A thing I have learned: the breakfast

(LighterLife Management – ongoing)
Breakfast is a girl’s best friend. I have skipped breakfast only a very, very few times this year, and each time I have a) been very very conscious about it throughout the day, b) been starving mid-morning, and c) eaten badly for the rest of the day. Added to that, I feel [...]

Cutting back like normal people

(LighterLife Management – Month 8)
I’m trying something ‘normal’ people do: CUTTING BACK.
One day back in December, or could have been November, I woke up one morning and noticed that my just washed favourite pair of jeans felt way too tight around the waste, producing a bulge that is both uncomfortable and unsightly – the donut.
AND. [...]

Coping strategies: share your worries

(LighterLife Route to Management – Week12 Day 4)
I couldn’t survive without my friends. They lift me up and bring me back down to earth, depending on what is needed.
So I’m in the middle of a job decision which has become huge in my mind. I’ve been mulling it over and over and OVER in my [...]

Coping strategies: Noticing that you are eating

(LighterLife Route to Management – Week10 Day4)
Someone recently asked me if I’m a visual person. Well. For years on end I used to think visual=creative, and always answer no. Then at some point I finally realised they’re not one and the same at all. So. I would say I’m an extremely visual person.
How this comes [...]

Route to Management – Week 9

(LighterLife Route to Management – Week9 Day 6)
What a strangely ‘normal’ week. Don’t quite know how else to sum it up.
I have found my first real food trigger.
Let’s get right down to it: porridge is fine any time, day or night. Comforting it is, addictive it is not, nor binge-triggering. Not based on this [...]

Coping strategies: Keep your Abstinence mentality

(LighterLife Route to Management – Week9 Day5)
Finding myself in reflective mood this week. A fellow LighterLifer said something in our LL meeting on Friday that I woke up thinking about the next morning. We had a couple of new girls in the group just starting out on Route to Management and we were asked to [...]

The necessary evil(s) of planning

(LighterLife Route to Management – Week9 Day4)
My relationship with planning – WELL!! Part of me so obsessed, part of me wanting desperately to not care, and yet another part of me somehow understanding there is a middle ground there somewhere. Somewhere.
I’m keeping so many records it’s bordering on madness! I write the food & mood [...]

Coping strategies: Take the true compliments

(LighterLife Route to Management – Week9 Day3)
I think I’m on to something here. I attended a big party last night and during the night got a very heart-felt, genuine compliment from a childhood friend. I think I last saw him in November last year, which was during the heavy drinking, heavy eating period I went [...]

Coping strategies: just go home

(LighterLife Route to Management – Week8 Day2)
I’m currently away to see family and old friends. The first night I went out with my sister and had no problems with anything, but the second night I had planned to meet up with ex-colleagues and friends for a big double leaving do…
I arrived in the bar about [...]

Coping strategies: Get into conversations

(LighterLife Route to Management, Week7 Day1)
It’s a two-way thing, conversation. Of course it is. But sometimes it can happen even when you’re just listening, or when you’re the only one talking. I feel like I’m having a conversation of sorts when I write this blog. Even if it’s with myself!
And sometimes you have to humble [...]