Christmas is coming, pick up a copy of my absolutely amazingly hilarious collection of Irish short stories as a stocking stuffer for yourself. Or as a gift for a friend. You can tell them you know the author!
For a Man or a Dog is available at your local Amazon site, in paperback & Kindle versions.
Okay, guilt is forcing me to back off the sales pitch a bit … being honest, I think that maybe one third of the stories are great, another third are decent & …
okay, let’s leave it at that! 😜😁
Click the Preview button below & skip through the Introduction to read the first story.
PS … Aside from the Irish shenanigans, you’ll get some interesting insights into where my dietary challenges might have originated too!
Now this isn’t so much the result of me dedicating myself to a highly focused dietary plan, it just kinda, sorta, maybe happened because I occasionally paid attention to what was passing my lips! I still ate cookies, cakes & candy during the past month, just not with the same degree of carelessness that I had been doing. Believe me, this past month was a big improvement on the three months prior!
What happened this past month is that I started trying to figure things out, again. How did I abandon something that was working reasonably well, while allowing me to eat really well at the same time? I’ve come up with a couple of suspects that might be contributing to the derailment. One is the lack of a gallbladder. I seem to be avoiding the fatty cuts of meat that were once a staple of my weigh loss efforts. I’m just not as in love with bacon & pork belly as I once was. I even trimmed the band of fat from a rib steak one night … what is wrong with me!?! Funny enough, while I’m avoiding all the fatty meat, the lack of a gallbladder is not stopping me heaping heavy cream over some decadent brownie dessert!
OMG … Am I turning vegetarian or something!?!
The other suspect is my routine, or rather the lack of one. I am a creature of habit & I like a good solid routine to help me get things done. I’ve made a few changes to what was a well-developed routine & I’ve had some other changes imposed on my schedule. I haven’t quite adapted to the new arrangement yet & I need to take a look at how to get that new routine bedded in properly. On top of that, I quit smoking about three or four dozen times over recent months. I’m not kidding, I’d quit for a day or two here & there, and then go back to smoking again. Another major routine disruptor. It’s important to disrupt bad patterns in order to lose weight, but I need to replace them with good, repetitive, habituated patterns to make the alternatives stick. Despite how I like to think of myself as this free-spirited & adventurous being, I still need to get stuff done, and routine, habits, & consistency are important for getting things done. Including weight loss!
I’m sorry, I went on a bit there. But that’s all really more a pep talk for myself, as I head into December … drooling about Christmas cake, Christmas pudding, that turkey & ham dinner, bubble & squeak afterwards, turkey sandwiches, chocolates, whipped cream with an infusion of Irish cream liqueur, & on it goes!
I know the January 1st weigh-in is going to be fun! Wish me luck!
And just in case my new routine doesn’t embrace another post between now & January, I’d like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas. And if you don’t celebrate Christmas, may whatever light that lights your way, shine more brightly for you as we close out the old year & look forward to a new one. Peace, love, happiness & all that nice mushy stuff to you & all those you hold dear!
We like to play with our thoughts, don’t we? By way of advice, to ourselves & others, we toss out trite little soundbites like … Hit Reset … Start fresh … Today is the Day! And so on. As though a few words might be the anchoring point for a whole new life. Some gurus tell us to dive headlong into huge endeavours, to explode our way through to a new existence. Perhaps we need to grab the bull by the horns, meet the challenge head-on, or jump in at the deep end. Less audacious leaders might suggest that we tackle things in a more serene fashion. They might recommend moving the mountain one pebble at a time, or beginning that thousand mile journey with a single step.
It’s all a crock! Isn’t it?
But then what do we do? Wallow in our own ineptitude? Feel sorry for ourselves? Learn from the past? Look forward to the future? Sometimes, we are told that we just need to kick our own ass. Or grab ourselves by the scruff of the neck. I’ve been down all those roads before. And here I am … celebrating another period of failure. Maybe I should see that as a “learning phase”? Hah!
I really enjoyed my pre-dawn coffee this morning. It was hot, thickened with heavy cream, & I can still taste the frothy crema on my lip. It was 18°C, with the gusty warm wind giving me a good excuse for sporting bedhead hair on the front porch! Of course I had three cigarettes with my coffee. Each puff a poke at my inability to stay the course on quitting smoking. Another reminder of my ability to excel at failure.
It’s fair to say that, from dietary & health perspectives anyway, I failed miserably over the past three months or so. Does that really matter? Does it really matter if it matters? Or not? So here I sit today, wondering what my next month’s result might be.
Mmmmm!?! I really do wonder what next month’s result will be? I think I’ll grab another coffee & hit the porch to mull that one over some more! Maybe, this time, I’ll come up with a strategy that works.
Fingers crossed! 🙂
By the way … this month’s result is up 16 lbs from when I last “officially” registered a weigh-in, on July 1st. Let me rephrase that … I am up 16 lbs from when I last “officially” registered a weigh-in, on July 1st.
Probably with an apology for being absent for the past couple or so months. I just lost my way & really, I have no idea why. I was working hard, doing what I normally do every day, & behaving normally for the most part. I made half a dozen attempts to quit smoking (all unsuccessful) during those months, something which generally hurts my dietary efforts, but that’s no excuse. Whatever the reasons, I just couldn’t hang in there this past little while.
I lost all interest in losing weight, I didn’t want to see a scale, I wanted to eat bread & cookies, I didn’t want to eat meat & fat, I certainly didn’t want to eat salad & veggies, & on it goes. I didn’t feel good about this state of mind. I was occasionally guilty, dejected, downtrodden & depressed but I couldn’t bring myself to do the right things when it came to eating well. Was it a mental thing? A physical thing? No clue!
I was at sea, without a motor, & couldn’t figure out where the paddles were. I abandoned all pretense of trying to lose weight, I gave up looking at the latest posts on forums, avoided chatting with my weight-loss friends, I stopped hunting down that latest bit of research. I just didn’t want to know.
And, of course, I gave up blogging!
But I’m back. The first post in a while. I hope this is an anchoring point for me to push forward from. And as I do, I’ll share some of the insanity of the past few months. I hope there’s something there I can learn from, as I do my rear-view mirror analysis of what might have happened along the way.
Now I’ve just got that leftover Chinese food to eat today. And that one last slice of cake. And there are those last few soft & chewy double chocolate chip cookies that nobody else likes. And was there an ice-cream sandwich in the freezer!?!
Then I’ll be back! 🙂
PS … I’d like to find the fortitude to jump on the scale come November 1st. I’m not going to like the result but … sometimes … I need a little stick along with all the carrots!
I was going to lie my way through last month’s results, in the hope that I could correct things this month! But what would be the point of that? Sometimes, shit happens. And shit really happened, big time, this month!
I thought I had oodles of excuses but I really can’t come up with anything that justifies what I did. Other than I’m human. And, sometimes, humans suck when it comes to adherence. And I just couldn’t adhere to the plan I had in place for when I couldn’t adhere to a good weight-loss strategy. What!?! Yeah, there’s a strategy for eating bad stuff. For those times when you just have had enough of eating good stuff all the time. For those times when you just need to be wicked. But I couldn’t even do that.
August felt like the last-of-the-summer-fling kind of month. I was drinking beer, cider & wine. I was eating fish, flesh & foul. There were some green choices in there too, lots of plant based stuff. Unfortunately, too many that had their origins with grain & starchy veggies! I sampled some excellent desserts throughout the month too. All in all, I probably ate more wheat during the past month, than I had in the past year. I ate more sugar in the past month, than I consumed in the six previous months. I definitely went on a potato binge. And now, as I write this, I can’t believe that I didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to squeeze in a slice or two of pizza along the way. Okay, now that I think on that one, I really should have wolfed back a whole pizza or two, eh!?! OMG … I might have to continue this nasty streak into September!
The summary of August is this … I was out of control. And I have no idea why. I read all my little tips & tricks for such occurrences. And then totally ignored the advice they offered.
Again … why!?!
Could it be that I kinda quit smoking!!!
Almost half way through the month, one morning I awakened to a bright & beautiful sunny welcome. Leaves & plants were all more effusively green. Birds were twittering with an extra zest of joy. The air was somehow cleaner & sweeter. It was one of those days where you are just glad to be alive. And you feel more alive because of it all. Have you felt that joy before? Do you know what I mean? I thought I’d like to have more days like that & I decided it was time to quit smoking. Again. I immediately made up my mind that I’d finish my pack today, & try quitting the following day.
I did. And then I immediately wanted a cigarette. I wondered if I could treat smoking like diet? Despite my “all or nothing” approach to many things, I think abandoning the requirement for perfection made things more bearable for my weight loss efforts. And, up until this month, it generally seemed to work well as a dietary approach. I was “kinda” dieting & it was “kinda” working. Could I “kinda” quit smoking too?
I kinda am. But it’s killing my diet!
Seems like I have to stuff something in my mouth, in lieu of cigarettes, & food is the go-to alternative. I could be screwed here. I wonder if a pacifier would work!?! (Tried later, it doesn’t!)
I will always be a smoker. I may occasionally manage to not smoke for a while but I will always want to smoke. And I will probably go back to smoking again, somewhere along the way. As I have so many times in the past. Or am I just making excuses to abandon my diet? Or to just go buy a pack of cigarettes?
I’ll muddle along through September & see what happens. I deliberately avoided the scale on the first of the month … I just didn’t want to know what damage I had done last month … but I need to get my act together & decide what I’m doing now. If I were forced to choose only one, I think I feel better at a lighter weight, than I do as a non-smoker. I know, I know, both should be done but what if I could only choose one!?!
Pity this isn’t following some Hollywood script guidelines & I’d already be skinny, blissfully smoke-free & loving it, while also running marathons!!! 🙂
The Wry Eye 