Back at it and throwing away the scales!

Did Christmas actually happen?! It already feels yonks ago that I was lying on the sofa watching Christmas specials and eating my body weight in chocolate. Can every day be Christmas please? Hope everyone isn't feeling too exhausted after their first week back.

Happenings

So much to catch up on!

My last few days of holiday were nice and relaxed. I was back home in London and whilst some of it was spent cleaning out rooms and de-Christmassifying the flat (does anyone else feel guilty leaving their part-of-the-family-for-the-last-month Christmas tree outside to be picked up?!) we did do a few nice things.

We went for a lovely walk along the river into Richmond where we had a coffee - or in my case a delicious spiced apple drink. Exactly what I needed to warm my frozen hands!

We also went to the ZOO!! I haven't been to the zoo in yeeeears. I'm always very dubious about zoos and am worried that the animals haven't got enough space or nice enough living conditions. On this occasion everything seemed great on the whole.

I was also amazed at just how many situation there were the animals were roaming free! There were ants roaming free, a bird house which you could walk through, and a monkey enclosure you could walk through. The monkeys were so much fun and so cheeky! I had one jump on me and try and steal my headphones from my bag! They certainly weren't shy.

And there were some times just chilled out on the sofa with a blanket and a good film.

Maybe the most significant life event that happened though was....throwing away my scales! These things do so much more damage than good. I've not weighed myself for a good few months, but for some reason had been putting off throwing them away. Well, now they're gone!

The week back at work has been a bit of a culture shock. I'm back working away from home again which has meant living off all that M&S provides. I've missed the South Coast sunrises though!

Movings

I RAN A 10K!!!! The first week I was back in London I really wasn't feeling the runs. I missed the beautiful countryside from back at my parents' and I was craving sleep. So on the Sunday I left my garmin at home and decided to go out for a nice, easy 5k rather than pushing a longer one. Somewhere along the way I had a huge mental shift and ended up running 2 loops. It was tough, but SO GOOD! I'm putting it down to new running gear (who said you need to be colour coordinated?!)! I'd forgotten how much I love the longer runs - that extra time gives my brain that bit longer to unwind.

In fact I was so excited by the whole I signed up to the Cancer Research Winter Run 10k on 1st February! Little bit scared...

Unfortunately (and kind of unsurprising) my muscles weren't a fan and I've got some pain in my foot. I still got out for 2 4-5ks over the week (and returned to this gorgeous sunrise) and did a couple of yoga sessions, but today I decided it was getting worse. So I'm sulking, looking out at the beautiful weather and wishing I was out there training for the event. Never mind...I know deep down it's the sensible option.

Eatings

A lot of buckwheat and rice porridge. Favourite combination so far is coconut milk, sultanas, cinnamon and maple syrup. Yum!

Some cereal bowls when I've been in a rush

Some amazing smoked tofu

Home made miso soup

M&S provisions

Canteen surprises - this bean chilli was amazing!

Thinkings

This week has been a bit tough on the old grey matter. I missed the ability to follow my meal plans and having the stress of deciding what to eat removed. I really had to try hard when living off M&S to try and go for balanced meals and meeting my calorie needs. And there were times at the end of the week where I was at home and hadn't meal planned, and my eating went haywire. I am getting there though...slowly. My therapist had to remind me this week that the meal plan was a guide to help get my eating back on track - not a law of what I had to follow for the rest of my life. I needed to hear that!

My anxiety hasn't been tooooo bad this week :) My therapist gave me a form to fill out when I had anxious foods which was really helpful to use. It gets you to talk about the situation, the thoughts going through your head, the physical sensations, what thoughts would have helped balance out the negative thoughts, and how I tried and could try to reduce the anxiety. Really useful to try out - makes me feel so much more control. Something else that really helped was my therapist saying anxiety is just a weigh up of the potential danger versus the control we perceive we have. And perceptions can always be changed!


Anyway, hope you've all had a fabulous first week back and are still full of all the motivation and hope that January brings.

How to maintain balance

Happy New Year everyone! Hope we're all feeling fresh as daisies after last night's activities...!

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I spent a quiet one in with my better half, watching DVDs and drinking champagne. That's right, rock and roll...

I started the morning with a good old 5k and then tried out a new waffle maker I got my boyfriend for Christmas. I started off with his waffles which were a big flop, and by the time I actually made something edible for him I was not in the mood to make any wheat free ones for me! 

What was more of a success was my roasted almonds (170c for 10 minutes, then sprinkle with salt). I made them to go with my leftover Christmas chocolate which I bashed up and created a nutty almond mix. So good, and it means I'll be getting some protein every time I reach for a chocolate fix :)

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So yesterday I talked about how my goal this year was to maintain balance. I'm quite often an all or nothing person in what I do and one aspect of my life, whether it be running, work, or eating, completely takes over. 

For the last few months I've been setting monthly goals under different topics. The topics cover all areas of my life and help me make sure each area gets some attention. And so I get some balance! The areas I set goals in are:

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Pleasure - all the things we forget about as we're too busy cleaning, exercising, and working!

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Health - at the moment these are often eating related for me, but could be around mental health, getting a medical check up or simply paying more attention to how your body is feeling at regular intervals.

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Fitness - whether it's a new personal distance or time record, just exercising 3 times a week, or trying a new sport - anything counts!

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Fear - when I turned 26 I was feeling pretty crippled by anxiety (hurrah, don't we love anxiety). I was fed up with feeling out of control of my emotions, so I decided I would do more things to push my comfort zone. On my birthday I went up Tower Bridge to take on the glass walkway, and in December I took on a whole project at work which was beyond where I felt capable. This area of goals is important to me to make sure I don't just sit in my comfort zone for the rest of my life. 

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Work - (Yeah I wish my work desk looked like that!). For me work is normally the thing that takes over my life. I want to improve in my role and further my career, and giving myself one or two goals can help me feel less overwhelmed.

Note: there are NO calorie or weight loss related goals. This was a big thing for me as these used to be my only goals. I'm slowly shifting my thought patterns away from this being the be all and end all of life.

When setting goals, they should be:

- Achievable in a month.

- Few. It's silly to set a heap of goals as we just can't keep up. 

- Not designed to last longer than a month. Sure, I want to take what I've learned and carry it with me, but they're about setting good habits, not ruling my life with an iron fist.

- Based on where I am now. I know how I'm feeling at the beginning of the month and what I'm realistically likely to achieve.

- Revisited throughout the month. It's amazing how quickly we can forget what our goals were, and it gives us the opportunity to try a new tactic if we realise we're not getting anywhere with one.

- Never repeats from the month before. If I achieved it that month, great. Let's learn from that and take our new skills on with us. If I didn't achieve it last month, why not? If I don't change anything I'm not likely to achieve it this month, so let's break it down and create a goal that will help me overcome where I missed out. 

- Always reflected on at month end. We should give ourselves a pat on the back where we did well, and learn from where we didn't. 

Sure, I rarely tick of all of my goals at the end of the month but I never feel like I've failed as there are always some I'm achieved! And, in the aim of maintaining balance, at the end of the month it's a great visible way of seeing how you've progressed in all areas!

My January goals are:

Pleasure

- Book theatre tickets. My boyfriend and I got vouchers last Christmas (yikes!) and have never got round to booking anything. We know we want to go and see Wicked, we just need to book it!

- Make the most of our week off at the start of January. It's already flying by, and I've spent an embarrassing amount of it sleeping, so need to get on with this one!

- Make sure my boyfriend has a wonderful birthday at the end of the month

- Write an email to a friend I've lost contact with

- Write all the online recipes I use frequently into a recipe folder...it's such a pain having to boot my laptop up every time I want to cook!

(I always tend to have a few more pleasure goals, as they tend to be more one off to dos, rather than ongoing challenges).

Health

- Focus on stabilising my blood sugar. My meal plan is reminding me what it's like to eat well rounded meals and not be darting between sugar highs and sugar lows. I really want to focus on keeping a stable blood sugar to keep on with the great feeling I have from eating this way

- Keep as close to the meal plan when I'm back at work. When I'm back at work in a week I'm working away from home again without a kitchen. I can't follow my meal plan and am always tempted to go back to my routine of fewer calories and more snacking. I want to try and eat as normally as possible!

Fitness

- Run a 7k. This month I've been at the 6k level so want to step it up.

- Do 10 proper push ups. For ages I've been doing push ups on my knees, and it's about time I manned up!

Fear

- Throw away the scales. I haven't weighed myself for a very long time and the thought of weighing myself terrifies me as I know the number will over rule any logical thoughts about my weight. Still, I've been putting off throwing my scales away, you know, just in case... Well stuff that. Scales are not needed in my life right now, so I need to get rid.

Work

- Maintain a positive attitude. I'm going back to work on  a project I'm not a fan of. It has unrealistic time pressures, not the best working team ever, and is just generally difficult. I finished my last project feeling stronger in my role and enjoying work...I want to keep that optimism!

Anyway, I hope those tips help you get balance in your life just like it's helped me :)

E x

What are your goals this month or year?

2014 review

The adjustment after Christmas is the worst! You still find yourself humming Christmas songs, you mourn the last mince pie, the Christmas jumper gets put away for another year (just as it’s actually getting cold enough to warrant wearing it…).

This time of year always makes us look back and take stock of the last 12 months. If someone asked me to describe 2014 in one word, my initial reaction would be “exhaustion”. As years go this has been a hard one. But for all the tough times I've had there have been many points of the other extreme. I may have dealt with severe anaemia and B12 deficiencies; some days I may have lacked the ability to understand the point of getting out of bed; I may have spent times eating 400kcal a day and others stuffing so much food in my stomach it felt like I would explode; I may have felt anxious 24/7 for weeks; work may have pushed me beyond my limits; and I may have realised I don’t even know who I am. But I’ve also travelled to places I could never have dreamed of; moved in with someone I love beyond words; started getting help with my eating; restarted appreciating life’s little moments; readjusted my view of what’s important in life; got promoted; and spent time with people who matter. Those amazing experiences far outweigh those tough times, and the struggles made me appreciate those good times even more.

Bali

Singapore

Buckingham Palace at the Garden Party with my family

The Lake District with all my favourite people - my family and my better half

New flat moving in with the bf (and the best slippers ever!)

Last January I set a whole heap of aims for the year, most of which I didn't achieve. I never ran a half marathon. In fact I didn’t participate in any of the 5 running events I promised myself I'd do. I didn’t overcome my binging (though I have improved so much through the therapy - I think I was being overoptimistic thinking I’d solve it overnight!). And when I set these goals I wasn't expecting to be signed off work for a month, be on iron tablets for the rest of year, and start therapy for my eating problems.

My last iron tablet a couple of days ago :)

I did achieve a few of my goals though: I discovered yoga (how did I survive so long without it?!) and increased my body strength, and I did track more of my runs using my garmin (but not at the times where I just needed to get out and stretch my legs without thinking about time or pace). I’m also pretty good at eating clean…but I do know that I can have treats when I want…hello 80/20. And all this shows the most important thing – how much more balanced I have become. I'm improving my health, but not letting it take over my life.

Run with a hug from a muddy dog

So this year I have learnt so much about health and fitness, and am beginning the journey of learning who I am as a person. I’m so excited to start 2015 with a clean slate of health and fitness and take baby steps to who I’ll be this time next year.

So what goals am I making for 2015? Just the one: maintain balance. I'll be explaining how I'm going to do this in my next blog post, but in the mean time, I hope you all have a fabulous New Year!

E x

Make a new ending

Hi all!

Just wanted to drop in super quickly this Autumnal Friday morning (urgh, dark mornings already) as I'm up early to get out for a quick walk and to get on with packing for the move tomorrow.

There's something about moving that gives a feeling of a fresh start (especially in September!).

I found this quote and it felt so applicable to me right now. All my eating issues have happened, and I have wasted quite a lot of my life as a result of that and the self-esteem issues that we all have. Sometimes it feels like my life will always be defined by these things. However whatever mistakes we've made in the past don't have to be mistakes that we keep on making.

So decide who you want to be, and realise that that CAN be your new ending.

Have a great Friday and an even better weekend lovelies!

What would your ending be?

E xxx

We are mountains

Sometimes (actually, far more regularly than just “sometimes”) my therapist says something that makes me go “woah, YES”. She puts things into a way that I have never comprehended. For that second, life all fits together and I feel STRONG. I can overcome my problems.

There are two related things she’s said recently. The first was that thought patterns and behaviours are just habits, and habits can be changed. The second was that thoughts to us are what weather are to mountains (go with me on this one!).

She’s totally right!

How many of us think changing a bad habit is achievable? Most of us, right? Sure, it’s going to be hard, a long process, and a bit of a pain, but it’s possible! If our eating behaviours are just habits, then we can change these in exactly the same way. For some reason I’d never thought of all of my problems as habits. I saw them as cemented to me and my being, refusing to be moved without completely changing myself. That's so far from the truth.

Her second point about us being mountains and our thoughts being the weather started off with a visualisation exercise. I was told to visualise a mountain, strong, unmovable, rooted to the ground. The mountain stands there no matter what the weather throws at it: it's defiant and strong. I then was told to bring the mountain inside of myself, to feel rooted to the ground to see the weather changing around me, just like the thoughts that come and pass over us. Sometimes they’re dark like clouds; sometimes they beat us up like the wind; and sometimes they bring us happiness and warm our souls like the sun. But they always pass and throughout we are the strong, rooted person.

We have to remember that our brains are not static. We learn, we forget, we can change ourselves. We can learn not to think badly about ourselves, we can learn not to mess around with our eating, we can learn to have a good relationship with food. These are all good habits that we can learn and we will also unlearn our bad habits. If we were not capable of this we’d all still be wearing nappies, we'd never would say please and thank you, and we'd never would look before crossing the road.

And whilst we work to try and change our habits, we need to remember that thoughts are only a minor part of us. Our thoughts are fleeting and can go as quickly as they come. Yes they can be painful and cause us damage, but they can equally be uplifting and make us feel thankful to be alive. We have the control as to how much our thoughts affect us:  we can draw our awareness to them and simply watch as they pass on. We do not have to try and bury our thoughts, or dwell on them, or let them dictate our emotion.

We are mountains, and we are strong and unbreakable.

Weekend roundup - can I pack the cat?

Hi all! Hope you had a good weekend and are looking forward to getting your weeks started.

I crammed a lot in to the last couple of days. Priority number one was getting as much of my stuff packed up as possible ready for next weekend's move (the tenancy agreement's all signed and deposit's paid so it's actually happening!). I mostly succeeded, though there's quite a bit still to do.

I'm wondering whether anyone will notice if I sneak the cat in.

Part of packing included me going through my wardrobe to throw out what no longer fits. I cried, alot. It was hard to find that clothes that I'd fitted in to for years now wouldn't do up or squeeze over my thighs. However, something I did do which I've never done before was throw those clothes straight on the "out" pile. Normally they'd have gone in the "keep" pile ready for when I'd slimmed back down. It's finally starting to sink in that that was not my natural size...and I'm never going to be that size again. Such a change in my thought pattern.

Yesterday also consisted of getting my hair cut (for the first time in about 7 months...oh the shame). I kept it safe as it was a new hairdresser, but kinda wished I'd done something a bit different. Next time.

My hair was poker straight when I came out of the hairdresser's. 10 minutes later and it already had kinks in it....

I refuelled with Whole Foods.

Those Rebel Mylk drinks are the shizz. Coconut milk base, sweetened with dates, and totally yum.

On Sunday I managed some form of exercise without too much of a negative impact on my stupid foot injury. I started off with this yoga workout from Tara Lee. It's pretty much the lowest intensity you could ask for, but makes you feel really connected with yourself and surroundings and was exactly what I was needing.

I also went out to the monthly Kew Market and then walked along the river to Richmond. I needed to get away from the house where I'd probably end up mindlessly eating. It was a stunning day and to reward myself for getting out in the beauty I rewarded myself with a Nakd bar and Pret. It was the perfect way to end the weekend.

What was the highlight of your weekend?

E xxx

September goals

How is it September already?!

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I was dreading September. The dark mornings, lack of sunshine, cooler weather, the pressures of every one being back at work after the holidays.

However I've actually really liked the fresh feeling of a new start that September brings. And whilst the Christmas chocolates in the supermarkets are a step too far at this point (seriously Tesco?!), I'm excited for the baggy jumpers, cosy coats, coffee shop dates after work when it's dark, beautiful amber trees...all the lovely things Autumn and Winter bring.

I wanted to set some goals for September. Normally I feel the pressure to do everything all in one go: I'm an all or nothing kind of person. And I used to thrive on that approach (hello successful disordered eating history), but not anymore. Now I'm constantly riddled by the feeling of failure. So let's make some smaller, bite size, achievable goals.

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3 health and fitness goals:

• Get my foot healed and pick back up the running. I'm totally feeling the desire to train for a half marathon again, but let's not get ahead of myself. My injury's put me out of action for some time, so I doubt I'll even be able to run a 5k!
• Eat my 5 a day. I know it's a simple one, but it's something I'm failing miserably at the moment. I've taken eating more as an excuse to eat a lot of crap, which has probably been necessary to get everything I've restricted in the past out in the open, but I'm feeling awful. Give me nutrients!
• Wean myself off the gluten. My dietitian recommended that I get tested for coeliac's on the off chance it had caused my anaemia and B12 deficiency. Unfortunately for that I've had to eat bread for the last few weeks to make sure the antibodies, if I do have coeliac's, are in my blood system. And doing this has given me brain fog, stomach ache, and general feelings of blah. I've got my blood test tomorrow, then just need to wait for the results, but not long til I can ease up on the gluten intake! The problem is that toast is one of my favourite foods, so it's going to be a battle of brain over heart to stop eating as much of it.

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3 life goals:

• Move into the new flat! Me and my boyfriend are moving in together next weekend and I am beyond excited. I'm excited for getting to see him all the time (when I'm not away with work at least), excited for living somewhere we can really make feel like home, and excited for not living in a shoebox. What I'm not excited for is lugging all of our stuff up 3 flights of stairs.
• Walks along the river. We'll be living closer to the Thames in the new flat, and I want to use this an excuse for some after-work and weekend walks as the leaves turn.
• Do daily mindfulness. My therapist got me doing a mountain visualisation (I'll talk about it in a future post) and it is seriously helping me out during tough times. I need to keep practising this daily to make sure the thought patterns involved stick.

What are your goals for September?

E xxx