15/4/12 Hello, it's been a while.

I've realised that I treat weight loss in the same way as housework.

With housework, I follow the Flylady system, which consists of small routines for everyday cleaning and decluttering. If you follow the routines your house is always only literally a few minutes away from company ready and the joy is that those Saturday mornings, spending long hours cleaning the house from top to bottom are a thing of the past.
So ninety percent of the time, I'm 'with the programme'. I have set routines for every day and little by little my house seems to clean itself. Hubby likes to help and the routines which are pasted to the fridge, allow him to be helpful without disrupting The Way I Like To Do Things. (Yeah, I know..)
So, what's the problem, I hear you ask? Well, the other 10 percent of the time I fall off the wagon BIG style. And I struggle with that. When I'm in the routine, I can keep going; when I'm not, I feel as though I may as well start over from the beginning and all my progress is lost. I am FAR too much of a perfectionist in that way. I'm trying to unlearn that, but it's taken me 38 years to get this far, it wont get fixed in a few months.

So with weight loss I am much the same. When I'm good, I'm brilliant. I can resist any temptation. I have drive and focus and the sheer determination to keep going.
And then there are the moments when I falter. I stopped writing my blog. I stopped experimenting with recipes and eventually stopped weighing myself altogether.

Fixing the housework is easy. Flylady has a 'Crisis Cleaning' podcast. Put it on, do what she says and hey presto, the house is ready for inspection in under an hour. But unlike the housework, there is no option to hide the extra weight and deal with it later, like the contents of an overflowing coffee table, hastily swept into a box and hidden away from visitors, temporarily in the shower cubicle.
Extra weight reminds you every day that you have failed at your mission to lose it. It mocks you from the bulges over the top of the those jeans that you bought when you were feeling so good about how you once looked. The guilt at Not Being Perfect comes at you in gigantic proportions.

So what do I do?
1) Find an instant way to feel better. I buy bigger trousers so that I can go to work and not be naked. They are cheap but they fit me. I am hoping that they don't have to last very long. Every time I put them on, The Guilts are not quite as bad as they once were, when surveying the drawer of outfits that are useless to me.
2) Start up my blog. It helps me. I'm sorry if it bores you - but I will never know if you choose not to look at it. If you do, how wonderful, thank you!
3) Face the reality. I weighed myself. I sat looking for a while at the figures on the spreadsheet. I've put on a LOT of weight during this period of running away from Low Carb. It ain't pretty. I guess my clothes were telling me that.
4) Re focus. I found an app for the Dukan diet. I loaded it onto my phone. I have no idea how good it is and I am NOT looking at it to make me amazing all of a sudden, but I'll take anything to keep me looking in the right direction.

So here I go. Six days on Attack. Starting tomorrow breakfast.