Living With An Eating Disorder - Part 1

I think in this modern age, the struggle with what we look like is a battle for more of us than society realises. There is an ever increasing responsibility and pressure put onto us to maintain whatever is fashionably deemed a healthy body image, and more focus in popular culture given to healthy lifestyle, food and diet and of course, looking good, than ever before. For some people, scientifically known as 'jammy gits', it's not an issue at all, and they instinctively know how to maintain a weight, size and lifestyle that's comfortable for them. For others, like myself, it's a constant worry. Whether too thin or too fat, I am just unable to maintain a comfortable physical existence without forever consciously being aware of how I live my life.

Okay, so crack the violins out I hear you cry. We all have to watch what we eat to make sure we don't balloon up or die of starvation. And I understand that there are more pressing things going on in the world at large - but, it's when these worries about body image, food and control becomes no longer a healthy consideration of lifestyle, but a routine and life dominating compulsion, that it becomes a problem, leading to ocd and issues regarding control, depression and anxiety and anorexia or overeating.

This is exactly what happened to me. At my heaviest I was 24 stone. I'm now weighing in at 11 and a half stone (or around there). My desire to lose weight and maintain a slimmer physique became a guilt inducing addiction. Skipping meals, calory counting, constantly worrying about every single thing that passed my lips; becoming increasingly irate with friends and family, frantically pacing around the streets in an effort to burn those few extra calories, eating identical and scrupulously measured meals day in and day out, feeling a real sense of guilt and self loathing for sneaking in an extra piece of fruit during the day... Sounds ridiculous, and whilst I knew in my own mind at the time what I was doing to myself and how illogical my attitude towards my diet was, I just couldn't shake these compulsions. Guilt at consuming anything I enjoyed caused me to feel physically sick moments later, and the incessant worrying meant I was always mentally as well as physically drained. I'm currently working my way back into full time employment after having some time off, and whilst things are definitely improving, I still constantly have a guilt and worry and consideration to all things meal time related. And it's exhausting.

Whilst that all sounds doom and gloom, I know for definite that things are improving. I feel healthier, look healthier, and have made a real effort to battle against some of the underlying causes of my ocd and eating issues. This is in no small part down to the amazing people at work and home that have helped me through these difficult times. My parents and family have really been there both financially, emotionally and by giving up many hours of their time to answer irrational phone calls when I've been feeling at my worst, or ferrying me to and from a multitude of varying appointments with GPs, psychologists and dieticians.

It is still a struggle, though not anywhere near as bad as it was at my worst. I'm learning, if not to be completely carefree and unbound from my new habbits, to work around my compulsions in such a way so that they're not longer dominating my existence. My weight seems to have levelled out now within my healthy recommended BMI range, and my mood has elevated from a time where most days were spent with a real sense of self loathing, failure and worthlessness throughout, to feeling positive about life more than half of the time.

This morning I had what felt like an especially helpful doctors appointment, where I talked to a doctor I hadn't seen before. It was refreshing to talk to a new face in person, and, whilst my previous doctors have done their utmost to be as helpful as possible, it just felt like this new doctor had more wisdom and insight into the issues I've been working against. We discussed my progress and how to continue in this upward direction, and the plan is to continue taking my current dose of anti-depressants, continue working through an online 'Cognitive Behavior Therapy' course set by Birmingham Healthy Minds, and keep seeing my psychologist, seeing how things are in about a month.

With my improved mood and new found direction, has come with it the inspiration to share my experiences via this blog. I hope it will ultimately help both myself and others to understand how someone as apparently happy and content as I was, can be affected by something as simple as the food they eat.

In the next few entries, I'll be detailing both my rise and fall in an effort to help myself understand what was going on in my head, and to maybe help other's that may be dealing with similar situations. If there's anything I've learned from my experiences, it's that everyone has their shit, and we shouldn't be afraid to share our experiences, or to ask for and offer help.

So first, the beginning...

http://abbott56.blogspot.com/2015/08/my-struggles-with-weight-loss-and.html

East Midlands Chilli, Artisan and Beer Festival

We only visited the East Midlands chilli, artisan and beer festival on the second day of the mini festival weekend. It very much felt like the second day - the weather was a little moist and the general crowd seemed to very much be recovering from the night's previous antics. But we'd attended the festival not for the music really, but for the chillies. And on that front I was not disappointed! 

There was a massive variety of stalls selling plants, sauces, chutneys, food, booze, nibbles etc, which was great for me. I invested in a large quantity of sauces, all of which were available for tasting before purchase. And though I didn't partake in any of the food on offer, there was a great variety for meat lovers - grilled meats, paella, chilli themed dishes, ice cream, but my veggie sister only found a vegetable pie to tempt her tastebuds. 

So, I got what I went for - a pleasant day out with the big sis, lots of chilli sauce and some chilli plants. It would've been nice to have more music on for the time we were there, maybe more smaller acoustic stages instead of one big music tent. I also think they could've made more of the craft element of the festival, as while chilli, food and plant stands were frequent, the few craft stalls that were there felt a little out of place. 

In all, I'd recommend this kind of event for any chilli lovers, but if you're after a bit of a party, make sure to go for the first day and maybe sleep over.

#StarWars - Darth Bane - Dynasty of Evil

This is the third book in the trilogy telling the story of Darth Bane, and is an appropriately epic conclusion to the Dark Lord's rise to power and tutelage of his apprentice, Darth Zannah, whom he discovers at the end of book two.
Drew Karpyshyn once again crafts several stories interwoven expertly, always maintaining my interest yet being accessible enough to put down and come back to a few weeks later. He makes not overly frequent reference to the stories that have come before in Darth Bane's history, and it always feels that he commands a great knowledge of the wider Star Wars universe and has a great love of it.
The conclusion is where this story for me really shines though, and the last few chapters are extremely fast paced, culminating in an epic fight scene with great description of the action throughout, from the prowess of the lightsaber sections to the intense terror of dark side sorcery.

As per usual I don't wish to spoil the story for anyone, but I thoroughly recommend this trilogy of Star Wars novels to anyone with an interest in Star Wars, particularly The Old Republic. Darth Bane is a character that, becomes steadily more evil throughout the 3 books, yet I never found myself not supporting him. We've come a long way together since the days of being a minor on Apatros.

I'm saddened that I've now finished all the novels before the movies are set, and am either rereading some or moving onto The Rise Of The Empire, though the story ends on something of a cliffhanger, so here's hoping some more titles as well written as these 3 come along to bridge the gap.

#HealthyLiiving & #Weightloss update (14 months)

Roughly a month since my last post I wanted to post about how things have been going. It's been a very hard month on the healthy eating front, but as of my latest weigh in I'm 13 stone dead, an 11 stone total loss since I started consciously trying to improve my lifestyle.

I'd been feeling a little weak from time to time, especially mid mornings at work, and I thought this was due to me being anaemic, being that for a long time my main food stuffs was indeed salad. I started taking a couple of extra vitamins, added a low cal protein mix to my porridge and decided to see a doctor to make sure it wasn't anything serious and to get some advice. 

I'd also been getting a bit down about things, for no real reason - life has been bloody good of late. Work is same old but it finally seems to be going places - love life is going really well with someone I really like and I'm still trying to be sociable when I can. I'm normally such a happy chappy, even when life doesn't want me to be, so I wanted to ask the quack about this also, and with all of the above he suggested a blood test and to come back and have another chat.

Well, bloods came back extremely positive, levels of good stuff normal, and levels of bad stuff low - including one of the lowest cholesterol levels the doc had ever seen (his words!). So that wasn't it.

Got to talking with the doc and he said that I was currently at an ideal weight and expressed a little concern for my eating attitude - I mentioned that straying even slightly from the diet was making me feel incredibly guilty, and generally quite down. I'm not particularly good about talking about this stuff, hence the blog, but he was very helpful.

To avoid developing a full blown disorder, doc recommended an app called My Fitness Pal which has been mentioned by some of you before, and doing some calorie counting as I was definitely eating under my recommended allowance of calories still every day. I had previously avoided calorie counting for fear of becoming obsessed, but seeing as that seemed to have happened anyway I thought I'd take his advice and downloaded it.

It is a brilliant way of tracking what you eat - I particularly love the barcode scanner which automatically shows you nutrients and content for most products - actually I'm yet to find one that doesn't work! I also recently cooked a meal out of The Hairy Dieter's cookbook (Turkey chilli with cauliflower rice) and was able to google the recipe, find a link online and for the app to find all of the ingredients for me, allowing me to accurately track everything instead of just calories! Brilliant feature. It also works with your iPhones pedometer adjusting calorie allowance accordingly.

So far I'm still having trouble meeting my ideal calorie intake, and still dislike any form of treat because of how it makes me feel guilty - but using the app seems to have made my diet at least more varied, which I feel is helping me feel better as a result. I'll keep tracking away and go back to see the doc in a week or so just to see what he says. 

I have found I eat mainly carbs and a lot of sugar, but most of this comes from the sheer volume of fruit and veg I eat, so I wasn't too concerned about this yet. I'm just glad I'm feeling better! 

I'll check in again after another week or so of logging in with MFP and another catch up with the doctor. Thanks for reading again, any thoughts or what have you, feel free to share ☺️

Normal breakfast these days - grapes and blueberries are hidden under bananas, chocolate protein porridge and a fat free yoghurt. 

Just to add I've recently done some more clothes shopping - now a 34" waist after being something like a 54" at my biggest. Win! 

#NewNintendo3DS First Impressions

I'm sorry to those that didn't and wanted one, but I was one of the lucky few to receive a Nintendo Ambassador promotional offer for an exclusive edition of the new Nintendo 3DS console. On the morning I received the email I shrugged it off, tweeting about no one having £180 spare just after christmas. By lunch time I'd ordered it, and by the following day it'd been dispatched. (I have no Nintendo self control). After some problems with the courier, I finally got to play with my new 3DS today and thought I'd share some of my first thoughts in a blog post, so as to stop gushing over the device in my twitter feed. 

The pack was £179 and comes with a limited edition boxed console, with a white charging cradle (but no AC adaptor) and 2 limited edition face plates, one an ambassador design and another a Smash Bros design. It also comes with a 4GB micro SD (easily upgradable by removing the lower face plate). Upon opening it it just felt very special - it was extremely well packaged and even the box felt of high quality. 





Transferring content over was a breeze and it now gives the option to send all content on the SD card via local transfer too (though depending on how much you play downloadable titles this will likely take a while. Best to keep swapping the charger over). 

In addition, whilst some folk are wanting to hold off for an XL version, I personally love the smaller size! The screens are bigger than the original 3DS screens and don't feel an awful lot smaller to me than my old XL. The machine is also much lighter, and I just think it makes sense to have a portable console that is actually portable. 

The unit itself feels much sturdier than my Zelda XL by comparison. The screen locks firmly in place when open and the buttons feel chunky, despite the smaller size and lightness. It looks good too, the SNES style buttons an ace inclusion for Nintendo nostalgia fans like myself. The face plates are easier to change than I suspected too, despite needing a small screwdriver to do so. And thank the video game god that they've seen fit to move some of the ports/buttons. The start and select buttons are now 2 small circles on the front of the machine, with a stylish circular home button replacing the old rectangular affair. The headphone jack has been moved (finally) to the middle of the console so the jack no longer gets in the way when you're playing with headphones. The volume control has also been moved to the top screen, the opposite side to the 3D slider, so it no longer gets knocked during play. The pointless wifi switch has been removed completely and the power button is now a small circle on the underside of the machine, sitting near to the newly located game card slot. All of these tweaks make for a much more pleasurable on-the-go gaming experience

Moreover, the quality of the screen is ace. It may possibly look like that to me because of the smaller size, but the 3D has also been reworked, making it less picky about where your head is. The effect is more eye popping more of the time. I found this to look especially effective in the Denpa Men 2 - battles look brilliant and so vibrant. I also approve of the auto-brightness addition. 

I've been playing Pokemon Y on it mainly today, which looks excellent on the device, but I still noticed some lag with the 3D switched on during battles with extra visual effects like floating leaves etc. I thought the increased performance of the new device would sort this but maybe it's just a quirk of the software. I look forward to playing some of the titles that will only work on this revised version of the 3DS hardware (role on Xenoblade!) to see what it can really do. 

The menu is much quicker, as is accessing network features - I haven't downloaded any eShop titles on the new device yet (there's nothing I fancy currently) but I'll edit when I have - I imagine they'll be an improvement on download time too. 

In all then, I'm impressed and feel it's money well spent for a collectible limited run console (well, the face plate is...) slightly ahead of schedule. I'll no doubt be persuaded to buy a new XL as well when the inevitable run of ltd consoles start coming through, but that's for another day and another credit card. 

#WeightLossUpdate 13 months on.

The diet has been going now for roughly 13 or so months. My previous blog on my weight loss challenge I worked out I started out back then at about 24 stone before making a conscious effort to improve both my health and appearance.

In the colder months it has been more difficult remaining disciplined in what I've been choosing to eat. It's winter; it's soon to be Christmas - all you want to do is eat rich, fattening comfort foods and treats, punctuated with sweet mulled wines and ciders. 

I think the reason I'm able to continue is that I've not cut out any food group completely at all - I just avoid a carb heavy diet, but do eat some rather than going full Atkins, making healthier substitutions where I can (I don't eat any bread though as I just enjoy it too much - pretty sure 1 slice would quickly escalate into 1 million loaves,). I still drink - but avoid beers and ciders replacing them with whisky, gin and other shorts with diet mixers. 

In fact I did have to up my food intake slightly, after having a couple of days at work where I felt incredibly faint throughout the day - I've upped my breakfast to include 40g of porridge, a fat free yoghurt and some grapes along with my trusty banana. I haven't gained any weight from doing this - quite the opposite - and I find I have much more energy in the day. 

I have upped my weight lifting, doing 2 sessions a day instead of 1. This was because with the cold nights drawing in I've stopped walking home from work but wanted to maintain my exercise. I'm thinking about taking up swimming as well to make sure I keep my legs active. 

My lunch is the same - 40g wholewheat pasta and veg, and then my main meal is often but not exclusively salad based. I just happen to really enjoy my salad! I'm trying to eat earlier of an evening as well, doing my second set of weights after tea to work through some of those calories. 

This seems to be working so far, and at my most recent weigh in I was at 13St & 12lb. Just over a 10St loss in total. Not too shabby. 

It's definitely nice having people notice the improvement, and I definitely feel better. I recently registered at our local doctors and had my first ever good blood pressure reading. 

After:

Before:

These blogs are just for me really as a bit of a journal, but feel free to comment with any thoughts or questions. Thanks for reading. 

Playing #FantasyLife Vs Living #RealLife

Hello to the farthest corners of the internet. In true tradition, I'll begin my post with the words "It's been a while since my last post". This is mainly to a lack of time to dedicate to my usual hobbies - gaming time has been either hard to come by or I've simply not been in the mood. Other than that I've been quite busy socially and at work. This then is a purely selfish post then, just as an update for nobody about how life is going.

I'm typing this with a cup of Christmas tea I purchased from a health food store in Moseley, with the latest episode of the Walking Dead on in the background. The tea is quite brilliant and is pure Christmas in beverage form. As for the Walking Dead, the episodes seem a bit slow currently, but when they're good they're very good. I'll of course be sticking with it.

This has been my birthday weekend. I'm 27 years young. Time to start figuring out what I want from life presumably? Though I seem to say that every year. I was bought some lovely things, including some rather trendy (and smaller in size) coats, some whiskey and the Saboteur card game among others.

I tried to arrange an all-encompassing night out on Friday, with colleagues and friends at a pub and a club, in an attempt to entice everybody out for at least some of the evening. This seemed to work, and I had an ace evening with some lovely people. For those who wanted to party in town, we went to Levana in Birmingham's Arcadian and despite it not being my usual kind of scene, had an excellent time. The teacher I work with had arranged with her boyfriend (who runs the Friday night) to get us a booth with a big ice bucket full of a variety of alcohols. They placed a giant sparkler in the top, and decorated with a Birthday Princess balloon and gifted me a Birthday Girl badge. Definitely one of the girls at work it would seem...

My friends were surprised when I met the rather lovely lady I've been seeing there, and proceeded to give me (and possibly her when I wasn't looking) ALL of the relationship advice. I'm glad some of my friends have met her now though, and they were extremely supportive in their own drunkenly gushing ways. I do feel very lucky and quite the content and happy bean. After getting home Saturday I went for a recovery carvery with my dear mother and perused the Christmas display at Melbicks garden center. I do love Christmas and all of it's associated tat. Saturday evening I went out with the lads, and consumed far too much Jack Daniels. It was good fun to see them and have a catch up.

As well as tuning another year older, my birthday was also the day I reached another weight loss milestone. The goal of 15 stone I'd set for myself to teach by the end of 2014 I have passed by 1 pound. That means a total loss now of approximately 9 stone! Because a lot of my exercise compromises of weights, I seem to have avoided the strange excess skin problem as well, and am slowly but surely toning up and becoming more shapely. The only downside to this progress is the expense - having to replace with new clothes is quite costly - thank God for George at ASDA, without whom I would be very naked a lot of the time... You can see some of what I chucked out below.

In the world of gaming, I've not really been playing a massive amount. I bought Fantasy Life for the 3DS which has had most of my time when I've gamed at all. It's really enjoyable, if a little repetitive at times. It's a very attractive game and I enjoy the mix of life sim and RPG, much like Rune Factory was on the DS. I think when we get our Rune Factory 4 release on the eShop that'll surpass for me the charms of Fantasy Life, with a slightly more mature art style and more focus on the combat and RPG elements. I keep meaning to go back and finish some titles I've started. Kingdoms of Amalur, Deus Ex, Mass Effect 3, but just can't seem to get into anything.

In music I actually wrote an entire song from start to finish. I do have a habit of half starting something and never finding the time or inspiration to finish it, so I was very pleased with myself. I will find some time to do a demo to share with the world at some point. I also recently upgraded my phone contract so that it now includes Spotify. I just can't remember a time without it now - It's such a brilliant way of finding and listening to such a wide range of music, and I've discovered loads of new bands. Whilst quality will never be on a par with CD/Vinyl, unless you have the ears and the money (my ears are alright, but I definitely can't afford the highest quality speakers and headphones) then the quality is just fine. Finally, I went to see the Antlers and the Oobleck at Birmingham's custard factory. It was an excellent gig with Marika Hackman supporting. Both were incredibly beautiful. Between Spotify and a newly discovered app Songkick, I've found lots of gigs I'd like to go to. I forgot how much I enjoy going to hear live music.

Before I sign off, I thought I'd mention my dearest papa, who the other week ran the Great Birmingham Run (a half marathon (13.1 miles)) in 2 hours 8 minutes and some seconds in aid of Asbestos support UK. He's raised over £500 for the charity. You can see his page here: http://m.virginmoneygiving.com/mt/uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserPage.action?userUrl=DavidAbbott6&faId=500566&isTeam=false

Anyway, I can't think of much else to say. Feel free to comment and what have you, even to just make conversation. I hope you're well and loving life :-)

#MyWeightLossSoFar

For those of you that have read my blog or twitter feed before, you might know that I've been trying to improve my lifestyle and get healthy. When I started that was my goal, not focussing on weight loss in particular, but just trying to make sensible decisions with regards to diet and life, hopefully making myself less prone to horrible, nasty illnesses resulting from being unhealthy.

Todays society seems to be moving slowly, bit by bit towards the scenario displayed on the Pixar film Wall-E, with lots of very large people moving around in hover chairs, because they simply do not have the need to exercise anymore. Except we don't have hover chairs yet. Or funky robots (just because I want a funky robot). This means we get all the bad stuff, with no cool technological advancement as a trade off. Unfair.

Junk foods are quick, cheap and accessible everywhere, where as healthy alternatives are often more time consuming to prepare, definitely more expensive and not nearly as easy to come by when out and about. I don't blame the companies - demand met with supply is all that has occurred to allow these chains to flourish.

It is down to us as individuals to begin making good decisions, hopefully culminating in an eruption of healthy food venders filling our towns, taking the mantle from the current deep frying champions. A man on a healthy mission can dream, right? Unfortunately, up until about a year ago my choices regarding diet, exercise and ultimately life were quite poor. I had gone through phases of gym and dieting but nothing had really stuck, probably because I'd never been too bothered. I was just the cuddly one, right?

But my then girlfriend began doing weight-watchers, and I tried to improve my choices in an effort to spur her on as well as improve my appearance. We broke up in January this year, and it turns out, for me at least, heartache is a great motivator. Since then it's become almost a hobby trying to improve my physique and maintaining a healthy diet.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not skinny by any stretch of the imagination, and I will be maintaining my diet for a while longer as I would still like to lose a bit more. But after the six weeks holiday, I went back to the school I work at and was reintroduced to the staff as a new face because of the apparently drastic change in my appearance. I'm sure it's more of an illusion after having six weeks off, and spending a little money on smaller clothes that fit better, but it's still nice (if incredibly embarrassing) to have my efforts recognised.

Some old trousers. 

Many people have been asking me about my secret, being sure that I've found some miraculous cure for obesity. Unfortunately not. For me what has worked is incredibly dull; turns out what the doctors say is actually true. Diet and exercise. My mum, adamant that what I'm doing will be the next fad diet, tells me to write a book. I don't want to meet the people that would want to read a book I've written, and anyway I can't be bothered. But I thought a blog would maybe be enough, even if it's only for me to document what I've been up to.

Sadly, I didn't weigh in at the start of my healthy spurt. Household scales wouldn't read how heavy I was and it was just too depressing at the time to find out. However, at one point last year I had tried to use a WiiFit balance board, and a quick google tells me that the max weight one of these would read is just short of 23.6 stone (330 pounds). At my most recent weigh in I was approximately 16.7. Almost seven stone give or take, so I must be doing something right.

One of my old belts around my new middle. 

I've become gradually more strict on the foods I eat and the things I drink, and gradually upped the amount of exercise I've been doing, starting simply with walking home from work but progressing now to short periods of jogging and doing weights at home.

I no longer eat any sweet things pretty much, I cut out bread completely (my biggest vice), restricted my alcohol intake to spirits and diet mixers (thank-you Jack Daniels), I've begun to use skinny milk on cereals should the overwhelming urge for a snack arise, and I swapped any sugar I may have used for sweetener in coffee and cereal etc.

I did not cut out carbs completely, as I was aware whilst my weight loss may be rapid, the minute I even smelled a carb I would put weight back on quickly. Instead I just try and make smart choices as to what I have, and make sure it's a sensible amount. It's always new potatoes instead of chips, or sweet potato instead of a jacket. I also always have Weight Watchers yoghurts and Alpen 70cal bars in to have as treats, which work brilliantly at satisfying cravings.

I also try and have the same thing daily for both breakfast and lunch. For breakfast it's a banana, and lunch time is currently 30g (uncooked weight) of pasta (originally 60g when I started) with roasted vegetables, namely carrots, peppers and mushrooms or courgettes.

And that's it really. Like I said, it has become a sort of hobby and I'm enjoying making these decisions and the conscious effort to resist certain foods and get in my exercise. I'm trying to muscle up a bit more too, making good progress doing varying sets using dumbbells at home.

My first set of Dumbbells.

There is a downside however - it's been bloody expensive! Having to buy new clothes quite often became a real problem, and I'm incredibly grateful for my interest-free-for-18-months credit card funding my weight loss habit. Now I've shrunk a bit, I can buy clothes from less expensive places now, so it shouldn't hurt the bank balance quite so much moving forward. 

Thank-you for reading this far, if you did. Again, this has been another selfish blog, but if what I've done works for someone else or spurs somebody on then it's been worth it. Feel free to ask me anything in the comments if you'd like to know more or offer constructive criticism.