ummm .... diet not going so good, in fact diet not happening at all right now. I have some Other Stuff I have to deal with and sadly I don't seem to be able to deal with it without carbs'n'fat. Me bad, I know. Hopefully normal service will be resumed within the next week or so. And at least I've given up the nicotine gum hooray but that is making life a little more stressful for me.

Smoke-free since 1st Feb 03 - completely nic-free since 11 Feb '04
I have not smoked for one year, two months, two weeks, four days, 12 hours, 43 minutes and 50 seconds.
11088 cigarettes not smoked, £2,217.44 saved to spend on books instead of paid to evil death dealing tobacco companies.
Life saved to spend with new books: 5 weeks, 3 days, 12 hours, 0 minutes.

Bad things about visiting My Parents .... as already mentioned, my mum keeps the house well stocked with Bad Things (despite her and my dad always being allegedly on diets). If I don't eat them, she goes on about it. If I do eat them, she looks disappointed in me. See, my parents have always been on at me about my weight, for as long as I can remember. When I was a teenager, prob size 14 - 16 but very active (playing hockey, swimming, etc) they were on at me to lose weight. They've stopped Going On About It now, but I know what they think. I can tell by the way my mum as of always asking 'have you lost weight?' in a hopeful tone of voice. Course now I have actually lost some weight she doesn't feckin mention it. Feckin parents. And she still gave me a feckin easter egg ('just a little one') despite me telling her not to. Feck.

So yes I did eat too much chocolate and assorted crap. My Easter has been somewhere between being totally good and being terribly bad. Mainly good with patches of bad.

My sis gave O Finding Nemo vid instead of an egg. We have watched it every day for the last 4 days (we saw it at the cinema too). My new hero is Dory

I joined my first fan listing. I would explain why she' so fab but I can hear the video starting again so gotta go ......

Lost 3 lb this week, not reached my 'mini-goal' but that's not surprising because of the weight I put on last week. At least I've lost that 2lb and another 1 too yay.

We're off to my parents for the weekend. My mum will have house full of chocolate biscuits, creamy desserts, crisps, butter, chocolate, etc etc. I will just have to sit next to the fruit bowl all weekend.

We now have 2 filing cabinet drawers full of choccie eggs. 1 drawerful is O's and 1 for giving to various kids. Actually mostly those will be exchanges, so we will prob have the same net amount of choc come Sunday morning. I can hear it whispering to me ........

On the plus side, I cycled to town to get the eggs, so I've got some burnet calories banked. Hmmm ....

oh dear it's starting. The Easter chocco fest begins, as an egg arrives in the post for O this morning. First of many no doubt. Everyone I know who is likely to buy me choccie eggs, is under strict instructions not to. But they are still going to be showered upon my 4 yr old. Plus this afternoon I have to go out and buy stack of them (fair trade, natch) for various kids. The house will be full of chocolate. Heeeeellllppppppppppp mmmmeeeeeeeee ....

I've given up on FIAFI for now. I don't wanna sit quietly thinking bout stuff, I wanna eat crisps! Not very constructive, I know, but not feeling very constructive right now. Am doing my best to stick to the new 'don't eat too much crap and keep doing exercise' plan. Went for half hour bike ride last night, after O was in bed, cold and windy but the full moon was beautiful.

I have switched to reading Ray Mears' Outdoor Survival Handbook. I love Ray. My ultimate reward, if I do get myself to my target weight, is going to be a Woodlore 'Bushcraft for Beginners' Weekend. I will be queen of the birch-bark cup makers.

OK I have to face the fact I have ‘issues’ ™ with food, and that when I’m unhappy, depressed, whatever, I want to eat and eat and eat (and at the mo I am feeling quite low). So what to do? I could ignore it, grit my teeth, summon up an iron will power and vow never to eat more than 1750 cals a day ever again. Yeah right. I have the will power of a small slug with no will power. I could think feck it all and give up dieting and go on being fat and ‘happy’. Except I’m not happy being like this (on top of all the other unhappinesses I’ve got that manifest themselves as desires for Pringles).

So, what I think I’m going to try and do is … just do the best I can and not beat myself up over things going wrong sometimes. I will keep up the exercising, and will aim to eat sensibly most days, and keep on weighing myself, and see what happens. May not be ideal but it’s an improvement on what I was doing before.

I did do some exercise today, in fact I feel like I did a whole week's worth. Missed my Thursday belly dance class so went to class at diff venue, went by bike. 1 hr dancing plus 1hr 10 mins bike riding adds up to 1,230 cals burned and very very sore legs. Oh and I went swimming yesterday too but that was crap, only 20 lengths, my excuse is my stroke was all over the place hahah.

Hah. The FDA has written to the magic fat busting miracle pill pushers telling them to stop it

"These products give unfounded hope to people who are attempting to lose weight," Acting FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford said in a statement. .... The Web sites have 15 days to respond to the agency and outline their plans to remove the claims. If they do not, the FDA can seize the firms' supplies, impose fines and take other enforcement actions.

Good. Sue the arses of the bastards.

in other news: I wish to apply to marry Ali Slimani

for he makes rai dub fusion wooooooooooooooooo hooooooooooooo. I love you Mr Slimani and wish to have your rai-dub babies.

put on 2 lb. bollox. more l8r ....

confession time: I been bad. Bad bad bad. Bad gurl. I've had a couple of binges over the weekend that I umm 'forgot' to mention. I've never really thought about it much, but I spose I've always had a problem with fits of binge eating. And then when I was stopping smoking, I gave myself permission to stuff my face instead of smoking. So far my subconscious has not cottoned on that that permission has been revoked.

The solution to my problems is unlikely to be found at the bottom of a family sized bag of fat'n'carbs, but part of me wants to keep looking just in case. So last night I decided to re-read my old copy of Fat is a Feminist Issue. Which is a slightly weird experience, it's so long since I read any 'feminist' literature, yet it felt like I spent the second half of the 80s reading little else. Also I don't seem to 'fit' into the model she's working with, I haven't spent most of my life on diets. Then again ... if you asked me if I'm happy with my body I'd probably say yes. But if I am, then why do I hate having my photo taken so much that I go out of my way to avoid it?

I do think it's probably right that we have to love ourselves as we are before we can successfully lose weight. If we hate ourselves (for whatever reason) and have been used to dealing with unhappiness and fear and all bad feelings by eating, then we can't ever lose weight successfully. Once I've finished FIAFA, I'll prob read Shelley Bovey's book (thanks Jude for telling me about her). So expect outbreaks of diet/feminist/well-meaning-gruaniad-reader politics from time to time, apologies in advance.

Well, the eating programme may still need some work but at least the exercising is back on track. Went to aqua-aerobics tonight. It's good exercise and I enjoy it, but the music is a trial. This week it was Now That's What I Call The Greatest Nineties Album In The World Ever. Or something. Hammer Time! Bad. Though it did remind me of two of the funniest things ever - Mark Lamarr in his MC Hammer trews interviewing MC Hammer on the Word and Bill Hicks' suck Satan's cock routine.

If there really is such a thing as "Irritable Desk Syndrome" and it's true that "cluttered desks make workers ill" I should be dead by now. Wtf is a "deskologist" anyways? sounds like money for jam.

Weather was nice today so we cycled to a local park, where even the goat is on a diet. Large signs all over the goat space forbid the feeding of crisps, cake and bread, the goat is allowed only fruit and veggies. So we gave him some carrots (after O had taken a few bites out of them first) then went to climb things and play football etc. Too healthy all together, so had to have apple pie with cream for pudding to make up for it.

My new favourite song is Aiysha (Aicha) by Khaled. Another of our belly dance teacher's faves and it has grown on me so much, I've been going round singing it to myself (all two lines that I know the words to), but I knew nothing about it. Hurrah as ever for the lovely google which as well as providing the lyrics, got me to this interesting article on Rai music and Berber poetry. Good music with subversive and feminist tendencies, sounds like the genre for me. Next stop, The Rough Guide to Rai

gosh i burned up 0.19 deep fried onions with sauce on my bike ride this afternoon

housework is, always has been and always will be, bad. However it makes it a teeny bit easier to get through it when you find out that by doing cleaning (multiple household tasks, moderate) for 1 hour I've burned 351 calories wooo. Hurray for calories per hour, I love them so much I'm gonna side-bar them

weighed self today, total weight loss = 0lb. This is good and bad. Good because immediately after last friday's wine-pasta-chipbarm happenings, I had put on 3lb. Bad because of course I shouldn't've succumbed to the chip barm etc and also cos I have been lax about doing exercise this week, I've really only done one walk and a belly dancing class. Must Try Harder!

hooray today is thursday. this means grauniad life/online (science/puters) section. first 2 bits I always read bad science and ask Jack. Got top tip from Mr Jack t'other week bout how to get rid of all that hidden info ms word sticks into your documents.

blah blah blah having a sh*t happens kind of day/week/life and feeling all blah blah blah

blah
ick
bah

Right, I'm gonna get me some mini-goals. I'm feeling like the novelty of losing weight has started to wear off, always a dangerous stage for me to get to. So maybe if I have something to work towards .... ? Might work.

Mini-Goal 1 (weight loss): achieve total of 25 lb lost ie 10% reduction from original body weight. Why 10%? Cos I've read that a 5 - 10% weight loss gives "significant health benefits". The mathematicians amongst you may quibble that 10% of my start weight is actually 24.5 lb, which is true, but asda seven quid 'smart-price' scales aren't so accurate. I spose I should set a date for it too ... hmm ... ok I hereby create a mini-goal of weighing 220 lb (15 st 10) by .... (extrapolates graph) ... 3 weeks time ie 9th April.

Mini-Goal 2 (nrt): ok so I need to get off the nrt. At the moment I get thro about 5 2mg lozenges a day. I will aim to taper off by 1 a week ie 4 this week, 3 next week, and so on, so I will be off them by 16th April. omg that's scary waaaah

Right I will stick those in my side bar so I don't accidentally on purpose forget about them. waaaaaaah heelepp what am i doing eeepppp.