Sunday, August 22, 2010

Strayed from the path...

Hey everyone,

Well, what can I say...

This past week has been a resounding fail as the overwhelming workload that I have been pushing on with for the past month or so, finally managed to throw me off course.

I swear, it was as if all the fates were conspiring to make me deviate this week. I found myself working 12 hour days and actually thought it would make it EASIER for me to avoid food. Uh-huh? As if my life could ever be THAT easy!

Turns out that as a 'reward for all the hard work' myself a few colleagues have been putting in, the boss wanted to take us all out for dinner on TWO occasions, along with bringing in these outside caterers to feed us whilst in the boardroom, with fully fattening lunches.

Not only were we locked into this fucking board room every single day so that we were acutely aware of the actions and activities of each and every person, but we couldn't eat, drink, shit or avoid doing all three without it going noticed.

Thinking he was being really nice and decent and helpful, the boss claimed to have not seen me eat a thing all day. And because he couldn't have one of his star workers (his words, not mine) failing to last the distance, he made sure that the caterers brought us in whatever we wanted from their corporate luncheon menu.

A menu that just happened to be laden with an array of highly calorific, fattening, greasy, lard-laden foods. Seriously, they couldn't have picked any worse foods for this menu if they'd tried. Added to that, the fact that all of us were huddled together in this one board room and you can only begin to imagine the overwhelming combined smell of foods wafting around the place.

My boss actually ordered a fillet mignon and foie gras. Seriously. I mean, can you imagine how much lard would have stuck to his ribs with that? Someone else had some pork terrine thing and the girl next to me had burger and chips! I felt like I was being tested seriously... everywhere I turned there were really fatty foods; the air was filled with the scent of the stuff and my stomach was growling terribly. In the end, I went for what I hoped was the least damaging of the items and had a chicken and bacon foccacia. I took the bacon out and tried to scrape as much of the mayo off as possible and ended up demolishing it the whole foccacia in hunger.

That evening he took us out for dinner at an Indian Restaurant.

Fuck my life.

I mean, what the hell am I supposed to say to that? "No I can't come out for a meal with the reps who are over from Ireland, despite me heading up the entire collaborative project." Or how about, "Yeah I'll come but I'll just sit there and drink iced water whilst all of you put away a small banquet?"

Grrr...

All the planning in the world wasn't going to help me get out of that set-up. I just had to try and order what looked the least fattening and went for jasmine infused rice with tandoori chicken and no sauce or naan or anything else. 

Fucking torture.

The next day was just as bad. We started at 7am and the boss ordered in a huge selection of pastries for us. I managed to avoid it by saying I'm just not a breakfast person and stuck to a black coffee, but come lunchtime I was having to order a caesar salad and hoping it wasn't too bad. The weird thing was, it was as if everyone's eyes were on me. I'm not at all thin and I haven't let on to anyone that I'm on any kind of diet, so they had no reason to think anything odd was going on, but they just seemed really surprised that when presented with the opportunity to have ANYTHING I wanted off of this super luxurious menu, I was picking the least extravagant choices on there.

Everyone else was trying to make the most of the opportunity and were ordering two courses each time. I can see their point, I mean you aren't supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth and all that, but they really exploited this freebie run for all it was worth. Steaks, crab, crawfish, pate, gateaux...you name it, they ate it.

And there was me picking out the smallest, most insignificant items on the menu.

I guess my size kind of went against me, because looking at me, I'm sure everyone expected me to put away my fair share. The fact that I didn't really just raised suspicion.

Urgh.

And it's not as if I could have eaten and then purged it afterwards, because for some reason, where I work, for a floor of 120 people, there are two cubicles in the ladies toilet. The bathroom is NEVER empty and I just couldn't get away with purging in there. Previously, when I've purged at work, I've used the disabled toilet which is set apart from the others and that's perfect. But the disabled toilet is being completely refurbished over these two weeks so that all the little handrails and extra fixtures can be updated and brought up to the required standards for health and safety - even though there are NO disabled people working at my company right now.

Like I said, fuck my life.

So yeah, with the forced luncheons and the dinner at the Indian and another at an Italian Bistro, the breakfast spreads and the piss-up at the end of the week, I managed to gain two pounds. Thankfully, by not eating anything all of yesterday, walking five miles and taking some ephedrine, I lost one of those pounds again and I'm working towards getting the other one off again real soon too.

I really couldn't believe it. It was as if everyone was in on my plan and had decided to come together and do their utmost to thwart my plans to stay the righteous path.

Why can't everyone just fuck off and mind their own business?

I know that my boss really was being nice. He didn't have to stump up the money for these huge extravagant meals and whatnot, but he thought he'd reward us all for our hard work, by treating us to the best catering available for free. To anyone else it was a really lovely gesture, it was just me who saw it as a means of torture.

Great.


1 comment:

  1. Hey there, just prodding to see if you are still around, I'm new to the yahoo group and really just wanted to see if i could find another couple of ladies to boost morale on my walk with ana. got an update for a newbie?

    ReplyDelete