Gilmore Girls Don’t Blink
Late last night, I finished an epic journey. I finished all seven seasons of “The Gilmore Girls”. I learnt that:
1. People will like you for being you, even if you’re an incredibly snooty Frenchman with a weakness for Celine Dion.
2. Life is a lot less complicated if you don’t constantly lie about incredibly minor matters.
3. Watching a show in which the two title characters are constantly binge eating, and two other central characters are professional cooks/chefs – is not a good idea while dieting.
It was good, though. But, like holidays, the best part is when it’s over. And I lost 7 kilos over 6 weeks, which was the maximum I could have hoped for.
In other news (this will only interest fans of the reasonably recent Doctor Who), yesterday I was at the home of someone I’ve been tutoring for a year and a half. I glanced around, and I SAW THIS:
It was just outside the door, and I swear I’ve never seen it before.
But there’s more.
Last week my student was sick with the flu. At one stage, her parents found her in her room (probably within a metre of where I was sitting when I took that photo) staring straight ahead of her. When they tried to speak to her, she became agitated and said, “They’re coming. They’re coming to get me.”
She only calmed down when her dad stood in the doorway. . . blocking her from the angels.
Things
Hello hello.
This morning I weighed in at 80.2 kilos, so with one week left of my six weeks without chocolate, things are looking good (I’ve lost 6.4 kilos). I’m desperately hungry, lethargic, and faint – but there’s a very good chance I’ll be back in the healthy weight range by the end of the year (yes, despite Christmas).
In the last couple of weeks I’ve received two rejections with comments from two different small publishers. It’s very rare to get comments (from Publisher F especially, who was the first) so that’s both useful and encouraging (without actually being technically useful at all).
Tomorrow marks two months exactly since Publisher B (the one who’s had one of my books for a year, and another for a year and a half) said they’d sent my books to an independent reader. Who knows? They might reply.
Without chocolate, my day-to-day goal has been to simply survive – do my work, pass the hours until another day has gone, and try real hard not to have a psychotic attack (I lost my head twice, and on one of those occasions broke our car door).
I’ve done very little writing, and barely missed it. So I wander down a familiar philosophical path, trying to figure out a way to quit writing once and for all. I think it’s theoretically possible, except what do I have left to get up for? TV can’t keep me awake forever, and I’m not able to do more than three hours of real work in a day.
I’m not the type of person who bases their entire life around a spouse – so that’s not an option either. And I know chocolate doesn’t really satisfy, no matter how much I eat.
So I’ll keep writing. May as well.
I’m about to enter a free competition with a $20,000 prize. It seems pathetic to even bother entering, but maybe I can meditate on the role luck plays in publishing until I think I actually have a shot.
Go team?
Four hours old
Today and yesterday I posted at http://twittertales.wordpress.com about my sister going into labour and producing THIS:
There’s a different video over there (they don’t get this one until tomorrow).
This is her again with my hand for scale:
Babies: They make poo exciting.
How zombies feel
ie hungry for braaaaaaaiiiiiiinnnnsss
I’ve finally begun my brave attempt to recover the healthy weight I’d reached before the epic schmoozefests of August/September. Today is day three. The hunger pangs began at 11am on day one, and the blacking out (when I stand up from sitting or lying down) started yesterday, and will continue for a few days. The stumbling with fatigue began today. Yep, it’s a typical diet. My self-esteem and sense of purpose is lifting fast, so – assuming nothing at all breaks my concentration – all is well.
I don’t know how much weight I gained as I held myself together by sheer force of chocolate for weeks before and after the conference. I’ve said five kilos elsewhere, but I know it was probably more than that. I don’t dare weigh myself, at least not until I know I’m doing a little better.
In two weeks and two days I’ll be going to visit my sister. There will be a LOT of chocolate for those eight days. I’m glad to have this window of opportunity to regain some ground – and seeing my sister is far less stressful than paying loads of cash to try to suck up to people I don’t know (which I won’t have to do again as an unpublished supplicant for several years, if ever).
I do feel like curling into the fetal position until then, but that just shows I really am losing weight. Here are two pictures that say everything that needs to be said. The first represents what I was eating every single day for weeks. The second (diet coke and a corn thin with avocado) represents my daily snacks at the moment. My meals remain exactly as they were.
And that, for me at least, is how it’s done.
Digestive Health Report
As some of you know, I spent four weeks eating and exercising as well as I knew how to do. Here’s the rules, and my conclusions:
1. Begin each day with a tall glass of tepid water (with a squeeze of lemon), then fifteen minutes’ exercise – all before breakfast.
Love the water, hate the exercise. I’ll stick with the water and do pre-breakfast exercise. . . sometimes.
2. Continue exercising six days a week, except when I’m sick.
Yeah, it’s clearly a good plan and worth the hassle. I’ll continue.
3. Drink over a litre of water each day, in addition to other liquids.
I suspect it’s keeping me bloated, but I’ll talk to a doctor before I stop.
4. Eat every meal and snack at a table (not the couch), and remain upright for half an hour after every meal. Take small mouthfuls and chew them properly before swallowing.
I definitely need to eat more slowly. But I think sitting on the coach is okay (especially for snacks) as long as I stay still and upright for that half hour (which is really difficult, but worthwhile most of the time).
5. Never go four waking hours without eating something (and eat small meals).
I can do that.
6. Eat five vegetables (at least one green) and two fruits each day (tomatoes, pumpkin and avocado can fall into either group – my resolution, my rules – and chickpeas are a vegetable).
I can keep aiming for that, but I don’t think I’ll make it every day (I will today, though, so that’s cool).
7. Eat 50 grams or less of chocolate/lollies each day (a giant or deep-fried meal counts as 30 grams, and savoury snacks count as 20g). I’ll have nothing unhealthy for at least the first seven days, beginning today.
Definitely worth sticking with, but not gonna happen. 50 grams or less of junk food is a worthy goal that I’ll try to stick to – starting from Tuesday next week 🙂
8. No soft drink and no artificial sweeteners.
I don’t think I eat enough of those for it to have any negative effect. Although I think I’m allergic to preservative 202, so I’ll be careful on that front.
9. I’ll attempt to go without iron tablets – instead I’ll have a vitamin C at breakfast and dinner (dinner is when I tend to eat meat, which is the most absorbable source of iron followed by chicken or fish). I am anaemic, so it’s likely I’ll have to take the tablets, but we’ll see.
This worked brilliantly. Definitely sticking to it.
10. At least one high-fibre food each day, and at least one does-something-cool-for-your-gut food each day.
If I’m eating a lot of fresh fruit and vegies, this will probably happen by itself.
As of this moment, I am psyching up for a gluten-free week, starting. . . soon.
PG for mention of the usual spam product
This piece of spam amused me:
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Lactose: Report
. . . nothing.
Naught, nada, no show.
It’s probably still a bit too early to say for sure, but all the evidence seems to indicate that I’m NOT intolerant of lactose. That’s quite a surprise, since I do get sick every time I switch milk brands (the safe one, for me, is Canberra brand full-cream – and no others).
Weird and good!
Next I’ll be testing gluten, which will involve asking my Mum about how to spot it in ingredient lists (is glucose syrup also gluten? Is wheat also gluten? Are there any secret gluten-concealing ingredients I should know about?)
CAN YOU HANDLE THE SUSPENSE?!?!?!?!?!
Lactose Day
The best part about experimenting with possible food allergies is the part when you get to suddenly eat all the stuff you might be intolerant too – right after you’ve missed it for so long.
All last week I stayed off all dairy products – no milk, no sweet delicious butter, no heavenly sour cream or fetta or yoghurt or cream cheese. And no chocolate.
Today I went nuts with the experimental eating.
Breakfast: Cereal and milk, plus 10 grams of chocolate. (And – unusually for me – I not only went to church, but I stayed around talking to people afterwards. I am SO much more functional on chocolate.)
Morning tea: Strawbery and banana milkshake with added sour cream (why not, right?)
Lunch: Baked slices of potato topped with cream cheese and butter-fried zucchini pieces (also known as the Cream Cheese Lunch of Dooooooooom).
Afternoon tea: Far too much chocolate, plus chocolate milk. And a half-shot of Frangelico with milk. (I was writing, and wanted chocolate so very much. It was a GREAT writing session, as usual when I break a diet. Last time I did this I consumed 300 grams of chocolate, and this time I ate 70 grams. Which sort of makes this a good day.)
Dinner: Tuna mornay with extra cheese + a side of beans fried in butter and garlic, and with fetta added at the last moment.
Supper: Chocolate milk.
I posted an article today on http://twittertales.wordpress.com about homosexuality and the Bible. It’s a scary thing to do because I have 2000 fans/followers, and at least some are likely to have a strong negative reaction. I used a pretty shocking opening example, too (offensive shocking, not M-rated shocking). In my head, I’m constantly in deadly danger of getting in trouble (like I’m five years old, I know). It genuinely scares me. But I’m more scared of deserving to get in trouble – I’d rather be unjustly punished than punished for something I actually did – so I think I can handle any hate the article brings out. Plus the sermon in church this morning used the exact same key passage as I did, and made the same central point (not that it was a sermon about homosexuality – that’s too hot a button for most sermons). That was encouraging (while also reminding me of some really dumb stuff I’ve done lately).
This is one of those rare and special occasions where my writing actually means something.
The good, the bad and the fatty
My sister and her husband are coming to Canberra in four days. That’s also the length of time I’ll continue eating super-healthily. (I look forward SO much to not exercising fifteen minutes before breakfast every day, although some of the other healthy habits are keepers.)
CJ was given a promotion this week – the job he’s wanted for about a year. And yes, it means more money. (I’ve just done my tax return – and I earned $17, 323 this financial year, which is pretty good for me. Don’t do mental illness, kids.)
I thought I’d hear about the Publisher A edit-me competition this week, but it turns out (as far as I can tell from reading their email five times) that although they’ve decided on the long list, they’re not telling anyone what it is. So I won’t know if I’m on the long list until late August. But oh well, at least they’ll tell everyone in the end.
I have liquorice all sorts in my lolly drawer (which I bought on the basis that (a) aniseed is good for the digestion – not sure if that has any link to liquorice at all, and (b) they contain preservative 202 and no others, which means I can test if I’m intolerant of that particular preservative). But this morning, somehow, I weighed 76.8, which means if I can lose .3 of a kilo today I’ve actually made my weight goal for this current session – and genuinely reached the healthy weight range. If I’m super super good today, then maybe tomorrow will be the day. Maybe.
Must. . . not. . . eat. . . lollies.
Age
I like getting older. I associate advancing age with better knowledge of how to deal with life, and definitely with better perspective (lost in a foreign country? Been there! Dumped by a first love? Been there! Chronic illness? Been there! Lost a best friend? Been there!)
It’s weird and sad, though, to realise that by the measure of wider society my prettiest moments are all gone. Seems like I’ve lost some kind of opportunity. But it’s just another reason to be grateful – others in their late twenties must be losing the only thing they ever liked about themselves. (Not losing completely, of course – a lot of people look better with wrinkles, or more body fat, or grey hair, or simply the sly twinkle of old age in their eye.)
Aging is the new puberty. My body is changing and I may as well just go with it. At least, looking at my mum and grandma, I know exactly where I’m heading. (Unless cyborg surgery becomes the norm, of course.)
Guest post today at http://www.urbanmusewriter.com/2010/07/guest-post-gods-need-social-networking.html
Felicity Banks 