I forgot to mention that I've recently gone to war a bit on my diet. I've cut coffee out almost entirely now - and the one time I did cave and have a cup, I did so with sweeteners in lieu of my traditional four sugars. I'm now drinking mostly tea - without milk - with two sweeteners. As a result, my sugar and fat intake has gone down, and after getting over the initial post-NaNo caffeine withdrawals, I've started to feel a lot better.
Every morning, I've woken myself up with two chocolate Weetabix and a glass of pure fruit juice. Weetabix is packed with wholegrain and it's low in salt and fat, and a glass of pure fruit juice counts as one of your five a day. Cartons of said juice are really quite cheap from my local supermarket - between 60 and 80 pence, and one carton will last me three days.
For dinner, I usually have sandwiches. My problem here is I tend to go overboard on the margarine and cheese - so despite having tomatoes and lettuce on there, I'm taking in more fat than is probably sensible. Plus the cheese and margarine get used up stupidly quick. This is a problem that can be solved with moderation.
The killer, I think, is teatime. In our house, it's always been Dad who cooks the meals at teatime. And it's always been chips, with pizza or lasagne or pizza or processed meat rubbish or pizza. But this is the only thing my siblings, the buggers, will eat. Okay, so Nathan eats curry and spaghetti bolognese as well... but Ashley is the fussiest eater ever, in that he will only eat chips and pizza. Yet he is stick thin.
So, a lot of my fat intake happens at teatime, when Dad cooks fast foods. This needs to change, and that change needs to happen with Dad. Or with me; I could always start cooking my own tea. See, if Dad were to change his ways, then Nathan and Ashley would have to as well... and like I said, Ashley's a fussy eater. So the change probably has to be with me. Perhaps if I scoured the Internet for some cheap, healthy recipes...
There are two reasons for my sudden war on my diet. One: I don't want to get into my forties and then poof! I have a lifelong health condition because of my years of eating rubbish. Two: I want to lose weight, because I'm a size sixteen and there's no way I should be that big. I'm not huge, but I should be size fourteen at least, in jeans/trousers/whatever. Size twelve in tops, because I'm a odd-looking pear-shaped being from outer space.
One of the things I attribute my weight gain over the years to is the fact that Dad got a new car - which became The Toreador - when I was in Year 11, thus removing the need to walk to school like I had done every day for four years previous. I was pretty thin in Year 11; I could fit size 12 jeans, and that was after all the funny growing things had stopped happening.
What I need to do is start walking again, daily, just like I used to, come rain or shine. It doesn't matter if I just walk aimlessly - it won't be aimless, really; it's for the purpose of getting back in shape. At the same time, I can always take my camera out with me, snapping around Newton and all that. I still haven't used a single exposure of my colour film.
You do not need to starve yourself to diet successfully. Starving yourself, if anything, can increase the problem tenfold. Dieting is about targeting the problem areas with what you eat and your exercise regime, and then addressing those problems appropriately. And this is what I'm going to do.
