A bad six weeks for me!

This has been a really dreadful month for me, as my scales will tell you! My poor old dog Buster has been failing for the last 6 weeks, getting slower and slower and needing more and more help to get in and out of the car and onto the sofa. Poor old chap, when he went off his food I knew that his time was nigh, as he has always eaten everything he could feasibly get his jaws around. We’d had fifteen years together and when he finally went to the Elysian fields last week (my ever-sensible elder sister tells me he is on a cloud paved with bones and sticks!) I missed him like I had lost a limb. It’s five days later and I still think I can hear him snoring in his sleep and licking round his bowl. I feel like I have had free botox, as my face seems unable to show any sort of expression at all, apart from a blankness that reflects how empty my house feels. He was always with me, like a little black shadow, and so many people have contacted me to share their memories of him and lament his loss, which has helped a lot.

Now some people, I am reliably informed, go off their food when they are upset. Not me! My theory is that I was born while rationing was still in force, into an atmosphere of deprivation, and that I have been trying to make up for it ever since. Whatever the reasons, I have found it very difficult to eat well at this difficult time. In fact, I have been eating with a lot on my mind, not really noticing what I am eating because I am distracted - so I still feel hungry when I have finished.

So that’s something for me to think about. I come back to something I have talked about before, which is focussing on what I am doing when I eat.  I should be concentrating on what I am doing but all too often I am ‘saving time’ by doing something else at the same time. I might be watching television, or playing on my tablet, or even writing a blog. That means I am not thinking about what I am eating which means that I still feel hungry when I have finished, and also means I am eating food I am not really enjoying - and that’s not going to help me lose my extra pounds!

Well, to look on the bright side I haven’t gained any weight in the last 6 weeks, despite my distraction. I have missed a few breakfasts - and then really noticed how much I eat in the evenings on those days! So I’m still on track, however difficult life has been... maybe this lifestyle change is really working, after all!