This bank holiday I...

1. Went to the anti-coagulant clinic every day

As I mentioned in my post on Friday, my INR reading had gone down, i.e. not the right direction. This has meant my warfarin dosage has been bumped up and a visit every day to keep an eye on it. I am also now injecting myself with Fragmin, a fast-acting anti-coagulant, in an attempt to thin my blood out more quickly. Injecting myself was a quite frankly terrifying prospect but it's not a big deal anymore, I just have to grab a load of fat on my stomach (I knew there had to be a good reason for me being overweight!) and stick the needle in. It doesn't hurt too much, just a little scratch and I feel very brave when I do it.

At the time of posting my INR is stuck resolutely at 1.7 and has been for the past 3 days. It just doesn't seem to be onboard with the whole concept of thinning out. I'm now taking 10mg of warfarin, which is a pretty hefty dose, and injecting the fragmin every day. I'm back at the clinic on Friday afternoon so fingers crossed there'll be a 2 on the machine!

2. Went to a barbeque.

We were undeterred by the rubbish weather because we are hard. BBQs suck when you're on Weightwatchers because there are way too many points on offer. It is very annoying. But I did my best and had quite a bit of the sweetcorn because that's all good. It was also one of the first times I was surrounded by drunk people and not being one of them. It was strange. And annoying.

3. Attended a stitch-a-thon.

One of our Stitch & Bitch group is off to Ghana for a couple of weeks in August to a charity she worked with before. They are currently trying to raise funds to buy a landrover to get between villages and we held an all day stitch in at a cafe in Hull. We had a little bucket and told friends and family and people came and stuck change in our bucket and admired our stitchery activities and we managed to raise £115. Not a bad day considering we basically wanted an excuse to sit about and stitch all day. I managed to start and finish this piece for the exhibition at the end of the month.
4. Did some crocheting.

Oooh what does that picture look like? Does it look like I've joined all my squares together? Oh hell yes. I managed to join all my squares together after a lot of dramatics and eye-rolling and squeals of temper. Now there is just the edging to do (no idea what I'm doing with that) and it is finished. Can't quite believe it.

5. Revelled in getting an extra day off

Although I generally think of work as something which gets in the way of doing the things I really want to do, I have to admit that sometimes it has its benefits. One of those being that we get an extra 3 days holiday a year for free - usually the Tuesday after the last bank holiday in May, the Tuesday after the August bank holiday and a day at Christmas. I didn't do much with today, especially as it's rained all freaking day but any day at home is better than a day at work.

6. Picked up two visitors
Mum is off to stay with my sister for a few days so we have taken delivery of Fred and Lily. So far they have mainly slept. I keep going in to the bedroom and fussing and poking them but they've been resolutely boring. This is why they bug us at 3am - they sleep all frickin' day.

7. Got my bake on
Haven't baked since starting Weightwatchers because the thought of finding out how many points were in the stuff I was making made my brain bleed a little bit. However, the WW website has some recipes and today I made banana and Malteser muffins. Only 4 points each, thus eliminating the guilt out of eating something 'bad'. I will be rewarding myself with one tonight because I just found out I've lost another 2.5 pounds (meaning there's officially 10.5lbs less of me than there was 3 weeks ago).

Believe it or not, there's a soup recipe in here.

Poor Weightwatchers. I started out so full of hope and promise and had a whole 2 days counting points and getting used to the system. But then the embolism happened and it all fell by the wayside. I did try to be dedicated. I even kept track of what I was eating for the first few days, but when it became apparent I was going to be in for a while I decided to write the week off. I did try and remain on best behaviour though. When Mum came to see me on my first day in hospital I accepted the Nutrigrain bars and satsumas but made her take the massive bag of mini cheddars and the funsize Mars bars home.

However it turns out that I was to find myself on a much more productive diet than Weightwatchers. It’s called the Hospital Diet and basically someone tries to feed you the worst food imaginable. So bad that you actually start to develop a bit of a phobia of it and dread the appearance of the mealtime trolley. So horrendous that you end up just ordering salads which you will try to eat but will lose the will to live half way through due to the lack of dressing or salt and pepper. You’ll also develop a rabid fear of coleslaw – NHS Hull and East Riding seem to think that approximately half a ton of coleslaw is required when you have a salad.

Once I was on the outside I did resume my Weightwatchers (apart from Saturday when I went mental and had a Macdonalds for lunch and a steak the size of my head for dinner) meaning that I’ve spent a grand total of 5 days on the plan. Yesterday was my first weigh in I have lost the grand total of 8lbs in 2 weeks. (I'll leave some room for applause now.)


The Hospital Diet was an excellent kick in the right direction, and having lost so much in one go I actually have an incentive to carry on losing weight.

So I guess if I’ve committed to lose this weight I’d better, you know, lose weight and to this end I have nominated my former arch enemy, soup, to help me with this task.

I’m thinking I need all the help I can get until I’m able to step foot in the gym again (the date has been set, next week sees the return of the gym as a regular horrifying feature in my life) so the soup book is out, many many interesting looking recipes have been bookmarked and I am determined to make soup my new best friend.

First on the list was Carrot soup. Mainly because I already had all the ingredients and just needed to buy a leek to complete the list (I will hold my hands up, I’ve never bought a leek before. I’ve just never had a use for one it would seem).

I can see why people are fans of the soupagement. It doesn’t really take that long to make. Most of them require fairly minimal ingredients or rely on stock-cupboard stores. And it’s only just dawned on me how freakin’ cheap it is to make! Why did I not have this revelation sooner?!

This soup is nice although I couldn’t help but feel it was lacking a little something. Probably carrots seeing as I intended to make this soup a week before I injured my ankle and when I opened the bag I discovered that half the buggers had gone off, so I was about 100g short of carroty goodness.

Carrot Soup
- 1 onion, finely diced
- 1 leek, finely sliced
-450g carrots, peeled and grated
- 2 pints vegetable stock
- 150ml natural yoghurt (optional)
- 1 tbsp chives (optional)

- In a large pan with a splash of oil, stir onions and leek, season with salt and leave to sweat for 3 minutes before stirring in the carrots.
- Cover and cook for a further 5 minutes.
- Bring stock to the boil and pour over the vegetables, cover and simmer for 6-7 minutes.
- Liquidize and then season to taste
- Optional - stir in cream and chives


Recipe from here

It’s still nice even if I was a little short on carrots. It was also not watery, an essential for me in the soup stakes. If it’s watery it’s just too annoying to eat.

And it made a good 4 portions (probably 5 if you’re like me and wanted to eek it out that little bit further) out it which has meant that your lunches for the week are sorted, as long as you don’t mind being a creature of habit for a whole week.

If you speak Weightwatchers this next sentence will mean something to you, the rest of you, look away now please...

...it has zero points. Zilch. Not one. (As long as you don’t add the natural yoghurt that is and I don’t feel the poorer for missing it out.) My only points at lunchtime comes from the slice of toast I have my soup, I can’t eat a bowl of soup on its own, I’m pretty sure that’s illegal.

Fat Camp

I have lost many a friend to the cult of Weightwatchers.

People seem to join and immediately turn into incredibly anal bores who delight in telling you how many points are in that piece of cake you’re about to enjoy. Whenever I think of WW I think of a friend who joined and turned up for a night at the cinema with a little freezer bag containing some penny sweets. She was ridiculously excited because she’d saved up her points to allow herself this treat. She talked about it some more but I couldn’t hear her over the handfuls of popcorn I was shovelling into my mouth.

I really do not want to become that person.

And so I haven’t told a lot of people that I’m doing it.

I don’t handle pressure very well, as the recent family drama I went through highlights. If I knew that people knew I was on the ol’ WW I would start to feel them looking at me, looking to see if I was losing weight, looking to see what I was troughing, wondering why I didn’t look like Kate Moss in a month. Most likely all in my head I understand but such is the life of someone consumed with paranoia.

I’m hoping the secret thing will work twofold – I can attempt to lose weight almost pressure-free and I won’t become a WW bore because I can’t give the game away by telling them how many points are in that digestive they’re about to dunk in their tea.

So I hope you feel privileged, knowing all about it.

Yesterday was my first day and it was with quite a bit of fear that I approached the scales. I don’t have scales at home so I can’t weigh myself but I had an inkling. But I had an inkling in the way that you think something’s going to be a certain way but there’s a part of you that secretly hopes it’ll be entirely different.

My inkling was right. The figure was official and was noted down in my little leaflet. It was like someone had taken a huge stamp and BOOM made it official. No escape for me now. I have to be committed, I can’t have a few days of being good and then kid myself that I can have 2 weeks of being bad as a reward, I have to be permanently good because I know that judgement day is only a week away.

God.

I’ve had fun, looking through my little book which tells me the points value of a few common things and I have a little Pointsfinder which is a grid which will allow me to work out the Points value of certain foods based on calories and saturated fat.

I think there’s going to be a certain element of annoyance as I get used to what things have how many points in them and there’ll have to be a certain amount of planning that goes on where meals are concerned.

But. For now. I feel positive.

Until next Tuesday...

The Girl vs The Soup

Some time ago Petit Filoux threw down a challenge. I had to fight the Battle of the Soup.

I had made the foolish mistake of revealing that I don’t really like soup. I am aware that this will bring gasps of horror from some of you, it does from most people. “What do you mean you don’t like soup?!” I just....don’t like it.

I don’t mean that I absolutely will not eat it and never let it touch my lips. Just that there is always going to be something I would rather have on the menu.

If I’m in a situation where soup is unavoidable or inevitable I quite like it, it’s not a horrifying experience, it’s just...boring. Maybe it’s that I have a need to chew. If I haven’t chewed then I don’t feel like I’ve eaten anything.

My dislike of soup extended to epic levels when I was in my first year at university. I got my tongue pierced and was warned by the scary man covering in tattoos and metal that my tongue would swell up to twice it’s normal size and I wouldn’t be able to eat anything other than soup.

I kind of wished he’d told me that before he’d shoved a titanium rod through my tongue.

It did indeed swell to twice its normal size, although contrary to popular belief I was still perfectly capable of talking and swallowing. My Mum, who I hadn’t told I’d had it done, asked me if I had a cold one day but otherwise didn’t suspect a thing.

Eating was an issue though. And I even bought lots of soup. I had soup coming out of my ears. But I just couldn’t bring myself to eat it. Instead I would sit with a sandwich and tear of really small bits of it and then push it to the back of my mouth, letting my molars get some action. It would take me about half an hour but I certainly showed that soup a thing or two.

But Petit Filoux told me I had to make this soup and I’m afraid I can’t turn down that kind of challenge. Plus if I am going to have my life taken over by WW then apparently soup is the way forward. (I should have known that soup and the notion of losing weight would join forces against me one day.)

And if soup is the way forward then this guy is the standard bearer behind which all other soups must get in line.

Red Lentil and Chickpea love

It is very tasty, with more than a kick of spice (I may have gone slightly overboard with the chilli flakes) which is nicely cooled down with a little bit of greek yoghurt. If I had to have a soup then a tomato-based one would be first in line so this baby ticks all the boxes and most importantly, it’s filling. It will fill you up like a....well I don’t know what it’ll fill you up like, but it will.

I was a little daunted by the chickpeas to begin with. I like my soup smooth and most certainly do not like those bloody horrible ‘Big Soups’ with slimy chunks of vegetable and potato in them.

*gag*

But actually I didn’t really notice them, I didn’t feel like they had a massive impact, I could probably happily make the soup again without them and it wouldn’t be the worse for it.

So I am souping it up all this week at work. The recipe made 4 big bowls, (This is where WW is going to kill me because I’m going to find out that actually I should be having about half that amount) and they are in little individual boxes, ready to make the journey into work to be scoffed down with a bread roll – thus satisfying the mouth’s need to have something to chew.

So impressed was I that I got out the never touched Soup Recipe Book and began tearing up strips of paper with gusto, bookmarking all the soups that I would like to make in the future. I expect this blog will soon be re-named Living in a Soup Bowl.

Has soup ruled victorious and conquered me once and for all?

Not completely. At the moment he serves a purpose so we have come to an uneasy truce. It’ll be a long time before I bow down and kiss his sloppy feet.

But congratulations must go to Petit Filoux (and her boyfriend who I hope now feels calmer about my admission of soup hatred) for making me see the error of my ways and forcing me to confront my demons.

If you would like the recipe (and why the hell wouldn't you after this acesome review?!), then why don’t you have a clickety click HERE.

The thorny issue of weight loss

Once upon a time a girl went out on a date.

She’d met the guy in a bar on a drunken night out, and in a moment of madness given him her number. He asked her out for a date and she hesitated but thought “Why not?”

On the date she asked him what he did for his job and he gave her possibly the worst answer she could have heard...

“I work in a gym.”

Her blood ran cold. How had she managed to end up on a date with Mr Fit?! There hadn’t been any warning signs, he’d looked completely normal in her vodka-induced haze. She was a girl who didn’t do gyms. There had been gym literally outside her flat for 2 years and she could barely muster the effort to go there twice a week. She was a size 16 and fairly happy with it. Yeah she could be slimmer, yeah her muscles could be tighter, but she did ok in life.

She wondered if they could ever really be compatible. If his life was so focused on being fit and healthy and hers really wasn’t, could the two of them ever get along? She didn’t like to think that it could get in the way so she decided it would probably be fine.

She went out with him for a long year and half.

She wanted to be thinner, he said he would help her. He wrote her gym programmes and she went to the gym like a good little gym bunny. She almost got to the point where she enjoyed going.

The problem was the food. She just pure and simple straight up loved it. Any kind of food. All kinds of food. What greater pleasure is there than eating a good meal?

However when the girl was with Mr Fit she constantly found herself feeling guilty. Feeling guilty for eating a big bag of Sensations all to herself. Feeling guilty for ordering the ‘bad thing’ on the menu. Feeling the judgement when she ate something loaded with fat and calories.

She was in short, miserable. Thinner. But less happy.

And then he left her for someone else anyway.

The lesson she learned was that if someone is that focused on that kind of lifestyle and the other person isn’t then the two just won’t work together. She wasn’t prepared to ever be made to feel guilty for enjoying herself when it was doing no harm to anyone else.

Fast forward two years later...

The girl weighs more than she ever has done. She lives with a boy now and understand that that’s the price you pay for being a good little girlfriend and making all the meals and wanting to don a pinny and bake cakes.

But she knows she’s too fat. She knows that even though she’s nearly 5’10” and can secrete the weight about herself much more easily than someone who is 5’5”, that there’s nowhere for the weight to hide anymore.

She’s signed up to the gym but hates going. Now that there isn’t the constant pressure of going out with Mr Fit it’s hard to find the energy to go.

People say to her “You have to lose weight for you” but she doesn’t really know what that means. How do you know when you’re losing weight for you? Are you losing weight to feel more attractive? What is it that makes you think that you are unattractive – is that you want people to admire you? Surely that means that you’re losing weight for other people? Isn’t it their problem if they don’t fancy you? Are you losing weight because it’s a nightmare finding clothes that fit you? Doesn’t that mean you’re losing weight to conform to what Topshop says you should be wearing?

It’s as if society can’t conceive of the notion that you might be happy being a tubster.
Will she become a different person if she loses a few stone? Will that radically change her personality? She hopes not because she thinks she’s a pretty ok person as she is and what faults she does have don’t have anything to do with her thunder thighs.

Will you love her more if she’s a size 12? (She’s realistic, to be any less she’d have to live on licking on celery stalk once a day and miraculously alter her bone structure.) If so then she doesn’t really need you as part of her life thanks.

Do you hang around with her because she’s a nice person and fun to be around or because she can wear skinny jeans?

Will she be a better daughter/sister/cousin/niece/auntie if she has a lower BMI?

It’s all a little confusing.

And then someone says the words she dreads even more than “I work in a gym”. Someone asks her if she wants to join Weightwatchers with them. This girl is Weightwatcher-phobic. She knows that everyone that does it thinks it’s amazing but she also knows a lot of people that have done it and become world class bores, recounting in great detail how many points there are in that slice of carrot cake you’re eating and extolling the virtues of WW’s like brain-washed converts.

She hates the thought of counting points and keeping a track of what she’s eating, it would make food the centre of her life and not in a good way. It makes food an ‘issue’ and not something just to be enjoyed. She has friends that have fallen down the slippery slope of eating disorders and one who still hasn’t made it back up. She’s all too aware of the dangers that come with obsessing about food. Her friend says that she became anorexic because she wanted to gain control in her life, but surely isn’t the disease and the concept of food controlling her? How far of a hop, skip and a jump away is it from counting points? One day you’re counting up to your allowance, the next you’re thinking to yourself, “Hell what if I just took another point off, surely I’d lose more weight? And what about another and another?”

But the girl figures she might as well give it a go.

If nothing else she’ll probably get fuel for some blog posts out of it.



PS For the record. The boyfriend loves me just the way I am. He knows I have issues with my weight and when I mentioned WW he said that if it made me happy then he was all for it.


PPS And another disclaimer. I'm not dissing Weightwatchers here, it's more a general outpouring of thoughts and feelings regarding the whole subject of dieting and weight loss. I am walking into WW with a positive attitude. Really!