So, against my better judgement I am slowly submitting to the fact that maybe, just maybe, I might have to make the effort to be a bit more active. This pains me, as I have finally found a man who is willing to do all the housework, cooking and footwork that I could so desire. However, exercise and I have a fraught relationship. We have not always seen eye to eye, in fact we are in the sorts of conflict that can only be expressed through constant, strong swearing. I have used it in the past. I have promised it so much, and given so little. There is no trust. Let us take a look at how the relationship has fluctuated.

Our relationship began at primary school, during PE lessons. In these days I was young and naive, and I had not yet realised that if I screamed and cried I could have caused a scene and escaped. I do not know if I enjoyed it at this stage - my memory has been addled by cholesterol.

By secondary school, I rarely participated, but then they left me little choice. Cross Country running was torturous and dull. In fact, I was quite good at it, and was in the lead for most of the way round, until I suddenly wondered what the hell I was doing running round a field in the middle of December, exerting myself to the point of being competitive. If I won, they would make me do it again and again, representing the school. Being able to run round a field a bit faster than other people is not my idea of achievement. So, I decided to stop, and walk. Exercise was sad. I had lead it on. It had thought I finally appreciated it. Instead, I knocked it down like a house made of twigs.

But we all have learnt, have we not, that it is exercise's fault for not choosing more substantial house building paraphanalia.

During school, my participation essentially consisted of a negotiation of such length, all calories needed were burnt through my razor sharp wit and stubborn intelligence. Oh if only. Other highlights include myself groaning at the top of my voice about period pain to avoid trampolining, and fainting dramatically in front of a hurdle. Drama queen you say? Well, if you're going to do something, may as well rule at it I reply.

At university friendship and fitting in made me consider returning to the rockpool of exercise. However, there are crabs in rockpools, and even starfish and creepy to touch. This started with trampolining.

Now, to understand the hidden-rockpool-lobster that is Trampolining, you need to understand the anatomy of freudthecat. At this time, though svelter than current, she still carried a chest that could've been heralded a principality through size. Now, breasts are bouncy. Freudthecat has long since perfected a running (let us stress emergency only) that involved the hands keeping the tits still. Trampolines are also bouncy, and arms are needed for balance.

I went trampolining one and a half times. I got sent home the second time due to damaging my back.

How do you mend a troubled connection with exercise? We are in need of relationship counselling, and I can't see anyone taking on counselling between myself and an abstract concept, however evil that concept may be. Fools. Have you found an exercise that has changed the way you think about it? Or do you do it out of necessity because you know you need to?

Today's painfully overused analogy is that of getting on the wagon.

The wagon is the place to be. It has fabulous decor put together by a team of Italian gay men. It has sumptious seating, threaded in gold, and cushioning that eats you as you fall into it. It is driven by a hunky man wearing tight silver trousers who blatantly quite fancies you, who is magically a woman if you are a male reader. It rides faster than the wind, but as smoothly as a panda licking bamboo.

Truly, the wagon is a holy grail, the place to be.

Without the wagon, you are forced to walk. The road is windy, and stony and you have on only flip flops. It is raining, and the flip flops are sliding off your feet as they become wet and lubricated. There are a thousand noisy peacocks who make a terrible sound, relieving themselves just where you want to step, and flaunting their feathers at you. Not being on the wagon is pain. Pain and gloom.

I have not become obsessed with transport, I am going somewhere.

Being on the wagon is great. We all experience times where you really get into dieting, and staying on the wagon is fairly easy. Sometimes you make a pit stop and get straight back on. Sometimes it leaves without you but you catch up.

This time, I keep missing the wagon. I keep getting to the wagon-stop, to find the wagon just went without me. How do you get over not being able to get on the wagon?

Mind you part of the reason I couldn't get on the wagon this week was due to comfort eating due to failing my driving test. So I can't even drive to the wagon to make it easier.

Sigh!

Gosh, £30 for a sports bra. I guess I can also use it for the cat to sleep in. A cat hammock.

I am coming to terms with exercise. I don't know. My back might not be keen.

A large amount of dieting tips seem to encompass a certain amount of psychological warfare. A plethora of friendly fire, demanding that your own brain surrender it's rational thoughts and programmes itself into submission.

The problem with diet plans, is that I choose to follow them, and due to incredibly fussy eating (there are so many foods I will not touch, it is amazing how I've managed to pack away so much other the years) I often have to set my own laws. As the Sheriff of the town of me, I keep the law round here. Everybody knows there is absolutely no point in having a position of power if you cannot break the rules to your own advantage. Hence I often find myself thinking "These aren't real rules. If anyone is going to adjust them, it's me. And why not, I deserve some adjustment in my nutritional favour."

This is a mind game. An attempt to warp one's thoughts.

Some of the Salad opinions envolved a certain amount of cranial trickery. I can't see a plate of food, a mixture between that which I will and won't eat without a medieval torture device. The advice I was given was that I should mix and give myself a 'within-food' reward.

I am not going to knock that advice, it is a good idea. However, I have a brain that does not succomb easily to the opinions of others, including my own if it does not usually agree with that entrenched in my stubborn neurology.

freudthecat: Hey brain, look at this!
ftc's brain: Must I? I'm busy, leave me to my precious thoughts!
freudthecat: Oh don't be like that. It's a beautiful salad, it has chicken, bacon, parmesan, lettuce...
ftc's brain: WHAT! LETTUCE! Why are you trying to fill me with that green poison!
freudthecat: It's good for us, brain! don't concentrate on the salad, there's yummy chicken!
ftc's brain: There's foul tomatoes! And they are adding MORE calories, of foods you don't even like!
freudthecat: But there's a scattering of gorgeous cheese...
ftc's brain: Concealing the danger of carrots lying within. Oh no. You can't fool me.
freudthecat: Please brain, we have to eat it.
ftc's brain. Ah NO! FOR I AM IN CONTROL! WATCH AS I TWITCH YOUR ARM! MAKE YOUR BLADDER WEAK! FORCE YOU TO THE CHOCOLATE STORAGE AREA!
freudthecat: nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo....

It's a funny place my brain.

These mind games work for other people. Why not me? Am I
a) Too clever for my own good?
b) Not clever enough?

Do you play dieting mind games with yourself? Or does your brain stop you, even if it's not quite so graphic?

Having breached the sensitive topic of salad, the enemy, I will now discuss with you nemesis number two.

Dieting, it seems, is married. The reason I say this, is because it’s like a human partnership where one of your friends bag themselves a permanent slave (or, husband) and there’s a big ceremony. You are invited to the ceremony in lieu of things to come, because you now have to invite them both to things. They become a single entity, and to get to see the one you like you have to put up with the gratingly irritating presence of the husband. They lounge on your furniture, interrupt your conversations, and they would probably have been bareable, had you not been crowbarred by a religious and/or legal bond into having to allow them on the premises.

Dieting’s annoying, constant, painful husband is Exercise.

“I’m thinking of having Dieting over for a few drinks.”
“You can’t invite Dieting without Exercise!”

“Hey Dieting, would you like to go to the farm?”
“Oh only if Exercise can come too! Otherwise I may not be able to appreciate the smell of the pigs properly!”

“I just invited Dieting to my party.”
“What? Just Dieting? What were you thinking? What kind of monster are you? What about Exercise? Have you no shame? Don’t you see?”

I guess what I am trying to express through an anecdote that I got carried away with, is that
I dislike
a) Exercise
b) The constant stigma that you cannot be devoted to dieting without exercise.

This is because
a) I am an unhealthy lazy blob of slothly lazeness
b) I spend all day wandering around a school or a classroom, being exhausted by the kittens who are a pain in the rearcat. I am too exhausted to do much other than sleep (Oh, or eat, but we can guess that!) This is made worse by insomnia that means I am exhausted but unable to sleep.
c) I have a bad back, as about 89% of my body weight is pure breast(s).

Excuses are a wonderful thing, but I have to quite validly say, that I cannot even stand for a prolonged amount of time before wanting to tear my spine apart and replacing it with a broom handle. This was still and issue when I was smaller, I have always had a bad back. The suggestion is that swimming is the answer, but this involves a degree of nudity I dislike, and I can’t swim anyway, and it is a mixture of trauma and boredom.

Would anyone else rather disembowel themselves than exercise for ‘fun’? If you don’t just spend your day sitting on a sponge, and have a job where you move is it necessary? Is anyone else unable to exercise for any reason, all excuses on a postcard?

Greetings, all.
Not so long ago I went on a very interesting course, which provided lunch. I do remember some of the course content as well as the lunch details. The lunch provided was a hearty salad. Many comments were made on how delicious it was. I read the Comments Book with great interest. Well, probably a more accurate description would be limited interest.

Now, I have never liked salad. It looks like alien shrubbery, and I get unsettled by how it manages to be both rubbery and crunchy at once. I cannot eat food where I do not like the texture, my tongue can only cope with pleasureable smooth sensation. Furthermore, I do not understand why so many people are able to eat it. I come from a family of salad dodgers, where Mother Cat will eat salad, but Father and Brother Cat do not.

I have tried to like salad. I understand it is good for you, and that it is low in fat and calories, and that it is a friend of dieters everywhere. However, I have found it hard to have a favourable relationship with salad. Salad refused even a one night stand with yours truly, and would have done so even if I had plied it with alcohol.

I have even tried tricking myself into liking salad. I decided to slowly phase it into my lifestyle in small stages. The initial stages were things like wrapping lettuce around a chip (somewhat counterproductive I know, but small steps) and burying a tomato in a wave of beans. The end stages were planned to be eating salad in its own right. However, chips taste significantly better without a lettuce jacket, and so, the plan fell short.

I wrote in the comments book: “Not everybody eats salad”.

However, I have never found someone else with the same level of salad detestal as myself. Do you enjoy salad? Do you eat foods because it is necessary when you do not like them? If you are a saladaphobic, how do you deal with this?

Once upon a time, I was nearly half the freudthecat I am now. I have put on about 70lbs from my lowest weight, but this has only been over the last two years. As I am a fairly small specimen of only five feet and three inches, I am looking more like a barrel as the days go by.

Even at my lowest numerals, I have always been overweight. I have always assigned myself the label of being a fat person, and have felt that this was an honest and open expression of both my inner and outer chub.

It is only recently I have been accepted by the wider world as a ‘fat person’. For many years when I complained about my weighty frame, I was met with retorts telling me that I was not fat, despite the very visible evidence to the contrary.

I have always seen myself as a realistic person (Hilarious, but no, really!) and I have always watched how others have described their figures. If people were going to be stored in buckets, I would have put a lot of people who complain about being fat in the ‘slim’ bucket. I have always promised myself that I would be honest about my bumpy mass, and I feel that if I was slim I would be jolly happy and never complain about being fat all the time.
Although my weight has gone up the escalator of curve, I have always been a larger person, and I maintain that this is and has always been true. It is only fairly recently people have stopped arguing with me about being a fat person. I am now accepted as a bonafide fat person. I do not enjoy that, but I always have been. I do like that others are now honest with me.

How far does it have to go? Must one become positively circular in order to qualify as a fat person? Why is fat seen as a term of offence and not one of mere truth?

Theory says the first day is easy and it gets harder after that. Theory can get lost, because I find it all hard. Now, this may be because I am a drama queen. Or I may have a special illness that means I cannot go a day without junk. Or I might have secret powers only invoked by the spirit of ten thousand calories. I am still searching for those powers.

I don’t know, I guess is the short boring answer.

I can map out my day, and decide the food. However, this will not stop me from finishing a staff meeting and being desperate for a burger and chips. And from expressing the desperation. And I have a willing slave (boyfriend, for the politically correct) who will deliver me to requested fast food joint, despite my promises to hold him at knifepoint if he lets me eat anything even slightly calorific. He is obviously more threatened by a hungry freudthecat than a fat one, and my grumpiness is worse than a good slashing.

I don’t know anyone else with such an unstable relationship with food. I find it almost impossible to eat one of anything - it has to be in bulk. I do not know how to prevent this feeling. Is it normal (well not normal, but common)? Does anyone else feel similarly?

Crossposted.

Diet, hah!

I am going to post statistics to ravage my diet complacency into disbelief.
And banish the willpower of disrepute!

CW: 228lbs
LW: 154lbs (oh glory days!)
TW: 199lbs

I have the willpower of a fish looking at a colourful fish flake.
Here, pretty flake!