How do I want to live?

Saturday:

I may have said this before, but I think the thing that has the single biggest influence on how I feel is whether my hair is clean. Since cutting it to shoulder length it seems to get oily quicker, I should probably wash it every day but can't be bothered so it's every second day which is passable. But a single minute over that 48 hours and I look and feel awful. My hair looks greasy and my face looks oily and I just feel generally unkempt and unattractive. With clean hair I feel quite pretty. I can't imagine how I would cope in the bad old days when even the rich only washed their hair once a month. Forget lice, they had mice living in their wigs. Mice!

Work was much slower this week, which was pleasant at first but now a bit of a worry considering the contract has only three more weeks to go and has to be done by 30 June. There are nine of us contractors in the team, three doing my particular part, and my supervisor is pulling her hair out in stress. She had two sick days off this week. The problem is we have sent all our completed work out for approval by the company employing us and have to wait for it to come back before we can move on. And it still has to go to the legal area after that! My husband (who is a lawyer) just laughs at the idea that the legal section is going to have a turnover of a few days. As if. Oh well, not really my problem. But I like to do the best job I can.

Marion over at affectionforfitness.blogspot.com.au wrote, the other day, about slender people: "they eat exactly like the weight they want to be - every single day". It struck me because I was thinking about that very subject that morning walking to work. My dietitian friend said (long ago, but I just remembered it) that for a slow sustainable weight loss you should eat as if you are maintaining the weight you want to be. This is different to many diet regimes which get you to greatly restrict your calorie intake and lose rapidly (I can see the benefit of this, it is motivating to see a rapid weight loss, but it's much harder to sustain), then increase your calories when you reach your goal. Even Weight Watchers does this.

It is a different way of thinking to plan where you want to be, and then live as if you are that weight already. This is more the: "it's not a diet, it's a lifestyle change" thing.

This made me think about where I want to be.

There is a woman at my current workplace who goes to the gym every morning. She is about my age, I would guess, but she is a solid slab of muscle. Good on her, if that is what she wants, but that is not what I want to be. I don't want abs you could break your knuckles on. I also don't want to be model-skinny with no softening fat at all, like an ultra-marathoner at the end of the race. I don't think soft is necessarily a negative thing. I like curves (and so does my husband), but I don't like jiggle or flab. I like strong, but not weight-lifter. So I am getting a good picture in my own mind of what I want to aim for.

And the lifestyle thing, do I want to never eat bread again, or have sugar in my tea? Not just when I am "dieting", but never? I know sugar is a problem for some people, or wheat, or whatever, but I don't think it particularly is for me. I have different food triggers. If I am going to live as if I was my goal weight already (and want to stay that way), what does that mean to me?

I am about to turn 43. I started this blog almost exactly three years ago, just before I turned 40. Before then, although I did want to lose weight I wasn't a dieter. The only diet I can remember was a formal one my mum paid for before my wedding (her idea). But since I turned 40 I have tried lots of diets. I rarely sick to them for more than a couple of weeks. I have lost 5kg over that period, but most of that was from being sick in China. I have hovered around 78kg for the rest of the time. Have I just not "got it" yet, seen the light, got the true conviction? Or do I go too extreme and set myself up for failure. I give up foods I love then give up dieting, or exercise hard until I get sick (as I always do pretty quickly) because my body can't handle it.

This sounds a bit maudlin, but actually I am feeling pretty good tonight despite having lasagne then lemon cheesecake tonight (both made by me). This is my thinking space.

I'm finding being back in the office, and still being a mother and wife and housewife the rest of the time, is enough for me to deal with at the moment. I think small changes (like walking briskly for nearly an hour each day) are the way to go at the moment. Regular activity, a few less junky snacks. Trying for maintainable instead of the excitement of a drop on the scales.