Thursday Confessions . . .

They say confession is good for the soul. I expect that it is and boy, oh boy, do I have a big un for you all today. It's taking me a bit of courage to come out with this, but I have come to the point where I feel that I must.

After 20 years plus of dieting I have come to the conclusion that I am fat. Oh, that is an ugly word, I know, but there is no other way to describe the situation I have found myself in,in recent years. F.A.T Oh, it wasn't for lack of trying to lose weight. I reckon that I have tried just about every diet under the sun. Low Carb? Done it. Slimming World? Done it. Weight Watchers? Likewise. Food Combining, Suzanne Sommers, TOPS, Etc. There isn't a diet that I haven't tried and had a modicum of success on. Then again, there isn't a diet that I haven't failed at.



Going on a diet . . . implies that one day you will come off the diet. Dieting, I'm afraid has only ever made me fatter, for with every ten pounds in life I have lost on a diet . . . I have put back on 15. A lifetime of dieting has helped me to feel like a failure and ashamed. A failure, because I could never stick to one long enough and the weight (and more) always came back on. Ashamed because, whilst I could control all other aspects of my life . . . food was one area that I seemed totally out of control of.

Point in case . . . after months and months of not eating a single squidgen of chocolate, or fat, or cake, or anything tasty like that, of eating nothing that wasn't green or healthy or blah . . . you find yourself one day looking at a cake . . . a cake that everyone else has been eating and enjoying, whilst you only watched. You decide to yourself . . . only one sliver, nobody will know. And so the knife cuts . . . a few minutes later you are in ecstacy . . . it tastes soooo good, and the next thing you know . . . the cake is gone . . . there's nothing left but crumbs, and you feel guilty, guilty, guilty. BUT (and this is a big one) you then say, what the heck . . . I've wrecked it today and then proceed to stuff into your face everything you've been telling yourself for what seems like forever is bad, naughty, not good for you, evil etc. You've lost control and you know it. You'll go back on the diet tomorrow, or Monday, or after the holiday, or . . . well, you get the picture I am sure. You do go back on the diet, but you can't help yourself . . . you sneak little treats in secret, a little bit here and a little bit there. Your eating goes underground.



When I went to Idaho with Lura last winter, I really enjoyed myself. A part of me was a bit afraid to go over and meet all these friends in America. I, kept thinking, would they like me. Would they be shocked at how large I was. Would they still want to be my friends after they found out. Thankfully none of that happened and I did have a pretty wonderful time. I was embarassed though for my daughter to see me (the largest I have ever been in my life). But I loved her so much and wanted to see her so much, I stuffed my fear down inside and went for it. I hated seeing any of the photos afterwards with me in them . . . because I hated reminding myself of how fat I'd actually become, and staring all my failures in the face. I had gotten to the point that I felt that I could never go back to Canada and see my family again, because I didn't really want any of them to see me the way that I was . . . I didn't want to see the shame in their faces, or to embarass any of them.



And so, in June of this year, this is how I was feeling. Fat and a bit of a failure and desperate. I did not know what to do. I knew that I didn't want to be fat for the rest of my life, but I also knew that dieting didn't work for me, that . . . I could never diet again . . . because I didn't want to get fatter, or feel even more like a failure. I told myself, that, if I ever had enough money, I would have gastric band surgery, because I truly felt that would be the only thing that would ever work. Me, who loves food and cooking almost more than anything, was ready to do something so drastic that it would put my life at risk . . .

Then, one day I came home from work, and Todd told me he'd just been listening to the most fascinating program on the radio. It was one of those talk/call in shows and there had been a hypno-therapist on the show, who had helped lots of people in just my situation to lose weight and to keep it off forever. He couldn't remember any more details, just that she had been from Kent. Oddly enough, I had been thinking about hypno-therapy all morning at work, and wondering if it really truly worked. I got onto the computer and started to do some research and came up with a hyno-therapy clinic about 40 minutes from where I live and called the telephone number. I got an answer machine, but left a message and when I got home from work that evening, the therapist had called and I was able to call her back. We talked for about 45 minutes, and then set up a consultation a few days later. I could hardly wait. I felt like this was going to possibly be the beginning of the rest of my life . . . I was sick of feeling fat and ugly. I was sick of feet that hurt unbearably at the end of the day, of hips that groaned in agony every time I walked up the stairs, of knees that caused me a lot of pain, of not even being able to bend over and tie my own shoes . . . of feeling like a failure.



The day I went for my consultation, I was very nervous. I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Would I end up doing silly things, like clucking like a duck, and not be aware of it? Would I suddenly regress to 5 past lives ago, and realize that I had once been the fat wife of Henry the 8th . . . the one you never hear about, and history has forgotten even existed? (tee hee, so not true, but sounded like fun) Nothing could have been further from the truth. Margaret and I simply sat and discussed the way I felt about my weight and what I hoped for, and she explained to me what the program consisted of etc. She had told me on the telephone that, unless she felt after this intitial consultation that I would be a good candidate, she would not take me on as a patient. She did not want to waste my money, or both of our time. I was worried that she wouldn't want to take me on . . . I was desperate. At that point, I wanted this more than anything in my life. I was so happy at the end of our meeting when she told me that she felt I would be a good candidate for this and that she could help me. I walked out of there armed with the tools that I was hopeful could help me conquer this demon and with an appointment for the next week.



I won't bore you with all the details, but I will tell you that, here I am, several months later, two stone lighter (That's almost 30 pounds in North American speak) and am still losing. My clothes are hanging off me, but I don't want to buy any new ones just yet. I still have a fair way to go, but I'm winning. It has been painless, it has been empowering, and I feel like I have been given a new lease on life. I have been eating whatever I want to eat, and enjoying the tastes of my food more than I have in a very long time. I have been discovering things about myself that I never knew before. I have been given the tools to gain back control of my life and I know . . . I KNOW . . . that I can live with this for the rest of my life quite happily. This is not something that I will go off of, or fail at . . . this is me taking back my life and gaining back the confidence that years of abuse at the hands of an abusive spouse, and that failure at dieting had taken away from me. It's been a pretty amazing journey for me. You've all seen the types of food I have been eating and enjoying. What I eat is an open book on here. I hadn't wanted to tell many people until I knew that it was working and until I felt totally confident in it. I didn't want this to be just one more experiment of mine that failed and I didn't want the world to witness my failing at it. But I am ready now to tell all and to bring it out into the open and I really hope that you will all support me in my journey. I do have a page, an online journal that I have been keeping these past few months, however sporadically, where you can find out more details of what I've been doing. You can find it here on Going, Down, Down, Down. My friend Angie is my partner in crime on there and I am sure you will find her story very inspiring as well. I know I sure do!!

So there you have it . . . true confessions. Be gentle with me won't you? (If you have anything truly negative to say, I would respectfully ask that you keep it to yourselves.)

I know it seems a bit hedonistic and evil to follow such a confession with a recipe like this, but I can't help myself. This is what I baked, and it was good, good, good. Mind you, I could only eat a tiny smidgen, but goodness, how delicious that smidgen was!



*Mother's Coffee Cake with Lemon Glaze*
Serves 15
Printable Recipe

This is a deliciously moist cake with a lovely crumb and very tasty filling. Tasty, because you are the one who decides what it is you want it to be filled with. I have chosen to use Wild Blueberry Preserves here, but you can use what ever flavour you like. Strawberry, rhubarb and ginger, lemon curd, raspberry, cherry . . . You decide! It's delicious any way you choose!

2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1 TBS baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2/3 cup fruit preserves of your own choice
Lemon Glaze:
1 cup icing sugar, sifted
2 TBS lemon juice



Pre-heat th eoven to 180*C/350*F. Lightly grease and flour a 10 cup bundt pan or large loaf pan and set it side.

Beat together the eggs and milk. Set aside.

Whisk the flour, sugar, salt, soda and baking powder together in a large bowl. Add the wet ingredients all at once and mix together gently, without overmixing. It does not have to be smooth, but all the dry ingredients should be uniformly moist.

Spoon half of the batter into the prepared pan. Top with the jam, being very careful not to let it touch the edges of the pan, or the centre of the pan. Spread it as evenly as you can over the batter. Spoon on the remaining half of the batter. Take a knife and carefully dip it into the batter all the way around the pan, or down into the pan if yo uare using a loaf pan, swirling the jam a bit through the batter, but not too much.

Bake in the heated oven for 35 to 40 minutes,or until the cake is well risen and a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Remove from the oven and allow to rest in the pan for 5 minutes before removing from the pan to a wire rack to cool completely.

Whisk together the icing sugar and the lemon juice. Spoon over the cake while it is still warm. Sit back and enjoy with a nice hot cuppa!



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