Difficult day

Today has been more of a struggle than before I think I over did it on risotto rice and now I feel stuffed and fat, which is a sensation that triggers the kind of thought like 'If I feel this fat having eaten healthy food I may as well give up and stuff my face with chocolate' which of course leads to 'sod it I will give up on the diet now' behaviour. Which I am fighting hard mainly with the logic that I am due on in a few days (sorry if that's TMI for some of you) This makes a huge difference to how my body feels - water retention etc. So I am hitting my 'give up now' gremlin with a big dose of evidence. I know from looking at my food diary and I know I have stuck to plan so I have not put on half a stone in the last 24 hours (which is what it feels like).

Another rule I am trying to break is weighing myself everyday, and I have got a lot better over recent months (down to two or three times a week). This is a particular one connected to my daughter as she has already started standing on the scales at the age of two. Now ok at the moment to her its just a game, you stand on this thing and it flashes and then some numbers appear on the screen. But I cant let her grow up thinking that is normal behaviour. I have a 'weigh in' once a week at meetings and have been advised to not weigh myself at home as scales differ. They aren't kidding! There was a 3lb difference between theirs the first time they weighed me and this leads to another rule of mine. I ONLY ever weigh myself first thing in the morning - after a wee - before any food or drink - naked and with the scales in exactly the same place on the floor. Yeah... bit obsessive eh? I am still coming to terms with being weighed clothed and after breakfast, its a bigger deal than I thought and makes me very uncomfortable, but if this was an easy ride I would have faced it years ago.

Recipes

Now I'm not a confident cook and I don't know enough to make things up. I have been really thrown by the recipes I am using that keep using ingredients in an odd way. Today I tried 'magic pancakes' (see picture) with involve soaking porridge oats in yogurt over night then beating in eggs before you cook them. The bubbled when I cooked them and I think they looked like a cross between pancakes and crumpets. They tasted nice though :-)

Oddly (well its odd for me) I am enjoying taking pictures of my food. Partly I am proud I have cooked from scratch, I am amazed how colourful it is but mainly to remind myself during weak moments that all the chopping, peeling, and cooking creates great results. I don't want to go back to eating tons of freezer food, I am really proud of myself for not eating highly processed junk anymore.

Some things I have cooked I have really had to look twice at the recipe to make sure they are healthy and I'm not getting the system wrong. The best example of this is chips, roasted peppers and eggs. I mean look at it it doesn't look like it should be healthy! I also amused myself by realising I had plenty enough syns to treat myself to a table spoon of ketchup and not feel bad.


I really am befuddled (in a very good way) that at times I am eating food that I would normally regret, feel guilty about or take restrictive action as a consequence of eating it.... But that hasn't been here for over ten days and that is an amazing development. Guilt free eating for over a week is the kind of too good to be true aspect of this experience that makes me worry it isn't going to last. I so pray I am wrong on that one.

Right onwards and upwards, I'm off for one of my daughters chocolate crispy cake a smile on my face and not an ounce of guilt *huge grin*

Breakfast.. most important meal of the day.

I have always had a hatred of breakfast back to when I was told I had to eat breakfast before I went to school, but of course I didn't want to go to junior school because I was being bullied, so eating breakfast became the thing that meant it was time to go get picked on - not a great food association. In later life skipping breakfast became a way to 'save' calories but that never really works as by mid-morning I would be so hungry I would often end up grabbing anything I could which was normally a chocolate bar.

Now logically I can see its better in the long run to eat a healthy breakfast earlier than crap later on, but getting that message through to my brain and stomach is more difficult and another habit I need to break. I have have had breakfast everyday since starting the healthy eating mission, but I am still putting it off as long as I can which isn't practical when I have to get my daughter ready for nursery and me ready for work. We get up between 6.15am and 6.30am but this morning it took me until 8.30am to face food, which would have been too late on a work day. This leads me into a situation where I sabotage myself as skipping breakfast means before lunch I'm reaching for an unhealthy snack.

Here is my filling healthy breakfast at the moment is this 2 Weetabix, 100ml of Almond milk, some natural yogurt and a big handful of berries. Most days I have it I don't feel hungry until midday, unlike a slice of toast that leaves me hungry in an hour.

While trying to retrain myself to eat breakfast by 7.30 at the latest, I think a back up plan of a healthy grab and go cereal bar is a good idea, but of course with me this runs the risk I will rely on those and ignore breakfast completely - I'm sneaky like that and these habits of many years are going to be hard to break, but I had breakfast this morning so that's another little *win*

Hello there!

I wish I had started this last week as so much has happened. Very briefly I have decided now is the time to face some serious gremlins. I have had a bad relationship with food for over twenty years and I am determined to not pass my bad behaviour and attitudes onto my beautiful daughter. She is of an age where she notices everything now - including mummy stuffing a sneaky biscuit in her gob! So its time to teach this old Cat (ok not that old!) some new tricks about eating food

So I began this journey (sorry to sound like someone on a reality tv show!) by seeing a CBT counsellor and really pulling apart why I have done what I do, what fuels it and how I hope to change. That process still continues, and I'm not sure how much detail I will share on that subject yet. But despite increased personal awareness I was left still feeling scared of what food to buy, cook, eat and every day I will regret eating something. So I decided I needed some kind of dietary framework to work in.

I'm not going to promote the system I chose to follow (they have advertising budgets for that!) though some people my guess from the terms I use. I went in this direction as I was impressed by the change of attitude my brother had on this system, I craved to have such a level headed relationship with food. I really want to stress now this is not a blog about how to lose weight though of course that will be a pleasant side effect. This blog is to chart my relationship with food as I attempt to break the crazy rules I have put in place over the years and teach myself and my daughter how to eat healthily.

The first week has been a huge eyeopener for me, I have never eaten so much food! Three meals a day that are leaving me so full up I rarely even think about snacking between meals. I have heard the saying 'you have to eat to loose' but never dared to believe it or try it in case I put more weight on, restricting my food to unhealthy levels was the only way I knew to loose weight. This 'old trick' was of course rubbish as I would just end up breaking at some point and eating a huge amount the next day. I was amazed that in the first week I had lost 3lb - but try not to focus on that figure as it is more important that I was full and my fruit and veg intake went through the roof. I am constantly taking photos of my food on my phone as it is so colourful, and to remind me how good eating healthily is if I feel an urge to return to my old ways.

The most important change for me was that I didn't feel guilty about what I ate as I not only knew but understood what I had eaten that day so no panic. This is a breakthrough in my mental process and I am so excited about it as to me it shows real change. I will add in other things that have happened in this first week as I go along as I am not sure I can remember everything tonight but I hope that recording these changes will help them to become my new tricks and rules and in time become second nature to me

Well that's the plan for this blog anyway, lets see where it actually goes :-)