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Birthday

Birthday - rockstardinosaurpirateprincess.com

My birthday this year made me feel profoudly grateful for my wonderful friends - new and old - who sent me cards and gifts, or drew awesome pictures, or sent me messages or sang songs to my voicemail. It all reminds me that I’m not alone, that people understand me, that people are thinking of me and care. As someone who suffers from anxiety and has struggled with depression in the past that is an incredibly powerful feeling.

I tend to see birthdays as basically an an excuse to take days off work to do absolutely nothing and act ridiculously. Well, ok, I often act ridiculously but birthdays allow you to act ridiculously without the added side-eye that you get when you’re nearly 40 and acting ridiculously on a day to day basis. Birthdays are a free pass for excessive cake eating, lie-ins, duvet fort huddling, staying-up-all-nighting and it’s a great way to get people to play silly games with you.

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10 Comments Me Me Me, Sugar

Epilogues and New Adventures

Just as my last post of my booze-free year was posted appropriately on New Year’s Eve, the first post of my new year is on the anniversary of my first ever post; where I stated my intentions for the year. My list was small, but ambitious.

I wanted to learn to sew, to learn British Sign Language, to write regularly and to see if I could ultimately go a whole year without alcohol. I’ve never stuck with any new year’s resolutions before, let alone four.

When I embarked on this scheme I had no idea where this journey would take me. I hoped perhaps I’d develop some writing skills, learn creativity, deal with a few fears, have fewer hangovers, reset my relationship with drinking so that I could go out and just have one.

As I stood on the bank of the pond at midday on New Year’s day, preparing to get into 4 degree water, replaying my year in my head and reflecting on all that has been in 2014, I was almost overwhelmed with emotion.

It is astounding to me to have reached 2015 and not only managed all four resolutions, but to have developed a self-confidence in both my body and mind that I never knew was possible, to have not only been seen in public in a swimming costume but swum regularly in unheated water. I went to a club in a skintight playsuit. I went to weddings sober. I went for 6 weeks without any sugar at all. I chatted someone up stone cold sober. I’ve said “yes” to things that terrified me, pushed myself and faced uncomfortable home truths head on. I’ve passed my level 1 BSL and am well into Level 2 - although I am finding it hard and still struggle with my putting-things-off habit. I’ve ended a relationship whilst maintaining a friendship. I’ve moved house 3 times. I’ve had surgery that meant I could breathe properly for the first time for as long as I can remember. Menthol is one hell of an intense experience now. And I’ve written publicly about subjects important to me - putting my voice out there in a year where the extent of threats against women with opinions became visible to the public in an unprecedented way. This was perhaps one of the scariest things of all (and I will admit that there are some subjects I’ve stayed away from for fear of reprisal) and at times harder than not drinking.

I’ve explained the appeal of cold water swimming to those who think I am absolutely crazy thus: It’s a rush. A rush of absolute intensity. Even if you’ve been carefully acclimatising all year and having cold showers and regularly getting into cold water (much to the bemusement of my family, when I insisted in going in the sea while visiting over Christmas) it’s still a shock to the system. There’s a brief moment where nothing exists in the world - just you, floating, breathing, moving. You can’t speak or think, you just instinctively move forwards. For someone who’s often struggled with having *too many* thoughts going around in her head, a moment of absolute cold blankness is a moment of ice cold clarity and perfection. Once your senses return to you you then have the challenge of trying to swim that *little* bit further than you did last time. You aren’t competing with anyone else - just you, your own body, and nature. It’s been a revelation - to go from someone who wouldn’t swim in case other people were horrified by the sight of my thighs to posting pictures of myself on the internet in a swimming costume and googling for local swimming lessons.

As I climbed out of the water one of the ladies handed me a small cup of mulled wine. My swimming companions gathered around to witness my first drink. They gave me a little round of applause, and we all had a big hug and a jump around going “GO US! WE DID IT!” then realised we were fucking freezing and should probably, you know, put some clothes on.

The drink was ok. The experience of drinking it paled into comparison next to me swimming in 4 degree water. The mulled wine tasted…ok. It was underwhelming. It made me feel a bit sick. Suddenly giving up alcohol seemed less of an achievement compared to the swimming. My mind went back to a conversation with a friend at the New Year’s Eve party I’d attended where I’d made a comment without really thinking about it about my future not drinking. My friend and I both paused - realising what I’d said. “So, you’ve decided?” she asked. “I didn’t think I had” I replied, “But I guess subconsciously I already have.” I am not going to do another booze free year though. I know what it feels like to be a non drinker through stubborn bloody mindedness and a resolution. Now I want to find out what it means to be a non drinker through choice.

So, looking forward to 2015, what do I want to achieve? It worked for me last year, stating my intention and checking in regularly in public. So let’s give it a go.

  • To keep writing weekly, and be braver in discussing issues important to me.
  • To explore life as a non drinker. Not because I’m doing a year long experiment, but because I think life might genuinely be better.
  • To get swimming lessons so I can swim further and faster and with more confidence - and to keep up the wild and all-year-round swimming
  • To save money. I am absolutely hopeless with money - unlike probably anyone else who has ever given up alcohol I am no better off, I just have More Stuff. I have a savings account with £0 in it. By the end of the year I want that to either have an actual balance or to have some holiday photos to show for it.
  • To cut out sugar. Again. I’ve not only fallen off the sugar wagon over Christmas - I fell off it into a sugar lake full of sugar fish singing sugar songs about how delicious sugar is. I felt great when I wasn’t eating it compulsively, and it’s terrifying how quickly the habit creeps back in.
  • I want to be more active in campaigning; for safer cycling and for safe access to public spaces (and that includes the internet. It’s still a public space, albeit a virtual one.) for women.
  • And, my old adversary, my Achilles heel and albatross. That sewing business. My sewing machine phobia is banished so there’s no more excuse. I need to get a sewing machine and just get on with it.

Wish me luck. 2015? Bring it on.

 

 

4 Comments feminism, Me Me Me, Sugar, The List

Facehooked

As the year draws to an end I am starting to think about what my next challenge could be. Something new I can take up, perhaps. Or something old I can give up. The giving up alcohol has gone excellently - 355 days with no alcohol (so far). The giving up sugar less well; I am very much back on the sugar train but I am not eating anywhere near the level of sugar as before, and am making significantly better choices about my diet. Apart from today where I had two slices of cake. Or Friday when I pretty much ate Cadbury’s Roses all day. But it’s Christmas and everyone knows things like this don’t matter at Christmas, right?

When a large number of my friends suddenly started disappearing from Facebook, and people whose names I didn’t recognise started popping up, all victims of Facebook’s sudden and strict enforcement of their ‘real name’ policy, I got annoyed. Many of my friends don’t use their ‘real’/’given’/’birth’ name on Facebook. Some because they are social workers and don’t want to be found by families they work with. Some because they are teachers and don’t want to be found by the children they teach. A few have different names because they have obsessive and/or violent ex partners or family members from whom they are hiding. Many just have ordinary jobs and no particular need to hide but want to keep their personal and professional life entirely separate, because, you know, that’s a perfectly normal thing that lots of people like to do.

I suspect though that the main reason for most of my friends having a different name is because they’ve all been on the internet since the early days of the world wide web. Handles were chosen on IRC and usenet. The same handles transferred over to LiveJournal and MySpace. The names stuck. We’d all already been using the internet as our social glue for years before Facebook came along and made being friends on the internet a mass mainstream thing. My friends being mainly a big bunch of geeky goths, the internet gave us a way to make friends and social connections like never before. The vast majority of the friendships I have now were forged via the net - perhaps we met in person but the relationship largely developed and deepened online. LiveJournal was, for me, at times, quite literally a lifeline between me and the world - when I was stricken with agoraphobia and unable to leave the house it was a connection to friends - real friends - and a connection to feeling like I could live a normal life. Developing friendships in this way meant that in my friendship group a person’s internet name was in fact their real name. I have friends I have known for 20 years that I couldn’t tell you their surname. Some I couldn’t even tell you their first name.

So one by one all members of my little alternative corner (all people vanishing appear to be linked by at some point being part of the London goth scene) disappear from the internet and reappear as strangers. Angry strangers, being forced to use a name that they don’t identify with - a name they might only ever use on their passport or bank account. A name that none of their friends know them by. But Facebook has decided that the name that everyone knows them by isn’t good enough. It’s not a ‘real’ name.

Facebook’s policy states

“The name you use should be your authentic identity; as your friends call you in real life and as our acceptable identification forms would show.”

And here lies the key problem. For many of my friends, what their friends call them in real life is not the name on these “acceptable identification forms”. Not because they have a “lack of integrity”, as believed by the creator of Facebook, but simply because that’s how things are; for people in alternative cultures, for those of us who formed our friendships in the early days of the net, for people who just like to have professional and personal separate.

I was upset and frustrated at seeing my friends have their identities taken away from them by a social network - but the deeper anger came from what I consider to be the transparent and abhorrent reason behind it: commerce. There’s no secret that Facebook is not the product. WE are the product. That’s why Facebook is free for us to use. We are a delicious data seam, rich for mining and selling to the highest bidder. Our tasty data, however, is flawed when they can’t sell real and identifiable people. We’re worth more when the buyer can be absolutely sure that they are going to be able to use the data to sell other stuff back to us, or track our every move. With everyone called Ian Spartacus, FairyFairy QuiteContrary and Cucumber Skimblepatch the data is worth less and therefore less profitable.

It made me so angry that people’s identies are being restricted in the name of profit that I thought perhaps for 2015, I will give up Facebook.

And as soon as I had the thought, I started to panic. Alcohol? Fine, I’ve gone 355 days without it and actually am not sure I want to drink it again anyway. Sugar? It’s tasty sure but I know if I just go for a few weeks without it I will stop wanting it so much. And there’s lots of other tasty stuff I can eat instead. But Facebook? Give up Facebook? Social suicide. I have one close friend who has no Facebook - she’s never had one - and I have to actually remember to invite her to things. I don’t always. My mum is on Facebook, and she lives 938423980328 miles away, it’s our primary means of communication. She told me in strict terms that under no circumstances am I allowed to give up Facebook. She even did the “I am your Mother and I am telling you…” thing. I’ll never get invited to anything ever again. I’ll never know what’s going on. No one will come to anything I ever organise because they will all forget it’s happening. I’ll never see any nice pictures of me. Or, more likely, people will put up awful photos of me and I’ll never see them to say GOD TAKE THAT DOWN JESUS I LOOK LIKE A MANATEE TRYING TO CLIMB A TREE. I am more likely to chat to friends on Facebook than on the phone or by email. If I am feeling wobbly, I can just go “meep” and I’ll get cat pictures. If my other friends are feeling wobbly I can send them videos of dogs falling over.

I am sure it’s not just me that feels this way. Studies suggest that social media is potentially more addictive than booze or cigarettes, and Facebook is the social network that we’re all on. I was at the pub earlier today surrounded by friends and every single person around the table (including me) at some point got their phone out and checked Facebook. After my alarm goes off in the morning the first thing I do is check Facebook. The last thing I do when I go to bed is check Facebook. I have alt+tabbed at least 6 times to check Facebook while writing this blog.

Of course, there are alternatives. Ello tried, but with a vague future business model. There was a brief moment when it looked like it might have a future - I can’t speak for everyone but the largest part of my acquaintance went there to get their own username - you know, the one they’ve all been known as forever by all of their friends. Google Plus occasionally has a spike, but it still has a bit of an interface problem and hasn’t yet hit the critical mass of social circles to draw people away from Facebook.

You may think I am going a bit far with my conspiracy business at this point - but I don’t think the current aggressive ‘real’ name enforcement is a coincidence, or a tightening up of an accidentally overlooked policy. I think Facebook knows full well we’re addicted. And I think it knows how we are addicted, and how to keep us addicted. It knows full well that we loathe them and what they stand for, but that we need the service they provide in exchange for our crunchy delicious data sauce. I suspect that Facebook has spent years tweaking and twerking their systems to be just as addictive as possible. They’ve certainly not seen a problem in using us as guinea pigs without explicit consent. Facebook has us all hooked. Hooked lined and sinkered. We have Internet Stockholm Syndrome. We couldn’t leave even if we want to because they don’t just have us, they have all our friends hostage too.

7 Comments Drinking, my opinions let me show you them, Sugar, The List

Self-esteem and 100 spiders

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve had some issues in the past with my mental health. One of the ways in which this manifested was in seriously poor low self-esteem - bordering on the obsessive. I wasn’t able to say anything good about myself. I wasn’t able to even *think* good things about myself. At my worst I felt that something really bad would happen if I ever did say, or think, anything that was even close to being good about myself and so to forestall the really bad thing happening I would have to immediately say something bad about myself to balance it out, or pull an ugly face - or even worse sometimes I physically hurt myself to punish myself for daring to think well of myself.

At one point, I couldn’t even capitalise the letter ‘I’ when referring to myself in a written sentence, because I had somehow got the idea that I didn’t ‘deserve’ a capital letter, and I didn’t want people to think I was so above myself that I would dare to use a capital letter. Of course all it did was irritate my friends who are sticklers for correct grammar who couldn’t understand why I was able to correctly punctuate and spell all other words. I wasn’t able to explain to people why it was so difficult to capitalise the ‘I’.

Compliments were like kryptonite. I couldn’t accept them. I didn’t know how to. I craved them and feared them in equal measure. On the one hand compliments from other people were validation - wonderful validation - that maybe I *was* ok, that I looked alright. On the other hand I wasn’t able to believe the compliment, because that would be to think well of myself and I can’t do that or BAD THINGS will happen, and the other person will think I think I look ok and that would be being vain and there is nothing worse in the world than vanity. Of course, this just made people pissed off that I would never accept a compliment. One friend once just said “you know, when someone compliments you, you should just say ‘thank you’ and move on. Don’t tell them why they are wrong”. It hadn’t occurred to me that rejecting their compliments in the name of my own obsessive low self-esteem could actually push people further away.

It did drive one significant other away. He became increasingly upset by my difficulty in being nice to or about myself, and with my constant putting myself down. “How would you feel,” he asked me, “if someone who looked and acted exactly like me came into this room and started saying really horrible things about me? You wouldn’t put up with it, would you? Well that what it’s like when you put yourself down. It’s like someone who looks like someone I love, being needlessly mean about them. Why do you do it?”

I don’t know quite how I came to develop the conclusion that to be seen to be vain is the worst thing you could ever do, and that thinking or saying nice things about yourself or allowing others to say nice things about you is the path to extreme vanity and friendlessness. I remember Mother RDP telling me that when people complimented her on what a beautiful child I was she used to say things like ‘shame about her ears’ so that I ‘wouldn’t grow up vain’. I suspect that’s part of it. But perhaps the wider context for it is built right into our culture. As was pointed out in the feminism event I went to, women find it extremely hard to be proud of their achievements. Even when those achievements are real and tangible, many women find it hard to say, “YES, I did that. I did it well. That makes me pretty awesome.” So many aspects of our society, our upbringing, the media around us, tell us that you’re not meant to be like that. You must be meek, you must bashfully and modestly accept your compliments, but never compliment yourself.

It seems strange to look back at those times and remember how I thought. Of course, as low self-esteem goes, this was a pretty extreme case. But I am not alone in having felt this way, and the more I talk about it, the more shocked I am to discover how many of us have gone through similar thought patterns as we’ve grown up - if perhaps not taken to such extent as self-harm and refusal to follow a rule of punctuation. We’ve assimilated messages that say be confident, but be modest. Be pretty, but don’t know it. Be strong, but gentle. Be smart, but don’t let people know. It’s so confusing trying to learn to enjoy being yourself when there are so many conflicting messages out there which simultaneously tell you that you are both fine just as you are and that you are inadequate.

There’s an episode of My Little Pony’s ‘friendship is magic’ all about this exact theme - where Twilight Sparkle becomes terrified of revealing how talented she is to her friends in case they reject her for it, because boasting is bad. Being Friendship is Magic it actually deals with this theme rather well, by drawing a line between making shit up to get people to admire you and just actually being good at something and being proud of that. But I couldn’t help identifying with the message that it can be scary to put yourself and your talents out there, and that sometimes it’s hard to find that line between positive self-affirmation and something that looks like boasting.

All of this has come to mind because of a Halloween costume I put together for a club night last weekend. Regular readers will have been following my body positive journey over the months that I gave up sugar, lost some weight and gained some confidence. I still surprise myself sometimes when I put something on and look in the mirror and am able to go ‘hey, I look good’, even though the days of (literally) beating myself up about thinking I look good are long past. So I surprised myself with this Halloween outfit, which was part Zatanna, part witch, mostly covered in spiders. The outfit pretty much consisted of lingerie with a tight jacket and a top hat. And about 100 spiders.

Since I opened the leotard floodgates I seem to be getting more and more comfortable leaving the house with my body actually visible, and feeling pretty confident that I look ok. That no one is going to point and go ‘fat chick in a leotard’ or ‘your bum is too big for that’ or ‘put it away love’. And even if they do, I have the self-esteem to go “meh, your opinion, my body. I win.” I made a point of telling other curvy women at the club in equally revealing outfits how wonderful they looked, and what a great body they had. It meant a lot to me when people said it to me.

When I saw some pictures of me from the weekend, I had a weird moment. Whereas previously I would have been picking over the picture picking where the jacket was crumpled, my shorts askew, my thighs chunky, my spiders in the wrong place - this time I thought ‘wow. I look great. Look at my waist! It’s so small! I look like I am wearing a corset, but that’s just me. I’ve never had a reaction like that looking at a photo of myself before. Briefly, I wanted someone to ask me if I was wearing a corset, so I could be all NO. THAT’S ME. MEEEEEEE. Then I realised - I don’t need someone to ask me. I am proud of this. Proud of not only looking but feeling good. I can just SAY IT.

Sometimes, saying something good about ourselves can actually make us feel better. We all should be allowed to give ourselves a boost. To say “I did this thing. I am proud of this thing. I did it WELL” without fearing that others will think we’re Boasty McBoasterson from Vainville.

I wonder if we’ve not got a twisted idea of what ‘vanity’ means. We use phrases like “god, she really loves herself doesn’t she” or “he’s good looking, but he knows it” as insults. But surely loving yourself is a good thing? We should celebrate people loving themselves, and allow people to talk about their achievements, or things that make them happy, and celebrate that they are able to do so. As Rupal says, “If you can’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?”.

Give it a go. Every day, give yourself a compliment. In the mirror, or to a significant other, or out there in the world as a tweet or a facebook status. Celebrate yourself. When a friend compliments you, believe it. Smile and say thank you. It’s ok to say nice things about yourself, it doesn’t make you a bad person and might make you feel good.

And never underestimate the power of 100 plastic spiders.

7 Comments feminism, Me Me Me, my opinions let me show you them, Sugar

Nine months in - return of The List

Wednesday 1st October marks the 9 month point of my booze free experiment, and so it’s time for the regular tri-monthly debrief!

Previous installments:

When the idea for this project first began to ovulate in my brain, in between the bouts of dry retching and wishing I was dead, it seemed like the best idea I had ever had literally in the whole entire history of time ever. Of course, at that time I was both still drunk and horrendously hungover all at the same time. We all know that we make poor decisions while drunk (and sometimes have to make those decisions leave in the morning before they realise we don’t remember making them) and we make poor decisions hungover (pizza topped with paneer tikka masala, BRILLIANT) so decisions made under the influence of both at the same time must be SO terrible that they go past the point of ridiculous and cancel each other out and make some sort of sense. Right?

A week in and I had stated my intentions to the world. I am quitting drinking. And once I’d said it, I had to stick to it. I am far far too stubborn to be derailed when I’ve not only made a decision but told everyone I know, and some complete strangers I randomly met, about that decision. It becomes not only a personal journey and meaningful mission but an act of bloody mindedness. No one thought I could do it. *I* didn’t think I could do it. So I was bloody well going to prove everyone wrong.

The first three months were a struggle. The following three were a revelation. Now we’re nine months in, the changes in my life have been almost unbelievable.

It almost seems a backward step to go back to the list given all the other unexpected outcomes of my 9 month gestation of the twins of sobriety and blog writing, but that is where I began so back to it we go. It’s a somewhat longer than where we began - and perhaps that’s as it should be. I am sure I am not alone in making a huge list of unrealistic New Year’s Resolutions and breaking them all within the space of 2 weeks. Making a short list at the start of the year and expanding it as you achieve the smaller successes is much more sensible, and less terrifying, and less setting yourself up to fail. So…

The (ever expanding) List

Learn to sew. Start with cushions, end up with dresses

Result: EPIC FAIL. The sewing machine is still in my friend’s house. But there’s still 3 more months of the year. I doubt a dress will be an achievable goal within that time but there’s still wiggle room for me to at the very least get over my sewing machine phobia.

Unexpected consequences: None. Still scared of sewing machines. The fact that every time I tell someone that the reason I am scared of sewing machines is that people always tell me stories of people putting a needle trough their own finger, that person tells me a story about the time they/their mum/their best friend/sewing teacher put a needle trough their own finger. Yeah. NOT HELPING GUYS.

Learn Sign language

Result: A clear win. I found out a few weeks ago that I had passed my BSL level one with flying colours, and was encouraged to continue to level 2. I have paid the deposit and start in November. I appear to have a natural flair for the expressive quality of the language, being naturally given to flail and gesticulate and make faces a lot.

Unexpected consequences: Learning more about deaf culture, and realising more aspects where I have hidden privilege. Despite what some quarters of the internet would have you believe, checking your privilege is not a bad thing. We should all do it more often.

Start writing again – and document my attempts to do all of the above

Result: Well, I am still writing - and hopefully you are still reading!

Unexpected consequences: I have had some amazing responses to my writing, both in comments, on twitter/facebook and in person. Every time someone connects with something I’ve written, or shares it, or tells me how much they enjoy my blog, it makes me feel fantastic. I don’t always enjoy writing or find it easy - and some Sundays (particularly today, when I got back from a night out at gone 6am…) I really don’t want to spend hours staring at a screen making my brain do words. But my promise to myself to write every week is inextricably linked to my promise to give up drinking, and the two must go together. In that way, they both support each other, and make my resolution stronger. And in the long run, this is improving me and making me healthier.

Get back into volunteer work in children’s theatre

Result: The school term started last week - and I joined the local branch of Chicken Shed. I used to volunteer at a different branch BRD (before Roller Derby) and left because I couldn’t do both. I had forgotten how much I enjoy working with young people, and helping children experience and learn through theatre and performance.

Unexpected consequences: I was much less confident when I volunteered previously, 9 years ago. I hadn’t realised how much I’ve grown and changed as a person until I joined the first session last week - I almost felt like a different person. 9 years ago I remember looking at some of the other practitioners and wondering at their confidence and their easy manner with the children. Now I’m one of those confident people. I am not entirely sure how that happened. But I like it.

Keep writing about feminism – do not give in!

Result: I am still writing, I haven’t given in.

Unexpected consequences: I have learned to never, ever, EVER, read the comments on a Guardian article about feminism. Nothing good is below that line. Which is a shame, as most other subjects have very interesting comments sections from which I learn a lot. Articles about Feminism however tend to re-establish Lewis’s Law over and over and over (repeat to fade…)

Get singing again

Result: I am working on this. I have no music writing ability and very much need collaborators to achieve this one. I haven’t really sung live, apart from the odd drunken karaoke, for nearly 10 years. Rather than waiting for someone to over hear me singing and go “hey, you’ve got an ok voice and seem like you’d have reasonably good stage presence, owing to you being naturally given to flail and gesticulate and make faces a lot. Would you like to do some singing with me?” I’ve actually started approaching some of the music people I know and asking them if they know of anyone interested. Putting myself forwards like this doesn’t come naturally, and I suspect I wouldn’t have been able to do this pre-sobriety. I simply wouldn’t have had the self-confidence.

Unexpected consequences: Too early to tell. But you can bet I’ll report back…

No drinking for 3 months – re-evaluate in 3 months time whether to go another 3

Result: Given that this is what started it all, and how difficult it was in the first few months, it’s amazing how this has become one of the easiest and most straightforward aspects of my life. I don’t worry about wanting a drink any more. I don’t worry about what people will think of me - it hardly ever comes up in conversation any more. I know that I made the right decision, thus proving that most decisions made while both drunk and hungover at the same time are actually good ones. I survived an all night club night with absolutely zero alcohol. Ok, there may have been a couple of cheeky Monster Rehabs, but I’ll take being somewhat overly wired on caffeine over falling-down-drunk and a crushing hangover any day (although tomorrow when the sleep deprivation kicks in perhaps I’ll have changed my mind.) I am sure this goes without saying, but I am going to go for one more round of three months to make it a full year with no alcohol.

Unexpected consequences: Where do I even begin? If I hadn’t quit drinking, I’d never have come to terms with my actually rather serious sugar habit. The cold turkey sugar blitz was so successful that even though I do now enjoy the occasional sweet treat, it’s occasional. I genuinely can have one biscuit and not need another. I no longer eat milk chocolate or cheap chocolate. I make better choices when eating out. As a result I feel healthier, happier, sleep better, look better, and the weight fell off me without any effort at all. I look better now after a few months controlling my sugar intake and cycling to work more often than after over a decade of diets and gym routines that bored me.

My increasing confidence in my body has made me re-evaluate how I even see my body, which has made me so much happier and more at peace with myself and my body shape than I ever dreamed it would be possible to be. It led to me going swimming which not only made me fitter, but has added to my confidence of my body shape - just as it is - being visible. I went out to the club last night wearing a spandex hotpant playsuit and felt amazing. I’ve never had so many people - both acquaintances and complete strangers - complimenting me on my body. I’ve never been able to even accept when a compliment about my body might even have some truth to it. To have someone say “I hope this is ok, and I don’t expect anything from you, but I’d like to tell you that you have a really banging body” is weird to someone who’s spent their entire life beating herself up for being curvy. (Just to forestall any accusations of double standards - this wasn’t random street harassment. This was in a club full of people all wearing clubby outfits, and it was a guy I’d been bumping into at the club on and off and with whom I had already established a mild flirtation. Context is important, yo.)

I’d never been able to accept a compliment before, especially about my body, as I’d always felt that if someone offers personal compliments you have to immediately point to something that’s wrong with you. But as I learned from Stella Creasy, it’s perfectly fine to discuss - hell, even shout about - your own achievements.

It’s ok to be proud of yourself. It’s ok to think good things about yourself. Nothing bad will happen if you feel good about yourself - quite the opposite. The better you think about yourself, the better you’ll feel. It’s a beautiful circle of body positivity. Give it a try. Stop buying beauty magazines and watching shows that reinforce the idea we should be constantly criticising ourselves and each other. They do that so we will buy more things. Give yourself some compliments in the mirror. Don’t make a face or pick a negative to balance it out. Do it every day. I bet you’ll feel the difference.

 

1 Comment feminism, Me Me Me, Sugar, The List

Sugar Lows

I am sure you will all be overjoyed to hear that Mission Make The Dress Less Small was successful, and without having to resort to the weird cling-film wrap treatment that my gym offers.

I admit that the day before the wedding, fearful of mission failure and in a moment of misguided panic I tried on some ‘shapewear’ in Marks and Spencer. After what felt like 10 minutes of trying to get into a ‘form flattering slip’ and subsequently deciding it did nothing for me other than reduce my capacity to move, dance or eat pudding, I experienced what felt like hours of terror when I couldn’t get the damn thing off. It was so tight and heavily constructed that I found myself in some sort of physical catch 22 where I couldn’t raise my arms because they were caught in a lycra vice but couldn’t take the slip off without raising my arms. I wondered if I was trapped forever in the fitting room; if the staff would find me after closing writhing on the floor, both shoulders dislocated, sobbing “I just wanted the dress to fit”. I got to the point where I almost tried to press the ‘call staff’ bell with my nose thinking they would have to come and cut me out with a pair of scissors.

I did eventually manage to extricate myself from the evil article of clothing without assistance, I have no idea how (I suspect my brain has blocked it, they way it would a significantly traumatic event) and I flung the garment back on the hanger and stomped out of the shop full of feminist anger at a society which makes women put themselves through such discomfort just to obtain an unrealistic shape, and anger at myself for perpetuating this due to an inability to accept my body as it was. We’ve come so far since the Victorian era in terms of women’s rights so WHY ARE WE STILL WEARING CORSETS. On the bright side, it made me care less about the success of Mission Make Dress Small. “It’s my bloody body.” I muttered as I headed back out into the rain, “and I’ll sodding well love it whatever lumps I’ve got.”

So the dress fitted, with only minor lumps and bumps which I felt compelled to embrace after the ‘shapewear’ experience. I felt glamorous and unfrumpy and I was thrilled - and amazed - that just two weeks of giving up sugar had such dramatic results. I say ‘just’ giving up sugar. I have to say that I had no idea how tricky it would be. First of all, sugar is in EVERYTHING. Some foods have ridiculously high sugars from carbs. I almost fell over when I looked at the nutritional value on a carton of apple juice. In my mind fruit = natural and natural = good for you. The same goes for potatoes. They’re natural, right? They grow in the ground. They are HEALTHY. But potatoes it seems are pretty much the Haribo of the vegetable world. It was hard to accept that things which are natural are also bad for you. Secondly, getting out of the ‘high fat = fattening’ mindset was hard work. Thirdly, I fucking love sugar. Cake is brilliant. Chocolate is the best thing ever. Pudding is compulsory. I don’t even feel like I can face the world without my morning soy mocha. Cereal is the BOSS. I could live on dried fruit granola.

Somehow I managed to (mostly) avoid sugar, despite it’s ubiquity in ALL OF THE TASTY THINGS, and by the time Friday and wedding #1 of 2 was in full swing and my starter arrived I was looking forward to tucking into some delicious carbs.The food was indeed delicious, and while I found myself delighting in treating myself to savoury pastry what I was really looking forward to was the dessert - chocolate terrine (which is basically a posh way of saying ‘mousse’ as far as I can tell from watching Masterchef).

 

One mouthful in to the dessert and I nearly fell off my chair. “Excuse me,” I said to my table companions, “This dessert and I need to be alone”. So effusive was I in declaring its deliciousness that one friend told me to “get a room”. But halfway through I realised I could barely finish it. It was too sweet. It was too much. It was making my brain zing and fizzle as if I was snorting champagne. For the rest of the wedding I was bouncing off the walls. I couldn’t sleep until 3am I was so wired. People thought I was drunk I was so hyper. I was also ravenously hungry again a mere 2 hours later but felt too sick to eat anything.

Previously I have worried about the upcoming weddings in terms of the champagne coming around and the toasts, and Talking To Strangers and Doing Small Talk and Having Sober Dancing Fun - but remained utterly untempted by the booze and no one batted an eyelid at my making toasts with sparkling water (or at one point a cup of tea.) I had just as much fun as anyone else at the party, once I was past the now familiar early party stages where everyone is a bit merry and you are jealous you’re not and into the latter stage where everyone is a bit flaily and fally overy and in some cases tearful and nonsensical and you cease being jealous and start being smug. But the extreme physical reaction to that much sugar after two weeks of abstinence knocked me sideways and put my booze crusade into a very new perspective indeed.

I thought at the start of the year that giving up alcohol would be the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I was wrong. Giving up sugar is going to be so much harder. I wasn’t ever chemically addicted to alcohol, that much has been clear over the last 5 months. I was socially addicted. Driven by social awkwardness and a need to hide behind drunkscuses (“please excuse my behaviour, I was drunk”) and a need to be part of the party. Sugar however - and while I have suspected this for a while going without it really brought this home - is fully wired into my body chemistry. There’s been a fair number of articles over the last few months with “signs you might be a sugar addict” and I have ALL of the signs, and have done for as long as I can remember.

By wedding#2 of 2 I wasn’t even sure I wanted to eat any more carbs. I was grumpy, anxious and short tempered and the dress was starting to Not Fit Again. By the time wedding dinner #2 of the weekend arrived I could barely finish any of the courses, and didn’t finish my desert. I have never, ever, EVER not finished a dessert. The biggest shock was when the after dinner chocolates were handed out - beautiful little miniature recreations of classic desserts. I bloody love little chocolates. At previous weddings I have even ended up collecting uneaten chocolates from other tables, utterly perplexed as to how people could abandon them. But now I found I didn’t want one. More out of habit than desire I took one. I bit into it, the sickly sweetness filled my mouth. It was too sweet and my brain, far from going RAWR MORE SUGAR was going ‘please may I have some water?’ I struggled to finish it, only doing so because I am pretty sure that spitting food out at a wedding is a faux pas - particularly a wedding of your partner’s family.

Today I feel dreadful. I feel like I have been on a drinking bender for the last two days despite having had no alcohol at all. I feel like I have a hangover. And now I think about it, I have felt like this often; and never connected it to my raging sugar habit. I am in the grips of a full on level 11 sugarover, and I don’t like it. Far from being terrified of cutting out sugar for a few weeks I am now looking forward to getting it out of my life for good. If I lose weight as a result, then fine, all good, but that’s no longer my reason for doing so.

I have always been a complete sugar monster. I’ve always needed pudding. I could eat chocolate literally all day and never stop. On one occasion I even ate a full 12 box of assorted Krispy Kremes because my relationship ended and a work colleague with an alarmingly good memory remembered me saying “If I break up with X I am going to eat an entire box of doughnuts and everything will be fine.” (it wasn’t.) I don’t ever feel full up of sweets, and there’s absolutely no limit to the amount of ice cream I can consume. So thank you, SCIENCE, for explaining why, and thank you Mission Make Dress Less Small for not only opening my eyes to the problem, but to making me realise all it takes to break the habit is 2 weeks cold turkey.

I have an addiction to a legal substance which isn’t even seen as a drug - not in the same way as nicotine or alcohol, but seriously, LOOK AT THIS. Forget “this is your brain on drugs”. Sugar man. It’s good shit. but it’ll fuck you up.

2 Comments Sugar, The List