Diet Schmiet

Bloody diets. Who hasn’t been on one? And how many are there to choose from? My God...it’s a hideous nightmare and every bugger who has ever been on one, successfully or not has their own advice or recommendation.


I was just saying to my best mate, how the hell did we manage to stay thin all those years in our twenties and early thirties without stacking on the kilo’s? We drank, we ate whatever we wanted as often as we wanted to and never put on an ounce.


“We were in our twenties and thirties”, she said.


“Yeah right.” I do remember a time when sometimes a meal consisted of a coffee and a couple of cigs or a couple of wines. That possibly helped.


Mum used to say, “Have you eaten love?’


“Sure”, I’d say, “I’ve had two glasses of white wine”.


“Not really enough”, she’d say.


“Well its fruit, isn’t it? Grapes are fruit. They’re on the fruit chart. In fact there are a heap of perfectly good vitamins and minerals in grapes”. Case closed.


It kind of serves my right in a way. I always easily maintained my weight without trying and was exceptionally complacent about it. Then I hit mid thirties and while I wasn’t looking fat snuck up on me. I even went to the doctor after finding a small lump on my rib cage and said, “is this cancer or what?”- always my fear.


“It’s a fatty deposit.”


“Get the fuck out of here.”


Time to diet. I did the weight watchers diet merely by borrowing the books and adding up points and went to gym. I lost ten kilos and swore I’d never let that happen again. I hated gym. I was always one of those people who played tennis, swam and played netball regularly. None of this gym shit. To me gym was for desperate people or obsessed dieters in fancy gym wear and body builders. Still I went along, rode the bike, pushed and pulled heavy weights and kept an evil and envious eye on the thin people. What I really wanted to say to really thin, buff and fit women who squatted in front of mirrors and posed with bulging muscles and not an inch of fat on them was, “ Honestly, fuck off lovie, what’s your caper? You’re skinny enough, bugger off and let us fatty’s get on that stair climber”.


When I was breast feeding my daughter the weight dropped off of me easily and I was able to consume anything I wanted. I was complacent again, my partner was stacking on weight and complaining because I was consuming what I wanted and not everyone can do that if they are not breast feeding. When I stopped feeding her I stacked on 8 kilos in two months. Whoops a fucking daisy.


Back to dieting. So I went back to the weight watchers diet and wasn’t losing anything much even though I had drastically reduced my intake. Then I read that drinking wine even though only adds up to one weight watchers measly point each glass, means also that you retain more fat. How much does that suck??


I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen for a while and was pregnant last time we met and she said I was too thin.” What’s going on with you?” she said. Now this chick is the thinnest bitch on the planet so it was weird coming from her but then a week later a woman I know well at my local petrol station asked if I was pregnant again....OMG!!!


As for exercise, my thoughts on that really were it keeps you fit, it doesn’t really diminish fat. Jury is still out on that one. So, I sat at my table behind a bunch of library books with various titles such as the carb free diet, the Atkins diet, the shake a day diet, the weight watchers diet, Tony Ferguson diet and so on and so on, plan my goal weight, pick something that suits and hope that something works and I get rid of my gut!! I don’t need to be a rake. I just want to be happy with it. I want to practice girth control. I have to exercise as early in the morning as I can manage so my brain won’t figure out what I am doing for a while. It can get pretty crazy though. You can go overboard. I write a list of everything I eat and so notice everything I do. Having a toddler means often finishing off their food. Half a banana here, some porridge and custard there. It goes on all day. Waste not want not and all that. I caught myself the other day not having the last bite of my daughters banana because ‘I’m on a diet’. For god’s sake...isn’t that going too far?


It really comes down to one thing. Diet Schmiet.

 
This is how 'they' do it!

Internetting Life

I heard yesterday that people would rather go without sex, their friends, their mobile phone and other 'things' we have normally regarded as vitally important for us to exist, than lose access to the internet! You see some weird stuff on the internet, this global structure of interconnected computer networks that interchange information (or something like that anyway), that we can’t seem to live without. We can do everything via the net. You don’t really need people anymore, except to deliver the shit you order or bid for on eBay or similar websites. You can meet your future husband without even being in the same country and you can spend a lot of time doing 10 billion surveys and earn money and points that add up to a new ball point pen or something as arbitrary.

From food to go, to bookings in Paris, tickets for the Nicks at Madison Square Gardens, and chatting on camera to a mate in London, the internet has shrunk the world. We have found old friends, advertised our music, writing and cars and learnt that words we think we know well don’t necessarily mean the same thing as they used to. It is about something you can’t see but know its there. Virtual. The shopping cart for example. We don’t see it or push it like when we are at Coles but it can be filled quickly with stuff and cost you money. Trojan horse is not the mythical ruse of war used by the Greeks sometime between 1500 and 1200 B.C. It is a masquerading virus in the form of a computer program. And we have a whole dictionary of brand spanking new words and terms for things such as hacker. Paypal, a payment system that lets you send money via e-mail using a credit card that isn’t swiped ever. You no longer need to go to the newsagent and buy a birthday card or card for any other event actually because there is e-card.


Broadband is not a cummerbund, it refers to connections to the Internet with much greater bandwidth than you get using a modem. A modem is an apparatus that connects a computer to your phone line. It allows a computer to chat to other computers through the phone setup. A, podcast is a mode of audio broadcasting via the Internet. A blog is an ugly word and is essentially a journal that is accessible and presented on the web. I think that the internet with its social networking sites is a huge tool to show off really. Look at my life, read about my life and know my opinions, thoughts and see my photos. It makes for interesting reading but it puts you right out there too if you choose.


One day our children are going to ask who or what is a postie and what is snail mail? What is a street directory? E-mail makes it all very easy than taking the ancient way of pen to paper. Its probably considered as antiquated as a carrier pigeon or Morse code. I bet they don’t even sell writing paper anymore.


Some of the weirdest sites I have come across using the net are,


How to avoid trapped arm while cuddling in bed.


How to underdo her bra using one hand.


How to apply translucent powder (my personal fave)


Ugly millionaire dating agency


Why do socks disappear?


Who comes up with this stuff? Or rather who doesn’t. Seems everyone can have a piece of the action if they want to.


With the arrival and popularity of My Space, Twitter, facebook and a million other web 2.0 sites like stumble Upon, Squidoo, Hub pages, Knol, Live Journal and a stack more..it has allowed us to be everywhere and communicate from anywhere. To promote, to hear the normally unheard, to cathartically express ourselves and our secrets on sites like Post Secret, one of my favourite sites!!! It’s the living room war without the conflict...although there is always some of that too with the misconduct of some.


Post A Secret

Can you live without it?