Quiet BOOBS

HI all,
Yep, I know it’s been quiet but am back online now. Will not bore you with the details but I am fine and have made some major adjustments to my routine (exercise and diet). The diet Oli gave me was good but in the end it was just too hard to stick with, so I have made some changes which means the weight loss is slower, but it also means I am not constantly freaking out about food, which is something I need to avoid if I am ever going to have a healthy relationship with it.
Have a great festive season and talk to you soon
Em

Air drying, anyone?

This week has been a lot better. I have finally got off my arse and started keeping a food diary, which is helping to keep me on the eating plan a bit better. I worked out that every time I got stressed, I let negative thinking overwhelm me and I am somewhat programmed to think that I can drown out the shitty, horrible things I am thinking by eating shit food. When you think about it, it would make more sense to eat carrot sticks or celery as you make enough noise crunching through those to drown out pretty much anything. Yep. That’s what I’ll do next time. Hmmm

 

Anyway, training was going swimmingly until last Friday, when my heel decided to pack it in big time and now I am really restricted in what I can do – basically low to no impact (I guess I could hop on my good foot if I really wanted to do some high impact stuff). And it is hurting all of the time, which shits me up the wall no end. So it is back to upper body work, such as boxing and weights, which if I do them quickly means that I get cardio work in as well. It also presents me with an excellent opportunity to whack myself in the head with a weight or smack my training partner with a badly aimed punch. I also have to work swimming back into my routine, which is ok and sucky. Ok because I LOVE swimming, sucky because I really don’t like flaunting my body, shoved into a swimsuit, in public. Stay tuned – I promise no photos.

 

Today I was doing PT with Lynn at Fernwood and we were able to work out a really good cardio and strength routine considering my heel was SCREAMING at me for most of the session. The down side was when it came ot getting changed to go back to work (I am doing a fair bit of my training now in lunch breaks) I realised I had forgotten my towel, soap, hairbrush etc. Now, the gym does provide those soap dispenser thingies in the shower but I was faced with the prospect of drying myself on a sweaty t shirt (yummy), running at high speed naked around the change room and hoping that air speed would dry me or end up looking as though I was making love to the blower dryer that you are meant to use for your hands. In the end I came up with another option – as I am a mum, I found in my handbag one of those packets of wipes that are commonly used to clean faces, hands and other body parts of children when out and about. In the interest of the comfort of my fellow workmates, I resorted to having what my cousin Elizabeth charming calls as “whore bath”.  Still, got the worst of the smell away and spared everyone else the spectacle of high speed streaking.

 

So, it is back on the wagon again, albeit balancing mainly on my right foot and longing for brie. Check you soon, sports fans!

How hard can it be????? (warning : swearing in this one too)

As you are probably aware, I am struggling, struggling, struggling to make the changes I need to in order to get myself in a space where this whole diet thing just “clicks” and becomes a little bit easier. The exercise stuff is easy and I now enjoy it (which means either a new attitude in that area or I have completely lost my mind) but where I am still feeling as though I am making little to no progress when it comes ot changing my eating habits. I start, do well for a while and then crash again. This cycle is upsetting, frustrating and really starting to piss me off, as I KNOW what I need to do, I just can’t seem to summon up the mental strength to be able to push through the “down” phases when the last FUCKING THING I want to do is be on a diet or even give a rat’s arse about what I am putting in my mouth. At the risk of sounding like I want to blame anything except my will power, I would like to put some perspective in here.

As you all know, I started this in June, went well and since then have not made much progress on the weight loss front. Well, 2 kg and 16cm is something I am happy about, but I was hoping to be so much further along by now and I’m just not. It is really hard not to be down on myself for this – I try to look at this objectively in the fact that I am changing 34 years worth of shit house eating and thinking habits, but FUCK FUCK FUCK – I wish some one had told me it would have been this farking hard. OK, they did – I WISH I had BELIEVED them. The exercise has come together beautifully but the attitude to my diet is in such a state of flux that it could be used in a physics class right now. Now, this si the bit where the excuses come in – take them or leave them:

1. I have plantar tendon facitiis. This has taken months and months to get under control and we aren’t there yet. Basically any impact exercise I do causes it to flare up and basically it feels like someone is driving a white-hot nail up through my heel. I still have a way to go but at least I can train now without crippling myself for days afterwards. Physically I can deal with it, but mentally it has really crapped on my resolve. It just seems like one more thing that fucks up in my life and means I will always be fat and unfit. You can imagine how much this helps me feel when it comes ot being enthusiastic about carrot sticks.
2. My husband is having an absolutely SHIT year at work. He is a teacher and was transferred to a new high school this year. This school has a large number of students who have anger management and other issues and as a result, he has been the victim of 3 serious assaults so far – 1 involving a broken bottle and the other required him attending an ER for x-rays to make sure he didn’t have broken ribs or shoulder. THIS IS SO NOT OK WITH ME I DON”T HAVE WORDS, SO I”M JUST SHOUTING INSTEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Tim has PTSD from a car accident he was in over 8 years ago and this kind  of shit doesn’t help. As a result, home life has been hard and tense, which is taking a lot of my energy. As you guessed, the diet takes a back seat when we are in survival mode. It’s not a good excuse perhaps, but before you knock it, try it. This is not a fun place to be.
3. Emotionally, this has been a bit of a roller coaster year. 2 of the reasons are above, but others include the fact that I really underestimated what a huge change this would mean and just how strong and resilient I would have to be to do it.  When you have other stuff piled on top of that, it can feel like you are drowning, which is how I have felt on and off. I very dear friend of mine is struggling desperately with severe depression (as in and out of hospital) and it has been so hard to watch. I love her dearly and there is absolutely nothing I can do to help her feel better – having been on the slippery slope of depression myself, I know that in the end there is very little I can do to help her get better, but it still hurts to see her suffering so much. I also have my own mental health issues (stop laughing, I mean the ones that I am medicated for) and at times just the concept of getting out of bed seems beyond me, let alone measuring out 170gm of low-fat yoghurt and blending it with fruit.

So there you go – a few excuses. What I can give you is this – I will never, ever stop trying. One of my favourite expressions is one my shrink gave me. When I told him that it was really hard to believe positive things about myself, he just told me that was fine, just PRETEND you believe them. eventually, your bluff will become belief. I am still in the bluff stage – promise to let you know when it becomes belief. In the meantime, I will keep trying, I will. And I’ll give those carrot sticks just one more try.

Find your mojo

Yeah baby, that’s the way – just got to find that mojo. I am not talking about the dog from “Transformers” by the way. My mojo has been somewhat MIA in the last month or so and to be honest, I wasn’t looking to hard for it. Anyway, it has resurfaced (probably got buried under the pile of clothes in my bedroom, but that’s another story) and so it back to healthy eating, thinking and exercising again. Although after last week when Mistress Pain (aka Oli) had me drag a farking sled with 15kg weight on it for a while, I was feeling there is actually no such thing as HEALTHY exercise, just delirium bought on by lack of oxygen and your brain desperately trying to find a happy place.
Good news is that during october my wonderful friends and family helped me raise over $2000 for the cancer council, which completely rocks. My Girls Night in was awesome and plans are already in place for next year’s bash.
Speaking of next year, I am turning the magical 40 and have some big plans for celebrating. Goals include being slim enough to fit into a size 16 dress by March (am size 22 now – down from a 24/26) and being able to run the City to Surf in August. Stay tuned.

What I want to do

So for a while now I’ve banged on about WHY I am doing this, but I thought I’d share WHAT I want to do before the chap upstairs decides that it’s time for me to step back from the roulette table.  In a page on my site I’ve written about what my goals are and some of these overlap, but others are just random things that I’d like to do. The reason why I’m listing then here is because almost all of them are much easier/more enjoyable/possible without lugging around the weight I’m carrying. Enjoy.

• Go to work in my PJs – at the moment my PJs are a size 22 – not flattering at all and for some reason, PJ designers seem to think that the thing that would make a fat girl feel better about herself is to  put cute pink PIGS all over the PJs. That or cows. Really does wonders for the self-image. I would prefer to sleep naked and my workplace is NOT READY for me to turn up in THOSE PJs.
• Walk the Kokoda trail the year of my 40^th birthday – this is 2010 (next year). Goes without saying that if I have to carry 45kg I want it in a pack which I can take off, not trapped under my skin.  UPDATE due to circumstances waaaaaaay beyond my control the trip to Kokoda will now have to be for Tim’s 40th in 2011. Long and quite tedious story but don’t worry, as a friend of mine pointed out, it a chance to get uber fit and sexy (becuase sexy is what is most important when walking Kokoda).
• Run the city to surf - I actually did this twice (not on the same day) in my early 20s and I loved it. See reason above about shedding the extra weight.  If I fell over backwards on heartbreak hill I might actually squash someone to death at the moment, although this is kind of moot point – wouldn’t make it up there in the first place.
• Do a triathlon – why not? If I have slaved for 12 months to shed my bus sized arse, I want to be able to show it off in lycra when I’ve finished.
• Get my final qualifications in massage therapy – I only have one certificate to get. I really, really enjoy doing massage for people. I somehow find it incredibly relaxing and it’s nice to know you are helping someone feel just that little bit less freaked out and sore.  Obviously I can do it now, but it would be nice to stop worrying the whole time about accidentally brushing my gut against them when I am working on their back. Mmmmm rubbing fat. Oh sorry!
• Learn how to dance the tango – you can tango when you’re fat, but there is nothing more demoralising that whipping your head to one side and feeling your jowl(s) rush to catch up.
• Run a half marathon – to prove to my trainer that pain IS NOT weakness leaving my body, it is just FRICKEN’ PAIN.  No one would dare say that to someone who had just run 21km.
• Go surfing at Byron Bay – used to surf a lot as a teenager. I completely sucked at it and got hit in the head a lot with the board (which probably explains a lot really) but I always had great fun. And Byron is awesome. I also don’t want to have to suffer the indignity of the hippie surfer dude on the beach suggesting I grease myself up with lanolin so I can get my wetsuit on and off easier EVER AGAIN. True story.
• Write a story that gets published in a book- don’t get me wrong, I love blogging. But seeing your name on the cover of a book is kind of awesome. Unless it has the word “unauthorised” on it as well. Also, if I want publicity, being somewhat aesthetically pleasing is a good idea. Sad but true.
• Write down all of the great stories my family has to tell – I am sure everyone has at least a few great stories in their family. Our family seems to have an over population of nutters, so there are LOTS of stories and they are really funny (mainly because I am not in them). It is always sad when no one gets around to writing them and then the person who knew the story best is gone. This is probably one of the few things I could do no matter what weight i am.
• Travel to Europe, especially Scotland and Ireland – I did do the whole travel after uni thing back in the  dark ages but I didn’t make it beyond the tanks at Heathrow at the time (first gulf war). The airport was in chaos (more than usual) and in he end it was just too hard to get anywhere without an internal examination and 17 character references. I would like to go back with Tim (and the kids, if they want to come).
• Sail around the Barrier Reef – hopefully it won’t all die off in the next 12 months. And yes, YOU BLOODY PILLOCKS WHO DON”T BELIEVE IN IT,  global warming and polluting is fucking it up royally. On the weight side of things, I really can’t imagine the misery of being a fatty on a sailboat. Monumentally sucky is a phrase that comes to mind.
• Watch the sun come up one day a month – when I was younger this used to happen on a regular basis but this was due to me drinking all night and being too shickered to know where my house is. Sober and less liver damage is the aim with this one.
• Drink real champagne – I am a huge fan of sparkling but I would LOVE to try “proper” champagne once. Looking vaguely glamorous as I do it is a huge plus.
• Learn how to meditate – honestly, I reckon this is in the “pushing shit uphill with a fork” bracket. Those of you who know me are well aware of my ADHD tendencies. I sit there and go “concentrate on your breathing, relax… I wonder if I put saffron through my hair it would go orange or look the same? WHat? oh yeah… breathe, relax, ducklings, Bryan Ferry is old enough to be my father but still sexy, breathe, relax, breathe, why is William so obsessed with his penis? Because he’s a boy, relax, breathe…”
• Believe I can achieve the goals I set myself – well DUH. Sounds like a no brainer? Try it.
• Learn to be proud of what I have achieved See above.
• Do 50 pushups non stop – I want to be able to do this without my BOOBS and my STOMACH hitting the ground well before anything else should. At the moment my trainer yells “make sure you hit at least 90 degrees on this”. Not possible – stomach hits the ground waaaaaaay before that.
• Wear a beautiful dress and feel fabulous in it for my 40^th birthday – enough said
• Drive a tank – in the famous words of the geek from “Transformers” who hasn’t. Also see lanolin comment about surfing in Byron.
• Fire a canon – see above.
  
• Eat a degaustation meal – I have never done this and as one of my best friends is a chef, I feel I should. And I want to do it without guilt. For those of you who understand what I mean by that statement, cool. For those that don’t, you’ve never felt fat or felt guilt about eating great food. Ping off.
• Learn how to cook beef Wellington – my all time favourite meal. I am sure it is so much more complicated than I think.
• Learn how to sew – my mother is a n excellent seamstress and so was her mother. Feel like I am letting the side down.
• Learn how to knit - my mum can knit cable knit jumpers in front of the Wimbledon telecast. This absolutely stuns me and has led to some very interesting interpretations on jumpers patterns. I am willing to forgive this as an absorbing moment in tennis history.
• Learn belly dancing - give it a wiggle baby is what is supposed to happen here. Not let the “flubber fly”!
• Travel to Canada - my oldest best friend lives here. I miss her heaps and want to go and see her. Being comfy on the flight is a top priority.
• Climb to the top mast of a square rigger – as sailors are known for their razor-sharp wit, avoiding comments such as “ge a move on lard arse” would be great to avoid.

Squidgy bits

ha ha. When I first typed that title it corrected it to ”squiddy bits” – not sure how appropriate that is

I have good news about my squidgy bits – they are shrinking! If you check my vital statistics you’ll see that since starting I’ve managed to shed around 16cm, which makes me really happy. My PT is happy too – she wants to see the weight come down to, but she said the cms are really important too, as it means I am replacing fat with muscle, which means that now when I wave at someone, it is more of a “wibble wobble” than an air displacement roughly the same as a 747 taking off. Those are my words, not my PT’s – she had much more scientific stuff in there that I can’t remember.

Am back on the healthy eating again, which is great, except am detoxing from caffeine, which makes me a bit grumpy etc I miss coffee more than I miss alcohol (yes, I know, TRY not to pass out from shock). Giving up the plonk has been relatively easy – I do love a tipple but I find I don’t actually miss it that much. this is also doing wonders for our budgeting – takes much less when I do actually drink for me to feel “merry”, so good stuff. KFC (the bastards) have bought out mashies again, which is one of my all time favourite things but so far I have remained stoic and driven past the tempting sign. Hey, don’t ask me to explain – some people feel the same way about tim tams, which I can’t stand and am bewildered by the idea that ANYONE could sit down and eat a WHOLE packet of them – yuck!!

So, I am still training hard, am avoiding most of the explosions in the minefield of “food to avoid” and am shrinking my squidgy bits. Not too bad, not too bad. And I’m keeping an eye out for any squiddy bits – sounds dangerous.

That sound you heard was a run away wagon

Hi all,

Got to be honest here – the last two weeks have sucked big hairy ones and I have fallen off the wagon big time. Back on the booze, eating crap you name it. Not proud of it, but I am slowly getting my lasso in order so I can catch the horses that have taken off with my wagon and I should be back on it fairly soon. I’d prefer not to go into what has been going on – pretty painful personally and it has been a very trying time for myself and those close to me. We have all come out of it more than a little ragged around the edges and diet and exercise could just get stuffed as far as I was concerned. Sorry if I’ve let you down but today I dug my shoes out from under the pizza boxes (joking. They were donut boxes) and went for a walk in the lovely 10 degree weather that descended on Canberra today. It was wonderful, felt great blah blah blah. I am back to the old standby of “bluff it until you believe it” – it has worked before, it’ll work again.

Stay tuned. And watch out for the runaway wagon careering around the streets at the moment – it’s probably mine.

A word on breast cancer

Hi all

I’ve been banging on about diet and so on for some time now and it’s time for another reminder about the reason why I’m doing this. Breast cancer. The big C. The “holy crap! I’ve found a lump in my breast”  freak out that many I know have gone through (myself included – scared the shit out of me but thankfully was a non harmful lump).

Am I fanatical about this? you bet your sweet arse!!! I really, really REALLY believe in this cause and I devote a lot of time and energy to it. Why? Because if you don’t care passionately about something, nothing happens. It’s just the way things work.

So this month – if you have ta ta’s, check them (including the guys – men get breast cancer too). If you want to make a difference, donate to breast cancer research , buy a pink ribbon or attend a Girl’s night in. Be the change you want to see in the world etc. And think pink!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ring of fire gnocchi

I recently had the wonderful experience of having to try and rustle up something resembling food after 7pm in a hospital cafeteria. My options were the leftover “fresh” caesar salad (fresh meaning that is was made sometime that week) that was mainly a few lettuce leaves, half a boiled egg and some croutons having a swim around in a fair dollop of salad dressing or gnocchi in some kind of white sauce. I went for the gnocci as it looks pretty innocuous – it tasted innocuous. I think it was meant to be some kind of cheese sauce, but I think the cook forgot to put the cheese in as it ended up having the consistency and taste of perkins paste (oh come on – we all ate perkins paste or clag once). What I was not prepared for was the impact the next day – let’s just say that since eating a stricter diet that my gut is a little more finely tuned to less-than-desirable food than it used to be. It was that or the sauce the gnocchi was in had chilli or prunes that I didn’t detect, so I got to know the hospital toilets pretty well too. Mmmmm ring of fire gnocci – it sounds like a weird dish in an Italian cafe, doesn’t it?

Dietary aesthetics

Now all of us know that when it comes ot losing weight, you can exercise your arse off and there can seem to be very little difference in the size of your booty. Why? because you aren’t eating the right foods at the right times and in the right amounts. “Well der!” I hear you say. If it was so “der” why is it that Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers and the “drink whale urine” diets are so popular? Because we so rarely make that connection between the knowledge stored up in that spongy mass between the ears (known to some as “the brain”) and the action of jamming a chocolate ecalair down your gob as a not so sensible food choice.

I also have to say that in the past, what has let me down (only a little bit, not the main reason) with diets is that aesthetically, the food is not that pleasing. I am a bit excited at the moment as I have discovered that they now “cream” cottage cheese. Big woop, I hear you mutter. You bet your sweet butt it’s big woop! Cottage cheese, in it’s natural state,  has got to be one of THE MOST anaesthetic foods on the planet that you commonly find in the supermarket. Can I just say to the nutritionists out there who gush on about the wonders of cottage cheese – when you have a fat person trying to lose weight and feel good about themselves, DON’T try to make them feel enthusiastic about something that looks like a bowl full of anemic vomit. It just isn’t going to work. So, this creamed cottage cheese is pretty good and when blended with fruit etc is pretty edible. Always a bonus. Just don’t try to get me enthusiastic about kale – it is the food from Satan’s toilet and I am NEVER going to eat it.