Mel's Mid-life Crisis

Depression and intuitive eating

2011-05-02T10:37:00.000-07:00

As most of my friends know, I get depressed every winter. I am just coming out the other side of it now, and I have gained about one and a half stone (20 lbs or about 10 kg) in weight and my clothes don't fit. This year it was a totally different experience because of intuitive eating. So how was it different?

1) I was aware of eating for comfort and didn't believe the self-con that it as because of the stress of this or the pressure of that....

2) I forgave myself, even as I sat feeling bloated and sick. I knew I needed to stop doing it, but I didn't hate myself.

3) Although I wasn't 'doing' intuitive eating, I wasn't 'not doing' it either so even in the midst of compulsive eating days, I would often eat intuitively. It wasn't all or nothing, and I never thought "well, I've made a mess of today already so I might as well ....."

4) I didn't make myself promises that I wouldn't keep. I just knew that when the depression eased, I would get back to eating more intuitively and the weight gain would stop.

So, intuitive eating isn't a cure for depression by any means, but it certainly doesn't add drama to the crisis.

:)

Not an ideal weekend

2010-10-10T14:37:00.000-07:00

This weekend did not go as planned in any way. We were going to see my parents and were in the last stages of preparation to depart when a voice from the bathroom alerted me to the end of those plans. Dave had been 'unwell' and was 'unwell' again 15 minutes later. The trip was cancelled. I tried not to show my disappointment as Dave said he felt he had let me down. Instead I busied about letting Dad know and helping the children see the positive side.

Saturday started well with Dave staying in bed until around 11am, I woke around 9.30am and sat in bed knitting happily. I went off to the supermarket with my eldest in the early afternoon and we arrived home with bags and bags of shopping to find a complete mess. Annie had been playing with my new paper cutter and the place looked like a ticker-tape parade had driven through. And Lexxy, who should have known better, had been playing with modelling clay and water. There were splatters of clay on the floor all round the dining room, into the front room, the taps in the kitchen were coated and the dining room table looked like a bakery. Nice. And Dave was back in bed watching TV and sweating out a fever.

I wasn't happy.

When I had cleared up the paper and the clay and put the shopping away I was totally cheesed off but it was all put into perspective by the news Dave gave me when I got back. My Aunt, who has had Alzheimer's for a decade or more and went into hospital the previous day with a lung infection, had died. I have only seen her once or twice in the last 10 years and the two families, (my father's brother and his wife), have never been close. But it hit me that this weekend I had missed seeing my Mum, and my cousins had lost theirs forever. Of course, with Alzheimer's, they may consider that they lost their Mum a long time ago but even so, it was a strong comparison and not a comfortable one. My Dad won't be able to go to the funeral as he isn't well enough to travel, my sister has other commitments and my brother is even less in contact with that side of the family than I, so I think I had better go. I really hate funerals and avoid them whenever I can. I don't think I'll be able to avoid this one.

So to more positive things: knitting. I am knitting a pair of hiking socks for Dave's brother for Xmas and I have finished the first one. It's a gorgeous creation in shades of reds, browns, oranges, a bit of pink and lilac and some fair isle effect too. Sounds a bit busy but it looks truly gorgeous. The trouble is the size. I have his foot measurements and the sock is smaller than his foot in both length and width, and yet when Dave wears it, (and Dave's feet are one size bigger than his brother's), it is just a tiny tad too big. As hiking socks, they can't afford to be too big or the ridges will rub and make blisters on his feet while he is walking.

So the brother lives in Milton Keynes and I don't know when I'm seeing him again to be able to try it on, and I don't want to ruin the surprise anyway. So what do I do? I am more than halfway through the second sock and as it's cuff down, I have the option to make the foot shorter. Eek, the decisions. I have decided to knit the other one to match the first and hope they fit. If they don't, I'll frog them both back and knit them shorter together. It will be fine...

I have picked up the crocheted bag for his wife tonight as well. It's in a tough, sturdy woolen yarn that will make a great hardwearing bag, but is horrible to work with. I have a line on my finger still where the yarn was tensioned, and I put it down nearly an hour ago. I will have to work on it in small chunks. I'm glad to be making progress on it, though, because I'm starting to be uncertain I will finish my presents in time. I gave no promises so it's not a big problem, but I really wanted to get them finished.

The shawl for my Mum is done and a Gecko bookmark for Dad won't take long. The socks for B-I-L are nearly finished and the bag for his wife is about 1/3 done. The house socks for my neice are ready to start when I have finished her Dad's hiking socks. Nothing for the nephew - it's not cool.

The lacey scarf for M-I-L is ready to start and I will enjoy knitting that. The ear-flap hat for her beau is also ready to start but I'm not looking forward to knitting in such a dreary colour. The bed socks for G-M-I-L are a stumbling block - I haven't decided on a pattern yet so a long way to go yet.

The entrelac scarf for S-I-L is more than half done and it's lovely, although I regret the choice of yarn. The camel for my bro is unlikely to make the Xmas cut TBH.

And I have started a pair of socks for me - it seems silly at this stage but I've been meaning to do them for months and some of the knit group wanted to knit it together, so I started. I'm really enjoying knitting it and trying to resist feelings of guilt whenever I do. I don't think I will knit Xmas presents for family again. I think it's something we all do..... but only once!

A life lesson from knitting

2010-10-09T02:43:00.000-07:00

I was down last night. Our trip to see my parents for the first time since June was cancelled at the last minute when my hubby threw up as we were finishing the packing. I had so much I wanted to show and give to my mum that I was devastated. I kept it from Dave as well as I could, as he was already feeling that he had let me down, but was so upset I couldn't even knit. That's not happened to me before.

So finally I came round a bit and decided to do the things I was expecting to do anyway - knit lots, drink Cava and stay up late. Dave went to bed but I stayed up until midnight on my own. This is what led to my life lesson from knitting.

I was knitting a hiking sock for my brother-in-law last night, the second of the pair so I had already done this part of the pattern. However, between Lord of the Rings on the TV and the Cava, I missed a vital part of the pattern when turning the heel. I noticed this a while later when I didn't have ther right number of stitches but couldn't work out why. My own rule with mistakes is that the circumstances which led to the mistake are likely to remove the ability to solve it so once a mistake is noticed, I put the thing down until the next day.

So this morning I picked it up and worked out where I had gone wrong. I took the needles out, ripped back the knitting to the place where I went wrong, picked up the stitches, wound the spare yarn around the ball and prepared to re-knit. At this point it occurred to me that I 'should' be frustrated with myself. In previous circumstances, like when I used to diet and had a target weight loss for each week, leading to a date when I would achieve the elusive target weight, taking a backwards step like this would be very upsetting. I would be thinking that if I hadn't done that, I would be at a different place by now and only so far from reaching the goal, but instead I'm back here. Well, that's all part of the negative cycle that dieting causes.

So what is different with knitting? Why didn't I think "all that effort last night has been wasted as I am back to where I was before I did all that"? Why did I think "making mistakes, noticing them, taking the knitting back and learning from the whole event is just part of the process of knitting"? I can't answer that but I think it has taught me a valuable life lesson. Making mistakes is part of the process, not a deviation from it. I learn from every mistake that I make and I learn again when I develop skills for rectifying the mistake. I am so much better at picking up stitches after undoing than I was when I started knitting again last year. When I made mistakes before as a teenager, my mum would sort them out for me so I had no skills of my own. And just noticing that the mistake had been made was quite a skill too. And now I have those skills, I can pass them on to anyone who needs them.

Not for the first time, Thank You Knitting!

Body Image Issues

2010-06-29T12:26:00.000-07:00

My 9-year old daughter (who is built like a racing snake) told me today that sometimes she thinks she is fat. She showed me her thigh to demonstrate why she thought this way. I knew this would happen at some time but I hoped not this early.

My first thought was "How can you think you're fat, you're bordering on skinny?" but I was able to quietly process that without speaking. What I actually said was "And what would happen if you were fat?" She didn't know. So, she knows that she mustn't be fat but she doesn't know why. This kind of illogic puts me in mind of some organised religions and I guess that makes sense because body image, fashion and popular culture is a religion to some people. It is certainly as costly and causes as much angst as religions do.

My final word on the matter was "I don't think you're fat and if you were, it wouldn't make any difference to how I felt about you. If you know anyone who would think differently about you because you were fat then they're probably not interested in the person you are anyway". I don't know how helpful this was but it was the best I could do under the circumstances.

I expect this topic will come back frequently over the coming years, (with 3 daughters, I think that's inevitable), and I hope that my responses will avoid judgement of the system that is giving them these thoughts and that they value so highly at the moment, and yet still maintain their positive self regard and confidence.

Ironically, I have a post-it note on my shower-room mirror which this same little girl put there about 6 months ago. It reads: "You don't have to change, you're beautiful just the way you are". So why doesn't she believe that about herself?

Devolved Responsibility and the Medical Model

2010-05-21T14:06:00.000-07:00

I was in the children's ward at the hospital earlier this week where my littlest girl had just had an operation. I overheard another mum talking to her daughter who had also been in surgery, and the language she used attracted my attention. She talked about what they were allowed to do and when they were allowed to go home. This is the kind of language I notice when clients use it and challenge them about whose decision this is to make. And here I was just a few feet from where my clients often make those decisions, listening to a mum use this language and I realised that I was resisting doing the same thing. I knew that the medical staff wanted my daughter to have a wee before she left and she was resisting this. When she asked if we could go home, I could have said "We're not allowed to go home until you've had a wee" but I chose to say "We're not going home until you've had a wee". Did it make much difference? Yes, I think it did.

If I said that we were not allowed to go home, then I would be saying that the decision about when we go was to be made by a doctor or a nurse, which is clearly not the case. If I chose to leave the hospital without this consent, no-one would be able to stop me. But I would have devolved the responsibility for this decision, at least in my daughter's mind, to the medical staff. It's not my fault we can't go home, it's the doctor/nurse's fault.

This made me think about something that has been on my mind for a while. My recent shift in teaching method has involved a deeper understanding of the effect of my words on my mind and the minds of those hearing them - Neuro-Linguistic Programming. I used to say that I wanted to have my second baby at home but I had to be induced, so I had her in hospital. This wasn't true, was it? I was strongly advised to be induced but in the end, it was my decision to make. How could I tell clients that all these decisions are theirs to make and then imply that I had no choice about my induction of labour? Well, this is all old news to me but this new experience in the children's ward helped me to realise why I chose those words. If I said "I wanted to have my baby at home but I chose to have an induction" it gives me the responsibilty for this possibly unnecessary and potentially harmful intervention.

So when a couple tell me their labour story and say they had to have a caesarean, are they deliberately avoiding responsibility for the decision they took, or did they not hear or understand what I had said about it being their decision to make? And how does this start to their parenting life affect their sense of personal power around their child? And what precedent does this set for the woman's future belief about her body's ability to give birth? And how much bearing does this have on our blame culture? If a woman feels that she 'had to' have forceps to birth her baby, how does she feel if her baby has bruises? Does she automatically blame the doctor as it was his/her decision? And what if the effect is more serious or longterm? How different would have be if the couple were empowered to make the decision for themselves? Would they be so quick to blame the doctor for any repurcussions?

So, I guess I am saying that in taking control of decisions away from the labouring woman, obstetricians have helped to bring about the litigation culture that causes them so much angst.

It's all looking up

2010-04-24T00:40:00.000-07:00

My despair culminated in a massive aggressive outburst yesterday morning. This made it clear to me that dairy intake is at least a factor in my emotional problems. I spent a lot of yesterday morning writing - a new habit I started last week. I got up at 6am from Tuesday to Friday and sat at my computer writing. I splurged out everything I was thinking and feeling, even the tiny stuff I wouldn't bother Dave or any of my friends with. I have written more than 1,000 words each day and on Friday it was nearly 3,000!

The big session of writing cleared the air a bit and I started to improve straight away. I had my hair cut in the afternoon and this made a big difference as well. My hair has been getting out of control for a few weeks and it has affected my self-esteem. As is often the case, I didn't realise how much it was bringing me down until the situation resolved and I felt much better.

So, lots of factors combined and last night I was back on form. I was resourceful and positive, I made 3 different meals for the girls' tea without shouting, I didn't eat because I wasn't hungry but had a candlelit dinner with Dave when the girls had gone upstairs. I stopped drinking wine when I had had enough, and gave what was left in my glass to Dave. Then I had a cup of camomile tea and went to bed at a reasonable hour. All very positive.

So, a friend from the Beyond Chocolate forum has been doing a programme from a book called The No Diet Diet (Fletcher, B., Pine, K. & Penman D.) and blogging about it. I have been reading with great interest because I love that kind of thing. The concept is that diets don't work - well, I already knew that. It says that in order to change the way you think, you change the way you behave. Break habits that are tying you into certain behaviours and hence change the way you behave and then think. Not very well explained, and one of the authors writes for the Daily Mail so it is a bit tabloidy, but the message is sound and I have decided to give it a go. More excitingly, Dave is going to do it with me.

I don't think I will start a seperate blog for this, or even get around to blogging every day, but I will write about what is happening with the No Diet Diet (NDD) as often as I can. The programme is broken into 5 phases and Phase 1 starts today. The task is not to watch TV all day. That isn't going to be very difficult for me as I don't like TV but we will see how it goes. There are some extra little tasks to do during the first week as well, but as I am assessing a teacher this afternoon and out with friends later I don't expect to do any of those, but I will keep them in my mind. Examples of things I might try are paint or draw, read something you wouldn't normally consider, write a story, contact a long-lost friend, ride a bike, learn to meditate. The creative things appeal to me most - drawing and writing a story.

I feel quite excited about the new programme. It says you are guaranteed to lose weight while doing it, which I don't believe or expect, but I will enjoy shaking up my life a little.

So, thank you to all of you lovely people who have expressed concern and empathy for my emotional struggles. It is the support of my wonderful friends that gets me through these troughs and I only hope I can repay your kindness when you have your own troughs.

Feeling out of control

2010-04-10T13:58:00.000-07:00

I have decided to blog this to try and get my thoughts together. Over the last week or so, since the school holidays started, I have been out of control with my eating and particularly my drinking. It's always been a bit like that with me, as most of my friends know, but this is getting serious. It's come to a head today because I have totally shot myself in the foot. I had a candlelit dinner with Dave planned for tonight, the food was chosen and bought, and I really enjoyed it when we did this last weekend.

But then at lunch my sister-in-law wanted a glass of wine and I didn't fancy red so I opened a bottle of Cava, thinking I could finish it this evening with our dinner. In true alcoholic fashion, the bottle was finished off by me and my SIL at lunch and then I spent the afternoon drinking cocktails with Dave and by the time it came to the evening, I was tired and headachey. That was the end of our evening plans.

So in the end, we ate our carefully planned food in front of the TV and I have gone up to bed with my knitting feeling really cross with myself.

I have put a bit of weight on since Xmas which isn't a problem in itself, but it's another sign that I am not in control of what I am consuming. So, I have to stop this but how? I'm not into the rules and new starts and strict regimes that I thought used to 'work' for me, so how do I start getting myself back on the rails? I don't think that going back to the BC daily blog is going to help - it's gone a bit beyond that. I think I need to ask myself not to drink any alcohol for a few days and see where it takes me.

The silly thing is, I am enjoying my knitting so much at the moment that I can quite happily focus on that rather than the booze. And the project I am most enjoying I can't do when I have had a drink because it's too difficult to take it back if I make a mistake. So it's in my own best interest on the night not to drink, so I am shooting myself in the foot again. I am running out of feet.

I think there might be something more to this. After all, it's spring which is my favourite time of the year, the sun has been shining, I have enjoyed being outdoors, I am getting more personal fulfilment from my work and my knitting/crochet than I could have imagined 12 months ago, our finances are good and we are considering some really exciting changes to the house, and yet I am struggling emotionally. What is going on?

Well if anyone has any ideas, please feel free to comment but in the meantime, I will probably share my continued angst with you all until it eases.

Day 6 - Be your own guru

2010-03-23T14:02:00.001-07:00

I decided to jump to this principle when I had a couple of good ideas in the shower.

I have been drinking quite a lot of Cava recently. When I applied Beyond Chocolate principles to my alcohol use, everything changed and I was comfortable with myself in that area for the first time in years. I don't create rules for myself any more, I just follow my instinct. This means that most days I have some wine of some kind, although I often don't and not because of any rules. So, I realised this morning that I am still feeling the slightly tight feeling in my head that I get when I am dehydrated. So I decided to do more of the things that hydrate my body and less of the things that dehydrate. That was it - no firm rules, no commitment or timescales. Just that decision without pressure.

My digestive system tends to be quite slow and without giving TMI, I need to keep it moving. Lately I haven't been eating as much veg as usual and it has had an effect. So, I decided to make smoothies in the mornings to get a couple of pieces of fruit into me before the day starts. For some reason, I just can't be bothered to eat fruit most of the time. Drinking it is a lot less effort!

So, two ideas under my belt I started my day. It did not go as I expected and I ended up spending the whole morning supporting friends and ex-clients with their problems. This was just where I want to be, and I was happy to do it. However, it left me with no time to do what I had intended, which is a source of stress for me. My first thought was to abandon my plans to go to knitting group this afternoon to do the things I hadn't done, but then I decided that I needed some time for me so I went. I regretted it on the way as I felt so tired driving and could have had a nap at home, but I did enjoy it and it was good to do something for myself.

The rest of the day went very pear-shaped and I ended up extremely stressed and unhappy. I decided to do the things I needed to do and leave as much as possible till tomorrow. I have just been up to my youngest who appears to have wet her bed quite deliberately, while sitting up. I ended up so angry with her that I have come down and cut myself off from the rest of humanity until I can be trusted to be nice.

There is so much going on for us at the moment and a big will we/won't we thing is hanging over us, making plans and expectations very fluid, which is not a comfortable place for me to be in. I can see what is happening and I am going to scale back everything I can. I will make sure I make time for me and what I want to do, and be good to myself. I ate tons earlier and it felt like a binge but I don't even feel too full now so I guess it wasn't as bad as it seemed at the time.

So, what have I learned?

- that I have some great ideas and that framing them in BC speak, without pressure or judgement, makes them much easier to work with. (I haven't had any alcohol today and I know I won't, but not because I shouldn't)
- that I need to work out why I am getting so stressed and take appropriate action
- that I need to remember that just because I planned to do something, doesn't mean that it needs to be done today. When something happens to change my plans, I can reprioritise.

It's 'stop when you are satisfied' tomorrow. I am looking forward to that one as it's one of the hardest things for me.

Day 5 - Put it on a plate, sit down and focus

2010-03-23T13:48:00.000-07:00

"When we make time to eat with enjoyment and focus, food becomes a delicious, nurturing experience. Why deprive ourselves of this pleasure?" Beyond Chocolate

This was a good day to look at this principle as I was teaching and I find it very hard to focus on my food when I am still working. Breakfast was rushed as usual and ended up as a sharon fruit eaten stood at the door waiting for the children to get their coats on. I ate again when the class was about to start and it was a cup cake, eaten stood up talking to clients. Not ideal, but probably unavoidable on teaching days. It seems to me that the main benefits of this principle are that I enjoy my food more and that I don't overeat. I can't really help the first one but if I make sure that what I eat in this unfocused way is very small amounts, I can at least mitigate that part of it.

When I got home I reheated the second half of the bacon and brie bagel from the previous day and ate that slowly and mindfully, sat at the dining room table. I made a point of putting the food down while eating, and focusing on each individual taste and texture. It was enjoyable and I didn't feel the need to eat anything else.

I ate with the girls at tea time and really enjoyed the pasta. So much so that I had a second helping. We were sat at the dining room table but I can't say I focused on the food as much as earlier. With the 3 girls there, all talking at once, competing for my attention, wanting help with things and stuff getting from the kitchen. We then made some cookies together and I enjoyed them so much I ate seconds again. Felt very full. But I think I did focus on eating it and loved every minute.

So what have I learned from today?

- Making time to sit when I am alone is very enjoyable.
- When I am not able to sit and focus, ensuring portions are small mitigates the issues.

That's about it really.

Day 4 - Eat whatver you want

2010-03-21T15:29:00.000-07:00

"It is only when we legalise all foods and give ourselves the possibility to eat everything that we can make choices and have a truly healthy approach to weight loss" Beyond Chocolate

This was a principle that I 'got' fairly quickly when I first read BC despite 10 years of dieting and the attendant demonising of whole food types. I do struggle with being true to it, though, because I live in a village 20 minutes drive from the shops and if I find I want something that I don't have, I can't have it! So, I tend to choose from the available foods, and that is only one small step from choosing from the convenient and readily available foods, then to the foods that need eating up, and suddenly choice is gone. So I work hard on this one. One method I use it to imagine walking into a restaurant and sitting down. There is no menu to look at, and after a while a waiter comes over and asks what I would like to eat. I know that whatever I ask for, they will be able to cook for me. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't! So how did it go today?

I woke late and knitted for a while so when I finally came downstairs, it was late morning. I felt the first tickle of appetite around 10am and at 11.30am I was making our lunch. It was roast beef so it would be a while before it was ready so I knew I wanted to take the edge off my appetite to get me comfortably through to 1pm. I asked DD2 to hand me a banana but then I stopped and tuned in. I was in the restaurant and asking for.... .... not something sweet.... something savoury and quite bland. I opted for 1/4 of a tortilla. It was almost completely right - it was certainly the right amount and better than the banana would have been but it wasn't exactly right. More practice needed, I think.

At 1pm we had what I had been looking foward to since I bought it on Thursday: roast rib of beef, yorkshire puddings, roast parsnips, buttered boiled potatoes, cabbage and carrots, with Dave's awesome gravy and some hot horseradish sauce. I filled my tiny plate and did have a little more parsnip and another yorkshire. It was good! For pudding, I wanted a leftover mud cake with cream and ice cream. In the event, I had two and really enjoyed them.

Not long after lunch I left for an NCT reunion - a meet-up with 7 couples and their babies in a cafe/restaurant. I had a latte on arrival and some of them ordered cakes and puddings, but I wasn't at all interested. I was aware, however, that in my dieting days I would have been in a dilemma - I know I shouldn't have any cake, but I want some. But today I just knew that I didn't want any, so there was no issue of 'should' involved.

When I got home I was just starting to feel the first feelings of emptiness again and by 7.3pm I was ready to eat. But what? I looked in the fridge at the things that were immediately available and none of them were what I wanted to eat. I looked in the bread bin and saw (and smelled) bagels. That was the first thing of interest so I took one out. I looked for ham, but there was none in the fridge and I didn't want it enough to defrost any. I decided bacon was even better so got some out of the freezer and fried it. I put it into th bagel with some brie and sat down to eat it. I cut it in half and enjoyed every bite of the first half. I left the other half but instructed hubby not to touch it! I haven't been back for it, or eaten anything else tonight.

So, what have I learned today?

- I have come a long way with my eating habits
- Having food available but involving some effort (e.g. frozen) helps to focus my mind on whether I really want it
- Even if I can't put my finger on exactly what I want, I can get close by using the restaurant visualisation. To just find out if it's sweet or savoury, hot or cold helps with the level of satisfaction I get from eating the food.

I am delighted at how this 10-day focus is affecting me so far. I seem to be focusing better on all of the principles and finding I am back to my pre-Xmas state with intuitive eating. And I haven't felt like I am on a diet, either. It's not that I am doing this for 10 days then will go back to 'normal'. I am focusing again on what makes me feel good (emotionally and physically) and now that I am being more mindful, I will carry on this way. This blog has cured me of the effects of the winter depression I had this year. And it's only day 4. Imagine what I might achieve by day 10!

Tomorrow is "Put it on a plate, sit down and focus on it".

Day 3 - Stop when you are satisfied

2010-03-20T14:11:00.001-07:00

This was a tricky day because a lot of stuff was out of my control. I was on the road at 6am, arriving at a conference in Birmingham at 9am and getting home at 8.30pm. It is on these challenging days that it is easy to go with the flow, and I was determined to observe myself carefully despite being very nervous about presenting to 20 fellow teachers for the first time.

I wasn't hungry when I left home so took a stash of fruit and a flask of tea and left the house. When we arrived I was hungry so I had a banana. I later realised that there were croissants available but I didn't fancy them so that was fine. By the time we got to the coffee break at 11.30am I was pretty hungry. I found myself a pack of biscuits, which was what I fancied (and I had left the bag with my fruit in somewhere else) and had one of the two in the pack. That was enough to satisfy me and the other one is still lost in the bottom of my handbag!

At lunchtime, I'm not sure if I was hungry or not. It was the only meal I was going to get before 6pm so it was fairly academic. I saw the salad bar and there were prawns and I didn't even look at the hot food. I helped myself to prawns, smoked salmon and some salad. It was a bigger plate than I usually eat from and I had chosen 6 or so different things. I was reminded while eating of a lesson I learned fairly early on in my BC journey: I tend to eat the things on my plate that I like the least first, then work up to my favourite things. With this habit, it's no wonder I always finish my food because if I stop before it's all gone, I will be missing my favourite things. So, I spotted this and made sure I ate what I wanted to eat and when I had finished the salmon and prawns, I was satisfied. I left the rest.

But there was still room for pudding. There was a chocolate torte, a carrot cake and a very liquidy fruit salad. I fancied the chocolate, of course, but the slices were too big. I took half a slice and added cream. It was nice, but I didn't go back for the other half.

At the afternoon coffee break I scarcely had time to get myself a hot drink so food didn't figure so I clearly wasn't hungry. By the end of the conference, though, I was hungry. I ate a sharon fruit, a satsuma and a few grapes in the car and by the time we stopped at services for food, my stomach was not happy. Not sure why. I bought a prawn and chicken salad with noodles, but what really took my fancy was prawns on their own and smoked salmon on its own. This was what I had eaten at lunch and clearly I wanted more, but it was expensive so I opted for the salad. A mistake, as it turned out. The prawns in the salad were tasteless, as were the noodles. There was a lovely coconut sauce with it, but this only just made a bland dish bearable. I sat there eating it, realising that I was no longer hungry, and thinking "Am I going to eat all of this anyway?" Because I had paid for it, and the packaging meant that I couldn't take it home I was tempted, but in the end, I finished the prawns, for the texture only, and left about half of the salad and some of the chicken. Throwing it in the bin made me feel strong and powerful.

I finished the smoothie I had bought at the services after we left and that pushed my stomach too far. I felt too full for a lot of the way home. When I got home, I wasn't hungry at all but I had the chocolate egg I had bought at the services for pudding but not eaten. It made my teeth hurt but I still finished it.

So, what have I learned today?

- I tend to leave my favourite parts of the meal to the end, which makes it very difficult for me to stop when I am satisfied. When I eat the bits I want to eat, I am eating intuitively and making it possible for me to stop before the plate is clear.

- Even in difficult circumstances, I can eat intuitively. Choosing a banana over a croissant (albeit retrospectively) made me realise that I knew what I needed at that time.

- I can eat one of a two-pack of biscuits!

- I can throw away M&S food that I have paid over the odds for.

It was a very good day, in many ways. Tomorrow I think I will go back one of the principles I missed out: Eat whatever you want.

Day 2 - Eat when you are hungry

2010-03-19T14:58:00.000-07:00

"Eating when you are hungry is the starting point for a healthy relationship with food..... but the reality is that we are so out of touch with our bodies that many of us no longer know how to read the cues."

It was interesting that this principle should fall on a Friday because I always have issues with Friday mornings. I am very rarely hungry in the morning before leaving for school. But on a Friday, I go to a dance class at 9.30am and I am usually hungry just in time for it to be too late to eat. Then I get unreasonably hungry by the end of the class. So, how did today go?

I didn't get hungry until 9am, as usual, so I chose to have the remainder of yesterday's banana to tide me over. By the end of the class, I wasn't really hungry so all was well. I went to a friend's house and we had lunch at midday. She loaded my plate as her daughter was asleep on my lap, and that hasn't happened for a while. When she put the plate down, I assumed that was for both of us to eat from, but it was just for me. In the event, I was hungry and I ate some garlic bread, lots of green salad and a slice or two of ham. I wanted to eat the last piece of garlic bread on my plate as I still felt a bit of hunger, but I knew there was cake for pudding so I left the bread. The cake was ace.

When we got home from school, I was hungry. My DD3 wanted to make mud cakes (batter-style cakes half-cooked so still raw in the middle) before we had tea and I concurred as I was hungry for them too. I had two with extra thick double cream and then when I made fish fingers for them later, I wasn't hungry. I crocheted through their teatime. In the end, I succumbed to a fish finger while wandering around the kitchen and then felt full. I don't like that feeling.

The girls had supper at 8pm and I wanted to eat. But, I wasn't hungry so I didn't. I was annoyed by not being hungry, though. Maybe if I hadn't had that fish finger....

By 9pm I was ready to eat, but was I hungry? I can't be sure but I had grown impatient. I had the leftover fish fingers cold with tartare sauce and some salad. Then another mud cake with cream. Delicious. In bed now at 10pm and feeling pleasantly settled but not full.

So, what have I found out?

- having half a banana within 30 minutes of my dance class causes no problems and helps me to get through the class without being too hungry.

- I get frustrated when I want to eat but have no hunger. Habit and social tradition tells me to eat, but my body says not to. Crochet and knitting helps - I couldn't just sit at the table and watch them eat. At least this way I am productive during the mealtime.

- If I eat when I am not hungry, it will be longer until I am hungry again and I won't have enjoyed the food as much as if I had waited.

It's been a good day, as I've found a way around the dance class issue and cemented my habit of not eating at the kids' tea time if I am not hungry.

Tomorrow is going to be a challenge: I am leaving home at 6am to travel to a forum in Birmingham, and returning around 9pm. Everything I eat between those times will be decided by what the organisers provide and what I can take in my handbag. Hence, working on "Eat whatever you want" is probably not a good idea. The following principle is "Put it on a plate, sit down and focus on it". As I will be networking throughout my lunch, I think there is little to be gained from this either. So, I will jump two and think about "Stop when you are satisfied". With free hotel food, this could be quite tricky and good to notice where I do well and where I don't.

Day 1 - Tune In

2010-03-18T15:31:00.000-07:00

"Tuning in is the golden thread that ties all the Beyond Chocolate principles together.... It is about turning to youself for the answers, listening to your body rather than looking to the 'experts'." Beyond Chocolate

As usual, when I woke up I wasn't hungry. I tuned in and found that my stomach was saying nothing to me, but my head had a slight tightness. I thought this was due to not drinking enough fluids yesterday. I had a cup of tea (which means 0.4 litres of rooibos or green or camomile tea) and then set off on the school / nursery run. When I got home I knew I wanted to eat something but my head still felt tight and all I wanted to eat was vegetables. I cooked some courgette in olive oil but found that the sight of the oil, which is usually appealing, put me off so I drained it off. So I had tea and then my courgette. I ate it slowly and halfway through had a realisation: if I had been eating something that wasn't as 'good' as courgette, I would have stopped by now, but because it was a vegetable, it was OK to eat more than I needed. Diet mentality surfacing for a moment.

Fate intervened and I was disturbed by a visitor before I finished my one courgette. I left what was left for a while and finished it later when I felt slightly hungry again. Later I reheated a small bowl of a vegetable and chorizo creation my husband knocked up a couple of days ago. Very satisfying and ate the small amount without much pause.

Around lunchtime I found myself with a sharon fruit in my hand. I paused and tuned in. My stomach felt fine but I had a savoury flavour in my mouth that I wanted to get rid of. I had the fruit. Would I have done the same if my choice had been a cake? Don't know...

Straight after I had the sharon fruit I had a sweet taste in my mouth and wanted more. Starting to see how one thing leads to another. Decided to pause and reconsider in 10 minutes. Kept pausing and tuning in and only noticed slight tension in head still. Had tea when I tuned in to ease headache.

Had 1/2 a banana shortly after 2pm after tuning in and finding that vague hunger was building. Never saw the point of eating half a banana before but that was all it took today.

After the school pick-up the girls had a snack and I was hungry. Suddenly realised that I was thinking diet again and trying to deprive myself. Decided to have half a bagel with salted butter. When sat down, decided to eat half of it and then reconsider. The birds ate the second half in the end.

We went out at 5pm and food was provided. Ate less than instinctively but small amounts and amazed at how much people around me were eating. Pudding was ice cream with sprinkles and all the trimmings. Decided I had better ice cream at home and declined. Never had ice cream at home.

Evening changed it all - I had Cava. A whole bottle. This isn't unusual for me, but it certainly changed things. A friend had brought chocolate digestives and I had one, mostly out of politenesss, but eating it and tuning in, I realised that I wanted savoury food. Had some, and more than I needed, but less than I could have had. And so ends the day.

So, what have I noticed?

- It was useful to split what I had taken to eat into two and then eat the first half. One time I came back and ate the rest, another I didn't. Could this be the next step in the 'Stop when you are satisfied' principle?

- I tuned into other body sensations much more than usual. I noticed that I had the tension headache of dehydration for a lot of the day. This prompted me to drink tea when I could have reached for food.

- I still have a background view of it being OK to overeat 'good' foods like fruit and veg

- I really enjoyed focusing on my thought processes and behaviours. I didn't feel the need to binge before the process, although I did treat it as a bit of a diet at one stage.

- I have built on what I found out yesterday when I paused after eating my main course and found that I didn't actually want a pudding. Today I found that once I am engaged in something else, if I am no longer hungry, I don't need to come back and finish the food. But if I am still hungry I will come back and eat more.

So tomorrow it is "Eat when you are hungry". I am looking forward to it.

10-Day Beyond Chocolate Focus

2010-03-18T06:29:00.000-07:00

I have been inspired by a lovely lady on the Beyond Chocolate forum to start a 10-day blog. I am going to take one Beyond Chocolate principle each day and blog on what I notice about it, where I am doing well with it, where I am not, that kind of thing. I am starting today.

An interesting thing happened when I made this decision yesterday. When I have decided in the past to start a diet tomorrow, I have spent the rest of the day bingeing on the foods I won't be able to have once I start my diet. So once I decided to focus on the 10 principles, what do you suppose I did? I started focusing on them straight away and eating more mindfully. BEYOND CHOCOLATE IS NOT A DIET. Sorry to shout, but it was just so clear to me for a moment.

So I am starting with the first principle, which is a tricky one because it underpins everything else - Tune In. I will be making an effort to tune in all day and will make notes on my progress and areas of interest (hopefully) at the end of the day. I will endeavour to update my blog every evening with the details. I hope you find it as interesting and useful as I will!

Winter Depression

2010-02-06T15:55:00.000-08:00

Since I had my first child I have suffered from winter depression every year. It is slowly getting milder and shorter and I hope one day it will go away entirely. It usually starts sometime in the second half of January or early February if I'm lucky. It slowly sneaks up on me and I'm never sure if it's just a bad day, or the annual thing starting. When the bad days start to outnumber the good ones, I know it's coming.

I've written about depression before and it's a difficult thing to describe to people who haven't had it. There are two elements for me. Firstly there's the background bringing down of everything: When I think about something that last month I considered OK, now it's grim or boring or depressing. Anything that was exciting is now OK and everything that was pretty crap is now totally awful. My optimism about things slinks away and I find I am living one day at a time in an effort to contain these negative feelings. If I only think about what is happening today, then there is a limit to how much I have to not look forward to. When that's been around for a while and sunk into my mental bones, usually the emotional breakdowns come. I had my first of 2010 on Friday. I was at my dance class and a different instructor was taking it. I wasn't in touch with her style and found the routines very challenging. Instead of laughing at myself and trying to concentrate more, I started to feel tearful. I didn't want to make a fool of myself so I left suddenly, halfway through the session. I just knew I couldn't handle it, and if anyone had asked me if I was OK, I would have caused a very embarassing scene by bursting into tears, so I fled. Later that day I had a very uncomfortable phone call to make and after that I cried on and off for an hour. Then I knew that I was having one of my breakdowns and the winter depression had begun in earnest.

But I handled it differently this year to previously. In my class, for example, last year I would have soldiered on and ended up in tears. But I exercised 'extreme self-care' and left with my dignity intact. And I resorted to food, which I always do at such time, but instead of eating and eating until I felt ill, and feeling no better emotionally I ate what I wanted, didn't beat myself up about it, and loved myself through it. I knew that I was doing what I could for myself. I couldn't take the depression away, I couldn't take the heart-ache over the phone call away, but I could eat something I enjoy, even though I didn't need it, and that would help me feel better. And it did, way before I got to feeling ill.

I think I under-appreciate my general optimism when I have it. That feeling when you look at what you have on today, this week, this month. That feeling of looking forward to something, but not just one big thing that you can build up to. Generally looking forward to the day, the week, the experience of being me at this time. Scheduling fun things to do is really lovely and I can anticipate them but one massage in a week of tedious activities is not enough to keep me from unhappiness. It's not the big events I need, it's the background optimism and that's what leaves me in the last 6 weeks of winter.

Update on Concept Based Courses

2010-02-06T15:46:00.000-08:00

After the first couple of classes of my first CBC I realised that I couldn't teach the old way any more. I can still see topic-based courses being taught and evaluate them as before, but for me, I can't do it any more. I have finished my 2nd daytime CBC and found that this group were very different. With 2 women in the group that were likely to be offered induction, they were a group already focused on intervention and they did want a lot of information. But the CBC approach still worked and the evaluations were even better than normal.

What strikes me is the presents. I sometimes get a gift from the group when we finish the course and sometimes I get one at reunions and on occasion I have had both but more often than not I get neither. This is no issue for me - I am paid after all! But the presents I get tend to be flowers or toiletries or gift vouchers. The 2 CBC groups have both bought me presents and they have been well thought out and carefully considered. The first group noticed that I drink copious amounts of green tea all day so bought me a beautiful huge mug and saucer, some loose green tea and a strainer, some chocolates and a bottle of wine. They were so excited about the gifts they wanted me to open them before I left. They had so carefully considered what I would want, I was really touched. And then this 2nd group bought me a lovely purple scarf. They had noticed that I always wear a scarf and I love purple. It may just be coincidence, but such consideration from 2 groups in a row is really surprising.

So, I am still happy with this style and will be developing my version of it for several years to come.

A new style of teaching

2009-12-18T04:25:00.001-08:00

Well, as if I haven't already transformed my life enough this year, I have had another big change. This time with my teaching. I teach antenatal classes for those that didn't know. It's my profession and obsession and the best job in the world.

Recently I had been hearing rumblings of a different approach, called "Concept Bases Courses" or CBC. A friend of mine was doing it and I went along and watched. I couldn't see a huge difference in the approach but something was different because the group were responding very differently. I booked myself onto a study day.

That was in November and was the catalyst for my knitting renaissance as the tutor taking the study day suggested that we bring some knitting. I can't thank her enough for that, but there was more to come. I'll try and explain the CBC concept, or how I see it:

Most antenatal classes are currently centred around giving information - on the stages of labour, interventions, risks, benefits etc. This is the model I have been working to since I started teaching 5 years ago. Recent research has shown that those who go to antenatal classes are not making different choices to those that don't go - the informed choice we are trying to give them is not changing their experience of childbirth. Some more research has shown something more alarming: that we are making the experience more stressful for the people in the group who prefer not to have all the information beforehand. The research calls these people 'blunters' and suggests that they are less satisfied with their experiences in labour if they have been given more information than they wanted at antenatal classes.

So, what is the solution? Lots of people do want information and you can't fail to give them what they probably came for. Alex Smith has been pioneering a new approach for which she has coined the expression CBC. This is based on a lot of theories, the blunters research is just one. Another is Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) which suggests that the words we use to say something have a lot more significance than we might think. For example, the CBC approach would favour phrases like "dealing with intense physical sensations" rather than "pain relief". To some this might seem to be just a matter of semantics, or worse, giving unrealistic expecatations to clients. This is one of the reasons that CBC is contraversial at the moment.

Personally, I feel that people already know that labour is considered to be painful in our culture, and don't need an antenatal teacher saying the word all the time. After all, if we talk about pain, see pain written down, think about how to relieve the pain and cope with the pain, what are we focussing on, expecting and possibly bringing about? PAIN. If we focus on intense sensations we are already expecting to be able to handle them. This opens the client mentally to means of coping - massage, breathing, positions, mobility, water, support etc. But is this enough? In reality most first-time mothers use more than that so are we setting them up for failure? I don't think so.

I think that colluding with the rest of society in making women expect intense pain is setting them up for failure. A client recently told me that she didn't have choices in labour. After her induction and failed epidural, the doctor told her that she needed to have a caesarean and it had to be under general anaesthetic. My course had not shown her that it was her choice to book for a hospital birth, to accept an induction, to opt for an epidural, long before the caesarean was offered. Who can say how much each of these decisions contributed to the eventual situation where she didn't have a choice, but I think it is clear that she made choices. So what did my class do for her? Gave her enough information to feel informed when agreeing to interventions? Was that my intention? How are my classes serving my clients? Giving them what they wanted, or giving them what will actually benefit them? Whose place is it to decide what the clients need?

All of this is so complex and variable that I could talk myself round in circles but at the end of the day, my classes are not helping people to achieve a normal birth, which we all know is the best possible start for a new family. So, I changed.

It happened quite quickly. I don't remember making the decision to teach my first CBC - I just noticed one day that I was doing it. (A bit like pushing in second stage!) I hadn't observed a CBC or talked about planning one in the study day, so I was unfettered by other people's ideas. It was just me and the concept, and what came out of it was great. My first class was scary - I almost lost my nerve the night before. How was it different? I had no projected durations for the activities, no firm idea of how many of them I would get through, I had all new teaching aids and activities, I wasn't using the things I had used regularly for months or years, I didn't give the information I usually do, I used different terms. Basically, everything was different and it was very unsettling.

But that first class was magic. I was sat there at one stage looking at the group. One group of 4 were sat on the floor around a piece of flip paper drawing with charcoal and pastels, another group of 2 women were sat at a table making a list together on A4 lined paper and the rest of the group were sat on chairs around a piece of flip paper where one of them was making a list. They had all chosen to do it their own way, something I have been trying to encourage for years. One of the men was holding a massage ball later and said that he hadn't even thought about any of this stuff (massage, touch etc.) and I said I was glad he came. He looked me in the eye and said "So am I, I genuinely am". This was 2 hours into the course.

I was worried that because there wasn't so much information, the men wouldn't be as keen to book a day off work to attend so I was delighted when all of the men came to at least one session and one of the men told me he was so impressed after the first class that he had rearranged things at work to make sure he could attend all the classes.

Then came the second class. This one took me totally by surprise. The group had mostly opted for the low-information sessions in the first week which vindicated my new approach. On the second class they all decided they wanted information and lots of it. They wanted to know all the risks of caesarean section, for example. I gave them the information, but they didn't want to know much about assisted birth and hardly anything about induction. Was this unconcious incompetence - they didn't know what they didn't know - or just them asking for what they wanted?

One of the reasons that the CBC approach is contraversial is that it is believed to be about not covering interventions. The knee-jerk reaction to this, which I had myself, is negative and I understand that. But that is not what CBC is about. If the group want to talk about interventions, then we talk about interventions. Alex speaks of giving the "homeopathic dose of information" - a snippet that will either satisfy or prompt further investigation. Those for whom the snippet is sufficient are happy with the response. Those who want more have avenues to get it, either in 1-2-1 time with the teacher or through e-mails or handouts. No-one is left wanting information, but no-one is given more than they wanted.

After getting halfway through this first CBC I started an evening course that I intended to be more like the old-style but I found on the first night that I couldn't do it! The group read a pack of quotes from women about contractions and the first 3 compared contractions to period pains. I have used these quotes for years and never realised that to spend so much time talking about pain is not helping them at all, it's just focusing them on the negatice aspects of labour rather than what they can do for themselves. I won't be using those quotes again. I found different ways of doing what I had planned and got through. The second class was more CBC and the remainder of the course is likely to be less and less information-based.

When it came to the second half of the daytime course, which I use for the postnatal activities, there wasn't much to change. I already use activities which promote the clients' belief in themselves as experts on their baby. I tweaked some things, though, and added in some new stuff. I had the same absence of time projections and moved through activities as seemed appropriate at the pace dictated by the group. It felt lovely and the clients enjoyed it.

I don't think I will be looking back, but where does this sit with my assessing career? I will be assessing teachers doing Topic Based Courses and those doing CBC and can I keep my feelings about information overload in check? I know the answer to that, but it is an issue. The movement toward CBC is gaining momentum, particularly among students. Maybe I am going to be in demand as an assessor who understands the CBC appproach. I hope so!

This was a long blog entry, and one that has been brewing for a while. I would welcome comments from the teachers who read this. Comments about the blog, about the approach, about the way I have done it, about your thoughts and plans.

Mel

and another thing about kinitting....

2009-12-03T14:12:00.000-08:00

It occured to me today as I sat with a friend, listening to her talk and knitting my daughter a duck, that I have a productivity issue.In common with many people who work from home, I have a problem knowing when to stop working. I work until 10pm several days a week and often later. I try to make every moment productive, which is one of the reasons that I struggle these days to do things with the children.

So, when my children are elsewhere, (school and nursery or playgroup), I am working. I might be teaching or preparing class plans, or keeping in contact with clients and colleagues and sometimes playing on the computer to escape but always alone. I have found it hard to share that time because I feel it needs to be productive.

Previously, I would have found it hard to make time for a friend during child-free time for this reason. But today, I was sat there happily listening, giving my friend the ear she needed although my children were all happily busy somewhere else. The difference was the knitting. Although I wasn't working, I was doing something productive. Not only was I producing something physical, I was also relaxing my mind. I arranged today to see another friend during child-free time for Stitch and Bitch as she calls it. I prefer Knit and Knatter! So I am more sociable now because of knitting.

And one more thing before I stop typing and start.... guess what...... knitting. I was sat with a group of women last night. They were here for a class I was teaching. There were 5 heavily pregnant women, one woman with her 6-week old baby, and me. The urge to knit was overwhelming. I did resist, but only just. I got my knitting out to show them but managed not to actually put needle to needle. It must have been the oxytocin in the air.

I am going to meet the knitting group next week. I am so excited - it will be combining 2 of my favourite things: knitting and wine.

I finished Annie's rabbit today. She was delighted and took the thing everywhere with her. She even sat in the bathroom while Annie had her bath. Then disaster struck - after bedtime, with Lily (the rabbit) tucked up in bed with her, and being slowly chewed, her pom-pom tail came off in dozens of little pieces. Annie was distraught but we managed to settle her again. To be honest, it wasn't a very well made pom-pom. I just hope the head doesn't suffer a similar fate tomorrow.

So, it's on with the duck for Lexxy now. It has come on leaps and bounds - it gained a back, a bottom and a front this morning and is now about to get a head. The slightly secret elephant for Dave is coming on well too and if I can get some yarn on Saturday, I will be able to start the jacket for Lizzy. I am starting to understand why everyone on Ravelry has several projects on the go at once.

Goodnight all,

Mel x

Kntting

2009-12-01T15:02:00.000-08:00

It's ben so long since I posted - not really grasped the idea of a blog, I fear!

The mid-life crisis has continued but has taken a couple of new directions, one of which is knitting. I used to knit when I lived with my parents and I don't remember doing any since leaving home more than 20 years ago. Then someone suggested I bring some knitting to a study day I was going to and I did. I quite enjoyed it and found it enabled me to listen in a different way to usual - without the background noise. A friend explained it to me tonight but I don't expect I will explain it as well. It's about the act of knitting occupying the neo-cortex, the thinking brain, and allowing the more instinctive brain to function without interference.

Regardless of why it happens, it certainly happened for me. I had dug out my old knitting bag which had my once-treasured bamboo needles in as well as a pattern book and some yarn. I had knitted a toy bird for my sister and the pattern was in the book, so I decided to knit one for a friend's little girl. By the time I had finished that bird, I had another 3 projects on the go and was hooked.

I hadn't realised that there was a gap in my life until it was filled and I began to feel more content than I ever remember being. Although my teaching job is creative, there is no physical product from it and that is something knitting gives me.

The children love it. My second project, which is almost finished, is a pink rabbit for Annie. Waiting in the wings is a duck for Lexxy, a cable cardigan for Lizzy and an orange elephant for Dave (long story). They often ask if they can have something knitted - another toy or a piece of clothing and I can happily say "Yes". They love the finished bird, which goes to its new owner tomorrow. They are fascinated by what I am doing and like to have me sitting near them when they are playing. It is something I can do around them that I enjoy and is productive, and yet can easily be broken off from to talk, look at things or give cuddles.

Then I found an amazing community - Ravelry. There are hundreds of knitters and crocheters (spelling?) around the world on there, each recording their current and finished projects, their queue of projects waiting to be started and their stash of yarns. I found there is a knitting group that has been meeting at least twice a month in the pub in my village. How amazing is that? Unfortunately, they meet on the night I teach but I know one of the group moderators and that might be more flexible soon. I am so excited about getting more into that site and the people on it.

When the people I know talk about getting together now, I have 3 words for them: "Do you knit?" I have had a knit and chat meet-up tonight and have another planned for 10 days from now and another before Xmas. Who knew that something you do on your own would be so sociable? I think I feel justified in spending an evening sitting with a friend if we are knitting and producing something, rather than just sitting and chatting.

Knitting fills in little gaps in my day when I don't want to get into anything big but I don't want to twiddle my thumbs either. Knitting enables me to think about things in a different way, without my brain intruding, if that makes any sense. I look forward to having a few minutes to knit at the end of the day to help me wind down. I am excited about getting the yarn for Lizzy's cardigan and getting going on something bigger than a toy. I am excited.

This Xmas my parents are coming to stay and for most of her life, my mum has been an avid knitter. She stopped knitting quite suddenly recently but doesn't know why. I am hoping that between now and Xmas she will dig out her knitting bag and we can recreate a family memory of mine: sitting in my family home knitting with my mum and my Grandma. Lizzy is just learning to knit so the 3 of us can do women's things together - a bit of a Red Tent experience.

My goals for 2010 include relearning to crochet. I did it as a teenager and made a very wonky giraffe for my brother, but my skill level was never very high and I am looking forward to working on it. There is so much to look forward to.

Another goal for 2010 is to blog more!

Mel

Children and intuitive eating

2009-07-25T14:55:00.001-07:00

I raised my children with strict rules - they could only eat chocolate after tea and only if they had been good, they could only eat sweets after tea at the weekend and only if they had been good. They were allowed fizzy drinks once a week, never allowed lollipops and no cereal with more than 20g of sugar per 100g. I wanted to give them eating habits that would keep them healthy. And then I realised that I was giving them attitudes to food that would ruin their relationship with it: food is a reward, some foods are bad and shouldn't be eaten, some foods are good and have to be eaten before any bad food can be eaten, food is an emotional issue. So after much careful deliberation, I decided to change.

The switch from heavy regulation to intuitive eating could not be done slowly - it had to be done all at once. We told the girls, aged 3, 6 and 8, that they could now eat anything they wanted provided they were hungry, they sat down at the table and concentrated on their food and they stopped when they had had enough. We asked them what foods they wanted to eat and we bought them in abundance. And then the binge started.

In the first 2 days they ate more sweets than they would have been allowed to eat in a month. They ate coco pops, chocolate brioche, marshmallows, chocolate digestives and turkish delight. They didn't eat any bread, fruit, vegetables or cheese. In short, they indulged their food fantasies.

As they started to realise that this was a permanent change, they slowly reduced their bingeing and started to eat more of the foods they had enjoyed before. My biggest challenge then was getting them to understand what 'hungry' meant. How often do any of us actually get hungry before we eat? How do you explain to a child what hunger means? They wanted to eat again 30 minutes after a big lunch, and said they were hungry. Is this what it is like being a growing child, or were they just bored and saying they were hungry? Was it a big lunch for me because I had eaten too much and they had only eaten just what they needed? I had to trust them and allow them to eat.

3 weeks on things are really settling down. They eat what they want for breakfast but if they aren't hungry, they don't eat and I put a snack in their coat pocket on school days for break time. We still sit down for family meals but they don't have to eat if they aren't hungry. If they prefer, they can get something else out of the fridge or the cupboard if they aren't hungry for what I have made. I put the main course on the table and allow them to help themselves. At the same time I put any cake we have, yoghurts, fruit and puddings on the table. They can move onto sweet whenever they want, or even start there.

The discussions about what they can and can't have have stopped completely. They know that if they are hungry, they can eat and they don't bother me with the details any more. I don't have to consider and agree to or turn down their requests any more, or deal with their pleading or complaints. I don't have to decide if they have had enough main course to have pudding, or remember if they have been good enough to have their treats. For them, food isn't an emotional issue any more - it has nothing to do with their behaviour, their previous eating or the time. It is just about whether they are hungry or not, and what they are hungry for. Exactly what it should be about.

My only remaining concern is their teeth. We have always tried to keep their eating of foods containing sugar to 4 occasions a day and most days it is now more than that. I will be taking them to the dentist in August and will see if there has been any change in the state of their teeth.

Although I am aware that their diet is not as 'healthy' as it was, I believe that a daughter is for life and not just for childhood. Although I was controlling their food intake now, I was setting them up for eating problems as adults. Taking their whole lives into account, their new beliefs about food will give them a healthier overall lifestyle and a good relationship with food and their own bodies.

on alcohol

2009-07-14T14:13:00.000-07:00

Sitting here with a glass of wine, I think it is time to talk about alcohol.

My family has a tradition of over-use of alcohol so I have always known that I have to be careful . I do have a lot to thank alcohol abuse for - I started seeing my husband because I had heard that he needed a drink at lunchtime and decided to go and save him. I didn't know at the time that he had a similar family history and was well aware of where he was heading. But I did save him, and he repaid me by becoming the love of my life.

In my late 30s I had come very close to being dependent on alcohol. I spent 2 months of the year abstaining completely, which is widely acknowledged to be a sign of dependency problems. Outside of those months, I usually had a set of rules to stick to: sometimes I only drank at weekends, sometimes I limited myself to 2 units in any one day, or 14 units a week. I never allowed myself to drink until Dave was home or the children were in bed. None of these rules did anything to curb my desire to drink.

I had my first memory blackout on my 19th birthday. I remember sitting in the bar in the early evening and telling the people I was with that I wasn't drunk enough to get on my chair and dance yet. That is the last thing I remember until the morning. Apparently, I was dancing on my chair before the end of that song, and was found wandering around at 2am, but I remember nothing of it. These memory gaps have been a regular occurence since and always caused a huge feeling of guilt - we all know that we get sentimental and over-emotional when drunk but not to even know what I did or said was quite embarassing and sometimes frightening.

After a few weeks of following the principles of Beyond Chocolate, I decided to apply them to alcohol. I got rid of all the rules with one new addition - as I couldn't really equate being hungry to alcohol, I made a different stipulation: if I 'needed' a drink, then there was something I had to address, and I found a different way of doing that. If I wanted a drink, then I had one. Often the need would subside if I just waited and then I could enjoy a drink later.

The difference this made was huge. Firstly, because I didn't drink out of a perceived need, I drank much slower. Previously, I had got past that 'I think I have had enough' stage, because by the time I felt it, I had already drunk enough wine to put me past it into the 'lets have lots more' stage. Drinking slower allowed me to notice this warning and stop when I had had enough. Much like food, I was no longer using alcohol as a way of expressing or supressing my emotions.

When I limited myself to drinking at weekends, Friday to Sunday for example, I always drank on those days. It would be a waste otherwise. When I could only have 2 units a day, I had those 2 units every day. Now I have as many units as I want and some days I have none. The most solid behaviour - not drinking when alone with the children - has remained. When I want to drink at these times, it is always out of 'need' rather than desire.

I have used the same approach to wine as I did to chocolate - I started focusing on quality rather than quantity. We are paying more for our wine now, but drinking less. I always look forward to a glass of wine when I have finished teaching and felt quite deprived when my rules didn't allow that. Now I can have one and yet I don't always. Perhaps the most exciting change is that I haven't had a memory blackout since I read the book. I haven't had a bad hangover either.

I don't think I have it cracked - I still feel that I am parked at the top of a slippery slope and will always have to be vigilant, but now I am static and not concerned about sliding down.

On depression

2009-06-21T14:28:00.000-07:00

I used to think that The Rolling Stones song "Paint it Black" was about life after the Vietnam war, maybe because it was the theme tune to Tour of Duty. More recently I think it feels a lot like depression.

I woke up one day last week and depression descended on me like a soggy black blanket. "I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes. I have to turn my head until my darkness goes". As I walked to school I felt physically weighed down by the grief and blackness I felt. I could feel the dread of the coming day pushing on the back of my neck. "I look inside myself and see my heart is black".

I know that people who have never had depression can't truly understand what it feels like, but I think listening to this song is a good start. When I am feeling this way, there is no joy in the day. Every day has its ups and downs but when I am depressed there are no ups. What I found a happy thought last week is now a grim one, what I was looking forward to I know is going to be miserable.

Then people on the way to school smile and say "hello, how are you?" and I stick on the smile I made at home and give them the stock answer. I can't bring myself to lie but I know they don't really want to hear the truth so I settle for "OK. You?" and hope that they are as keen to move on as I am. If one of my friends notices that I am not myself then my cover is blown. She'll ask what's up and I will look at her and wonder how I could possibly answer that question. Then my eyes will fill with tears and I will try to get away before I make a fool of myself in the playground. I then hurry back home where I can hide.

Despair is an almost physical emotion. It weighs on my head and makes me look down. When I do look up, it is from that position which gives me a permanent frown. I just skulk through my day hoping it will end quickly but knowing that tomorrow will be no better.

Then suddenly, or slowly, it lifts. I start to find I am looking forward to something, or I enjoy something and I know things are going to get better. This week it all happened so quickly that I was quite shaken by it. I felt the deep despair almost from waking and then when I dropped off my littlest at nursery it lifted in a matter of minutes. As soon as I was back in my home alone I started to feel positive and relaxed. I wonder what that says about me. I daren't think. I just know that I need time alone to feel grounded.

Don't really know how to finish this section.

A landmark weekend

2009-06-15T14:33:00.000-07:00

We've had last weekend planned for months. Since before I read Beyond Chocolate. I've imagined it so many times that I didn't think it could possibly live up to expectation. But it did. In fact, it exceeded expectation.

We left the children at home with my parents after lunch on Friday and drove to a spa hotel. We settled into our lovely room and then went down to the bar we saw on the way in - sat at tables outside in the sun, doing the things that people without children do. We lazed about drinking beer and chatting all afternoon and then had dinner in the hotel's restaurant.

We had £25 each included with the cost of the break and it was very easy to get 3 courses for that money. So, there I was, pretty merry after 5 bottles of beer and a cocktail, eating delicious food with my lovely husband. A recipe for over-eating, but I didn't. I ate all my starter and about half of my main course. Then I had the best cheesecake I have ever had - white chocolate with strawberry sorbet. I savoured each mouthful slowly with my eyes closed, and then left half of it on the plate.

The following day we had breakfast included in the cost. I wasn't hungry so toyed with the idea of having just one sausage and just one hash brown, but instead I went and got some yoghurt, some mango puree and a bit of honey. It was lovely and all that I needed to keep me going until lunch. On Sunday I had nothing for breakfast except a few cups of peppermint tea, because that is what my body wanted. £12.50 worth of breakfast available and I had a cup of herbal tea. I could never have predicted that.

So, after a weekend of eating and drinking exactly what I wanted, I felt on top of the world. Last time I stayed in a hotel where the food was all included, I ate so much that I was sick in the night when I had rolled over onto my stomach. This time I left the hotel 1lb lighter than when I arrived. I had the energy to visit the gym twice while there, which I was surprised to really enjoy, and I did plenty of little bits of swimming. I did lots of reading (Breaking Free from Emotional Eating by Geneen Roth) and a fair amount of quiet reflection.

Altogether, a totally perfect weekend and the most relaxing one I have had for years. And a triumph of Intuitive Eating over Bingeing.

Eating what I fancy

2009-06-09T08:43:00.000-07:00

For any serial dieter, the concept of eating what you fancy is an exciting but all too short-lived one. It's not for life, it's just for Christmas. In many ways, it's what we do when we are in between diets. But are we really eating what we fancy? It feels like it is, but what we are probably eating is the foods we know we won't be able to eat when we are back on our diet.

Anyone who has ever done the Atkins diet will know how quickly you start to crave fruit and veg once the diet says you can't have it. This is the very food that you didn't fancy when you were on the Slimming World diet and it was 'free'. As soon as something is banned, we want it.

Every day I sat and watched the kids eating fun size chocolate as their treat after their evening meal, and wished that I could have some with them. When I started Beyond Chocolate they weren't banned any more. It didn't take me long to realise that I didn't actually like them very much. In fact, I eat them less often now than I did when they were banned, and it's not will power: I just don't fancy them,

I still eat chocolate, but probably no more often than I did before. What's changed is the amount and the type. I used to shove it in, mouthful after rushed mouthful, usually when no-one else was looking, usually standing up or hidden in my bedroom. Now I eat it slowly and enjoy it. My favourite at the moment is praline shells - I bite half of one and let it slowly melt in my mouth. I usually close my eyes at this point and enjoy the smooth velvety feeling. When it has all gone I eat the other half the same way. When that one is finished, if I fancy it I have another one. So far I have eaten no more than 3 in one sitting - I have had enough by that point. This isn't will power, I am just eating what I fancy. It amazes me how much I thought I loved chocolate, and yet I never allowed myself to sit and enjoy it. It's as if I was trying to get it in and eaten as quickly as possible.

When they hear the title Beyond Chocolate, a lot of people seem to think it is about stopping eating chocolate. That couldn't be more wrong. Those of us who have read it celebrate chocolate and the eating of it. We look for more ways of enjoying it all the time, and new sources to buy it. What we don't do is hide it, crave it, stuff it in or allow it to take control of our lives. We are in control.

and today...

2009-06-07T14:38:00.001-07:00

I thought it was about time I wrote something about what is happening now. It was a great day for food, and lazing about. Dave and I didn't wake up properly until after 9am - the kids were downstairs playing. The we lazed about in bed reading and dozing until about 11am. This is heaven as anyone who has had small children will know. I was hungry when I got downstairs but Dave had already been down and put a leg of lamb in the oven and I knew that would be ready at about 1pm. So I had a banana to keep me going and went out into my veg garden to plot the death of some slugs.

We both busied about the house making food and getting software onto my netbook. I made cheese sauce for the cauliflower and we made some decisions about how we are going to work with the Beyond Chocolate approach for the children. Instead of putting the cheese sauce on the cauliflower, we served it on its own so anyone could take it in the proportions they wanted. We didn't serve the kids food at all. They served themselves so they could choose what to have and how much. We didn't say they had to finish what they had before having more of anything - we let them be in charge. It was quite different, but not different enough to be alarming.

I ate off a tea plate and added a couple of bits of this and that as I went along. In the end, I probably had about 1.5 tea plates-full of food. For pudding we had yoghurt (full fat) with granola and cherries. It's organic so I am hoping it will not make me as aggressive as dairy usually does. I half-filled one of the children's plastic bowls for my portion. I had some wine as well. Had about half a glass and gave the rest to Dave. It was nice, but I didn't want any more.

Felt a bit stuffed in the afternoon and not at all hungry when the girls had their tea at about 5pm. I had 2 bites of the choc-chip buns I made for them as they were an experiment and I wanted to know how they turned out. We had our tea at about 7pm - Dave had made a curry out of the leftover lamb and cauliflower and we had it with a wholemeal tortilla. I had a small bowl and one tortilla followed by one of the buns from earlier. That was enough for me and I haven't had anything else to eat today.

In comparison to how I used to eat, that is amazing. Even if I had eaten as little as that during a meal, I would have grazed all evening. And the wine - I often restricted myself to drinking just at weekends, so I would have had a drink tonight as I wouldn't be able to for several days. As it is, I am teaching tomorrow night and I love a glass of wine when I have finished teaching. I know I can have a glass of wine any night I like so I don't need to have it. If I start a glass and don't want to finish it, I don't.

I have a box of my new favourite praline chocolates a few inches fom my head. I have given myself permission to eat them whenever I am hungry and fancy them. I don't fancy them very often but when I do, I slowly eat 2 or 3 and really enjoy them. How different from the binge scoffing of the very recent past.

Well, that's today's successes. My challenge for this week is working out exactly what I do want to eat, rather than what I like most from the selection currently and conveniently available. The idea is that the more I get in touch with what I really want, the more satisfied I will be by what I eat and the more I will be giving my body what it needs.

Hunger

2009-06-06T15:30:00.000-07:00

Geneen Roth writes in her book "Breaking Free from Emotional Eating" that not one of the twenty five or so diets she has been on has mentioned anything about eating when you are hungry.

One of the selling points for Slimming World for me was that I never had to be hungry: there was always free food I could eat. In fact, for many years, I got hungry very rarely and when I did, I considered it a mistake, the result of an oversight. I once met a woman who ran a slimming club who told me that hunger was our friend. I'm not sure what she meant by that but I don't think she meant it was signal to eat. But that's basically what it is, isn't it? It's not a good thing or a bad thing, it's just a natural thing, a sign from our bodies that we need to eat.

So why did I resist getting hungry? Maybe it was simply that I couldn't resist eating for as long as it took for my stomach to empty. I just enjoyed eating so much that I did it - lots.

Our society tells us when to eat. We get up and we must eat breakfast, after all "it's the most important meal of the day". We have to eat at our lunch break because we can't eat outside of that time. We eat dinner at a more flexible time but usually a whole family will eat together, regardless of whether they are all hungry or not. This shared meal time is one of the cornerstones of our civilisation and many others.

So we are brought up to eat not when we are hungry, but when we are told to eat. That coupled with the obsession with clearing our plate (because of the starving children in Africa, as if our over-eating helps them at all) adds up to a generation of people eating based on several factors of which hunger is not one. Our natural body signals telling us to start or stop eating are overriden and we learn to ignore them. Is this part of the reason for the epidemic of obesity that is expected or possibly already here?

So, what now? I have had a hard time leaving the feelings about breakfast behind. "It starts the metabolism" they say, but surely getting up and moving around starts my metabolism and failing to add food to my stomach can't stop that process. Now I eat when I get hungry. Sometimes that is as soon as I get up so I eat before the children come down. More often it is later and I eat after I have dropped them off at school and nursery or playgroup. I don't eat lunch as such, I eat again when I am hungry. If I have eaten early, it is often mid morning but it can be much later, especially if I am busy and don't tune in to the early signs of hunger.

Not eating tea with the children was hard. I felt strange sitting down but not eating. After a while I realised that it meant I could feed them in the kitchen and not have to keep running back and forward to get things, but it also meant that when I did eat, I could focus on it rather than chewing fast in between clearing up mess and sorting out arguments.

I always disciplined myself not to eat in the evenings when I was on a diet. This meant that I sometimes went to bed hungry, which isn't very comfortable. Now I eat in the evening if I am hungry in the evening, but if I am not hungry, I don't eat. It sounds so simple and logical but it is anything but simple at first. The grazing habit is very hard to break but once I got used to going to bed satisfied rather than hungry or stuffed, I didn't want to give that up again.

I am still working on this. If I have made a lovely meal, I sometimes still eat even if I am not hungry. And when I have had a drink, I usually snack without hunger, but not to the same extent as I used to. I am improving all the time and finding out new things about myself almost daily. For example, I found out today that my post-swimming hunger is very superficial and can be as easily satisfied with a drink as with food.

I will close with another quote from Geneen Roth: Being hungry is like being in love: if you don't know, you're probably not.

My self image

2009-06-05T09:11:00.000-07:00

I think I should be talking more about what is happening now on a blog, but I feel the need to get all the historical stuff on first, which should give a context to the current stuff I want to move onto later.

My earliest memories of body image are poor. I was a size 16 when I was 16, which wasn't a high-street size then so I felt like an outcast every time I wanted to buy clothes. When I went on riding holidays with my slimmer more able friend, she was assigned a spirited elegant animal to ride, and I felt like I got the shire horse! I can sum up my body image with the phrase I have often used: "I've always been big".

This section is titled self image, not body image, but the two are so closely linked that I find it hard to separate them. Until recently, I had a very poor body image, which stopped my overall self-image being good. Avoiding looking at myself in the mirror, avoiding buying new clothes and putting things on hold until I have lost the weight all contributed to making me feel pretty low and unself-confident.

Now I have a very positive body image - more so than I think I have ever had before. It's not that I am lots slimmer, because I have only dropped about a dress size and I have been much slimmer than this in the last 5 years. It's because I have stopped avoiding looking at myself in the mirror and buying new clothes, and I have started doing the things I was putting on hold. I have started wearing make-up - not every day but often enough to be getting good at it, and yet still consider it fun and not a necessity.

I read in Beyond Chocolate the suggestion to look at myself naked in the mirror and imagine I was the first woman. This means there are no comparisons to other women. I can now consider my hour glass shape without judgement or comment, just acceptance. It's fascinating to discover just how much of our thoughts about ourselves and our bodies are in (usually unfavourable) comparison to others. "My legs are too fat (compared to ...), my stomach is bigger than it should be (according to ...) and my boobs aren't as big as ..." When we just consider our legs, stomach and boobs without comparison, they are just legs, stomachs and boobs. Without the comparison there is no judgement, no right or wrong, just parts of the body. It's a fundamental shift in focus and very empowering.

So, with a new body image I have changed my image. I didn't like my hair as it felt non-descript and frumpy to me. So it is now much shorter and instead of having a hair cut and then going months before doing it again, I have booked myself in for another cut 6 weeks later to keep it as I like it. I like it purple and I don't like it grey so Dave colours it for me around the time of my hair cut so my hair goes back to being short and purple every 6 weeks.

I wasn't buying new clothes for two reasons: I shouldn't spend the money on me, and it's a waste to buy clothes I hope to get too small for so I will wait and buy them when I have lost the weight. The first one just isn't valid: I bought a new pair of trousers for the summer this week from Asda and they cost £8. I can afford that. And then the idea of waiting until I have lost the weight. Putting my life on hold until I get to where I want to be puts pressure on me to lose the weight. Every day I look at my drab wardrobe or see clothes in Asda I am reminded that I have failed to lose the weight. How can this constant mental self-criticism ever motivate me to move on? And what if I don't ever lose the weight?

So now I buy new clothes regularly. I buy clothes that I would never have bought before - the summer trousers I bought this week are white. I have never bought white because it is too unflattering. I love them and what's more important, I feel great wearing them. When I put on clothes that fit me and wear some make-up I feel confident, energetic and happy. If I never lose the weight, isn't this enough?

My relationship with food

2009-06-04T23:35:00.000-07:00

It's hard to pin-point exactly where my relationship with food went wrong. My sister and I saw a dietician when I was in my early teens and we were put onto a 1,300 calorie a day diet. I don't think I learned much from that - I remember eating more toast because I read in the calorie counter that it had less calories per ounce than bread. The dietician later explained that the slice of bread had the same amount of calories, but the weight had been reduced by removing some water while toasting. This was a great introduction to the daft rules of dieting.

The first time I remember using food as a substitute was when I gave up smoking at University. I starting eating takeaway pizzas nightly which was costly in many ways. The problem was that when I started smoking again, I didn't stop eating the pizzas or lose the weight I had gained. This became a serial problem for years. By the time I gave up smoking for good I was obese and had some very disturbing eating and drinking habits.

I started dieting again in 1999 and over the following decade I tried Slimfast, food combining, Weight Watchers, Slimming World, the Cambridge Diet, the Atkins diet and many exercise regimes. I lost weight many times and put weight back on just as many. By 2008 I longed to be normal - to be able to accept an invitation to a meal at someone's house and eat what I wanted. To achieve that, I had to wait a little longer.

I read Beyond Chocolate in April 2009. Straight away I realised that it was what I was going to do. It wasn't a diet or a new eating programme, it was just a collection of principles that made a lot of sense. It upset me to realise how messed up my relationship with food was and I got to work on it straight away.

I craved chocolate cake, home-made, with chocolate icing on the top and jam in the middle. I made it sometimes for the kids and tried hard to resist it but usually ate enough to make myself feel ill. The cake was in control and I was powerless in its presence. So, I made the cake and when I was hungry, I had some. I didn't have a second slice because I knew I could have it later when I was hungry and it was much nicer to eat when I was hungry. I had some more the next day, and the next day. On the 4th day I ate half a slice and left the rest. This was a massive breakthrough for me. I was in control and the cake no longer had any power over me. In the end, I gave the last slice to the birds as I had had enough of it.

That was the start and I haven't reached the end. I am still working on my relationship with food. I still eat more than I need to when I have had a drink or when others are eating. I still want to eat when I am unhappy or stressed but I am working on all of that. The main thing for me is that I am in control now and I haven't eaten until I feel ill since I opened the book for the first time. It's going to be a long journey but I have found some wonderful women to share it with and for the first time in many years, I am optimistic about my future with food.

Where to start?

2009-06-03T15:17:00.000-07:00

I turn 40 at the end of this year. As soon as the year started I felt different. Just being able to say that phrase made me feel more reflective about my life. It started with a hair cut. On a whim, I decided to have it cut really short, much shorter than I have for many years. Later that week I had my nose pierced and then I dyed my hair purple. A few weeks later someone told me about a book called Beyond Chocolate. This was the big change. I bought the book that same day from Amazon and the day it arrived I started reading it. I could tell straight away that this book would change my life. I bought it for my sister-in-law the following day. Before I had finished reading the book, I had already made such big changes in my eating and thinking that I hardly recognised myself. This blog is going to be my account of how this life change is progressing. It will include the highs and the inevitable lows. I hope it will help other people in their journey toward a healthy relationship with food, and if nothing else, help me to own my thoughts and feelings in a way my personal journal can't. I've never blogged before so I have no idea what the right and wrong ways are. I will just blag my way through it and see what happens.