RISK (WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TO LOSE?)

 27^th May, 2021

After writing my last blog, and thinking about change, I have also been thinking about risk. It seems like the natural progression really. You think about a change, and then you risk doing it, sort of. This could be at so many different levels. I have never taken any really big financial business risks in my life, never had to. My ex-husband did risk £600 on shares once, which he then lost, and that was really devastating as money was really tight at the time. But I have never been in that kind of position myself. I know that when I have had to make those kind of decisions, I often have weighed up who else would be affected if things went wrong. If it was just me, then that wasn't so bad, but if affected the ones I loved I really had to think really hard about what I was doing.

When I was 16 years old my mother wanted to take me from Yorkshire to live down South. I really didn't want to go. She then said she would get a court order to make me go. My Grandad said he would fight this, but even at that young age I was aware just what a proud man he was, and I didn't want to put through all that, so off I went. Later on in life I was continually trying to work out what was best for me and the children with not much external support, until the day I could change things and not live with my ex-husband anymore. I know now it was a continual risk assessment, but at the time I was just trying to work out where we were going to live and how I was going to support myself and the children, and give them the best that I could. I might not have got it all completely right, but it is now what it is. We are all still here and we survived.

Risk is a strange thing. Sometimes we can live our lives and risk living it in a detrimental way. We can eat excessively, we can drink too much alcohol, or take illicit drugs. All things that can risk our health, but for whatever reason, we carry on. We are all different people, and we are all living a different story. We all may take the risks. The risks that we don't realise are risks. There are many of us that only realise this when it's too late and something goes wrong. We have a health scare, or a mental breakdown, and all of a sudden we realise just what we have been doing. We can be one of the lucky ones. Some people never do realise and their health deteriorates so much until it's too late and they die, which is so, so sad.

Why do we take risks with our lives. Sometimes it's just easier not to think about it, and sometimes it is too scary to think about change (there's that six letter word again). I have been lucky in life really. Yes, there have been a lot of things that I have had to cope with that a lot of other people haven't, but I have survived and I'm still here. I have had many changes in my life, and taken quite a few risks. Yes, they're at a very low level compared to some, but risky enough for me. What I now know is that is never too late to take a risk. If you have to make a decision, are given an opportunity or something has to change weigh up the pros and cons. What have you got to gain, and what you can afford to lose. Can you afford to lose what you lose, and if so then go for it. I think that is what is called a very, very simplistic risk assessment. I know it's always the way I have thought and survived, and learnt a lot along the way.

Now back to Jackie and the weight loss and weight management bit. This Friday is the 28^th May and it is a calendar month since I last got weighed. It is now time for me to risk weighing myself again. You spend all the time losing weight and then, as I have said before, after about 18 months or so you know it has to change into a different, less obsessive, more “normal” way of life, but it's not easy. In the past it has gone wrong so many times, and even though I know it shouldn't go wrong this time I am still nervous.

It's no good me writing in my blog that I have taught myself to live in a more sustainable way of eating and then going back up to 21 stone. Who would know, except my family and the people who know me? I would know. I would feel a failure and, and the dress I got for my son's wedding would not fit me, would it? I haven't quite got to the stage of being awake at night worrying about it, but worry about weight is such a real thing isn't it?

NOW STOP IT, JACKIE!!!

You will get weighed this Friday, and we will see. Yes, you have had some “normal” meals. Yes, you have had some “treats”. But if you can not adjust what you eat and maintain a reasonable weight then you have not learnt anything have you! You know full well what you are doing and you are responsible for yourself! When you eat what you eat you know what you are doing and if it is not 100% healthy you knew the risks involved! :-)

Here endeth the lesson!

That's all until after Friday.

Until next time,

Love, Jackie

xx

CHANGE IS A SIX LETTER WORD

 22^nd May, 2021

Before I start this, I know I think too much, but that's what comes of having too much time on my hands. At least, that's what my son says I have. :-) He is right in a way, but at my stage of life I don't really mind that. All the best philosophers had time to think and to be able to think is quite a luxury. I hate to say this, but not all of us are willing, for what ever reason, to think sometimes, but that's a completely different piece of writing.

It is not so much having too much time, but using that time in a beneficial way, and it's better to have too much time and use it wisely, than not have enough and waste it! There, that's Jackie's saying of the day!

Anyway, I was thinking there are words in the language we use that, when we have to use them, can cause some really strong emotions, whether it be excitement, fear, worry... well, you get my drift. One of these words that I have been thinking about recently is “change”. For a six letter word, change packs a lot of power for most of us at so many different stages of our lives, and how we deal with it can sometimes be easier than other times.

If we were to take a minute right now to think about it, I bet we could all recall a moment that change had an impact on us whether for good or for bad. I can remember starting school, going to secondary school, going on a school holiday abroad for the first time, leaving school and my mother taking me away from my Grandparents, who I loved, to go and live down South with her. She needed me because she was pregnant, even though she hadn't needed me before that. When I think about it, the list of changes goes on and on. So many changes in the nearly 63 years of my life and I am sure there are many, many more to come.

That's the thing about change. It always happens, it never really goes away. Some of us have more changes than others. Some changes happen to everyone, some are personal to us. Some of us have support during these times of change, while others have to cope with it on our own. And some of us will never, ever be the same after one particular change, whatever that might be, has come knocking at our door. Once the change is there and is happening, most of the time we have no choice but to surrender to the flow and let it happen. Sometimes there is just nothing we can do about it.

When my mother took me down South to live away from Yorkshire I was only 16 years old and had no choice in the matter. I didn't want to go, but I was under age and there was nothing I could do about it. When she tried to move me again a few years later I was older and more able to assert myself and didn't go with them. However, I believe that life has a way of putting you just where you need to be. If I had never left Yorkshire when I was 16 I would never have been to the places I've been to, met the people I've met, had the life experiences that I have had, and have the memories I have today.

So, sometimes change, no matter how hard, can work out to be a good thing. That was change I had no control over, but there has also been many, many times I have had the choice whether to change or not, and whether to maintain that change. Now, I bet you are thinking “She is coming around to talk about weight loss and management again”, and I will (after all, that is what my blog's about), but... first of all I was going to talk about another time, back when I was in an abusive marriage. At that time I was so busy just surviving. Trying to look after everybody, the children, my grandmother and even my husband, I took my wedding vows very seriously indeed, and I knew he had some serious problems and I did my very best to try to help him, but he wasn't able to help himself, and we had no support really, so in the end there had to be a change, both for my sanity and the safety of the children and myself. If I was to write about all that happened in those final days it would sound like if it was coming straight from the pages of some novel, or maybe a TV soap opera, certainly not real life! But, as they say, truth is stranger than fiction and perhaps someday I will write about it, but at the moment my blog is still about weight loss. Now, I say at the moment because I feel some changes coming on. I am just not quite sure what they are at the moment. This is my 100^th post in my blog. Who would have known that when I decided to start writing again last year that I would have really got this far, in more ways than one. I started writing this blog, the first time, way back in 2014, because I wanted to document my weight loss and I wanted my grandson, and also now my granddaughter, to know what I was doing. I blogged for a short while, and then stopped, and then started again last year, and really it has changed with the way I have really started to look differently at the best way of having a sustainable way of eating whilst also losing weight and now hopefully keeping it off.

So here we are, as I said, at blog number 100, but I have no idea as of yet if I have reached my goal of losing 100 lbs, because I decided I would only get weighed at the end of the month. I am at a time of change. Yes, there's that six letter word again, but I will greet it head on and I know how I am going to deal with it. It doesn't scare me at all. Well, at least not as far as my writing is concerned. For now that will carry on. All throughout this last year of strange times, my writing has been the one constant in my life, and the one thing that will be here for many years to come. The thing to look back on when my grandchildren are old enough to read it, should they want to know just what their Nannan got up to! :-)

My writing may change in the months to come. I am not sure what road it will go down, but what I am sure about is that it will be varied and hopefully interesting and I will not worry if something changes at the last minute. Life is an adventure, so enjoy it and make the most of it!

Until next time,

Love, Jackie

xxx

YOU ONLY REALLY KNOW WHEN YOU KNOW

18^th May 2021

I mentioned at the end of my last blog about whether a person who had never had a weight issue in their life really worries about the bathroom scales. Now, I think that some people, especially in the Western world at time like Christmas and just before holidays, may think about weight, but it isn't a real issue or fear. Things have a different importance to different people, depending on their experiences, but I think what really hurts is when I see someone professing to know what it's like when their experiences aren't really to the extent that others have had.

Don't get me wrong, everyone's experience is varied and means so much to that individual and evokes so much passion, but it is that person's experience and it is not the same as someone else. As someone once said, “We may be in the same storm, but we may not be in the same boat”. When I started to write my blog, it was, and still is about me. Writing about the thing that have happened to me over the past 62 and a bit years. My circumstances are like no other persons. What has happened to me in my life has not exactly happened to someone else, and this is the same with everybody. We may all have similar experiences to each other, and things we can relate to, but things that have happened to us do not make us an expert.

I also believe that education and experience can have an equal worth in life, but someone who has both, or just one or the other is no better than anyone else, if that makes sense. It is how we use what we have that matters and the care and sensitivities we express to others in life, while being aware we may not know it all. Having said this, the reason I write is that I am a passionate person that knows that things are not always easy in life. It helps me to write down my thoughts, to put them into words rather than them going round and around in my head, and if anything I say helps someone else, then that is a bonus. I would also hope that I would not be pretentious enough to say anything that would offend, but if I did I would be terribly sorry as that was never my intention, and my thoughts were about me and no one else.

As I have said in the past, I have always been afraid of bathroom scales. I know I am not the only one that the scales bother. The fact that right from birth, weight is important for health reasons, but then for some reason it morphs into a fear connected to how we look. It creeps up on us over the years, but it is a real fear and it doesn't matter how much well meaning people tell us it shouldn't matter and try to talk us out of feeling that way, well it's just not that easy. It's a fear, a terrible fear that can affect how we feel the rest of the day. Having said that, we know that if we don't use the scales we risk putting on the pounds and living life overweight! A small problem compared to some other people's troubles, but to those of us that have the fear we have to try to live with it. I am finding my way. I used to weigh myself daily, then weekly and now, at the moment, monthly. I got weighed at the end of April-ish and I will get weighed at the end of May and see how I have done. All this while trying to change my food intake to eat more calories, If things have gone slightly wrong I will still be able to adjust things without any damage done.

we can learn to know how we want to live and conquer fear. To know that whatever happens we can have the confidence of damage limitation, and that all is not lost. We can do what we feel is right without being judged by someone who doesn't really understand just what it is really like.

I am almost at my 100^th blog, this is number 99. What will be interesting at the end of the month is to see how near I am to the 100 pound lost mark.

Writing this has been a pleasure as always.

Until next time,

Love, Jackie

xx

YOU ARE ALLOWED TO GET IT WRONG!

 

13^th May, 2021

Three years ago this coming July I finally gave up work. I hadn't worked full time since 2010, but working part time was a good balance to my life, far better than a stressful full time job, and far, far better than the time I had to work both a full time and a part time job together just to be able to pay the bills and give my children what they needed, as I wasn't getting any support from their father. Thankfully that didn't go on for too long, and I was able to find an income that we could survive on. I have always had to work, as we all do, to live the life we live. No matter what income you have, you find a way to cope. My love of charity shops and eating good food on a budget comes from those days, when it was not so much a choice, but knowing how to survive in the best way you could , which is a good skill to have.

When we came to live in Yorkshire, I only needed to work part time as Steve works full time, and as much as you do moan about going out to work, it is good to mix with people and feel that you have some worth in life.

Then, as I said, three years ago I finally gave up work, not really 100% because I wanted to, but because I was in so much pain. It was taking it out of me just getting myself there, doing the work and getting myself home again. My quality of life was not great. It has taken me a long time to adjust to this and really know that I still have value and worth, even though I don't go out to work and have an income. That has been such a valuable lesson to learn. I personally have done my time giving and now I have time to be able to give to myself. I can find new ways to mix with people and spend my time in a constructive and valuable way. So often we give ourselves mixed messages about worth, we truly do not always know who we are. A these times there is nearly always someone there who, in whatever way, will jump in and tell us the best to find it, how we can be the best person ever! Even if we not really sure, it's so easy to follow the one who is so confident, especially if we do not feel so confident ourselves.

With me, especially as I spent the early years of my life being controlled in such a strong manner, and then having to fight just to survive,it is lovely now for me to be able to find my own way, my own value and my own way of living. Having said that, there are times that I must admit I sort of got it wrong and one of those times was to do with food and weight management.

Now, I am not making a big confession that what I have done this last year and a bit is all wrong, I have fibbed about losing weight and it is all back on again! Sorry, I don't mean to sound so flippant, all of this is real, although sometimes it is hard to believe, but what I mean is about how I looked at weight loss before. How I thought it was a job that needed to be done. Sort of like cleaning a car and then driving straight through mud again, rather than looking for a cleaner  road. That is not a great example, to be honest, I must try to explain it better.

Back in 2012 I was sent to see one of the G.P.s at our surgery. My diabetes was out of control and I was told I had to go and see him. He wore a long black coat and a black hat when out of the surgery, and he had desk with a glass top that looked like a coffin, but I digress. I went in to see him and his first words were to me “Do you want bariatric surgery?” I said NO! Now, please don't get me wrong, I have nothing against anyone who chooses to lose weight this way, and a more educated me now knows it is just as hard for them to lose weight and keep it off , but it just wasn't for me. In my mind, it would take away the way of eating that I loved forever, and all I had to do was restrict myself for a short time and lose the weight and then go back to the way I ate before Job done! Of course, it's not like that at all, is it?

I had to find a middle way. When I read about people losing weight and then regaining it, I do get frightened, because this has happened to me in the past and I don't want it to happen to me again. I have to find this magical middle way and, do you know what, I have realised that it is not as magical as I thought it was. Even though I didn't want the bariatric surgery because I didn't want my eating life to change, I have to accept that it does have to change, just in a different way.

I can never go back to the way I used to eat, and to be perfectly honest, I don't think I would want to. I am beginning, much to Steve's amusement, to realise if I have eaten too much chocolate, or that I only want one sausage instead of two. My tastes have definitely started to change.

So to finish today, what I am trying to say is that if anyone diets and does not change their lifestyle it will not work in the long term. Eating habits, in whatever way we do it, must change in order for the weight to stay off.

When we decide what is best for us, we need to find the right way to do it, a way that we can keep to in a sustainable way and do it. The mountain may be large, but step by step, you'll get there and the view from the summit is just beautiful.

Until next time,

Love, Jackie

xx

P.S. Here's a thought for you to mull over. Do you think that a person, who has never had a weight issue in their life, ever knows on a daily or weekly basis if they have put weight on, or lost it? Probably not, they may realise the waistband on their trousers feels a little snug, but that's about it. Wouldn't it be lovely to put the scales away and be like that without a care in the world? I feel another blog coming on :-)

THE SKIRT AND THE BOOK AND ALL BETWEEN (PART 2)

 6^th May, 2021

In my last blog I wrote about how I felt when I wore my denim skirt. In reality it was one of the few things that fit me and I did not feel frumpy in. I felt half good. I say half good because deep down inside I have never, until very recently, felt worthy of feeling good about myself. I always give to the ones I love (and to others in need) 100%, and always will, but fall short of giving that to myself. When I come close to that I feel wonderful, so why do I deny it to myself? I'd like to say I don't know, but really it is because of those times in my life I have been made to feel unworthy, and those feelings stick with you. Instead of fighting back and saying “hold on a minute”, you think that person knows more than me, they are older, wiser, more experienced, or they have qualifications, so what they are saying must be right. Well, what they are saying might be right at some level, but if it makes someone feel inferior and hinders rather than helps, then it certainly isn't right.

When you are ill, in pain and not strong – mentally or physically – it is so easy to be made to feel a lot worse. Not a good start to self improvement. If you were to go to a slimming club and the leader said to you “What have you done to yourself, you fat woman?”, or “You are far too fat for my advice and attention!”, do you think you'd go back? Probably not. Of course, they are not going to say such things because they rely on our custom for their income. Now, when you go to see an N.H.S. professional here in England, that can be quite different. I heard a saying “Your health may not be affected by the size you are, but the size you are may affect your health”. What I feel that means is that just by looking at someone's BMI and their weight does not cover the whole issue when that person seeks medical help. There are many, many times in my life I have experienced what I have now come to know as “weight stigma” within the medical profession. Weight stigma exists in many walks of life and affects many of us at different levels, but the one that has been most relevent to me in recent years has been in the medical profession.

I still remember how I felt back in my early twenties standing on a platform in nothing much more than my underwear and a short gown, with a specialist looking and examining my legs and telling me ten minutes or so later that no, he would not remove my varicose veins because I was overweight. I must have been about 12, 12 ½ stone at the time, but no, the rules had just changed and I was too big. I still have those veins today, underneath my long skirts or trousers that I wear, but at 62 years old I now look at them when I am on my own and think of them as my battle scars. I have also been told in following years that I was too big for an X-ray, a scan machine and other procedures or how hard my size was making it for the so-called “professional” to do their job.

A lot of the time I just tried to ignore what they were saying. Even when a nurse who was nearly my size gave me a lecture of how being overweight is not good for you. A perfect example of the kettle calling the saucepan burnt bottom 🤣 A lot of do as I say, not as I do! Those of us that have struggled with our weight know exactly how it is.

One of the hardest times, and one I have written about before, was about six years ago, when I saw the first specialist about the pain in my knee. He bluntly told me that yes, I needed a knee replacement, but he wouldn't do it because I was too much overweight,bluntly fat and in his opinion fatter people's self hygiene was not as good and because of that they didn't heal well, so it would be a waste of his time to do it. At that time I weighed about 14 stone, having lost 10 stone in 2014, and it had just – only just – started to creep back on. I had still lost 6 stone from my largest weight, but I was not worth his time until I was at the point that he didn't see me as fat. I seem to remember that a weight of 10 or 10 ½ stone was mentioned, but by this stage I was in so much pain that I had started to mentally switch off from it all.

Back to my denim skirt. When you feel good you can take on the entire world, but when you are knocked down at your weakest it is a downward spiral. As simple as you look good, you feel great, battle won. Then a few unkind or unsympathetic words and suddenly you feel the battle is lost. It sounds very simplistic, but there it is, and over the next few years I strarted to feel worse and worse. I never really found any strength in myself to fight back. And then, because one GP heard and listened to what I said, I had an opportunity to see a different specialist and there was then a chance of things changing. He still said I would need to be a certain BMI to have my surgery, but the respect that I received from him helped me to believe it was worth a try. I still remember how good I felt when I came from the appointment that day. It was like a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Someone had given me hope and had treated me with dignity, respect and worth. Now here I am a year later, still waiting for surgery, now on a hip and possibly both knees, but seven stone lighter and with some hope for the future.

Weight stigma still exists and it definitely depends on what frame of mind you are in as to how it affects you. People are starting to fight it and the attitudes of some medical professionals are changing. Some are seeing the flaws that some ideas rooted in weight stigma can bring to light.

One of these medical professionals is Joshua Wolrich. He has written a book called “Food Isn't Medicine. Challenge Nutrib*llocks & Escape the Diet Trap”. I am about half way through at the moment and it makes very good reading so far. At some point in the future I will write about what I thought of it. I will finish my blog here, but I hope I have been able to put across just how important it is to feel good about ourselves. It can be the difference between being able to stick up for ourselves in a difficult world, or just slipping helplessly into depression and self-despair, feeling unworthy and not having a right to be here.

We are all worthy. We all have a right to be the best we can be, and receive what we deserve. Never give up, no matter how hard it might be.

Until next time,

Love, Jackie

xx