Day 17…. Anyone for Pineapple?
Posted by Tess Egerton in 
The egg timer has been ticking away furiously for several days, and with a few arduous weeks of dieting behind me, I have a mere 2 days left to go until target and party time! The extra baggage is nearly gone and whatever will be left on the day will have to be disguised with scaffolding and gaffer tape.
So far I have gone into full starvation mode with the flu, minimalisation mode with soup and fruit, a huge hiccup with some chocolate mousse, and with the home run in sight, I find myself living on pineapple and coffee. Quite why I have landed on this combination I really don’t know, but it’s low fat, tastes nice and fills me up. I have also discovered that diet chocolate bars are the way forward for those naughty moments when the devil is sitting on my shoulder blowing big fat ones at my angel on the other!
I have mused endlessly to friends and family on the pro’s and con’s of dieting; the importance of healthy eating whilst trying to lose weight to a tight deadline. We have spent hours chewing the virtual fat about why ‘us girlies’ take it all so seriously in general and why we allow society’s perceptions of physical appearance to affect us at different points in our lives: some times more important than others.
I have survived a family birthday party without eating enough cake to sink a battle ship and seem to be developing new habits in place of the old bad ones … for instance~ not finishing all the kids leftovers at teatime ( almost before they’ve even decided they’re going to be leftovers !).
Panic is setting in as I can feel the contrary side of me niggling away, just willing me to eat a five course creamy curry for devilment. My dreams have consisted of me chewing marshmallows and waking up with the pillow in my mouth. But the party gear now fits and I have only just over 48 hours left to keep it that way.
I need a blind -fold and a staple gun to get me through to Thursday.
Only 2 days left to go…..can she do it? Yes or no?
© 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
Diet Day 6~ Diminishing Lardiness~ RESULT!
Flu….. but then….
It’s been 4 full days of rather revolting illness, and only today am I starting to recover. This morning I woke up bright and early and actually felt like some resemblance to a human being.
After a strange few days of existing in a semi-conscious state, surfacing occasionally to sip a hot flu remedy then return into another hallucinatory doze, I finally regained consciousness mid afternoon yesterday. It was a revelation indeed as I had no idea what time it was, where I was, or who had taken the children to school. Thankfully for me, the boys’ dad had turned ‘fairy godfather’ for a few days and taken care of everything! One good thing at least.
Revelation number two; I stumbled out of bed to find….. my hip bones!! I had lost weight! UnbeLIEVable! I hadn’t seen my hip bones for almost a year, but now they’re back. Ah my good friends… they had been there all the time but had been cosseted under a blanket of lard. I had lost weight over 4 days and~ amazingly~ didn’t feel so hungry I’d want to eat an entire bun factory PLUS my arm right up to the elbow aswell! The sheer excitement of this discovery wore me out once I’d sat down, so I went back to bed as soon as possible and dreamt of bodycon dresses until the morning.
Too excited to wait until the full first Saturday-to- Saturday diet week was complete, I just had to jump ( too ambitious).. STEP , on to the scales this morning and discover a hopefully glorious result. The digital display danced around for a bit ( as they do, annoyingly), then settled on its final decision..
YES!!! 4 and 1/2 pounds weight loss this week!! A positive start to an incredibly long and arduous six days. The energy is still low, but the spirits are high, high , high! The illness has been foul, but it seems fate has taken my situation in hand this time and dealt me a big positive out of a thoroughly gloomy negative.
Quite where I go from here though, I do NOT know…as soon as I’m fully recovered I will be eating for Britain again; I have to work out a sensible strategy to combat this. With 13 days left to go until the big day, I also realise I had previously miscalculated my dieting countdown by a WHOLE week! Oh dear. I still have 10lbs left to lose! How am I going to achieve that?
The pressure is well and truly on!!
Week two, what am I going to do with you?!
© Tess Egerton 2011
Day 1: ‘D’ Day … for Dieting
It’s D-day. Nothing to do with Remembrance weekend and the war, but Diet Day 1; the first day of reckoning.
I started the day with virtuous intentions ; black coffee, fruit and a large wedge of determination on the side plate for breakfast. The mantra of the morning was ‘four fat-free weeks to freedom, four fat-free weeks to freedom’. Extra zeal was initiated on my morning run; so much so that on pushing myself that extra mile I had to stop at the graveyard for a moment of asphyxiation and felt as though I may end up staying there for good. Clearly, this was ‘first day frenzy’, the novelty of a new exciting challenge and one which I already knew would be wearing off by at least day 3. The ‘no pain , no gain’ philosophy appears so much more attractive when it’s being considered nonchalantly on the sofa of an evening beforehand.. good intentions and all that.
As I stumbled along the driveway back to the house feeling exhausted but most pious,my phone beeped with a diary reminder: ” Dinner Tonight With the Girls; Make Spinach and Ricotta Pies”.
Suddenly my morning of dieting glory turned into a flash of red panic. Firstly , this would inevitably mean lots of amazingly yummy food a la ‘Come Dine With Me’. My diet would be shot to pieces! And it was only day 1! Secondly, I had forgotten to buy the ingredients and would have to fit frantic food shopping into the rest of my crazy day’s diary- pretty sharpish too.
Whizzing into the sitting room to grab a pen, I scooped up the two children and threw them into the car. One was happily munching on a packet of Doritos and thereby occurred my first deadly sin of the day… stress induced snacking. Before I even KNEW what was happening , I’d already stolen a few chips from the bag and with lightening speed , they were demolished and in the tum. Oh dear me. So much for the self discipline already.
On we continued, racing from the supermarket, to the swimming pool for the boys activity (why is it that swimming pool cafe’s always smell of fish fingers??), to soft play and finally back home for me to cook the starter for dinner that night. With all the speedy work to be done , I’d built up even more appetite by 5pm and could have eaten a manky horse between two mattresses once ensconced in my kitchen. Deadly diet sin number 2 was looming menacingly around the next corner. I prepared the starter ready to cook , but the combination of being hungry and locked in the kitchen working proved way too much for me. My temporarily steely resolve was shattered into a million pieces as I absent-mindedly munched on biscuits and cheese whilst pottering from mixing bowl to fridge, pie tin to oven. Without even realising, I had just eaten the equivalent of a cheese board starter and the diet for day one was obliterated already.
Accepting my fate, I decided to go with the flow for dinner and start my resolve again in the morning. Just as well really. The chocolate mousse pudding at ‘dinner evening’ was so evil and delicious in equal measures, no am0unt of running all weekend would have compensated for it’s sheer calorific density.
Oh well, c’est la vie.. lessons learnt from day 1; TRY HARDER TOMORROW (and gaffa-tape my hands together between meals!).
© Tess Egerton 2011
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