Follow the _Four Day Win_ plan, noting my thoughts and experiences as I go

I started this 4-day win about a week ago. I was in the middle of writing down Non-Food Nurturers and feeling really rather excited and happy about it, when I stopped. It took me till yesterday to get back to it.

I do wish I had all my notes in one place. This one asks me to look at previous exercises, and I don’t know where they are. I didn’t write in the book because there wasn’t enough room and I thought I might want to pass this book along.

Anyway. The Wild Child isn’t liking this. For one thing, some of the stuff on the prep list is the same old stuff we’ve heard before. Even though I get to decide what I use, resistance is still there.

She was crazy for french fries on the drive home Friday, but I talked her down.

I feel very good about my list of non-food nurturing acts/things.

This post feels like it’s been random.

For some reason, I worked out less after reading this. What a weirdo.

I’m going to try this as a my daily reward for exercising. I want a USB turntable so I can turn my LPs into mp3s. I could raid the tin in my sock drawer or I could do this.

I’ll put $1 into a tin to save for the USB turntable every day I exercise.

Note post-write: Having written this, it’s not really that related to the 4DW, but I’m leaving it on this goal anyway, cos it seems fitting to me.

I’ve spent the weekend at my parents’ house in the country. To be quite honest, I’d been dreading it a little bit. My mum is the least sensitive person in the whole of Christendom, and I’d braced myself for at least one stingingly well-meant remark about my weight gain which is by now, frankly, undeniable, obvious and humungous. Thankfully, she managed to keep any direct remarks inside her mouth, but her eyes flicked several times up and down my body when I took my coat off, while she was clearly trying to keep her eyes on my face, and the look of dismay and shock that followed had me feeling quite shameful, physically uncomfortable and embarrassed for the rest of the weekend, to the extent where I often couldn’t even meet her eyes. What an awful situation where I’m so ashamed I can’t even look my mum in the eye.

As many of you will know, my mum spent my childhood yoyo dieting and comfort binging. She encouraged me to join her in my first diet (I’d forgotten this one) – a “lose seven pounds in seven days” crash plan – when I was about 15, and took me to Weight Watchers “to cheer me up” when I was 17, following the collapse of my first relationship. Weight is a big deal to her. My weight is a huge deal to her.

She is now skinnier than I have ever known her. To be honest, I don’t think it suits her – and I’m not just being bitter, I genuinely don’t – but fair play to her, she seems happy. She cacklingly informed me that an old friend had failed to recognise her after a seven-month gap because she’d lost so much weight.

My mum is also a Weight Watchers addict. Or True Believer, as I believe they call them. It sits very badly with me. I was brought up on health food – but real food – with artificial additives absolutely verboten. Now the fridge is full of reduced-this, and light-that, with the space vacated by real fat or sugar filled up with chemicals. Extra light mayo, given body by some kind of gum. Runny, unnaturally bright zero-fat Weight Watchers yogurts, thickened with ground-up horses’ hooves and sweetened with carcinogens. Is this healthy?

And the mental effects? My parents now only keep cheese in the freezer in the workroom, far away from the main house and frozen so that it can’t be snacked on. Is this healthy? To find a food so tempting that you have to render it unpalatable and hide it to stop yourself eating it? Is that a healthy attitude towards food? They have portion-control plates. FFS. They trust themselves so little they let their crockery do it for them.

After Mum and Dad went to bed, I flicked idly through one of Mum’s WW magazines, looking to see what it was that attracted her. I was curious. I tried to prise open my mind. Maybe this could be the answer for me, too? I was, frankly, disgusted. The main point of it was advertising for the WW ethos. And the main thrust of that was this: eat what we tell you and you’ll be OK. Stop doing what we tell you and you’re doomed to being a fat pig. I’m not exaggerating. They don’t even pretend that you’ll one day be autonomous and able to eat like a naturally slim person – people who’ve lost weight with them and gained it back without them are chastised as naughty kids returning to the fold: “It was third time lucky at WW for greedy Gertrude.” Headlines like “My big knickers hell!” tell you all you need to know about what they think of their arriving clientele and how they hook people in – fear, fear, fear of being a fatty. And the menus! The gross exaggeration of the before and after menus! I’m sorry, but they pretty much read like this.

Before:
Breakfast – a box of sugary cereal sugar with a pint of cream.
Midmorning snack – deep-fried lard.
Lunch – contents of the fridge
Midafternoon snack – the fridge
Dinner – a child
Late-night snack – my own head dipped in mayo (full fat)

After:
Breakfast – small bowl WW cereal with skimmed water
Midmorning snack – smugness as I admire my own reflection, panic at the thought of being publicly humiliated at the WW meeting, self-induced vomiting
Lunch – one slice WW bread with 1/2 teaspoon WW low-fat spread, 1/2 tin low-fat low-sugar low-taste WW beans
Midafternoon snack – iron willpower and a WW low-fat carrot
Dinner – WW ready meal
Late-night snack – overwhelming chocolate cravings, hunger that I won’t allow myself to assuage because I’ve used up my Points for the day and WW says I shouldn’t be hungry. I’m a bad person for being hungry.

Jesus H Christ. What about people who eat more or less normally and are fat? What about people who eat more or less normally and are slim? Do they not exist, then?

So I flicked through this piece of shit getting more and more irritated, and what’s that grumbling, echoing noise in the back of my ribcage? Yes, it’s my wild Child, shitting herself, frankly, at the very thought of all this deprivation. Not only there is nothing immediately available to eat in the house, I know damn well that if anything goes missing my mum will be onto it like a shot. How did I silence my Wild Child? Three small handfuls of “Lighter Choice” reduced-everything bran flakes, straight from the box. Then I went to bed, feeling even more disgusted with myself after the WW indoctrination and my instant rebellion. I guess it’s still not for me. In a way, I’m glad. I absolutely do not want to live either like my mum, in a world of willpower, no-fun chemical food and daily gym visits. It takes up all her time, and frankly I’d rather be fat than need to exercise that much self control.

So anyway, now for the relevant bit. Now that I’ve got my college course out of the way, I think I might start up on this goal again. I’ve done some reading on the train on the way home and I’m quite fired up. I think I need to go about it in a more systematic way – I get so excited reading it that I skip the actual wins, do the exercises in my head, and leap on to the next part. But I’m starting work with a new coach on Tuesday, and I think I might make this 4DW one of my goals with her. If I’m paying someone to be accountable to, I might actually do them.

I’ll shut up now. Time for this week’s freshly downloaded Lost, then bed.

I accidentally marked this done. I’m not done!

For Pete’s sake, I want this goal off my list. And I’m not willing to give up.

I picked up where I left off. So for the next four days it’s “Choosing to Move.” Which is thinking about ways to get more movement into my life. I will actually move during this time, but all I have to do is think about it.

I had a new experience with the Dictator and Wild Child last night that had nothing to do with weight loss. I had completed, a couple of hours earlier, a plan for the next couple of weeks. I was thinking about how pleased I was with my plan when I suddenly had a feeling of panic. And, I realized that this was a familiar feeling after I’ve just made a plan. In the past, I would have squashed the feeling but with recent experiences, I asked myself “what’s up with that?”

A few minutes later, I got the answer. When I have a new plan, my inner Dictator rubs his hands with glee over the opportunity to order all my inner minions around to accomplish this new plan. At the same time, my Wild Child is convinced that I’ll never do anything fun or spontaneous again (never mind that there are fun things in the plan—she can’t see that when the inner Dictator has that look in his eyes). The Wild Child’s response to the Dictator is “NO F-ing WAY!” It’s no wonder that my plans often disintegrate within 24 hours of putting them on paper.

I’m not sure what to do with this revelation, but I was able to get myself in the Watcher frame of mind, so maybe that’s all I need to do with it for now.

want to continue
guilt is counter productive
I’m holding myself back.

I dusted off the book a couple of days ago and going back to a win that I had decided to skip over. It was the win that has you thinking over times where you’ve binged and working through all the memories associated.

I had originally thought that this one wasn’t for me as I’m not much of a binger. Oh but I used to be, and I still have some lingering fears, anxieties and self-loathing that I should probably address.

I’m still, however, still dealing with that issue of time. I don’t expect that will change until the kids are grown and I’m retired.

I picked up the book the other day and it doesn’t really do anything for me in my present post-op state of mind. Really, the Gall Bladder Removal Diet is the best thing ever.

First, you are too doped up and in pain to eat…seriously, like 100 calories the day of the operation, 300 the next, 700 the next. It’s a week an a day later and I think the highest I’ve been able to get is around 1200 calories in a day. What a weird experience to actually make myself eat when I didn’t feel like it.

I don’t even want foods high in fat or sugar, which is a very nice thing. Also, my stomach seems to have shrunk. It’s amazing how little satisfies me. (Then ago, exercise levels are low.)

I am going to start doing the end of the book again, and reviewing, probably in a week or so.

I’m actually thinking that having read the book might be helping me maintain this attitude about food that is lasting longer than I expected. I really do feel there is plenty, and the meal that really nourishes me tastes the best.

Now I’ve finished reading this, I’m feeling a lot sunnier and more apt to get back on plan with this. Weirdly, one thing that’s held me back on this is that I find visualisation quite difficult because I’m quite kinaesthetic. But reading the above book has helped me with that, and I’ve learned a little tip, too, from my life coach – if you’re having trouble visualising, look upwards while you do it. It really works. I’ve also found that, as a kinaesthetic, it really helps me to feel the feeling before I try to visualise anything. It’s quite extraordinary – during the Dictator/Wild Child/Watcher visualisation exercise, I feel the Wild Child’s feelings of helplessness, and my face immediately changes expression, and before I know it, I can see the starving little Wild Child in my mind’s eye.

Another thing that’s stymied me is the reward system. I just can’t get my head around it, and every time I think I’ll start a win I get tied up in trying to think of rewards and then I fall flat on my face and don’t do the win. The book says it’s absolutely essential, but I’m not sure about that. I think I’ll try and do it without for a while and see how I get on. So I’ll be accessing the Watcher state on the bus for the next few days, and making thick descriptions of my treasure box memories, anchoring them to my middle left finger – my NLP anchor of choice.

I’m also experimentally combining some of the exercises and techniques from Paul McKenna’s I Can Make You Thin, to help fasttrack the reformatting of my own self-image.