Progress on the whoopass

Hi all. Well, I am exercising and sticking to the diet, which is great. Not so great – this time the anaemia is  KICKING MY ARSE when it comes ot the energy stakes and I having to do things that I never would have thought I would. Such as go to bed early and not sitting up watching re-runs of Macgyver, look forward to taking my iron tablets and nearly crash my car because i am so stonkered. My effort this arvo with Mistress Pain (aka Oli at group training) was less than impressive – doing just 80 jab punches became a fricken’ marathon and I needed to take 2 breaks just so I could finish. This is unheard of for me and if I’ve got to be honest, really shits me up the wall. I just am not used to feeling that exhausted and it’s hard to not to resent this thing that I have to fight so hard to get on top of. Whinge whinge whinge. I guess on the plus side I am not yet having to eat liver (which will NEVER EVER happen. Retch etc) or have a blood transfusion (this may still happen). Sigh. Bleat. Woe is me. Where is my jar of toughen up cream?

The good news is that I’ve managed to lose 400gm per week on average since joining weight watchers. The plan is not so hard to stick to and I love the online tools – they really work for me. Also, breakthrough today – I went out for lunch and ordered (drumroll please) a green salad with fetta cheese!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! May not sound like much of an effort, but when I know that the café we went to does absolutely KILLER potato skins with bacon and cheese believe me, this ranks as almost herculean in my books. Even weirder I really enjoyed it and felt that just maybe I could do that again. Maybe. One step at a time

Anyway, need to sign off. I have to go and chew on some iron filings and swallow1 kg of ascorbic acid. Yummy!!

5 weeks of whoop ass

I was browsing my calendar today ( as one does) and realised that my 40th birthday is 5 weeks and 1 day away. Instead of having a moan about how much I haven’t achieved in terms of weight loss and fitness, I decided to throw a bit of a challenge down to myself – how much can I (safely) achieve in 5 weeks? Not s shite load of time but not so small an amount that you can’t see some good results if you really try. Sooooooo the challenge is on, which means opening up a great big can of whoopass and really seeing how hard I can push myself. The good news is that mentally I have not felt this stable and strong for some time, which makes me think that either (a) I need ot up my meds as I am having a delusional episode or (b) I am ready to push myself a bit. I guess we’ll all find out at the end of 5 weeks, eh?

I have had a medical in the last week and sadly my anaemia is back with a vengeance – the dr has told me that on the plus side, they have found no physical reason for my iron levels to be so low. As this means I don’t have cancer of the intestine or bowel or a massively bleeding stomach ulcer, I am kind of happy with this news. On the down side it means that whatever causes me to have the blood iron level that almost runs into the negative (I have a reading of 5 and it should be at the very least 9.7) is probably genetic – this, in plain english, means that somewhere my DNA wiring is “subprime” and it means that I could chew on iron ingots daily, I just can’t hold or store iron in my system long enough. And that I have to get used to the idea that this is going to be a more or less normal state of affairs for a  long time. The good news is that I can still diet and exercise, which is what I plan to do. I am iron tablets the size of horse pills and have the enchanting side effect of giving me gas, usually as a lull in conversation takes place  and I can loudly “share” with everyone.

Back t the next 5 weeks – I have set myself a fairly ambitious goal of losing 2 dress sizes, which is a big old ask. Thus the need for a large can of whoopass. So get the lead out, boys and girls - this si going to hurt!

To all the foods I loved before…

Yep, those of you that are either nerdy enough or old enough are now hearing the classic tune immortalised by Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias (and yes, I had to look up how to spell Julio’s last name). I was wandering around the local shops today and whilst standing there, slowly salivating down the front of the cake cabinet of the bakery, I began to wonder exactly HOW “bad” or “good” a food can be. How do you define something that is “bad”? Well, there are the obvious, such as selling your kids on the internet (although there are some days where this is just almost too tempting to ignore) or stealing stuff, but when it comes to food, I have noticed that some people react to it in quite weird ways.

An example: sitting at a café with friends, a piece of chocolate mud cake arrives. The person who ordered it then sits there under the eyes of the others and tries to prove why they can eat this “bad” food. This has always puzzled me, as I am pretty sure that most of my friends don’t give a rat’s bum if I eat the cake or not. Well, they might, but because they know I don’t need extra padding and a fruit salad would be a healthier choice, but NOT because they think I am about to condemn my should to hell by eating chocolate cake. Therefore, is food really “bad”? I just find it strange that when it comes ot food, it seems you are either on the side of the angels or devils and I am wondering about what falls into that no man’s land in between – what I like ot call “food purgatory”. When I think that something is bad,  it is because it has done a wee on the carpet or nicked off with the rent money. I like to think of my food in terms of the level of affection I feel for it. This has, however, started to be re evaluated in recent times, as even though I am fond of a certain food, it may not in the long run be helping me. Kind of like that “friend”you make at the work christmas party because you gave them a lift home when their taxi didn’t turn up, but now won’t piss off no matter how much you drop hints that their personality and different attitude to hygiene just really aren’t things that you like.

Confused yet? Ok, this is what I mean in the food context : I love chinese and turkish takeaway food. I reckon that if I had the money, I would eat it at least twice a week. On the affection scale, it is a very deep like, bordering on infatuation. Sooooo when I found out that one of my favourite chinese dishes, Beijing Chilli Beef, has 1500 calories PER FRICKEN’ SERVE, the affection meter slipped to a mild interest. If I eat that meal, it means at least 120 minutes on the step machine or a whopping 4 hour swim. The food isn’t BAD, per se, but the after effects of eating it aren’t that grand. I must also admit that my attitude to veggies is somewhat luke warm on the old affection scale, but they’ll do for now and I am willing to work on the relationship. There will just be days when I don’t care how “good” they are, they will still piss me right off and no matter how much affection I have in reserve, it just isn’t going to work.

I guess what I am trying to explain here is that for me – and I suspect others like me – changing your attitude to food is like changing how you see a relationship. To all of you who just see food as fuel and don’t have any emotional attachment to food, what I am talking about now will make no sense to you at all and you should just go and chomp on some mung beans. Changing in a relationship can be hard and at times, the trauma is not worth it. I will stick with it though. I am hoping to move celery up my affection scale from “you’ve got to be joking?????’ to “not so bad”. Does this mean I need vegetable counselling? I hope not.

And in the blue corner…

I thought you might like an update on how things are going. So far have stuck to keeping my WW (weight watchers) diary, even on days where it turns out that it is actually possible to consume your bodyweight in pide and the online diary starts to make incredulous noises and raise its little electronic eyebrows. Have also dropped 800gm each week since the 4th of Jan, which I am happy with. Will see how we go next week – I am off the exercise this week as I had a skin cancer removed from my left cheek. It turned out that it was a little larger under the skin than first thought and I am now sporting 12 stitches and a rather spectacular shiner. I have to say it never fills you with completely calm thoughts when the plastic surgeon goes “oh, well, that wasn’t what I was expecting” after he starts cutting into your face. Still, all gone now and the early pathology report has given me the all clear. In the meantime I am telling people at work that the management meeting got really rough on Monday. As a result I have to avoid stuff that raises a sweat, as there are micro stitches n there and my chance of busting one or picking up a charming infection due to sweat/dirt getting in there are higher if I exercise. Swimming is out until the stitches come out – in the surgeon’s words “you might as well just swim around in a  bowl of urine”. Nice. That should help with my “don’t swallow the water” regime once I am allowed back in the pool next week.  Yummy!

Freak me out, batman!

Are you all sitting down? Because I have something a bit shocking to tell you. I am talking about MAJOR shock, freaky occurence type news. OK, now that I’ve prepared you, here we go :

1. I have a  photo of myself that I like!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2. I have gone without alcohol and chocolate for over a week!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3. I’ve managed to keep my online weight watchers diary and NOT LIED OR LEFT ANYTHING OUT. Have been 100% honest with it.

Now, this may not seem like anything huge to you, but to have achieved all 3 of these things in the space of a week is somewhat mind-blowing for me. I admit that perhaps it does not take much to blow my mind, but there you go.  Below is the photo

The little lizard perched on my shoulder is Monty, one of our bearded dragons and he’s there because I dressed up as a pirate (as you do on a slow Sunday afternoon) but couldn’t find a parrot. Monty was suitably unimpressed with my efforts to get him to say “shiver me timbers” which is why he has his back to the camera. Bearded dragons can be very sensitive.

Anyway, as I said, I did stick to my online weight watchers diary and it has helped me in terms of working out what foods I should think about changing or cutting out, as well as making me think twice about what I eat, as everything gets written down. I am sure that there will be times when I will want to eat a family sized pizza and just write I had a salad in the diary but I will wrestle with that problem when/if it occurs.  To be completely honest, I have really, really  missed the plonk but so far I seem to he holding strong, so it looks like it was a habit that wouldn’t be as hard as I thought to break. That said, I have had to change my seat at the dining table as I kept finding myself gazing mournfully at the wine rack most meals. That and I kept wanting to stand there and breathe in Tim’s breath after he had a beer

30 mile hop

Now, I might showing my age here, but does anyone remember the “Ripping Yarns” series done by members of Monty Python that aired in the 1970s? I watch them still on DVD every now and then and just about wet myself laughing each time. One of them has begun resonating with me lately though – “Tom Wilkinson’s schooldays“.  You can read about it if you like, but in one part of the show, the main character is condemned as punishment to take part in the school’s 30 mile hop. At the moment, this is what my foot injury feels like it is doing to me.

 The low down on the foot injury is this – it started with plantar fasciitis which really farking hurts and takes time to go away. One of the problems is that the heavier you are, the longer it takes to heal (or heel – ha ha ha I am soooooo funnny). So, one of the great things to do is lose weight. Sadly, any impact activity (which includes extended periods of walking) are a no no and often are so painful that you need ot take lots of drugs just to function. As well as thisthis, the heel pad (this is the fleshy part of your heel that helps with shock absorbtion) on the same foot has been moved out of alignment due to my walking funny (pronation). So, not only am I in pain but the shock absorption in my foot is “compromised” (that’s the podistrists word for it). The bottom line - I need to lose weight but if I do any impact work, my chances of sustaining permanent, long term injury and/or stress fractures in my foot is incredibly high. Awesome.

 So suddenly a lot of the things that help with the weight loss (like exercise) are a bit, well, not possible. Or seem not possible. Which leads someone like me to sulk and then get upset and frustrated.  The  throw my hands up the air, have another sulk with some moody thrown in for good measure, give up on everything as too hard and then a few months later end up even more disgusted with myself for throwing the towel in. Again. I have adapted (after a month or two of sulking, eating tonnes of food and rather a lot of alcohol consumption) and am now trying to focus on August/September 2010 as a date ot aim for, and not something waaaaaaaaay off in the distance. This date is important, because if I have lost enough weight, I can trial some impact work. The risk is that the damage may already ben done and no matter how much weight I lose, my left foot could be (ahem) fucked permanently. However, I am giving it my best shot because at the moment, my right foot is ok. The podiatrist was surprised at this – he said he often sees people like me with both feet completely stuffed. Yay me!  Actually, he didn’t say the last part – that’s just my interpretation.

So what am I doing? Well you know I’ve joined weight watchers and I have changed my exercise regimen. Swimming is now featuring  a lot, as well as upper body and ab work. Boxing training is ok as long as I don’t jump around and I am going to dust of my deadly treadly and get cycling. For some reason, cycling just doesn’t strain my foot and as the magpie bombing season is over, my only real risk is falling off my bike or getting talked into buying lycra shorts by some pushy sales person when I am having a weak moment. Will let you know how I get on but maybe no pictures – not for awhile anyway. the only people who look cool in a bike helmet are the Lance Armstrong’s of this world. I just look like an unsuspecting member of the public who is about to be fired out fo a cannon. Not pretty.

Born again dieters

Good news – I’ve signed up to weight watchers online. I looked at the different options and I know that meetings work for some people, but they really aren’t for me. There are a few reasons why and if you want to know, leave a comment and I’ll fill you all in, but online is letting me ease myself into this, um, whatever this is. It is also heaps of fun to an online junkie like myself and has the added benefit of doing all of the maths and conversions for me. I enjoy maths almost as much as I enjoy doing the ironing (those that know me have probably realised by now most of my clothing is either non-wrinkle or rumpled) and counting calories, converting kj to cal, fat content blah blah blah absolutely shits me ot tears. The online tracker just does it for me and lets me know if I am making good or bad food choices. Makes it a lot easier to keep track of what I am eating and also is keeping me amazingly honest – you really think twice about the KFC large chips when you see that it blows about half of your daily food allowance. Most of the time.  Early days.

Another reason why I don’ attend meetings is that I invariably run into what I like to call born again dieters. For some reason they get infected the same disease that people who give up smoking do – suddenly they are the evangelists that look askance at the person heading off on their cigarette break or eating a piece of cake in the tea room, when only last week they WERE ONE OF THEM!!!!!!! Whilst I like to celebrate weight loss and good health as much as the next person, I find the idea of potentially being trapped in a  room with one of these people for an hour once a week  just a bit too much at the  moment.  It is said by many sensible people (you know, the ones who wear tweed jackets and conduct studies involving mice and stuff) that knowing your limits is really important. Well, this is one of mine. I tend to find that these born again dieters either (a) shit me to tears or (b) make me feel guilty about my less than herculean efforts compared to their evangelistic zeal.  Or both. Which adds (c) makes me want to hit them and then eat a whole brie by myself.  So at the moment it is the online option for me. Oh, and any webpage that ASKS you if you want to access your tool has got to be fun.

So, onward Christian (I mean dieting) soldiers. Slap on that armour and grab your horse. Giddy up!

NOT new year’s resolutions

Welcome to 2010, BOOBS followers! Hmm, thinking about it, that little line might get me some interesting redirects from Google.  I know it has been a long, sometimes torturous and on the odd occasion, downright frustrating ride since last June. The weight has not come off and I put that solely down to the fact that although I told myself (and the rest of you) that I really wanted to lose weight and get fit, in the end it was all just talk on my part. Not that I didn’t try, but I found that after the euphoria of enthusiasm wore off, all that was left was a great bit bag of self-doubt, self-hatred and frankly, a lack of faith in myself as a person. Throw in a few setbacks such as my foot injury (more on that later) and all it meant that in the end, a lot of navel gazing got done but not a whole lot else. Whilst not happy on the lack of weight loss, this amount of time has allowed me to do some really serious soul-searching, as well as some intensive therapy. There was a lot of anger and lack of belief in a lot of things, but most of the anger and negative thinking was directed straight at myself. Sadly at other times it was also directed outwards and I have really hurt some people by lashing out. I am lucky and on the whole, people have been a lot more understanding than possibly I deserved to be, but this in itself has restored some of the faith I have in myself. Odd how things work out, eh?

I am not a big believer in ne year’s resolutions – I reckon we make them because we think we are supposed to, not so much that we really want to. As my shrink puts it, January 1 is just another day and although it’s symbolic, not really any more than any other. It is about what is on the inside, not a date, time etc that determines how you succeed. So during this year this is what I’ll be dealing with:

• Working around my foot injury. As I have blogged about before, it is just not getting better quickly and the latest prognosis is that it will be August before I can think about any kind of serious impact work. This means that swimming, cycling, weights, ab work and anything that does not mean impact on my foot are the main parts of my exercise regime.
• I am not going to set dates on progress. You are welcome to ask and I will put them up when requested, but mainly I will post them at random now. After a lot of psych sessions, these kind of things I set myself so I can have something to fail. An actual “negative” target. Don’t ask, it’s really hard to explain. Just take it for granted I am a bit nutty and don’t see goals the same way as other people.
• I am going to join weight watchers. After my nutritionist quit I took this as a sign that everything is against me and I should just give up, all support I have just vanishes blah blah blah. Some support is important, but I am finally becoming self-reliant. This is a huge step for me and I will have the odd shaky moment, so something like weight watchers is like a  backup for me. And because I am married to the most amazing man in the world, Tim is going to join me. Champion.
• Please let me know what you would like to hear about. I will continue to crap on as always, don’t worry.

See you soon!

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!