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Saturday 19 July 2014

When you're too busy to worry about food


Oh how I’ve missed blog time. I’ve missed it so so much! Unfortunately, the last few weeks were absolutely crazy, and as my life and income didn’t depend on the blog, that was the one thing that had to take a back seat. There were so many times I wanted to just put some thoughts on a page though!

The last few months I’ve been organising my company’s involvement in a large conference, including running a fringe event and an exhibition stand…and last week it took place! It was pretty much non-stop 24/7 for that and the preceding week, and to top it all off I had a job interview to turn my graduate position into a permanent position in the same week. I was running a fringe event at 7am in the morning, packing up the exhibition and event until early afternoon and then quick-stepped it onto a train to Woking from the south coast to just make it to the interview on time. I was running on my last bit of adrenaline at this point.

But everything was so worth it – the conference was a success (albeit not up to my perfectionist standards!) and the interview went well enough for me to get one of the jobs J

I stupidly thought this week would be nice and relaxed as a result. How wrong I was! I ended up travelling from the South coast up to Manchester for a new project on Monday and then was commuting the 2 hours from my parents’ house up to the office for a couple of days. It’s always so exciting when you start a new project, but also equally exhausting as you try and learn everything you need. With that and trying to wrap up everything from the conference and get everything sorted out for when I was out of office I’m pretty sleep-deprived!

I was hoping to spend some quality time with my family whilst I’d been staying at home this week, but it just didn’t happen which I’m annoyed at myself for. It was one of the few times that me, my brothers and parents were all in the same place. I did take yesterday off for brother’s graduation – I was one super-duper proud sister (though I can’t believe he’s old enough to have gone through uni already!), but I really had such little energy to participate. Still, an amazing day that I was so grateful to be there to celebrate!

However, the two most remarkable things that have happened these last few weeks were body image-related.

The first is that I could barely tell you how many calories I’ve eaten each day (but it’s been a lot). And I’ve just not had the time to be concerned with what I’m eating – I’ve had to grab food when I can and it’s often been additive-ridden supermarket cheese sandwiches full of fat and sugar and calories. This isn’t a diet that I would advocate(!) but to be relaxed enough to allow myself to do this is quite an achievement. I’m not saying there wasn’t any guilt, and yes there were times when I thought about restricting to compensate, but I talked myself round and compared to normal it’s been a total transformation.

The second thing is that I have done basically no planned exercise. In the last 2 weeks I’ve been on one run and done about 10 minutes of yoga. Sleep just had to take priority. I definitely wouldn’t say I’ve enjoyed not being active, but it’s because I’ve missed the feeling of exercise, not because I’m panicking about weight gain.

Like I’ve said, this is not a lifestyle I advocate: exercise and eating well is fundamental to our wellbeing, but we shouldn’t be uptight about it. Why add extra stress into our lives? Sometimes we can’t eat perfectly and we just have to eat what we can in those circumstances, and a few weeks of fewer good eats is not going to kill us.

I’m off on holiday today to Singapore and then Bali (I was dreading a 12+ hour flight, but now I’m seeing it as an excellent opportunity to catch up with some sleep!) which I’m super excited about. There are things that fill me with dread: wearing a bikini (I don’t remember the last time I did that – even at my thinnest I was too self-conscious); eating out all the time; having a sudden outburst of all the disgust that I’ve so far avoided feeling from the last few weeks. I just want to maintain that relaxed attitude that I have for the last couple of weeks. I want to enjoy my holiday and relax and be a normal human being.

I’m hoping to do some blogging whilst I’m away so hopefully I’ll get some blog posts up over the next week and a half. I imagine there’ll be some thoughts to share on bikini wearing…

I’ll also be around on Twitter and Instagram for those of you who like a good photo or two…

Have a fabulous weekend…see you in Singapore!

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