Wednesday, 3rd June
I'm about to regale you with a very First World problem, so I apologise. Kind of. I put my Levi's away today, in a drawer, admitted defeat and the reality that they simply Do Not Fit. I've pushed through the pain a few times, despite the discomfort and the fact that the zip creeps down. I've tried to convince myself that I'm simply bloated and it will pass in a couple of days. Sometimes I've just been so desperate because I've had no other trousers to wear.
But today came the dark day and I rolled them up and closed the drawer, knowing that it will be a while before I can get into them again. What made it slightly worse is that I caught sight of my reflection in the windows of M&S today (I don't have full-length mirrors at home) and realised how they looked. Oh dear. The only thing worse than feeling rubbish in clothes is catching sight of yourself looking rubbish in clothes.
The book I've just finished is called 'Lose Weight Now', by Allen Carr. He was most famous for writing a best-selling book, which was phenomenally successful in helping people stop smoking. One of my best friends, Sarah, read it and she's never smoked since. His philosophy is that you don't use willpower to try and give something up and that the more you try not to think about something, the more you think about it. So he takes a different route. And his route is basically to simplify the way you eat and get back to nature, cutting out the process, the dairy, the sugar...
Anyway, I finished the book about three or four days ago and felt quite excited. Inpsired by what Allen said, I tried having fruit for breakfast. I was a bit sceptical and didn't think it would fill me up enough, but I realised it mostly did. I'd supplement it with a tiny bit of porridge or something, but it did keep me going. I've been excited about the prospect of simplifying my eating habits, along with everything else I've been working on streamlining. So this would mean more raw foods, more fruit, nuts, seeds, things that don't need cooking, in effect (less cooking = less work, so that's good).
So today felt like a bit of a blow, as I put the jeans on once again, for the first time in a while. The temperature has been around 24/26 for the last few weeks, so I've been able to get away with other clothes, but today it plummeted to a mere 13, so the jeans were brought back out. And now they've now made a swift exit and the drawer has been closed. Sad, since they're my nicest jeans ever and I really decided to fork out on some good ones at last, not so long ago.
And today did not go well in the eating domain either. I woke up late, in spite of the birds tweeting loudly on my alarm clock. I think I must have turned them down, in fact, since they didn't tweet me out of my sleep. Then I quickly threw on some 'exercise' gear and went for a very short walk, since Michael had to be at his desk pretty sharpish. I impulsively grabbed a flapjack on my way out (one for the road) and it went downhill from there. It certainly did not have the beneficial impact I've experienced from the banana or pear or apple I've had for breakfast recently. So I tried to eradicate the sluggish feeling with a coffee, but that didn't work. I was grumpy, irritable and sluggish. In desperation, I reached for a pear, but that didn't do it either. To cut a long story short, the second coffee didn't help, nor the second piece of flapjack, nor the orange, nor the herbal tea, nor the third piece of flapjack... nothing, but nothing. The sluggish feeling remained. Was it the grey clouds? Or the flapjack? Or the jeans? I'm not sure.
All I can say is that the downside of simplifying my life and becoming something of a minimalist is that, when the pounds do creep on, there's nowhere to hide. I have no emergency jeans, no forgiving trousers or collection of skirts that would feel more... comfortable. When I lost weight, I got rid of all my bigger clothes. My pregnancy jeans, post-pregnancy and post post-pregnancy jeans are gone. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I suppose it's both. I certainly do not feel good in the clothes I've had to wear today, but I'm definitely more inclined to follow Allen's easy way to losing weight now, as I have added impetus.
And it has given me license to buy a couple of dresses online, too... they can weather a fluctuation in weight in either direction, so they're clearly a must-buy for my capsule wardrobe, if I want to stay a minimalist. Though Allen does promise that, if I follow his 'easy way', I'll never have problems with weight gain again.
Watch this space.