I Feel Like I Should Say Something

I don't really know what to write about today... I mean. Weight wise, I kinda feel neither here nor there about it. I'm not binging, I'm not restricting too much (net of about 1000 calories) is the goal and working out every two days. I worked out today... and yesterday, so that's good. But like - what to say? I kinda feel like my stomach looks flatter - let's see on Sunday for the before and after. It's been two and a half weeks, they say it takes three weeks to form a habit. 

Work is still intense, just as I think I've turned a corner, my workload just bounces back with vengeance. I think another three weeks of this crazy workload and then I should have caught up - to be clear, I'm not behind, because of me. I'm behind because my company restructured and I got an extra project which I'm not meant to have. FUCK MY LIFE. 

*ramble ramble* I'm getting a new tattoo in a couple of weeks with my sister. We are both getting cats on our inner biceps. Mine will be a manky, creepy alley cat. Hers will be a tribal cutesy cat. I'm excited about that.

*ramble ramble* Ramble... why do they call it rambling? I mean - doesn't sound phonetic... Is sounding phonetic an oxymoron? 

Everybody wants to be a cat. Because the cat's the only cat who knooooooooows who it's at. I'm blank? 

Who knooooooooooooooooooooooows who it's at. 

Love & Cats

Xo Xo

Motivation Comes From Strange Places

Today's motivation came in the form of the trip to Atlantic City - basically, I have to go convince a tiny industry of around 1000 people to spend money on our project - about a quarter of a million pounds worth. Today's motivation therefore comes from the fact that the majority of the people in the industry are middle aged men. This of course means that I need to stand out. Power dress if you will. The plan is therefore to go get a sexy fucking wardrobe. I'm basically going to make sure that I look classy hot for two days. The joy of course is that I need to have as flat a stomach as possible before that. Now, I'm not convinced that the working out is helping, but I kinda think it is. Anyway, so I've yet to miss a workout, today is no exception - although I've got to still do it. I did also say that I'm going to do a before and after - and I promise I still will. I'll do it on Sunday regardless of what I look like - promise :)

Today's intake has been fine (considering I still need to workout) - Coffee (130), soup (210), pomegranate (50), beans and cheese on mash (400), yoghurt (100) andddd some hot chocolate, which I'm still to drink (100) - 990 for the day. The workout will be around 300 cals burned, so I'm okay. Still not weighing myself. 

I hope I don't become obsessed with working out, but knowing how much I hate exercising, it seems unlikely. 

Love & Kettlebells

Xo Xo 

zZzZzz

The only thing of significance that happened today is that my flights were booked to Atlantic City, so Jerseyshore HERE I COME! I'm quite excited about it. I'm still fat, even though I am doing well with the working out. I've had a coffee with honey (100), soup for lunch (200), potato with beans and cheese (400) and a small coffee (50) - so 750 total - I can live with that. 

Love & Boardwalk

Xo Xo

I'm About To Try A Jillian Michaels Workout...

... WISH ME LUCK!

I'm literally feeling the worst I've ever felt about myself. I'm going to commit to a yoga class once a week, a 5k run on a Saturday morning and a kettlebell workout every two days, so I'm hoping that the results will start soon, because I don't actually think I could feel worse about myself and I've never done this much exercise consistently in my life and I'm just getting fatter and fatter. I've worked out two days in a row and now I'm going to do a third. Literally, I weighed myself yesterday and it was BRUTAL. And no, sadly it isn't muscle because girls only gain 0.5 - 1lb of muscle a week, so. It's all just nasty fat. From me eating like a disgusting pig. I'm trying to keep it at 1000 - 1200 cals on a workout day, but the last few days it has been more. Fatter and fatter. But dedication and hard work and it should start coming off. I hope.

Jillian Michaels, I'm gonna do it. Let's hope tomorrow is better.

Peace & Love
Xo Xo

I Weighed... And It WASN'T Good.

Yeah, I weighed myself and it was NOT good ... and to prove my point about myself - I immediately binged. Fuck. Sakes. It wasn't a bad binge, but it was two Chinese dishes and a small bag of prawn crackers. Yeaaaaah. It wasn't good, but it did put this into perspective for me. I also can't understand how I weighed so much. Well obviously, muscle weighs more than fat - but I must just be fucking fat if I weighed that much. So yeah - it may be time to get that intake down a bit more. I'm gonna weigh again on Monday. I have worked out religiously every two days for the past two weeks. ANYWAY, I just don't know do I? Fuck. 

Fuck & More Fucks

Xo Xo

Brewing On A Thought

This isn't really anything related to my normal trend of thought on this blog, but it's something that has been stewing for a while in my head... I struggle with the idea of working for a living and the daily grind. The idea that one works hard and exhausts oneself in the pursuit of money - the idea that one can potentially never be happy working. Then I'm confronted with the conundrum of what I learnt while I was working from home for a year - which is that one needs a daily purpose to prevent the despair and depression that comes along with ambling through life. 

I wonder sometimes if the purpose of having a job is greater than just earning money and going to work because one HAS TO - the idea that as humans, in all our glorious flaws, HAVE to have a purpose towards which we have to strive in order to feel fulfilled. I think maybe this may mean different things for different people - money, actual career or work... I dunno. 

Then going back to the original conflict, the idea that we go to work are told how to dress, when to arrive and leave, when to eat and have no say in our peers around us, yet we are told that we are free... in democracy. We are not free... Then, you have the Heideggers school of thought that freedom isn't the absence of restraint. I don't know. 

Does this make any sense? When I'm sitting on the tube home in the evenings feeling exhausted and stressed out I sometimes think about why I do this to myself and whether it is actually necessary for me to put myself through this daily... but then - do I actually need it? Am I a slave to my own need to be busy? 

I don't know if I am making any sense. 

Peace & Love

Xo Xo

Staying Upbeat When You're Disheartened

I feel a bit defeated today... :( 

I am defeated by work, because it feels like I'm running on a hamster wheel and my projects are just not doing very well and I don't know what I can do to fix them or if it's just me. Am I the problem? My colleague, who is NOT half as good as I am... maybe she is good and I'm just the problem is getting to go on uber important business missions to Central America for weeks at a time and I can't even get to my shit. It's like they are working me like a dog on shit projects and then freeing up her schedule so she can go on amazing trips. I'm just bleak. I've finally made the decision that I'm going to go back into law, so I'll start my LPC next April. Time to be a lawyer, I'm sick of being in this role, even though the travelling is great. 

I'm defeated by my body. I'm working hard to not binge and I still haven't - legit, have not binged in two weeks, haven't weighed and HAVE worked out every two days since last Sunday - I even threw in a bonus day yesterday, but fuck it. I don't look any thinner, I don't look any more toned. I just don't feel like it's working. I mean - is this it? I finally get to a good place where I don't want to obsess over my weight on the scale and instead am taking to a binge-free, scale-free, exercising lifestyle and I'm still disgusting and fat? HOW DO NORMAL PEOPLE DO THIS!? I don't want to crack and go back. I don't want to binge and starve anymore - I just DON'T WANT THAT!!!!! But if this doesn't work then what the fuck am I going to do? I'm going to weigh myself on Monday next week and if the scale isn't reflecting, I think this "healthy" phase might be over. 

Fucking bleakers, yo. Fucking. Bleakers. 

Kak & Despair

Xo Xo

It's All Fault For Fat Shaming ME! #obsessed

I had a really interesting conversation with a girlfriend of mine yesterday and I've been thinking about it a lot. So I thought I'd share it here, because context to this discussion is that my BFF, who still lives in Cape Town is grossly overweight. About 220lbs is my guess. Nonetheless, her major issue is that she can't control her portions and her intake. She really is a textbook case of an emotional overeater. But she also plays into her weaknesses and won't take any control of it - i.e. her issues are her issues and she is too helpless to overcome them. BE THAT AS IT MAY - we both have one person in our lives who we are a tiny bit obsessed with. Before I get to that, let me back up. 

We were having a conversation about my eating situation at the moment and how I've given up weighing for exercising. That is however a different thing entirely. SO, we were talking about this and it got onto the subject of fat shaming. Basically, a few weeks ago she got fat shamed badly by a girl who she considers to be a good friend of hers. Something along the lines of: "I've only put on my weight in the last two years, but I feel so sorry for you that you've let yourself get like this." In her words, she was annoyed. On the one hand, I'm like - bitch, you ARE FAT! How can you be surprised that people pity you - I PITY YOU. (She is also on tinder at the moment and has posted pics of herself where she looks a normal size - and I rue the day that she goes on a date and finds out that men need to know you're fat prior to the date, because when you show up and they are expecting a thin girl, you are FUCKED! Just be honest about your appearance, it will hurt less in the long run!)

ANYWAY, so we were talking about how fat shaming is just unacceptable and how my eating disorder (and her over-eating disorder to some extent) was brought on by this idea that someone had fat shamed me. Now this fat shaming came in a number of different forms - it came from all the numerous men who had hit on my skinny friends, but not me. It came from my grandfather who said (when I was 13) that I needed to go on diet after our holiday because of my stomach. It came from the (NUMEROUS) insensitive jokes from people over the years asking me if I was pregnant, because my luck - my weight all sits on my stomach. It comes from being the fat friend. It comes from being the fat daughter. It comes from wanting so desperately to be skinny to have what my thin friends had - attention. Positive attention. It comes from me not thinking that I am good enough for any of my boyfriends, because skinnier girls hit on them and OBVIOUSLY that's more attractive than me. 

Tying into this is a girl named Vicky. I met Vicky at a music festival called RAMFest, where she was camping next to us with her boyfriend at the time... whose name I forget. ANYWAY, Vicky was tiny - short and petite with the most BANGING petite body, skinny and toned. She was covered in tattoos, had a couple of cute piercings and punky short bright red hair. She walked around in a bikini the entire festival long. I was there with Roy, we had just hooked up and this was our first outing together. When it came to Vicky, I wanted to BE her. She had attitude, was alternative, smart and a total badass. Most of all, she had the appearance that I wish I had - pixie. I looked at Roy and I looked at her and I just thought - there is no way Roy and I will ever work out, because I will never look like that. Through her being her normal awesome self, she had fat shamed me. She had done absolutely nothing wrong, but she had shamed me. 

Because of that over the years, I've kept tabs on Vicky. Over the years, she has made a series of bad decisions about her appearance - bad tattoes, bad hair, bad piercings and CLEARLY bad dietary choices. Vicky has put on rather a lot of weight over the years. Every time a new picture on facebook of Vicky comes up, I send it to my BFF and we discuss how she's let herself go and I can't believe how big she is. I secretly fat shame Vicky. Never to her face obviously, because 1) the only reason I have her on fb is to stalk, not because we are friends and 2) she'd probably kick my ass all up and down the curb. 

So when I was talking to my bestie about how awful and pathetic people are that fat shame, she mentioned Vicky and how I/we fat shame her, albeit secretly. (FYI - my BFF also has a person like this, except unlike Vicky and I, she's gotten thin, while my BFF has gotten fat.) 

I don't really know what the point of this post was in all honesty. I mean - I find it ironic how the person who did nothing wrong to me, except just be her awesome self, someone I envied was one of the many people who unintentionally fat shamed me because of my own insecurities about my weight and I would easily point a finger at them for fat shaming me - is it a crime to be skinny!? Meanwhile, I am the real villain in this whole story, because I fat shamed myself and now, I fat shame her. (AGAIN, I would never do that to her face. TWO-FACED!)

I just thought I'd share this story with y'all. 

Peace & Love

Xo Xo

Still Not Weighing

Yeah, so I still have not stepped on a scale in absolute age, but the funny thing is, I haven't binged either. I technically haven't binged in two weeks - I haven't had a big intake (more than 1500) since last week Saturday. So actually, I'm doing well. My intake for today has been somewhere in the region of 1000 which consisted of a salad for lunch, tiny bowl of olive tapenade pasta for dinner, a pudidng cup, coffee with honey and two skinny hot chocs. I haven't worked out today, but am quite stiff from yesterday's workout. I've got another one to do tomorrow. I'm still really confused about how this is all going down... would be interested to hear from anyone who maybe has found the same thing? At the same time when I post my before-and-after kettlebell pic, which will be next Sunday, I'm going to weigh too. I'm really hoping the results will look good. 

Tell me why it helps to not weigh in? Tell me why I feel more in control by not weighing?

I am so confused. 

In Control & Confused

Xo Xo

London Fashion Week

So FINALLY this year I'm going to actually make it to fashion week in London. To say that I'm excited would be an understatement. I have literally always wanted to go since I was a teenager. I booked my tickets yesterday and I'm so mutantly excited. This of course does mean that I can't eat for a week and the day before I am running a 5k mud-run in Finsbury Park in aid of breast cancer (Cancer Research UK). So hopefully, I'll be decently skinny before then. I'm going to be working out with my kettlebell every two days now. I've only done it twice mind you, but like whatever. I'm not feeling any different. I did promise that I was going to do a before and after pic - which I will. I'll do one next week Sunday which will be two weeks in. I think that's 7 workouts. So hopefully, it will look impressive ;). 

I still haven't weighed myself and I've been restricting, but not calorie counting (LIAR, I can't even stop myself anymore) ... well. More like - I'm not obsessively calorie counting anymore. Well, at the moment. I've keen doing around 800 - 1200 for the past two weeks and haven't really binged. I'd be interested to see what my weight is, but don't feel the need to weigh right now. 

I don't know how to explain it. It's like... the pressure isn't there anymore and it's kinda like I don't feel the need to binge if I cheat or have something I know I shouldn't because it doesn't feel like I've got to face the scale tomorrow. And you know when that happens, you just go on a massive binge, because you've fucked the scale so now you are just going to fuck it properly and start again tomorrow. Does that make sense? I'm sure it makes sense.

My intake today was coffee with milk and honey, a chickpea salad for lunch, tiny bit of pasta with olive tapenade and a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese. As a reward for working out, I'm going to have a small mug of low cal hot chocolate, a pudding cup and some pomegranate. Sounds like a ton doesn't it? (Reality - around 1000 cals, I can't live with that)

Love & Fash-Ho

Xo Xo

Just When Things Get Good

So I tried my new kettlebell yesterday, as I said - and I am stiff today, but not unbearably so. I'm aiming to workout every second day, so today I don't have to which is just as fucking well because I worked an 11 hour day today at work and just got home. I'm still not weighing myself and it's fucking liberating. The whole weekend I didn't actually binge - not like terribly anyway. I mean, I definitely didn't go over 2000 on Friday or Saturday... Yesterday ended up being fine. Today's intake was also okay - I'm trying not to obsess. I really do feel liberated... I don't know what has changed with me all of a sudden - like I can't be arsed to obsessively count calories right now? Am I recovering? I don't really know what's going on? I'm really confused, because I don't want to eat more and I still want to be thin - but I don't want to weigh myself and I don't want to like.. Yeah - I don't actually know. This has never happened to me before... 

Also, HAPPY 3 YEAR ANNIVERSARY TO ME!!! August 26th was the 3 year anniversary of my blog - how mental is that? I feel like I need to do a belated birthday edition or something. 

ANYWAY AND so despite being stiff and not having a terrible intake for the last week or so, I'm so fucking bloated - my stomach is literally distended. It's disgusting. I do have my period though, so that is why, but it's awful. I don't know how pregnant people do this - it's SO uncomfortable. Awful. 

Bloated & Confused

Xo Xo

Making Progress

So I've been trying a couple of things differently for the past week and I feel like I need to share these. The first thing is that I haven't weighed myself in two weeks. My intake has been good - around 1000 - 1200 and not having the pressure of stepping on the scale every morning makes it a little bit easier to accept that kind of intake. I don't feel like I am being fat, because I don't feel full. But I'm also not beating myself up. ALSO, I don't feel the need to binge at the moment. I mean, I don't really know what has changed for me, but I think I might keep going with not weighing for a little while. Maybe I'll weigh once a week... dunno. Maybe. 

The other thing that I've been doing is kettlebell workouts. Okay, not workouts. I bought one last week online, because carrying a huge thing home was gonna be too much for me, but then it hasn't arrived, because the courier is useless. So I cancelled that order and went to buy one from the store. I did my first workout an hour ago and my muscles are useless and shaky. Because, I've never been a workout person. I mean - I have no muscles. I'm determined to look good though. I want to have some muscles and feel strong. 

I don't know what's going on with me right now, but there it is. 

... I have something else that I need advice on, but don't have time to write about it right now, so I'll post again a bit later. It's a bit of a boy drama... which confuses me... and DON'T WORRY - it isn't about Roy. :) 

Strength & Love 

Xo Xo

American Ninja Warrior

Does anyone else watch this? I know I'm a bit of a lad when it comes to my tv watching habits, but I'm totally obsessed with it. The reason I'm asking if y'all watch it is because on the ep that I watched tonight there is a guy on the episode I'm watching right now that recovered from the depths of ana (m-ana - LOL, manorexia, yes I know I shouldn't joke) because of the show. Basically he saw the show and how the perfect athletic body is strong and capable, so he gained 60lbs of muscle in 6 months. On the face of it, one might say that this is inspirational. But... My thoughts on the matter tend to be a little bit more cynical and the idea that one can recover from going from one extreme (skinny) to another extreme (kick-ass athlete) in that amount of time... Doesn't it sound like 'recovery' to me. But then again, I'm not a shrink, nor do I know him - but knowing what I know about this, I'm cynical. Anyway, judge for yourselves - his name is Brant Axt. This to me is particularly the case because his anorexia stemmed from believing that skinny is the way an athlete is meant to look, then on discovering that an athlete should look differently, he went straight to that extreme. I mean I dunno - am I just being a dick? 

http://minnesotaparkour.com/aotw-brant-axt/ 

https://twitter.com/brantaxt 

What do you guys think?

Peace & Love

Xo Xo

My Newest Purchase Is *drum roll*

A KETTLEBELL! That's right folks, I have purchased a piece of exercise equipment. I really want a flat tummy and since I am clearly FUCKING SHIT at starving myself, I'm gonna have to substitute my lack of discipline and disgusting fat habits with some exercise. I'm going to post a before and after pic - 1 month. I want to try for three times a week of working out for 1 month. I've found some videos on youtube that look simple enough. I AM DOING THIS! And keeping my intake down below 1000 for the whole of September. I'm so tired of this cycle of binging and starving, like. I'm just so sick of it. I just want to consistently eat 1000 cals a day. Is that so hard? Apparently it is. Anyway, I've got to try something different, because I'm just failing. I lose two pounds, I gain them back. Fuck, I'm so tired of binging and starving. I've been doing this for 10 years now. I wish I could stop. I'm not thin enough to be ano, I don't purge so I'm not mia, but this cycle is just disgusting. I just want to stop binging. I hate binging. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. 

My flights for Johannesburg are booked for October, I really wish I could go to Vegas instead like I was meant to... Man, things are heating up. I'm going to need to buckle down and hibernate for September and October to get my shit done. I can DO THIS! 

Wish me luck?

Peace & Strength

Xo Xo