Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

What can I say? I have another 3 weeks of this Intermittent Fasting to go. How has it been...? Well it has been incredibly effective, for one. The results started after 2 weeks and apart from the half term glitch I managed to keep it up. For the first 5 weeks I was OBSESSED with it. Which seems ironic since really, of all the methods out there is the is one which requires the least effort. You say to yourself, I cannot eat from this time to this time - and quite a lot of that time is spent sleeping anyway. Then you only eat a normalish meal when you do it. So that is literally it. Having that cut off point of not eating is a huge mental assist. When the cut off time arrives, you just go, actually nope. Can't and won't eat. It is literally a fast I guess.  I never felt hungry, also incredible. Human beings are so efficient at storing and using energy. I have lasted eight weeks - and will probably go on another 3 with no bother. I assume being efficient the slowing down will star...

It is all heading in the right direction, of course. But I do think that it is a bit taking a toll on my energy levels. However, it is only 2 more weeks to go, less now... and really I cannot stop at this stage. I am literally almost there... Completed the reports. It is so lovely to read them and look back on the year.

Well, it is now almost two months since I began my Intermittent Fasting. I got back on that pony again and today I got into one of my larger Future States dresses. I was delighted. It was a little loose but nowhere as loose as it should be. However, it is all still heading in the right direction and I am very happy. The reports will be done tonight. It has been something of a landmark year. By the end of this year I would have completed this phase of my life... as Kevin said to me the other day, you are thriving. It was so nice catching up with him again.  But Ghin is with me today and it is extra nice having him here. I don't know what else to say... there is nothing new under the sun. Everything has been thought of. Everything done. We end up making the same mistakes. It seems that just as activists think they can make things better, assholes and idiots will always think that they can get away with shite. It seems madness really. Forever this battle between saviours and dickheads...

Yesterday I was going through my FB feed, yes it is so old now that it's probably back in vogue, but I came across a video made about an ex-Goop employee who was criticising the wellness industry. Now I have NOTHING to do with the wellness industry. But I am FASCINATED by it, in the same way I am fascinated by people who are on the right side of conspiracy theory. I enjoy watching videos about people who are railing about the latest woke trend, mostly because it is very amusing, but also because it is good to know how the right or what the right is thinking. My youtube feed is a car crash of left and right politics. I do draw the line though are the total racists disguising themselves are the critics of wokeness. BUT... anyway, I digress. Wellness. I HATED the term wellness when I first heard it from the get go. Because it mostly had people who were holier than thous telling other people how life should be lived. Also it said stupid things, things which don't seem THAT extreme ...

Can't believe it has been a week since I last wrote. Since then the full moon has done its worst, which is not bad at all. I was just very tired and a bit giddy. I find it affects me differently. I don't go into a meltdown but its effects are still unpredictable. How is the IF going? Well... If I am being brutally honest, I was a little sidetracked since the start of the half term. But now that it is over I am returning to business as usual. I tried on my North Face trousers and they are still waaaay too tight. So I then mourned my youth, but also it refocused my efforts. I counted down days, said I would loose 1 kg a week which made it 7 kg by the time I got to Singapore. Look, even if I lost half of that, it would mean that I lost most of my menopausal weight already and it would be a nice bonus. I also have decided to start running every morning. Look at where we live and this weather. I owe it to myself to do that. The good news though is that I have stood still rather than...

Ah life... it is rather wonderful And this weather. What is going on? I know that we did have the wettest March and coldest April on record, but this??? This is amazing. It is surely a year of extremes. Probably too much sunshine now. I absolutely LOVE the beauty of the things which we have here... love the way we can rely on the sun to shine. However no water for crops also means a harvest which we may need to be worried about.  My garden has not been watered - well I never water it. But all the lawns around me are starting to dry up. Why do people plant lawns like that? They look so dull. I have to mow my backyard though. As usual I will probably hand cut it. Right. I need to start prep now for today. It will be fine. I think I might head to Redburn to see if I can get elder off the trees there because I did not see any elder in the forest... AND also I might my nettles here because they have better stems. Today today today...

The god news is I am not drinking. The bad news is I am not doing much of anything else. That said, I didn't do much of anything else when I used all that spare fat. I am just gonna have to accept that this is my life and eating habit till I arrive in Singapore. Although last night I DID want to go for a run. I will start running everyday from Sunday. The weather has been mad. After a coldest March and then April on record, May has knocked it out of the park. We have had three weeks, going on fourth, of unbroken sunshine. After this weekend we need to prep for the Summer Scheme in Carrick. It is gonna be hard work. NGL. BUT it will be magical. And then Singapore. I think I will need to get dates into calendars for next year. We don't have very much by way of Fostering Network requests and it is their last year, but so what? If it all comes to an end when it does, that will be fine. I will have loved how successful we were this year. I am quite unambitious that way. If it does d...

Women are told a lot of shit about our bodies. All through culture, the control of our bodies, especially in patriarchal culture has been an obsession. our acts of defiance and free will have always been punished. We are damned if we do and damned if we don't.  I know this. Mostly my weight loss journey has been about health. I have seen that the menopause has resulted in me getting larger, almost exponentially on a yearly basis. Because I have a smallish frame every pound means something. But more to the point, getting larger is a strain on so many things - from the heart to the joints. I have never been able to keep weight off, even in my 20s. But now I see, looking at the clothes that I have, even when I was at my 'fattest' I was not fat at all. It's kinda mental. I would say that I have probably lost a pound a week. Maybe a little bit more. Maybe two pounds, I don't know. I can see that I have about another two pounds, at least, to go on my stomach alone. I thin...