Drinking & My Slimming World Secret

So there’s me in my 30’s not quite going out as much and doing my drinking indoors and it was bliss.  No queuing at the bar, no shouting over music and all snug and cozy in my pj’s – ahhh this was the life.  I felt a sense of being grown up and pleasing myself and that’s what hitting the 30’s was all about – empowerment and not running with the crowd eh?  Of course there were plenty of nights with friends and my boyfriend/hubby indoors with music, dancing around the kitchen and staying up to the wee hours but then gradually that started to die out as well.  As I mentioned before, my husband started to cut out the booze and had no interest in drinking at home anymore and I would have been happy if he had left me alone to get on with my drinking.  And so the endless rowing and huffing ensued and I could only see poor me, having to put up with this and all I wanted to do was enjoy myself.

Around 3 years ago I joined slimming world to loose weight.  I had convinced myself that I had put on over 1 stone due to an accident I had had 2 years previously – in hindsight I think I had been really lucky before and had always stayed the same weight even with the amount of beer I could put away.  I more or less ate what I wanted, did a good bit of walking and that always kept me happy enough.  After I broke my leg I guess my metabolism took a hit and slowed right down and as I kept on drinking the weight went on.  I was now a size 14 and had started living in leggings (not a ladies friend at all!) and baggy tops – the bigger the better!  And it is so true, the more you dress baggy the bigger you look!  But by that stage I didn’t really care as much about how I looked.  I had always loved clothes and getting my hair done and had took a pride in my appearance before I broke my leg but once I felt I was getting bigger I just didn’t try as much.  I put it down to settling down, having other priorities and sure my husband loved me as I was eh?!  But finally I was going to do something about the extra weight.  I had long ago accepted I would never be skinny again and knew I had a beer belly (one ex affectionately called me 2 bellies!) but my legs had started to get bigger, nevermind my bingo wings and chins!!!  I remember seeing a meme on facebook taken of a girl naked in the dark, her boobs were big and droopy as she was slumped over and her 2 bellies bulged out over her nunu and beside it was another image of Homer Simpson’s face – the likeness was uncanny!  In my beer fear when I seen this I was certain someone had taken a pic of me at some stage while drunk!!!  And the scary thing is, it could have been me and I wouldn’t have remembered because that’s where my drinking had taken me at times and blackouts were a regular occurrence – thank god I mostly had my crazy naked blackouts before iphones and I was usually round a good bunch of people.  Well normally but that’s for another time.

So there I was starting slimming world and I had big ambitions – I was going to loose at least 2 stone and get back to loving myself and the things I wore.  I was going to get a new hair do and start this contouring thing that was the rage – I was going to be beautiful again!!  Well, I did loose a stone and it felt great but one thing was, after every weigh in, that the ladies talked so much about and had a good laugh relaying their woes with it was….. Red Wine!  Now, I had tried to be a glamorous lady drinking wine before but because I was such a greedy drinker, I would have been onto my second bottle by the time dinner was served – wait, wait – scratch that, I wouldn’t of had dinner – eating was cheating and all that jazz!  There was serious drinking to be done!  Then I would have fallen all over the show, cried and blacked out!  But these ladies were drinking at home, during the week and were managing to loose the weight still – give or take of course.  After 5 months of SW I had decided to embrace the tradition of cheat night 🙂  Most would go home after weigh in and treat themselves to a chinese or a big chocolate bar.  I decided to get a bottle of red wine, sneak it home in my bag, wait till my husband had went to bed and then I would have MY reward and MY time and I loved it.  See I had cut out my beers during the week because it wasn’t worth the crap I got from the hubby and the huffing that lasted to the weekend.  All I wanted was to make it to the weekend and have my beer on a Friday and Saturday night – minus all the aggro from the Mr grrrrrrr!!!!!  This way I could do mid week and weekend drinking, whoopee!!

Fast forward a couple of years and SW had stopped, I was now having a sneaky bottle of wine nearly every night and my beer at the weekend and me and the Mr were getting worse and worse.  But I wasn’t negative about my drinking, I was negative about my marriage – it was to blame and not my drinking.  You see I was trying everything to keep my hubby happy, cleaning the house, organising finances, doing shopping, helping him with his hobby, taking care of the dogs, doing as much as I could for my mother in law – all to keep him happy.  And the only thing I wanted him to accept about me was my drinking and to him it was only on the Friday and Saturday – what was so bad about that?  I knew only to well that my husband and I had issues to work through and I was willing to work through them.  But I was not going to give in to the drinking – no way hosay!!!

It was a war of wills – I had changed myself so much already in the last 7 years and I was not giving up that one last thing.  I used to be a feminist, equal rights for women and equal respect – I would never cook and clean for a man and be expected to do that while he sat on his ass doing nothing!  But what I didn’t realise was I had married a 1950’s mummy’s boy who still had supper served to him at 8pm on a night!!  I had thought this was a joke when I first met him and he had said he wanted a ‘mother figure’ – I laughed so much at that I nearly cracked a rib – because seriously if you knew me, I was the farthest person away from a mother figure 😉  And it was half banter and to my disdain half true and once I fell in love with him, well it was too late so all I could do was compromise.  C-O-M-P-R-O-M-I-S-E – I love it and I’m good at doing it but by god my husband is so stubborn that it’s taken 7 years of a constant battle to get there, and it is, little by little lol!  Actually we are both Aries – not sure if I buy into all that star sign stuff but we have definitely locked horns since we first met.  We often joke about being similar to that couple in Father Ted that are constantly rowing and telling each other to Feck Off and then when Father Ted and Father Dougal come into the shop they are ‘Ach hellooo fathers, how are you? My fine wife here will help you.’ (see pic above)  To be honest, it used to hurt me when he said we were like them because I didn’t want that and I knew we weren’t that bad.  I just wanted compromise, love and understanding and equal rights ;)!!!

So, weight back on and extra, I was now sitting at 12s4 (previously 10s), at 5f6 wearing baggy clothes and my hair constantly up out of my face cause I just couldn’t be assed with myself.  All my energy was in drinking every night and fighting my husband more often that not!  Oh then running a house and keeping a full time stressful job down yay me!!!

Then there was another issue – babies….

Cherry bye for now,

S xx