OK, so followers of this esteemed blog (in all of their millions) have been waiting with baited breath for news of the medical trials I currently seem to be under, and how they're affecting my weight.
Well, the good news is that my "I'm now full" reflex has returned. Hurray! I'm also on some new meds which don't make me anywhere near as drowsy and are actually helping to stabilise my moods, which is what they're supposed to do! So hurrays all round, except for...
The bad news is that I'm now back up to 268lb. But the good news (Hurray!) is that I'll be staying at the in-laws all next week, so no opportunities to sneak naughties out of the cupboard. I've also pretty much stopped taking in white sugar, and I'm cutting down (slowly...) on the amount of worshipping I do at the shrine of the brown, chocolatey goddess. I'm confident that we'll start to see some downward movement on those damn scales one of these days!
Meanwhile, I'm very encouraged by your support and feel very grateful for it. You're a great bunch, and for those of you who are also trying to plane your muffin-tops along with me, you can do it! We can all do it! Yay!!
No it isn't. I really do hand-on-heart promise that it isn't. My shrink has put me on some powerful new meds which have had a CRAZY effect on me. For the last three weeks, I've either been asleep, trying desperately not to be asleep, or falling in and out of sleep.
A psycho-nurse friend of mine promises me that I'll get used to them after a few more weeks, but in the meantime, my body is in a flat-spin and doesn't know whether it's coming or going.
Not only am I nowhere near as physically active as I've wanted to be, but also the damn pills are messing with my hunger reflex. Whenever you guys eat, a part of your brain says, "Stop now, that's all I need", but for some strange reason, mine doesn't because of the pills. I end up eating like a King, then feel exhausted within 30 minutes. I disappear upstairs and hibernate for another three hours!
The up-shot of all these shenanigans is that I'm back up to 265lbs again, and so have even more weight to shift. Boo! I guess on the positive side though, this means that overall I'll be donating more money to Sport Relief, which can only be a good thing, right?
OK, so here it is, the moment of truth..... At the end of Week One, I now weigh..... 259lb. Yes indeed, that's two pounds down and here they are look, going into the jar.
I feel so good. I feel on fire. It felt amazing to actually take that two pound coin and drop it into the jar. Whatever else happens between now and next March, that's £2 that I've raised for Sport Relief by burning off my unwanted lard. It feels great, it really does, and this would be a great place for me to invite you all along!
It would be fabulous if you kept track of my progress towards my fifty pound weight loss target, and matched my donation with a pound of your own into your jar. It would be even better still if you decided to lose your own excess poundage and got your friends to sponsor you as well. It's for Sport Relief next March. I'm well on the way to losing my target fifty pounds and raising fifty GBPs along the way.
Come and join us. At least tell all your friends about us. It's for a great cause, and did I mention that you'll also feel great at the same time?
Here's the basic plot... I'm 50lb overweight. Have been for some time now. Certainly is a shame that they don't come off as easily as they go on! Whenever I try to lose the excess weight, I inevitably run into one of three obstacles:
1) A lack of motivation 2) A lack of discipline, or 3) A lack of energy
The latter has a fairly straightforward explanation: depression, the nasty, really-difficult-to-diagnose kind. We're getting there now finally (after seven long and dark years) but there are still times when even getting out of bed seems like a marathon. Needless to say, I can lose a pound or two fairly quickly, but have never been motivated enough for long enough to actually keep it off.
Until now that is... There's an organisation that I hugely admire called Comic Relief, which has been raising phenomenal amounts of money for vulnerable people around the world over the last twenty four years. It was started by Richard Curtis, the acclaimed British comedy writer.
I remember seeing the same news reports he saw in 1985 - images like that stick in your head - of tiny African children, flies buzzing around their faces, their bellies swollen with hunger. The famine in Ethiopia was killing thousands of them through starvation and disease every single day. Curtis and his team got together to do something about it the best way they knew how: by televising a comedy spectacular, as well as encouraging people to do whacky sponsored events to help raise money.
I got involved there and then and went to work. I think I raised about £5 in total - I was so proud! For an 8 year old that was a lot of money in those days! Now as an adult, it doesn't seem all that much, but here's what a fiver in the hands of Comic Relief can do...
That £5 has saved at least one person's life from the certain death that is malaria. Knowing that I had helped, gave me a massive buzz. It still does now. I might not be able to change the world and alleviate all of its suffering, but I can ease some of it. That right there is one person's life that I have changed forever. I'd love to meet them one day and just listen to their life story, to hear everything that was possible because I did something daft for a few hours and raised a measly £5.
It's been a while since I did anything more than give a donation and I think it's high time that I did. I want that feeling back, today, tomorrow, and every tomorrow for the rest of my life, however long that might be.
One of the symptoms of my depression is comfort-eating, hence the fifty solid pounds of lard I drag around every day. But another is that I frequently can't sleep and end up writing down a mind-melting list of incredibly creative ideas. You're now reading one that was conceived somewhere around 3am on the 23rd March 2009....
You see, I have fifty pounds of weight to lose before I reach a healthy weight, and I got thinking: Wouldn't it be brilliant if I put a pound in a jar for every pound that I lose, then when I've reached my goal, I can give it Comic Relief.
If £5 can save one life from malaria, then £50 can save ten. £100 can save twenty. £500 can stop one hundred broken-hearted mothers from burying their children next year. I'm going to do this whether you join me or not. But it would be great if you did, it would be life-changing. In fact it would be more than that - it would be life-saving.
