The rise and fall of Ferdinand Monkey

Let me tell you a story. I’ve got this cuddly toy - let’s call him Ferdinand Monkey*.
*not his real name
Ferdinand, as his name suggests, is a monkey and I bought him on impulse, one morning when I was walking through Woolworths (remember them?) on my way to work. Someone had placed Ferdinand on the edge of a shelf so he looked like he was sitting up and he had a very friendly, engaging face. I was going through a bit of a difficult time on my life and although I’d had a brutal cull of all my cuddly toys, a few years prior to this, at that time I felt the need to get back in touch with my inner child. He was only a fiver! It may seem childish and pathetic but Ferdinand, who shall hereafter be known as Ferdy, bought me comfort, and I figured it was healthier to fixate on a cuddly toy than to eat whole cakes or drink bottles of wine.

A few years after I’d acquired Ferdy and his brother, Forbes, I joined Facebook and when I joined Facebook, Ferdy joined too, he had his own profile.

Ferdy proved very popular - he had far more Facebook ‘friends’ than I had; most of them fellow cuddly toys. It was all a bit of silly but harmless fun and I enjoyed his interactions with the other toys - or ‘faux furries’ as members of the group called themselves. There were oscar ceremonies and parties - someone created a picture of Ferdy in a tuxedo, escorting another ‘faux furry’ down the red carpet. A bit childish, you might think, but all very friendly and somewhat imaginative.

The thing about Ferdy was that he embodied everything I wanted to be - he was a Zen Buddhist and yoga practitioner; he was peace-loving, amiable and way more chilled than I could ever hope to be. He only ever said positive (albeit somewhat surreal) things. When I was getting a bit stressed about something one day, my husband turned to me and said ‘What would Ferdy do?’ In the same way that someone might ask - ‘What would the Buddha do?’ My husband used to get a bit disturbed by my Ferdy fixation, even saying ‘Who will rid me of this troublesome monkey?’ When I’d taken Ferdy on a mini break with us. But on the whole he didn’t cause any problems (Ferdy, not my husband).
Yes, I had fun with Ferdy and the rest of the faux furries, then one day, without warning - Facebook deleted his profile. They said he breached their community standards by not being a real person or something and I thought  - WTAF?!? Because, ever since I joined Facebook, I saw racist or xenophobic memes that other people had posted, shared or liked (I did report a couple of them) and still see them now. Yeah, yeah  - freedom of speech and all that but stuff that would make me feel physically sick; angry, bile-filled vitriol was allowed to fly but not my fantasy profile, my peace-loving monkey avatar. And I’m reminded of that now, when I try to share my blog on Facebook; which I’ve been doing for four years, and I write a fairly innocuous piece about me trying to give up sugar and Facebook removes it because it thinks it is spam!! Yes - Face-Cambridge Analytica scandal - book thinks that my blog breeches community standards! And yet - still with the racist memes, Facebook!

I’m going to try and post this now - let’s see if it gets deleted…..

The diary of a sugar shunner

Day 1:
Monday 16 April
Day 1 of official sugar strike (didn’t actually eat any yesterday either but today is the official start - husband ate whole Easter egg yesterday, I just smugly declined!)
Feeling a tad depressed about being back at work after being on holiday for a week. Walked part of the way to work and felt smug and evangelical (amused self fantasising about all the clothes that would fit me again, come the summer). Mood crashed when actually got to work! Tempted to eat whole box of nuts I bought with me and intended to eke out during the day. Nuts are actually delicious - who knew.
Drinking lots of ginger tea!
P.M - waited a loooong time for dinner.
Danger zone, after dinner, jonesing for some chocolate - ignore it, it will pass, it passed.
Had peppermint tea as a break from ginger tea.

Day 2:
Met friend in coffee shop. On the way there tried to envisage the challenges the cafe would pose - doughnuts and pastries and and pies*, oh my! *Don’t actually like pies, or doughnuts, just did it for the rhythm.
When I got there, my friend was choosing a cheese and tomato toastie, so I joined her just to be sociable ;) No obvious sugar, probably loads of hidden.
Daughter off sick and asked me to get her a Kinder egg, turns out she only wanted it for the toy. Had to suppress natural instinct to eat egg, before quickly squirreling it away in fridge, out of sight. Ate some fruit and nut mix instead. (Probably won’t lose any weight with all the sodding nuts I’m consuming!)
Had early dinner with kids. Satsuma to follow.
20.44 hours and now feeling hungry - yes, despite the ginger tea! Will try and ignore it, failing that, will go to bed at 9!!

Day 3:

Something strange happened today (still haven’t eaten sugar). Went to eat lunch outside and sat at a picnic table, as I was having noodles (easier to eat at a table than on a bench or on the grass). Two young students asked if I minded if they sat there too. Of course I didn’t mind, I said, heart sinking a bit (but you have to pretend to be nice and accommodating). I’d just started reading a book by Megan Jayne Crabbe - Body Positive Power.

Reading about all the *impossible standards that women are supposed to subscribe to, from a very young age. She talked about how she first felt fat or wrong about her body, aged 5! And I remembered - feeling FAT from a very young age and feeling WRONG and unacceptable!
* Quote from book: “What better way to make money than to make half the world feel ugly then sell them the solution?”

 The two students kept up an incessant stream of chatter about food and weight! One of them was lecturing the other; extolling the virtues of protein powder and the evils of sugar. They went on and on about food and weight
I wanted to shout at them that this was a colossal waste of their time and that they should be concentrating on their studies!!!
HOWEVER - this has not made me fall, nose down, into a sack of sugar, no, no, no! I’m not saying that. I feel that, even though it’s only been two and a half days, what I’m doing is looking after myself, by eating healthily, nurturing ma body. Eating more good things like nuts, seeds and fruit (does that make you think of bird poo - or is it just me?). Sugar is a drug-like chemical that alters your mood and rots your teeth, and I’m just trying to be healthy (if I try and focus on that, rather than the weight thing then I might be OK).
Because the thing is - I’ve done the weight thing, many times over - lost it, put it back on again, lost it, ignored it and ate what I want, lost it, put it on again….and I’d been trained, all my life, from a very young age, that losing weight was the magic key to everything - to happiness, success and yes - being acceptable, and it really, really isn’t.
(The noodles were very nice btw, before I bit into a rogue chili)

Day 4:

Ahem - does the previous entry seem a bit mood-swingy? I don’t think it’s lack of sugar that prompted that rant but the genuine dichotomy between wanting to be healthy, lose weight but also fight the patriarchy!
Anyway, today, have had really busy morning - school run, fighting vicious rose bushes, doing two loads of washing, tidying up, so only just having breakfast at 10 am and really enjoying me pre-soaked muesli with plain yogurt and cinnamon - genuinely, no sarcasm intended. Had some really disappointing news yesterday and at one point thought - eating a load of chocolate will not make this any better.
Do I feel any better yet? A little bit. Bowels in v healthy, working order - sorry for the TMI.

P.M: Had a reaaallly long day! When I went to pick the kids up, the teacher called me in because older one had just had a massive nose bleed. She daughter seemed OK but was covered in blood and it was stressful.
Then her and her sister decided to act like little demons at bath time.
Had some of husband’s homemade lasagne for dinner - v nice, but he told me that when he was looking for lasagne sheets in the cupboard, he’d stumbled across a box of Thornton’s continental chocolates. He told me this yesterday and it was fine, I wasn’t tempted, but now I CAN’T stop thinking about those chocolates. If I wasn’t doing this diary, if I hadn’t gone public with this, I would just eat some chocolates! I wouldn’t  ‘go mad’, just have a couple but alas, I am being watched!!

Day 5:

It was so tempting but I didn’t have any chocolates last night.
However, my husband had bought a cheeseboard selection - he’s joining me in quitting the white stuff and decided that we’d get our excess calories from cheese instead! Nothing wrong with cheese but I wasn’t really hungry after dinner but I did have a few pieces of cheese - the one with cranberries in it (the closest I could get to eating something sweet). Is my husband a FEEDER? Hmmm….
Years ago I decided to outlaw the use of moral language around food - I tried to never say things like “I’ve been really bad and eaten a whole Easter Egg” or “I can’t understand why I haven’t lost any weight - I’ve been good all week.” But one rule I try to live by (not always successfully) is to not eat when I’m not hungry. Sounds simple but not always easy - programmed to clear plate, encouraged to order a starter at restaurants etc. The trouble with things like chocolate and ice-cream is that they are not filling, so you can eat them when you’re full up, but they are very energy dense.
Husband has said to me, half-jokingly, a couple of times this week - “What’s the point of life without chocolate!?” And “Are you telling me you’re never going to eat another slice of cake?”
Well, what I’m trying to do is not rely so heavily on sugary things, but have them as an occasional treat, a la the sanctimonious health advice. So, I will have the odd ice-cream or slice of National Trust Victoria sponge at the weekend, in the future, after this initial period of cold turkey.
Didn’t pre-soak any muesli so had slice of seedy bread toast with almond butter instead (delicious!). But craved something sweet afterwards - first time this week craving for sugar had started that early. Had a little bit of dried fruit and nut mix. I know - dried fruit packed with sugar, blah, blah, blah but dried fruit also has lots of iron so bleh!

I think I’m gonna leave the diary there for a while, friends. Thanks for reading ‘til the end - I can imagine it’s been a bit tedious in parts. I’ll check back in this time next week, with photo evidence of my glowing skin and shiny, lustrous locks!

Have a great weekend!

Kicking the habit

The Sweet stuff

So, friends, do you remember when I said that I wouldn’t write about weight any more? When I said that it was anti-feminist to focus on it? I flirted with the body positivity movement and tried to embrace my shape. I still think that this is a good way of thinking; being accepting and kindly disposed towards your body has to be healthier than hating it - right? And this piece isn’t about weight*, not exactly, but about trying to cut sugar from my diet.

* I mean, it’s always there; that blushing, blustering elephant in the room; trying to hide in the corner, teetering on a footstool. No point in trying to deny it, really. Come into the light, elephant, show yourself!

Yeah, so it’s a little bit about weight, cutting out sugar, but it’s also about teeth and hair too. Because I have this bizarre expectation, which has no scientific basis, that eliminating sugar will make my hair shinier.
And the elephant - the weight thing; it’s not just about appearance or even health, it’s also about the thing of your clothes not fitting any more. It has a pragmatic aspect to it - I can’t afford to buy a load of new clothes.

Emotional Eating

There was a time when I would think - you’ve had a hard day - you deserve this! Before shovelling in some chocolate, and being aware of this attitude doesn’t stop you doing it (I’ve found). We are programmed to seek out food that is sweet and fatty - a survival instinct from our hunter-gatherer days and our instincts haven’t quite caught up with our sedentary lifestyles, where food is available at every corner.
I’d say that my diet is generally healthy -  I'm a fan of vegetables and all things wholemeal but this is scuppered by high biscuit/chocolate/cake consumption. So, when I say I’m going to cut out sugar, I’m not talking about eschewing fruit, milk or naturally occurring sugars. I’m not going to scan sandwich labels or bread wrappers for hidden sugar either, but at this stage, I’m just going to cut out biscuits, chocolate and cake (yikes). I’ll avoid honey too, because, although honey had good, antiseptic properties, the more sweet stuff you eat, the more you crave, so I’m going to try and go cold turkey.**
** Artificial sweeteners are the work of the devil!

I’ve Googled ‘ways to deal with sugar cravings’ and received all sorts of advice about zinc, cinnamon, protein, nuts and water. I suspect that I will eat a little more fruit than I did before. The danger time is the evening, after dinner, after the kids have gone to bed. That habitual, cognitive association of chocolate with ‘a treat’ - my reward for dealing with whatever that day has thrown at me (like a monkey flinging its poo). More deeply ingrained, for me, than any of the adult crutches - like alcohol. The instant lift. How to recreate it without nudging yourself towards type 2 diabetes? Or eroding the coastal defences in your mouth. Will ginger tea cut it?

 I’m hoping that going public with this will help me adhere to it.
Yes, I often try things and find they haven’t had the life-changing, ground breaking effect on my life that I envisioned, in a massive flight of fancy, but, if I can stick to this, my teeth will thank me. Also, I’ll be setting a better example to the kids, instead of hypocritically lecturing them about the evils of fizzy drinks (when I’d happily snarf down half an Easter Egg - one of theirs no less!! Bad, bad mother!). I can tell them, with irritating sanctimony, that they don’t need sugar and neither do I….

This picture perfectly encapsulates my over-inflated expectations