We don’t like the concept of dieting here at Currantbun Towers. We don’t like it. We don’t believe in it… and most importantly we don’t do it. Diets yes, dieting no…
I probably should explain here my use of language here. A diet is what you eat. It can be general referring to everything you eat or it can refer to a particular regime you have chosen to follow for a reason that is not necessarily associated with weight loss. For example you might be training for a marathon, have a heart condition or suffer from migraines and you follow a specific regime or diet that is designed to help you with that.
“Dieting” though almost always seems to relate to following a particular regime in order to lose weight. You pretty much never hear someone say that they are dieting because they suffer from a migraine and are trying to avoid certain foods… then it’s described as “following a diet”
So, we don’t do dieting here… we believe in a healthy balanced appetite with everything we enjoy eating in moderation… until, we forget the moderation and the balanced bit… and the monitoring to ensure that it is moderate and balanced 😦
How did I get here ?
Possibly sitting on the sofa for 12-18 months feeling sorry for myself and doing nothing but drink red wine and eat comfort food. So nothing interesting or unusual there… The story is that in October 2013 my employers announced they were cutting the work force by 1700 and then what was supposed to be a quick exercise was dragged out for a Loooooooooooooong time… and we were pretty much in limbo for 12 months not knowing what was happening.
But now it is over. I have a job. What’s more I have an extra 2 hours of freedom a day as part of the restructuring I got to move office and don’t have to commute quite so much. But…
Where does this leave me ?
I put on weight. I put on a lot of weight. I am now 1.5 stones over the weight I am comfortable living out…I am 2 stone over the weight I would like to be… and I am 3 stone over weight Nirvana (which, since it is the weight I was at age 18 I know is unachievable…)
Oddly though, the fact that I am overweight and need to do something about it has reignited my interest in food… but in a good way
January is a silly time to start a diet and exercise regime… the overcast skies, the gloom and the grey, the dark nights and the cold make it highly unlikely that you will want to go out and exercise after work and more likely that you will stay in. In January, and possibly more so in February, foodie thoughts turn to stews and casseroles full of potatoes, dumplings and fatty meat (yes please !)
but we all do it… because we overindulge at Christmas… but 18 months of overindulgence… well that means you can’t afford to procrastinate. Do it and do it now. But recognise that the first months will be tough and just because you fall off the wagon it doesn’t mean that you give up.
Nevertheless I have made inroads into my problem. Despite the fact that I tend to hibernate the whole of February with too much wine and chocolate, I have still managed to lose over half a stone. This has mainly been through portion control, less red wine and cutting out the biscuits, chocolate and crisps. I have also made an effort to move more and have been aiming for 10,000 steps a day. I also fell off the wagon a lot in February… it was really hard…
I am not aiming for perfection. I am not aiming for a fast loss of weight. I just want there to be less of me at Christmas than there is now.
So, I although I am dusting off the blog and planning on writing about Appetite again I will try not to whine about being fat… but more about how wonderful food is, and how healthy eating does not mean living on undressed lettuce and detoxing…
Please bear with me, the other reason I haven’t been blogging so much (other than fear of redundancy) is that my boy managed to kill my lap top. The hard drive is toast. I swapped to an IPad mini but fear it has proved a bit more complicated for someone of my advanced years (that’s 43 in case you are wondering… but as far as Spider is concerned that is “old” and pretty much almost dead !!!)
And yes, I know its May… but it shows you how much I hate the concept of dieting in that its taken me until the end of May to bring myself to write about it…and to be honest it’s been going up and down like a yoyo due to grey miserable skies… April was much better.
In fact Easter is a much better time to start a diet…
Appetite for... 