I don’t like being weak!

I am not afraid to admit when I am doing something mindlessly, I am not scared to say “Hey, I don’t know what I am doing” as I am learning something new.

I am feeling like this right now with a new form of exercise I have taken up “medium resistance band exercises”. 

I’ve been bed bound sick from 2013 to spring 2022, before I was bed bound sick I was a very active woman with a weight training past, I was very strong.  I am disappointed to have learned that I can barely move this resistance band, because I have become very weak over the years.

A far cry from 2006 when I could carry a 250llb man across a room!  Seriously, I did that because the guy, who was called Sahid, did not believe I could do it and that I did weight training in my spare time back then because I had strange dreams of becoming a wrestler or gladiator if my other career options failed.

I don’t like being this weak!  I want the amazon in me to come back!  I was very proud of my physical prowess back then, yes I was always a little large looking by most people’s standards, but I was toned and strong and fit!  180 pounds of toned woman!

I am not like that anymore and it’s going to change – I don’t believe for one moment that being forty years old makes me too old to go back to that level of toned fitness and strength!

This is exactly why I am having a high protein diet and trying to put in HIIT exercises here and there in my day.  I am unable to do more than 15 minutes all told in a day, because I am still sick and I have multiple immune problems which will be with me for life; I have to work around it the best I can!

Right now I am doing more in a day than I did a year ago and that makes me feel proud of myself, because I’ve come so far!

I don’t think I will reach my weight goal by July like I said a few months ago because I have had lapses and the weight loss has slowed down somewhat, I do think at my current pace it could be reachable in 75 to 100 weeks if nothing changes and that is depending on whether or not I am losing 0.5llbs to 1llb a week like I have been this past month.

Also my goal has shifted to becoming lighter than I wanted originally.

I intend to do a lot more to make the goal faster, but I am basing this on more failure, ill-health, mental relapses and financial worries getting in the way of the goal – so if I say to myself I will be at my goal by March 2025 I won’t be disappointed every six months, will I?  But March 2025 is doable with the failures and relapses in mind.

If everything goes my way – there is no reason why it should take that long!  There is no reason for me not to be my goal by Christmas 2023 the latest with a 2llb loss per week being necessary to do so and no relapses!

The relapses aren’t dietary – they are lapses in my exercise routine due primarily to illness – but kind of dietary in that financially it might be tough to prioritise high protein – but I am trying to force that as a priority no matter what!

Even if I have to eat nothing but porridge and protein shakes and a celery and spinach smoothie a day, I feel inclined to do this!

In fact this is a discussion I aim to have with Paul, as yes I still live with him and yes, he still holds the budget purse strings!

So, getting back to the gist of this post – I have no idea what I am doing with this resistance band, but I am doing it anyway and I am hoping and trusting I am positioning myself correctly according to these YouTube videos I am watching! 

I’m pretty sure it’s normal for people as unfit as me to get butt cramps when you use this thing on your upper thighs after two minutes? 

LOL!

Thanks for reading!

Weight loss journal

For the past few weeks I have been really hard on myself for not losing weight fast enough and I started to get miserable about it all.

However, one thing I did which is a blessing was keep a weekly diary of my weight and inch loss since June 2017, something I recommend everyone should do!  Because you never realise how much you’ve done, until you look back on these diaries when you are having a down moment!

Today I was shocked that I have lost 14 inches off my hips that were a smack in the face revelation for me!  It made me feel tons better!

OK it took 6yrs, but during that time I had huge lapses in diet and broke off and went back on a lot. I’ve only been taking my goals seriously since April 2022 and in that time I naughtily had approximately 4 weeks off.

Yeah, on a good week I might only lose a few ounces and a good week, only three pounds, but all in all its weight loss and not only this, I have noticed on the times I lose no weight, I have had some kind of inch loss. 

What is the point in only weighing yourself?  Did you know muscle weighs more than fat?  So you might not have lost any weight, in fact you may have gained one week, but check that inch loss or you will lose heart quickly!

It’s vital to check all your stats regularly to keep your mental health in check as you progress towards your goals!

I’m building muscle faster since I dropped the habit of no lunch for a bowl of porridge made with protein shakes!

So delicious – so is porridge with cinnamon and a bunch of other yummy things – I am coming away from the sugar options because I don’t do well on sugar, it gives me a headache and this meant I never really had much fibre in my diet until now. 

I can’t believe my hips were 58 inches once! 

Please look out for more updates on my weight loss and tone up in the future…

Thanks for reading!

Size changes & memories

I am so excited that I have lost another dress size!

In the UK I am a size 20 going into 18, I should be fully in the size 18 in about six weeks’ time – to the US I am a size 16 going into a 14 – which makes me about the same size as Oprah Winfrey, well Paul thinks I have similar shape to her only my waist is more defined – which really flattered me!  Especially as I see myself more like June Shannon, Honey Boo Boos mum from ten years back every time I look in the mirror, but I have been suffering from body dysmorphia my whole life, so I can’t trust what I see!

I struggle at looking at pictures of myself because it makes me just cry, whether those pics were of me when I was thin or not, because to me, I am just hideous, even now when I look in the mirror I see no visible difference to how I am now vs two or three years ago!

But the scales and the clothing tells me something different, I am significantly different now – I wish my brain wouldn’t lie to me!

On a positive note, my nails are growing! 

I had to unfortunately chop both index finger nails down though, because they were peeling and it looked ugly, don’t know why them and the right pinkie are doing that, so they have been cut down and I am trying to grow them, but it looks odd as all the other nails are half an inch long now!

I did a huge mistake in putting clear nail varnish on the other day, it is uncomfortable and irritating and I don’t have any nail varnish remover in the house until weekend!

I really must put up my stats again soon, been meaning to but keep forgetting and I am writing this at like 3am so it’s not convenient to wake Paul up so he can help me measure my stats, lol.

You can hardly tell I had alopecia now, though there is about a four or five inch thick strand of hair that stands up all on its own when I don’t wax it down, because that’s where the alopecia used to be, but my hair is nearly 2 inches longer than shoulder length nowadays, so it’s easy to hide now.

I am one shoe size bigger in the US – I am a 7 to 7.5 so in the US I am an 8 to 8.5!

If your grandma ever tells you that the bigger the woman’s foot is the less trouble she has in labour and the baby is likely to cannon ball out, please believe them!  Worked for me!

Even if I did nearly break Paul’s finger with my death grip on his hand during labour, at least I didn’t scream like all the other wussy pussy mothers in the ward that night!  I may have growled a little whilst chanting I love you and I want this baby almost seemingly demonically, maybe once roared when the midwife used the scratch and scrape to induce me, but I didn’t scream!

Paul’s finger was bruised for two months.

I often joked that next time he gets me pregnant I’ll get him a baseball mitt for protection!  But that’s never happening now, so, lol!

Oh just imagine… now I have nails…

Thanks for reading!

Remission, weight loss and dreams

It may have been a long remission between Easter and last week, because for the past few days I have been sleeping a lot and finding things a little difficult again.

My immune system has taken a massive hit and I feel like I have influenza but there is no temperature and not much else of the normal flu like symptoms.  The brain fog is coming back, the depression is hitting hard again and then the washing machine breaks down two days ago and it needs replacing.

The asthma has got a bit worse too, but it’s the feeling that I am turning into stone or lead I can’t get over – every limb feels weighted. 

Very sleepy is not a good description really – I kind of feel like I am going into a hibernation period, if you get my drift?  But what is weird about that is the fact that I can’t seem to sleep at night.

My appetite has stayed much the same, not eating much at all, so the idea of gaining weight over Christmas is silly as I seem to be losing up to two pounds a week still or not moving on the scales at all.

I found a local gym for £8.75 a week membership, I can afford that with my personal allowance and I will be signing up for the membership around the end of January, to help me tone up – my upper arms in particular as they are the only things which don’t seem to be doing what the rest of my body is doing… losing inches and toning up.  They are a good gym to go to because they specialise in helping people who have long-term health problems or are morbidly obese, which I need because I have asthma and a couple of auto-immune problems, one of which is rheumatic arthritis.

It’s exciting to note that I have lost ninety six pounds over a year now without much effort, now let’s take it up a huge notch!  I am not that far off from my goal weight and with this gym membership I should reach my goal weight before July with any luck – at least I haven’t been on the morbidly obese scale for a while now- In fact I remember a time where I was a horrifying 56 on the BMI scale that was nearly two years ago!  No, this wasn’t the reason I was bedbound either, the bedbound came first and this kind of obesity was caused by that!

How did I manage that?

Simple!

I was a highly active person who walked an average of nine miles a day amongst lots of other exercises and physical activities, needing to eat an average of four thousand calories a day just to sustain myself or collapse – to becoming a severely ill and bedbound person literally overnight, but never readjusted my diet, until three years later when it dawned on me what the heck I was doing!

I had such spleen pain and constant chest infections for nearly eight years solid, the amount of times I was diagnosed with pneumonia too, I couldn’t move because the spleen was too swollen and I was literally advised to do nothing in case it ruptured!  NHS overstretched before covid even existed and so operating wasn’t an option given to me! 

Especially as I was eating my feelings when the depression stepped in, meaning I was over doing food on a massive scale for someone who was extremely sedentary!

It wasn’t until around three years ago that I realised when I am having an angry or a depressing day, I go to food again for comfort, I realised this is a base instinct we all have; why?  Because as animals we would take our anger and frustrations out on other animals and bite them and attack them, but as humans have learned to civilise ourselves somewhat we suppress our anger and food is the substitute for the primordial release for biting!

So when you feel depressed, sad or angry get yourself chewing gum – believe me, it works – only I find it hard to have gum these days because most of it contains soy and soy is really bad for my spleen issue.

Around four years ago was the time I had a completely free from diet, no eggs, no gluten, no lactose, no soy and a mostly paleo diet.  This helped a lot with the breathing problems and the swollen spleen, eventually I learned that I could eat almost anything without pain but there was something still off – occasionally my spleen would swell again and it took until earlier this year to find out what was doing it… mustard and soy. 

Now I am not on a free from diet anymore, but I have to avoid soy and mustard, or the spleen swells up again and my asthma has a bad day – unfortunately most of my favourite foods contain them, as I especially love mustard!  So suffering is a choice now – which I don’t choose often! 

Not a lot of people who are recently acquainted with me take me seriously about how much I understand nutrition and exercise since they’ve always known me to be this size.  But in actuality, I am really switched on, because I used to be very athletic and I can name in approximation the calorie worth and nutritional value of most foods.

But for some people they can’t understand that if you know all of this, then why did you allow yourself to get so fat?

Because if you live a certain lifestyle for too long, then you become ill where the physical aspect changes but not the food – you can see how this is easily done.  But people will be people and some people are morons and don’t use their head on this kind of stuff!

I remember a time where my doctor suggested my diet was too healthy, too low on salt, too low on fats and too low on calories, that I was blacking out three times a week on average and going into severe full bodied cramps.  Because of lack of electrolytes as I didn’t add salt to anything and I had a low fat diet which was mostly vegetable based.   I remember having to keep a food diary constantly and keep every nutrient in mind and I remember having to rush out to McDonalds at random times throughout the week to get the high fat, high salt and calorific food I needed because I didn’t have time or the wherewithal to eat a large meal, so I had to opt for big macs as a dietary supplement.  A weird contrast to my life now!

No, I do not miss it, because I didn’t enjoy having to do those things – what I do miss is the health and fitness I used to have and the energy I had as well as the body.

In the future, I am hoping to get all that back again, only this time I am going to be smarter, no big mac supplements anymore – I have a weight lifting professional friend who had the same problem, only she supplements the low salt problem not with crisps and salted fries or peanuts, like I did – but as adding rehydration salts to every bottle of water she drinks!

At the time I knew I was a protein type metabolism but I didn’t fully understand it as much as I do now and I never knew you could get really nice protein drinks to get what you need in per day.  I was literally trying to stuff down copious amounts of chicken and fish every day into my system – another thing which will change in the future.

You see, back in the good old days of when I was active, I was active alone and without a fitness network, so I was literally clueless and often had stomach ache and a bulimic reaction to the food I needed to eat.

You live, you learn.

Paul and I are still living together but we are separated, still he is trying to support me the best he can with the diet I need.  He has told me that our finances are better than we used to have as we are now being supplemented now he is retired, which means I can see the doctor more often and the diet can improve slightly.

In March my own personal finances will have doubled for me, which means I could also supplement myself too – so I should be losing the weight much faster soon.  I will get back on it all after Christmas, properly.  

Calorie, protein and nutritional monitoring that is, as well as signing up for the local gym classes!

My self-employment should be kicking off around March too, so hopefully I will earn enough to consider moving out of Paul’s by the end of summer, maybe – who know?  I can’t see me living alone to be honest, but there you go!

I don’t do New Years resolutions, so please don’t take all of this as that!

My second biggest dream right now is to rediscover my inner pride and vanity! 

When I was healthy and fit, there were a lot of people who said all I needed to do was dye my hair blond and get a Chihuahua and I’d be like Paris Hilton in my style!  I was offended, because what’s wrong with a brunette?  Though I like the idea of platinum hair! 

Though maybe they were just on about how much I love pink and fluffies? 

My first biggest ever dream I’ve had forever now, is to find someone who genuinely loves me and wants to keep me, build a family with me, push me to be the best that I can be and we motivate each other like live in life coaches!  Along with this the person has to tolerate that I can be suffocating with how I love them and hands on with them, because I am just like that!  I am like Elmira from Looney Tunes – but they also have to tolerate eccentricities, daydreams and creative pursuits as it’s all a huge part of who I am!  Please also, the person must understand I am very childish – I am overly playful and I am not too responsible really.  I am such a hedonist to be honest!

My third ever dream is not what you think it is either… nope… no, it’s not really anything to do with my stories or art – it’s having a great home and social life. 

The stories becoming movies is really a fourth dream… shock horror… I know!

I kind of kept that a secret as I kind of wore this with shame for a while – but I am starting to release the true me and I have to be honest with you as much as myself now, don’t I?

I feel bad admitting that actually.

I am still writing, don’t fret!  I am just not all that bothered in giving boring details about word count anymore, because nobody really cares enough to comment unless they are a troll who moans about how often I update word counts!

But meh – I always lacked structure anyway, I say I intend to write one novel but I end up writing a little towards twenty and so…. I am learning to become at peace with me and the way I am… so should you!

But project AD and the Easter project are the main focuses for me right now, even if I only write about twice a week on both of them – at least its progress!  You have to remember I have lots of other projects on the go too!

I know lots of people are eager to get their hands on project AD and this is why I am writing this as fast as I can, because I know there are a lot of people in waiting over it. 

I just got to get it out there anyway, because it’s a great story and I am very excited for it.  I am seeing merchandise in my head already; it will be a great new toy brand in my opinion as it is a dystopian comedy for kids.

But the Easter project is also gripping me a lot too with so many amazing ideas I am literally bursting to share them with someone but scared I’d shoot myself in the foot if I did!

So that’s what’s happening in my life right now.

Thanks for reading!

Suffering & tragedy

So, I have been freezing my butt off for nothing!

No progress whatsoever, the green tea with turmeric and cinnamon is disgusting and I have suffered for two weeks for nothing!

Why do I say that?

Because for some reason or another, I haven’t lost or gained not even an ounce of weight for two whole weeks!

Grumpy about it?  Not half!

The whole idea of developing brown fat to lose weight is utter tosh!

Before all these stupid new ideas, I was losing a steady two to three pounds a week and I got cocky thinking, it will be faster doing these hair-brained ideas… no, a complete stall!

Not happy at all!

To top it all, I have a raging sore throat and bronchitis so I haven’t been able to exercise for ten days either and now Christmas is around the corner!

I have until the 21^st December then I am on cheat system till the 2^nd January, because I don’t want a sucky Christmas – I am expecting a two pound gain, but not happy about it – but going back to my old system that’s easily lost in a week!

So shoot me, it’s Christmas!

I am crying and praying for a good friend of mine who is in ICU right now, so now is not the time to get on my case. 

We’ve been through some hard times together, though we haven’t physically seen each other since I was a teenager; we still spoke on LinkedIn now and again and it’s going to really hurt if she doesn’t pull through, really hurt a lot!

She said she was going be my wing girl when I become a famous bestselling writer and although we don’t talk much these days, I don’t know what I will do without her!

Get well love!  XXX

Thanks for reading!

Personal events of 2022

I had taken up a new protein diet and exercise regime, which worked well.

I have lost 93 pounds of weight since last year and hoping to lose another 50 pounds to reach the goal ideal weight for me by July 2023.

I have unfortunately lost three relatives this year, two due to Covid, as well as a family friend.

I have made some good close online friendships with other creative people.

I have broken up from a long-term relationship and I am now single.

My son has been officially diagnosed with autism on a mild spectrum.

I am no longer on a free from diet, because we have learned I had problems with mustard and soya.

One of the debts I had has now been paid off, that debt was due to paying things off from Christmas 2017, when the government cut our money unexpectantly by £200 just 3 weeks before Christmas!

Thanks for reading and being with me throughout the year!

Writing & glowing

I am living in nothing but coincidences and synchronicities lately and its making me feel like I am losing my marbles!

I spoke with a friend last night about how I really should get back into writing my novel again because it’s been awhile since I picked up the pen or typed away at my laptop towards a substantial project outside of blogging; then I decided when I woke up today that I was going to write towards my project AD and I managed to get down approximately 1200 words.

Where does the synchronicity lie in that? 

Well, about an hour after I had done that writing I decided I would go on YouTube and watch a weekly reading from one of my favourite YouTubers and she said that this week I am working towards unblocking a big aspect of my life, I am moving forwards whereas before I had a long hiatus and that the cards indicated a lot of wands and page energy in the future, which means a lot of childish, playful and creative energy – and in the past aspect of the reading there was a lot of cups and swords in the reading, which indicated a lot of arguments and emotional turmoil.

This is one of the major reasons why I stopped writing for a while as there was a lot of emotional upset in the family and a lot of arguments and losses; also I have been under eating and under sleeping a lot lately.

On a good day I get five hours sleep without naps and I am eating 1300 calories – those are good days!  My average day looks a lot like 3 hours sleep with two 25 minute naps and 900 calories.

What concerns Paul is my body isn’t going into starvation mode anymore, I am constantly icy cold even with the heating on and I am still losing a steady two pounds a week.

Because of the lack of sleep, I haven’t exercised in nearly 10 days now and I have to say, it has bought back the depression big time!

When I do finally sleep, I wake up with a start because I have heard someone shout my name or shove the bed, only to find there is nothing there.  Or I have woken up because of a nightmare; I am often waking up startled!

I sometimes wonder if it’s because I am meditating a lot lately and not eating enough to stay grounded.  Other practitioners have thought this about me, but you know – I am not so sure, I’ve never eaten after meditation in the past and was fine back then.

Though I think Henry is developing clairvoyant abilities since starting puberty, because he claimed he saw me glowing gold when I was using reiki on his twisted ankle the other day!

He said he never believed in all my magic talk until he saw that and he said “Wow, you really are magical ma”!  I am proud; he actually saw the golden glow I was using to heal his ankle!

When I stopped healing his ankle he was disappointed the glowing stopped, he asked me try and do it again and I did and he saw me glow again.  He was fascinated!

Thanks for reading! 

Freeze treatment & spicy green tea

Universeodon is taking some getting used to, I don’t know how to find my followers or find things in general – but I am getting the hang of it, like I am trying to get the hang of other things too.

Such as, learning how to accept being cold and encouraging myself to sit around literally freezing my butt off, because I heard that it helps you lose weight faster by producing more brown fat rather than the horrible kind which makes you fat.

Brown fat reputedly makes you lose weight, did my own research on it and all you need is to sit around in temperatures below 19c  66.2F and eat or drink regularly the following – green tea (which I do twice a day anyway) turmeric, propolis, cinnamon and apples as a main thing – amongst others.  Oh and B5 supplements or B5 rich foods also helps with this, apparently. 

I am in pain if temperatures are under 21.5c seriously, because of my arthritis – but we all have to suffer for the sake of beauty and goals!  Anyway, I noticed the cold doesn’t hurt so much if I drink the spiced up green tea about half an hour before cold exposure, which helps! 

So I am seeing if I would lose weight faster by taking on these new simple steps, it will take two weeks to see an effect apparently, so two weeks of suffering the cold before my body regulates its own temperature.  I am not doing well with the cold, I am shivering and resorting to my fluffiest cardigans again and again, which defeats the object! 

I know when I was slimmer I was crazy enough to regularly have cold showers, but here that’s no longer an option because back in 2015 when the shower broke down, Paul hasn’t been able to fix it. 

I had the showers because I thought it was healthy for the heart to expose myself like that to the cold, also it improved my hair and skin.

I bought a new shower, but it’s been stuck in the box since 2016 and he doesn’t show any signs of helping fix that up.  So I have had to tolerate baths all the time and that means my skin has been suffering due to lack of regular exfoliation and shea butter treatments I used to do to myself.

Washing myself down twice a day at the basin is really not my idea of hygiene but until that shower is fixed, I have no choice, especially as baths use way too much water – so I have those every two days, again it’s not my cup of tea!  I miss my twice a day showers!

So I am freezing my butt off literally… drinking two cups of turmeric and cinnamon infused green tea a day, keeping to my high protein diet and trying to keep the house tidy enough for me to exercise in – but I am confined to a place I don’t like exercising in… the bedroom – because nobody respects what mama wants and needs to do in this house!

Still people are using my exercise bike as a glorified hat, coat and shoe stand and that really pisses me off!

Like today I finally cleared an area and was about to put my mat down to start exercising and Paul gets the vacuum out, he never does that unless asked!  So that idea was cancelled.

I sometimes wonder if it’s all deliberate, as Paul will suddenly become super-efficient when I am busy trying to do something in an area.  If I did nothing all day, neither does he!

Is this in my head or is he really up to what I think he is?

He tells me he supports me being happy anyway possible – but he does these things to stop me…

Whatever, all I know is I am getting sick of it, more than you know!

Something has got to change or else I am going to scream louder than the family banshee!

But hey, looking on the bright side of the heat or eat crisis!

Thanks for reading!

It’s not vanity week, honest!

Why did I confess about my supressed vanity and why do I seem so proud of it?

Because, it is a major part of my natural personality that got the hardest beatings and chastisements over the years, to me it feels like it was 50% of my personality and that since my suppressors took a hold on me – to get me out of the mind-set of it, it was like I have lived my whole life a lie.

I lived as my shadow self for too long, though many people feel that vanity is the shadow aspect in itself, maybe my mind is all muddled up – but to me, this is what came naturally to me and it is this what got moulded out of me.

I know a lot of people, my mother included will tell me that vanity is the shadow self, because vanity is a sin.

I don’t see how it’s a sin to make the most of what you have, why shouldn’t you adorn the precious body God gave you however you like?  Why should you not worship God through your temple, which is your body and give thanks and honour him for a job well done?

Why is it more holy to hate yourself and live modestly about your looks or abilities, surely revelling in it all is the biggest form of gratitude to the creator?

I remember slaps across my face as a child when I actually used to have the guts to ask these questions to my mother!

“How dare you” she used to say as she’d drag me to the bathroom to wash my mouth with soap, literally!

To wash those dirty words out of my mouth, because I say something that can’t be redeemed, her long nails scratching the back of my throat as she washed my tongue deeply!

I hate Imperial Leather soap to this day!

All the women I admired growing up were the vain glamorous types, I always kind of screwed my nose up at the ordinary woman and lived in amazement at how much some women put the time into their looks above everything else.

I always wanted to be like that too, but I was only like that for two short years in my adult life before I moved in with Paul and about a year when I moved in with Paul – funnily enough the year before I became sick.

Its sods law that I want to get to grips with my true self now and I have long Covid alopecia which is ruining my idea of what great hair is!  I have learned these things over the years, your hair is your crowning glory, and the thing that gets you judged the most; second to that are your shoulders, people look at your shoulders and your neck and judge your posture a lot!  Thirdly to this is the clothing or accessories you choose to wear and it’s generally make up as the last thing people will notice about you. 

Though going back to the clothing, people don’t look up and then down, they look down and go up, they judge you from your footwear.  This is my experience in any case.

Your smile is another factor that probably comes before the cosmetic application judgement!  Which is why I have a closed mouth smile, I am ashamed of my mouth.

My mouth is the most abused part of my body, my voice suppressed a lot, my mouth has had a lot of abuse – forced feedings, mouth wash outs, slapped across the face a lot, squeezed to keep silent, hand over my mouth, is it any wonder my throat chakra is hard to unblock?

So what is going on here, why is it vanity week?

Well it’s not intentionally vanity week – it’s just I am really working on my inner child in the past two or three weeks and it just so happens to coincide with a few of the self-therapies I am doing.

Waking up the true me, the unblocked me, the real me.

I want to take you all on a journey with me – weight loss and changing my image and I hope it will be fun for all of us!

I am not going to be happy until I can rock a pair of suspenders better than Dr Frank n Furter!

Just don’t think of me in them now huh, don’t want to have nightmares now do we?

For me one of the big things I hate about living here is the inability to get access to someone who can do household maintenance when it needs to be done, instead of having to wait years between projects!  Our shower broke down in 2016 and I bought its replacement in 2018 and it still hasn’t been installed!  I need my twice daily showers and twice weekly exfoliations!

I miss lathering myself in shea butter for an hour and then showering it off, the stretch marks were reduced a lot and it does a lot to help with cellulite, but you can’t get into a bath to wash it all off, ew!

I think my biggest goal since childhood was to have the confidence as well as the body to rock a velveteen cat suit too!  One I’ve dreamt of designing since I was a nine!  When I had the figure to wear something like that I didn’t have the guts!

Its really weird how since doing all this inner child stuff, I am seeing a lot of butterflies, dragonflies, caterpillars, flamingos, ibises and peacocks – all representatives of transformation, flamboyance, vibrancy, vanity and confidence.

I have been taking care of my body with a high protein diet, a little exercise per day and face yoga and I am seeing a major difference to my face and figure personally.  I am starting to like myself a bit but I am thinking that’s a lot to do with the change in my mentality, thanks to that Mel Robbins technique I shared with you a couple of weeks back!

I am now able to plank for about one minute, which is impressive when you think that I struggled to hold a squat for fifteen seconds at Easter!

Six weeks ago I could only do ten reps of bicep curls without weights before needing a two minute break to continue to the full thirty reps – now I can do fifty reps off the bat without resting, though I am slightly out of breath by then.

My main focuses in toning up are my triceps area, as that is not a very nice part of my body, as well as my abs, because I look five months pregnant if I am being honest right now.  The rest of the body seems to be doing itself naturally and appropriately, I don’t know why these two areas in particular are being stubborn!

The aim isn’t to become too muscular, but to tone it up and not be horribly flabby.

At the moment my arms look alien to the rest of my body, which is why I pose with them tightly behind my back, because I look like an ape… well I am an ape, all humans are… but you know what I mean!

So, I just want to be beautiful and feel good for it, I want to be in a position of belief when someone tells me I am beautiful.  But I don’t want to be a mean cocky bitch about it like some women are. 

I just want to wear what I want, feel great in it and be who I want to be, when I want to be it, instead of cringing and thinking I am making a fool of myself, or that people are going to think that two little boys are fighting up my skirt as I walk down the road!

Thanks for reading!

Vanity & suppression

I have been thinking about the YouTube channel I am going to set up after Christmas a lot, I have been trying to think about what it should be mostly about.  People like themes, they don’t like random people no matter how authentic they are, or do they?

I mean, I like a lot of stuff and I would like to do a lot of stuff – I don’t want to be bored with the same old same old, you know?

I want to sometimes read out my poetry to people, I want to share gardening tips and recipes and my journey through weight loss and other things.  I don’t want to just be a gardening vlog, or a beauty and fitness vlog or a writing vlog.  I want to do the whole caboodle, now people say, sure you can do this but have multiple channels, but I don’t really want to do that.

If I had multiple channels, then I will need to film and edit every day for a once a week post on each and that is taking up more time than I want to do.

Plus I am none too thrilled about the editing process, I hate doing anything technical for too long.

One of my biggest desires in having a YouTube channel is to visibly show people my weight loss, fitness progresses.  But contrary to that there are two things I hate about it… the fame this could give me and the fact I have to show my fat ugly body and face on the camera, or else, what am I showing?

I’m paranoid enough without being famous!

Seriously, you have no idea how paranoid I am when a stranger points and looks like they are talking about me.  I mean… I can’t cope now, let alone when I know they know me… you know… at least right now I can put it down to me being a schizoid, of course they aren’t really pointing at me…. Until they then call me fat ass to my face and I am like… ok I guess they were then, rude!

I keep my mouth shut to people who shout that at me, primarily because I want to live.  But inside I want to shout out “Like your lip will be if you carry on mate”!

If people knew the attitude that goes on inside my head, I would have been murdered years ago!

I don’t like the idea of going out dressed up in a headscarf and huge sunglasses and learning to turn my head away from anyone as I walk past them like some super international spy!   

I just want to dawdle down the street in my scruffs on a lazy day, walking a dog, without it being splashed on the papers “TC bad hair day” or “TC midlife crisis” you know.

But then again, there are days where the attention whore comes out and it’s like “for goodness sake notice me, notice me, stop ignoring me, why am I being ignored when I have just walked down the street looking like a bowl of fruit”?

Thing is, I do like attention if I have to be honest with you.  But the problem is, on my terms and the world doesn’t work like that!

Fame scares me because of the stupid lengths some journalists will go to for a good pic and a front page position in their newspaper; it’s disgusting what some people will do to advance themselves.

When I was little I was famous for a few months in North London as being a pageant queen stripped of her rightful prize because of nepotism in the judging panel.  I remember someone taking me by the hand to pull me away from my mum so they got a perfect shot of me, The Angel of Burnt Oak!

That scared me, let alone the incidences with a couple of my more famous relatives.

The universe has wanted me to be famous for a long time, but I have always fought it.  My grandmother and some of the Romany relatives we have often sat down having fortune telling annuals for the family and from the age of seven they have all been convinced I will be a huge name in the world someday; though they said I will be late in getting that name.  I will be in my early forties.

They suggested even back then, that I am destined for greatness, I will find greatness myself, but I will find someone equally great to spend my life with.  They warned me I would have a child with a man but then I would leave him to start a second family quite late in life. 

Though I would start all this late in life, my legacy would be huge and I would be like Shakespeare or Charles Dickens in how long my fame will last.

Vanity, I know – I know its vanity and I would hold my hands up and say, you think I am bad for this now?  You should have seen me when I was thinner and I felt prettier than I do now, then you’d know how vain I really can be!

I even have a playlist called “Vanity” where you will find songs on it such as “keep young and beautiful” by Annie Lennox, “You’re never fully dressed without a smile” by the musical Annie and “beautiful and dirty rich” by Lady Gaga!.

So yes vanity has always been part of what I call “my true” personality, but it has been badly abused and supressed over the years.  Make no mistake, I don’t think I am beautiful, but I do know there’s a lot of people who said I am and although I don’t believe them, I take their word for it; as the world isn’t generally nice about that sort of thing, unless it’s true and I know a lot of beautiful people who hate themselves too.

I used to obsess over my looks a lot because I can’t stand it when another woman notices; you forgot to do your eyebrows today, omg you have no lip liner, just lipstick? 

I can’t afford to be vain anymore; I don’t have the budget for it.  But when I got sick in 2014 I totally let myself go because my illness made me bedbound and for a while we thought I had some type of cancer, but it wasn’t. 

I also thought, nobody is interested in me with a child and I am approaching forty, why bother?  Especially with my baggage. 

But I have been doing a lot of inner child therapies lately and its waking the true me up again – I love it, but I also hate the idea of people seeing my changes and thinking I am trying too hard to impress others or that I am being pretentious, when in fact I am actually becoming my more authentic and very supressed self! 

As a child, before my mother started to peel me apart from the age of 7yrs I used to love standing in front of people performing for them, singing, acting, dancing, showing off and being my beautiful self in such cocky little way!  This I believe is one of the reasons behind why my grandad called me “cocker” because I was cocky before my mother got her nails into me!

It’s funny but I started to get fat around the time mum started to hate me and supress me, before that, when I had her love and support, I was blooming marvellous and hadn’t a care in the world, I could move mountains with my confidence. 

She insisted she needed to hold me down though, or I was going to the devil, she especially freaked out when I got the notion of burlesque – a thing I saw on TV thanks to my grandad and uncle watching it and predicting that will be me when I am older, mark their words! 

My grandma said if I turn out like that, I’d definitely be following her mother’s footsteps as she was a cancan dancer and burlesque performer!  Imagine that, my great grandma a cancan performer! 

As a child my biggest career dream was to be a fashion designer but my mother worked like a woodpecker on my confidence when she found this out and wouldn’t encourage anything that might be connected to fashion and destroyed my sense of self love as much as possible to get this stupid dream out of my head.

Yet, ironically, it was she who’d force me into the pageants until I became embarrassingly fat for her and she told me she was ashamed to be seen in public with me because of it.

So yes, given the right environment, the right sense of self, I am a vain creature and attention whore to boot and my mother did everything possible to knock me off the pedestal I was on, because she felt the way I was going my life would be filled with sin if she didn’t act cruel to be kind.

But I have tried hard not to be vain, narcissistic or to reach too high – because I can’t stand the reactions from people like my mother who are vitriolic and jealous or greedy to try and do something to you to either destroy you or make entertainment out of you.

I have to say it has been a battle that’s been with me my whole life.  I want to be this great person that everyone admires and to be beautiful and loved, but I also don’t want the evil that comes with it.  You know?

I am on a weight loss journey, so I can be whoever I want to be unashamedly and with a little extra confidence – I will never have oodles of confidence, but I am going to fake it until I make it and I want to be a butterfly or better yet, a peacock!

As I’ve said before, I have had to learn to do everything on an emotional level alone – no support – no friends, nada.

It’s scary to think of what I could be if I am still alone, you know?  I need security, I mean emotional security.  Yeah sure, physical security, physical assistance is in abundance in the world, but it’s the emotional security that really counts.

I’ve never been taught to cope with grief or have my grief acknowledged by anyone.  I was always made to feel bad and selfish when I was sad and grieving a loss.

Told I am a stupid girl who needs to snap out of it, snap out of the idea my grandpa has just died, the same grandpa who I lived with for the last 3 months of his life as he died of cancer right before my eyes!

10yrs old and all I got was a pat on the head from my dad, nothing else from anyone else, when grandpa died, when I was still tearful after three days, people became aggressive with me – get over it you stupid girl stop going on trying to get attention for yourself!

All I wanted was a cuddle, some kind words, but being raised by adults who are all self-absorbed, obviously they don’t think about anyone but themselves.  They might have been a close family in that we had a massive family extended for five or even six generations that still maintained contact, but they were not supportive of each other.  They were not the kind of family that pulled together to grieve and help each other, they all go off into their own small groups or by themselves and the children usually end up forgotten.

When raised by people like this, is it any wonder then, why I cry when a stranger shows me kindness and goes out of their way to be nice to me and sympathetic?

Because I am genuinely not used to being treated with any kind of humanity!

I was raised like a thing, not a person.

I remember when I was in therapy groups as a teenager, I remember joking with my peers about how I wasn’t raised I was dragged up and spat out, reeled in and clout, clout, clout.

My peers though knowing it to be tragic laughed, the therapists cried and some refused to treat me as my case was so specifically hard, they needed a lot of mental time off from work, as hearing what I went through, broke them.

It happened to a lot of therapists, I often had them in tears when I recalled my normal daily life and they’d have to end sessions early.  I tried my best actually to hold back a lot because I needed the therapy, but some of them insisted I didn’t – my mother did.

I remember one therapist in particular was so aggrieved by what I went through, she broke all protocol just to give me a long, long tight hug as she cried and she told me, she so desperately wants to get me away from my parents and adopt me.  Then she came to her senses and she couldn’t be in therapy with me alone anymore, she had to have a colleague with her to maintain a professional standard.  This woman worked tirelessly to try and have me removed from custody of my parents, but she failed.

I was weirdly happy with quite a bit of my childhood until I realised that my parents weren’t normal, after seeing so many professionals break like that.  I really thought it was normal that at 7am you’re kicked out into the garden until lunch time, made to entertain yourself when you’re not at school with only a dog and a rabbit as company or the elderly neighbours talking to you over a fence.

At 12:15pm daddy comes home for lunch, perfectly normal to cook for him and yourself, eat your lunch and get out into the garden by 12:45 again until you’re called in for dinner at 4pm same routine, mums working night shift, you got to cook for everyone – then outside again until 7pm.

I thought it was perfectly normal to only bath once a week and nothing else and that in the summer your bath became the kids paddling pool, but with soap!

Of course it’s not, I know that now, but back then, it’s normal life!

I remember my mum when I was of legal age to drink getting excited that I was of age to become her drinking partner at nightclubs, but I was terrified of going to places like that and refused to go.  She was disappointed, but still tried to have drinking nights in with a slap up meal with her mates and tried to make me drink alcohol with her – “here love, drink more of this, you are more human after you’ve got a drink down you, you’re so tight otherwise… go on have another and another”.

She nearly poisoned me one night when I gave in to every temptation.  I got so ill I nearly needed the hospital, the hallucinations were really, really bad – she said it was only alcohol, but I never really knew.

Dad was furious.

I still went with mum to her mates, but I started to insist control in my drinks and never trusted anything given to me after that – I wanted to know my orange was just orange and not some exotic new type that mysteriously contained vodka or gin that they didn’t tell me about.

I am not tight; I will drink, but not enough to get drunk.

So yeah, all sorts of things could end up on my vlog, but I won’t make it a sympathise with me vlog.  It will all be upbeat or informative, nothing dull, nothing depressing; it will be my happy place.

I was thinking about being 100% authentic on there, no matter how tragic it is.  Doing all sorts of things, whether I get laughed at or not, because no doubt I will because I am cheeky – I am self-deprecating and I do stupid things, I am accident prone, I am just not graceful and clueless… it will be hilarious. 

I mean the other day, I was putting on something really tight and I struggled and I was hopping around the room like a Chinese vampire, trying to heave these darn pants on and I fell ass over tit on my face!

Don’t be surprised if that happens in the vlogs if I am brave enough to show my face!

Henry forgot his password to his Roblox game review channel he had, where I’d comment from time to time funny little quips now and again, interrupting his shows and he said if it weren’t for me, he wouldn’t have had as many views – because a lot of people loved the mum stuff.

We thought at the time, Henry was a budding “Morgz” because he did a lot of stuff with his mum didn’t he?

Well this post is getting a bit long now, so I think I had better end it here, sorry about that, just so much on my mind tonight.

Thanks for reading!