As you can see, in my blog titles I'm keeping track of the days done and the days yet to do on my vlcd.
Goodness as i was thinking about which day it was today and how many days to go, i just couldn't work it out!!!!! I guess this cognitive impairment is still around, then! Listing all of the days in this way i feel more comfortable, as i feel a little woozy when i lose track of time. (notice in a prev post, reader, that i got it wrong once - confusion is definately a side effect of this vlcd, for me)
I was counting out my foodpacks today, to see how many of each soups and shakes i had left, so that i could choose what to consume in order to not be left over with all of one type or flavour of foodpack for the last day.
As i planned out each day, i noticed that i seem to have two soups left over. I know that one day i only had three packs, and not four (i think it was yesterday) but i must have done that twice without realising.
I know that i bought home the right amount of packs because i listed what i was putting in my bag in my diary as the counsellor was giving them to me. (I've decided to stop calling the counsellor by the name of Venus on this blog, because i know that one day i shall refer to her by that name in person and i don't want to do that).
Its easy to remember about the bars, we are told to just have one per day.
My routine these days is to get up and have 2 litres of water, then perhaps a cup of tea, another bit of water and then a bar.
I do so much look forward to having the bar during the morning, or lunchtime. Some people, i know, save them and have them during the evening while watching TV.
I don't want to do this because, to me, it sniffs too much of saving treats and scoffing them gleefully in front of the TV - behaviour that got me to this obese state in the first place.
I intend to break eating habits while i am doing this vlcd. Rather than just lose weight rapidly and then have all of my issues and habits still there to contend with and control.
I have also heard of someone saving up all four of the packs and then at night cooking them in the microwave and oven and having a 'feast' of soup and crisps, followed by something like a muffin and something else, all in the eveing while watching TV.
I know that i am going to get dreadfully bored of this food on the vlcd's and i do expect to succomb to 'cooking' the foodpacks in this way, to add variety, but i sincerely hope that i don't resort to doing what i have just described.
I think cooking the packs is a great idea for one or two packs, but having all four at once is simply starving and bingeing again isn't it, reader?
We must stop doing that.
I must stop doing that.
After my weight returns to normal I can't live without food, but i can and should - in fact, no i must - live without food binges.
I know i am sounding 'high-horsey' here. I do apologise. Please bear with me, its just my opinions here, not anything that i would actually say offensively to anybody doing this kind of thing.
Moreover, its not what she did, so much, but the way that she proudly told us about her feast 'trick' that is a problem. It made me feel mightily uncomfortable that she was boasting about what she had done, and sharing it with us, 'devilishly' while grinning. Fair enough, if you know a binge is coming on, then, during the weight loss phase, to binge on vlcd packs is better than gorging on real foods containing massive amounts of carbs, fats and sugars, because of the risk of 'blowing it' and abandoning the weight-loss plan. But we seriously have to stop that binge-eating behaviour.
Maybe it can't be done. I've seen loads of evidence to show that the vlcd-with-counselling method has enabled big people to lose a lot of weight, fairly fast.
I am seriously happy for those people. Seeing and reading about how they have now got their lives back is very moving. But, so far, i haven't read accounts of people describing their eating-habit-changing-process-and-outcomes in detail.
"Does this change-of-eating-habits-exist?", i wonder.
Perhaps i have not been looking in the right places? In that case it is far easier to find the success stories than those stories of the issues. Perhaps people do change their ways but don't particularly blog about it (a handy pun, there). Perhaps people are ashamed? or they want privacy?
Yet, people seem not to want privacy when they are showing off their 'before' and 'after' photo's.
This, to me, highlights a problem, thus:
People calling attention to their acheivements and success (i.e. thinness) can inspire many others, true.
Yet no mention of the pain and confusion of the issues being discovered and resolved, and the hard work that went into resolving those issues.
Isn't it a paralell of the whole capitalist system?
Have you heard of the 'American Dream' ideology? Yes, of course you have. As i see it, its about striving in a competitive manner, to become healthy, beautiful, rich and popular. The goal being to become more so than 'all of those others'.
That is the capitalist measure of 'succes'.
Isn't that system saying, "Provided you do all of those things you'll have a perfect family, a perfect career, a perfect body, a perfect everything. And if you've done it better than most others, then you are considered to have really made-it". You are successful. you are to be admired, respected, financially rewarded and, even the extreme, you can be one who is worshipped (Hollywood stars, for example).
Is eveyone seeking a moment of worship?
Those people grabbing opportunities for fame, for example, the contestents on Big Brother. Are they seeking to be worshipped, even if only for the proverbail fifteen minutes? They certainly do get that when they come out of the 'house' - and they get rewarded financially and socailly.
most do it for the money, or the chance to improve (or change) careers or they do it even in the hope that they will meet a partner in a different socio-economic group to that which they were matched with before they appeard on the program.
Do they blatently go on the show there to market themselves?
And are the immediate results of the marketing spree resulting in temporary worship followed by reward? I think so.
Are the people in the 'before and after photos' in the same process? Are they 'advertising' their success in order to procure admiration and even worship?
Or what about people who drive around in flashy sports cars? Are they not simply advertising their 'success'?
And those people that wear designer labels? Them too?
Or those that wear diamonds or a rolex?
What about any brand of watch? They all have a 'heirarchy' do they not?
Hmmm, its starting to become all of us now, isn't it?
I think that we are all in the system.
Isn't our adaptation to the system and to be 'in the system' surely by default?
Don't we have to consciously 'opt out'by taking each aspect of the system at a time, analyse it and decide not to partake? (rather than herd along on autopilot?)
It seems that we select our 'opt out' areas quite uniquely. I wonder whether we opt out in varying degrees too?
As for me, yes well, i am blogging here in cognito. I do not particularly want to be identified. In this way i feel that I can be more honest. And, in being unidentified, I hope to avoid the shame of people knowing about my behaviours.
The shame of people knowing about my failure.
In my opinion being obese fares quite lowly on the American Dream scale that is used to measure success.
So why would anybody want to be obese when they sit in a particular socio-economic group, say, being midlle class, for example? It just doesn't make sense.
Being obese throws a spanner in that particular works, since people measure you, comparitively, quite differently if you are middle class and obese to if you are middle class and thin and beautiful. Some previous criterion for success have now been effected by the data input of your 'failure'.
Is it merely stupidity, neglegence, recklessness? Or is it a mixture of these things and more besides?
At the moment I don't know.
I do intend to find out.
Read this blog further if you'd like to share in my discoveries.
And please do leave comments on my blogs so that i 'know' who all of my readers are.
