The Curvy Goddess

Child Obesity Alert

The News lately seems to be awash with news about obesity, one story worried me a great deal.

The government seems to be considering proposals to inform parents if their children are overweight. What particularly worries me is that there seems to be no follow up plans, it would seem as though parents are just going to be told your child is fat. What good is that?

I remember at School having some kind of health check by the School Nurse, who told me I was overweight and should try to lose weight by changing my diet. She then proceeded to tell me not to eat a list of foods that I did not eat and when I told her I didn't eat what she was reeling off, she just ushered me out of the room. This stupid cow of a nurse just made me feel utterly powerless about body and that is just one of many experiences that for so many years haunted me and made feel totally out of control of my body.

My concerns are that some parents won't know how to change their children's diets and that children, will like I did grow up with poor self esteem.

It does seem that there are some excellent and positive schemes out there by the NHS to support overweight/obese children if they want to lose weight, but I suspect that if the government decided to follow this course action there won't be enough cash or places for every overweight child to be involved with one of them.

Oh how I worry.

Some New Links

I've added a couple more links to the best of british section...

First is for Serenity Blue who sell beautiful tie dye and floaty tops and dresses all made from natural rayon.  They say on their site that they want their clothes to:

"to bring out the goddess in you"

And their clothes certainly do look goddess like - everything is colourful and pretty and plus size (up to size 24 and larger sizes are soon to follow).  Plus the tie dye options are very impressive.

And I have added Matalan to the list which I recently realised was quite a silly omission.  Although you can't buy online from the Matalan website, the Rogers & Rogers range they offer in their stores is usually quite extensive and cheap - yay for cheap plus size clothing!

Finally I thought I would just give a quick mention to Halloween...  I got an email from Big  Girl's Wardrobe the other day telling me that they have an extensive range of fancy dress costumes for Halloween in plus sizes.  The costumes are quite pricey (£40-45ish), but I suspect thats because they are imported, but if you want sexy costume, it will be worth the money - all the costumes a figure hugging and leave little to the imagination!

My Sugar Monster Has to Die...

Well here I am again, starting AGAIN…

I've lost count of the amount of times I've said here, turning over a new leaf, restarting, going to finish this stupid bloody diet.

I feel quite confused as to what I should do.

Do I go back to the GI Diet and stick to it strictly?

Do I need a new diet?

How do I bring exercise into my life?

I hate this dieting bollocks, yet I want to carry on as a firm believer in taking action, rather than mulling this over doing nothing (well I am an aries).

This limbo feels rubbish though I don't want to give up, but I do want to diet, but I can't stick to it.  And I feel angry and cheated because dieting has turned me in to a chocolate fiend.  I need to kill my inner sugar monster, but he's all cute and fluffy and likes to be fed twixes.

Some might think this is crazy, me tormenting myself like this.  But I have been so unhappy all of my life with myself because of my weight.  No matter how much I try to reset my brain, it ain't happening.  I do not like myself because I am fat.  Nothing anyone says is going to change that, so I have to change myself.

I have to change myself, boy does it suck.  But if I get to my target weight, right now, it would seem so worth the struggle.

The sugar monster has to die!

Re-Start

The cleaning freaks out there just imagine this...

A whiteish grey kitchen top covered in bread crumbs, various spices scattered around and marmite smeared across the lot for good measure.  Plus on the floor there is evidence of several slug trails, particularly around some red lentils which have been there for weeks...

Well that was a very accurate description of the kitchen I used to have to cook in.

I'll hold my hand up to being a clean freak as far as kitchens go,  I'm quite happy to have a messy bedroom , lounge and even bathroom.  But I cannot stand a grim kitchen.  My mother was an incredibly house proud woman and a cleaner.  Growing up my house was always immaculate.  Since visiting Malta I've seen that this seems to be a maltese thing (my mum is Maltese), every family member's house I have visited has always been pristine and terrfyingly clean.

Anyway sorry to have rambled on a bit there but my point is cooking in that original kitchen decribed above has just been a nightmare to me.  Obviously I couldn't cook in it and I always had to clean it before I could cook in it...  Well faced with that there was many a time I thought fuck that and got a take away instead.

At the start of my diet I could get away with such behaviour, having a lot to lose, but as stones have dropped off, loosing weight has become harder and take aways plus other bits of food cheating have prevented me from loosing weight.

I still have such a long way to go and over the last couple of months I have gained a few pounds back. 

I am now ready to re-start this dieting malarkey and now I am free of the shitty kitchen.  So good bye slugs, psycho bitch house mates, marmite smears and hello no excuses.

Re-start weight 12 stone five pounds.

Sorry!!!

Hiya

Apologies for the lack posting lately,  I have moved and have been without the internet at home for nearly three weeks now...  However thanks to wonderful geek boyfriend, the internet is back!  Life without the internet is sooo empty...  I stupidly have filled the internet void with frantic packing, late night cleaning and eating the most unbelievable shit.  Sure I've had no kitchen and few items to cook with at times during the last three weeks, but what was there to stop me eating microwaved low calorie meals or tins of soup?  Nothing.  Instead I choose to do pie and chips, KFC and other amounts of copious fatty bad, bad food.

Annoying thing was a couple of weeks before my move started I had managed to lose two pounds through focused healthy eating.  Those 2 pounds are now back on plus 1 more.

GRRR, GRR and more GRRRRRRR!!!

Anyway I've said fuck it, the KFC was great but time to move on.  Soup and fruit here I come.

AND!!! And!!!  Today is officially day 3 of me being vegetarian :) I've decided to go veggie for the month in an attempt to make me find new healthy recipes and as a meat detox before my next trip to Malta in October, where I will be fed huge amounts of meaty goodness...

Simply Be

Last week I was very glad to see that my autumn/winter simply be catalogue had turned up, although you can look at the collection online, sometimes only a glossy catalogue will do…

Along with my catalogue was a tiny little guide introducing you to the models for simply be and particularly focussing on Crystal Renn who obviously is the most famous of them all.  But most interesting of all was that simply be also provided the models measurements.

I found it rather intriguing that all of them had a waist of about 30 inches and all were around a size 14 -16.  I am amazed that they all constitute 'plus size' but from their measurements they all seem so tiny (especially in comparsion to me) and normal.  They are normal women, yet they model plus size clothes.

Something feels wrong here!

Fat? Blame Mum. Don't Sneeze! You Might Spread the Obesity Lurgy!

Two fablous reports floating about in the British Press this week.

Firstly from the University of the Daily Mail, if you are a working mum, your child is more likely to be fat.  And secondly skinny people watch out because fat is contagious!  Yes all the way from University of Bullshit Science in America it seems that if your brother/sister or partner is fat you might catch the fat lurgy too! 

Who fucking pays for all of this bullshit research!!!!  Why oh why does only the most ridiclous and stupid research on obesity ever get reported in the press?  Why doesn't anyone do any worthwhile research into the subject?

Anyway back to the stories.  So working mums.  First off what about Dad?  Where does he fit into all of this?  Whilst I understand that in the animal kingdom, it tends to be females that feed the young, we humans are wee bit more sophiticated.  Middle class mums are not puking chips and KFC's in to their kids mouths like birds.  So Institute of Child Health in London - if you are going to do a survey do it properly include Dad too.  And this survey seems to be all about money.  If you are too poor you are too stupid to know what a carrot is.  But too rich?  You shouldn't be feeding your kids marks and spencer's ready meals.

Although I don't always agree with every she has to say Zoe Williams at the Guardian has some amusing mullings on the subject too.

Now I always thought Havard was one of those posh American universities, that captured all the smart people in America.  That could be my poor understanding of education abroad, but research saying that obesity is contagious I thought would have come from the University of the sort of west of America, not Havard.  But I guess it goes to show that stupid funding and research goes on, no matter how good the university.

Apparently the more fat people around you the more likely you are to think that it is okay to be obese.  And to quote Professor Nicholas Christakis:

"What appears to be happening is that a person becoming obese most likely causes a change of norms about what counts as an appropriate body size."

Interesting really because aren't people also trying to achieve the mystical size zero?  And if you read the comments of the average person on for example the BBC's have your say or the Daily Mail's comments facility on their articles, you will see that average person is actually quite nasty and vindictive about obese people.  That does not sound like the sort of environment that will allow obesity to become normal.

Hopefully there will be less of these bullshit studies next week.

Or maybe one day someone might even do some meaningful research...

Fitting Exercise In Your Life...

As part of this whole changing my life weightloss thing I know that in addition to changing my eating habits I also need to be more active.  Sure no problem, I can do - can't I?

Well actually no, thing is I find exercise dull, on your own it is so boring, dull, dull, dull, DULL!  I like stuff that involves little movement like reading books, watching films and surfing the web (and I suspect typing does not count as exercise). 

So exercise with another person is infinitely preferably because well then you can talk to them and even better for me it brings outs my heavily repressed aries competitive streak which actually makes me exercise more. 

Problem is though the other person you play against actually has a life, they don't exsist soley to be your exercise buddy (bloody selfish if you ask me). 

So what am I doing again?  Oh yes exercise...

I count myself very grateful for a few things. 

One, despite being able to drive I no longer own a car (evil black holes of wasted money!!!) and I live in a very car unfriendly city (love you Brighton).

Second, I have to walk everywhere.  Sure I get the bus when I have to go far.  But town is only 25ish minutes away.  Work is only 10.  I live up a big hill too, oh yes brighton has many hills, steep crazy hills.

So I walk lots, sometimes very far or several times a day.  Is this enough?   It seems not.

Not sure how a person like myself, inactive for the majority of my adult life is now supposed to be gradually more active, I don't have masses of sporty friends (damn me for not making friends with Jocks!  Not that we really have jocks here in the UK).

Anyway if any of you out there have any ideas on how I can do more exercise, do let me know - answers on a postcard or well here...

Tomorrow

When I was little (in terms of age not size) I loved Garfield.  He comforted me because he was always mocking diets and how he viewed himself.  Garfield's ideals of sleeping all day and eating nothing but lasagne did and still do appeal to me.

Last week was a bad week and I have eaten and drunk a lot of things that I have should not have.  I am so close at the moment to saying fuck it.  But then I have strange moments of catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror and thinking I should be bigger, my face is fleshier - isn't it?  Or I go shopping with my best friend who tells me that the size 16 dress I have tried on is too big (and around my bust of all places!!).

I am really bored and fed up of dieting, but I don't want to stay this size, despite the positive comments from the people I care about, I still feel fat.  I still feel huge.  I want the belly that I have always had to be flat and to know what that feels like.  So I am just gonna have to shut up with my whining and get on with it.

Back to Garfield, one of his funniest comments on dieting (in my opinion) is about when they are started...  Of course you will be thinking surely they always start on Monday - Garfield's most hated day of the week...  Actually most diets are started 'Tomorrow' (sadly though I can't find a link to it).

I am back on the wagon as of tomorrow :-)

Traineo

Today one of my friends invited me to be their motivator at Traineo which is something I hadn't come across before...  I had infact recently joined fatsecret but I think now I will stick with Traineo as it for me their pages are so much more user friendly and they use font I much prefer.  Fickle I know!  But they actually have a very good system of charts and recording your daily progress, in particular I like that you can also figure out how many calories you have burned doing a specifc activity.

Feeling a bit more positive today :-)