Hi Guys, For the last few months I have been a shadow on the forum, occasionally popping out to answer a question, but not an active participant. Lockdown has led to a period of contemplation for me, although that may be an understatement, it feels more like I was marching head down on a treadmill and someone switched off the power. I have spent the last few months picking myself off, dusting myself, and questioning how I ended up on that treadmill and if I want to get back on again. I have decided I don’t, but I am just starting to pick through the jigsaw pulling out the pieces for the border without any idea what the picture is.
Sorry if this is boring for the long term members of the forum, but for the sake of explaining where I am at, and what I plan for this time on the wagon, I feel like I need to explain my thought processes by starting at the beginning. All my life I had counted calories, and been physically active, and tried every diet going in the book to try to keep body fat under control but was still overweight. The week before a large building project started as part of a complete change of career I slipped when walking down the road and landed with my foot bent back under my leg breaking the bones on both sides of the ankle. Thankfully the bone fragments were all in the right places, but I had a 6 months period of not being allowed to put weight on that foot so ensure that the bones didn’t move before they completely healed. -By the time I was allowed to put weight on that foot, the main structural work of rebuilding an old stone barn on my farm into a big holiday let was completed and 6 months later my career change from IT, to living at home and depending on income from the holiday let had happened. But if I tried to walk on uneven ground or walk for more than half an hour on flat surfaces.the level of shooting pain in my ankle would be difficult to bear. During the years while I struggled on I piled on weight.
Fortunately I came across a trainee physio who didn’t know it wasn’t the done thing to say the NHS consultant is wrong, the pain is caused by a lack of physio at the time, and worked with me to remove the pain. – Once I could walk without pain then it was time to deal with the weight.
The next piece of good look was coming across a Fast 800 book, (I will admit it was the promise of rapid weight loss that attracted me) but it did lead me into starting onto the path of this WoE in October 2017, and joining the discussions on this forum back in December 2017. – I like data, and happily disappeared into a personal research project on why this WoE worked. Last year I got back to the weight range I have normally been during my adult life (a discard of over 40Kg) and decide to spend some time maintaining before getting back on the wagon to try to get to a body I would be proud of.
———— So back to the effect of lockdown ———–
I have been plugging away for years, running the holiday let, seeing to the needs of the horses, dogs, cats, sheep, poultry, every day of the week, every week of the year before dropping onto the settee in front of the TV in an evening with something that is quick to grab from the fridge. – Renovating the barn into a holiday let had gone over budget, so I had to work to build up an emergency fund and then save up the money before I could afford to renovate my house. and even though I had saved up the money I didn’t have the time or to be honest the enthusiasm or vision on how to turn my house into a home. I just couldn’t picture how it would work.
For the first month of lockdown it was just a revelation. I had time to sit out in the garden in the sunshine with a good book while the dogs ran around. – Or just go for a walk and enjoy the shapes of trees. – and then it hit me, I realised I didn’t want to go back to the life I had before lockdown. This was closer to the life I had wanted to achieve when I dropped out of the rat race and moved to a run down
Over the last couple of months I have regained a couple of inches of navel to gaze at, I no longer need to use a belt to prevent my jeans from falling down, but on the positive side I have only gained a couple of inches, I am no where near the size I was when I started on this WoE. I am telling you all this because I am going to get back on the wagon and rejoin the forum, but I realise I need to make a lot of other changes about self care. – Even after a couple of years on the forum I was still in the get to the desired weight / dress size and my life will be good . mindset. – Yes I could walk uphill and be physically active more each day, yes people did remark on the weight I had discarded., but actually I still wasn’t showing myself enough self care. Its take this time of a major change in workload to realise that I still was / am not in a good place with a lot of aspects, one of which is food. I still didn’t make the time to cook healthy meals even now during lock down. Given half a chance I will still turn to chocolate when stressed, I still have to regulate myself to stop myself from heading to the fridge when I need a break from working on paperwork and want to contemplate what to say next.
I nearly went back to my old way of being. The Welsh Government had announced that tourism businesses may be able to reopen from the 13th of July, so I started to make up to do lists and get stressed out. – But then they announced the rules yesterday. – Unlike England and Scotland, its a maximum of 1 household in any self catering holiday let. – So no point in continuing with the plans for buying PPE, and producing risk assessments and going through the 5 page long check list on regulations that we have to comply with produced by Welsh Government, when its highly unlikely that 1 house hold would want to book a 7 bedroom, 32 bed holiday let. 🙂
So big sign of relief, and its back to working on working out how I do want to live. – Sorry for having waffled on, the short version is, hi folks, I am back again, but I have decided that this time I will not just be focusing on ketosis because that’s the way to block physical hunger, I will be off down different rabbit holes about emotional hunger in my spare time and chattering away with any one with the same interest / issues.
