Experiments in Masochism

Well, so much for that. You remember the gardening I promised would be done this weekend?

Nnnnnnnnnnnotsomuch. Yeah, I'm heartbroken...

So, again, I was faced with the question of how to get some exercise into the day. Became particularly relevant because as it happened, I didn't do my cycling last night.

As is fairly usual, we waited in for a grocery delivery, but the day was so bright and blue that once they'd arrived and d had written her blog - seriously, go check it out, you'll be drooling - we went out for lunch. Humans being what they are, we saw the error of our ways pretty quickly and came scurrying back to our little cave. d got a cooking jag on, and I got a writing bug, so my novel - did I mention I'm a seriously untortured would-be novelist? - grew a few inches. While watching the - as it turned out, depressingly few - funny bits of last night's Comic Relief, d brought out a surprise she'd picked up while we were in town. A tub of caramel honeycomb ice-cream.

Ahem...

I got on the bike.

Ten fairly punishing miles later (note to self - never get on the bike when you really need to pee) - I got off, and d, bless her, took the ice-cream away.
"I trust you around it," she said, "but it's gone all soggy."

Ever tried to cycle ten miles while someone not only eats some gorgeous ice cream in the same room, but leaves most of it to go all soggy? Next time, I'm thinking of strapping forks to the handlebars and headbutting them on every mile marker.

I'd be lying if I said anything else of note had happened today. Been sat on my ass writing a comedy Armageddon most of the day. I suppose one thing is that I'm entirely failing to take my own advice - have been sneaking more and more peaks at the scales. None of which is remotely helpful. Woke me up at 5AM this morning, going "Oh Christ, I'm going the wrong way..." In case anyone other than me hasn't been listening - DON'T sneak peaks between weigh-ins, it'll just make you absolutely crazy. It's just another experiment in masochism, really.

While I'm on the subject, I read a feature piece at Yahoo! yesterday about how NOT to lose weight...which pretty much listed everything I'm doing as reprehensible, stupid and the absolutely wrongest way to go about things. Don't reduce your portion sizes, it said, you'll only get hungry and eat crap. Don't substitute ordinary snacks for healthy ones, it said - then came out with the most insulting piece of 'advice' I think I've ever read. It was giving calorific comparisons - eat one full-fat yoghurt instead of two low-fat ones, for instance, and it's something like ten calories less. Then it said 'eat a proper portion instead of a smaller portion - and the five chocolate Digestives that inevitably follow, because you're still hungry' - and you save fifty calories. Have you ever heard anything that appears to loathe its intended readers more than this? Why not add in the implied 'ya big fat weak-willed lardasss piece of scum'? The blithe assumption that people who are fat actually don't have the willpower to feel hungry and NOT dive into the chocolate Digestives really pissed me off - though maybe that had something to do with reading it yesterday, when chocolate Digestives were, as you might have noticed, rather strongly on my mind.

So experiment in masochism number three - reading advice from people who despise you. In the words of Baz Luhrmann - "Don't read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly."

This thing is hard enough to do, without punishing yourself unnecessarily.