I’ve just come to the end of my 365 photography project – a challenging year for creativity. Now that it’s over, I feel obliged to focus a bit more on my drawing so I’m tentatively starting a doodle a day for 2016. The drawings will be rough and ready and I probably won’t post all of the images, instead, I’ll just share a select few, like this one!
I went for an impromptu meal after work this evening…I may have overdone it. Now I feel like Violet Beauregarde from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!
I have a very sweet tooth and can put on weight just by looking at a cake. There’s a voice in my head that is constantly chanting ‘EAT. EAT. EAT. EAT.’ More often than not, it’s chanting ‘EAT CAKE. EAT CAKE. EAT CAKE!’. I try hard not to succumb to the urge to satisfy my cravings because afterwards there’s a taunting voice chanting ‘FATTY, FATTY, FATTY’. Sometimes I wish I could just have a great wedge of deliciously moist cake and not feel guilty!
So, with all this Olympimania, you can’t help but get swept along…
So, pretty much every woman in history has at some point, looked down at their belly and thought to themselves…”Crikey! Where the hell did that come from?!!”
I am no different…and so with the new year spread out before me, I, along with a gazillion other women have given up my ‘syns’ and taken solace in group therapy for fat people. Yes, Slimming World, Weight Watchers, Fat Burners R Us…whatever you want to call it…January is the signal for women the world over to wave their carrot sticks and commence the annual battle of the bulge.
This is the first time I have tried ‘group therapy’, partly because I was bored one evening and partly because maybe, just maybe it might work. At the very least it is a delight for the ‘people-watcher’ within me. Who are these people confessing their deepest, darkest feeding habits to a room full of strangers?!
Our leader says:
“and so how did you do this week Betty?”
Betty (this is not her real name):
“well for the first two days everything was going well, then my grandson had a birthday party and my daughter left me alone in the room with the chocolate cake…I ate it all”
The group make a collective “aaaah” sound and there are several nods of ‘we understand your pain’.
The Leader:
“don’t worry Betty, you had a blip, we all do from time to time. Now you just need to get back on the band wagon and start again”
A round of applause follows
I think to myself – this is just like Alcoholic Anonymous, but for fat people. “hello everyone, my name is X and I am an overeater”.
There is no doubt that the support of a group is beneficial to some people. Last week I lent over to chat to a girl and asked her how she had done this week…’not bad she said’…I pry a little deeper to find that she’s lost 5stone in less than 10 months and is the Slimming World Woman of the year! Well if that isn’t inspiration, then I don’t know what is.
I think this particular group which is heavily weighted (excuse the pun) to the over 50s is seen as a social event. I plonked myself down next to a smiley woman the other week and got into the usual chit chat: ‘how did you do this week?’ , ‘Really! That’s great news – you lost half a pound!’ I could probably relieve myself and lose half a pound but we still congratulate each other on the effort and she starts offering me tips and advice. It turns out this woman has been coming to the group since 1996 and I wonder whether it has taken 16 years to lose the half pound.
I suppose I have to admit that each week I find myself anxiously awaiting the results of my ‘weigh in’ and secretly hoping it is more than two pounds so I can ‘announce it’ to the group and revel in the applause. This week was a bit disappointing, maybe I should have gone to the loo before I went…
I’m recovering… this is good because on Monday I wasn’t sure I’d make it to the end of the week. Why? Well, L and I have started our latest fat burning, self-flagellating exercise regime.
Last night I tried to explain the idea to a friend who was horrified to hear that I, a carefree, sofa-hugging student would voluntarily get up at 6:30 am three times a week to cycle to work with L – a 12mile round trip! We started two weeks ago and since then I have ridden 3 different bicycles in a desperate attempt to make the journey that little bit easier.
Preparation for the regime required a week of psyching ourselves up and digging our bikes out of the shed. After dusting down the cobwebs, pumping up the tyres and reviving the rust-encrusted chains with a hefty dose of WD40, we were set to go.
The first day proved interesting. Whilst I chose to ride a relatively new, full suspension mountain bike, L chose to ride a rusty old bike of mine that had been shoved from hallway, to cupboard, to shed (and seldom ridden) since my first days at University in 1996. We donned oversized florescent green jackets and attached every bicycle light we could find in the house until we shone and flickered like gaudy Christmas trees. Off we went!
After a bit of crunching and grinding with the gear changes, my bike seemed to move fairly smoothly so I set off at a keen pace, eager to get the blood pumping! Five minutes down the road I turned to talk to L only to see a little flashing speck in the distance! “GET A MOVE ON” I shouted, “I have to make getting up at 6:30am worth the effort”.
Stony faced and gasping for breath L finally caught up and grunted something about gears and the seat being too low. “Huh” I thought to myself “she’s probably just unfit and being grumpy about it” so I begrudgingly slowed down to pedal alongside her.
20minutes into the trip and L was really really grumpy (that’s not like her I hear you say) and I was chirpily trying to coax her along, offering to swap bikes as the grinding gears hers still hadn’t eased. “NO!” she stubbornly replied and plodded on at an excruciatingly slow pace.
It took around 45 minutes to get to the hospital by which time the look on L’s face had turned to thunder. She obviously blamed me for the tortuous ride and the fact that she only had 15minutes to have a shower and get to the ward! Keeping calm, I offered some positive encouragement and persuaded her to swap bikes before I set off on the journey home.
WELL MY GOD!!!!! It turned out that the bike was the biggest heap of scrap metal ever to be ridden and I suddenly felt guilty for thinking it was just that L was unfit! (we both are and this bike did nothing to help) Yes, the seat was too low but the pedal on one side was askew making pedalling extremely difficult. To make matters worse the gears were jammed on high, helping to simulate a mountain stretch of the Tour de France. By the time I got home my legs barely functioned and I had to crawl, red-faced, up the stairs to the bathroom. L’s thunderous mood from earlier was remarkably contagious.
The second attempt: Both suffering from bruised private parts but with a positive outlook we set off. I was on the smooth ride with full suspension and changeable gears whilst L chose a Japanese ‘KIT’ bike put together by her father and rescued from the tip several days earlier! Well you can imagine… 10 minutes in and the complaints started to flow. I could see her brow break into deep furrows and the mood swing from mild enthusiasm into stubborn, why-the-hell-are-we-doing-this mode. A heated discussion ensued – “don’t be such a bloody martyr and swap the damn bike with me!” She did.
Again, cold hearted, unsympathetic me, had presumed L was being ‘difficult’ but this bike seemed to have a mind of its own. The gears changed of their own accord and the seat managed to wobble loose flipping into a very uncomfortable, vertical position. With 5 minutes to go before reaching the hospital and after several failed attempts to hold the seat in its correct position, I conceded and turned back.
I might as well have removed the seat all together and ridden on the pole because by this time the seat was so loose I slipped off the back with every adjustment. I rode most of the way back standing up before trying the seat sideways. It worked after a fashion but I now know why bicycle seats are designed the way they are…. trust me, forward is certainly the most ergonomic position.
NB: I know these things can be fixed in a jiffy with the right tools and an understanding of simple bike maintenance. However we were not equipped and our understanding of bike maintenance matches our ability to carry out surgery on a rhinoceros.
We cycled today (our 5th time) even though we’re still recovering from Wednesday’s wet and windy journey. The monsoonal weather helped L discover her waterproofs were not any kind of ‘proof’ at all. But even though she arrived home looking like a drowned rat, her mood was remarkably upbeat. She is now borrowing her father’s bike which has no problems apart from the rather large panniers that catch on her heels when she pedals.
The weather today was bright and crisp filling us with the joys of spring… well, we were as joyful as one can be when hot, sweaty and out of breath on a 12 mile cycle. But I’m interested to know at what point one becomes a true cyclist? Is it when you start to snarl at pedestrians that walk in the cycle lane instead of the allocated pedestrian path? Or is it when one discovers a hidden cycle rage that is difficult to control when cars pull out in front of you or park across a cycle path? Perhaps it’s when one has mastered the art of cycling up to a pedestrian crossing, balancing precariously on the bike whilst simultaneously pressing the button, then crossing the road without putting a foot down?
Whatever the case, we are getting on with it and even if some of our friends can run faster than we can cycle, I hope as our fitness improves we can shave at least 10 or 15 minutes off the journey time.
Postscript: I have since spoken to a couple of cycling fanatics to discover what a ‘real’ cyclist is all about. And I’m sad to say that we have a long way to go. Apparently you are not a cyclist until:
1) you wear lycra
2) you go for a 60mile cycle for fun!
3) you spend as much on a new bicycle as you would on a new car
4) you have more than one bicycle for different occasions
I think my friends are at the extreme end of the cycling scale, tutting and shaking their heads when I told them I was riding a mountain bike, with suspension on a road!! “Well THAT will get you nowhere”. I defended my bike saying at least it worked and although it may not be light enough to pick up with one finger, it’s good enough for me!
Now, I’m not obese but I admit I’m not my ‘ideal’ weight. So what is the ideal weight? Women are always striving to be thinner no matter what size they actually are.
There’s a rake-thin girl at work who looks like she’d snap if she had to carry anything other than her own body weight plus a very small handbag, yet she still thinks she needs to lose the pounds. And no she’s not anorexic, she’s just like every other woman who looks at herself in the mirror and thinks ‘with a handful off here and a pinch off there, I’d look much better’.
I put my battle with the bulge down to boredom at work and general inactivity. Our bodies were not designed to sit at a desk, in front of a computer for 8-9 hours a day with no physical exercise apart from the occasional bicep curl when answering the phone, or a good jaw stretch during a gossip session around the kettle.
I once measured how many steps I did in the average day. Bearing in mind the recommended number of steps (to ensure general fitness) is 10,000, I was surprised to find over a 12 hour period, even with a 15 minute walk to and from the train station, I could only manage 9,000!
Only 9,000! Even with my regular ‘I’m-so-bored-so-I’ll-waste-time-going-to-the-toilet’ trips and a 30 minute lunchtime saunter around the shops, I can only clock up NINE THOUSAND! A snail could do more than that and they only have one foot! By comparison my other half managed to clock up 9,000 steps in just a morning at the hospital – I guess it’s dashing between all the emergencies “he’s crashing – Resus! STAT”
So to combat this downward spiral into a lifestyle more sedentary than a rock, I joined a gym. In the last five weeks I have been jogging, pumping, cycling, bouncing, stepping, pulling, pushing and crunching at least three times a week. The main goal is to lose weight but I’d also like to be fit enough to climb the stairs at work without hyperventilating.
Until now, I thought I was doing pretty well but it would seem in the last 4 days I’ve managed to gain 3lbs! Where did it come from? How could this happen?? Has someone secretly been sowing bags of sugar onto my thighs without my knowledge?
After this discovery, I came into work with a mood blacker than an inkwell in a dark room and whinged to my collegues. To give them credit, they tried to cheer me up with sympathetic comments like ‘muscle weighs more than fat’ and ‘ don’t worry its probably water retention’. HAH! WHATEVER! I don’t think I’m carrying around 3lbs of water and I certainly don’t think I’m buff so either my scales are faulty or I’m just FAT!
I think I’ll be hitting the gym tonight for a bit more pumping and bouncing…
Big Hair Metamorphosis 