Evolution not resolution

Ok, so I'm about a week too late to do a post on New Year's resolutions. Although, as revealed by the kind of scientific research known as "doing a quick Google search", it seems the average resolution lasts only about a week; so perhaps I'm actually being rather timely.

I ummed and ahhed this December (or is it now 'last' December given it's a new calendar year...?) about whether to make any New Year's resolutions this time around. I always used to do it and yet ne'er has a resolution been kept long - or even medium - term (bar the one to stop biting my nails when I was about 13 - that's still going strong two and a bit decades on). So a couple of years ago I decided that I wouldn't make any New Year's resolutions and that's been that for the past few years. On the bright side it means I haven't broken any resolutions so I can feel smug about that. However, it also means that nothing in my life has really changed. Of course, we shouldn't strive to change our lives or 'better ourselves' if we are happy with things as they are - but most of us have a few things we'd like to work on or achieve. Hence this year I waivered between whether to make resolutions or not.

Eventually I decided I would walk the middle path. Resolutions have the flavour of being unyielding and specific and oh-so breakable. And indeed 'resolute'. Absolute. And I have been guilty of making these kinds of resolutions in the past - not just at New Year either (check out my '35 by 35' post - I hardly achieved any of that stuff!) - and I've found it just leads to a horrible sense of failure when I don't achieve my goal. On the other hand, not bothering to do anything at all differently didn't work out so well either and so it seems that some kind of plan/goal/sense of direction is still required. So I have gone down the route of making looser plans and having broad ideas as to what I'd like to achieve in the coming year and beyond. Not so much 'lose two stone by July' but rather just a broad idea that I'd like to get my weight down this year. I'm also keen to look into some free online courses this year - and have indeed already started the process - but didn't want to make a resolution to do anything more specific than that. I don't want to feel a failure because I didn't successfully finish three courses or get a qualification in a specific subject.

Another aspect to I've considered in making goals and plans is in looking at the process rather than the results. To use weight loss again as an example (since I'm a little overweight myself and it also seems to be a perennial favourite resolution with an awful lot of people): instead of setting a resolution to "lose two stone", consider the more process-based "eat more fruit and veg and join a gym". You could make the latter more specific if you wanted but the point is that  your goal is the HOW of losing weight and not the hoped-for end result. Firstly, you can actively control whether you go to the gym or eat a piece of fruit but you can't really control whether ultimately your body will respond by getting you to the weight that you've randomly decided appeals to you. Secondly, what if you didn't hit the exact weight you wanted? I know I would personally feel a failure if I only lost a portion of the weight I have aimed to lose. Whereas hopefully the weight loss is just a fantastic side effect of all that fruit-eating and gym-going (should I elect to do that...) and who gives a stuff about the precise number of ounces if it's in the right ball park...or even the right direction!

So, for me, I'm not making any firm resolutions. I want my life to gradually evolve. I don't believe in the New Year, New You rubbish that's peddled out by the magazines year after tiresome year. I don't want to be a whole new person. I just want the person I already am to continue to grow (though preferable not girth-wise) and to explore what life has to offer. And for me, in 2015, the things that spring to mind are: working on my relationship with food in the hope that this will both help my self-esteem and reduce my weight; looking at ways to be more organised in a bid to reduce stress; explore mindfulness; look into courses and volunteering opportunities; and try and make some headway with that huge stack of unread books...

Struggling to legalise and be healthy

I don't want to be fat any more. I'm at my heaviest weight  and I'm also not loving the way I'm eating either. Even if you take size out the equation for a moment (hard to do when I'm feeling frumpy) I still don't love the way that the food I eat is making me feel. As you'll know, I'm a big fan of Beyond Chocolate - it just makes perfect sense that this is the right way to eat. But, of the ten principles, I am still - six years later - stuck on 'eat what you want'. That's the one that most people dive into in the beginning, eating chocolate and cake and pizza and chips with gay abandon until they realise that actually they want something more nutritious as well. Except I don't seem to have got to the wanting something more nutritious stage. I still want chocolate and cake all the time. I'm still drawn to it every time and I still overeat every time and I don't live in hope that it will ever change.

Now, having been amongst the BC community for a few years now, I'm pretty sure I know what the responses would be if I was to say this on the forum or to Sophie or Audrey (the creators of Beyond Chocolate). I would expect the responses to be - and if I'm wrong and people want to throw some other theories in, please do! - that either I haven't legalised these forbidden foods I'm overeating or that I'm not eating them whilst also observing the other principles. And both of these suggestions would be correct.

When I eat chocolate or cake, I tend to do something else at the same time - watch TV, surf the net, play on my phone. Or otherwise they will be wolfed down standing at the kitchen counter whilst I'm making a cup of tea. Two or three doughnuts can easily be gone in less time than it takes for the kettle to boil. I don't want to savour or enjoy them - I just want to stuff them down. It's habitual. If I was truly following the BC principles, I would be allowing myself those foods, but waiting until I was hungry to eat them and then putting them on a plate and focussing and then stopping when I've had enough. But I don't. I always tell myself I will but then, when it comes to it, I tell myself 'maybe next time instead'. I just eat until I feel sick or until it's gone.

The problem is that it's still the Last Supper mentality. The last time I'll binge or eat so much of those foods because tomorrow I'll do better. Tomorrow I'll eat like a normal person. Except I've told myself that every day for the past twenty years and discovering Beyond Chocolate and the concept of intuitive eating hasn't actually got rid of it. Instead of thinking 'tomorrow I will diet' it's just 'tomorrow I will eat intuitively'. Not today. Not now. I just need to do it once more. This is where legalising food comes in and that's something I still really struggle with. I told myself I've legalised this food but I haven't.

Legalising forbidden foods is about acknowledging that you can have these foods whenever you want. And so, by not restricting your options or creating a 'I better have it now because tomorrow I will be on a diet' situation, you should be able to choose what you really want. It means that all foods are equal and don't have guilt attached to them. Beyond Chocolate suggests a way to do this is to stock up on large amounts of your forbidden food so that you can be reassured that it's always there if you want it. This is a great idea and I know it's helped lots of people. But it didn't work for me and I felt like a failure. Every time I'd go in the kitchen, I'd have some. There was loads - no one would even know it was missing. But of course I wasn't combining it with the other principles - just grabbing it and eating it without breaking my stride.

I didn't actually really believe I even needed to legalise any foods purely because I never really dieted and therefore I always allowed myself to eat the food. Why was I eating so much if I wasn't responding to dieting? Well, partly because just by planning to diet or 'be good' I was anticipating scarcity and therefore falling into the Last Supper trap (I blogged about this more in my Deprivation Without Dieting post). Also the crux of the matter is that, whilst I believe that I can eat these foods whenever I want, what I don't believe is that I can eat these foods whenever I want, in whatever quantity I want and not suffer for it. By 'suffer' I mean gain weight, feel sick, bloat up, lack energy, damage my teeth etc. And so I find myself in a bit of a chicken and egg situation; I will only stop eating such high quantities of these foods when I have legalised them BUT in order to legalise them I have to be able to prove to myself that I can safely eat them in the quantities I desire (which is going to be huge quantities because I'll only want less when I can prove that I can eat enormous quantities without suffering...). And so round and round I go. I want to eat less of these foods because I think they are negatively affecting my health in the quantities I eat them but how else do I legalise them? I'm still choosing with my taste buds and not with my whole body and I need to be kind to my body because it's not in a good state. Some days I just wish chocolate and cake didn't exist and I didn't have a choice at all. 

Just a drink?

I have one of those pre-pay Starbucks cards where you get a star for each purchase and then when you have fifteen stars you get a free drink. My voucher for my first free drink came through last week and I decided that today would be the day I would use it. X is at pre-school on a Tuesday morning so it's a good time for me to have time to go to a coffee shop on my own. Actually, I chose to get my drink 'to go' and bring it home today but still...

It's probably akin to blasphemy to say so in Starbucks but I don't like coffee. I normally drink tea. But somehow I wanted to use my free voucher on something more exciting.  Just like I'd prefer to use my Boots Advantage points on a lipstick rather than toothpaste. So I opted for one of their caramel crème blend frappuccinos (which don't contain coffee). Medium size (a grande is it?) since I wasn't having to actually pay the £3.45 for it.

As I took the 5 minute walk home, beginning to sip my creamy drink, a thought came to mind. And, with that thought, a feeling of guilt. The thought was "I shouldn't be drinking this. It's fattening. It's disgusting. It must have hundreds of calories". An interesting thought for someone who eats - sometimes mindfully, mostly not - large quantities of cakes and chocolate and popcorn and biscuits, probably well in excess of whatever number of calories is in the drink, every single day. I know that the overeating is not desirable behaviour and obviously I'm trying to work on that. But when I am eating that stuff, I don't actually find myself thinking of the calories or how fattening it is (although I may be disgusted at my behaviour) and all those foodstuffs are equally deficient in nutrients and high in fat/sugar as that frappucino. So what's the difference?

The difference is that it's a drink. I never even really realised that might be a 'thing' for me. My day-to-day drinks are tea (with a dash of milk), Diet Coke, and water. All with negligible calories. Now this isn't why I choose these drinks - I'm pretty certain of that. Well it was why I switched from full fat coke to the diet variety originally (somewhere in my teens) but I do genuinely prefer it now. These are just what I like to drink. Occasionally I will have fruit juice or a smoothie - but maybe that's 'ok' because counts towards your fruit/veg intake. And very occasionally an alcoholic drink. But somehow with alcohol, I don't think the sugar/calories/nutritional value has ever really crossed my mind. Maybe it would if I drank a lot but I think that in 2013 so far I have had one can of lager (in fact I think I tipped half of it away in the end) on a hot evening and one amaretto sour before the meal at a posh restaurant on our wedding anniversary.

If you take the alcoholic variety out of the equation (I'm partial to the occasional Baileys over Christmas), creamy drinks do kind of make me twitchy. Mentally not physically. Milkshakes, hot chocolate and the like. Frappuccinos too I guess - although to all intents and purposes they are just a glorified milkshake. I'm curious as to why. I rarely fancy these drinks anyway, so it isn't that I'm going around denying myself them day in, day out. But occasionally I do. And then I agonise over it. I think it might be because when I go to a café/coffee shop - the only time I am ever likely to be drawn to these drinks - I always have a cup of tea and piece of cake. I really struggle to have just a cup of tea. Even if I'm not hungry. I want the cake. Or maybe just a biscuit if I'm really full already (the Starbucks ginger ones are a favourite). But I do like something sweet with my tea. Now, if I opt for a sweet, creamy drink such as a milkshake or a hot chocolate, that leaves me with a dilemma. Do I still have the cake or not? If I have the cake as well, I know I'll end up feeling sick. If I don't have it, however, I feel like I'm missing out.

I didn't order cake with my frappuccino today. Partly because I couldn't be bothered to get my wallet out as well as my 'free drink' voucher and partly because I got my drink to take away rather than to drink there. I'm glad I didn't. I would have felt sick. The drink alone was enough. I think maybe this is something I need to experiment with over the coming months. See what it's like to order a creamy drink next time I fancy one. To say it will be enough without the cake. Or maybe order it with the cake and try just eating/drinking until I feel full...even if that means leaving some of both. Maybe even one day, just having the tea without cake. Seeing what it's like to not have something sweet at all. Interesting.