The Birthday Party

Slim and healthy people do not eat their own weight in pies, frankfurters, birthday cake and chocolate crackles.  Not even as a coping mechanism in the face of 30 preschoolers on a hyperactive sugar high.

If only I had told myself this truth before I reached for the sweets.  Admittedly, I did remarkably well avoiding alcohol and instead sipping water, but deep inside I was thinking, "if I don't eat the pies and I don't drink the giggly lolly water, I can eat cake!!!!".

Without wanting to sound like a disciple, Michelle is right.  Every action has a thought behind it.  I knew precisely what I was doing when I suggested that my daughter have a lovely little slice of cheesecake.  And oh, look, they're cutting that pretty pink birthday cake - well, we can't go without having a piece of that.

Really?  Is that a rule?  Would we be sent to the naughty corner (or, worse than that, be forced to lie on the trampoline while abovementioned tiny terrors jumped on us and pulled our hair . . . oh no, wait, that did actually happen).

Truth be told, I'm not super mad at myself.  I did much better than I normally would.  I only slipped up on having a bit of cake, and even then, I only ate a little.

If anything, I'm a bit disappointed that I blew those calories and didn't really enjoy it.  All of a sudden, sweets  just don't really rock my world anymore.  For some crazy reason, those little sugary compounds and their creamy friends no longer have a positive effect on my emotional well being.  And eating a slice of chocolate cake doesn't even come close to being a spiritual experience.

Incidentally, what is it with this chocolate fixation?  I'm beginning to think that it's only because we women talk about being chocoholics so much that we are actually chocoholics.

So, it's true: think, and you will do.

So, this morning, I opted for a positive thought.  I had this idea that I would jog much more of my jog/walk than ever before.  I had this idea that after my fifth set of 90 seconds of jogging, I would just keep on jogging.  And I did.  And then I did another few sets, and on the last of those, I jogged some more.  Even ran for a bit.  Only my dinky achilles prevented me from tearing up the pavement some more.

I'm not proud of my birthday cake incident.  But I am very pleased with  myself that I literally ran away from it (and possibly ran it off) this morning, putting it way, way behind me.  And I'm not looking back.

The Tim Tam

Something happened on Day 1 that has been bugging me all week.

It involved a Tim Tam.

I went along to a coffee morning for parents at my daughter's preschool.  It's C's first term there, and so I didn't know anyone.  I was on the lookout for the mother of a particular boy, S, because C had told me that he "hugged me so tight that my bones hurt" ("Why darling?"  "Because I love him!"  But of course.).  

I asked around, and soon someone pointed out S's mother.  She honed in and swooped towards me, wielding a fresh pack of Tim Tams.  

She thrust them forward, under my nose.  "Tim Tam?"  

As if I needed to be told what they were.

"Oh, yes please!", and I daintily picked one out and gave her a big smile.

I wonder if, immediately after that, my face communicated the horror I felt.  What on earth had I done?  Oh dear God, it's a Tim Tam, it's in my hand, and the woman armed with a whole pack of the freaking little turds  - possibly the future mother-in-law of my 3 year old daughter - is staring at me with a huge grin on her face.  

And she's waiting for me to eat it.

My goodness she's skinny.  I bet you she doesn't eat these things.  She just inflicts them on fatties like me because she's read somewhere that that's how to make friends with us.

I couldn't just hold on to it; you know how those things melt (you know you do).  I couldn't even put it in my handbag; it would melt in there, but I wouldn't care; it's just that it seemed that everyone's eyes were on me.

So I ate a Tim Tam.  On Day 1.  Less than 3 hours after I had so courageously walked and jogged around my neighbourhood in the rain (oh, how the mighty fall!).

The problem, I think, is that I wasn't yet fully programmed.  I'm still not fully programmed.  But the mindset is on its way to become hard-wired in my brain.  But it's that instant that you reach out for the Tim Tam when you should instead say, "Thanks, that's really nice of you, but no thanks (and now, can we talk about our children?  I'm not sure if my girl is ready for commitment yet; has S mentioned anything to you?").

I'm kind of glad that it happened though.  I'm glad because I was positively mortified when I realised what had happened.  That's something in itself.  I used to just feel a few seconds of guilt and then move on.

Next time someone offers me something very, very bad - no matter how well intentioned they are - I'm just going to think of that little brown turd, and say no, very nicely.

And go back to dreaming of how fabulous and fit I am going to be at forty, and how I am going to rock that dress.

12WBT - Day 4 - It's going to be ok

Yes, the sky might be falling, but it's going to be ok.

I know this, because I have survived over 3 days of the 12wbt without imploding, exploding or collapsing wherever I happened to be and curling up in the foetal position until someone fed me a lemon tart.

And this morning, something wonderful happened.  The (incidentally, tall, slim and radiant) chick (let's just call her Amazon Woman) who runs the cafe where I have been going for the last couple of years for my morning skim-milk-flat-white said, "Thanks gorgeous girl" as I said goodbye on my way out.  For the first time, ever.

This caused me to wonder: why all of a sudden am I a Gorgeous Girl?

Could it be the 2.2 kilograms that I have lost in the last week?  No, I don't think so.  When you're this big, people don't notice that you're a New Improved You until 5 or 10 kilograms at least, I imagine.

I think that it could just be that I walked a little taller (possibly pride sneaking in already?), I smiled a little more, and rather than replying, "Oh, I'm sooo tired!" when Amazon Woman practically roared her usual "How aaaare you?!" greeting, I sang back, "Great!  How are you!".

I'm pretty sure that I noticed Amazon Woman blink.  That's her version of surprise. 

And then I kept on smiling and saying nice, happy things, until I got out of there and wondered what the hell had happened to me.

Oh.  I get it.  Exercising.  Eating healthy portions of healthy food.  Having an hour to clear my head and then fill it with positive thoughts like how I'm going to rock that dress at my fortieth.  That's how I'm already starting to give off that Gorgeous Girl vibe.

12WBT - Day 1 - The Sky Is Falling

At approximately 6.10am this morning, my lovely 6 month old, chubby cheeked and oh! so cuddly, ample thighed daughter (no resemblance - clearly takes after her father) woke me by gently caressing my face and cooing something that sounded more than remotely like babytalk for "I love you", which I am sure is exactly what she meant.

I looked down at her and smiled and told her I loved her, too.  More heart-melting babytalk in response.

Ah, perfect.  

No, this was the WORST POSSIBLE THING THAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED.

I had reached over to my 'smartphone'.  So smart that it failed to wake me at 5.30am.  I studied it.  Very hard (it takes a while without coffee).  Oh.  5.30 PM.  Human input error.  

"Love, it's 6.10am.  Please take Bubs."

"You can't go out.  It's raining".  

"No it's not."

"Well you're too late.  Go tomorrow."

"Nooooooooo!"  I had to think fast.  "I'll go for a half an hour".

I may have thrown the baby at my husband as I ran out of the bedroom.  I poured myself into my trackies (don't tell me that I'm the only fattie who refuses to buy fat person clothes) and burnt approximately 57 calories squeezing and manipulating my G cups (not for your titillation, people; we all know that there comes a point where it's more Rocky Horror than porn) into my sports bra, which, as those similarly endowed would know, was worn over my regular made-of-actual-cement chastity-bra.  Successfully put on T-shirt (again, memories of a slender yester-year) and sneakers (likewise very old, but remarkably pristine in condition).  Then, I walked out the door.

I'm trying to celebrate the little things.  So it's important that I walked out the door, ok?

My first challenge was to unlock the gates.  We're currently living with my parents.  I'm 39.  So my parents are old people.  In the last month or so that I have lived with my parents, I have not found a single cliche about old people not to ring true.  Testimony to this is that it took me a full ten minutes to escape from my own parents house, as it involved unlocking several gates and heaving them open (honestly: surely at least another 57 calories burned).

Having found freedom from Alcatraz, I swam for my life.  That is really how it felt, trying to walk briskly in the downpour.  Yes, it had resumed raining.  Quite hard, really.

Then something unusual happened.  I started to run.  Or fat people's version of running, anyway, which is how I used to run even when I was slim, which is to say, I jogged and tried not to look too silly despite not really knowing what to do with my hands.  I did the 30 second / 1.30 minute thing (approximately, of course; you'll learn that I'm not one of Those Organised People).  After doing it five times, I did it twice more.  Uphill.

It felt good.

I got to the top of the hill, which is, in my parents' neighbourhood, a main road.  So I thought I may as well run a little more, after all, it was downhill.  Weeeeee, I was flying, I was flying!  I WAS FLYING!

Oh, that was hard and rather sudden.  I was on my arse.  Imagine how skinny people must feel when they land hard on their arse bones, without all that nice cushioning, I thought to myself.  But then, they wouldn't land so hard, because they're lighter, like feathers, and so they'd kind of float to Mother Earth.  

Note to self: avoid slippery manhole thingies at least until you can flap your fairy wings and gracefully float over them.

Thankfully, people in this neighbourhood are all slack and, to my surprise, I had not been joined by 1000s of 12wbt'ers.  There might have been one other of us, but I couldn't be sure.  He looked like he was in his own private world of pain, and so it didn't matter.  And other than him, it was just me and a few cars.  

The rest of the walk (there were no more overeager attempts to get a gold star in running on the beginner lose-that-lard program) was quite uneventful, with each minute distinguishable from the last only in terms of whether it rained like the sky was falling in or merely like the clouds were going to crush me.

I arrived home to find hubby very angry indeed.  "You said half an hour! It's 7.20am!" 

"Oh, is it?".  I was in that buoyant state of happiness that can only come with exercise.  "Here Bubs, let's have a cuddle".