Pushing Boundaries

Well...the Xenical works.

I know this because, without being an idiot about it, I was interested in where the boundary of safe behaviour was. I think the boundary was lunch today - individual lasagne with two slivers of garlic bread. Given the cheese on the top and the garlic butter, the pills announced their presence mid-afternoon, but more with a nod across the battle lines than a full-scale assault. So that was useful to know.

Speaking of lunch, this blog is not in any sense 'Tony's handy hints to lose weight,' but one thing that has already helped me is making a change at lunchtime. Where I work, there's nothing doing in terms of choice of places to go for lunch in the locality, so if you don't bring your own, the downstairs canteen is the place to go. The first thing one of my colleagues told me when I arrived in the job five years ago was to set up an account with the canteen, and I've been using it the whole time. What that does is it stops you worrying about the price of things - which in Kensington is insanely dangerous. Not worrying about the price of things also of course has a secondary effect - you eat more. You have one of those, and one of these and one of those...oh and a couple of those...and by the end of the week you've spent £50. On lunch. And no, they haven't given you platinum sandwiches or anything, but you've really, truly, eaten all that money.

Since I started this experiment, I've been paying cash for my lunch. Which has meant I've spent less, and eaten less. It's a sledgehamer-subtle approach to calorific economics, but it seems to work.

I've also pretty much pushed through another boundary - having spoken to d about it on the weekend and added a five mile cycle on Sunday, I've started to formalise that relationship; one day, ten miles, next day, five miles. That means by the end of this week, I'll have ramped up from 30 cycled miles to 55, without particularly feeling like it's killing me.

Am feeling the urge to go sneak a peak at the scales, but am avoiding that because a) everyone, including me, says that's just stupid!, and b) at the moment, I feel positive. I realise I've only lost a handful of pounds, but I actually feel smaller - more focused, more able to achieve things (I've been feeling less sluggish in work too - Hell, watch this space next week, if I start walking up the several flights of stairs to my office, I might need hitting with a cricket bat). It feels like my brain is working better, and my creativity is sparking (had an idea for a whole short satirical story walking home tonight...). I don't want to slap a 2 by 4 of reality across that feeling right now, so even though every insidious whispering Nagini of doubt is nagging at me to go and do it...I'm not going to, so nehh, I'm pushing through the boundary of impulse-control too...

And after yesterday's love-fest, it strikes me that there's one more boundary I'm pushing through. When I started, I was so full of myself, with the 'It's just me and my stubbornness against the flab...' lark, but actually, when I look around me, there are so many of my friends and family who are doing this with me. d of course is the star, having lost her 2.5 stone before I even joined the party. But Mae's working to lose weight. Tig's working to lose weight. Even my mother is working to lose weight - she's doing Weight Watchers, and it's working for her. And everybody who's reading this is pretty much doing it with me, so it actually helps - it doesn't feel like it's just me and my 'bastard-stubbornness' any more, it feels as though we've pushed beyond that to 'doing it together,' so not doing my utmost would be letting you lot down. So, thanks for that, genuinely. It feels like spreading the load...
Ahem...no, really, that's not a Xenical gag.

Promise.