I have just spent 3/4 hour waiting first in the queue at the Post Office (25 minutes) and then in a queue at the Halifax (20 minutes) ... neither establishment had enough staff working to cope with the numbers of people wanting to use their service. I am especially angry because that was 3/4 of my precious lunch-break and it wasn't a relaxing and re-invigorating experience. In the case of the Post Office it is even more annoying because they recently shut down 2 sub-Post Offices which would have absorbed at least some of the people in the queue this lunch-time and made the whole experience less lengthy for me.
Of course, it's all me, me, me - but everyone else was also stuck in that queue for the same amount of time and everyone's time is equally precious for different reasons. There were elderly people in the queue worried about being out in time to catch their bus. There were parents with young children who find it very hard having to stand still and be 'good' for all that time. Having one Post Office for a town of over 15,000 people is absurd, particularly when the Post Office has also closed down many of the sub-Post Offices in the surrounding villages, forcing people to come in to the town to use their main Office.
I got back to work thoroughly irritated and unrested and that's not what lunch-breaks are for in my opinion. HUMPH!
Rant Over.
Thursday, 28 April 2011
Eating Out - Luxury or Burden?!
I never thought it would come to this ... but I am becoming bored with eating out. For the record, I have been a person who loved to eat out, who ate out at every opportunity, who never passed a cafe or a fast food shop without buying something. Eating out has always been a big treat for me - I suspect it stems from the fact that when I was a child we almost never ate out (my parents couldn't afford it) and I remember long car journeys where my long-suffering mother passed round the cheese and marmite sandwiches she'd been up early preparing. Also, when I was a child, there were fewer opportunities and options when it came to eating out. There have always been cafes but the proliferation of cafes of all shapes and sizes has been a relatively recent phenomenon; particularly the outbreak of coffee vendors (often branches of huge companies - you know who I mean!). Now there is a bewildering array of food outlets and constant opportunities to eat at all times of the day and night, even in the small market town where I live.
So what has happened? Why am I feeling this ennui about eating out?
Several things have changed for me recently;
1. I've moved jobs from a position a mile away from shops to one in the centre of town.
2. I've moved from being part-time (3 days a week) to full-time.
3. I've had to re-organise myself so that I'm using time in the mornings to do a bit of housework and some preparation towards the evening meal, to save me time in the evenings and to prevent the housework all piling up for the weekend, so I have less time to prepare packed lunches.
4. I don't much like packed lunches.
5. I've been working with Beyond Chocolate for 3 years now and there have been a number of significant shifts in my attitude to and relationship with food.
All of these have combined to make me feel less enthusiastic about eating out - which is most unexpected.
So now I have to think what I want to do about this .... I guess the options are:
1. rotate my lunch-hours round the various cafes and eating places available to me
2. rotate packed lunches with eating out
3. go back to packed lunches
4. take it a day at a time and decide which I want to do today
5. stop eating at lunch time.
All, apart from number 5, are reasonable options and I'll have to experiment and see what works best for me. Today I haven't brought any lunch, so I'll see what I fancy come my lunch-break and act accordingly.
So what has happened? Why am I feeling this ennui about eating out?
Several things have changed for me recently;
1. I've moved jobs from a position a mile away from shops to one in the centre of town.
2. I've moved from being part-time (3 days a week) to full-time.
3. I've had to re-organise myself so that I'm using time in the mornings to do a bit of housework and some preparation towards the evening meal, to save me time in the evenings and to prevent the housework all piling up for the weekend, so I have less time to prepare packed lunches.
4. I don't much like packed lunches.
5. I've been working with Beyond Chocolate for 3 years now and there have been a number of significant shifts in my attitude to and relationship with food.
All of these have combined to make me feel less enthusiastic about eating out - which is most unexpected.
So now I have to think what I want to do about this .... I guess the options are:
1. rotate my lunch-hours round the various cafes and eating places available to me
2. rotate packed lunches with eating out
3. go back to packed lunches
4. take it a day at a time and decide which I want to do today
5. stop eating at lunch time.
All, apart from number 5, are reasonable options and I'll have to experiment and see what works best for me. Today I haven't brought any lunch, so I'll see what I fancy come my lunch-break and act accordingly.
Wednesday, 27 April 2011
Well, it's been a few days, but that's what I expected to happen. I can't commit to blogging every day - some days it's not possible, other days I have nothing to say and there's no point in saying something about nothing ;)
Today I want to talk about Easter. I don't really remember Easter as a child - I have dim recollections of making Easter cards at school or decorating hats to wear in a parade, but I don't remember if we had Easter Eggs. I suspect not, but will check with parents at some point - my parents weren't keen on us having sweets and chocolate - they were trying to save our teeth - so, of course, we sneaked out and obtained as much as possible, and I ended up with four fillings by the age of 12 ... sigh.
Anyway, since becoming grown-up and in charge of my own food, Easter became another source of food-related angst for me. It started with the arrival in the shops of Cadbury's Creme Eggs and went on via Cadbury's mini eggs (are you detecting a pattern here?!) and through as many Easter Eggs as possible until all the madness was over and I was casting about for my pre-bikini diet. (btw I haven't worn a bikini since I was 18 - but the idea was always there).
This Easter just gone I bought Easter Eggs for daughter and husband and nieces and nephews and one for myself. My parents bought me one as well, so I ended up with 2. On Easter Sunday I sat down with my Easter Egg and a cup of tea and started eating chocolate. I got about 2/3 of the way through the Egg when my 'enough thank you' signal kicked in and I wrapped the rest up for another occasion.
I think this proves that I have finally 'grown-up' when it comes to Easter Eggs and chocolate in general. It's taken over 25 years, but I'm finally there and I'm happy with where I am.
You know I used to envy those people who could have a box of chocolates open in their living room and not eat their way through every single one in one go ... now I find I am one of those people and it feels gooood!
If you want to know how I done it, check out www.beyondchocolate.co.uk it has all the answers.
And so Easter is over and the summer approaches and I will be on the beach in my cossie (not a bikini) whatever shape or size I am, this is me and I will enjoy it - after all, this is the only chance I'll get.
Today I want to talk about Easter. I don't really remember Easter as a child - I have dim recollections of making Easter cards at school or decorating hats to wear in a parade, but I don't remember if we had Easter Eggs. I suspect not, but will check with parents at some point - my parents weren't keen on us having sweets and chocolate - they were trying to save our teeth - so, of course, we sneaked out and obtained as much as possible, and I ended up with four fillings by the age of 12 ... sigh.
Anyway, since becoming grown-up and in charge of my own food, Easter became another source of food-related angst for me. It started with the arrival in the shops of Cadbury's Creme Eggs and went on via Cadbury's mini eggs (are you detecting a pattern here?!) and through as many Easter Eggs as possible until all the madness was over and I was casting about for my pre-bikini diet. (btw I haven't worn a bikini since I was 18 - but the idea was always there).
This Easter just gone I bought Easter Eggs for daughter and husband and nieces and nephews and one for myself. My parents bought me one as well, so I ended up with 2. On Easter Sunday I sat down with my Easter Egg and a cup of tea and started eating chocolate. I got about 2/3 of the way through the Egg when my 'enough thank you' signal kicked in and I wrapped the rest up for another occasion.
I think this proves that I have finally 'grown-up' when it comes to Easter Eggs and chocolate in general. It's taken over 25 years, but I'm finally there and I'm happy with where I am.
You know I used to envy those people who could have a box of chocolates open in their living room and not eat their way through every single one in one go ... now I find I am one of those people and it feels gooood!
If you want to know how I done it, check out www.beyondchocolate.co.uk it has all the answers.
And so Easter is over and the summer approaches and I will be on the beach in my cossie (not a bikini) whatever shape or size I am, this is me and I will enjoy it - after all, this is the only chance I'll get.
Thursday, 21 April 2011
First Blog
Hello
I tried a number of names and styles for this blog, but the only one it would let me have was 'recovering dieter' and so I will succumb to the heavy hand of fate and accept, head bowed, that this was MEANT TO BE.
I am, after all, a recovering dieter. That's not the first description I would have used of myself, but it is true and maybe it's time for me to really face up to this fact - I am a recovering dieter.
I don't intend or expect my every blog to be on this theme, but certainly there will be some food and diet related blogs because it is a huge part of my life.
So, to get the history out of the way first ... I was a skinny child, I remember having a large appetite and was also very active. I remained skinny until well into puberty where I suspect the activity decreased and the appetite increased. Just before I got married, age 21, I put myself on my first diet for reasons I cannot remember 25 years later. I certainly wasn't over-weight. As I didn't know anything about dieting at the time, I just cut down on what I was eating rather drastically - I was at college and I don't remember doing any exercise at all. From what I can recall I had porridge for breakfast, one sandwich for lunch and ate an evening meal, no pudding. I lost weight but was miserable and starving by the time the wedding came.
As a result (I can see cause and effect now, but I couldn't then), I compensated for the pre-wedding starvation by eating huge amounts as often as I could. I gained a lot of weight and then gained more through my first pregnancy.
By the time my daughter was coming up for her 2nd birthday, I was the largest I had ever been. At that point my younger sister told me I couldn't be a bridesmaid at her wedding unless I lost weight.
And so it started ... Over the next 20 odd years I yo-yo dieted and binged. My weight went up and down as I successfully lost weight on a diet and just as successfully put it all back on again once I finished the diet.
I was a very good dieter - I stuck absolutely to the letter of the diet and they always worked. But what they didn't seem able to tell me was how to maintain my newly achieved lower weight. They would talk vaguely about 'maintenance diets' about eating a little bit more and monitoring it and eating a bit less if necessary - but after the rigidity of the diet, I couldn't cope with such vagueness and would return to my former eating patterns with inevitable consequences.
When I'd had enough of dieting, I sent off for diet pills, detox solutions, diet patches, diet teas ... and guess what? Yes! They didn't shift an ounce. Not one of them, not one ounce of weight was shifted by any of them. I am emphasizing this because they are still out there - these envelopes that arrive full of 'before' and 'after' photos, often endorsed by doctors, nearly all claiming that anyone taking this product could eat as much cake as they wanted and still lose weight. It's all absolute rubbish, but I was desperate to lose weight and kept spending out and hoping.
Then one day in September 2007, I went to the amazon.co.uk website looking for a new diet. I couldn't return to any of the ones I'd done previously, no matter how successful they'd been. There had to be something new out there that I hadn't tried.
Amazon, bless its little cotton socks, came up with 'Beyond Chocolate' in response to my plea for a new diet.
A chocolate diet sounded like heaven to me and, inspired by the positive reviews, I ordered the book. I didn't know, but what I had just done was to set myself free.
Beyond Chocolate is NOT a chocolate diet. Beyond Chocolate is a way of guiding the disillusioned dieter towards a life after dieting - back towards what could be compared with the way small children eat - intuitively, in tune with their body's needs.
Since the book arrived back in 2007, I have been working with Beyond Chocolate to sort out the 20 odd years of food abuse, body loathing and dependence on dieting that I had subjected myself to entirely voluntarily.
It hasn't been easy, but then the diets certainly weren't.
It hasn't always been pleasant, but if you've ever detoxed using those foul tasting liquids, you'll know the meaning of unpleasant.
What Beyond Chocolate has overwhelmingly been is liberational (is that a word?!).
Beyond Chocolate set me free from 20 years of dieting hell and is helping me to find my own way through the world of food, one that suits me, one that fits with my lifestyle, one that I can do for the rest of my life.
If that sounds like what the latest diets promise, it's because they've jumped on the intuitive eating bandwagon and are using catch-phrases and slogans that deceive the desperate dieter into thinking that what the diets are offering is freedom and choice, when it's the exact opposite.
I think I will save my rants against the diet industry for another blog.
Suffice it to say that I am now free from the destructive influences of dieting and much happier than I've been for 2 decades.
I'm not sure how often I will get to write on this blog - but we'll take it one blog at a time and see where we go (if that's all right with you, of course!)
I tried a number of names and styles for this blog, but the only one it would let me have was 'recovering dieter' and so I will succumb to the heavy hand of fate and accept, head bowed, that this was MEANT TO BE.
I am, after all, a recovering dieter. That's not the first description I would have used of myself, but it is true and maybe it's time for me to really face up to this fact - I am a recovering dieter.
I don't intend or expect my every blog to be on this theme, but certainly there will be some food and diet related blogs because it is a huge part of my life.
So, to get the history out of the way first ... I was a skinny child, I remember having a large appetite and was also very active. I remained skinny until well into puberty where I suspect the activity decreased and the appetite increased. Just before I got married, age 21, I put myself on my first diet for reasons I cannot remember 25 years later. I certainly wasn't over-weight. As I didn't know anything about dieting at the time, I just cut down on what I was eating rather drastically - I was at college and I don't remember doing any exercise at all. From what I can recall I had porridge for breakfast, one sandwich for lunch and ate an evening meal, no pudding. I lost weight but was miserable and starving by the time the wedding came.
As a result (I can see cause and effect now, but I couldn't then), I compensated for the pre-wedding starvation by eating huge amounts as often as I could. I gained a lot of weight and then gained more through my first pregnancy.
By the time my daughter was coming up for her 2nd birthday, I was the largest I had ever been. At that point my younger sister told me I couldn't be a bridesmaid at her wedding unless I lost weight.
And so it started ... Over the next 20 odd years I yo-yo dieted and binged. My weight went up and down as I successfully lost weight on a diet and just as successfully put it all back on again once I finished the diet.
I was a very good dieter - I stuck absolutely to the letter of the diet and they always worked. But what they didn't seem able to tell me was how to maintain my newly achieved lower weight. They would talk vaguely about 'maintenance diets' about eating a little bit more and monitoring it and eating a bit less if necessary - but after the rigidity of the diet, I couldn't cope with such vagueness and would return to my former eating patterns with inevitable consequences.
When I'd had enough of dieting, I sent off for diet pills, detox solutions, diet patches, diet teas ... and guess what? Yes! They didn't shift an ounce. Not one of them, not one ounce of weight was shifted by any of them. I am emphasizing this because they are still out there - these envelopes that arrive full of 'before' and 'after' photos, often endorsed by doctors, nearly all claiming that anyone taking this product could eat as much cake as they wanted and still lose weight. It's all absolute rubbish, but I was desperate to lose weight and kept spending out and hoping.
Then one day in September 2007, I went to the amazon.co.uk website looking for a new diet. I couldn't return to any of the ones I'd done previously, no matter how successful they'd been. There had to be something new out there that I hadn't tried.
Amazon, bless its little cotton socks, came up with 'Beyond Chocolate' in response to my plea for a new diet.
A chocolate diet sounded like heaven to me and, inspired by the positive reviews, I ordered the book. I didn't know, but what I had just done was to set myself free.
Beyond Chocolate is NOT a chocolate diet. Beyond Chocolate is a way of guiding the disillusioned dieter towards a life after dieting - back towards what could be compared with the way small children eat - intuitively, in tune with their body's needs.
Since the book arrived back in 2007, I have been working with Beyond Chocolate to sort out the 20 odd years of food abuse, body loathing and dependence on dieting that I had subjected myself to entirely voluntarily.
It hasn't been easy, but then the diets certainly weren't.
It hasn't always been pleasant, but if you've ever detoxed using those foul tasting liquids, you'll know the meaning of unpleasant.
What Beyond Chocolate has overwhelmingly been is liberational (is that a word?!).
Beyond Chocolate set me free from 20 years of dieting hell and is helping me to find my own way through the world of food, one that suits me, one that fits with my lifestyle, one that I can do for the rest of my life.
If that sounds like what the latest diets promise, it's because they've jumped on the intuitive eating bandwagon and are using catch-phrases and slogans that deceive the desperate dieter into thinking that what the diets are offering is freedom and choice, when it's the exact opposite.
I think I will save my rants against the diet industry for another blog.
Suffice it to say that I am now free from the destructive influences of dieting and much happier than I've been for 2 decades.
I'm not sure how often I will get to write on this blog - but we'll take it one blog at a time and see where we go (if that's all right with you, of course!)
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