What happened was that I completely fell out of love with cooking.

It was fine as long as I could make my 1-pot stovetop meals and work my way through them. But my sister Paula had pointed out that I wasn’t eating any complete protein while cooking my beans-based vegetarian meals.

It was then I found out that I CAN’T COOK NON-VEGETARIAN. No: not that my noble spirit won’t allow me to; but that I’m not able to !

Bummer.

So I struggled along doing things like eating a shitload of salad with tinned tuna, until I felt that another mouthful of tuna would see me screaming. And Woolworths over the road had put up the price of its roast chickens to $11, which I refused to pay. So for a while it was those deli packets of sliced ham and stuff like that – all of which I actually detest.

And so, of course, I then fell out of love with the MyWW regimen. It was all too hard because I’d never used any of their hundreds of recipes.

Happily, I moved here to Essendon and had changed my Home Care Provider (as mentioned yesterday) and so have someone to offer advice – or, rather, suggest possible solutions. My Look-Afterer says he often eats Lite n Easy meals for the sheer convenience, and recommended a couple. (But he and his wife and kids eat from the straight dinners menu – not the calorie-counted meals; so his choices aren’t available to me.) I signed up; and I’m here to say that although the delivery men are stroppy bastards – well, mine is ! – it’s most definitely worth it !!

I get lunch and dinner. I’ve swapped out my oats banana for a grated apple, and believe me it’s a YUMMY breakfast ! And to not have to even THINK about preparing food is the most delightful thing – just wonderful ..

My Home Care Package picks up 70% of the cost, which means I’m paying just under $41 for a whole week of lunches and dinners because I decided to go with the 1200 calories a day set. Interestingly, moving up to the 1500 a day looks to me to add desserts, coz the menu items have the same names. I’m not a dessert person, and I fill up quickly these days; so as I don’t want to drop too much weight in the short term I’ve ordered some extra soups for next week. It’s all fun !   🙂

You can see what I mean about losing weight too quickly .. Of course, a sensible person never weighs herself daily; but I’m glad I did !

I can’t go on eating 1200 calories a day indefinitely; so at some point I’ll cut out the lunches and just order the dinners. Or maybe go up to the 1800 cs a day ! – wowee !! I must check those meals out, sinful as they are ..

But I want to share the joy of never needing, ever !, to think dismally “What on earth am I going to make for my dinner ?” while knowing that it’s meant to be HEALTHY and all that.  With Lite n Easy all that shit’s done for me, lazy old fart that I am ..

But yes ! – exercise.

I suddenly and inexplicably grew tired of having to choose the radio button that says ‘nil’ when indicating how much of it I do.

No, that’s a porky. Wish it were true.

I came across a link in .. in .. dunno: maybe The Guardian ? – it wasn’t the ABC’s Just In column. Musta been The Guardian (to which I subscribe).  Yes, this was it. Never knew about ParkRun; or if I did I’ve managed to push it to the back of the ancient brain.

It grabbed me instantly. And that’s NOT a porky, believe it or not ! It fired me up to remembering how I used to do this daily walk, after Chic had gone and I mysteriously decided to lose some weight:

It was, of course, an absolutely GORGEOUS walk with Sydney Harbour everywhere around. I had some terrific photos taken during it, once: but no more. And that’s a tale from the M-R Madness files ..

Back to ParkRun ..

My local one – there are thousands throughout the world !! – is, I am very happy to report, at Maribyrnong. I have a very soft spot for that area as a result of living there for almost a year and having fallen in love with the beautiful little river – around which, as you can see, the ParkRun course runs. As do its participants – well, not this one: I don’t run, I walk briskly. I actually can’t run: something to do with balance and fear of falling ..

I start next Saturday. And I’ve already started on ‘Lite n Lean’ lunches and dinners: I can have my Home Care Plan pay for 70% of that ! In other woids, apart from seven bananas with seven servings of 40g of rolled oats and some lactose-free low-fat long-life milk for my coffee, I eat fourteen meals a week for about $48. Heh heh .. good for me and very good for my wallet ! Which has been attacked relentlessly of late by the need to have furniture taken away and in a couple of instances replaced by smaller things – this is a very small apartment indeed ..

Today my scales tell me 76.9kg. Comme vous pouvez lire, my weight continues to fall, ever so slowly. As I said to the young bloke who looks after me – upon whom I dote – in my Home Care Plan Provider company, Aunty Grace,

it’s my ambition to reach 70kg so that I can be a regular person in a lift. Don’t get it ?: lifts have plaques telling the gross weight they can carry and also the number of people. It always divides into about 70kg. [grin]

There was a very, very long time during which I would have to look away from that plaque ..

They say that exercise is addictive. Hmmm .. I shall have to avoid talking to my dear Hev, as she will only push me to do MORE. Still, getting up on a Saturday morning and taking a coupla trams to ParkRun should be tolerable: after all, I did that Pyrmont walk every day for quite a long time ..

Watch this space ..

I’ve always thought of myself as a person who doesn’t like change.

But now I think that’s bullshit: I’ve been occupying myself with nothing but change since .. well, probably since Chic died. (I’m so repulsed by the use of “passed” ! – what’s it supposed to mean ? Passed from this world to the next, probably. Seeing as how there isn’t another one, it’s a meaningless and euphemistic term and I eschew it.) I’ve moved from one place to another in an unceasing round of seeking a home and never finding one, which I attribute to a lack of the necessary funds. I mean, had I been still working, say (at the age of 69 which was when I rejoined the human race), or the winner of a small but satisfactorily sufficient sum in the lottery (for which I’ve never bought a ticket) .. why, then I could’ve rented a nice little unit in Sydney somewhere and settled into a life of ease.

And I would never have met those met after leaving Sydney; I would never have come to understand how it’s Melbourne that’s now my emotional ‘home’; and most of all, I would never (I’m almost sure) have decided to pare myself down.

I was telling my very old friend S on the phone just yesterday that I don’t FEEL any different – that I still feel like the great fat slob who’s the only person I can actually recall myself being.

I mean, HONESTLY ..! Why did the unfortunate Stringer have to have a wife looking like that ?! – and he actually loved me !!! I did once tell him that he was an idiot for it; but he only did his hangdog routine about “You just called me an idiot ..” that always made me laugh. Btw, I wasn’t always as fat as in that photo; I reckon I was at Peak Plumpness then – 110kg—115kg !

What I said to S is absolutely true: when you’ve looked at yourself and seen a large, fairly-shapeless-but-for-the-roundness-or-convexity person for years and years, it’s a very strange – weird, really – thing to know you’re not that person any more but to be unable to accept it.

When I sit back on the recliner with my feet on it so that my knees are together and on a level with my nose (I hope you get what I mean !), there’s a gap between my thighs !!! – big gap. SO odd .. And when I have to look in the mirror to pull out an eyebrow hair that’s trying to do a Little Johnny Howard on me, I see that my cheeks go IN now – not out any more. But I can easily forget these oddities so that within moments my brain has me looking like that person up there with huge arms .. Pertaining to which, just try to imagine where the skin holding in all that ‘avoir dupoids’ has gone – like, nowhere. It’s all still here !
ACK !!! That’ll teach me to lose weight at my age ! {Late addition: I laughed loudly suddenly, remembering that phrase from the ’70s – I think ! – that was so popular when blokes met: “Gimme some skin, man !” [grin]}

Maybe that’s why I have such trouble thinking of myself as anything but the person I’ve grown so used to – that I still need to wear clothes as camouflage rather than as a covering. I look around me and see women in their hundreds who are far fatter than I’ve ever been blithely going about in sleeveless blouses and shorts and I can only marvel at their strength of character. Where did they find the power ??!

Anyway. I know, finally, that I’ll never return to the fatty up there. I’m now this other person, and it would kill me to return. There’s no rhyme or reason to it: I still don’t know why I did it – well, other than a kind of niggling wish not to be quite as I was .. I recall posting whingeingly about trying this or that (e.g., smaller portions – hyoh hyoh !) and my lack of success. And I recall Whispering Gums’ suggestion about Weight Watchers .. who now chase me by SMS, hoping I’ll fall into line and behave as I’m meant to, rather than following my own personal methodology (and why is she continuing to achieve weight loss when she does NO exercise ?!) – which is not a methodology at all but merely laziness.

There’s some mystery here, my weight loss. Truly ! And no, I don’t have some lingering disease that’s slowly consuming me – or a tape-worm !!! My wonderful but grossly over-worked GP, Cecile, together with her wonderful but grossly over-worked Practice Nurse, Dora, look after my health sternly, and I love them both. But when I weighed in this-morning at 78.8kg and understood that it’s true, I can still lose weight, and maybe even get down to that fantastical 70kg one day, I was very pleased but primarily mystified.

I can’t help wondering if the inability to accept myself as I am is an indicator that I really DO hate change ..

This-morning I very nervously weighed myself again.

I did it because yesterday, having donned a pair of leggings (I can’t keep buying jeans and finding they’re unwearable after a while) and gone shopping, come home, finally finished an umpteenth enormous bunch of delicious white grapes that the Woolies Metro over the road has been tempting me with and settled in to do some serious overlay mosaic crochet, I realized I was distinctly uncomfortable around the waist. Going to remove the leggings I saw (1) that my flab was being forced out above the waist by them and (2) that their waistline was all bent over. The obvious conclusion was that I HAD PUT WEIGHT ON. Ugh !

Hence this-morning’s activity with the scales.

Expecting to find myself something like 3 kilos up, I found to my astonishment that I am in fact another half-kilo down: today I weigh

79.4 kilos.

That may make you wince and wonder why I would be chuffed, considering that ..

(typical bloody Google: June 2013 ???!) ..

but I’m about 168 cm, just for starters; and somehow I dunno that the average Aussie sheila has grown 7 cm, even in 9 years !

But the real point here is that I haven’t been in the seventies, kilo-wise, for longer than anyone alive can remember. Certainly I can’t !

And together with my new-found lack of kilos comes a new-found thinking about Moving Out: I’ve come across a delightful unit at an amazing rental price in .. wait for it .. Ballarat. And if they accept my application I SHALL GO THERE. I’ve dithered and havered about leaving the big smoke for so long that I disgust myself.

In fact, I disgust myself on many levels, these days ..

I have no friends here in Melbourne, not any more. No-one travels here to visit me, not in these C-19 days, when Victoria is riddled with tales of infection. So why should I stay here ? Why not go Somewhere Else ? Stringer is with me wherever I go, after all .. And although I’m going to view a truly beautiful place in North Melbourne on Monday, it’s a studio; and I don’t really think it fair on The Boodster to not provide him with at least one room to get away from me ! (Yesyes; there are those who consider that perhaps an eight-room house wouldn’t be enough distance ..)

The one thing that might keep me tied to Melbourne is my wonderful GP, Cecile. However, she herself has pointed out that we can do video consults so there’s almost zero need to visit her; and an occasional trip down as necessitated by, say, my bi-annual exhaustive health check would be a pleasure. Ballarat isn’t far:

Anyvays, that’s the current thinking. Knowing me, I may well disgust myself further and decide on relieving myself of most of what’s left of my possessions in order to move in to a studio (it is such a beautiful environment !).

So you ain’t hoid de last of dis ..

You can see in that screen-grab both of the newest switcheroos of WW:

1.  is the word “reimagined”, and
2.  is the phrase “personal points”.

When I started with WW it was the beginning of April of this year: I weighed in at just over 104kg (by no means the heaviest I’ve been, as I can clearly recall being crapped on by my doted-upon Sydney GP, Uttam, for being 112kg !!); and I believe the “reimagined” bit hadn’t been running for all that long. But I’m not at all sure when they started with the creation of ‘four pillars’, as they’d come up with for the reimagining ..

Sleep, Mindfulness (or Mental Attitude, or something), Food and Exercise: these comprise the quartet of support.

I can honestly say that the 1st, 2nd and 4th pillars in my house did not exist; so it was required to .. ahh .. manage (balance ?) on one pillar alone – that of Food. I simply ignored those three topics and concentrated on what I stuffed into my cakehole.

I didn’t actually SET OUT to  be thusly wicked; I mean, I never formulated the thought that I had no intention of doing what was expected .. I just went to the website (no horrid smartphone for me !) and sorted out how to ‘do’ the points thing with my food, and it worked.  So what point would there have been in carrying on with all the rest of the stuff, I ask you ..?

The reason it worked ? — my circumstances; namely, living alone and thus never needing to consider anyone else’s tastes or preferences or allergies or refusal to eat the same meal two or even three days in a row. There was no-one else in my group (talking the first few weeks of workshops, before Covid-19 ruined lives and put a total halt to meetings) in a position to do that; hence my kind of leaving them all behind. She said, modestly ..

So everything was hunky dory anyway when WW suddenly introduced A Much Better Thing: the now-famous ‘Personal Points’. Long story short— no, I can’t do it, sorry. Not possible to explain it without taking up far too much text. Just accept that this is a genuine improvement, except for ..

this kind of thinking, that continues to be my personal bugbear. “Low of 99% fat-free dairy” ?? – what the— ?! Everyone knows that when the words ‘low fat’ or ‘fat-free’ appear referring to .. anything, I believe !, then that food’s sugar content has been jacked up by a frightening factor. What would I rather eat than sugar ? – FAT, that’s what.

Consider this book:

and if you want, you can watch its author, the wonderful and determined Nina Teicholz, here at a TedX talk, which is a brief summary of her work over EIGHT YEARS of research. Unfortunately, her voice is not a good one for giving a talk, and she can prove difficult to understand at times; but if you zot in and out a bit you’ll find sections that are not only fascinating – as is her entire thesis – but able to be comprehended. The book is rivetting throughout; and I’ve listened to most of it – skipping only the parts where chemistry (I think it’s chemistry !) proves too weighty. I am a convert, and a passionate one.

But .. WW hasn’t caught up with this thinking — here’s an email about how it’s spreading — and will probably take a looong time to do anything about it, even when it’s set in stone in the American Dietary Guidelines. Because it’s going to mean they have to re-think their algorithms, re-think their wordings, re-think bloody EVERYTHING.

The bottom line to all this raving is that I have little idea how it is that since April Fool’s Day I’ve managed to lose 22kg.

What about the 99% fat-free cottage cheese ? – or the ditto cheese slices ? Have I lost these kgs on account of eating no bread at all ? – or is it the absence of marmalade on my non-existent toast ? Can’t be.

∴ it’s the quantities. I very often don’t have an evening meal – not because I want to fast, but because I’m not hungry. One of my delicious vego meals for lunch can fill me up to dolly’s wax (or pussy’s bow, of course): I’m eating probably half or less than I was before April.

I’m staying with this. It’s become a sort of hobby, and it’s interesting. If only the same could be said of this post, eh wot ? [grin]

This-morning wasn’t as cold as of recently yore (so to speak), so I weighed meself.

To my unutterable joy I weighed in at 84.5kg ! – FINALLY broke the 85kg mark.   🙂

This means that I’ve now lost 20kg — on April Fool’s Day I was 104.5kg. Am I pleased ? – I am bloody ecstatic ! I don’t remember when last I weighed under 85kg – probably around 20 years ago is my best guess.

I had actually gone so far as to cancel my MyWW account,  because I’d finished my six-month special rate and the next one was billed at $79 per month. Nearly fainted. But during the 2 or 3 weeks of said cancellation I was bereft – simply couldn’t cope without the WW site to refer to for working out the points in various things and recording and tracking the number of ‘blue’ points consumed per day. I felt really odd without what I’d been referring to for the past six months ..

So I emailed them and found an even better financial deal: first 3 months free, followed by another six months at the same $40-odd (can’t recall exactly).

And here I am, ready and willing to just keep going indefinitely with this ¼ use of MyWW – meaning, using only one of their four ‘pillars’ – that’s apparently become part of my lifestyle now.

So I’m somewhere around 98kg. Dunno exactly where owing to my not having gone to the last meeting and not having scales in which I have turtle confidence.

That’s it. What I haven’t got in my scales.

Thus, uncertain of the precise degree of my success, I present meself for loud congratulatory pæans of congrats ..

(Just in case ..)

I’ve always been told and accepted that the best rate of weight loss is  ½kg a week, or 2kg per month. Though I’ve bettered that, there really isn’t a “better”: I will most certainly not progress at a continued rate of 6kg a month (unfortunately) ! As an example, in one week I lost only 200g ..

The four pillars stuff is beyond me. I don’t exercise, owing to a dicky lower back, and I sure ain’t gonna start now. Besides, I’m all too aware that exercise actually has zero effect on weight loss: it merely keeps one fit, and ready to rock’n’roll with losing weight via other means.

And I’m  a lost cause with the mindfulness or whatever it is pillar: my habits (most of ’em vile) are so ingrained that to even contemplate change regarding any one of them causes more wrinkles to pop out all over .. Well, I suppose that might be the ancient skin giving up when all that blubber starts to drip slowly away .. But more seriously, I don’t know that any of my habits – which are not numerous – warrant attention. Other than the one that encompasses sitting in my recliner chair crocheting, that is ..

But with the sleep one and the eating one I’m good.

I emailed one of the group’s two overladies to point all this out (using different terminology) and to ask whether I should go on attending as I’m a bit of a cheat; but she didn’t reply. Hmmm. Possibly they would both be happier without my rather raucous presence ..

Can you believe it ? – I’ve become a WW member !   🙂

I decided it’s never too late to lose weight. I also decided to confess this latest .. ehrmm .. occupation to anyone out there reading this so as to put myself in a potentially embarrassing position should I weaken. Meaning, you must scoff at me the moment I start (if I do) to indicate weakening !

No-one is allowed to call it WeightWatchers now: it’s myWW – much as Kentucky Fried Chicken became KFC ! [grin]

It’s good. Really ! They’ve made it a sort of semi-holistic approach, now: four pillars, they describe it as – food, activity, sleep, mindset. Not too sure about the heading for the final one, because that word really covers everything .. but it’s better than ‘mindfulness’ – a word I detest. As it’s the only pillar that needs any kind of explanation, I can tell you that meditation definitely is part of it, but it’s largely to do with thinking through what one’s doing, why, and how well or badly one is doing it.

I went to the opening night of my group workshop on Monday night, and enjoyed it. I removed as much of my clothes as I could without becoming embarrassing, and was weighed in at 102.1kg. Chuffed, I was; had  been 104kg fairly recently. My type of membership is what they call ‘digital & workshop’; the other choices are digital alone, or personal 1-on-1 handling !!! I’d do that willingly, but it costs too much. I was able to sign up for 6 months because they had a 60% offer going for that commitment; and I pray to every god mankind has dreamed up that I don’t fail.

More of this boring shit another time. You’ve been warned ..