Author: Wattle

For the first year my Collendar took the form of obtaining catalogues. That is easy. They place them in the mailbox all the time. I felt like placing a new sign on our mailbox, “Squash in as much junk mail as you can, thanks.”

On less busy days I started cutting out some of the images that appealed. Images of foods that are good to eat and images of foods that are nice to eat but only sometimes. I studied images of numbers… Did they look summery, wintery? What colours are they? What colours surround them? Are they small or large? How would I place them on some chosen coloured paper? I’d cut out images of the date. Many catalogues have their sales dates printed on them. I also cut out images of words like “great value” and “Win”. An A4 plastic pocket was allocated for each month and I kept all the cut out images in them.

The goal was, and still is to keep my fingers busy, no where near my mouth.

At some stage a trip to a stationery shop for something else found me also walking out the door with some bags of A4 paper, of various colours.

I asked myself, “What is on my plate?” I started mentally owning what I eat. I covered a large plate with some of the coloured paper near the start of each month. It is very fast and easy to stick on some washed, dried and cut out food packaging, or some catalogue images that reflect what has been eaten. A visual diary forms. If a month stars more cheesecakes than carrots I get the message.

As well I would start placing a few cut outs from pamphlets of places we visited, activities we went to. An example is when ever I think of “Aprilcot” I also think of Pub Quizes, because we bestirred ourselves to attend some, each Thursday night, for the duration of one April.

If you ever decide to make a Collendar think of it as a work in progress which takes some years.

It might involve the collection of a collection of images, making a “What is on the plate?” visual diary, and the gradual collection of Collendar pages. I say gradual because it might not be always possible to make a page for each day, on the particular day. It might take years to make a complete set of 366 Collendar pages.

And after the Collendar is made? I will know that I have really given up smoking.

I am always glad I am not a contestant on a weight loss television program. They seem to be huffing and puffing, and still they get pushed to do more.

Whilst I do thoroughly enjoy watching the contestants’ dramatic weight loss journeys, I think it is important to be sensible about my own exercise. Some small amount of huffing and puffing is alright. If breathlessness became too great I would think that I made a poor decision about the distance to walk and review it.

Choosing the amount of distance to walk depends on how much feels right.

At the other end of not quite one kilometer down the hill, there is a shopping center, so our distance almost chose itself. We buy some groceries and trudge back up the hill, making it an almost two kilometer round trip. In the first year or so we did not go every day, only some days.

This year’s plan is to go for a walk every day. Some walks will be a similar amount of distance in other directions, allowing us to view many gardens. We take breaks along the way as required, more in hotter weather. I am finding that as there is less weight to carry, I need less breaks. This is very heartening. So in general it will be safe to say that the hardest walks will always be the first ones. It does become easier.

Isn’t today’s image lovely. The raindrops are showing so clearly on the rose’s leaves. We timed our walk to happen between two rather heavy showers. Of course if it is raining heavily all day long, on some days, that will be no excuse. That’s why they make umbrellas!

Yesterday afternoon a technician from the “National Broadband Network” (NBN), our government owned, monopoly, telecommunications infrastructure provider, was sitting above a meter high hole on the side of the street directly outside our house and the next thing you know our internet and telephone were disconnected. Then the next thing you know they remained disconnected, and now a day later they still continue to be disconnected.

Borrowing our neighbour’s mobile telephone we established that our modem is constantly attempting to connect to somebody else’s modem, and that that somebody else is not even using the the same internet service provider as us. On top of that our neighbour was also disconnected at the same time, and is not the somebody else, so we know the problem involves at least three houses, possibly more.

How depressing, our site is only just launched and now it is not on the world wide web. Tomorrow is Saturday, and it defies belief that the policy of the NBN is to attend to the provisioning of our national telecommunications infrastructure only during business hours, Monday to Friday.

Well, I have acknowledged my mood drop, right through the floor, down to the level of the place where the wires are now attached so strangely.

Perhaps the hardest relationship to understand and to act upon is how mood is able to effect what, and how much we eat. Instead of having a comfort food feast I am forcing the continuance of my tasks.

To be complete my collendar needs a page made each day. I am reminding myself that the images will still appear in the archives eventually. It’s important to go walking every day and take the photos. Best of all, this blog might be the most important one I ever write of the whole blog collection. I must hope that it will be readable, some day, in its rightful place, on the internet.

Catalogues often have an image of a half (1/2). These can help with motivation. I pair them with images of foods I would prefer to eat less of.

Over time I have gathered a plastic sleeve full of cut out images of commercial brand biscuits, ice creams, cakes, chocolates and crisps. It makes for a pleasant virtual-eating afternoon doing all this cutting out and thinking about all the indulgent foods I didn’t actually eat. For example *half* a Chocolate ripe is better than a whole one.

Also over time I have gathered a plastic sleeve full of cut out images of a half (1/2). Blue ones, green ones, fat ones, tiny ones, you name it. The list of the types of an image of a half well and truly covers any future mood I might have. While cutting them out I imagine what sort of food image I might pair with the image of a half.

These days when I am making my Collendar there are very few images missing to cover any, and I do mean any, high calorie menu item.

You will also notice that on my Collendar the image of cabbage hasn’t appeared. That is because they are really difficult to find in catalogues. At some stage a printer might be useful, but for now never mind, it is alright. I know that I am eating it, and now you know it too!

Tonight we are having *half* of a commercial brand boysenberry flavoured cone ice cream on our pancake. My collendar page reminds me that I really did need less of this indulgent food.