Weekly weigh in - week 0

New start, at 16st ½lb.

( or alternatively last week of 45¼ months )

Some random thoughts

I could be at post-pizza (hell I could have gone to pizza too but more on that anon) but why? Beer's no good if I'm not drinking. I don't even have the excuse of going to see the new format Grauniad 'cso rjk bought a copy. So that leaves the company and well, I'm fed up which makes just hanging out with the usual crowd of people unappealing. Not because of who they are but because I just don't feel like I can engage in anything that's going on, I don't know if that makes sense. And the part of me that really wants to see Mike is overruled by the part of me that thinks I'm pathetic and that I can't let myself rely on him for company, and besides I don't feel like risking making him feel even less like I'm a fun person to be with and risk a friendship as well as having lost more than that. So instead I'm home alone and a little lonely.

More positively, and yes at least partly because of conversations with Mike but not just that, I've somewhere found a little hard knot of resolve in me, and I *am* going to lose some weight again. I don't think it's just a flash in the pan this time. This morning's graph was in one way a new beginning, and in one way an end. Next week's data will go on file, and the following week there'll be new graphs, starting from today. I know it's cheating to be always making new starts, but I think this time it will actually help, and the failures of the past need to stop dragging me down. I'm going to ask Richard to take some photos of me when I get in. I don't expect them to be pretty. And I don't intend to look at them all the time and wince. But I want to make a record of how things are now.

Anyway as a result of this I went shopping at lunchtime and bought vast heaps of food :-) An odd way to start a diet perhaps, but I now have in my desk drawers a selection of stuff which can be filling, not unhealthy lunches, snacks and if necessary breakfast. All stuff that will keep, with the exception of the fruit selection on the windowsill. Living on pre-pack sandwiches with the need for extra variety being filled by crisps or chocolate or the occasional pork pie is the way of the expanding waist line, and the empty pocket too. This way it shouldn't matter that I just don't have the energy to make myself decent food for lunch when I get up in the morning. And that's my main reason for not going to pizza, which is a shame, as post-pizza would probably feel more worthwhile that way.

I've had conversations before with people (OK, mostly Ian, hi:-) where it was felt that diets of any sort just don't work. That even if you're apparently "successful" like I was then once the willpower wears off the pounds come back. The suggested alternative is to instead of changing your diet change your lifestyle so you get more exercise, burn off more calories and hopefully boost your metabolism long term. The thing is as far as I'm concerned this takes just as much if not *more* willpower, and certainly more time, than dieting. And equally if you stop you'll just go back to step one again in the same way. It's good to make sure you get a healthy amount of exercise but I would argue that in 15 mins cycling (more like 20, while I'm this overweight and unfit) twice a day 5 times a week I already do get enough exercise. [sorry, that's a little rant that's been nagging me since I worked it out after the last instance of this conversation]

So yeah. Stuff. And I'm knitting and crocheting various odds and ends. Don't show any sign of finishing anything else soon, having completed the second version of the hat in the icon using the same pink yarn I used for the top for Col and Kirsten's wedding. I could do with spending more time out of the house and with other people, but as usual for me I built my life too much around one person and don't know quite what to do any more.