Fun Suckers!

I put a pound on this week, so I’m not overly happy with myself. I think in a weird way I’m sort of maintaining my weight, so I’ve decided that I’m going to try cutting my points a little bit this week, just by 2 a day and see if I can boost my weight loss a little. Still the good news is, I know that when I do reach goal, I’m capable of maintaining, so every cloud and all that!

  One of the things I’ve always been good at (well despite what I’m referring to as my “purple and green years”) is looking for the positive in a situation and making the most of things. This morning, I dropped my toast on the floor and it landed butter side up and I thought "Yes, today is going to be great" and then I got in the car and this song was on the radio.

Then I found an earring I lost a week ago. These things however small made me happy!

I read an article the other day, it was in a newspaper by a proper journalist and the premise of the article was that he hated people who counted “sleeps till Santa’, because as an adult you shouldn’t do that you should be above that…blah…misery…blah…no joy…blah get over yourself! The irony of this was that it had been retweeted by someone who is a bona fida “Fun Sucker” This person mocked and scoffed at everything from people singing “Happy Birthday” to those that clapped along to the “Strictly Come Dancing” theme tune.

  Don’t get me wrong, we all have things we find annoying. For me I’m not a fan of Joey Essex and I don’t particularly like it when people put “LOL” on the end of everything, when clearly it’s not a laugh out loud situation. I used to work with a bloke who’d send e-mails, which would go something like…

“You forgot to send me a competition question......LOL”

And I’d think did that REALLY make you laugh out loud, because if it did, I’m funnier than I realised, I should take up stand up comedy. Move over Peter Kay, get out my sight Micky Flanagan, I have the ability to reduce people to fits of laughter by forgetting to e-mail them!

  My point is, these things slightly annoy me, but I don’t waste time letting the hatred of them consume me, cutting from my life those that think the fact Joey Essex can’t tell the time is amusing and write LOL after they put that fact on Facebook. I think get on with it, it makes you happy!

  There are lots of things in life designed to make us miserable and being an adult is tough, in fact if we realised how tough, we’d probably all develop “Peter Pan” syndrome and not bother growing up. I spent a lot of years letting my grief and depression take a hold of me. I let my fear of my stalker coming back blight everything. I was so unconfident that I wouldn’t even walk into a restaurant first to ask for a table, I’d make Lucy do it. 

   Depression is a horrible disease and it’s not as easy as one day saying, “right that’s it, I’ll jolly well pull myself together”. My depression wasn’t down to a chemical imbalance, it was the result of a lot of horrible situations all happening within a really short space of time.

 I can’t really remember the moment at which I started to feel better, but once I realised I was worth bothering about, that’s the moment I felt able to start to lose weight and put myself and my health first. For ages I thought I didn't matter, no one else cared about me, so why should I? Now I care about me and I try and do one thing for me everyday, even if it's just 10 minutes to read a bit of a book.

  I also try and find joy and fun in everything, even if I don’t want to. Lucy and I started to make a list the other day of our highlights of 2013. On it there was some of the big stuff you’d expect – going to see Robbie Williams, holidays etc., but then there was a lot of little stuff too. A day out with Laura and the kids that resulted in us getting lost, walking 10 miles and having a cheese and onion cob. Our “Pie-athon” where we watched all the “American Pie” films back to back and evenings sat in the garden talking nonsense with Dad and drinking red wine.

  There are enough things in this world designed to make you feel bad, so if you’re going to get stressed because someone is counting sleeps till Santa or singing along to a theme tune, then get over yourself, these are not big problems, they're things you don't like!

  Oh and it’s 26 sleeps till Santa and I will count those sleeps every year until there is no breath left in my body!

This isn't factually accurate, but you get the gist!

  

A Comforting Thought

Even though it’s only Wednesday, this week has been a little bit crazy already and November looks as though workwise it will be the same! I’m certainly not complaining, when you run your own business you want to be as busy as possible! Yesterday Lucy and I were working at an event and so we couldn’t make our normal class, instead we went in the evening. For some reason I always think I’ll weigh lighter in a morning, before my belly is full of tea, so I was pleased to have lost half a pound, because lets face it that’s a bag of sugar and they can be quite heavy!

  Although my “new” life is a bit bonkers at time, since I left my old one behind I know I am a lot happier and more positive. One of the reasons I put my weight on in the first place was down to comfort eating. Being stalked, the deaths of my Mum, Gran and two of my friends and then just generally being unhappy in my former workplace took its toll and my solace was food, normally chocolate or ice cream and as much of it as I could possibly eat. Over the last year I’ve pretty much kicked my comfort-eating habit and now if I feel a bit down I try and find happiness in something else, a book, a hot bath, a walk with Cyril anything that will boost my mood.

  Last week, that wasn’t the case. Last Wednesday was the fifth anniversary of my friend Matt’s death and for whatever reason it really hit me. Matt and I became friends when he came on work experience to Mansfield 103.2 and I think from the moment we met we were pretty much inseparable.

 In fact looking back I wonder how we avoided getting sacked, because we laughed every single day and got into a million scrapes. Even when Matt changed jobs it didn’t affect the friendship. I know some people believe men and women can’t be friends, but I think anyone who knew us, knew we were just best friends and would never be anything more because as much as we mucked about we also drove each other crazy! Matt was the sort of bloke who you could say to “fancy trying to recreate the dance off from American Pie the Wedding” and he’d say “hell yes” and that’s what we’d try and do. Weirdly I still have friends who I can say that to! (You know who you are!)

  Last week no amount of trying to cajole myself out of my mood worked and in the end it was my old friend Mr Cadbury who came to my rescue. As I ate every single last piece of chocolate I realised I wasn’t enjoying it at all, it wasn’t going to bring my friend back and it would probably lead to a weight gain (although I think I spent the rest of the week trying to make amends and fortunately it worked!)

  The thing is grief is a bitch and there’s no formula as to when you’ll suddenly feel better. I remember leaving the hospital after my Mum died and me, Dad and Lucy coming home and we had no idea what we should be doing. It was early hours of the morning, so we couldn’t phone anyone or do anything practical, we just sat there listening to the rain and watching the clock. 

  If you break your leg, the doctor can say to you, we’ll x-ray it, put you in plaster, it’ll be 6 weeks, we’ll take the pot off do physio and you’ll be OK, you know the sketch. With grief, who knows? 

  They say there are 5 stages of grief, denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. I remember looking for something after Mum died that would tell me how I should be feeling. I found many websites who spoke about this and they all then sort of backtracked and said you might feel these in any order at anytime and there’s no telling when each stage will kick in. Helpful!

  So here’s my take on grief, you will miss whoever it is you’ve lost every single day. You miss them in varying amounts and in different ways, some days you will be absolutely fine and others it will just hit you like someone has walked up to you in the street and booted you clean in the stomach. This is all OK, it’s normal and above all it’s OK to miss someone, don’t pretend they never existed. Just don't let the grief define you, you're not Miss Havisham.

  So what I’ve told myself is that once in a while I’m allowed to feel sad and the occasional date with Mr Cadbury is OK, but it has to be rare and not the norm! There would have been a time where I would have let those feelings of sadness take over completely, but the next day, I put it behind me and got straight back on track, comfort eating never really offered me any comfort, it just made me fat and miserable and I’m on a mission to be slinky!