The Rigmarole Diet

*image credits to http://www.bottomviewfarm.com/fresh_berries.htm

Mmmm... look at those berries. Doesn't it make you want to be on the Rigmarole Diet too? Advertising is powerful. Pay someone enough (or learn the skill) and you can use some powerful imagery to boost your message. More on that another day.

So that's what I would call it, if it had a name. The Rigmarole diet... if you could call it a diet, that is. It is certainly complicated and goes on forever. Stick a juicy image with some advertising and I bet I could get someone to pay me so they could sign up. People can get pretty desperate for a change, like we can buy hope or promises. That's the kind of world we live in. It's not too bad though. Look at the juicy fruit we have here on this planet. Unless you have allergies or some eating disorder where you can't/won't eat them you may agree that the fruit here can get pretty good sometimes.

I'm deliberately going off track here to stick in theme with the whole Rigmarole thing. So the diet starts with a strict halt so crazy you would already have to be pretty desperate to try it. There's a little bit of logic but not much depending if you get it or not or if drastic change freaks you out.

FIRST is the habit change. 1-4 weeks (longer if you can)

Eat nothing processed or manufactured, including bread, icecream (*cries) anything made by someone else (with someone exceptions) when away from home. If you forget your lunch (yes often) then you miss out. Lunch is along the lines of fruit or crackers or both.

Make and effort to eat breakfast and dinner everyday and theres no rules there except I guess no fizzy/soda drinks but thats rare for me anyway. No icecream or anything with icecream in it for the whole time. No cake. Drink as much tea/coffee/other as you like and whenever you like as long as you have 1 glass of water in between.

NEXT is the new habit forming. 1-4 weeks (or forever if you can live that long-yeh right)

Kinda of the same as before except you can eat a normal meal for lunch if you made it yourself. Breakfast has no rules. Dinner is now sad. You can no longer gorge or double up at dinner time. One measured cereal bowl size serving of food for dinner of whatever dinner you like in it then thats it, no more. Still no icecream. You will usually be in some kind of weird limbo by this point as you will most likely miss that nice feeling icecream gives you but you cant remember when you had it last or why you were hanging so bad last week. You can have cookies with you tea or coffee a this point but no more than 2 per drink with a glass of water between each drink of course.

THEN balance, be honest and take it easy. Keep busy if you can. Ongoing.

Being busy can have its ups and down. I had some weird moments by this stage. I remember I allowed myself to buy food out again by this time but found myself opting to going back to hitting rice crackers really hard over all the other food options I had. I was actually craving them, it was nuts. By this point I was a whole lot more conscious about what I was eating though and after some big changes I couldn't really eat that much in one sitting. I look back thinking I must of had a heavy addiction to icecream before now. It was life and how I got in this mess in the first place.

The Rigmarole Diet is about change, positive change that take a long time and is complicated. If you dont focus on the positive how will you see the positive change?

Throughout the whole process I allowed myself to make mistakes, set backs, enjoy Christmas and a random binge. I weighed myself once at the GP in December but I've tried not to fixate on it.

I would really wish I could become superfit and train really hard with all that spare/free time I never have but I guess that statement speaks for itself. At the moment I'm just working on what's working and the rest I'll get on to later, because I promised myself.

As a woman, or a female, or a lady in this modern day the fact is it's hard to forget a majority of people cherish all those glossy magazines, idolise celebrities or have a general expectation of how a woman should look act and feel. This has a hug impact on self image. When it's not you, you panic that your nosehairs are too long or they grow too fast, that maybe your teeth aren't pearly white and that sometimes you worry that you look rotund in the clothes that you want to wear. It's just how it is. No matter how good you feel about yourself this stuff will always creep back in. Today it's about being fat. Tomorrow it will be about something else.

So here's to being healthier, but for ourselves, not someone else, not for someone who thinks we are less or thinks we aren't human or have feelings. Here's also to commitment, committment that you can do it even when you know it's too hard and that some people are just shallow.

Do it for you. Leave the world behind. Stick with you. Can you count on you?

You're beautiful.

-Mez (eat the berries!)