Fed Up

I changed clothes 4 times this morning before finally settling on an outfit that didn't make me look extra-wide (from the front, that is. I shudder to think what the rear view is like!). Granted, I can at least fit into my work pants - after Christmas I couldn't even get them on. So there has been improvement, to the tune of around 3kg or so. But still I'm fed up. I hate feeling uncomfortable. I'd like to feel attractive again, and get rid of those darned 20kg I picked up when I sat down at a desk job 10 years ago. Ok, so starting out I may have been a bit on the skinny side, but still. You try carrying a 20kg bag of potatoes around everywhere you go!

I've been told that an injection I've been on for years may be implicated. But I lost weight while on it previously. So I can't blame it. Unfortunately.

Perhaps I'm too fed up - literally. Not that I eat a lot. But I'm eating the wrong things. Like the piece of homemade fudge I'm currently snacking on. Not good! But on the very irrisistable side, I'm afraid.

I'm vegetarian, I know what I should be eating, I know how many servings of fresh foods I'm to get each day. And yet I'm in a major food rut. We live on pasta with tomato sauce and cheese, a few veg here and there (can't get green anything into the kid), and bread! My picky pre-teen is a pain when it comes to eating properly. Serve him a nicely balanced meal, and he'll eat up the potatoes, the protein - and then say he's too full for the veg! But dessert he has room for, and there's nothing to stop him delving into the freezer for ice-cream when I'm at work in the afternoons, and not telling me about it later. Nor snacking on sugary cereals by the handful while parked in front of the TV all holidays.

A talk-show on TV yesterday investigated how one can make huge differences in health, intelligence, concentration etc with a good diet. Supplements of nuts and seeds as snack, no sugar, no chemical additives (like colourants), plenty of fresh goods as near to just-harvested as possible etc. I KNOW what I'm supposed to be doing, what WE'RE supposed to be doing, but can't seem to do it. Heck, I have files full of info on what we should be doing, but that's where it stays.

On my limited salary we tend to go for things that cost little and last long - fruit and veg end up vrot (another good Afrikaans word for rotten, pronounced almost like "fraut") in the fridge if not used quickly, and although we buy them we sometimes neglect them until it's too late. The only thing we're eating a lot of is tomatoes - the garden is way, way overrun with them right now! (Anyone near Somerset West want a delivery of guaranteed-organic Roma tomatoes???)

Last night I fried up an onion in olive oil, a few cloves of garlic, a green pepper and TEN home-grown tomatoes, added olives and feta cheese and had that for supper with a slab of home-made focaccia. But could I get my son to touch it? No. He dug out leftover macaroni from lunch and ate that instead!

It's a big dilemma. I remember how it felt to be thin, fit and healthy. I want it back. I don't want to be embarrassed when I go try on new clothes to find that all my leg-lumps have shadows in the overhead lighting. I want to feel attractive again, and get noticed by those good-looking guys that frequent the mall, instead of averting my eyes and hoping they don't see me.

I know I need more exercise, and that the dogs would love a daily walk. I just can't seem to do it though. Especially with the sun getting up later and going to bed earlier as winter approaches. After work I'm exhausted, before work it's a rush to get going. And I need my sleep - extra-early mornings are not my thing.

I've even considered a one-month trial run of those "miracle" weight loss pills just to get going, but have heard they could completely and permanently wreck my health.

So I'm fed up. And ranting (where better to do it than on my blog?). And trying to work out what's stopping me from sorting my life out. Laziness? A sense that it's not going to work, so why try? Fear? Dunno. Something's gotta change, that's all.

::update::
I think I may have found a partial solution to the veggie/fruit problem. There was an ad in our local paper this weekend for a company that calls itself Gaia Organica (email link), and who does a weekly deliver of fresh organic seasonal produce to your home, directly from local farmers, for a very, very reasonable fee. They also deliver in the Cape Town area, so seem to have a good thing going.

Paying and getting fresh will motivate us to eat the stuff before the next box arrives, and find creative things to do with items we wouldn't normally buy. For instance, in the seller's words:

..."this week's R50 “basic pack” and an R80 “value pack” both have a variety of fruit and vegetables. The basic pack has about 6 items in it. This week’s basic pack as an example has a bunch of carrots, a lettuce pack, a couple of peppers, a kilo of sweet potatoes, a punnet of plums and a kilo of pears. The Value pack has the same as above, but with an added pack of apples, extra aubergene, spring onion, tomato, bunch of spinach and butternuts."

That's pretty good value for money!

I've offered to advertise on campus for them - think they'll give me a discount? :)