1066 All Stars

Christmas Eve - Middle of week 17 - 24th December

Starting weight - 12st 4lb

Last weight - 11st

New weight - 11st

Comments

* My end of year goal is achieved! Somehow I have conspired to lose 18lbs in 4 months, not a bad achievement by anyone's standard.

* And yet I am disappointed! Having hit 11st at the last weigh in I had really hoped to dip below for Christmas but it was not to be. Despite the progress made, the negative automatic thoughts want to sabotage this result, convince me that I haven't done enough. And so I reject these thoughts. When I started, I did not realistically expect to be at 11st by this time. I go into the Christmas and New Year period able to relax my diet, safe in the knowledge that application and dedication will counter any slight increase over the festive period. And more than that, I am looking forward to tackling the next half stone to bring me to my ultimate target weight of 10st 6lbs.

* I bought a packet of sweets on Saturday on the basis that I had done really well this past 4 months and deserved a small treat. But when I got home and took them out, I didn't want to eat them. I was so close to my pre-Christmas target that I did not want a small, unnecessary indulgence to ruin the work done. Weigh in completed and target met, I will now enjoy them guilt free.

* It is a strange feeling pulling on a shirt for work and thinking, 'I think I might need to buy a smaller size.'

End of week 16 - 20th December

Starting weight - 12st 4lb

Last weight - 11st 3lb

New weight - 11st

Comments

* Amazing what a day of feeling like death and hardly eating can do for you.

* Clearly I wouldn't recommend it as a strategy but Thursday was a complete wipeout with illness. Breakfast consisted of about four bites of toast and some paracetamol. Lunch was one slice of toast with a bag of sweets, followed by a half eaten dinner. I was still a little shaky on Friday but managed to fit in something of a walk and resisted the lure of a McDonalds to stick with my planned salad for dinner.

* Regardless of the circumstances, what a pleasant surprise to find myself down at 11st. As ever, I always weigh myself at least twice in the morning to validate the result. One of the weights registered just under 11st which I subsequently dismissed as it was not repeated. It would be wonderful to shift that extra pound by Wednesday's weigh in to give me a pre-Christmas boost. I don't expect it to be maintained over the Christmas period, nor will I beat myself up if it isn't, but it would be a great achievement all things considered.

* Speaking of Christmas, as it draws closer my sense of impending dooms increases. I wrote about it here but inevitably there were things left unsaid. I appreciate that people may find this strange. After all, I have two very exciteable kids and a new baby, what's not to get excited about? But that is to totally dismiss the anxious mindset. Whilst I do not want to be a slave to my anxiety, I am also not prepared to downplay it. Anxiety threatens to unravel my world every single day, it is a beast I must continually attempt to slay. It is a fight I don't always win.

* Lots of new pieces on the site recently. In the absence of any pending publcation of my children's story collection, I decided to post The Friendly Lion on the site. I also wrote a new children's rhyme, The Little Blue Whale. This story came about from a toy whale we donated to nursery and Karen suggested I write a story to go with it. I have received some very nice feedback on Readwave suggesting it is book material. I must admit to being quite pleased with it, especially considering that I made it up in a quiet ten minutes at work. I would greatly value feedback from parents.

* There are also a few mental health pieces dotted around, including my mental health Christmas carol, Jingle Blues! If you see something you like, help a brother out and share it with your friends.

Middle of week 16 - 17th December

Starting weight - 12st 4lb

Last weight - 11st 3lb

New weight - 11st 3lb

Comments

* Urgh, these last 3lbs are going to be tough to shift.

* I have reached a point of acceptance though. December is a tough month to lose weight and I think I have done pretty well so far. I do not my Christmas to be dominated by thoughts of food guilt or self recrimination. This is not a sprint, this is a race for life. The changes I have made will benefit me for the months and years to come and it is important that I accept and keep moving forward.

End of week 15 - 13th December

Starting weight - 12st 4lb

Last weight - 11st 3lb

New weight - 11st 3lb

Comments

* Disappointing weigh in but could have been far worse. I always weigh myself twice to validate the result. First time I stepped on, it said 11st 4lbs, which came as a bit of a shock. Second time, it said 11st 2lbs. Then finally 3rd and 4th times it said 11st 3lbs, which I settled on as being the true value.

* I really want to get down to 11st but these last 2/3 pounds are proving difficult to shift. There is a two part problem. 1) the combination of Christmas and length of regime have caused me to give in to the occassional snack desire. 2) I think I am reaching the limit of weight loss without fundamental changes to my exercise regime, which I simply don't have the time or desire to implement.

* There are parallels with other activities though. I recently returned to Football Manager, having not played it for several months. I enjoy FM but it causes me an immense amount of anxiety, which is why I started a blog on the Sports Interactive forums to monitor my feelings as I play. One of the themes that come out of that is an impatience to be better, to reach my target (the Premier League) but always with the thought at the back of my mind that whatever I achieve will never be enough.

And so it is with my weight. I expect to have lost weight because I want to. The reality is that, without significant lifestyle changes, I am at or near my natural weight. I can still achieve my goal but, realistically, it is a long term goal, not a short term one. Being impatient and expecting things to happen before they are ready will just build a resentment. Instead, I must simply focus on what is and forget what has been or what may come.

Or, to put it another way, mindfulness.

* There can be a tendancy with mental health problems to to think, 'other people have it worse than me, what have I got to be depressed about?' But by so doing, we invalidate our own feelings. Circumstances do not have to be compared, they are relative. A broken arm is still a broken arm, even if the guy in the next bed has cancer.

* A few new pieces on the site in the last few days. Why not take some time to check them out;

Jingle Blues - a mental health Christmas carol!

A Mental Healthy Christmas - a poem reviewing my year

Outrunning The Black Dog - an excerpt from my Football Manager blog

You Only Play Once - a retro gaming article

And don't forget my books are on sale at Amazon. Give the gift of mental health this Christmas with one of these stocking fillers.

Middle of week 15 - 10th December

Starting weight - 12st 4lb

Last weight - 11st 2lb

New weight - 11st 3lb

Comments

* Nothing important happened today.

End of week 14 - 6th December

Starting weight - 12st 4lb

Last weight - 11st 2lb

New weight - 11st 2lb

Comments

* How dull. But a good dull as 11st 2lbs seems to have become the new norm, despite the giant Nando's I had yesterday.

* I'm still hopeful of getting down to 11st before Christmas but I will not put any undur pressure on myself. If I go back to my very first Mental Healthy Eating blog, below 11st was always a longer term target, so I am ahead of schedule.

* Yesterday threw up a really concerning period of anxiety from the most innocuous ofcircumstances. I am not going to document the incident as I am concerned that blogging about each and every one may actually have a deleterious effect, becoming a means to dwell rather than truly deal with the problem. Suffice to say I was disappointed in how quickly and easily my defences were broken and that a sinmply set of circumstances quickly overwhelmed me, affecting my mood for the rest of the evening.

* A reminder if it was needed that however far I have come, there remains a long way to go.

End of week 13 - 29th November

Starting weight - 12st 4lb

Last weight - 11st 3lb

New weight - 11st 2lb

Comments

* Back down to 11st 2lbs (and 1/4 stat fans), once again giving me comfort that this is becoming a sustainable weight. It will be a very special moment for me when I get on the scales and see my weight dip below 11st. Almost there.

* The week has been disrupted from an exercise sense but the change of routine has not been unwelcome, the respite keeping the routine fresh and hopefully ensuring that it does not become a chore.

* It was noted this week that my mood appeared better. This was interesting to me on two levels. 1) that other people notice my mood and 2) the fact that it was true. I think one of the key elements to the improvement has been the absence of pain, ironically just before my physio appointment falls due.

* One note of caution though is that my weekend mood remains noticeably poorer than my weekday mood. I have attributed this to the absence of structure, the sense of pressure to enjoy time with the kids. What I want to be a relaxing, fun time too often turns into two days of 'should' and 'must' statements. This is not a fixed state though. This is behaviour driven and therefore can be changed.

* I have commented before how I appear to have lost some interest in football, a concern given the huge role it has played in my life. Just this week, I spurned the chance to watch Liverpool and watched Gotham instead. I had attributed this to the demands of parenthood, with a side order of depression. There is another possible cause though. I discuss football with (selected) people at work and remain passionate and well read. I dipped back into Football Manager this week and enjoyed myself. So perhaps there is more going on. Perhaps in fact it is circumstantial. I am not consistently around people who follow football closely. I only really discuss it at length when see my brother or Jon. The absence of interaction has seen it fall down the priority list. That is fine in itself but if there is a desire for it to be re-elevated, and I believe there is, I will need to consider how I allocate my time.

* This week I published my third book, Sins Of The Father, a short story collection. I was thinking what I may do next, outside of the potential children's story collection, and wondered whether my Mental Healthy Eating blogs may make interesting enough reading to be worthy of publishing. To be honest, I haven't read them. I write and post, I very rarely revisit so I have little objective sense of how they might read to someone else. It is worth considering though. I guess the true value of something is how much someone is prepared to pay for it.

Middle of week 13 - 26th November

Starting weight - 12 st 4lb

Last weight - 11st 2lb

New weight - 11st 3lb

Comments

* I try not to hope for a particular weight on the basis that if that hope is not met, it can only lead to disappointment. But what is life without hope? Balance under pins everything of course. Constantly thinking positively, to the surprise of some I suspect, is as unhealthy as negative thinking. But a sprinkling here and there keeps us going.

* Why am I rambling on about this? Because today I had hoped to get to 11st 1lbs. It was always a bit unrealistic. Whilst I recorded my last weight as 11st 2lbs, to be more precise it was 11st 2lbs 7/8ths so a minor variation is enough to push me back up to 11st 3lbs.

* I quite miss writing my daily blogs. They were a fun way to explore issues and maintain visibility and involvement in what I am eating. It became less of a blog and more of a diary that I shared with the world (if the world consisted of the 3 people who read this). On the other hand, writing blogs so frequently can risk straying into a little 'woe is me' territory as I strive for content. Instead of acknowledging an issue and moving on, it becomes a running theme, the point of the blog no longer to explore, understand and correct but simply to document. Altogether now...balance is the key.

* I had planned on publishing a second edition of 'Bring Me That Horizon' to add a further chapter with my more recent blogs. After careful consideration, and the unheard of step of actually talking to the wife, listening to what she had to say and agreeing with her, I have decided to hold off a potential second book for further down the line. My blog writing hasn't suddenly stopped, nor is it likely to in the near future and so I'll settle for correcting a couple of typos but leaving the content unchanged.

* I am close to publishing my short story collection. I am not entirely satisfied with it. I feel that I would be ripping people off if they buy it, much as I do when someone buys 'A Matter Of Time' (available now, folks). But it is difficult to maintain perspective on one's own work. Ultimately I guess judgement is for others. I have written it, if they choose to buy it then that is up to them. Look out for 'Sins Of The Father', coming soon to Amazon.

* On the other hand I am still not sure what to do with my children's stories. Of everything I have written, with the exception of a couple of particular blogs, this is the work I am most proud of. I genuinely believe these are good quality stories with important messages, some of them quite complex life lessons, hidden in the seemingly simple structure of a children's story. I want to publish them just to have them published but I also want to do them justice.

* A few pieces have popped up on the site recently so do have a sniff around. I wrote a piece on living with anxiety at Christmas ('The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year') that I hope people will take the time to read. This year will be the first without my Dad, which of course brings up its own feelings. It is important not to push them away but instead to sit with them, accept them, then let them pass in their own time.

I was somewhat surprised to realise that my healthy eating regime had been going for three months and it seemed a good time to take stock of what I have learned in that time.

Starting weight - 12st 4lbs

Current weight - 11st 2lbs

Conclusions

* Well the first thing to note is that it has worked. I had hoped to get below 12st and somehow achieved that target by the end of the first week. My secondary goal was to get to 11st 3lbs, my previous 'best', by Christmas, which I have achieved a month early. My next target of sub-11st now seems like a realistic target before the end of the year.

* They key to the success of the plan has been balance, a core tenet of mental health. It would be no good implementing some hardcore, militant regime where I tried to enforce too much discipline over food or try to squeeze in too much exercise. It was important to develop a plan that could be sustained indefinitely. As such, I haven't really cut anything out per se. My basic meals are unchanged, I simply switched lunch and dinner around to move carbs to earlier in the day. At the same time, I eliminated any unnecessary snacking, replacing a sugar laden biscuit with an air filled rice cake for instance. Exercise meanwhile has been gently built and then maintained. My lunch time walk has been sustained, the route varied to keep it fresh, the time taken to complete reducing as I became fitter. I even managed to go for a jog, not wholly successfully, but I was proud of myself for doing it. 

* One other core tenet of mental health that has manifested throughout this period is a subject that I have used as the framwork for a number of blogs and I make no apologies for repeating myself here - you can change. It is such a basic and yet fundamental concept to dealing with life.

From a mental health standpoint, this was key to my recovery. When I first entered therapy, I assumed that I was broken. I thought (hoped?) that there was something fundamentally wrong with me that meant I could not function in normal life. It came as something of a surprising revelation therefore to discover that I was the primary cause, and therefore solution, to my mental health issues. There are different types of depression. Some people have a chemical imbalance in their brain for instance. Mine was a cognitive depression, brought on by sustained, heightened anxiety, amongst other things. By addressing underlying thinking errors and unhealthy behaviours, I could lower my anxiety and banish my depression. It is not easy and it is a path I am still walking. But the skies above me look sunnier than those behind.

The same basic concepts are true of healthy eating. I had meant to start on a 'diet' several times over the last few months but always convinced myself that I couldn't. Part of the excuse was that I was not happy and did not see why I should make myself more miserable denying myself things I wanted at that time. Quite simply, I wanted to eat more than I wanted to lose weight. This is a thought and thoughts can be changed until they manifest in behaviour. And the change came almost instantly. Once I made the decision to embark on the new plan, it was like a switch going off in my mind. Suddenly I wanted to lose weight more than I wanted to eat. I had learned to accept that I was in control. I could change. If I wanted to.

* As the name implies, this regime was always about both healthy eating and mental health. I was keen to explore what effect one would have on the other. It is an oft stated point that exercise has a positive effect on mental health and I wanted to put that to the test. So, what did I discover?

Not much to be honest. Sure, I feel a little better about myself having lost a few pounds but there has been no great revelation, no sense that the fog of depression has been permanently dispersed. In fact in some ways my anxiety levels have never been higher. My daily blog entries are littered with instances where I have emotionally struggled to cope with an event, to the extent that I started an entire new thread, dedicated to anxiety issues.

What does this mean? Nothing. There is no magic pill Life is not a Hollywood film. It does not comprise those moments of revelation, backed by some poignant musical score. Instead, life unravels over time, whatever truths it has to reveal to us are done so in stages as we grow and learn. I go back to my original diagnosis of depression. Whilst I may have some underlying predisposition to mental illness, the cognitive errors that led me into depression were not to be solved by going for a couple of walks. These issues are with me for life. Each day I must confront them, must choose to go left instead of right. Healthy living is one of those choices.

* So, what now? The last time I embarked on a serious healthy eating plan it started at a similar time of the year to this one. I was waiting for an operation and my blood pressure was too high so I set about losing weight to try and reduce it. I always referred to it as a 'lifestyle change' but the truth is that after the operation, the plan quickly fell away, my weight ballooning as high as I can remember it. As such, it is difficult not to have concerns that this could go the same way, especially with Christmas coming up. But this feels different. As I said before, this has not been a diet and as a result, I have no serious cravings. My experiences with therapy are also key. I want to change.

End of week 12 - 22nd November

Starting weight - 12st 4lb

Last weight - 11st 2lb

New weight - 11st 2lb

Comments

* The second consecutive weigh in at this weight and the consistency leads me more to accept this as a 'true' weight.

* I am surprised in a way (in a weigh...or, forget it) because, whilst not a terrible week, I did indulge in a Chinese midweek. Proof perhaps that the odd treat is absolutely fine as part of a balanced diet and lifestyle.

* I often refer to a previous time when I lost weight, back in 2008 or thereabouts. At that point, I got down to 11st 3lbs and no further which lead me to think that this was about my natural weight. This time I am confident that there is more to lose. Without being unhealthily obsessive about it, I still have wobbly bits that don't need to be there. These can either be lost with a continuation of my plan, or perhaps firmed up, in which case the number on the scales becomes less important than what I see in the mirror.

* I had the opportunity to see my books in print last weekend and so flicked through the Flash Fiction collection and it occurred to me...this is shit! Okay, so probably some negative bias creeping in, mixed with the fact that I know these stories inside out. The trouble is that I have no independent  validation of them. Self publishing is great but as a consequence, my books have not been published because someone thought they were good enough to sell but simply because I could.

* I had a similar reaction reading through my short story collection, to the extent that I don't know if I'll bother publishing it. I am very proud of the children's stories, I genuinely think they are very good. And my blog writing is, I hope, engaging and easy to read. I guess I just need a little bit of love!