IS A SKIRT GOING TO HELP YET AGAIN?

 28^th January 2022

I was going through a very hard and strange time when I was writing my last blog, and my mind went off on one of it's “I will make your writing hand move the way I want it to” moments. :-) It can do that sometimes and I let it because that's the way I have learnt to feel better about a situation. I learnt this nearly nine years ago when I first started to write this blog. I needed to keep my mind clear to lose weight and writing helped me to do that. At the moment I find writing alone is not helping as much as it used to and I am now trying out lots of new ideas to keep me occupied and not constantly think about food.

I don't know if it's the time of year, or the fact that it is so cold, or even something else, but I do seem to think about food more than I have been. It's easier in warmer weather when you can fill up on salads and other low calorie foods, but in Winter it feels like there is only so much soup you can eat without feeling bored. There is also the fact that Winter clothes cover up so much.

Before we know it the warmer weather will be upon us and there will be nowhere to hide our bodies. I will feel so let down with myself if I can't at least maintain the weight I have reached. I was listening to Carla Jenkins on her “Calorie Crush” YouTube posts (I have mentioned her before in my blog) and she was saying she was finding it harder to lose weight now. She is at year two, week twenty of her weight loss journey. She started at 27 stone and 2 pounds, and at the moment she is 19 stone and 11 pounds, with some more weight to go.

She, like me, has a long, long journey, one that has to be there for the rest of her life. If only it was like getting in a car and going from A to D, and once there that was it. You could go back to the way you lived, the way you ate and you didn't step back on that slippery slope back to A. Somehow you need to keep going from B to C, C to D and stay there without going back.

We can't help who we are, what has made us this way, but we can take responsibility for where we want to be. My plan at the moment is damage limitation. I refuse point blank to once agin go back to where I was at 20 stone plus, but it is never going to be easy, especially at this stage of the game.

I am finding the scales frustrating. I have the older type with a dial and they don't show the smallest weight loss, unlike those that are digital. Unless you lose a couple of pounds, it doesn't show and at this stage of my journey, I may only lose a half pound a week.

I have decided for now to go back to not getting weighed. It's a bit of a risk, I know, but getting on those scales every morning and not seeing any change is so frustrating and depressing. Instead, I will, for now, gauge it with my clothes and how they feel. I know what I eat in a day, I know if it is “right” or “wrong” and I know the consequences, so in that situation the scales won't help me anyway. They will just add to the frustration of it all. I have done it before with monthly weigh-ins, and I will do it again. I don't need the scales to tell me. Words that can lead to a downfall, I know, but I am giving it a go. Scales were never my friend, anyway, so I won't miss them. I have a skirt that I bought the other day that is a little bit tight for me at the moment. It only cost £1 in the charity shop sale and instead of taking it back, I am going to see if I can lose the small amount I need to to get it to fit. I know they say you shouldn't use this method, but it has worked for me in the past, and that £1 skirt may give me the inspiration to lose the few pound in weight I need.

I will let you all know how I get on, but after losing weight this time over the course of just over two years, a new way of monitoring success may be just what I need. I promise – and I don't promise this lightly – a photo will follow in the future.

Until next time,

Lots of love,

Jackie

xx

THE FACULTY BY WHICH THE MIND STORES AND REMEMBERS INFORMATION

 25^th January, 2022

It is getting towards the end of January now, and it always amazes me how time flies by. It was my daughter's 40^th birthday on the 21^st and the years have certainly flowed away so quickly. Those years, and the ones before her birth contained so many, many memories. Some good, some not so good, but we are still here and each memory is precious, either for the happiness it gives or for the lessons left for us to hopefully learn from.

I find it easier now to be more philosophical because I am here looking back. Sometimes the reality of what happened in those years hits me and I am left wondering how I survived. But survive I did. When I relive moments in my head it can feel like some fictional story but it wasn't, it was real and I was one of the lead characters. Perhaps one day I will go into more details about my personal history, but I don't think I could do it as me, so to speak. It would have to be under a nom-de-plume. It could hopefully help those who are going through similar situations know they are not alone, how they are living is not “normal”, things can change and life can become so much better. Writing as someone else would also protect the ones that are intermeshed with my story to give them the privacy they deserve. Who knows, I will have to give this all some deep thought.

Life and memories are so important. When I was young I lived with my Grandparents as my mother was single and when she wasn't working she was always going out or going away somewhere. She had married my father when she was 17 years old on a cold and snowy day in January 1958. I was born in a much warmer July of the same year so I think you may have realised I too was at the wedding in a much smaller way :-)

After the marriage broke up about seven or eight years later she was still young and perhaps wanted to catch up with the youth she had missed out on. We had moved in with my Grandparents so catch up she did. At the time it was hard for me but looking back at the situation years later, I realised what a blessing it was. I spent a lot of time with my Grandad who I loved, he hadn't had an easy life but he just got on with things and always seemed to have a solution to problems as they arose. Grandma was always telling me stories of her childhood. This paid off in later years when she was diagnosed as having Alzheimer's.  When her mind took her back to her past, I knew what she was talking about and we could chat together. This was a hard but special time.She only had me to care for her in her last few years as my mother had disowned her and me but that, as they say, is another story.

When we are young family history can seem so boring but as we get older it can take on a whole new meaning. We have time to think about what went before and what made us who we are. How I wish I could travel back in time and see those family events first hand, rather than piecing together the different facts and stories.

This blog today, as you will have probably noticed, is not about weight loss, except life experiences can shape and mold us into who we are and be part of why we gain weight. How we deal with difficulties and problems can be limited to our experience. Past fears need to be overcome before we can move on.

For a lot of us there is far more to losing weight than watching what we eat and exercising more. We can over eat to deal with emotions and feelings and this can only really be addressed by knowing what the triggers are and learning how to overcome them.

I have realised over the years, especially after looking after my Grandma, just how important memories can be. I will move forward documenting mine in one form or another. Hopefully I can express who I feel I truly am, how it all was. Anyone interested  will be able to hear it from me. They will know my side of a story. 

Who knows many years from now what will be thought of all this I don't know I won't be there! :-)

Oh well, that's all for now, perhaps next time I will write the blog I actually sat down to write before my mind took over and I digressed!

Until next time,

Love, Jackie

xx

NEVER TOO OLD TO LEARN A NEW TRICK OR TWO!

 

15^th January, 2022

We are all probably doing our best to get through January. It can be a hard month, but it can literally have it's rays of sunshine. My daughter was born in late January 40 years ago, and it was a beautiful sunny day. She was born in a military hospital, the Louise Margaret in Aldershot. Although it was a military hospital, it was available to us civilians too. It was a wonderful hospital, where both my children were born, and you couldn't ask for better treatment, even from a private hospital.

I had my own room during labour and I clearly remember looking out on a wonderful garden, bathed in golden sunshine. It helped me take my mind off things, if only for a little while. :-) Some how, sunshine and bright blue skies always seem to make you feel better. They give you hope of better things to come. Life may change, but always hope for the better and do your best to make it that way.

I am carrying on with my plan to motivate myself. Little things that concentrate my mind and encourage good habits. At the moment I have been posting a photo of one brooch from my collection on Instagram each day, and saying something about it. I know that it might seem a trivial thing to do, but it focuses my mind on finding the brooches, photographing them and then putting them online each day.

When you are at home a lot, for whatever reason, it is so easy to slip into doing nothing all day and a task as small as this helps you to establish the get up, dress up and get on with life attitude you really do need if you are going to feel your best.

I have collected my brooches over a long period of time, and each and every one has a special memory. I have always loved jewellery and shiny things. They can be so small, but can bring so much joy. When I was over 20 stone, a lot of jewellery didn't seem to “fit”, but a brooch always did. I have around about forty four at the moment, But I know my collection hasn't stopped. Most of them haven't cost a lot of money, not that that matters, but they all shine in one way or another. You do run the risk of damaging them if you wear them too much, but they are there to be worn and they give me so much pleasure, and hopefully others appreciate them too.

I am always looking at different ways to wear things and adapt them possibly for a different use. As I have said before, I do love to shop in a charity shop or two. Not really ever having a lot of disposable cash, it definitely is a cheaper way to dress yourself, especially if you don't mind being a little imaginative and think out of the box. There are so many treasures you can find, and up to now I have, and I am still going. ☺️

There is someone I have found on YouTube who is such an inspiration. The name of her channel is “PoppyK” and it can be found at https://www.youtube.com/user/ktcreid. She is based here in the UK, not America as so many are, and she does a lot of charity shop and vintage outlet shopping. How she manages to pick up some of the wonderful things she does, I am not sure, but she does and puts them together in outfits that give people inspiration to give it a go themselves. Maybe not in the same way that she does, but it opens the mind to new ways of thinking. She also has videos of when she has upcycled items, either by embellishing what she has bought, to help it to fit better, or completely changing something into something else.

She is an inspiration to watch and has such an imagination when it comes to putting her charity shop finds together. I know that watching her has definitely given me some new and much needed ideas. She is well worth a watch or two... or three ☺️

I have started going through my clothes rail with a different pair of eyes. Over the next few weeks I shall start to put outfits together for Spring, which is rapidly approaching, (yes, it will come), and see what I need to keep and what I can give away. As I have a rule of one thing given away, one thing gained, I may be in for a charity shop hunt very shortly indeed.

I will let you know how it all goes, but in the meantime give “PoppyK” a watch. You too may learn something new.

Until next time,

Love, Jackie.

xx

NEW IDEAS EMERGE. WE WILL SEE!

 

9^th January, 2022

“The difference between who you are and who you want to be is what you do.”

(Bill Phillips)

Well, here we are, the second week of January and at what stage are we when it comes to weight loss, New Year's resolutions and the new us.

For many it may already have dwindled or they have given up, after all it wasn't really going to work once real life kicked in was it 😁 For others that have been losing weight throughout 2021 and gave themselves a break for Christmas, it may be hard to get back into the swing of things. It's all really about mind set and how we see things and trying to find a middle way. A middle way that is sustainable. It's not easy at this time of year to always be motivated or not to let boredom creep in and spoil the show. With me I know it can be boredom, or should I say activating my mind to think of things rather than food. In the Summer it is much easier. There is always somewhere to go, or something to do outside which you don't always want to do when it's cold and raining. For me to stick to my plan of healthy eating I need to be doing other things. Other things that don't always involve food. I say that, but I would like to start thinking of cooking interesting healthier food. This is not always easy me for me to do as I find I cannot stand for long a great length of time without feeling the consequences later, but I am sure I can find a way around this with a little help from Steve.

I have also thought about finding new interests and new groups that I could possibly join, plus doing a little volunteering work, but all of this I shall write about as I progress, and I can see where they go.

I managed to keep myself going through the lockdowns of 2020 and I am sure I can do it now. Of course, then my motivation was at a very high level, but I can still come up with things now especially as things in the outside world are getting easier. I have a love of clothes and fashion, even more so since I have lost weight and also I have a great love for jewellery, especially unusual jewellery. I find a lot of things on my charity shop and antique centre visits and look forward to doing more of this. It is a little difficult for me to go too far at this moment in time as the bus drivers in our area are on an indefinite strike, but that won't last forever.

I still watch a bit of Youtube, but to be fair I have learnt so much from there and have found some really interesting channels that are very entertaining. In an upcoming blog I will write about these and how I have used information from them to help myself. I am also in the process of finding out more about online courses and what I can gain from a little more education.

So what with new foods, fashion and jewellery, new groups, Youtube and a little more learning, you can see I have set myself up for a very interesting time, along with, of course, carrying on with my writing. It is so important for me to carry on progressing with my healthy eating and trying, as a result, to lose a few more pounds. If all these new ideas I have come up with help to occupy this mind of mine, it can only be a bonus, says she with optimism.

So we will see what happens next,

Until next time,

Love, Jackie

xx

OUT WITH THE OLD AND IN WITH THE...?

 2^nd January, 2022

I am writing this on New Year's Eve, although it won't actually appear on my blog for a day or two. New Year is traditionally a time when we think about the last year and look forward to the next one. It's always good to look forward, but when you consider that others in this world have different New Years it didn't necessarily need to be today, but today is as good as any. We had a good Christmas. It was a little different, but for me and Steve different is the way we often like to be. This year we decided to not have the traditional Christmas dinner, and went instead to an Indian restaurant for a buffet lunch, and it was really nice, albeit a little bit noisy, but you can't have it all ways.

Christmas was different for me this year in the way I felt about food too. Last Christmas I found it really hard to eat the food I wanted to because I felt it was “bad”.Even though I did try to eat all the lovely treats like mince pies and chocolate it didn't last long. The pressure and guilt got too much for me. Even though at the time I thought it was great for me to be back on “plan” on Boxing Day, it was really because I couldn't relax and I was worried I would put on a lot of weight. I have read so much  about how many calories you would have to eat to put a lb of fat on your body (and it is a lot) but last year I still worried. I had not learnt at that time to not let food be a problem. When I say problem what I mean is the obsession of not wanting to eat fatty, sugary foods because I was terrified of putting weight back on. I know back then I was waiting for my operation and then the wedding and to lose weight was important to me but it was fear and obsession that stopped any enjoyment there could have been Christmas 2020. As these needs for weight loss have passed I am starting to think differently. My weight did go up after the operation, then it went down again, and then it went up slightly with the wedding and went back down and then went  up a little over Christmas. In the real world this is normal and should not be feared it is not the end of my slimmer Jackie world 😂 Not having that pressure of the fear of weight gain is a lovely feeling. Remembering that it is about health and how you feel about yourself and not only the number on the scale will help me to enter 2022 on track to what I want to achieve in the next twelve months. It has now been just over two years since I weighed 20 stones and 4 pounds. I have still been able to maintain my weight loss of just over 100 lbs give or take a few pounds so I must be doing something right. I have learnt so much about myself in that time and about the issues I have around food. It is so much easier now but it is not fully overcome. I don't know if it ever will be completely. With any other addiction, to abstain is a good start, but we have to eat to live. Not only that, but the issues that drive you to overeat are still there, even when you become slimmer. It is then you have to address those issues driving you to overeat again and not go around in that continual cycle.

The years go around and around in a circle and there is nothing we can do about that, but what we can do is break those cycles we put ourselves through throughout those years if we want to live a different life. There is no starting point to a circle, so perhaps I need to live the next year in a straight line with a beginning and some outcomes. It is so uplifting to be able to think about these outcomes and what they could mean to me and where they might lead me to. It is good to look back, we can learn so much, but let us not forget to also look forward, and who knows just what memories we will have on December 31^st 2022.

Here's to twelve months of trying and hopefully succeeding.

Until next time,

Love, Jackie

xx