1066 All Stars

Day 74 - 13th November

Food Log

Breakfast - Weetabix

Lunch - Home made chicken and vegetable soup, 1x bread roll

Dinner - Garlic chicken with salad and 6x onion rings

Dessert - 1/4 strawberry swirl cheesecake

In Between Meal Snacks

* Banana

* 2x Go Ahead yoghurt breaks

* 3x rice cakes

Thoughts & Feelings

* After declaring that I was free from the low mood / bad eating bug, today has been a real struggle. Walking to the office I could sense that my mood was unnaturally low. I feel as though I am operating below my capacity, that I have far more to give than that which both others and myself are currently asking. It is a delicate balance, I know all too well the consequences of taking too much and falling over the precipice. But standing too far from the edge, in too much comfort, brings an anxiety of its own. We need stress as part of a balanced, healthy life.

* This is partly of my own doing. An ex-manager once told me that I am great in a crisis but in the status quo, I don't know what to do with myself. I tend to run at 100% or crash. There is some truth in that. I had work lined up that should have lasted me the quarter but I effectively completed it within the space of a couple of weeks. It is a mark of my level of ability to be sure but has led to a new stress. As with all things, this behaviour, this crash or burn mentality, is learned and as such can be unlearned but it takes time, patience and compassion with self, traits that do not come naturally to me.

* As a result of this low mood, I felt the urge to snack. I could really go for a big, juicy burger or a bag of crisps or a cold tin of coke. The additional rice cake seemed a reasonable compromise under the circumstances and in that sense, the link remains broken. Desiring and acting are two very different things. Ultimately my desire to lose weight, to do things differently, to change, outweighed my desire to eat garbage.

* I saw a picture of myself today and my first thought was...I'm an ugly bastard. A statement of truth or the negative skew of mental illness? In a way it doesn't matter if it is true or not. The fact that this was my overwhelming, automatic reaction reinforces to me that I have considerable work to do in (re)building my confidence. Sure, we all have body issues of our own, none of us is ever happy with how we look. But to someone dealing with mental illness, I recognise that this is more. It is part of a pattern. I want to be able to look in the mirror and be, if not pleased, at least not disappointed with what I see. I can get fitter and I could get a haircut but fundamentally I'm not going to change how I look. So the key is to figure out how to be comfortable with what I have.