Wait – and (Drink) Tea

In German, we have this proverb that goes “wait and drink tea”. It translates into ‘wait and see’, and basically means you should just sit back, relax, and wait until the situation is more favourable. Kind of works for all occasions – including weight-loss. Yesterday I was down in the dumps. A bad day because my eating routine was already upset when I realised early on in the day that I had run out of my beloved kiddie wraps and could not make my usual lunch. I often blow stupid things like that out of proportion, and rather than a practical problem it becomes a mental stumbling block. Instead of  just factoring in a quick walk to the shop, I resigned and comforted myself with bad food choices: Two small packs of fat-reduced but nevertheless crisps. Which is only the start of a vicious circle. Once I had eaten them, I thought ‘ugh, the whole day is lost, I have failed to keep up with the diet today. I might as well give up’.

Sue’s great post on Self-Sabotage comes to mind. It really resonated with me – I am a true saboteur when it comes to dieting. If my routine gets disturbed – by work lunches, dinner invitations or any other occasion that holds me back from my usual eating habits – I find it very hard to stay on track, and even harder to get *back* on track. I spiral into an ‘all is lost’ mentality that does not even fit with my usual, optimistic, can-do attitude. Especially when in the previous weeks the weight loss was not forthcoming. (Last week was a definite low when I gained 200g instead of losing anything.)

Yet, to circle back to the title of this post, the ‘wait and see’ approach more often than not proves to be successful. Ok, it didn’t happen last week, but maybe it will the next! The body and mind work in mysterious ways, and after all that frustration yesterday, today’s weigh-in recorded minus 1.9 kg. How bizarre, such a big loss well into the journey (8 weeks) – but well, I’ll take it. I am 300g away from my second reward milestone, half a kilo away from reaching the 10% weight-loss mark – and 1 kg from crossing the obesity threshold. I still don’t feel as if the clothes are more comfortable, but according to my mother, I have lost weight on my face. Well, great *hmph*.

So, wait and drink tea. I am doing that religiously now. Because drinking lots is good for weight-loss. I am not great with drinking water during (or even better: before) meals, but I am drinking lots of fruit tea while I am working. My favourite tipple is Turkish apple tea. It is not black tea but dried bits of apple which you can infuse. With a few drops of sweetener, it actually tastes almost like apple juice. (My stock of Turkish apple tea unfortunately having been diminished, I have now found an alternative in Tesco’s own brand apple-cinnamon tea, which is also delicious.)

Finding your favourite kind of tea is one thing, but the other is actually remembering to drink it. In order to drink at least a litre and a half of apple tea a day, I keep a little teapot on my desk. And I have treated myself to an insulated cup that I simply can’t wait to get my lips on.

I also drink a good few cups of black tea – starting with the cup of tea that the best husband of all delivers to my bedside at quarter to 7 in the morning, to a last cuppa in the middle of the evening. In true Irish style, I drink it with milk – but have switched from dairy to almond milk a couple of years ago. Unsweetened, unroasted almond milk only has 13 cal per 100ml (for comparison: full-fat milk has 64 cal/100ml). Admittedly, dairy milk tastes better. But for me, it is more about what the tea looks like than what it tastes like: The almond milk gives the tea a soft brown colour – and I can imagine that I am drinking regular tea with milk.

Ideally, however, I would like to drink tea with Mr Thornton…

… especially if he looked at me like that. I suspect, motivation would never be a problem again, I would live off love alone, and the pounds would fall off…