When The Going Gets Tough

Oh, good ol' iTunes -- I finally get around to updating this journal again, and it's on random. So what does it play me, but Billy Ocean. When The Going Gets Tough. Mindreading, eh?

But yes, it's been an obscenely long time since I updated. And I have to put my hand up and admit that it's because I am weak and cannot handle the jandal, as it were. Although I was always intending to go off-plan for the ten or so days I was on holiday, that was supposed to be it. But the week before I left things turned pretty much to custard, and today? Is my first official day back on the diet. Basically it's four weeks of waste right there.

Still, it likely wasn't a complete waste. And in the end, it wasn't the diet itself that was causing the problem; external factors drove me to despair and unfortunately I made the choice to seek refuge in my old friend: food. I'm not going to go into the reasons why I chose this path, mostly because a public blog is not really the place to talk about it, but basically it's a work-related issue. It's something stressful that is supposed to have been sorted weeks ago, but it has dragged on and on -- and thanks to the earthquake, it will likely now spin out even longer. And of course, even though I myself no longer live in Christchurch, like everyone else in the country I am suffering along with friends and family and the entirety of the city and its surrounds. It's just...not a good year, at all, so far.

But I do need to take stock of the situation and understand what I have learned about myself and my relationship with food in the last few weeks. Basically I am such a grazer, and I need to cut that out. I also am an intensely emotional eater, and bad habits are incredibly easy to fall back into. Laziness is my biggest enemy, because even though I know I prefer the food I make I will go for the crappy worthless easy stuff just because it is easy. And you know? It's not worth it. Although with that said, every time I put something in my mouth in Australia I felt guilty, and I was constantly trying on my clothes to make sure they still fit, and feeling my thighs and my stomach, and...yeah. I don't know. It was crazy. Not to mention I exercised, which is not  bad thing, but I was almost obsessive about it by the end of my trip. And I still want to keep doing it now -- I've got into the habit of long walks and Zumba -- even though the low calorie nature of this diet doesn't allow for much in the way of exercise. So...yeah.

I wish I could be more articulate about how I feel. But at the moment it's just enough that I have managed to get back on the wagon, and although I haven't weighed myself -- and I won't until next Sunday -- I know the next ten to fifteen kilograms? Need to come off. I can make the decision about the maintenance weight when I see how I feel at 54kg. Right now...I just need to slow down and get back into the Zone, and just...keep calm, and carry on.

Or something.

The going's tough, but I can be tough, too. So let's get going.