I haven’t blogged for a few days and honestly it’s because I’m annoyed. I’m annoyed with myself, I’m annoyed at life, I’m annoyed with everything. I know writing about things is supposed to be cathartic, but I didn’t want to dwell on things and let it get me down so I figured the best thing I could do is just let it go for a few days.
Where to start… Being a recovering fatty is hard. Trying to break old habits is hard, trying to make good decisions is hard, but even when you do your best sometimes the situation you are in just makes it nearly impossible to be good.
Jamie Oliver had a very public campaign about school meals, aiming to improve the food that our kids eat at school. He may have achieved it, although judging by the fact that some kids eat pasta and cheese every day I’m not so sure. Anyway, the campaign was very loud and got a lot of attention, great. But what about the rest of us, where is the campaign for everyone out in the real world, how about providing us with better food? Yes, I know I am old enough to make my own decisions, but still, a little help would be nice.
Getting to the point, we went to the football on Saturday. It was a 12:30 kickoff, which is where the trouble began. It was a sellout crowd, and stupidly I had forgot to book parking when we got our tickets, which meant parking anywhere close to the ground was going to be difficult if we left it too late. To try and at least get somewhere sensible to park we decided to get close to the stadium for around 11am and then see what we could find. That meant leaving we would be out at lunchtime. It was too early to have an early lunch, but we would be out too late to have a late lunch when we got home. Whilst I don’t think we have ever been searched, it is clearly stated that you cannot take food or drink into the stadium, and if Vikki had a bag full of picnic bits you just know she would have been searched. I stressed and stressed and stressed over what to do, there just didn’t seem to be any good option.
In the end we opted to play with the dinner menu and use some bits planned for dinner one day and have a cooked brunch, eggs, bacon, sausage rashers. It was a decent meal, but it was essentially breakfast at 10am and had to see us through until we got home from the football. For the calories it wasn’t a bad brunch, turkey bacon and HECK sausage rashers aren’t exactly high in calories, but still, I just knew the day was going to be a struggle.
Now we get back to my original point, being a recovering fatty out in the wild is hard. We’ve paid to be somewhere at lunch time, along with roughly 15,000 other people, including children and elderly, people of all shapes and sizes, people with all sorts of dietary requirements. What are we offered? Chips, burgers, Hot dogs, loaded fries and meat filled pies. If you just want something small, or that doesn’t need you to remortgage your house then there are tubs of pringles and chocolate bars on offer. Literally nothing that you would opt for on a diet, hell, even the Pepsi I got was full fat even though I asked for Pepsi Max. By this point we were already feeling a little peckish, and the whole setup did us no favours.
Let me ask this, why are cigarettes and tobacco products locked away out of sight, but chocolates and other unhealthy options are put right there on the side on full display? Sure, smoking kills a lot of people every year, but what, obesity doesn’t? I’ve been a smoker and I’ve been obese and I’m telling you, trying to quit junk food is just as hard as trying to quit smoking, in fact it is probably even harder. I know I got myself into this mess and I need to get myself out of it, but a little help would be appreciated. Would it really hurt to keep the junk food out of sight? Or how about offering some healthy alternatives? I opt for a chocolate bar, not overly filling but it was the best of a whole lot of bad options. This annoyed me. Here I am struggling and it feels like the outside world is setup to make us fail. When was the last time you went to any sort of entertainment and saw a healthy (and desirable) food option? At bowling the deals are a game and a pizza, or a game and a burger meal. The cinema is hot dogs and bags of sweets. Even at the theatre you’re looking at ice cream and sweets. I know people will be thinking one little treat won’t hurt, but would they be saying one won’t hurt if we were talking about cigarettes?
Anyway, that situation annoyed me. Next up I annoyed myself. Having been out half the day and having had to mess with the dinner menu meant I didn’t fancy cooking when we got home. I wouldn’t have minded cooking, but I didn’t have anything to cook that was easy. That’s my fault, I should have planned the menu better. On top of that, I made the rookie mistake of joking about wanting pizza, which I should know better because by now I know once the thought is in my head, even if it was a joke, it stays there. Yep, I wanted pizza. Hell, our team had just secured promotion, why not celebrate. Off to Dominos we go, driving out of our way to a specific branch of Dominos because they do the base that I love. The pizza was amazing, I enjoyed every bit of it. But…idiot. That’s it, double annoyed. I was just days away from my birthday, desperately hoping to be under 400lbs and here I go sabotaging myself, and the world is just there encouraging it.
I’m the interest of trying to take any positive out of the situation, I guess I’ll call it lesson learned and in future I’ll plan better. Also, the pizza was amazing.