Food Fight Part 9: 6 months

Today marks 6 months since my Mum and I started our Ketogenic Switch eating plan. I was inspired to start by my friend from Auckland who I used to teach with – she lost 35kg, and has kept it off for 3 years. She also reversed early onset arthritis, got rid of menopause symptoms, and now has spades of energy to play with her grandchildren.

She is a changed woman.

She did what I thought was impossible.

I stayed with her for a few days after I got out of MIQ, and it was a very challenging visit for me. As she slowly answered all my questions and concerns, I realised that perhaps this transformation might also be possible for me too.

When I look back to where I was in January, I was utterly hopeless. I could not stop eating. I had in 2019 lost 5kg or so, and then in 2020 put all of that and another 10kg on.

I was working at a board games store before Christmas, and they had a stand just by the doorway through to the staffroom out the back. The number of times I knocked it over because I couldn’t actually fit through the gap – it was embarrassingly often. I was the biggest I’ve ever been, but more than that, there seemed to be no way to rein it in. I was out of control.

I had escaped the banality of lockdown in Ireland, and the desperate cold of mid-winter, but I had still taken myself with me to New Zealand. 

I still had my own eating habits, and my belief that I could just ‘run it off’ etc. I had to confront the reality that actually Jared and I together egg each other on to indulgent food choices, but alone, I’m equally as bad. Blaming him didn’t help anything much.

I had just finished gorging myself on all the kiwi treats I could get delivered to MIQ, and managed to pack on another 5kg in 2 weeks. 

A lot has changed since January this year.

It’s been a hell of a learning curve about a whole bunch of things. 

I’m really proud of myself for adapting my eating habits, for facing my demons, for helping Jared to do the same, for being organised, and having an eating plan ready to go for each week.   

Small, consistent, incremental efforts. 

Like the gentle drip, drip, drip of water, small incremental efforts carve out landscapes or create beautiful stalagmites and stalactites over time. A lot of time. Lifetimes. What am I carving out with my lifetime? Slowly, but surely, something to be proud of. A life that is not in reaction to stress and busyness, but a proactive, measured, balanced life.

I’m really proud of myself for losing and consistently keeping off 17kg.

I notice that I can do yoga more easily now. There’s less of me getting in the way. I have more energy to do it as well. I’m getting more flexible because I’m doing it nearly every day.

Jared says I snore slightly less, and I’ve noticed that about him too. 

There are six flights of stairs to our apartment, and getting myself up the stairs is significantly easier now. 

My feet have gone down about half a size, and I fit into a bunch of clothes and shoes I feared I’ve have to throw out.

How’d I do it? 

Small, consistent, incremental changes. 

I noticed last year that I spent a really long time studying the progress of my students, and giving them a learning intention to work, then when they’d achieved that, look at the next one, and then the next. I decided to start doing the same for myself – setting learning intentions for myself. 

First, it was to make my peace with throwing food away – particularly old bananas – and not turning them into cakes, thus creating an obligation to food I didn’t need, or even necessarily want. 

Second, was to be true to my energy levels and start honouring the insane amounts of energy that I have. I have to take myself out for exercise, at very least an hour a day, otherwise there’s no sleep, especially when I’m not working, or in lockdown.

Even with loads of exercise, sleep’s still hit and miss when I’m not working. Coffee and I have a love/hate relationship. I’ve spent most of this year without it, and I am sleeping significantly better.

Current Learning Intentions include: 

• Figure out how to reconcile eating out and staying on plan. It is possible, if the right food at the right restaurants are chosen. Caesar salads are a great option. As is steak and salad.

• To thine own goals be true. Even if Husband is in self-sabotage mode. You are not your husband. You do not need to join him in self-sabotage.

• Set myself up to succeed by finding ways to socialise without needing to have the excruciating challenge of staying on plan at a restaurant or bar. Find friends that want to go for walks, movies, kayaking, enjoy tea – or perhaps go ziplining through the forests with you!

• Stay chipping away at the mind work section of the plan – this is where the real transformation takes place. Change your thoughts, change your feelings, change your actions, change your world.

I feel a little bit like I’ve finally figured out how to balance on a tightrope, and I’m doing it, and my inner critic doesn’t quite know what to do with that. For once, she is at a loss for words, but I can feel her biding her time, just waiting until such time as I fall, and there’ll be the ‘I told you so’, and the ‘See, you’re not really able to get yourself together, you can’t really overcome yourself, it was just an aberration’.

I can hear her cutting calls of ‘Who do you think you are to be losing weight? Who do you think you are to be thin and beautiful? It’ll all just go to your head and you’ll be a vain prima donna again.’ 

My inner coach is slowly finding her voice, and I can hear her rebuttals of ‘But if other women can do it, why can’t you?’ and ‘Actually who are you not to be thin and beautiful – inside and out? Who are you not to be healthy? Who are you not to be in control?’

Part of the plan I’m on involves an online community where women, daily, share their victories and their wins. It is so inspiring! I love seeing so many other women achieve their goals. I figure if they can do it, so can I. It’s a good reminder to keep going. This is not a crash diet. It won’t happen in a couple of months, but slowly and surely, over time, with slow incremental effort, I’ll get there. 

Stalagmites and stalactites. 

Or I won’t. 

I’m also fully prepared for that eventuality. But if nothing else, I now have a tool that I can use to temper the 10kg/year fluctuations that I was having.

Worst case scenario, I can now listen to my body more about what full feels like. I can now not feel compelled to finish everything on my plate (and everyone else’s). I can eat mindfully, savouring every mouthful. Even if I didn’t lose another gram, there are still so many wins.

When I first started doing this diet, changing my lifestyle in this way, my brain was panicky. There was a voice in my head that I made four portions, say, that I would give slightly more to the one I was eating now – because otherwise you’re going to STARVE – even though that would make one of the other portions smaller – because this wasn’t enough food to live off right now. 

The more I’ve sat with that thought, the more I realised it’s not true. This is enough to live off. This is enough. I can be satiated. It has taken some adjusting to how much food each meal will be, certainly. Detox was a bitch, both times. It has taken an openness, a willingness to recalibrate my normal to be a smaller normal instead of a too-much normal. 

I had truly made my peace with the fact that I would never get under 100kg again. I had become quite fatalistic about my size, and I thought if I could just maintain it, I’d be doing OK. 

Yesterday, I wore size 14 jeans for the first time in 6 years. They fit like a glove. Every time I think about it, I imagine a picture of the God-rays coming through the clouds, and the hallelujah chorus type ‘laaaaa’ starts playing. I’m utterly amazed, incredulous, about the changes that I’ve made to my body with this plan. 

My resolve is starting to falter a little bit to be honest. There’s a voice in my head that says that ‘Yea, you’ve come this far, but you can’t actually go much further. Biology won’t allow it. Besides, you can’t stick to things. There are restaurants to try, there’s baking to be done. There’s travel to be done, and none of that is conducive to this lifestyle plan where you basically have to either bring food with you, or stay home forever.’ 

But I’m taking it one day at a time, one meal at a time.

It is summer, everything in Ireland is starting to open up, and while I’m still largely ‘on plan’, there’ve been sleepless nights, there’s been a lack of routine due to being on holiday, there’s been a fair bit of deviation from the plan. I’m also going back to full time teaching my own class, with all it’s stress and general hardness.

Life is about to get a lot more triggery.

Have I done enough to bed in these changes? Can I keep going? I hope so.

My dream goal, my long term goal, would be to get down to 70kg. That’s supposedly a ‘healthy’ BMI for me, just. I know that for me 70kg is me at a UK size 10/12 with basically no fat on me. That’s still the better part of 30kg away, so I’m not sure if I’ll ever actually get there, but that’s the perfectionistic ideal. 

I think more realistically, anything under 90kg is a win.

Short term goal is 95kg – that’d get me to losing 20kg, then I can reassess after that. 

The number on the scales is not actually really the goal. Having a more peaceful relationship with food, and with hunger is the goal – the number on the scales is merely a byproduct of that.

Why am I telling you this? I hope that in sharing my story, I can inspire others to challenge their own relationship with food, if they feel that it is problematic for them. It is also a way to keep myself accountable – I’ve told you I’m on a journey and I can’t just quit or give up, because I want chocolate cake now more than I want to achieve control over myself, more than I want to be true to myself. 

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to be ‘true to oneself’ in the last couple of years. 

It’s a bit of a misnomer – oneself – as if there’s only one. 

We all have multiple selves, with the barest of minimums as two selves. 

I love the wolf analogy. I’ve referred to it before, but it can’t be repeated often enough. 

Christianity anthropomorphises these voices into an angel on one shoulder, and a demon on the other. 

Jerry Seinfeld talks about them as night guy vs morning guys.

I remember when I was at uni, having strong words with myself about short term happiness vs long term happiness, and how the two were often diametrically opposed. 

I have recently concluded that in order to have long term happiness, you have to be really good at doing boring things for a long time, with little or no immediate reward, and definitely no dopamine hit. This has always been problematic for me.

Short term happiness had become my norm, a moment of bliss – life is short; eat dessert first – and the subsequent dopamine hit had become a crutch, an addiction. There was never enough. I never felt satisfied or full. There was always room for more. The question was not ‘do I need more food?’ it was ‘Do I want more food?’ met with an eternal yes. Instead of ‘Does my body need more fuel right now?’ it became ‘Can I eat more?’ where the answer was almost always yes.

It has taken a lot of time, but this is not the self that I want to be true to anymore. I have found that two things have really really helped with this transformation: 

1. realising that ‘cheating’ on the diet is only cheating yourself, and doesn’t really serve you, or make you feel good. 

2. And asking the question ‘Does this serve me?’ in a Marie Kondo kind of a way. 

Will this bring me joy for more than the moment it’s in my mouth? Will I feel good in 20 minutes when this arrives in my stomach? Am I going to feel good in an hour from now, in six hours from now, or tomorrow? 

Does this serve me? 

I imagine myself as a queen on my throne in a medieval kingdom, reigning over my subjects, and asking the question as a good ruler would. Does this serve me? Is this a good decision for the kingdom of Lauren? 

This has made saying no to things like lolly cake (one of my favourite treats of all time) surprisingly easy. It doesn’t serve me at this time. 

It hasn’t been in anyway foolproof – undoing a lifetime of habits is never cut and dry. But I’ve made good strides. If there’s an offer that involves socialising with food, then socialising will always win. But I’m getting better at counter-propositioning. Instead of coffee, would you like to go for a walk instead? How bout some badminton in the park? 

6 months in, and somewhere near a third of the way to where I want to be. It’s not going to be a short journey, nor an easy one. But the worthwhile ones seldom are.

Thank you to all those that have been so supportive and awesome along the way. Don’t stop!

What thoughts are keeping you ‘stuck’ in a reality that you don’t want to be in? What’s a learning intention you’re working on for yourself at the moment? What small, consistent, incremental changes are you putting in place at the moment? Leave your answers in the comments – I love hearing from you, and it inspires me to write more.