Hello Readers
I've hit a new low! I'm now the lowest weight I've been in 28 years and I'm finally - finally! - under my next major number! I'm so pleased and a little bit proud of myself. By the way, the reason I don't publish the numbers is because, strangely, I don't want this blog to be just about that ( I will post them at the end of my journey, probably). We are all so much more than the numbers on the scale, and yet we all inevitably define ourselves by that. Wouldn't it be marvellous if weight, size, shape, gender, colour, race, religion, sexuality all became irrelevant, and it all became about who you are at your core? Utopian and naive, I know, but can you imagine how liberating it would be? How freeing? Part of my original reason of wanting to start a blog was because I wanted to reach out to others, to connect. And because I wanted to have a reason to write regularly, as I find it incredibly cathartic. Writing something down makes it easier to 'see' what's going on and to put it in the wider perspective. To give my thoughts context, I suppose. The act of writing gives me clarity.
Even though it is the early hours of the morning here in England, it is technically the first of June, so today, I am recommencing Eating Clean - this means.....planning. I'm not great at sitting down and planning meals. Mainly because I'm genuinely not that interested in food. Now, I know this may seem a little bit ironic for someone who had reached such a massive weight, but, over the last few years, I have been on a drug called exenatide (for diabetes) and because of the way it works, it slows down how your body processes food and drinks. The upshot of this is that I rarely feel hunger. Combine this with living in my own, and not seeing the point in cooking....can you see where I'm going with this?
However, I know that Eating Clean improves my health, gives me more energy, makes my skin look better and, best of all, balances my blood sugars. You'd think this would be a no brainer, right? Wrong; I just find it incredibly difficult to sit down and plan a menu. I've tried all sorts of ways to do it - a few days at a time, a full week, a rough plan for a month, one day at a time - and I just struggle. I think that it's the commitment. I know that people who write down their goals are more than 80% more likely to achieve them. I've come to think that I have an inherent lack of faith in my ability to carry out the planned menu, a lack of belief in myself. I always leave it too late to start cooking, I find meal prep boring and I usually end up throwing away what I've bought, which, in this day and age of more and more people relying on food banks and soup kitchens is disgraceful, if not obscene.
So, I've come to a decision. I have to quit stalling, quit moaning and quit delaying and just get on with it. The other irony is that I really believe in Eating Clean; I am currently doing a home study course in nutrition, and I've always been a proponent of food being what our bodies are built with; we literally are what we eat.
I remember being about 17 and getting magazines imported from the USA (Muscle and Fitness Hers and that sort of thing), because you just couldn't buy them here, and those magazines were so advanced on nutrition and exercise. I can't begin to tell you how educated I am on these subjects, but I have not so far put them consistently into practice. That's why the Eat Clean movement is so important to me and for me - the availability of information now is mind-blowing, and it has simplified all of that early information and made it accessible. The diagnosis of IBS kicked my butt to an extent, but I don't want to go completely grain-free. I don't think I could go Paleo, for example. However, I do believe that over 80 per cent of all illness can be attributed to lifestyle, specifically what we choose to feed ourselves.
June 1st - I first started Eating Clean in June last year, so it seems a good time to fully commit, on my one year anniversary, to a lifestyle of supporting and caring for myself by nourishing myself properly. And that means...planning. And food prep - I'm intending to do it once or twice a week. Surely that will make it more achievable??
How do you plan? What do you do? I'd love to hear.
Much love to you and yours,
Carol B
xxx
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