I can’t believe it’s been 2 months. Time has flowwwwn. It’s been incredibly busy – but then again, who isn’t busy these days?

September and October, and somehow half of November.

I was busy, I was stressed, and I wasn’t looking after myself (yes, yes, despite saying I would on previous posts… this is the theme of my life). I wasn’t drinking alcohol – so my go to chill in the evening after a stressful day was eating junk food. And I ate a lot of it. It would not be unusual to have a large bag of popcorn (Sweet Butterkist is sooo good…) and a full tub of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food (my favourite). And probably more.

And then I would have guilt for that. So I would stress more. And the vicious cycle would continue.

I’ve always thought I’ve been told that it’s been shown that sugar has been proven to be addictive. I truly believe in emotional eating as an addictive behaviour. However, somebody told me recently that it’s not – there’s not any proven biochemical proof of addiction. So this will definitely be an area I am going to look into someday (one day the link will be  – here – )

I did run an 8k in the Amsterdam TCS marathon festival. Amsterdam is such a great place. Had a fantastic time. And I ran it in 49mins, which I was truly surprised at – my training was very suboptimal (if we can even call it training..). But I am overjoyed at it, and motivated to keep running and keep my fitness.  Although my friend did the half-marathon and she also was “undertrained”.. and then ran it in 1h 50… I can only dream to one day achieve that with all the preparation in the world!!

And then I got injured. The week after – survived basketball training fine. Two days later, warming up, went to do a sprint from standing and strained my calf muscle. Tried to a lay-up and it wasn’t having it. I was devastated. Such shit timing. Didn’t get to play at all, and then basically didn’t exercise for a while (which was not the right way to handle it… but see below…). So that really interfered with any training ideas I had been motivated to do.

Then, I fell off the sober wagon. I had achieved 3 months sober, I was so proud of me. But I hadn’t quite achieved any state of mental nirvana.. and with a stressful week, a sick patient experience which didn’t go very well, then a Halloween party (which I hosted) was too much to resist. To be fair, it did all start because I accidentally opened an actual alcoholic beer instead of the non-alcoholic beer of the same brand I had in the fridge. I was half way through before I realised. And then fun chaos with costumes and ripping things and mayhem… and shots were mentioned… and taken. It was a brilliant night… until I was up still up at 5am buzzing.

Thought I’d learnt my lesson (not a fun hangover), but a trip home, some family stresses, and attending a wedding with brilliant friends I only get to see when home, and the ex-partner in situ and the free wine at the reception ended up in my hands… Fast forward through many shots and excess alcohol, and yup, Pauline is still awake at 5am and more chaos ensued.

I am just tired of it. One drink opens me to a world of chaos. I need to look after me, to make sure the worlds stresses don’t lead to me giving into that one drink. And that will take a lot of work. And I really want to document that journey –  regularly, truthfully, – in this blog.

And that will involve me trying to get fitter and healthier. That is a crucial part to me feeling better about myself. Not only does exercise make me feel much better mentally and physically, I will feel an overall better of myself if I am healthier and happier.

But that will not be easy, and I am not naïve to think it will be. I need a system and a method that I can stick with to make my world better. I can’t feel overwhelmed with trying to stick to rabbit foods or truly restrictive diets. Nor will I exercise 2 hours every day. This is unrealistic and unattainable. And goddam I need chocolate in my life.

So how to do it? What is the right way to make long term realistic manageable weight loss and stay sane? Even with my medical training, I’m still not entirely sure. But I have some ideas. And I really want to get into the research and see what really is out there. And I will share that with you all, hopefully in a way we can all understand. Hopefully, that will be the PMA Way. And I’m excited to truly get it going.