Weird Week

First off, I know, It's been nearly a whole week since I last blogged but seriously, it's been up and down all the way.

I am struggling with controlling my binges again (no purges thank god) so I joined an online forum for weight loss'ers to get some support. Initially it was very good and responses to my plea for help were encouraging. Since then though, zero communication. Which has kind of left me in the wilderness, floundering like the proverbial beached Whale and feeling like I've just been dumped.

I had planned to run but that didn't happen either! I seem to know what I have to do but have no ability to get up off the sofa and do it unless my super fit body pump teaching friend drags me!

Last negative thought, is that I need to find a Halloween outfit for my sister in laws party and all I can think off is buying an orange cat suit and going as a pumpkin!

So! I cannot be a pumpkin every year and action is needed. It's become obvious that I cannot do this alone so I've decided to go back to Slimming World (SW). I like sw because it's the most flexible plan I've ever done and I don't get bored so easily when I'm doing it :-)

I tried sw about 5 years ago and I think I only gave it up because the instructor was a joke! It was like candid camera bad! For those of you who know the programme Little Britain? Think Marjory Dawes and your there. Seriously. This woman told the class that there was no point in doing any exercise because she'd been on a treadmill once and burnt off a toffee! Another time she was trying to sell us Quorn sausages and we had ONE guy in a class full of about 20 women and he happened to be Asian. So she's there telling us all the things you can do with a Quorn sausage and she turns round to this guy and goes "And you can put them in a curry!". As if the poor guy wasn't shy enough, that was just blatantly prejudiced and needless to say he never came back again. I don't blame him.

However, despite my previous instructors stupidity, I have moved house now and and I'm willing to give in another go with a different instructor. Fingers crossed it works this time!

On the work front, I've got an appointment next Friday with the guy who co-ordinates the PHD courses at the uni I work for so he's going to look at my CV and discuss what I want and if I can do a PHD course! How exciting is that! Dr Jellybean has a nice ring to it I think :-D Fingers crossed it will all go OK.

I also did the second week of my writing course this week and it was such good fun! It's re-ignited my passion for writing (not blogging obviously! but writing stories) so I've been working hard on my book. I have a HUGE reading list though and thee first book is sat there in the library waiting for me to collect tomorrow!

So, onwards, upwards and hopefully waist inwards!

YAY!

I KNEW going back to work would help my diet! I'm following the GI rules, eating my 5 a day of fruit and veg and I already FEEL Slimmer so hopefully the scales will confirm it when I weigh this week.

I'm trying really hard to only weigh myself once a week as well at the moment as one of my symptoms is obsessive weighing. Once a day is usual, twice, sometimes three times on a bad day but that's rare now.

So feeling positive today for many reasons! :-D

One of these is I submitted an application for the most amazing job. I don't think I've mentioned what I do before but I am a researcher in social medicine at a university. As is par for the course with research, the contracts are temporary and my current one is due to end in Dec 2010. However, because I'm bored, I've already started the search and this job popped up on the universities website. Not only is it a 2 year research assistants job for the uni I work for now, but there is also teaching involved AND (this is the really good bit) the opportunity to do a PHD afterwards! research experience, teaching experience and the possibility of becoming a doctor! I am so hoping I get this one but it is too good to be true so the competition will be fierce.

I'm also trying to learn to drive and despite the fact that my test is weeks away, I'm already cacking myself about it. I actually had nightmares the other day! Why? Why do I allow these things to wind me up so much? Its just a sad little man, in a high vis jacket with a clipboard. Surely I can deal with this?! I am after all a fully grown, responsible adult.

Well I guess we'll find out in a few weeks whether life is on the up or if I still have to look for a job and pay for another test.

Wish me luck!

Damage limitation!

Well today was OK, not the best diet day I've ever had but by no means a disaster.

Boyfriend has gotten into this hobby called Geocaching where people hide lunch boxes full of tat all over the place, you get the GPS co-ordinates from the website and off you go and find it. Once there you log you were there and there's toys and travel tokens (to be taken to another cache) to make it a bit more interesting. However, boyfriend fails to realise that this is his hobby, not mine! Cue boyfriend 'making sure I'm up' at 9 am this morning to go out crashing through the woods to find another cache.

I would like to say I embraced this with good grace and took the walk in the woods for the beautiful, relaxing experience it would have been had I gone voluntarily but unfortunately, I'd been dragged out of bed on the last day of my week off and frog marched across country so I was grumpy and complained that my feet were wet. Looking back though, it was quite a pleasant walk, it got me out of the house and it burned off the toast I had for breakfast so bargain!

Lunch kind of became a mismatch of peanut butter cups, cheese and marshmallows. I know, not healthy or nutritional in anyway but I was still grumpy from being out and listening to boyfriend complain about the car so I indulged. Calories wise, probably about the same as a normal lunch.

Tea was spag bol which the boyfriend cooked and my mood had improved by then so I enjoyed it!

So in terms of calories, not great but not a total write off, I probably won't lose but I won't gain either. Nutritionally speaking it was horrid but I'm planning to go back to the GI thing tomorrow when I go back to work. It's always easier to control what I eat when I'm at work. mainly because I have set meal times and I can plan my food better but also because I'm kept occupied and I don't 'boredom' snack.

I also plan to go out for a run tomorrow as well! Fingers crossed it will work well!

I'll post to tell how it goes!

Theres a 1st Time for everything!

OK, so I've decided to start a blog. My main reason for doing this is as a diary of my struggles with my weight and eating, mainly for myself but also in the hope that someone out there can relate to what it's like to have disordered eating patterns.

No-one knows about this. Not my lovely, supportive boyfriend, not my family and not even my closest friends. I decided to stay anonymous as I may from time to time write things that they don't know about me and things that might cause them pain if they found out.

A bit about me, I'm 30 something, female, live in the UK with my boyfriend of 4 years and our animals. I had bulimia as a teenager and young adult but although I managed to stop purging, the binge and comfort eating part of the disease has not been so easy to kick which means I am now technically obese. I wear a size 18/20 and I'm 5" 9 tall.

I live permanently with the knowledge my doctors are telling me to lose weight whilst the fear of getting obsessive and falling back into old habits stops me from ever achieving much in terms of weight loss. I find loosing weight sensibly very hard to do and I punish myself hard for the slightest slip up (a habit I am trying hard to break) and every time there is stress or disturbance in my life, I'm guaranteed to either overeat or starve myself depending on how upset I am.

I also have IBS and gastric reflux as a result of my previous binging so recently the doctors put me on a tiny dose of Prozac. Only 20 mg as a 'relaxant' to try and ease my symptoms. HA! unfortunately it had the opposite effect, made me more depressed than I'd be for ages and cue the resurgence of my purging behaviour after 9 years of being 'clean'. Needless to say I stopped the Prozac asap and thankfully the behaviour stopped with it. I was left with anorexia for a weeks afterwards while the drugs wore off though which thankfully has passed.

My dietitian has recommended the GI diet to me and I find it does work when I stick to it. I have a major sugar addiction which the GI thing should help me to kick but it won't be easy. The reason my user name is Jellybean is because that's what I'm eating right now! I love the little American style ones you get in Sainsbury's.

I'm hoping that this blog won't be all doom and gloom although the introduction hasn't been to bright and rosy. one of the reasons I think this will be good for me is to allow myself to put my life into perspective and gain some control over my situation so making it lighter and having a laugh will be important. One thing is for sure though, this blog is about RECOVERY and health only.

I'm training for a 10K run for a Marie curie too so hopefully that will help with my quest to be healthy.

I've never blogged before so my apologies if it all goes a bit pear shaped. I probably won't have the time to blog everyday but i hope to continue with it fairly regularly.

If you stumble accross this and you want to join me in my quest to be healthy then feel free to follow me. I'd love to hear about your lives and what you have to do to so I can follow your blogs too.