JUST SAY NO TO THE S.S. CHLO!

I always swore that if I lost weight I wouldn't be one of those yo-yo dieters, that I wouldn't engage in the dreary old to and fro. Seeing as I don't actually follow a diet per se, I guess I'm not, but I put one and a half stone back on after losing 8 (and still having 3 or 4 to go) and I've been going up and down within that same 1.5 for about 10 months now. DULL! DULL! DULL!

I've been dabbling here and there with a run now and again, a bit of a walk here, some weights there, a dash of yoga to act for the cherry on top, and not committing to anything at all, especially not my health, fooling myself into believing I was still keeping myself fit. I've eaten more falafels and chips than anyone has a right to (although I think by law everyone should have at least two a week ... which probably explains a lot) and drunk enough booze to sink the Titanic (my backside would stand in for the iceberg)

It's time to pack it in.

I can't kid myself anymore. I'm approaching 40 and shit gets harder to shift as we get older. I'm not happy with it so I have to do something about it. Thusly, I am officially on the wagon for the next six weeks. I'm going to run at least once a day, add a proper weight regime to it so I can at least try to avoid too much saggy old skin, and learn a bit more yoga to add to my sun salutations. I'm not going to drink sugary drinks, eat any white processed carbs, and I'm going to remember why I enjoyed losing the weight in the first place. It wasn't because I wanted (or still want) to be Miss Skinny Minnie or wear a size 10 pair of jeans. I enjoyed losing the weight because I regained control of myself. I didn't look in the mirror and see an imminent heart attack staring back at me (that distinctive colour grey is one of the scariest things I've ever had the misfortune to see) and my brain works better. Much better. So much better. I can think straight and productively. My mental health improves beyond measure. It works for me and that's what matters. Until that bitch queen Self-Sabotage Chlo rears her mingey old head and whispers, oh so softly, "Nah, let's stay in bed. You can do that later. You're back hurts and your legs ache, have a little more sleepy" or "It's just one big fat greasy portion of lard, it won't hurt you, it'll make you feel better".

But it doesn't. SO THIS TIME I SAY NO TO THE S.S. CHLO! In your face, greedy boxes.

Let's go.

500 Words

I'm writing a novella. Or it might be a novel. It's all very "whatever happens happens". So, let me tell you what's happening - the glacial formation of sentences. GLACIAL. They're slipping out of my noggin like a spelunker stuck in a crevasse. 500 words today. 500 - now that's 200 more than Gerard Butler got playing Monopoly (I might mean Thermopylae, I'm all about the rhymes just like Ice T) so I'm not going to sniff at it because it's better than my brains dashed across the screen, but they've made my teeth ache and my back sore. I've also finally realised that my sketchy premise for how a character gets somewhere was ... well, it put the rhu in rhubarb, and for three hours today I sat and stared at my yellow legal pad and thought about how much of it I would have to ingest before I had a vision that would deliver me the solution ...

I didn't eat it. I'm fine. I did have an idea though. I'm going to take the hack out of hackneyed and use it like a bigot uses nonsense to prove their point - unashamedly. Because how she gets there doesn't really matter, it just has to not sound like total arse. That's progress and as long as I'm getting that shitty first draft down (thanks to the Prof for recommending Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird - it's already kicked my sorry grey matter into a higher gear) that's what matters.

So here's to 500 more today.