Help, I need some Body, Help, not just any body, I need my body...just less of it!

I have to have a deadline.
The 1st September 2011 is it. Tomorrow I am going on a diet. I know it is not good to deprive yourself but to be fair I like ALL food so I will have to cut out something.
I have tried 'FatReducers' a humiliating 5 times, no course working as well as the first time. Each visit I start weighing more and give up having lost less. The financial cost however is more each year (reminds you it is a business)!
So following the example of @jojohedgehog who is quitting smoking with the support of her FB & Twitter friends, I am roping in the help of Twitter.
My thinking being, I am letting down a whole lot more people if I don't try & I am documenting my travails, putting it into print so as to be held accountable!
I am doing this for my family and my health.
The more help the better. Today... @wifenotlodger: So any DIET suggestions? As long as they are safe & palatable I will give them a go....(use the tag) #WifeysTwitterDiet ..and Exercise tips, I need ideas... #WifeysTwitterDiet
First responses,
@wombat37: I used SparkPeople. It's free, full of all sorts of stuff & help. Lost 5 stone using the site. I immediately register, site looks good & is free!
@stickymitts:spark people is pretty good, takes a while at first to enter all the nutritional info of British foods though...It's good for emphasising the importance of exercise too, which I think is the most important bit. @wombat37:Quite a few are already on there, just search entries by other people.I also have a "food" called Calories which I've set up to be 1 cal per gram. Easy to enter just a number then. I've made a lot of good friends on there too, through the social teams. Lots of good support. @parkrunner: Good luck with diet.My advice is only way to lose weight is to eat a good diet but small portions exercise as much as poss>...and don't restrict yourself too much or you'll fail. I lost a couple of stone 6 years ago and kept it off by doing that
@weids_l just cut out bread and white flour worked for me Xxxx hugs
So I am all set. There is some great advice, which I need and will appreciate.
I will share #WifeysTwitterDiet with the ephemeral internet and hope it helps!!

Time to think, time to change.

Life is sweet here in Anglesey. I have had space to relax and think.
September for me as a teacher is 'New Year', I make plans, decisions and resolutions.
These days, I don't recognise myself, it seems through being a mother & girlfriend my appearance has become last in a long to-do list.
I do not know how I should look, what I should wear.
I have bin-bags of clothes, that I have swelled out of, but hope to shrink into again someday.
My hair neither flatters or deceives. It proclaims to the world at large that I have lost touch.
My weight has gradually grown over the years, encouraged by child-bearing and depression.
I now wear the weight of my past experiences like large panniers, holding the mistakes and traumas of the last decade.
But I am here now, at an indefinable start line, that were it to gave a title it would be, The Rest Of My Life.
I have a husband who loves me and children who are old enough to make their own decisions and choices, needing not the physical sheperding of the past, merely emotional support and 'huggage'.
I am rich.
What happens next is up to me.
What happens next is truly exciting.
Watch this space...

A review wot I wrote...

Green Man fires up first-timers « FamilyFestivals

I always knew the time would come when I had to talk about S-E-X with Small Boy and Girl.
I have tried to be open and relaxed.
I was given this lovely book when I was little- took me years to think about procreation without wearing striped jumpers!

Whilst Big Boy sprints for the bathroom swathed in towels , I try to brazen it out naked styly!
Every so often, at bathtime, I have used to opportunity to air the correct language ( as recommended by the Sex Education advice at school) , Remember to wash your VAGINA, clean behind your SCROTUM
 (the children look bewildered as I over enunciate and bellow, through embarrassment, rendering the words foreign and unusual)!
This doesn't always work out  quite as you hope- after a long discussion on mustaches with Small Boy, he wandered into the bathroom as I was showering, glanced across casually at my 'front bottom' and said " Nice Mustache, Mum!"
You try and answer each question as honestly as possible, but who amongst us does not use some shortening  phrase, front bottom, willy etc.I have to say I hate the word penis, just saying it makes my lips press together in a Mary Whitehouse way, but I have persevered using correct parlance where possible.
So now,it was the time to reveal that the birds and bees are not so far short of the truth,I researched books on the internet and made my selection.

Mummy Laid an Egg- Babette Cole

Where Willy Went- Nicholas Allen

I took the books round to a friends one evening where we drank wine and evaluated them, ( yes really and a cracking night it was too I can't recommend it enough , maybe there is a whole new market- an alternative to 'Baby Showers)!'
I planned to read them the stories while camping, there they could ask me as many questions as they liked, get it all out of their system before going back to school!I hoped the 8yro would benefit most and the 6yro take in as much information as his brain needed at that age...Of course Gales and rips in tents foreshortened that plan so it actually occurred at we were walking down the street...
"Mummy why don't you have another baby? I mean you are a lady so why not?" -Small Boy
I decided to seize this opportunity and run;
" Well do you know how babies are made?" Silence.
"Well it involves a seed and an egg."
" A seed!" The look on 8yros face was so disgusted that I thought I was going to get the giggles so I hurriedly postponed it until we were back at home. I sat them on the sofa and read both books.
The End.
No reaction, no questions...like a stone into deep water with no ripples.
However I feel something will emerge when they have had time to digest the information ( I can't wait!).

Just hoping the questions get asked at home - though I fear they might be aired elsewhere so I apologise in advance if your child comes home having been 'educated' by mine!
P.S.
Small Boy seemed excited about finding out what his wrinkly, saggy testicles were for ( perhaps previous to this he thought they were excess skin waiting to fall off?)

Self Help & Dirty Feet

'Self help' What is that all about?

Well it is definitely better than being locked in a room with the best the NHS can supply!

I finally get an appointment for 'Psychotherapy', 6 years after the main crisis loomed!

I feel positive, mentally agile and ready to put the final seal on my recovery with some good strategies for maintaining mental well-being...

...then I step into my first 'session' with The Counsellor', she has dirty feet and straggly hair and clothes in shades of brown. She takes up a position that is slanted away from me, poor body language- in an interview she would be shown the door before a question was answered!!

She gives me reams of paperwork to fill in and asks the occasional question with a long drawn out ...'yes' to follow, I feel like saying rhubarb in response and seeing if she still answers in the affirmative.

She asks me what I want to achieve out of this 'treatment'.

I say honestly, 'strategies and concrete responses that will help me build my confidence and maintain well being'....

More sighing and limp questions, then she asks me again, I say, more firmly now, 'I want actions and responses not just talking' ....

..she mentions Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, my heart quickens, but she speaks, with the slowness of a Pope,

"I feel that there is more to explore, more discussion to come."

'Oh please no!' We are now running over an hour and my will to survive is melting.

..... "I state again- more stridently, even daring to mention 'CBT' obviously- a no-no in 'counsel speak' let them divine what you want- usually the opposite of what you are saying!

"I think my colleagues in CBT could probably do something good with you but....there is just some thing intriguing, I feel we need to talk more, you are un-resolved"

...( 'yes as to whether to throttle you?')

She asks me to do a checklist of how I am feeling right now, it comes out dangerously high on the Harm/self harm side, she does not realise that it's her I might want to harm...

...she mentions past desires to do harm to one-self

" But it wasn't serious? I mean you never actually did it"!

DUH!! And you became a counsellor how?

Finally she protractedly explains that although she has normally made a decision at the end of this 'interview' she feels she needs to see me again...

...absolutely not I think!

I go home and order the complete Paul Coelho works and 'CBT for Dummies' from Amazon,

SELF HELP!

like my voice, delayed in the ephemeral post!

I wrote this at Easter but never got round to posting it...
It’s perhaps unusual that I should find my blog voice again on the cold coasts of Holland. Then again the bracing arctic winds are great for sinuses and clearing out anxieties!
I have been struggling for words over the past year. Not vocabulary, for I have lots of words waiting to be used, but for the air to speak them with. This pausing and stumbling manifested itself in a minor way during stressful times of my life but now, when I am out of a toxic stressed environment and feel well, it has come back full force, gripping my larynx in a tight grasp that can only have a physical cause, or so I thought!...
But apparently it is a ‘common’ manifestation in people who have suffered from depression and anxiety. It seems so unfair that as I enter the stage of my recovery where all the work-related ‘nastiness’ seems a dim distant memory (on someone else’s page) that this has appeared.
I have been having speech therapy and for most of it have fought all the way that it is mind related. It is such a physical sensation for me. However as I get to grips with the problem, how best to manage it and how not to let it put me off speaking I feel I am on the right path again.
As with anyone suffering a ‘speech dysfluency’ or in my case a stammer, the person begins to dread certain words and letter sounds.
‘K’ was a bad one and when I was supply teaching in a particular class with a Kayleigh followed by a Kaine it was a daily struggle to tackle each name equally, one child always came off worst!!
You feel like the person you are speaking to thinks you are dissembling as you, stumble over words,blush and your eyes begin to slide away, as you try to calm your larynx- all classic lying 'tells'!!
.....now to present day and August!
How did I cope with this?
I decided I had to keep talking whatever may! I kept teaching until I was made redundant this July and now have a 'party-plan' business selling Jamie Oliver home wares in peoples houses- using my raconteur skills for a living!!I will not give in!
After all a little breathiness went a long way for Marilyn didn't it?
"Boop boop de Boop!!"
Blonde and a bit blonde!!
"I am involved in a freedom ride protesting the loss of the minority rights belonging to the few remaining earthbound stars. All we demanded was our right to twinkle. "
Marilyn Monroe

WoW

I write my 4-year-old son is recovering from the trauma of wandering off a cliff and dying! His avatar that is!

His granddad, my dad, has got him hooked on World of Warcraft (WOW), an online fantasy role-play game. Small Boy is 'Piggy Mon' and Small Girl is 'Lyonessuz'.

Grandad left the room for a second and Small Boy climbed a tree ( as boys do) and dropped off a cliff, cue much crying and devastation until Granddad brought him back to life!

There is a life lesson right there! All without leaving his seat!

This activity is keeping in the family tradition; I was inducted (brainwashed!) into Dungeons and Dragons and Tunnels and Trolls at the tender age of 9! It was a major past time in our house and all the neighbours kids would be round to play and dice roll through various situations.

My brother still has not let me forget that my Elf Legolas threw a spear without looking and stuck him in the back! That's 26 years ago!

It was normal to me to have talk of Trolls and Orcs and this was while Peter Jackson was still doing homework and dreaming!

On going to university in a different country away from my family I knew exactly what to do on fresher's week and I headed to the Fantasy Role Play Soc… only to find it was populated by spotty males in denim, their eyes lighting up at the thought of a female member!

Turning on my heel I tried the Science Fiction society, this at least had female members! However the first meeting descended rapidly into a testosterone fueled argument along the lines of " How many Dicks have you got?"

Philip K Dick that is!

I kid you not!

So sadly my role-playing fantasy and science fiction has been kept firmly behind home doors until now! My dad and younger brother are hooked and meet up online in WOW to interact and 'play together'.

I have resisted because I have the funny feeling I too will be hooked!

As a quick rule of thumb watch this,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkCNJRfSZBU

if it makes you laugh then you are a natural gamer and or may have played in the past!

if you mutter "nerds" or " utter twaddle" then don't worry this world is not for you, you are obviously well balanced holding down a good job and providing for dependents!

Tunnels & Trolls (abbreviated T&T) is a 1975 fantasy role-playing game designed by Ken St. Andre and published by Flying Buffalo. The second modern role-playing game ever published, it was developed to be a simpler alternative to Dungeons and Dragons suitable for solitaire and play-by-mail gameplay.