a little while at least!
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Finally! It is party time and the suit fits so I’m going to wear it!! The whole purpose of the diet was to not feel conscious of myself or my clothes all night; just to enjoy the friends and the music. Mission has been accomplished and the diet is complete……………. or is it…..?
© Tess Egerton 2011
Day 18… Nearly There~ But….
The ‘ fatbuster fairy’ appears to have stolen my scales! The most relevant and necessary gauging tool at this eleventh hour in proceedings and they have disappeared! The scales have vanished! Disaster! Do I blame it on my temporastate of malnourished insanity? Or is it lack of memory from cramming too many million other things into the day to remember where the left hand was placing the scales while the right hand was whipping up a souffle for the kids pudding?
I must have worked off at least 200 calories, running up and down the stairs, emptying cupboards manically, like a woman possessed. They could be anywhere…after all, I am prone to finding the newspaper in the fridge; this is just another example of typical absent mindedness.
The diet continues and I have images of furtive visits to Boots tomorrow; hiding behind the rows of baby talc until no-one is around , then jumping onto their less than generous digital scales. The potential public humiliation of being spotted on a Boots scale is a fate I certainly don’t relish at this late stage in proceedings. Apart from anything else, they’re not accurate! The mini interrogator shoots monitoring questions at it’s visitor before a single foot is stepped on the platform. Age? Height? Body type? Shoe size? Diet Preference? (Would you like fries with that???). Once satisfied one isn’t a hoax visitor or an alien, an invite is issued to step on the scales. It ‘ then hums and harrs’ for an eternity as to whether it’ll add that extra O.5 kilo JUST to annoy it’s desperate dieter. Inevitably, the 0.5 is duly added and the ticket is presented with a fanfare of indiscreet squeaks and clunks. Without fail, it announces an increase of over half a stone , I’m 4 ft 2, 58 years old and my name is Margaret. All for the bargain price of £2.50. Deep Joy.
Only around 30 hours left til deadline!
The house fills with wails as I can’t find my scales
©Tess Egerton 2011
Day 13…. Lucky or Not??
Well another week of fasting, not feasting has passed and I have arrived on day 13 and it’s a Friday too… unlucky for some! Pity I’ve chosen it as my new weigh-in day… ( I decided Saturdays are SO much fun, it seemed almost sacrilege to blight them with the presence of a mocking digital scales).
After another 7 days of careful food monitoring this week, I’ve been frequently reminding myself that this had ‘better be worth it!’. As the weather has begun to turn colder and the lack of substantial fuel started to chill my bones a little, the concept of why a lot of thin people are often poker-faced suddenly dawned on me…. they’re cold, tired and hungry!! Who WOULDN”T be miserable?! Energy just doesn’t create itself, no matter how hard we try.
Monday , the thrill of having lost some weight and experiencing successful wardrobe renaissance sessions was still fresh enough to provide incentive. Soup, fruit and black coffee virtuously replaced my usual ~ rather more palatable fodder ~of toast, sandwiches, crisps and hot chocolate.
Tuesday and Wednesday spun past in a flurry of workloads and my tum rumbling to remind me I had to eat something, even if it DID look and taste like pitted cardboard. So ryvita and cottage cheese it was! Followed by a whole tin of pineapple rings to remove the wallpaper paste consistency of the cheese. It should surely be called ‘claggy cheese’ NOT ‘cottage’! I have wondered all week if it achieved it’s moniker from having been discovered on the walls of a country ruin somewhere… evil stuff! I found myself mixing it with marmite just to introduce some taste into the glurg. However, when I found it all combined together into a browney-grey lump, it appeared exactly like mashed brain on my plate. Not altogether apppetizing then.
Thursday proved to be a day of attempted~ and failed~ excercise. The god of contrariness was with me and no matter how much I contrived circumstances to allow a short run or fifteen minute jig about, doorbells rang, people stopped to chat and all but a 50 piece brass band piled into the equation. “Ah well, I’ll just have to lose the blubber some other way” I mused whilst eyeing up the mince pies in the local bakery window.
And here we are.. ” thank Crunchie it’s Friday”. Except I’m not allowing myself a Crunchie or anything else lovely for another week. So! I must jump on those scales to elicit some joy out of my week in self deprivation!
Yes! Thank you resultometer!! I have lost another 2 and 1/2 lbs in 7 days! That’s almost a bag of flour’s worth. I wonder where it went to? Maybe it’s melted into the ether and transferred itself via precipitation onto some poor thin person who actually needs it…!
Now it is late on Friday night with only 6 days until my party and the ultimate deadline left to go. I still have 7 lbs left to lose in under a week. Short of several daily seaweed wraps and living on miso soup with spirulina dressing for a week, there’s nothing much i can do, but ” keep calm and carry on”. I guess any spare tyres still to be shifted will soon disappear once my feet find that dancefloor on the 1st December!
Week 3 , my final week
Those final pounds I have to tweak!!
© Tess Egerton 2011
Day 3 of Dieting; D for Decongestant
Day 3
Oh dearie me. The start to the week has been an odd one indeed. Woke up early this morning; it’s a Monday and I am feeling groggy with a blocked nose to boot. The fluey virus circulating our neighbourhood had been kept at bay until now, but seems to have finally intercepted us at last.
Having packed a slightly sicky looking child 1 off to school, I ferried child 2 to the doctors for a check on his rising temperature. Upon arrival, we could hear the coughs , sneezes and wheezing before even entering the waiting room. I made a mental note to bring my gauze mask with me next time, but for now it was too late. Mental note two tried to introduce some positivity into my thoughts and reminded me that at least I could look through the healthy diet sheets on the rotating stand while we waited. Plus, feeling SO full of cold I wouldn’t be hungry anyway. Double result!
Sure enough, the ‘health leaflet’ stand was packed with useful information on healthy eating ( the ‘D’ word for dieting seems to be taboo in our doctorssurgery at least; it’s all based on healthy hearts and circulation, healthy bones and muscles and giving yourself a great quality of life through the best choices in nutrition). There were leaflets and booklets galore, exhibiting the ‘healthy food triangle’ of items to be eaten in abundance ( fruit and veg) right down to the ones we should bother nibbling the least ( fats and sugars). All common sense, but all essentially geared to lifestyle choices rather than the psychology of weight issues. I guess they leave that to the diet clubs instead.
Dieting can have a strange effect on one’s thoughts once that ‘blue touch paper’ of consciousness has been ignited. As we sat in the waiting room, I found myself looking around the other patients, absent-mindedly sizing up what frame and weight they could be. Did they look healthy, thin, overweight? Did they look happy, self conscious, confident or miserable? One man got up and wandered to the drinks machine for a hot chocolate , setting me off into a silent giggle as I thought of how much I wanted to ambush him for the drink. Having not touched anything sweet for two days, the mental cravings had kicked in, even if the cold had supressed the real cravings.
Throughout the day, the regular top-ups of lemon flavoured flu drinks and lucozade were enough to put me off even the loveliest of food aromas, so the children and I picked at any small snacks which didn’t initiate instant billiousness.
The day’s exercice consisted of walking to the car and back, plus a few sluggish laps around the house. I am sure a tiny gram or two of extra baggage is melting away slowly, but certainly not for the right reasons on day 3. I’ll just look on the bright side and consider it as an unscheduled bonus.
Now, I wonder what day 4 has in store?
© Tess Egerton 2011
Diet Day 2. ‘D’ for Desperate Measures….
Day 2.
After day one’s disastrous attempts at shifting those inches, I decided to go into ‘desperate measures’ mode. The idea that I needed some extra incentive so early into the diet shocked me into raiding my box of tricks in the next level up from whence I’d started.
Today I initiated the mission by raiding my photo-box for shots from earlier years to shame me into action . ‘Compare and contrast’ always works when all else fails. There I found my wedding photos from ten years ago, still beautifully presented in their glossy album. Inside revealed the images of a bride far more youthful than now and a slender size ten. The washboard stomach and toned arms created just for that day have since stretched into an ironing board stomach which sits atop as I work. I don’t even want to THINK about the bingo wings which are desperately trying to cultivate themselves as each day passes.
The power of nostalgia and reminiscence did wonders as I mentally measured up my workload ahead… and within less than a month! The decision was made quickly. I would stick to grapefruit, vegetable soup, wholemeal toast and fruit all day to see how I would cope.
On top of this, I dug around for my old VHS tapes of Mr Motivator ( remember him??) and fitness DVDs of every ailing celebrity under the sun. I found requisite determination to try and tone this butt into looking like part of the human anatomy and less like a dead-heat in a zeppelin race. By early evening, my dieting had proved a little tedious but thoroughly possible. I’d had my first successful day of self discipline.
All I needed to complete the day was a successful session of exercise and I would feel settled into a mode of positivity. Newly kitted up and ready to go in no time at all, I cleared the decks in the sitting room and warned all family members of low flying limbs for the next hour. I then proceeded to follow the instructions of my chosen TV teacher eagerly but without any trace of gracefulness whatsoever. There I continued for the full hour; leaping , lunging, star-jumping and running on the spot over a highly polished wooden floor. Inevitably I went absolutely flying several times and must have appeared like a complete lunatic to anyone passing our front window. But here was a mum on a mission and nothing was going to stop me. I’d even remembered to dust off my pedometer for charting my glorious hour’s intensive workout.
Once the hour of physical mayhem had ground to a relieved halt, I checked my pedometer for success. A half decent 263 calories and 8,091 steps completed. I momentarily wondered if that would have been enough to even touch the damage i’d done the night before at my girlie dinner. Happy with my efforts nevertheless, I collapsed gratefully into my bath while the children sprinted back to the tv downstairs; squabbling like crazy having been starved of their favourite programme for an hour.
Whilst soaking the limbs I reflected on the reasoning for all this pressure on myself for the sake of one night, essentially. Why did I feel the need to look so presentable when actually it shouldn’t matter too much. Was it a secret fear that when the clock struck 12 on my birthday night, I would suddenly turn into a pumpkin? Was it the silent, insidious effects of every magazine and newspaper in popular circulation permeating my thoughts with a necessity for a need to be super slim, super glam and superhuman? Was it that desperately clichéd fear of ageing , making me turn into a glamour-junkie automaton?
The answer to those questions seemed to return as ‘no , not really’ in each case. More the fact that during the last year in my thirties I have indulged far too much in the good life, with work and play crossing over much too frequently and resulting in enormous fun, but gradual midriff spread.
Whilst swinging from the chandeliers with a glass of Veuve Clicquot is wonderful fun, it plays havoc with the saddlebags over too many months. Any more protracted indulgence and my liver would be suffering from repetitive stress disorder; my hips would reach across two separate time zones.
They keeping telling me that ‘Life Begins At Forty’, so for that reason I feel it’s time to push onwards and upwards. Health, fitness and a peppering of light glamour lay ahead~ I just have to put the work in to reap the benefits.
Positivity is the key- let’s aim for day three!!
©Tess Egerton 2011
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