Consolidation The not so very secret diary of Atropos, 11 &1/2
- Thread starter Atropos
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Atropos
Gold Member
Protein Thursday. Translates as
B - omelette (couldn't concentrate long enough to make a galette)
L - Cottage cheese, prawns
D - Steak.
Very dull, but I'm too knackered to care.
Went to see Abdellatif Kechiche's "Vénus Noire" last night - it's an extraordinary film (in French, English and Afrikaans), often very beautiful, but very very very hard to watch. And 2 hours and 40 minutes long, (with a 1 hour 30 minute QandA by Kechiche first - so I am pretty much wrecked this morning.
B - omelette (couldn't concentrate long enough to make a galette)
L - Cottage cheese, prawns
D - Steak.
Very dull, but I'm too knackered to care.
Went to see Abdellatif Kechiche's "Vénus Noire" last night - it's an extraordinary film (in French, English and Afrikaans), often very beautiful, but very very very hard to watch. And 2 hours and 40 minutes long, (with a 1 hour 30 minute QandA by Kechiche first - so I am pretty much wrecked this morning.
Maintainer
** Chief WITCH **
Gosh... that's a long film...
how are you? how's Conso?
how are you? how's Conso?
Atropos
Gold Member
Conso certainly has its own challenges! It is bringing me face to face with old demons, which is unsettling, but I am beginning to realise that my Dukan experience may have given me some crucial new tools and confidence to deal with them. So far.
(I'm still not safe around a bag of crisps or crackers.)
I miss the zingy energy of ketosis most of all!
Maintainer
** Chief WITCH **
Gosh yes you're right (and I wish you hadn't said that, cos I'd forgotten about that!!!). I was just sitting here wishing I could have a zzzzzzzzz, and hadn't put 2 and 2 together! haaaa!
It'd be interesting if you could bear to narrate those moments when you are struggling (with "voices"?), and which tools you are using to overcome them. I overuse the protein option, I know that, and so will have to watch that one personally... preferring perhaps my new "distraction therapy" (get on my bike and cycle. I'm so mystified by the different gears on both handle bars, my thighs screaming for mercy by the end of my driveway and my bum hurting to high heaven, that I'm soon distracted!!!)
If anyone can bear to type me a beginner's "how to ride a bike with gears" post, I'd love you for ever. On left handlebar, I have 1, to 3 with about 10 markings in between each... on right handle bar, I have 1 to 6, with again several markings. There are probably 90 odd permutations possible but each I've tried make my little legs go round faster and faster.
I'm pathetic on a bike! But I get along quicker than on my leggies
It'd be interesting if you could bear to narrate those moments when you are struggling (with "voices"?), and which tools you are using to overcome them. I overuse the protein option, I know that, and so will have to watch that one personally... preferring perhaps my new "distraction therapy" (get on my bike and cycle. I'm so mystified by the different gears on both handle bars, my thighs screaming for mercy by the end of my driveway and my bum hurting to high heaven, that I'm soon distracted!!!)
If anyone can bear to type me a beginner's "how to ride a bike with gears" post, I'd love you for ever. On left handlebar, I have 1, to 3 with about 10 markings in between each... on right handle bar, I have 1 to 6, with again several markings. There are probably 90 odd permutations possible but each I've tried make my little legs go round faster and faster.
I'm pathetic on a bike! But I get along quicker than on my leggies
anjuschka
Dukan Ancestor!!
Bike explanation coming up in your own diary Jo!
Here:
http://www.minimins.com/dukan-diari...f-first-you-dont-succeed-139.html#post3717368
Here:
http://www.minimins.com/dukan-diari...f-first-you-dont-succeed-139.html#post3717368
Last edited:
Atropos
Gold Member
Dealing with the "Voices" - ages ago I had thought about putting a thread on the main forum about this, because I often spot "the voices" in other people questions - usually at a crisis point.
"Every girl deserves a day off", "You have to live a little", "Just one won't do any harm", "You've earned a treat", "We have to let our hair down sometimes", "What's easter without a choccie egg"*
What I have realised in the last few months is that when I hear these - just at the moment when I would have reached for the toast or the chocolate is this is not my voice. They are cliches, they don't sound like me, these are not things I would say in any other context. They are fossils lodged in my head and memory from a long time ago - and often the voices of people who didn't mean me well. "Friends" who wanted me to join them in their own binges - or advertisers, trying to get me to hand over my money for a cheap synthetic ice-cream.
This also applies to other - much much nastier - voices, which say "You're fat and ugly and stupid", "Who'd want you?", "no one cares", "You'll always be the fatty of the family!". Again - not my voice, just fossils left by really nasty people who wanted to hurt me - and succeeded.
I think that protein safety blanket helped to put just enough distance between the impulse and the toast to hear the voices properly, and start to see what cheap and nasty nonsense those voices are parrotting.
Yes, perhaps I deserve a treat - I deserve a better treat than a krispy kreme donut, that will make me feel sick and bloated and sticky 5 minutes later, and the person who whispered that in my ear, like a little barbed fishhook, all those years ago, probably wanted me to feel sick and bloated and sticky.
In short - I cope with the voices by saying - "that's not my voice, and I don't have to listen to it anymore."
I don't expect it work 100% of the time - or even 50% but every time it does work, a hope the voice loses a little volume, and the barbs it has stuck into my brain for all these years start to loosen just a little.
"Every girl deserves a day off", "You have to live a little", "Just one won't do any harm", "You've earned a treat", "We have to let our hair down sometimes", "What's easter without a choccie egg"*
What I have realised in the last few months is that when I hear these - just at the moment when I would have reached for the toast or the chocolate is this is not my voice. They are cliches, they don't sound like me, these are not things I would say in any other context. They are fossils lodged in my head and memory from a long time ago - and often the voices of people who didn't mean me well. "Friends" who wanted me to join them in their own binges - or advertisers, trying to get me to hand over my money for a cheap synthetic ice-cream.
This also applies to other - much much nastier - voices, which say "You're fat and ugly and stupid", "Who'd want you?", "no one cares", "You'll always be the fatty of the family!". Again - not my voice, just fossils left by really nasty people who wanted to hurt me - and succeeded.
I think that protein safety blanket helped to put just enough distance between the impulse and the toast to hear the voices properly, and start to see what cheap and nasty nonsense those voices are parrotting.
Yes, perhaps I deserve a treat - I deserve a better treat than a krispy kreme donut, that will make me feel sick and bloated and sticky 5 minutes later, and the person who whispered that in my ear, like a little barbed fishhook, all those years ago, probably wanted me to feel sick and bloated and sticky.
In short - I cope with the voices by saying - "that's not my voice, and I don't have to listen to it anymore."
I don't expect it work 100% of the time - or even 50% but every time it does work, a hope the voice loses a little volume, and the barbs it has stuck into my brain for all these years start to loosen just a little.
Maintainer
** Chief WITCH **
those kk donuts do smell lovely, mind...
yes and that also goes along with the whole idea (from the cognitive therapy book I purchased) that each time we use our resistance muscle, we strengthen it, rather than strengthening our giving in muscle. And we've all seen how much easier it is to give in the second time. So it's that first time which needs to be avoided always.
I admit to never having tried to argue with the voices in the way you describe and I've always felt it was MY inner self telling me to do just what I wanted to!
yes and that also goes along with the whole idea (from the cognitive therapy book I purchased) that each time we use our resistance muscle, we strengthen it, rather than strengthening our giving in muscle. And we've all seen how much easier it is to give in the second time. So it's that first time which needs to be avoided always.
I admit to never having tried to argue with the voices in the way you describe and I've always felt it was MY inner self telling me to do just what I wanted to!
Atropos
Gold Member
That was, I think, a bit of a revelation to me as well - it was just that suddenly, in about week 4, the voices sounded different, hollow. And then, for the first time I read other people using the same hollow phrases to justifiy really dangerous things - like getting utterly rat- arsed, weekend after weekend - "A girl's got to let her hair down". So how could it be my inner voice, if it sounded equally - no, more - unconvincing coming from someone else.
Have to be careful though! If I get caught arguing with the voices by the chocolate rank at the checkout, I'm gonna end up in a padded cell!
Atropos
Gold Member
Jo - I think I'd find it a bit scary reading a CBT book "cold" (ie - without a therapist).
I read a lot of self-help books when I was younger, and I honestly think they made things a little worse - I could see what might be going wrong, but not what I might do to get "out of the fog".
I read a lot of self-help books when I was younger, and I honestly think they made things a little worse - I could see what might be going wrong, but not what I might do to get "out of the fog".
Atropos
Gold Member
I just know I am going to end up really, really disliking 'ThroatClearer'.
On the one hand - he is terrible complainer. Nothing is ever quite good enough. Our business cards are too flimsy, our staplers too weak and kept in the wrong place, our glasses too small (to which I am tempted to add "and our new hires are too whiney").
On the other hand he is horribly smug and entitled about other people's lifes. he just told me in all seriousness that public demonstrations (like the one every week outside the Zimbabwean High Commission) should be banned because the noise "irritates" him, and he can't "push past on the pavements" and he is "the son of immigrants, and if he can get what he wants without holding a placard then no one should have to".
I don't expect to work with people who share my political views - but how much gross smugness does it take to believe that no one needs to protest in public?
And then he clears his throat. Again. And I am eye-ing my "too weak" desk stapler and wondering what noise he'll make when I beat him insensible.
I'll go and get a coffee....
On the one hand - he is terrible complainer. Nothing is ever quite good enough. Our business cards are too flimsy, our staplers too weak and kept in the wrong place, our glasses too small (to which I am tempted to add "and our new hires are too whiney").
On the other hand he is horribly smug and entitled about other people's lifes. he just told me in all seriousness that public demonstrations (like the one every week outside the Zimbabwean High Commission) should be banned because the noise "irritates" him, and he can't "push past on the pavements" and he is "the son of immigrants, and if he can get what he wants without holding a placard then no one should have to".
I don't expect to work with people who share my political views - but how much gross smugness does it take to believe that no one needs to protest in public?
And then he clears his throat. Again. And I am eye-ing my "too weak" desk stapler and wondering what noise he'll make when I beat him insensible.
I'll go and get a coffee....
Topaz63
Gone a bit quiet
I think I agree with you about Throatclearer being annoying, especially as the point about many demos is not to gain an advantage for one person but for many, a sort of 'class action', some of whom may be unable to speak out. The penalty for demos in Zim can be life threatening, unlike here, tell him.
The trouble with reading CBT/CAT books without a therapist is also that one can grab hold of the aspects you fear are you, led by lack of self esteem, rather than what is important in the range. A therapist can tease it out a bit. I find it's taken a lot of my life to quell negative voices, and even now they are still there but I just don't care so much. I notice they are strangely silent when I'm reaching for the biscuits, only chorusing afterwards how silly etc.! So not good guides!
The trouble with reading CBT/CAT books without a therapist is also that one can grab hold of the aspects you fear are you, led by lack of self esteem, rather than what is important in the range. A therapist can tease it out a bit. I find it's taken a lot of my life to quell negative voices, and even now they are still there but I just don't care so much. I notice they are strangely silent when I'm reaching for the biscuits, only chorusing afterwards how silly etc.! So not good guides!
Splendarella
Full Member
Great postings Atropos. Your descriptions of throat clearer make me think I am in the room with you. Arrrrrgh! Interesting comments about the 'voices'. Yes, when protein has filled you but you crave carbs then carb cravings are not body hunger but head hunger. The head hunger is the devil on our shoulders. Gonna hit him with that weak stapler of yours....
Atropos
Gold Member
Ha - back at my desk with throatclearer, who is updating us all on the progress of refurbishing his new flat.
I really don't think he knows let that the deal-breaker isn't his politics, it's his anti-social smugness. It's gonna be hard to like him - thank goodness we don't have to like all the people we work with.
I really don't think he knows let that the deal-breaker isn't his politics, it's his anti-social smugness. It's gonna be hard to like him - thank goodness we don't have to like all the people we work with.
Atropos
Gold Member
Weekend with family - and I arrive to dicover they are all Dukan-ing like crazy.
And I mean CRAZY.
As in - both have HUGE hangovers this morning (only 4 days into cruise) - so bad that they are still over the limit at 10am, so I have to take the bus from the station.
When I finally arrive, the kitchen is littered with "emergency" bacon sandwiches ("to soak up the hangover") and the fridge is almost empty except for cherry mullerlights (" I have to have something to look forward to at the end of the day - do you think I should have the vanilla with chocolate instead?") and there are 5 kilos of oatbran stacked by the door "I think I over ordered a bit".
Hmmmmm......
As a veteran of family hangovers I just stay quiet and hand out glasses of water. They are smart and old enough enough to make their own choices.
I wonder if I'll inherit the oatbran in a few months?
And I mean CRAZY.
As in - both have HUGE hangovers this morning (only 4 days into cruise) - so bad that they are still over the limit at 10am, so I have to take the bus from the station.
When I finally arrive, the kitchen is littered with "emergency" bacon sandwiches ("to soak up the hangover") and the fridge is almost empty except for cherry mullerlights (" I have to have something to look forward to at the end of the day - do you think I should have the vanilla with chocolate instead?") and there are 5 kilos of oatbran stacked by the door "I think I over ordered a bit".
Hmmmmm......
As a veteran of family hangovers I just stay quiet and hand out glasses of water. They are smart and old enough enough to make their own choices.
I wonder if I'll inherit the oatbran in a few months?
Atropos
Gold Member
Oddly unsettled morning - I woke up with a sense of unease about the world that I can't quite pin down. I suppose it must be a dream that I can't quite remember.
I also feel fat and bloated - but that's probably TOTM.
Two office events to negotiate.
1.) Our birthday tradition is that the celebrant decides on a theme for an office tea party, and I pop out for the goodies. (This is always much cheaper than buying a cake that no one really fancies).
Today it's "Strawberries, cream and scones" - that's an easy one, I'll just eat strawberries and make that my conso fruit ration.
2.) Tomorrow is a big outing, first for drinks (sparkling water, check) then to Dishoom - the India teahouse - which is wonderful but not by any means Dukan friendly.
Siting around saying "no" every time someone tries to fill your glass or offer a canape does tend to wind people up (including me) and I have already used up my Gala for the week.
So I'm feeling irritable about that as well.
I also feel fat and bloated - but that's probably TOTM.
Two office events to negotiate.
1.) Our birthday tradition is that the celebrant decides on a theme for an office tea party, and I pop out for the goodies. (This is always much cheaper than buying a cake that no one really fancies).
Today it's "Strawberries, cream and scones" - that's an easy one, I'll just eat strawberries and make that my conso fruit ration.
2.) Tomorrow is a big outing, first for drinks (sparkling water, check) then to Dishoom - the India teahouse - which is wonderful but not by any means Dukan friendly.
Siting around saying "no" every time someone tries to fill your glass or offer a canape does tend to wind people up (including me) and I have already used up my Gala for the week.
So I'm feeling irritable about that as well.
Topaz63
Gone a bit quiet
Poor you, I bet it was the RR. I come back with a cold whenever I visit French nieces or if they bring their families here, strange foreign bugs that i lack resistance to. I read that children exude more bugs when ill than adults do, presumably to help them throw off the illness.
