Forming Habits

I am learning so many new things everyday - mostly positive:
I know that I enjoy exercise and being challengd by my trainer. This makes me happy because before today I did not know this. I said to my husband this morning - "you know I cannot imagine not exercising!". The moment I said these words I realised this was a first. In this long journey I believe that this is a great outcome for me. I can very easily not move. It comes naturally to me and I have to usually remember to move - to exercise. The journey to now feeling that I cannot NOT exercise has come about as a result of persistence and habit forming HAVING to exercise.

There will always be the threat of going back to the old ways but as long as I am aware as I have just become today - I will consciously have to decide NOT to exercise to get to the point of feeling unfit. I still have a lot of weight to lose but today I am happy that an intrinsic part of me - (my inherent tendency to not move) has been altered (for the moment) and whats more I am aware of this.

This means that I now have one less thing to work on and can focus on maintaining this whilst getting my food and nutrition correct. I know there is tremendous room for improvement here. It feels a bit comforting to know I have one less thing to get right. Nevertheless this does not take away the importance of making sure I do not fall off the exercise bandwagon. As per a blog I read earlier today I must "check in" focussing on food improvement. This "checking in" philosophy made me realise how high a bar I set for myself each time and of course I had to fail it at some point or other and then I beat myself for it and of course got onto the food bandwagon and continued the see saw. So instead of trying to be an army general trying to bring myself into line I want to recognise the failures and learn from them and move on. I dont want to make myself the mental wreck I have been making myself but instead I will think and eat and learn from the mistakes and NOT binge.

Heres looking forward to tomorrow CARPE DIEM!

All them blogs and all

I went to gym today and exercised and it felt good as I was really pushed to the limits of my existence by my trainer. Although food was not perfect it was not rubbish either. Tomorrow will be better.

I came across dietgirls excel spreadsheet and 'borrowed it' so I could use it. I am hoping this tool will really help me. This spreadsheet automatically adds up the weekly weigh in and also tells you without having to count on all fingers and toes how much is left to go. I liked this spreadsheet and will be using it. Note: must thank dietgirl!! I find there are so many tools on dietgirls website that it feels like one has entered a treasuretrove of sorts.

Another blog i find highly inspiring is Galateas. I guess since I have a personal trainer and also like bike riding I see a few similarities already and it is such a well written blog.

Moral of the story for me is to utilise the experience of others and pick what works for me and use it to my advantage and goal achievement. Long live blog world. I just love the range of information one can exchange!!

Condensed milk...anyone????

I have gone completely off the rails the last 2 weeks. Today I almost had a tin of condensed milk...correction...I just went to the kitchen and finshed the last dregs of it...so it is done.....I have finished a whole tin of condensed milk!!! I have not done this for a while now and I had thought I had gone past all of this....but clearly not!!

I then went trawling through different blogs to get some thing to stick in my brain and one of the blogs titles Gwennie said 'I am strong, I am smart, I am fit, I am healthy' and it struck me that minus the condensed milk I did see myself as smart, fit and healthy but the difference was I did not believe it and did not display it. I tend to fall down when I am succeeding...i tend to sabotage myself. Why? no idea? maybe it is coz I do not want to believe I can succeed coz I already believe I won't and in making that my truth I dont leave space to be proven wrong? Now how is that for a head fuck?? I must be mad

I will do better tomorrow and I will write a blog tomorrow. This is my mantra for the next 24 hours... and yes I will also write my food diary on calorieking.

Cut myself slack!!!

Well there have been ups and downs all through since I last blogged. On the + side I have succeeded in getting my arse to the gym for the last 3 weeks a total of 14 times - pretty much Monday to Friday straight through - a feat I am terribly proud of and each of these sessions have been pretty much an hour and a half each time. My eating habits have been pretty much a whole lot better than before although the last week I have stuffed around and hence have no idea if I was average or really bad as I have not filled in the calorie blog. The one I use is http://www.calorieking.com.au/ . This blog got me started really well and it made me think of what I was putting in my mouth. It is great especially because it counts the calories and tells me where I am at. I found that whilst earlier I used to write my diary - it was not hugely efficient as I either put in wrong amounts or did not know the kilojoules/calories for the foods and hence probably ended up counting different calories to what I was eating. On the negative side I have slacked off writing my diary and that in my life means that when I do not want to officially feel like shit for not putting in my 100% I stop writing. I think this is because I do not want to lie in my diary and so I simply do not write. I tried counting on my fingers the items that I should have eaten less of and it is easy to count. Now I know I have been a whole lot worse before. However, I also know that now since I am keenly aware now - even moreso than before, I feel shit for losing some discipline.

My husband is taking photos of me each tuesday in the same clothes and already I notice a difference. Slight but the difference is there. This week we went to dinner at a friends place and she mentioned that I had lost weight, then another friend i met also said something similar. So people have slowly been noticing but I am having a bad day today and feel a bit dishearted as I feel all this is taking forever and wonder if my body will melt little by little and if I will ever be little???? I also ended up meeting a friend who has lost 50 odd kilos and looks like a million dollars now although she made it sound pretty easy and said that all that worked for her was positive reinforcement and she kept telling herself each time she lost weight that she was better at 115 kilos than she had been at 120 kilos. Although I dont think this would work for me, I did come away thinking I needed to give myself more credit than I do.

This weekend my husband and I went cycling to Ballarat. It was cold as..brrrrr...but then once we started cycling along the track it got better as we warmed up. Then halfway through we also shared a lovely romantic moment where we took refuge in a shelter from the rain. Here we shared a blueberry muffin (in days of old I would have gobbled a whole one myself alone!!). Then we rode back but as the bike track was new the rain made the track like sludge and it was really hard to cycle back. I burst into tears about 4 km short and my lovely husband offered to get the car. So I waited for him under a tree reading a book. Earlier I had slipped and scraped my calf and the rain and cold wind directly on wound stung and throbbed like mad. Another reason was that it was so hard to ride in the sludge that I felt that I disappointed myself by not completing the whole trip. I had thought that I was fitter and not completing the trip made me feel that my fitness levels had not changed and hence the disappointment with myself. The truth I know is that yes I am fitter but I am not at my peak. My husband found it "one and a half times harder" and his calves hurt the next morning. Thus with my wanting to lose 40 kilos ideally and 30 for the moment - 1.5 times harder would mean it would have made it feel for me as though I was carrying 16 extra kilos to what I was already carrying!!! So yes I have to cut myself some slack I think!!! So the rule for tomorrow is 1) cut myself some slack and 2) START WRITING THE BLOOMING FOOD DIARY AGAIN!

I think I stuffed up !@#$%^&*( - BIGTIME

I have stuffed up today...Bigtime.....I had not one but almost 2 whole family bars of cadbury creme brulee chocolates.

I am still reeling from the whys of why I did it? What made me reach for it? Am I really serious about this weightloss journey? and also it makes me think of fri and sat which is when I am meeting friends for dinner at a restaurant and at our place. Life afterall stops for noone and I am not about to close myself in my house and cease any form of social life to lose weight. I will have to lose this weight and this means giving more thought to how I live my life and how I plan to incorporate food around my new life.

The decisions I have made after today are - No more chocolate until I can manage it or for a minimum of one month at the very least. I find that chocolate manages me instead of the other way around and so I will need to cease socialising with creme brulee in a romantic date for 2!!

The bottom line is that I want to lose weight and this means that I will need to have habits of healthy people and although there is a very slight margin of error it certainly does not mean that I can make these errors willy nilly.

I am still trying to understand why I had it? I know it was not hunger or even a craving. I think I can put it down to feeling like the goal was too far away, feeling some amount of work related stress owing to work I need to get done for the promotion and the boss giving me something absolutely unrealistic!! Mainly I think it is also indiscipline of the last many many years taking over to something it knew best. I feel like I need to believe in myself a bit more than I do. I need to believe I can do this and I will do this.

I take away from today that I will work on my self belief and discipline for the rest of the week. After all I have blown all form of calories today and I will have to make sure I exercise really really well and also eat superbly. I can do this and I will. Weight day is Tuesday and I will come good. I bloody well have to! I have spent too many years feeling fat and frumpy and I want to change it this year - once and for all.

Happy or sad: I have lost 300 gms

I went to gym today and worked out on my cardio for an hour. It felt good although with the flu I found I struggled with the rower especially. All in all I was back after 3 weeks and it felt real good.At the end of the workout I weighed myself. The moment of reality had hit. I wondered if it was a good idea or not. I had my period, was the first weigh in, I had gone a bit over on the fat section last 2 days as per calorie king - although still within calorie limit....I bit the bullet and stood on the weighing machine and at that moment all I wanted was a decrease - just not an increase! The machine told me I had lost 300gms and I tried 4 or 5 times just for good measure. Each time the same result. I have to admit I felt a twinge of disappointment but had to turn it around telling myself that it was a loss and I should try harder next week and I will see better results.My husband M who came to pick me up from gym consoled me saying I really needed to see this as a plus as it was a chip I had done away with and needed to appreciate that. I was trying to change a lifetime of food abuse and it was like walking all over again. I felt sort of half and half by the time I got home. So I guess I still dont know how to feel about the loss of 300 gms.Blogs I read when I got home depict sagas similar to mine. I know it is going to be a hard road but I also know that before I get to India I want to lose between 25-30 kilos just to shock the pants off the family, feel great about our honeymoon - which by then will be a year late, try things comfortably and by that I dont mean just clothes - I mean activities too - I just want my holiday in November to be a celebration of health and happiness. I learn so much from the blogs i read especially Dietgirl and Bridging the gulf.The one thing I have learnt is that we all have our own individual path in our journey to weightloss. What may work for one might not necessarily be workable for another and in this journey I am also working out MY path. My knowledge of fitness is above average and is an interest and passion. I voraciously try and keep abreast of fitness information. When I listen to the so called Gurus of fitness, I realise I know what they are saying, the information they are giving me is not new to me. I am done with working off someone elses formulas - Weightwatchers, Donna Aston (fitness guru in Australia) and trainers and the like. While they have the advantage of being specialists in their fields, none of them know my body and mind like I do. What works for client 1, might not work for client one million and I often find that sometimes one can become just a number. I have decided that I will use the tools these businesses have to offer - tools that I choose or have interest in such as extra cardio or weights etc.I could wax on and on but it is time to get to bed. Night all

The time to weigh has arrived.....

The time to weigh has arrived....drum roll......The past 3 days have been great. My beloved husband and I went out of town for a well deserved break. We went to Maffra for one night where we stayed at someones place..messy place....although we were eternally grateful for a roof over our heads for the night...it was a lovely house but also a messy one!! I being the queasy one - did not shower that night and this for me is unusual as I am someone that cannot sleep without a shower at night!!! The next morning the husband and I went along a lovely bike trail from Maffra to Stratford - a round trip of 21 km. I was quite proud of myself. We rewarded ourselves with a blueberry muffin and a skinny latte once we arrived in Stratford. I for one did not feel guilty and felt as though I had earned it. Lately I have been liking the feeling of EARNING calories back from the calorieking demon for activities such as cycling, walking etc so that if I have indulged then no worries...all is not lost with the world. However later in the piece of this blog - I will pay for feeling relaxed for one - losing guard and taking things a tad easier than they should be.We found ourselves at Meeniyan by the end of the day and this is where we set up post for the night. Very quickly we even managed to squeeze in a 6km ride in the fading light. Dinner was at the next door pub and although I had ordered grilled snapper and salad and chips - most of my chips went to husband dearest and I didnt even enjoy the snapper as it had way too many bones for my liking. In the morning, R and I went cycling from Meeniyan to Buffalo - a 22km round trip. In Buffalo we had a coffee and a yoyo but of course I had earned it as I was cycling......so this bit will not be discussed. By the time we got back to Meeniyan we were starving and so drove off to Fish Creek where we stopped for lunch. I ordered a chicken foccacia with a small Greek salad. Of course the chicken focaccia came as a chicken burger and although not ultra healthy - let me remind you that I had done a long ride and so the burger even was fine until I decided to order a coffee and ended up with a sticky date pudding with a coffee!!@#$%^& WHAT WAS I THINKING?I am now safely esconsed in my bed in Melbourne and filling out my eatings - in calorieking only to discover that I may have been within the calorie range but had blown out the fat and carb levels on both days. Moral of the story? Is there a moral to this? Well i think the bottom line is that I cannot afford to get oversmart and think I am one step ahead and that I have it all figured out......each day is a learning experience and I will have to take very small steps and only when I have achieved at least half the journey can I claim to say that I know something. Until then the temptations will always be there. It is after all so very easy to slip up that I dont even realise half of the time.Meanwhile the weighing in is overdue as I was away and I have now started a period where no doubt I will store water and feel bloated. Ominous signs this. Anyway, I think tomorrow will have to be a better day. I will have to make sure I go to gym and blast some calories away before I weigh myself.+++++++++++WATCH THIS SPACE UNTIL THEN!!!+++++++++++++++++

Day 3 and going well.

Today is day 3 of my new life. I believe I have done better than I expected. As per calorieking I should be having 1700 calories per day. On Monday I totalled 1451kcals (this did include 2 biscuits unfortunately) and on Tuesday I used 1488 kcals and it was all healthy. I did go over the 200g limit on the carb though but not by much - 200.6.What brought me dangerously close to crossing the carb was a banana I had eaten. It wasnt a huge massive one - a regular sized <100g banana and it had all of 22.8grams of carb in it. And so when I went to cook my dinner, I had to do a lot of playing with the cals and their content to tailor it so I did not go hungry.In the end I believe each weightloss journey is different and we have to tailor things to our body patterns. So for instance I need to have a bigger breakfast so I do not have the munchies at 9am. So instead of 1/2 cup of oats I now have 3/4 cup of oats (dry weight). This keeps me going until 10am when I have my mandarin and a cup of tea.The annoying thing is that the calorie king website is great for monitoring th food side of things as the moment you are enot sure - all you have to do is enter the food and it tells you where you are at in terms of the calories/protein etc. However this great facility I have learnt can also be really annoying. This morning when my husband and I were cooking breakfast, I poured myself some orang juice and before I could take the hugely desired liquid to my lips he reminded me - 'dont forget to put it in the diary!' - I groaned and stoppd at my tracks and measured the juice, all 60 ml of it and then thought about whether it was worth having it or not - did a PhD on it and then made the informed decision to have it. One of my biggest pitfalls is what I term 'Invisible eating'. For me this happens quite easily and sometimes I even remember it days later - and then I wonder why I am not losing weight! So my new rule is to write down what I eat before I eat it!What do I want out of being healthy?I have asked myself this question many times. The answer is usually:
Be healthy and strong
Just feel as though I could go to a shop and pick what I wanted instead of actually checking first what items the shop actually had in my size and then decide from there.
Have more confidence. Look good next to my 70 kilo husband. Feel like I can match him step for step instead of him matching me.
LIVE LIFE 100% INSTEAD OF 50%
I find that although I do a lot of the things I want to, I hesitate with the little things like -
- Hating sitting on a foldable chair as I am always paranoid that it will break and I will look like a fool. You see when a skinny chick falls off a chair it is ok but when a fat chick falls off it is like it is all bcause of her weight! This makes me angry but also conscious.
- Feeling sorry for the size 30 person everyone on the street is staring at and pretending they are not looking. One of my flatmates once had a cousin from Greece visit her. We all went out for the night and I noticed that while my flatmate was running off ahead of her (being the conscious social butterfly she was she did not want to be associated with the fat cousin!), her cousin - a size 26 or thereabouts was puffing hopelessly being her. On reaching the pub, the flatmate went off to flirt with the barman while I sat with the cousin chatting. I could see she felt humiliated and hurt and quite ready to leave.
- Wearing a dress - I have never worn a dress in my life. I am one of those people that likes to wear clothes that look nice on me and not those that are en vogue. I would look bad in a dress at present and if I didnt look bad in it I would be conscious and uncomfortable in one. So for the moment my goal is to wear a dress at my brother in laws wedding in March sometime in Perth. This gives me 10 months to do so.
- Meanwhile I am ready for motherhood (what am I thinking) and so the hubby (who has been ready for the last 6 months but has been an absolute darling and not been pushy or hinting or anything) and I will start trying in Dec this year when we are holidaying in India (our honeymoon even though a year late by that stage). I want to have some semblance of health before we start the venture. I dont want to die on the operating table but be around for my gorgeous husband and baby.
There are so many instances that I am uncomfortable with that I feel like it all points to one direction: I am simply not comfortable with myself, I am ready to make that change and so here I am. The annoying thing is that having started my journey, I wanted to get to gym 5 days a week as I am already making 3 days easily - and I am down with flu! This means pretty much out of action for the week. Damn! But maybe this is a test of my resilience - albeit an early one.

The last time I was <100 kilos.....last century sometime!!!

Tonight, at 8pm I have decided to commence my weightloss journey. I currently weight 112 kilos and my aim is to weigh 60 kilos. I suppose that makes it a weightloss of 52 kilos. A very challenging goal this. I start completely determined to give it my best shot yet and save my life to be able to live it to the best I can.I have never been someone that has been skinny but when I think of when my weight began to creep up, I can associate it to going to Scotland on a scholarship. This is the first time I saw the world of frozen food and its uniqueness to me. After all I came from a country where the only things frozen were ice creams and all else I ever ate had been fresh and boring. Boring chicken curry, aubergine 'bharta' (grilled aubergine, then mashed and spices added), plain and simply boring indian food. Frozen food was cool. I had read about it in books and always wondered what it tasted like and so I indulged in the made land of endless food isles and ready made frozen foods. I also indulged in all the various ice creams and chocolate that I could lay into. By the end of the 12 month period, my mother wept when she saw me. I had ballooned to over a 100 kilos!!!Since then I can only remember constant abuse of food - when I moved to Australia, the battle of the bulge continued and although my fascination with frozen food had ended post Scotland, the weight had continued to creep up. Australia in my first 7.5 years had been very very stressful. From being an international student to finding a job, a place to live during Grand Prix time when at one point I may have had to live in a phone box!!, endless visa stuff ups and bad immigration lawyers followed by worse choice of boyfriends and then a merry go round of another bad boyfriend, and another - all of my 7.5 years in Australia aged me and tired me an additional 10 years and I have grey hair (at least 200 strands!) to prove it - each time I lost a bit more self love and to combat all this - food was the answer. I ate and ate and it became my best friend. I wanted to be alone and I was happy with it and the way I saw it - I was waiting to die one day buried in a mound of food!!............But then one day I met the love of my life and to cut a long story short, 18 months later we are married and happy. Correction......madly and insanely and obscenely happy. He was ironically Australian and made all the tough years in Australia worth it. Maybe Australia decided to give me one of its own to heal me. A breast cancer scare also happened along the way somewhere. Luckily thats all it was...a scare... and so I want to be healthy, strong and make the most of my life. I also believe health is everything and I just dont know where to start. This is my millionth attempt and this time I hope I will succeed... So here goes....