It would all be fine if it wasn’t for the booze

Which, now I say it out loud makes it sounds as if my diet would be all peaches and cream (no, wait, that would be a BAD diet) - as if my diet would be all oatmeal and apricots if it wasn’t for the nine pints of Guinness I put away every night. Which is, of course, not the case.
It’s eight pints.

Haha! Not really. I don’t drink pints anymore - or hardly often - because I know they’re very very bad, and contain four-hundred thousand empty calories. And for what? For the sake of a lovely fun evening with friends. Oh, no, that sounds nice. Hang on…

Alcohol. I likes it. And it’s taken me the longest time to work out that if I want to get this whole weightloss thing actually moving again, I’m going to have to cut it down to (basically) zero. Not zero. That would be ridiculous.

But basically zero. Because for me, it’s not JUST the empty calories in the alcohol that make the difference - and actually, I’m finding it hard to call them ‘empty’ calories because that doesn’t sound like they’re any fun - it’s the hangover points that make the difference…

The booze is one thing - since working at home, I’ve been practically abstinent on school nights; No colleagues to pop out to the pub with after finishing work, no communal stress to communally release after finishing work, and, with my poor time management and lack of ability to put the damn laptop down, no ‘finishing work’, very much, now I think of it. Which may not be the healthiest thing either.

But weekends are a different matter. Friends round for dinner, birthday drinks or whateverthefuck, or just going out for dinner to mark that it’s not an actual work day: it is nice and good and right and proper to have a vodka and tonic - alright, slimline tonic, or some wine. But I do have a tendency to forget how many vodka and slimlinetonics I have already had, and, killingly, having lost a fair amount of little weight already, and not drinking as often as I used to, I have become a bit of a total pussy in the drinking department, to put it in the most polite way I can.

And so come the hangovers. And with the hangovers come the desperate need to Carb The Fuck Out.

Also the ‘not caring what I put in my mouth while drunk’ (no, not in that way) - but the hangovers are the worst. Last weekend I was at least partially sensible, and while preparing to have friends over for dinner on Saturday night (for which I baked my first cheesecake, by the way, and it fucking rocked. And yes, I did swap lots of the ingredients out for ‘light’ versions, though I’m not sure that counts when you eat the remaining half-cheesecake, as we did, while drunk, once the guests had gone home)

Sorry, while preparing for dinner with friends, and knowing I was most likely going to be hungover and carb-craving, we also mashed some potatoes for nice healthy if stodgy fishcakes to have with some lovely baked beans when I woke up groaning ‘Carbs! Caaaaaaarbs!’ as knew I quite literally would. And did.

And it was a good thing, because otherwise I would have been on the phone for a supersize pepperoni pizza with extra jalapeno peppers quicker than you can say “Hello can I have a supersize pepperoni pizza with extra jalapenos, please?” - which is pretty fucking fast, let me tell you.

So there’s the problem.
Anna - shy person, drinks to cope with stressful and scary social situations, and also to relax, and when relaxed, because it is an enjoyable thing to do.
Drink - contains lots of calories for seemingly no reason, and increasingly appears to inspire pizza.

BUT

No wine = terrible idea
Lots of wine and supersize pepperoni pizza with jalapeno peppers with some sour cream dip for the crusts = Also terrible idea.

So I know that I have to do this vile ‘moderation’ thing - which I cannot do, it is too hard; ‘all or nothing’ is more dangerous, but easier - and so I am trying, very hard, to be moderate, in an all or nothing way.

No alcohol, apart from maybe one night a week. And then hiding the pizza menu.
Or making alternate (vegetable related) plans.

Or giving the booze up completely for a while.

[Noooooooooooooooo]