Food, footy and a weighty issue!

I was listening to or rather reading the BBC news sports page regarding the Transfer window and all the wheeling and dealing that was going on.  The topsy turviness of it all reminded me of being on a diet. The ups an downs, the rumours, the hints, the truths and the outright lies.  In the end, when the window closes you can physically see the results, ie. Joe cole left Chelsea and went to Liverpool, just as Yossi benayoun left Liverpool and went to Chelsea.  This was the case in many clubs in many divisions in many countries all across Europe. 

So, how does this compare to dieting?  I  was thinking that  when a diet is successful where does all the fat go? How much of it si transferred into muscle and how much of it is used in fuel. Whilst the transfer market is conducted in Pounds, players and Euros, the diet is conducted in food, fuel, fat waste. Measured in terms of calories etc.  I think the logic applied here is straight forward and can be quite scientific. We all know by now that a mars bar has more calories than a stick of  celery; however the psyche is not  necessarily so scientific and can be a hindrance or a help in the battle of the bulge.  In this mode one can wake up in the morning and feel awfully ‘fat’ and the feeling can prevail for the whole day or indeed days, but quite often can dissipate just as quickly as the feeling arrived.  Some people always feel fat despite having anorexic body proportions. The point I am really aiming at is that fat is relative to the individual.   It varies by gender, culture, social groups etc and the impact of the feeling of fatness manifests in the society to such an extent that there is room for a multi-billion pound diet and fitness industry.

Myself, I often feel fat but I like to think that it does not affect my personality or indeed how I view myself.  I do worry about it in terms of my health though. I participate in martial arts. Tae kwan do to be precise, and I love it. I have obtained a black tag belt, this is the level that my instructor refers to as black belt in waiting or indeed sometimes virtual black belts. Needless to say the grading was very hard. I knew it was going to be hard, and I practiced a lot with my friends as often as I could. Indeed in the run up to the grading I went to the class 3 times a week, and in the two weeks immediately prior to the class I  did the class 4 times a week. I don’t need to tell you that I was absolutely shattered by the end of it.  In the end, I  got the belt and i suddenly thought that it would have been a lot easier if I was not carrying so much weight. In fact when that thought came in my head, I did really begin to feel fat. Funny then that not long after this I was st with a group of colleagues who all seemed to be doing one diet or another and in the end, I decided that I was going to make a concerted effort to lose weight, I was not however willing to starve in the process. I then enrolled in Slimming world for the 3^rd time. ( yes I had done it before quite successfully in fact). I had to think long and hard about my motives and what I wanted to achieve. I then decided that I wanted to drop at least 2 dress sizes.  3 would be better, but I did decide that I was going to take it slowly and realise that the world and indeed my world was not going to stop just because I was dieting.

It was with this in mind that I was able to adopt the edict that it was a lifestyle change rather than a diet.  Indeed that was to prove to be the challenge the ‘lifestyle change’,  changing the habits of a lifetime, those habits that are often routed in tradition and culture. They are often very comforting too, evoking comments such as ‘just like mummy made, yummy, to die for’ and so on and so forth.

So I have been on this plan now  since April and I have lost 1 stone and 4 pounds. Nearly a dress size. I am still highly motivated but its getting harder I have to be honest. And so I will soldier on, I must however spare a thought for my long suffering hubby ( not so suffering really) but will have to put up with my experimental cooking and my incessant search for the fat and sugar free versions of everyday comfort foods like cakes.   I must say though that I do make up for it to him in that I am a footie fan and lover of most sports except golf and horse racing. So am sure you can guess the contents of this blog – yep you guessed...food and footie.