Changes

Since I have last written a post, a million things have happened.

The year anniversary of being on a diet has been and gone. I graduated. I started my masters degree. I passed my driving test. My two bosses got fired. Two of my wonderful guinea pigs passed away. I got a new guinea pig who is extremely naughty. My boyfriend got promoted, then immediately got made redundant. He didn’t have a job for over a month and we barely got by on just my wage. We took his ex-employer to court. He got a new job. We set a date for our wedding, March next year. I found out I have gall stones and my doctor told me to come off Atkins or he couldn’t put me forward for surgery. I came off Atkins.

We’ve been trying to diet since by calorie counting, but it is really hard when a) you don’t have any money and have to just eat whatever you can afford and b) there aren’t such strict rules to follow. I haven’t lost any weight, I’ve put on a few lbs instead.

With a date set for our wedding, I have something to aim for, but it is much harder than it was before. Calorie counting is a million times harder than Atkins. Cutting a whole food group out but otherwise pretty much eating what you want is a piece of cake compared to limiting food and checking labels. If I got hungry on Atkins, which was hardly ever, there was always something I could eat, like a pepperami or tuna mayonnaise or whatever. When you count calories, if you get hungry and you are over your calories, that’s it. You just have to be hungry, and I’ve never really taught myself to be hungry. I’ve got in a really bad habit of binging, I will eat literally nothing at work, just drink four or five coffees because I’m too busy to leave my desk, maybe snack on a biscuit or 3, then I’ll get home, eat my allowed calories for the rest of the day, then still feel ravenous and stuff my face with whatever I can find, thinking ‘oh well, I’ll get back on track tomorrow’.

We still haven’t managed to sort ourselves out financially, paying back what we owe from when my boyfriend didn’t have a job. We’re eating all our cupboard food from before Atkins, like tins of kidney beans and packets of risotto rice.  I don’t know how we’ll afford fresh food this month, so maybe I’ll learn to be hungry on the poverty diet. We haven’t told our families just how bad things are, because they are not in a position to help us and we don’t want them to worry. It’s a hard time for us.

I’ve been focusing on our wedding as a distraction. We haven’t told our families yet, so I’m still calling my boyfriend my boyfriend rather than my fiance. I know, we’re keeping lots of secrets from them right now!

I have a sort of plan for the wedding. I want it casual and low key, because we’re a casual and low key couple. And we’re poor of course, nothing limits how flashy your wedding is like an empty purse. I also don’t want the stress that loads of my friends have planning and replanning table plans and worrying the colour of the confetti won’t match the grooms shoelaces and all that bull.

The original plan was to have a surprise wedding, tell people it was an engagement party or something and then just get married. But we talked about it, and there would be too many passive aggressive comments from our mothers especially. “Oh this is lovely but I wish I could have known so I could have told my friends” or “This is great surprise, but I wish I’d known so I could have made an effort to look nice” … and personally, I would make far less effort to go to an engagement party than a wedding, so we might miss out on seeing people that we actually want at our wedding if we don’t tell them it’s a wedding, especially if we do it out of town.

So… I think we’re going to forget that.

My plan instead is a day at the seaside. We’ll get married in the registry office of our favourite seaside town, then spend the afternoon on the pier with our families and then have a party in the evening with our friends. But that still seems a bit stressful, like how and what do you feel 100 people at a party? Should we risk somewhere with a minimum bar spend? What time should we have it? If we do have it at the seaside, will people make the effort to come that far? Who the hell should we invite? Do you need security guards? How can you keep track on everyone? Is it even worth spending so much money on ONE day?!?!

My other idea is to JUST invite our families to our day at the seaside and go out for a meal in the evening instead of the party, then having a party in our hometown the next day? But then the costs just add up and up. But I want to do SOMETHING with our friends as well as our families.

Anyway. So, the day I need to fit in to my dress by is on the horizon. I reckon it will fit if I stick to my eight stone goal, so on that basis… 67lb down, 45lb to go.

45lb in nine months, I did it before, can I do it again?!