Christmas Wishes...

This week I weighed myself for the first time since making the 'momentous' ( for me at least ) decision to have two days away from the gym each week. I braced myself, saying that I had to expect it to have gone up, but that this would be OKAY because I had taken a deliberate step towards this, hence I was still in control. But it was still quite a few moments before I could open my eyes after stepping on the scales.

And....no change. I checked again and again but the line hadn't moved. There are several reasons why this could be the case - a bad reaction to an injection earlier in the week which gave me a mini- outbreak of flu, feeling dreadfully sick over the weekend which put me off my food.... But the short answer is, it looks like I haven't done enough. 

According to the media, it is all too easy to put on weight, but it is like a complete guessing game for me. I have forgotten just how much my body can take in and use to perform at its best, before any 'excess calories' even begin to turn to fat. The body is wonderfully flexible - if you starve it of fuel, it will slow down to compensate, the metabolism will become depressed so that you can keep 'ticking over' on a lower budget. I think of it like a fire, and the difference you see when a stack of kindling is suddenly thrown on it - the flames whoosh up and the beast becomes alive! Right now, I am more like the glowing embers left when nearly all has turned to ash. I've forgotten just how alive I could feel and don't know how much 'kindling' it willt take to get me back up to my optimal level.

The worst part of it all was that part of me was secretly pleased that I hadn't put on weight. The old pressures and guilt are still there, like rot, even though part of me wants to cry every time I go in to work at my new job, knowing it isn't my research PhD. These two opposite parts of me, tugging my resolve in different directions, are ones that I've lived with for so long that the thought of trying to untangle them and challenge the wrong one simply exhausts me.

Thank you for reading this over the festive season, when you doubtlessly have many preparations of your own to do. I hope you and all your family have a truly blessed Christmas and that you feel the Joy and wonder of the festival of Christ's Birth. You might wonder how I cope at this time with the onslaught of excess and the suggestion that we eat like kings every day. I do struggle, but I am also fascinated by it all - amazed that anyone could eat such rich food without worry, as part of a social celebration. I often glance through the Christmas food catalogues, or linger by the supermarket 'Festive Fayre' shelves - just looking at it all. But if you offered me a bowl of Christmas pudding, a platter of calorific canapés, a Yuletide eggnog.... I couldn't touch it for the sudden nausea of fear it would induce. Everything at this time of year seems to,be s loaded bombshell of untrackable calories...

So what do I want for Christmas? I'd like to be able to end each day without the conviction that, no matter what else I had 'achieved ' that day, there was still something fundamentally wrong that I hadn't addressed, that was keeping me back from where I want to be. I suppose that means I want the strength to challenge myself, to go through the pain and discomfort and reach the other side.

Merry Christmas!