Becoming Empowered

So, a week and a half ago I wrote about my struggles with weight loss, more specifically the mental ones. The lack of will power, the ingrained habits, the reliance upon it as an emotional crutch. All issues that many women of my size face when trying to shed the spare baggage.

I promised myself when I wrote it that I would take each day as it comes and I can say with confidence that so far it's helped me immensely to take on that attitude. I've also started drinking all my water (Well...sugar free fruit squash anyhow) and I'm seeing again the improvements that I first saw when I first started out back in August last year. I feel a bit foolish having to do it all again but this time I have the benefit of experience on my side. I know what does and doesn't work.

I've had two particularly delicious victories this week. The first was Wednesday, when Ben managed to get an impromptu day off work. He wanted to take me out on a date (yes, we're married and still dating, it's the best way to do it!) but not too pricey, so we ended up deciding on Pizza Hut. Normally this would mean me 'taking the day off' so far as the diet goes, but knowing the day in advance what we were doing, I was able to get online and take a look at their nutritional info and plan not only the meal but the rest of our day (so far as food goes) in advance. What's more, my reignited enthusiasm for this seems to really have rubbed off on Ben and he did it too, which made things much easier for me; it's always difficult when eating with people who aren't restricted as you are, and he has always been the strongest of the two of us when it comes to will power vs food.

Anyhow, it all worked out pretty damn well as we figured out our current calorie allowance would enable us to have starters, the main, and a dessert. Of course as the weight starts to come down, so will our calorie allowance, but the adjustment seems to be nice and easy and slow.

The next victory was yesterday. Becky called an impromptu coffee evening, but it was so impromptu that this time I didn't have time to plan ahead. Still, instead of grabbing a huge hot chocolate with lashings of cream and marshmallows and a heavy chocolate cake I went for a cup of tea and a lighter cake.

Well, I thought it was a lighter cake. Victoria Sandwiches, in my experience, are usually made with a whipped cream filling and what my cookery teacher of old called a "fatless sponge" which sounds like a dieters dream but is actually just full of sugar. Nevertheless, to make it work it is usually whipped into submission and is 99% air so I thought hey, a wee slice of that will be an indulgent treat that I don't have to feel too guilty about. Only, it wasn't fatless sponge, it was just a regular old cake the way that anyone would make with margerine, and the whipped cream filling wasn't whipped cream, it was lemon flavoured butter icing. It was rather delicious, but I felt a little cheesed off as I thought I was getting something completely different.

Anyhow, I later did cave in and had a bag of crisps too, but it was still a victory day. How? Well I knew the cake would be, maximum, 700 calories and the crisps is about 200. That is an awful lot of calories, yes, but once more, since I'd been tracking them so diligently and knew what I was having for tea (and knowing I'd been caught short before I could leave and so hadn't had lunch) and knowing that I could happily skip out on my bananas and custard dessert I'd actually be fine. I was; I came in 584 calories below my daily goal, even with the cake and crisps after all was said and done.

So, compromise has become my weapon of choice. Compromise and planning. I know this might sound really silly, especially at this early point in the process, but I feel really quite empowered by this. Before, the meal out on Wednesday would have marked this week as "ruined" and I would have gone straight for the cake and hot chocolate last night. But it was not, and so this week is a total victory week! I'm going to look at it like this; if every week of working out a body builder becomes stronger in the arm, then every week I do as well as this, passing these challenges in such a manner, I come out of it a stronger person with a stronger will power. I'm building up my self control "muscles"!

I did something else quite empowering today too. Now I feel a bit odd about it, maybe a bit embarrassed and squeamish as if waiting to be told off for it, even though I know that's actually completely ridiculous...I have problems with asserting myself and standing out from the crowd to have myself heard, so that's why I feel a bit odd. I never used to, but I think years of having the shit ripped out of me for it makes me feel a bit foolish and stupid and shy. Well anyway, however I feel about it now, today I kind of took a step towards breaking free of those particular mental restraints and emailed my local MP about the reforms that are being planned for the NHS which will, apparently, lead to a more privatised system. Not as in you need private health insurance to be seen to or anything like that, but what has been proposed has caused some concern amongst many people.

Anyhow, a few months ago I got involved with a group called 38 degrees regarding the selling off of acres of our national forests. I was actually rather enraged by the proposition, and found this group compiling a petition against it. I opted in to keep up to date with their various campaigns, and when the government did a U-turn on the selling off of the forests they held a vote about which issues we should campaign for next. The percieved privatisation of the NHS was one of the issues that a lot of people felt strongly about, and I amongst many added my vote that this should be something we should try to have our voice heard over. It came out way ahead, and a petition was formed, which I put my name to. Then they asked us to write to our MP's.

Now, they asked us this regarding the forests, and another campaign regarding the UK's position on EU human trafficking laws they'd been supporting. Indeed, I think they always do. Normally I ignore those requests. For a start, like I said, it's one thing to put your name on a petition, but to actually step up and write, speaking personally and voicing my own concerns and asking my questions. It always made me feel uneasy. I know it's probably really stupid and I shouldn't feel this way, but I think it's a fear of looking stupid. Even a fear of being wrong. What if, actually, all the hype is over nothing? What if I don't have all the facts straight?

My friends and I aren't known for keeping our opinions to ourselves, especially politics. They say you shouldn't bring up money, religion or politics at the dinner table, and I think that if my friends and I were to be invited to such a fancy dinner we'd be kicked out for doing just that. It doesn't hurt us though, it's good to belong to such a group of friends who can stand up to such discussions. And when one of us doesn't have the facts right, it doesn't really matter. We all have a laugh. It's nothing really. A minor embarrassed flush of the cheeks is the generally the worst thing to come out of such discussions.

But that's my friends, we're friends for a reason. It's intimidating to write to some stranger for whome this is their job, their very livelihood. I'm a bit of a coward underneath it all, and fear rejection probably more than anything else in the world.

But then, as I disregarded the request and went to check my inbox, I happened to see an old email from Liverpool Anti Fascists sitting there and it begged the question; If people like Nick Griffin can preach the hateful horrible racist nationalist crap that they do and get elected as MEP's for it, why can't I spout off to my MP who is as accountable to me as anyone else in my constituency about what I think? We're a democracy after all. Everyone is supposed to get heir say, apparently.

So I decided to go ahead and wrote an email to him expressing my concern about what is supposedly going to happen to the NHS and asking what he thinks of it all. I'll be pretty chuffed if I get a response. I hope I do!

I know it's not much and I know I didn't exactly do it off my own steam, but it's a start, and despite now feeling like "oooh what's he gonna think about me just emailing him a load of shit about that when he probably has a million and one other more important things to worry about" I still feel pretty empowered by it. It's not the biggest issue in the world right now, and it's not the one I particularly feel the most passionate about but I do feel concerned and now that I've taken a step in this direction who knows, I might finally get the guts to actually step out and get my voice heard about the things that really get me riled up.

Like the fact that penny sweets are no longer a penny. I've never been so enraged in all of my life.