Author Archive for thetoad

The Toad Is Back!! Gwuar!!

Published
by
thetoad
on 5 June 2008
in Mental Health
. 0 Comments

Well, it has certainly been a while since I wrote on this blog. I haven’t forgotten about it – or you – my loyal reader audience – it has just been a difficult month and I have not felt much like writing. Alas, my muse left me for a while!

Things I have been battling with in the last month have been down to trying to get my mental health care sorted from the NHS down here on the south coast.

Each week I have been told something different by someone else – it seems I don’t need to see a psychiatrist about my medication when it has been over 12 months since it was last reviewed. This turns out to be something I alter myself or visit my GP for. This has been a big disappointment for me. When we had the first assessment – when TuT was present – the nurse conducting the assessment said, in front of TuT and to me, that a psychiatry appointment would be made. This has not happened.

The day hospital that the nurse was so positive about turned out to be another disappointment. After another gruelling assessment at the said day hospital, I was told that it ran groups, the groups are broken down into activity, support, and educational. I was not given a timetable and asked which groups I would like to attend or what I felt would be beneficial, I was told that they would have a meeting and decide which group would be suitable for me.

Nothing was heard from this assessment for over two weeks, until I got a phone call, saying that I was going to be put down for attending “The Holistic Group”; I am as much in the dark as you are reading this, as to what the said holistic group is and what it does.

This is a mystery that will remain unsolved for some time; the groups run in blocks and you can’t join a group that has already started. My window for joining the holistic group is not for another two months!

So I had all this going on with my medication, lack of psychiatry support and finding out the day hospital could do nothing for me for months. I am experiencing an increasing sense of loneliness and isolation with TuT out the door before 8am and not home until well after 6pm in the evening. It’s a long day with no friends or family.

In light of this, my CPN recommended that I get in touch with the local “Mind” centre. The mental health charity “mind” run a centre about 25minute walk from the flat that you can “drop-in” to. They cook a lunch and one night a week an evening meal, and you can get involved in helping to prepare that meal, or just have some company with people that may be in a similar situation to yourself. Just drop in for a cup of tea and a chat; whatever you feel like doing – there is no pressure, you can attend as often or as infrequently as you like.

I had made a few attendances at the mind centres in the north, so I went along for a look, then returned a week later for an interview. As it is an informal drop-in I didn’t think the interview would be too troublesome. It turned out to be another gruelling assessment of my life and experiences and mental health and medication that lasted over an hour and a half. I came out in floods of tears, and was told that I would have to wait for references from my GP and Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN) to come back to the centre before I could start attending.

This was another blow as by now I was frustrated that the day hospital had come to nothing and was becoming increasingly unhappy with my long empty days that I just wanted some company and social interaction to fill. I was falling into dangerous waters of spending my time watching rubbish on the tv, not getting showered or dressed until late in the afternoon, and not making any effort to go out and do anything because I was just so depressed. At one point I said to TuT

“I can’t remember the last time I laughed”

It was not a good time. I met with my CPN last Thursday and she told me to chase the mind centre because they had faxed off my reference to them.

This week I rang the mind centre on Monday and went along to see them late on Tuesday afternoon. After a chat it was agreed I can start attending the mind centre and will also be having scheduled “one-to-one” time with a member of their staff to work on confidence and just feeling better in myself.

It’s been a long slog to get to this stage, but having the support of the mind centre, and actually having somewhere to go, to be with some company, is just what is needed for me right now.

So things are looking up and I am more inclined to write about my experiences now – so keep checking the blog – THE TOAD IS BACK!! GWUAR!!

1st May – New Month – New Start

Published
by
thetoad
on 1 May 2008
in Dieting, Food and Mental Health
. 0 Comments

Greetings audience, I offer my apologies for neglecting the blog for as long as I have.

Basically, after the psychiatric assessment I lost the plot a little bit – going over the past and stirring up the mud at the bottom of the pond is never good for me and I got a lot ill for a couple of days. I didn’t much feel like blogging, in fact, I didn’t feel much like doing anything much at all.

Then when I’d just about got myself together, TuT had to go away for a couple of days for a training course for his job. I know couples that don’t mind separation, that can deal with one of them spending Monday to Friday away and just spending weekends together, but that is not the relationship TuT and I have. We both HATE being apart. Especially at night. It was playing on my mind, TuT’s impending departure for a few days, and this further added to my stress in trying to get over the psychiatric assessment.

TuT left on the Sunday afternoon, leaving me with an empty hollow feeling in my stomach, that was never full, no matter how much food I ate. I tried to stick to my weight watchers points, but was comfort eating. I hate spending long periods of time on my own. I was also scared to death that something would happen to TuT on his long drive to the North.

On the Monday I decided to treat myself to something nice for lunch as I was hungry and hadn’t really eaten a proper evening meal on Sunday evening. In town there is a sandwich shop – doing all the typical sandwich fillings and jacket potatoes, but it is run by Thai people. In addition to doing the normal stuff you expect from a sandwich shop they have a Thai menu.

I was craving a Chinese take away with TuT away, but, they are never open at lunch time, so I thought I would satisfy my craving with a Thai Takeaway. I ordered the Thai noodle soup – with eager anticipation. What I got was a bag of micro-waved supernoodles, the vegetable component was carrots and cauliflower – I had no idea that cauliflowers were Thai?! And a few pieces of sandwich chicken. I was disappointed, but starving, so ate a fair bit of it, but then felt really bad.

Supernoodles can be up to 12 points – and they are certainly not worth 12 points. So I just felt like I had ruined weight watchers on something that wasn’t even worth it.

I recently read an article that explained that cravings are not actually your body signalling that you are low on a particular vitamin or mineral. For example just before your period you sometimes justify the chocolate craving as your body needing sugar and magnesium. Or if you crave crisps it’s because your body is low on sodium. In actual fact these cravings are down to a craving for comfort as these are the foods that we associate with happy and comforting times. It’s a psychological craving as opposed to a physical need.

I read this article after the Chinese takeaway cravings I’d experienced whilst TuT was away; and it made sense. Chinese takeaways are my favourite take away and TuT and I often enjoy one together on a Friday night at the beginning of the weekend – I have rarely ever ordered a Chinese take away on my own before moving in with TuT – so I was craving the togetherness of enjoying a Chinese takeaway together, which is something I always associate with Friday nights and the beginning of TuT and I’s weekend together.

On the third day of TuT’s absence my parents arrived for a short stay. They weren’t up for bedding down on the inflatable air bed in our spare room, so stayed in a nearby hotel.

Spending days with my parents also spelt diet disaster. Already, thanks to the evil “Thai” noodles and comfort eating I had a 1lb gain on the scales on the Tuesday morning weigh – in. It was annoying, but not unexpected, due to the foods I had been eating.
My parents took me to the posh sandwich shop over the road for Tuesday’s lunch and then we had some lagers whilst watching the football in the evening, and finally, for me, a Chinese takeaway!!! Craving satisfied, whilst sharing with my mum.

The next day saw us going to Brighton for the day and we went for a lovely lunch at an “all-you-can-eat” Italian – pizza, pasta, salad and garlic bread. It was delicious and I tried to focus on filling up on the delicious salad bar.

In the evening I wanted some “mum cooked goodness”; so I got mum to cook tea for us all out of the ingredients I had in the flat. We had savoury mince with mashed potatoes (the aunt bessie’s frozen version! – thank you Delia!) and vegetables. It was comforting and delicious and fairly healthy I would say; although by this point I had abandoned sticking to my weight watchers points allowance as I had no idea how to point what I had eaten so just tried to keep things as healthy as possible, whilst not pointing.

TuT returned on Wednesday night – hurrah! So happy he returned safely. The parents left on Thursday lunch time and I was pretty stressed out by all the changes. It was wonderful seeing the parental units, but a total change to my usual routine and with TuT being away as well, plus still getting over the psychiatric assessment; the upshot was by Friday I lost the plot big time.
I had this constant churning feeling in my stomach and was convinced that cosmic forces were out to get me. I couldn’t stop crying and my head was constantly buzzing with sounds and thoughts. I managed to get through to the nurse that had conducted my psych assessment – by this point I was thinking that I needed to be on the psych ward I felt so spaced out and frightened, all the time, with a churning stomach. It was awful.

The nurse agreed to see me that afternoon, and there was talk of a doctor being called in to potentially give me something to calm things down a bit for me. I was a total state.

After seeing the nurse things calmed down a bit. I talked through everything and the churning feeling eased off somewhat. The psych nurse explained that there had been a mess up with my referral to the day hospital and it would be a while before they picked me up, so in the meantime she would see me – “off the record” as it were, to keep an eye on me until my support system was properly in place. This was reassuring.

TuT and I enjoyed a wonderful weekend together, without the shadow of TuT going away as we had had the previous weekend.
Tuesday morning revealed another 1lb gain, which to say I had been comfort eating with TuT away and hadn’t pointed my food the whole time my parents were staying and when TuT came home, was expected, and to be fair, with what I’d eaten, I could have deserved to have put on a little more.

I just need to focus now. I bought one of the weight watchers journals, and I am going to fill in every single bite of food and every single drink and track all my points properly from now on.

I am also wearing my weight watchers points pedometer and trying to beat the previous days bonus point earning score.
So yesterday, armed with my trusty pedometer on my pocket, I marched to see my psych nurse for my second appointment with her and to find out the progress of my referral to the day hospital.

What surprise news I was greeted with when we met, She has arranged to take me on her case load officially and will see me until my referral to the day hospital comes through and continue to support me during my attendance at the day hospital. She is my official care co-ordinator and I now have the support of my own permanent CPN (community psychiatric nurse). This level of support is something I have not had since I lived in the north and is a big relief.

Today is the 1st May and I am a big believer in starting new things, or improving on old things. So first thing, I need to keep all you readers entertained and get blogging again! I think I’ve got off to a good start!

Psychiatric Assessment

Published
by
thetoad
on 16 April 2008
in Mental Health
. 0 Comments

So, yesterday was different from my usual Tuesday – no Weight Watchers weigh-in, not out of choice, but after a good two months of waiting, I had my psychiatric assessment for the mental health team based in my new coastal location.

I was very anxious about it. With all the moving around TuT and I have done in the last twelve months we have had experience of four different NHS mental health services and it really is a post code lottery of what is on offer depending on which part of the country you are in.

Living in the north had different ideas of what was a good level of support, and the same is true of the south. The problem with these psychiatric assessments is that you have to go through everything; I have been involved over the years, with various mental health teams since I was 15. At 28 years old now that is over 10 years to go through to give an accurate background of my mental health.

So when the CPN (community psychiatric nurse) took TuT and I through to the little office to do the assessment I was very anxious, but reassured that she had my official looking file and had got some notes from Milton Keynes, where I lived for five months before moving here.

The seats were uncomfortable and I ended up sat on this rotating-retro square desk chair – I felt like the director! And so began the tale.

Beginning with the abuse that I can remember occurring from the ages of 10; to being taken to the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinic when I was 15 because the school told my mum I was acting strangely and that was why I was getting bullied; apparently I was bringing it on myself with my the way I was behaving.

Then through sixth form when I discovered self harming as a way of coping and perhaps enjoyed getting drunk and messy a little more than my friends.

Then from sixth form to university with the beginnings of my disordered eating, through the famous “breakfast/tea diet”.
Into university where I nearly ended up being admitted as an in-patient to the psychiatric ward in the north, but managed to persuade them not to as I wanted to finish my degree in Liverpool. The agreement to skirt my admission was that I would see a Psychologist.

So then into my third year at university I had to come home to the north every other weekend to see the Psychologist.
Then graduating, starting work in administrative roles, with the psychologist tagging along in the background whilst I ended up on anti-depressants and was struggling to get any sleep.

Then into 2003 when I made my first suicide attempt and ended up in hospital. The hot summer of 2003 when I spent most of my nights sat in my bedroom self harming and taking overdoses. Whilst getting angrier and angrier at my parents for allowing the abuse to happen when each night I was reliving terrifying flash backs and just felt completely unable to cope.

Days were spent in the psychiatric day hospital and nights were spent losing the plot and drinking with friends I’d made from the day hospital.

Things between my parents deteriorated to the extent that my new psycho-therapist placed me in supported housing for people with mental health problems.

I lived there for about a year before moving home and going back to work part-time as a legal secretary. Which went well for about two months then the solicitor I worked for took on defending a man accused of abusing his step-daughter. When having to photocopy daily his step-daughters statements, which I couldn’t help but read, but mirrored my own experiences of abuse, I knew the step-daughter couldn’t be lying, but we had to defend the step father.

By the autumn I was back in hospital as in-patient following another overdose. From there followed a cycle of returning to work, getting ill and stressed, getting admitted as an in-patient, going back to work etc.etc. and so on. Until my employers got sick of having to find cover for my secretarial role, and on discharge from my admission in August 2004 I came home to a letter sacking me and telling me not to return to work again.

At around this time I started seeing and soon moved in with, my ex-partner, who turned out to be a violent and abusive, manipulative alcoholic. Life was based around alcohol and was total chaos. I returned to my parents on a couple of occasions but he would always talk me round with promises to change and that life would be better.

I was totally unable to contemplate going back to work with how badly my mental health had deteriorated and couldn’t see any way out, any way to improve my life. So in January 2006 I started the year with a massive over-dose, my most serious and nearest I’d got to actually finishing the job and ending my life, and on recovery, another in-patient stay on the psychiatric ward.
My new psychiatrist had taken me off all my medication and I was just flying along through life, trying to keep things as normal as possible whilst living with a violent alcoholic. I started attending Weight Watchers and losing weight, which made me feel a bit better about things and improved my self-esteem. The improvement in my self esteem meant increases in the violence from my ex-partner.

Eventually in June 2006, wandering the streets at 4am after the ex had locked me out I decided to take control of my life and declared myself homeless. The ex went on holiday and trusted me with the flat keys to feed the fish and collect his post, I used the opportunity to clear the flat of all my belongings, re-housed my fish with my brother; and spent another hot summer, this time three years later, attending the day hospital and living in a bed and breakfast whilst I waited to be re-housed.

During this time I met TuT and after six weeks of being with him moved to South Yorkshire to live with him; I knew I loved him and wanted to be with him forever and I wanted a fresh start away from everything that had happened in North Yorkshire.
There’s been plenty more that has happened whilst I have been moving around the country for TuT’s work and we have been at the mercy of whichever mental health team we were living under.

I was pretty exhausted after covering all this history with the CPN conducting the assessment. There is a place fairly near to us that will be able to help me come to terms and deal with the abuse when I am ready. In the mean time she would like me to attend the local day hospital here. So I am now waiting to hear from them and am just hoping that I won’t have to go through another assessment at the day hospital and go through the whole story again!

I spent the rest of the day exhausted and feeling like I’d sat a couple of A-Level examinations.

Today the sun is shining and the weather is wonderful. I am going to a different Weight Watchers meeting at 10:30am to find out how the last week of tracking my points has gone – I am at the mercy of the scale-gods! Wish me luck and I will post my weigh-in result when I get home.

Needing to Move More!

Published
by
thetoad
on 14 April 2008
in Dieting, Excercise and Losing Weight
. 0 Comments

I haven’t been posting for the last couple of days. The weekend days are always tough for me to sit and write, but last week I was feeling really down and despondent about life. My motivation to do things and fill my day productively just went out of the window.

I haven’t got a proper routine established at the moment, so I have been doing very little exercise. Earlier posts will reveal that I was actively training for the 5km Race for Life that I have entered. This has fizzled out and I haven’t been out for a run in nearly two weeks. The time when my 5km training began to dwindle was finding out about the effects of the Depo Provera injection on my weight. I was running most days, believing that I would firm up and get skinny and light. After six weeks or so, giving it a proper chance to start showing some positive effects on the scales, I actually ended up slightly heavier, although my fitness had improved. There’s no way I was running enough to build up any sort of muscle weight in that time and the whole experience of consistently running and not getting any results has really put me off.

I am not a natural runner, I never have been. But when I am lighter and fitter, going for a run is enjoyable and brilliant way to keep the pounds off and get some fresh air and exercise.

I now know that my lack of results on the scales despite my running is due to the injection playing havoc with my weight. TuT and I have basically worked out that it fools the body into thinking it is pregnant and hence predisposed to put the weight on. There’s people out there that say it just increases your appetite and that’s why you put on weight, well, that may be true for some people, but not for me. Through tracking my weight watchers points, I am probably eating more now, than I was previously. That’s how little I was eating – that Weight Watchers points allowance of food is more food than I am used to eating. So the increase in appetite theory of the weight gain is not something I agree with in my case.

The injection would have been due this Wednesday 16th April, you can have the injection a week either side of it, so as of a week on Wednesday I am into the detox zone I feel. I am not going to change what I am doing now with regards to the eating plan I am following I am just going to keep going as I am – I am within my points allowance easily most days and eating pretty healthily (hence the recipes for the soups I made last week). I just hope that once the effects start to wear off and my body adjusts and detoxes off the injection that the pounds will disappear at a better and more consistent speed.

In the meantime, I do realise that I need to move my butt more than what I have been doing in the last couple of weeks. I got an email from a friend I haven’t heard from in a while and she said

“are you still doing loads of exercise….I bet you’re really fit now”

This made me remember that when I first moved to the coast I was doing a lot of exercise, and on the whole enjoying it, and just because it didn’t show on the scales doesn’t mean that it won’t show on my body.

I have been reading sara’s blog www.sanafit.blogspot.com and she has just completed a 12 week training programme and lost 3lbs. You may think, as I was, that 3lbs is not much, but the “before and after” pictures speak for themselves and the 3lbs difference is really noticeable on her body and she looks very good – I would love to have the fit, toned and slim body that she is modelling on her blog pages today.

So this week I plan to get myself booked into some classes at the gym; I bought a new swimming costume on Saturday so I have no excuse not to get some lengths done in the pool, and I am just going to focus on the inch loss and toning my body up whilst getting super fit, as opposed to what the scales say.

Soup of The Day

Published
by
thetoad
on 9 April 2008
in Dieting, Food and Losing Weight
. 0 Comments

I really enjoyed both eating and cooking the wonderful curried cauliflower soup I made yesterday. For the curry powder I used the Tandoori Masala blend that I bought from www.seasonedpioneers.co.uk to make my Delia Smith curry that I created last week. The story of that fantastic curry is in an earlier entry. I think the curry powder used makes all the difference to the finished recipe.

What I love about homemade soups is that they have far more flavour than the ones you get out of tin, and with all the veggies you pack into them, you know you are getting your five-a-day and I have to say, you do feel very virtuous tucking into a bowl of homemade soup, knowing you have taken the trouble to make it, and that it has zero points or free on the core plan.

I am just simmering today’s soup. Going off what vegetables I have and what needed using, I had a cabbage that was looking like it wouldn’t last much longer in the fridge. So here’s the recipe for the soup I will be eating today.

Cabbage and Tomato Soup

1 cabbage
1 handful of spinach
3 onions, finely chopped
2 fat cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 inch piece fresh ginger, chopped finely (I used 2 teaspoons EPC very lazy Ginger)
Vegetable stock made up with boiling water and 2 knorr vegetable stock cubes
2 tins chopped tomatoes
2 tablespoons tomato puree
Fry Light Oil Spray

Spray a large non stick pan with Fry Light and add the finely chopped onion, garlic and ginger. I used the chopper attachment of my stick hand blender and gave it a quick blitz – Delia would be proud! But if you don’t have a mini chopper or chopper attachment, finely chopping it all is fine. Sweat the onion mixture for one minute over a moderate heat.

Add the chopped cabbage and combine with the onion mixture, following with your handful of spinach. Cook for a further two minutes.

Add the tinned tomatoes, tomato puree and enough of the vegetable stock to cover the mixture.

Allow the soup to simmer for 30 minutes. It will reduce down slightly and go all thick and tomatoey/cabbagey.

After 30 minutes, blitz with your stick hand blender until it reaches a smooth, or chunkier if preferred consistency.
I must add a very STRONG WARNING. Once the soup is blended and smooth, take extra special care when re-heating. It will SPIT. When re-heating a tomato based soup a couple of weeks ago I lifted the lid off to stir it and got a huge splatter of scalding hot tomato soup on my ring finger. It blistered so badly I couldn’t wear my engagement ring for over a week. Re-heat with caution and when stirring it, take it off the heat entirely which immediately stops it spitting.

The resulting soup is thick and filling with a wonderful rich tomato flavour with the gentle heat of the ginger in the background. This recipe makes enough for four large portions – if you are eating a zero point soup I think “fill your boots!”. Although if you were having a sandwich or crisp breads with it, you prefer a little less depending on your appetite.

So I have three more boxes of soup cooling ready to go in the freezer to join the three curried cauliflower punnets I put in yesterday. My aim is to get enough homemade zero pointed soups into the freezer so I can have a different flavour each day of the week, without having to cook from scratch!

Breakfast Update

I ate some breakfast on Monday, but neglected to yesterday as I was at my weigh in and by the time I’d got home and faffed about a bit, it was basically lunch time. My breakfast today is going to be some rhubarb yoghurt with oats stirred through it, as recommended by my good friend Kate.

This breakfast has protein in the yoghurt and slow release carbohydrate in the oats, so I think it is the perfect thing to keep me going until my bowl of soup at lunch time, whilst being totally scrummy at the same time!

Tale From The Scale

Published
by
thetoad
on 8 April 2008
in Dieting, Food and Losing Weight
. 0 Comments

So today was my Weight Watchers meeting. I had a mad moment about my slippers beforehand. At my meeting you can’t weigh in your socks, it has to be the shoes you have on or slippers or flip flops. It is too cold for the flip flops option so it’s slippers for me.

Today I weighed in my “Bear Head” slippers, they are more like socks in their fabric, and have a little strap going over the top of my foot and then a teddy bear head at the top of each slipper. I would say they are more like slipper socks than proper slippers and hence I chose them as they are the closest thing to socks I can get away with when getting weighed.

After last week’s gain I felt I needed all the help possible to get a good loss this week.

I have lost one pound. But with the 2.5 pound gain from last week, that actually still puts me at 1.5 pounds heavier than when I joined 3 weeks ago. I feel this has got to be the injection – who ends up 1.5 pounds heavier when following Weight Watchers?!

I posted about this on the Weight Watchers forum to see if anyone else had found the same, a few people were, I felt, a bit unkind in their replies, saying I am using the Depot Provera injection as an excuse and it’s down to me not following the Weight Watchers programme correctly. Feel a bit low in myself about this. My leader has asked me to fill in a tracker this week so she can see exactly what I am eating and if I am going wrong anywhere. I will fill out my tracker properly this week and see what the verdict is next week when my leader, Melanie, looks at what I have eaten.

Melanie also mentioned drinking lots of water again, like the stand-in leader from last week, so will continue getting my water down me. Currently I am managing about 3 litres of water a day, plus tea and coffee. It gets bugging going to the toilet all the time, but think it must be helping.

I have been to the farm shop today to stock up on lots of point free vegetables. I got lots of things from a fennel bulb, mange tout, apples and cauliflowers. The cauliflowers are huge and were on offer for “2 for a £1”. Our fridge now looks like a greengrocers stall and I couldn’t fit both the huge cauliflowers in! So I made some zero point and core friendly cauliflower soup; here’s the recipe in case you have some cauliflowers that you can’t fit in the fridge (!) or you just fancy a nice tasty zero point soup : -

Curried Cauliflower Soup (zero points and ‘core’ plan approved)

1 Large cauliflower, split into small florets
1 Large Leek, finely chopped
1 Tablespoon Curry powder (more or less depending on how hot/mild you like it)
Fry Light Oil Spray
1 Litre Vegetable stock made up with 2 knorr vegetable stock cubes and boiling water
Fresh coriander (optional)

Spray a non-stick pan with fry-light and add the leek and sweat over a moderate heat until slightly browned and softened. Stir in the curry powder and keep stirring the leek in the curry powder for about 30 seconds, to combine, but careful not to let the leek stick once the curry powder is added. Add in 1 litre vegetable stock and the cauliflower.

Simmer the mixture until the cauliflower is tender and starts to break up when you push a floret with a wooden spoon.
Using a stick hand blender whizz up until totally smooth, adding some fresh coriander, if using, before you whizz it up.
This makes enough for four large portions and is a very comforting and warming meal.

The Great Breakfast Debate

Published
by
thetoad
on 7 April 2008
in Dieting, Food and Losing Weight
. 1 Comment

Years ago, possibly ten or more, a magazine recommended a book that you could only get in America; it was called simply ‘The Skinny’ “What every skinny knows about dieting but won’t tell you”. I HAD to have it. I managed to get it from Amazon and when it arrived I could not put it down until I had read it.

To write the book the authors had conducted a series of “skinny lunches”, inviting skinny women to lunch to find out what exercise they did and what they generally ate to stay slim. Each chapter of the book, there are lots of them and all fairly short and includes funny topics such as “What to do if you accidentally drink a full fat coke instead of diet coke” how much weight you can expect to lose or gain depending on life events – moving house, a divorce etc. As well as comprehensive calorie lists for fast food restaurant foods. One chapter was entitled “Breakfast”.

I was brought up on breakfast before school. No matter if I couldn’t really face it or want it, I had to eat a bowl of cereal before school. We were never allowed the sugary fun cereals that were always on TV when I was watching kids television. The most exciting it got was rice krispies! I had some kind of belief that bad things would happen if I didn’t eat my breakfast.

Then I started my famous “breakfast/tea diet” which I have written about in an earlier post, and I always began my day of starvation with a large bowl of cereal. During this time cereal was a bit of an obsession. I’d spend ages wandering up and down the cereal aisles, checking the fat content of any that I hadn’t tried before and fancied. It was just about the only food I could eat without guilt, without measuring out, just enjoying it.

Then I read ‘The Skinny’ which explained that there are no proven benefits to eating breakfast. The people who think if they don’t eat breakfast they will faint by 10am have probably never skipped breakfast to see if this was true. That not eating breakfast saved loads of calories that you could spend later when you were actually hungry and on something more worthwhile than a bowl of cardboard tasting cereal. This seemed to sink in with me, so when I stopped the “breakfast/tea diet” and followed a more calorie controlled Weight Watchers style of diet, if I could get away with skipping breakfast then I did. Firmly believing what I’d read in the ‘The Skinny’; that I was saving calories, it was an unnecessary meal. I was rarely hungry first thing in the morning so it wasn’t hard.

I did lose some weight following this method of not eating breakfast. But I was being very careful of what I did eat during the day. And the summer of my Atkins style of eating I never ate breakfast, but then I was not eating very much during the day and for my evening meal either. So what impact not eating breakfast had on my diet and weight loss at that time can’t really be gauged.

But since reading the book and going through a long phase of not eating breakfast it is a meal that I always struggle to eat, thinking I am saving myself calories by not eating it.

However, more recently people like Ian Marber, The Food Doctor, sometimes seen on Richard and Judy, advocates eating breakfast as part of his “10 Principles” for losing weight. It’s just that I never really feel hungry in the morning, but then having read through the CORE Plan in my Weight Watchers book I am thinking that maybe I think feeling hungry is feeling absolutely RAVENOUS, starving hungry, which is not the correct hunger to feel. The hunger scale makes for interesting reading; and in fact the more I read about Core and seeing the results that you can get from people in my Weight Watchers meeting, I am wondering whether trying a week on core would be worth a trial?

So this week I am going to make sure, as much as possible, that I eat my breakfast within an hour of waking up and see if that has any effect on my metabolism and weight loss. Has anyone else noticed whether eating breakfast or not eating this “most important meal of the day” has had any effect on their weight?

Non-Scale Victories

Published
by
thetoad
on 4 April 2008
in Dieting, Excercise, Food and Losing Weight
. 1 Comment

In the business of losing weight I think that sometimes you don’t feel like you’re winning unless the scales show a reduction in number. All the effort you put in can feel, frustratingly, a waste of time and in finding out at your weigh in you have stayed the same or put on some weight everything good that you did that week disappears out of your mind and we only focus on the negative and bad things we did previous to the weigh in. I am guilty of this, but this week my BFF Gemma, pointed out to me something called “a non scale victory” and I just thought that was the most fantastic concept.

Basically a non scale victory could be resisting a pudding when you’re out for a meal and feeling good about it rather than deprived because it’s a non scale victory! Or going for run or walk when the weather conditions are adverse.

I have found that whilst I am still under the effects of the depo injection and every pound I manage to lose takes a large amount of effort, that it is important to focus on all the small changes that I am making each day rather than what the scales say. Then when the effects of the injection finally wear off, I won’t have to particularly change my dieting behaviour to lose weight as I will already have all my good habits and exercise routine established.

This week I am focusing on drinking lots of water. Even though there was an article in the newspaper and it was on the radio that a new study has found that drinking lots of water has no more benefits than just drinking lots of any liquid, surely water is better than drinking litres of caffeine containing coffee! They’ll probably change their minds next week and there will be another study out saying it is of benefit.

The stand in leader at Weight Watchers on Tuesday was very very slim – the difference in seeing her and her before picture was astounding, one of the most dramatic leader “before and after” pictures I have seen. Looking at her, you would have thought maybe she’d lost a stone or something to get to goal. So if someone so slim that has achieved such a good loss and maintained it for 18 years, as she had, tells me to drink more water I am going to listen! So a daily non scale victory is drinking all of my 2 litres of water that I filter and pour into a bottle each morning. I have already had a pint of water and have yet to have a coffee!

My non-scale victory last night was making THE DELIA CURRY! Yesterday morning my special spices arrived to much excitement and glee. I got the tandoori masala blend from www.seasonedpioneers.co.uk and was so very impressed with the speed at which my spices arrived – I only ordered them Tuesday morning! I needed a few other ingredients which I picked up at lunch time, but the curry is very simple in that you don’t need lots of things to create it. The magic lies in the special seasoned pioneers spices!
So basically you brown your chicken – I used fry light, not the specified groundnut oil, I don’t think you can tell the difference and it does have an impact on your points! Take the browned chicken out of the pan. Using a mini-chopper, or my case, the chopper attachment to my stick blender, chop up an onion, 2 cloves garlic and some ‘Very Lazy Ginger’ from EPC. Blitz the mixture then adding more spray oil, fry the onion mixture gently for five minutes. Then stir in 4 teaspoons of the tandoori masala spice into the onion mixture for a minute or so, return the chicken to the pan, stir around to combine, then add a 200ml tub of half fat crème fraiche. Simmer gently with the lid on – I kept stirring as I was slightly concerned it might stick as it made a very thick sauce – for 15 minutes and that is it! It works out at 7.5 points a portion and makes enough for two!

Think Delia and her hubby like hot curries as the resulting gorgeous curry was very warm – ok for me as I like hotter curries, but TuT doesn’t like things too hot, so next time I make it, I will use 3 teaspoons of the spiced masala instead of four. A great success and makes you feel quite proud when you produce an authentic tasting curry without having used a jar!

So I ended the day well within my points even though I’d had a curry for tea and that made me happy. Another non scale victory scored!

Watching My Weight – An 11 Year Brief History of Dieting Time

Published
by
thetoad
on 2 April 2008
in Dieting, Food, Losing Weight and Mental Health
. 2 Comments

I have always felt big and fat. Looking back at childhood pictures of me, I wasn’t exactly a skinny kid and I have always loved nice big home cooked dinners, but I certainly wasn’t the monstrosity that I had built myself up to be.

I tried doing silly diets when I was 14 – even having my best friend at the time come into the bathroom with me whilst I downed salt water in an attempt to make myself sick because I’d eaten some twiglets.

Mostly I accepted that I was larger; aged 16 I was wearing size 16 skirts for school, but I didn’t think about it too much until I was 17.

It was November and I stayed the night at my friend’s house. We had an Indian takeaway, stayed up late drinking wine and watching videos. The next day we slept in late and had our breakfast of rice krispies at lunchtime. Later that day my Dad came to pick me up and in the evening I ate my tea of homemade cottage pie with veggies and went to bed.

The next day when I woke up I felt somehow lighter. It was a strange feeling that I hadn’t really felt before. I thought about the previous day and what had been different in the way I’d eaten. In having breakfast at lunch time I had effectively skipped lunch. I weighed myself – the number didn’t mean much to me and my parents scales were really old. I then decided to skip lunch all week, and see how much I weighed the following Monday.

It was a tough week. I knew nothing about the GI ratings of cereal, so if I’d had rice krispies or corn flakes for breakfast I was often starving by lunch time. It was a hungry week, but I stuck to it. Eating my breakfast, skipping my lunch, and eating whatever mum had cooked for tea in the evening.

Monday rolled around and I’d lost half a stone. In a week. I thought I had found the dieting secret of all time – I can have a large bowl of cereal and eat whatever mum has cooked in the evening – pies, chips, anything and still lose weight just by skipping lunch. I believed the weight I’d lost that week needed to be “consolidated” ; which meant to me I shouldn’t expect or want to lose any more for a few weeks, my body needed to adjust month by month. So I decided to just weigh myself every four weeks on the “breakfast/tea diet”.

I stuck to it all over Christmas and the following months. I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing and as a result it was always surprising if people said

“Have you lost weight?”

I wasn’t talking about losing weight to anyone so it was strange when people commented.

Eventually my steady half a stone a month began to come to a halt. My parents newspaper had featured an article about a couple following a low fat diet and how healthy and zippy they were. The article included a long list of the fat grams in common foods. So I continued with the breakfast/tea diet, but with a bigger focus on what I was eating for my tea – it now had to be low fat. I began to eat differently from my family at meal times. I’d shun mum’s home cooked food that I had no idea of the fat content of, in favour of calorie counted healthy choice frozen ready meals.

By the following November, a year into my breakfast/tea diet I was away from home attending university and had lost 3 and a half stone. Sometimes I saw the magical 9 stone something appear on the scales, but the numbers didn’t mean so much to me. I continued wearing size 16 clothes, sometimes submitting and believing I had got smaller, I’d buy a size 14. I liked baggy combat trousers and baggy band t-shirts bought from whichever recent gig I’d been to. So the weight loss did not encourage me to go out and buy a whole new wardrobe. Although I’d lost weight, I still believed I was meant to be a size 16 and my head would not catch up with the size my body actually was. I still believed I was fat and always would be. It was in my genes, the way I was built.

My weight stayed pretty steady throughout university. Thanks to some weight watchers leaflets and booklets my Nanna had given me, I started thinking about points and calories and did allow myself to have something low fat and low calorie at lunchtimes. Mainly soup or yoghurts. As long as it was liquid based it was allowed.

Finishing university and becoming prone to binges, after all the years of deprivation my body was starting to rebel, I put some weight on. Getting a boring office job with lots of diet-obsessed middle aged women I put more weight on and joined my first slimming club – Slimming World.

The first week I lost 5 pounds. I did the diet for a while, but binges were always lurking and getting harder to resist and control. So I’d have a massive binge, big weight gain, then chuck in the slimming club and go solo for a bit. Which would lead to a bit more weight gained, so I joined Weight Watchers, I knew all about points from my Nanna and even had a points calculator I’d got through the magazine at university that I’d used for a bit, following my own version of Weight Watchers.

So I did Weight Watchers for a bit, then stopped and went solo, put more weight on, went back to Slimming World, binged, gained weight, didn’t go back, joined another slimming club. This cycle continued for a couple of years, with my weight steadily increasing.

In summer 2003 I lost my job due to my mental health problems and began attending a Psychiatric Day Hospital 7 days a week to keep me stable and out of being admitted on to the in-patient ward. I was back at Weight Watchers and losing weight steadily at 2 pounds a week. It was a wonderful hot summer and I successfully reached my 10% goal and got my key ring, and really thought I’d cracked my weight problem.

Into the autumn of 2003 I was prescribed an anti-psychotic called Chlorpromazine and an anti depressant called Mirtazapine. I lost all concept of what feeling full felt like, I was CONSTANTLY hungry. All I could think about was my next meal. I was aware my weight was increasing, I’d stopped attending Weight Watchers, I complained to people about my increasing weight, but they would always say comments along the lines of it being better to be mentally healthy whilst carrying a few more pounds, than thin but being psychotic.

At the end of 2005 my psychiatrist left the hospital and the new psychiatrist that took her place took me off all my medication. She believed that my mental health condition of Borderline Personality Disorder, did not need to be treated with medication. I was angry – I’d believed from my previous psychiatrist that I NEEDED my meds to be well. I got a second opinion, but the psychiatrist conducting the second opinion consulted the psychiatrist I was challenging, so I was not prescribed any meds again.

When I calmed down from being taken off my medication I noticed that I was losing a bit of weight without really trying. What would happen if I did try?

So medication free, January 2006, I joined Weight Watchers again. By this point I was classed as Disabled because of my mental health problems and was totally unable to work. So all my time and focus could go on getting slim. I cooked from scratch everything, soups – point free, a different flavour for everyday of the week, and meals out of the Weight Watchers cookery books. The weight steadily fell off and I began to get my confidence back and feel good about myself.

By the summer 2006 things in my personal life had gone a bit crazy; in splitting from my violent, manipulative and alcoholic ex-partner, I had ended up homeless. There was an attempt to get me into the women’s refuge as I was escaping domestic violence, but when this all fell through I ended up temporarily housed in a bed and breakfast in a town ten miles away from my home town.

I led a very chaotic lifestyle and with living in the bed and breakfast and having to use my parents kitchen for meals I was cooking fairly simply so as to not make the kitchen a mess. Plus I was much more active, rather than flopping in front of the tv with wine after tea, I was having to get the bus back to the bed and breakfast, which involved a long walk to the bus stop after my evening meal. It was a scorching hot summer in 2006 so I just never felt very hungry and consequently just ended up just not eating very much and following a kind of low carbohydrate Atkins diet that I had fashioned.

By the time I moved in with TuT I was very slim – a size 10/12 and had lost 5 stone from the January until the September. However, my slim frame came at the cost of being borderline anorexic and I was not very healthy.

Now I have pretty much gained back all of the 5 stone I lost in 2006 due to a combination of taking the depo provera contraceptive injection, being back on anti psychotic and anti depressant medication, and getting a bit content living with TuT and not doing enough exercise.

I am now back at the Weight Watchers coalface and want to lose the weight permanently and end this long story of gaining and losing weight once and for all.

“Do you exercise Portion Caution?!”

Published
by
thetoad
on 1 April 2008
in Dieting, Food and Losing Weight
. 0 Comments

Well, it’s Tuesday and this morning was Weight Watchers. I was really good yesterday fight-fighting-friends. I went out on the bike for 13km. It’s all relatively flat along the coast roads, but I could feel my legs working away as I cycled along and I was out for nearly an hour so I was pleased with my efforts.

Lunch was a homemade low pointed vegetable chillie-con-carne. Then I had a small bowl of point-free homemade celeriac soup to keep me going at 5pm as TuT and I went to the gym together. I love working out with TuT, although he does get a bit grumpy when he gets sweaty and does not like me saying anything like:

“It’s the last two minutes, lets make it COUNT!”

I said this to him once and he was not happy! I think I have just taken too many ‘Spinning’ cycle classes where they bark stuff like that at you the whole 45 minutes. It motivates me, but everyone is different.

Relaxing in the pool and spa bubble bath we both felt virtuous to be spending our Monday night being healthy gym bunnies. We made a healthy tea of more homemade soup and low fat cheese toasties for tea when we got home; then I flopped in front of ‘Delia’ that I’d recorded whilst I had been out at the gym.

Loving her curry recipe that she did last night, a quick consultation of the recipe book revealed where she’d sourced her special curry powder from, TuT was already on the tinter’net and bought up the web page, so I have ordered some Tandoori Masala from www.seasonedpioneers.co.uk. It cost under £5 including postage and packing and when you consider how much a decent jar of curry sauce can be to make your own at home I think it’s good value. Delia’s really did look tasty and appetising - curry is probably one of my most favourite things to eat.

So after all my exercise yesterday – cycling the tour de seafront, going to the gym with TuT, watching my points values and eating virtuous food like homemade point free celeriac soup I was not dreading the weigh in as much as I had been doing at the weekend.

But, wouldn’t you just know it, I haven’t got away with the meals out that I had last week, or the takeaway, or the lack of exercise. Did I deserve to gain 2.5 pounds though? I don’t think that’s fair at all!

My usual leader was away today, she didn’t tell us last week that it would be a different leader this week, I think she did that on purpose, knowing that if you didn’t have to check in with your usual leader you might have slackened off at the Weight Watchers coal face this last week. As I did really, but I have to say, it was a relief not to disappoint my usual leader, and it’s only my second week!

I mentioned being on the injection to the stand-in leader, a lady called Laura, and her resulting comments did make me think about water retention. She said that if I wasn’t drinking enough my body would retain water and hence a gain would be reflected on the scales. When I thought about it, I have been slackening off on drinking my two litre water bottle through the day. So I don’t know if there’s anything in this, but on my first week at Weight Watchers I was good about filling a 2 litre water bottle up in the morning and making sure it was all drunk by tea time.

The meeting was all about portion control. Laura the leader had the expensive Weight Watchers scales that tell you the exact points of what you are eating when you weigh it all out. We went on a whirlwind tour of points in different cereals and what the amounts looked like, pasta points when its dry – 20g dry weight is one point, whether it’s pasta, rice or cous cous. Laura the leader was full of punchy one liners on the subject of portion control:

“If your eyes light up, it’s too big” (?!!)

“Do you exercise portion caution?”

It certainly made me think, and me being an advertiser’s dream – if I was an Eskimo and you made a sales pitch, I probably would buy snow from you – started thinking I really needed the expensive Weight Watchers weighing points scales. Thinking that my lack of weight loss is because I don’t have the magical Weight Watchers weighing scales. I placated myself with the new magazine and a proper points calculator so that TuT and I no longer have to fiddle with the cardboard points wheel that isn’t so accurate when we go shopping.

My friend that joined the first week as me has now lost over half a stone! In two weeks, following the CORE plan. I had a really good chat with her afterwards and I am potentially thinking of doing the core plan this week. I excitedly mentioned had anyone watched ‘Delia’ and seen her fab curry recipe that I am sure is low in points. I was met with stony faced stares – not in the Weight Watchers cook book – NO! (Remember, if you eyes light up it’s too big, Delia!!)

Then I spoke to TuT and he said should we think about doing the Weight Watchers ‘Kickstart’ programme of having 18 points instead of my usual amount for a week. My head is buzzing with ‘core plan’, ‘points plan’, ‘kickstart’. Am I exercising portion caution without the magical scales? It all feels rather manic, I am going to have a coffee and play with my new points calculator and have a think about which direction I need to take on the Weight Watchers journey this week.