Changing Habits

"Blythe dug out her woolly hat in anticipation that the weatherman was right"

Day 6 Post-Op

Current status: Still bored.

Yep, I remain bored but, I have a bit of a dilemma. I took the past week off as annual leave and not as sick leave. I have nothing booked in tomorrow, just in case I was feeling rough, but, having watched the weather forecast for tomorrow (SNOW), I am rethinking my imminent return. Two reasons basically: 1) My journey is at least an hour on a good day and my office is based almost slap bang in the city centre. The journey has the potential to be bloody awful tomorrow and 2) It’s snow! SNOW! I love the snow … how can I contemplate working when it’s snowing? We get so little of the stuff that my excitement is somewhat disproportionate. I have 4 days of annual leave to take in the next 7 weeks and nothing planned for it. One more day wouldn’t hurt would it? I mean, I ask you, nobody can be bored in the snow? I think I’m going to ring my manager and attempt to strike a deal, if it’s a no show for snow then I’ll go to work. But, if there’s even a millimetre dusting, then I stay put. That’s it … done it. Just rang my manager to talk to her about and it’s a yeeeeees! So she thinks I’ve lost the plot when I explained about the snow excitement but, it’s not as if I’m taking a day off sick. Just wait, there’ll be no bloody snow and I’ll be sitting here going up the wall. I suppose I could always do some housework … yawn :)

Do you know that this week is the first time I have ever spent truly putting myself first in a positive way? Hang on a minute, just unnailing myself from my cross. Sorry, I don’t mean to suggest that I am some whiter than white, goody-goody because I’m really not. However, as this is my place to reflect on my behaviour, I’m going to acknowledge that, “I’m just a girl who can’t say no” and no, not in a ‘rudies’ way, you dirty-minded rabbits. I have a tendency to take on too much, at work and with my friends. This has led to me ending up in all sorts of situations that, when I look back on, I’m realising that people were, frankly, taking the piss. I think it’s dawning on me that I may have a problem with boundaries. You see, I am a sucker for a just-cause and a sob story. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but, I think there is when it encroaches on your quality of life. I do feel an enormous amount of guilt. I feel guilty for all sorts of things that I have no control over whatsoever. So I over-commit myself and become a bit of a doormat at times. I’ve done this for years and I can’t be the only one who does it. What is it about being overweight that makes you feel you have to over compensate in other ways? Because, do you know? I think that’s what I have been doing. If you have a low self esteem about your body image then you need other ways in which to make people accept you. It might be that you work too hard, or that you can never say no when somebody asks a favour of you, or you become this outwardly ‘happy go lucky’ person. Or it might be that you choose a career that you know people won’t be critical of.

May I digress for a moment? One of my closest friends is a bigwig for a major record label, in fact he was my first boyfriend (for all of 1 month – aahhhh). We were 11 years old and we call that time BP, before pubes :) Anyway, he has this fantastic job, his sister is a producer at the BBC and they really live ‘the life’. We see each other every couple of months and whenever he brings a new girlfriend over, they are usually a ‘media’ type, and, without fail, they’ll say something along the lines, “How fantastic that you do your job. It’s really worthwhile isn’t it?”. This is usually accompanied by a patronising nod and smile. Blimey, I'm touchy today. My point is, why have I chosen a career in the ‘caring professions’? Do you know, I’m starting to think on some subconscious level it has something to do with acceptance? It’s ok to be fat as long as you compensate for it in some other way? When I was younger I really wanted to be a make up artist. Not just make up but, special-effects make up (you know the sci-fi or fake injury, gory stuff) but, I was too intimidated by the thought of all of the ‘cool’ kids to do art at A-Level. So I did biology instead, lol. Funny old world.



Enough of the psycho babble already. Right. Today I want to talk about changing habits. Boots the chemist have that campaign, ‘change one thing at time’ or something along those lines. Do you know what I think about it? I think its bollocks. Pardon my French, but I do. To me that’s just too idealistic. In my opinion, you can’t ever change just one thing at a time. Simply by changing that one thing you have a whole chain of other things that need to be addressed. For example, being banded; with the Boots philosophy, all I need to do is change what I eat but, to change what I eat I have to change so many other things. The reality is that I need to change how I shop, my organisation of how and when I prepare food, how I eat (no, not literally how I eat, I’m still using the same orifice as before, I haven’t started pouring soup in my ears), how I spend my time, how much exercise I do … you see? The list is endless. So I have put together the bits and pieces of advice gleaned from the forums and also from the dietitian.

• Break the cycle of over-eating during the first month by adhering to a liquid diet.
  

• Examine, if you feel able to, the reasons why you overeat. Easier said than done that but, perhaps it maybe easier to look at ‘when and what’ situations you overeat in. This past week has highlighted what situations are triggering my ‘head-hunger’. These are; boredom, a strong psychological link between watching TV and eating, advertising, seeing other people eat – in real-life or on the TV, aromas, mild irritation and habit.

• Make everything that you do eat ‘count’. Make it count both nutritionally and taste wise. For example, normally if I had been making something such as the soup, like I did yesterday and, I was trying to ‘diet’, I would have omitted the cream, the butter and even the olive oil. The result? It wouldn’t have tasted anywhere near as nice and I would have resented having to eat, ‘the darn healthy food’. It’s quite a mental leap for me as I am totally ‘all or nothing’ usually.

• Eat those chewy vitamins – they’re like wine gums :)
  
• Look at the size of your plates and bowls. The plates we have are massive. My mom treated me to a pretty little soup bowl and seven inch plate.
  
• Ditto the cutlery – again, bless her, my mom bought me a set of good quality, stainless steel, infant’s, learner cutlery. It’s so groovy that it doesn’t really look like kiddies’ stuff. Thanks mom – you’re a star :)

• Eat at the table. Okay, so I haven’t managed this yet but our dining room is just a glorified corridor, lol and my excuse is that I don’t need to do this yet as I’m not eating solids.
  
• Exercise every day. This one’s much harder as my natural state is ‘lounging’ but, I have been walking everyday since Saturday (oh, only 4 times then. Feels like so much more).

• Find a hobby – this is my one. Blogging is my new hobby but at some point I’m going to run out of things to wax lyrical about. Nobody needs to hear about the exploits of our cat. We’re thinking about buying an old VW Camper Van but it’s more of a pipe dream because we’re skint, lol.
  

That’s it really. I’m sure there are loads more tips. Any ideas? Anyway that’s enough for today. Perhaps I should mention how I am physically. I’ve deliberately avoided weighing myself because I don’t want to start a load of negative thoughts if I have gained after the operation itself. My wounds are healing nicely; the band-wound is now dry and I have stopped wearing the stockings. I’m supposed to wear them for another week but they were driving me nuts. Especially when out walking, they kept falling down and ‘hoiking’ them up made me look like I had some kind of bum / twinkle itch that I was furtling with – not the look I was going for. I’m taking an executive decision on this as I feel I am active enough not to be at too much risk of DVTs. Just wait, I’ll have a massive one now and end up without any legs or bottom.

Onwards and downwards.