Project (Tiger)Lily :) 67 days of SS to go!

[Lily]

What do you do by the way? I am a nosey bugger.

Ooh, I could tell you, but then I'd have to shoot you...

Although it's actually more likely that you'd all line up to shoot me instead. There, now couple that with the fact that my profile says 'civil servant' and see if you can make the connection. I'm one of the good guys though, honest. I'm one of the people who try to make things better for the people my employer likes to call 'customers'. Honest!

Feeling all nervous about this evening's call. Silly but true.

 

[Lily]

Don't know why I was nervous. My life coach was lovely. Of course she was - she wouldn't be doing the job she does if she was rubbish at building rapport, would she?

I told her all my issues - about how, at work, I take what people think of my opinions too personally, about how I'm often scared to voice what I really feel for fear of being shot down or made to feel stupid, that I procrastinate madly sometimes when I've got something to do that's 'too hard' because of my inner perfectionist (I'll either do it right or not at all!). And then the other stuff, about whether I want to progress in my career, figuring out what my career goals actually are...

So we're going to work on all of it. It ain't cheap, but I knew it wouldn't be. She'll send me a questionnaire to fill in that covers how I feel about a range of stuff, and I've already booked a 2 hour session with her for the week after next.

How's that for progress? To be honest, I feel so much more... in control, if that makes sense, already. Cos I've taken a positive step forward and I'm not settling for continuing to feel the way I feel.

It's a brave new world...

 

[bettiesrevenge]

I know some lovely civil servants!we won't talk about the ones with poles up their bums and a twin set and pearls (lots of those in criminal justice) but i know you are not of that ilk!

Fan blimin tastic! It's knot about the cost it's about the outcome. I am excited for you!

 

[Lily]

I know some lovely civil servants!we won't talk about the ones with poles up their bums and a twin set and pearls (lots of those in criminal justice) but i know you are not of that ilk!

Fan blimin tastic! It's knot about the cost it's about the outcome. I am excited for you!

{whips off pearls}

Thanks Nat.

Oh, sigh. :sigh: Been eating tonight and I really don't know what triggered it off. I won't say what cos it hardly matters but let's say it wasn't particularly ketogenic.

Gonna have to have a few days of having only shakes, methinks. Bars are just giving me the raving munchies at the moment (weird, cos I can go for ages being fine with them ).

I've got a feeling it's the life coaching thing. Like a lil Gremlin is saying, "Oohoho, little missy - you can sort out your head but you'll neeeevvverrr sort out your lardy arse..."

Think I probably should've mentioned my life long weight problem to her (my life coach). It's funny, but I was so 'on it' as far as Cambridge is concerned at the time, it didn't come up. Guess I'd better add it to the list.

So what have I got - perfectionism and procrastination, career direction, self-esteem issues and self-sabotage. Yikes. This could get very expensive...

 

[Lily]

Ooh, 70 days left of SS. 10 weeks! I've just had a weekend when I messed about far too much. But I think I see a pattern. I noticed it before but I was too stubborn to 'see' it - hence recording it for posterity (or for my posterior? ).

It started on Thursday when I ate a few slices of chicken, found they weren't enough, and ate a few slices of ham too (only low carb thing in the house other than cheese and I don't do tuna since it put me in hospital last May...). Not awful, I thought. Better than the alternative.

Too much justification though. Cos on Friday, I did the same, except there was no chicken so I ate ham. Then followed it up with a few squares of 72% chocolate. Oops. Still, not too awful, I thought, could've been worse.

Saturday - I had a shake, ate cheese, ate pizza, ate chocolate and drank wine. Whoa. Not good. Totally unjustifiable. But I can see how I got there (and probably you can too, dear Reader).

The only way I can SS is to do it straight. No additional nibbles, not even chicken. I know this but I forget. In my desire to eat, I forget what it does to my head. Well, no more forgetting, cos I'm writing it here. It's a cautionary tale.

So... Back to the shakes. Haven't had one yet, just guzzled lots of water and had two big cups of tea.

I will learn. I've got to. Because I have 10 weeks left and after that I'm not SS-ing again. Ever.

Stop messing about, silly Lily.

 

[*Shanny*]

Best of luck today Lily.. xxx

 

[bettiesrevenge]

Jesus lily are we twins? This is practically word for word what I do.

Damaging destructive behaviors that i don't care to possess, it's all too give an inch take a mile.

I'm going to do my garden to stop me thinking about eating the babys harribo, which are not even in a food group and likely extra-terrestrial.

Stay strong sista!

 

[AliGal]

Dear Lily,

Glad to see you had a good start with your coaching. Coaching is about chemistry so it's good to have found someone you want to work with. It's a great idea to do it as you are SS-ing and can use it to plan for successfully staying at goal as well as pesky work stuff etc.

I'm a big fan of coaching at home and work. It has helped me take charge of difficult times and work places. In fact, I appreciated it so much, I trained and enjoy coaching with clients.

Have fun

Ali

 

[Lily]

I wasn't going to post this here but I posted it on my Gold diary and realised I should. So here goes.

I've lost the plot. I don't even know how to end the chapter. I got just a little past the title page and I was just starting on the acknowledgements:

My thanks to my mother who passed on all of her body image neuroses to me and first put me on a diet when I was 12

Thanks also to my father who can never lay eyes on me without commenting on whether I'm bigger or smaller than the last time he saw me

And thanks to my sister who's always been a skinny petite lass who has no idea how I can manage to eat myself into oblivion...

when boom, off the wagon I fell (the boom was my arse hitting the carpet).

B*gger.

I really thought I'd cracked it this time. I thought telling myself I only had 84 days on SS and that was it - forever! (now down to 69) would do the trick.

Well, it did for about 10 days. And then I started picking. Low carb stuff at first, which led to justification of 72% cocoa chocolate, which led directly to pizza. And now I've just polished off a burger and chips. It was just going to be a burger (ha, low carb!) when DS decided he was off to the chippy to get his tea...

God, I'm hopeless. I'm clearly destined to stay big forever.

I'm not seeing my life coach (first appointment) for a fortnight yet. I'm so paralysed by fear of failure at work that I've gone into procrastination overdrive (methinks the eating incidents are no coincidence...) and getting nothing done. I'm procrastinating so much, I looked up 'how to overcome procrastination' whilst avoiding a piece of work this afternoon.

Black hole. Lily is sitting at the bottom of a very deep, very dark black hole. :beam:

So, um... I'm wallowing in self pity. This is stupid. Very stupid. Why can't I just pull myself together and stay pulled together? Why do I unravel every couple of weeks?

This life coach is going to need to be good....

 

[AliGal]

Thinking of you Lily. That is ace procrastination to google it. It's struck a chord with me as I have had a very proscratinatory day. And I work for myself so it's lost £.

If I were with you right now, I'd run you a bath, and tell you to have a long soak, and stop being so hard on yourself. Towel yourslef dry and then use loads of lotion.

Then start again tomorrow and tell DS not to bring anything back for you again.

Clean new slate tomorrow.

Ali

 

[spangles]

Oh honey - you are not destined to be anything. Destiny is for people who have given up.

So you need to think about whether CD is worth trying with. is this a blip? or is this the way things are likely to stay on CD?

when you come off plan is it getting worse than in the past? or is it just a bit of same old, same old?

you need to think about your future with CWP and make some choices. But whatever you decide, you don't have some kind of destiny... there are many, many ways and times to do something.

 

[Jelliebabe]

Ohhh Lilly why do we do this to ourselves? This disorganized way of living and task avoidance seems rife on this board. I'm massively disorgsnised and always handing projects in just on time or late, out the hard stuff off till later.... why don't you re-read your post and think what advice you would give to someone else... also don't be too hard on yourself 10 days is a lot on this diet x

 

[Lily]

Oh honey - you are not destined to be anything. Destiny is for people who have given up.

So you need to think about whether CD is worth trying with. is this a blip? or is this the way things are likely to stay on CD?

when you come off plan is it getting worse than in the past? or is it just a bit of same old, same old?

Good questions (you always ask good questions).

I don't think it's worse. If anything, overall I'm eating less - not that it seems to matter because I seem to regain weight really quickly. I read of other folk bemoaning the fact that they've gained a pound after a blip and think, "I wish!" Cos if I blip, I gain 5 pounds overnight. Think I'm really good at refilling my glycogen stores (which would have been handy a couple of thousand years ago, I'm sure...). My CWPC always gives me this look that tells me she doesn't believe I didn't eat ten times more than I actually did. "How can you gain that much weight in a week?" she'll gasp. As she will tomorrow at my weigh in, no doubt. There's not a chance I'm going to have a magic whoosh overnight. (Certainly not after eating those salt n vinegar crisps...)

you need to think about your future with CWP and make some choices. But whatever you decide, you don't have some kind of destiny... there are many, many ways and times to do something.

But it's Groundhog Day. I've stood in this spot so many times. And if I don't do Cambridge I pile on weight within weeks. I'm in the rather stupid position of needing to do Cambridge to balance out the 'off Cambridge' days. It's not a great plan for maintenance.

I think... No, I know I need to find some alternative coping strategies to stress - ones that don't involve using food. And using is about the right word.

 

[Lily]

Ohhh Lilly why do we do this to ourselves? This disorganized way of living and task avoidance seems rife on this board. I'm massively disorgsnised and always handing projects in just on time or late, out the hard stuff off till later.... why don't you re-read your post and think what advice you would give to someone else... also don't be too hard on yourself 10 days is a lot on this diet x

LOL Jelliebabe, I've noticed that too (the 'disorganized' thing). I suspect it's something to do with having a tendency to put others' needs first and our own needs last.

And the one thing I've always said about doing Cambridge is that you have to be utterly selfish when you're doing it. Doesn't matter if you know that your loved ones would cheer up if you took them to Pizza Hut.

Don't know the answer just now. But I'm not going to stop working on it til I do. Just hope it doesn't take too much longer. My life is just ticking away here, waiting for me to be the 'right' size...

 

[spangles]

Hmm - and what would it mean to be the wrong size for a year? what difference would it make to your life if you put all your energies into staying exactly where you are and having a normalised relationship with food? treading water in calorie equilibrium?

personally, and this may not resonate, but my binges are often triggered by trying to diet. when i committed to giving up dieting i was able, with a fair bit of mental effort, to stabilise my weight. if you could do that for a year, maybe you could break the associations and behaviour cycles that you are currently experiencing?

 

[bettiesrevenge]

My thanks to my mother who passed on all of her body image neuroses to me and first put me on a diet when I was 12

Thanks also to my father who can never lay eyes on me without commenting on whether I'm bigger or smaller than the last time he saw me

And thanks to my sister who's always been a skinny petite lass who has no idea how I can manage to eat myself into oblivion...

POWERFUL STUFF LILY!

Now, I may be truly wide of the mark here, but can I just throw this out there.

Why were you musing these things?

Have you ever asked yourself why you procrastinate and have a fear of failuire? Re-read those words again. I have a feeling I know. I know, because I also have had conversations like that with myself.

I am as driven and motivated as it gets in my work life, I have pushed myself forward (to the glass ceeling I am currently against) frustrated by the fact that due to my family commitments I cant go any further. BUT WHY DO I NEED TO? It's not about money, it's about self worth. I need to feel I did something, something that validates me, something that sets ME appart from my siblings, something which says " Hello, I may be the middle child, but look what I did, now you HAVE to notice me, now you HAVE to appreciate me"

I have struggled with this since I can remember, a low sense of self worth, a constant bugging feeling that I am not worth anything. I am (was) cinderella incarnate.

You are so right, we are serving types, who's lives were always in chaos. Who out everyone elses needs, wants and drama first. It's a long battle but I am taking steps to beat it. I recognise that I am utterly co-dependant, even though I like to think I am very independant, my motivations have always got some basic linkage to someone else. I realised that actually, I need to self validate, I need to absorb my own self worth. I need to appreciate me. Then everything else will click into place. If other people dont recognise how brilliant we are...so what?

Lets be brilliant for ourselves.

By the way...work procrastination. I get it.

I now use the following tools

Outlook
White board
Daily to-do list pad.

Crack on Lily. Weight is the symptom, lets treat the causes - we can do this, we really can. A burger is just a blip, some pizza is not the end of the world.

Get Dona Eden's book on energy medicine and do the tesnion blow out and stress soother. I try my best to keep up with them, but I dont always succeed. They do help lots though!

 

[Lily]

Hmm - and what would it mean to be the wrong size for a year? what difference would it make to your life if you put all your energies into staying exactly where you are and having a normalised relationship with food? treading water in calorie equilibrium?

personally, and this may not resonate, but my binges are often triggered by trying to diet. when i committed to giving up dieting i was able, with a fair bit of mental effort, to stabilise my weight. if you could do that for a year, maybe you could break the associations and behaviour cycles that you are currently experiencing?

It's a great idea. But (well, you knew there'd be a but)...

I have tried not to diet. Turns out that commitment to myself, be it dieting or consciously not dieting, is not my strong suit. If you read back over my Gold diary (LOL, don't recommend it, it's one hell of a rant in places), you'll see that I stumbled across a fantastic site called 'No S'. I honestly thought it could work. And maybe it would've done, if I'd managed to keep going. But I started piling on weight at a rate of knots instead, panicked, and eventually went scurrying back to my Cambridge Counsellor. Again. She's watched me convince myself I'll be fine off the plan so many times it's embarrassing.

It doesn't bode well for maintenance, I know. I've been reading about, well, listening to an audiobook about procrastination today and realised that my procrastinating behaviour even affects my dieting prowess. Which does at least give me some hope - that if I can fix the other screwed up parts of my brain, maybe I'll fix the screwed up bit of my brain that controls how well I stick to a diet.

 

[Lily]

My thanks to my mother who passed on all of her body image neuroses to me and first put me on a diet when I was 12

Thanks also to my father who can never lay eyes on me without commenting on whether I'm bigger or smaller than the last time he saw me

And thanks to my sister who's always been a skinny petite lass who has no idea how I can manage to eat myself into oblivion...

POWERFUL STUFF LILY!

Now, I may be truly wide of the mark here, but can I just throw this out there.

Why were you musing these things?

Have you ever asked yourself why you procrastinate and have a fear of failuire? Re-read those words again. I have a feeling I know. I know, because I also have had conversations like that with myself.

I know. The significance of what I'd written didn't really hit me until I re-read it late last night.

And the weirdest thing - I am, to all intents and purposes, estranged from my family. I see my sister and my Dad once a month or so, if that. They don't really know the person I am now. And well, the stuff that I could've said to Mum I can't tell her now anyway (she died in 2005, around about a year after my family declared me a black sheep for choosing to stay with my OH instead of getting a divorce - long story but let me reassure y'all that it had nothing to do with it being an abusive relationship and for those who really want to know why, post 1500 times and read the first page of my Gold diary ).

But somehow it still matters what they think of me. Or is it what I think of me because it's so entrenched in me, buried deep down?

I am as driven and motivated as it gets in my work life, I have pushed myself forward (to the glass ceiling I am currently against) frustrated by the fact that due to my family commitments I cant go any further. BUT WHY DO I NEED TO? It's not about money, it's about self worth. I need to feel I did something, something that validates me, something that sets ME appart from my siblings, something which says " Hello, I may be the middle child, but look what I did, now you HAVE to notice me, now you HAVE to appreciate me"

I have struggled with this since I can remember, a low sense of self worth, a constant bugging feeling that I am not worth anything. I am (was) cinderella incarnate.

You are so right, we are serving types, who's lives were always in chaos. Who out everyone elses needs, wants and drama first. It's a long battle but I am taking steps to beat it. I recognise that I am utterly co-dependant, even though I like to think I am very independant, my motivations have always got some basic linkage to someone else. I realised that actually, I need to self validate, I need to absorb my own self worth. I need to appreciate me. Then everything else will click into place. If other people dont recognise how brilliant we are...so what?

Tricky that bit, though, isn't it? When you don't quite believe that your own opinion of yourself counts as much as theirs? I don't quite know how to get that self belief. I can tell you that I'm brilliant but I wouldn't quite believe it.

Lets be brilliant for ourselves.

I'm trying!

By the way...work procrastination. I get it.

I now use the following tools

Outlook
White board
Daily to-do list pad.

Yes, I've gathered that I need to spend my whole life making lists. All these years I've prided myself on not needing a diary, it turned out I should've been using one to create ticklists.

Crack on Lily. Weight is the symptom, lets treat the causes - we can do this, we really can. A burger is just a blip, some pizza is not the end of the world.

Get Dona Eden's book on energy medicine and do the tension blow out and stress soother. I try my best to keep up with them, but I dont always succeed. They do help lots though!

Do you think we need to figure out the cause? Because I reckon it must be that there's lots of causes and that's why it isn't straightforward to move on and leave the crap behind. Causes stacked inside themselves, like a set of Russian dolls. That's one of the reasons I chose Life Coaching, cos I don't want to waste time figuring it out whether it was something that happened when I was 9 (which, come to think of it, was exactly when something happened cos that's when I started gaining weight and crying at random moments (so much so my teacher phoned my mother and expressed concern - "Is something going on at home that I should be aware of?" My mother was absolutely mortified that anyone should think her a bad mother - that's my abiding memory of that). I got into so much trouble courtesy of that 'caring' phone call... )

But my mother always was overly concerned about what other people thought of us, as was her mother before her. I suspect that's the true meaning of the 'sins of the generations'. So silly, really.

Anyway, I've waffled on way too much. I called off my appointment with my CDC cos I couldn't face her disappointment in me either, LOL. I'll see her on Friday - hopefully by then I'll be properly back on the wagon and can gloss over all of this.

 

[bettiesrevenge]

I think it's not really that important or helpful to go waaaay back into the annals of time to figure out why we ended up this way. More so, the causes which impact on us now. I truly believe that change is all about now, this very second, what we can do to check our responses to these external influences now. I know that all sounds very self-helpy, but I really do feel that while we can pinpoint the times when we have not felt enough, or that criticism was all we heard, we can only deal with today, thats all we have.

With that in mind, the causes that you work on have to be what is eating you today. I spend far too much time detached from my physical body in my head, thats why I know that activity and raising my heart rate and getting my blood pumping is an action I need in my life, without it I am just too disconnected and thats where my unconscious eating creeps in. When I am "in my head" I reach for anything to bring me back to my body.

It's always good to know what triggers off behaviour because then you can plan actions to mitigate it.

A very funny thing - a few weeks ago, my sister's husband said to her, before you have any interactions with your family, I think you need to do a risk assessment and see if the benefits outweigh the impact of being around them. Good advice - I can also relate that to my interactions with other people.

My mother is inherantly narcasistic, I know she doesnt mean to be, but like your mother, and her mother before her, all she cares about is other peoples perception of *her*. Everything must have her as an epicentre.

I had to create a distance between us for the sake of my own mental health, I have had to create distance from all my family and while I do get dragged back in occasionally, I have to recognise that I need that distance for my mental health. I suppose to some extent that means I am also considered the black sheep, but I actually dont really care. I see them on my terms now, which can only be healthy.

Getting back to causes, I think you could do worse than to map your triggers. What happens shortly before you have the *moments* where it all goes t*ts up?

As for work, well, everyone I know in the public sector/civil service these days works in a pressure cooker environment. Their jobs lack structure and have additional expectations as a result of the constant shifting sand in policy and government expectations. Performance indicators seem to change daily and I know that I feel like chief cook and bottle washer most days and cant complete tasks before new priorities come along, all of which causes me stress.

I think that, this is what we all need to rally around on in relation to your job. What is my job, what is expected of me, and how will I deliver it? I think it's called performance management () Last year I was given carte blanch to set up a femail bail support service, it was just too broad a remit, it had too many nuances set locally by the regional NOMS directors and you just couldnt do a one size fits all approach. It also had to be ballanced against getting men out of prison and maximising rental income, so often colleagues would change the occupancy of an address with no notice, so I was constantly having to chase up which female properties were left and fight ardently to procure more, all against a poilitical/local opinion that bail hostels were not welcome in their back yard. STRESS was not in it, I was probably teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown every day felt like a huge insurmountable challenge. I would be on the train around the country intermittently crying and stuffing pain au chocolates in my gob to calm my anxiety and I mean I would buy them from anywhere - marks and sparks simply food was the best, a pack of 4, a large posh coffee and I would polish them all off before I got past watford station.

Self belief doesnt happen overnight, it takes time, perseverance and kindness to yourself, so for today, start there. Be kind to yourself, give yourself a break. This diet business isnt easy, but we didnt get this way overnight, so it will take a while to reclaim ourselves.

 

[Lily]

A very funny thing - a few weeks ago, my sister's husband said to her, before you have any interactions with your family, I think you need to do a risk assessment and see if the benefits outweigh the impact of being around them. Good advice - I can also relate that to my interactions with other people.

Sooo true. And the reason I don't very often pick up the phone to call my Dad. Layers on even more guilt, of course, but I rarely come out of encounters well...

STRESS was not in it, I was probably teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown every day felt like a huge insurmountable challenge. I would be on the train around the country intermittently crying and stuffing pain au chocolates in my gob to calm my anxiety and I mean I would buy them from anywhere - marks and sparks simply food was the best, a pack of 4, a large posh coffee and I would polish them all off before I got past watford station.

So we are twins then. The crying bit really isn't fun, is it?

Urgh. I think I'm heading in the right direction with the coaching thing. Rather fortunately (I think :confused I've chosen someone who not only does life coaching but is a psychotherapist and has hypnotherapy qualifications too. I'm hoping she's going to view me as an enjoyable challenge.

Trying to get SS right today. My tummy's really sore - it doesn't really like me eating carbs anymore, I don't think - so I'm going to have to give them up, whether I want to or not!

Thanks for your support, hun - it means a lot. :hug99: