Hiking around this wide brown land

Tuesday:

I spent the morning at the Arboretum café writing, then went out onto the hillsides for a walk. There are "trails" that are literally just signposts on the grass between the baby trees.

Which makes it kind of fun. And I was wearing my new hiking boots. I walked from the café on one hill up a bigger hill with this statue thing on top:

This is a quote from Australia's most famous poem:

I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains,

Of rugged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains,

I love her far horizons, I love her jewelled sea,

Her beauty and her terror, this wide brown land for me.

It was written by an Englishwoman, Dorothy McKeller, and there is a second verse about how England is pretty nice too, but no one knows that one.

And when you turn around, you get this lovely view:

Not sure about the weird spiky trees.

Climbing up the hill was fine but going down down down into that valley was a bit hard on the knees. My boots made me feel very secure though, no slipping! Then back up an extremely steep slope to the café again, I don't think that bit was supposed to be climbed. There actually turned out to be a little fence at the top that I had to step over. I had to keep my arms out wile climbing to balance. Any steeper and I would have been crawling. So I felt pretty good about powering up it. I may hate many forms of exercise, like jumping or bending, but I do like walking and climbing.

In all, 45 mins of hiking around the hills.

And I have had what is possibly my biggest win of the year so far. I bought a family size packet of chips yesterday to share tonight at D&D. And I haven't eaten them yet! I don't even know why I dared buy them, so many times before they haven't lasted an hour. These have lasted two days - an exciting new flavour I haven't tried before. Still unopened. If you have a trigger food that you usually can't resist if it is in the house, that you will eat until you are feeling sick and then put aside only long enough to feel a bit less sick then finish them, you'll know how big a deal this is to me.

Secret eating

Friday:

I don't always say everything about my struggles with my weight on this blog because my husband reads it and I'm ashamed. I generally love that he reads my blog but it does mean that it isn't an anonymous space for me to admit to all my failures. However, I think it is very bad for me to keep things secret so I'm going to talk about my uncontrolled eating.

My worst food triggers are anything chip-like. Fat+salt+crunchy. Twisties or Doritos or even savoury crackers. Even if I don't like the flavour (for instance salt and vinegar) I will eat it anyway. If it is in the house, I can't seem to resist. And I am well aware of this. Yet I still occasionally get deluded into thinking I can handle it.

Four times over the past couple of weeks I've bought a  packet of something to have a snack in the cupboard in case we had visitors or the kids had friends over, but then surreptitiously eaten them all myself over the course of a couple of days. The latest was today. Dad has just been here visiting with his partner and we usually sit up late playing cards; I'd bought a packet of chips and some chocolate and some things for a cheese platter to have for supper. After the kids were in bed I decided we didn't really need that much food, especially as dad had mentioned he was on a bit of a diet (one that still lets him have a bottle of wine a day, obviously). I told Tim that I was feeling a bit out of control with food and could he please hide the chips. He suggested that we wait and see if we ate them that evening, if not he would hide them from me until the next suitable event.

Turns out dad is finally starting to feel his age and he left almost immediately. He says 2012 is the year he went from being middle aged to being old (he is 72). So we didn't need any of the supper. I didn't bring it up again with Tim. I'd made an effort to get them out of my reach, hadn't I? Not my fault if if failed. One effort was all I had in me.

I've had almost exclusively carbohydrates today and I feel like crap. I started with my warm oats, then the kids and I went shopping. I often get us each a treat when we go shopping together, and today I decided that the way to avoid binging on the family-sized chips at home was to have a small packet of exactly the same product. So I wouldn't feel deprived. WRONG! Then lunch was a bread roll with butter and vegemite (ie fat and salt). More carbs. I was feeling pretty groggy by this stage and had a bit of a nap.

By mid-afternoon I was obsessed with the thought of those chips. I love chocolate, but I can have a square or two then stop. A tub of ice cream would take me a year to get through. Peanut butter seems to be an issue for some people, but I don't get that at all. It's just something to have on toast occasionally or make satay sauce with. But chips?

When the kids were out in the backyard I sat on my bed with a book and the chips and shovelled them in. Listening between each mouthful in case the kids came in. Shoving my pillow on top of the packet and quickly wiping my mouth and fingers when they did come in. Not really enjoying, but not stopping. Quite disturbing behaviour.

Later I poured the rest of the chips out of the packet into the bin. Only way to be sure.

I cooked dinner about an hour later than usual because of course I wasn't hungry, and then I still only ate half of mine (and that was a lot more than I wanted).

I guess the only solution to this is to not have it in the house. I already knew that. I think the voice on one shoulder tells me I am strong enough to resist; and the voice on the other shoulder reminds me that if I do fail, well, I get to eat chips. I look forward to the inevitable fail. I can't listen to either of those idiots!