Monday 30 April 2012

Always, Yes!

Woo-hoo! I went to the gym again today!  It wasn't just a one-off from last week.  I'm so pleased.  Tired now though.  In fact, I was tired before I left.

I didn't get much sleep last night - because I stayed up to 3 in the morning reading.  Whoops.  I also didn't wake up early enough to pack myself lunch, (which I know I should have packed the night before), nor make breakfast.  I was aware throughout the day that I was nowhere near the right level of water intake.  In fact, I think I only had 2 glasses.  And I knew that I was going to be finishing up late at work (nearly 5pm) and I didn’t bring anything to eat for the afternoon.

Overall, not the smartest series of decisions I've ever made.  I am really glad however, that I didn't quit out tonight, claiming 'tiredness', but I pulled on my shoes and I went to the gym.  In fact, my gym bag was the only thing I had packed ready for today.  I thought I would get out of work much later, and thus would need to go straight from work to the gym.  So I had my gym clothes, towel and shoes all sitting ready to go.

Then I had the odd feeling where I didn't quite know what to do with myself.  Seeing as I had finished work earlier than I anticipated, and I didn’t relish hanging around for another 45 min, I went home and go changed.  And then, I sat around.  I didn't know what was worth doing.  Seeing as I ducked home, should I have done some form of house work?  Clean the bathroom sink, for example?  Or, if it was a night that I was cooking dinner, I would have used the time to prep, and maybe cut up some vegetables.  I also didn't know if it was worth trying to warm-up, because honestly?  The thought went through my head of, "but I don't want to use up my energy before I even get there".  So I just sat around, twiddling my thumbs, until it seemed decent enough time to leave the house.

Maybe in few weeks I'll be more willing to wait the extra time at the gym, but right now, I don’t know people other than the trainer and one girl I lived with long ago - and we don't really have anything in common with one another these days.  I'm worried that as the days get colder and evening comes sooner, I'm going to get more of these moments along the way.  And I'll get home and say to myself - do I really want to go to the gym tonight? 

I need to make sure that I convince myself that the answer is 'yes'.  Always YES!

-SunnyDuckling

Sunday 29 April 2012

On Yer Bike!

Man!  I am feeling so proud of myself right now!  I just came back from a bike-ride and it was awesome!  I rode 9 km in under fourty minutes.  I don't have an accurate time keeper right now other than my watch.  I would say it was possibly 37, maybe 38 minutes.  I'll go 38 just to be safe. 

So obviously, I do not pedal very fast.  But what made this so great for me is the fact that I rode the whole way back (4.5km) without stopping once.  I paused when it came to crossing roads (small town = empty streets) and coasted along once or twice, but I didn't have to stop pedalling once in order to give my legs, or more considerably, my arse, a break.  I'm so excited!  In fact, I even picked up my pace when one of my favourite songs came on the radio.  I cycled 1.2 km in 3.08 min.  If I did my calculations correctly, that was a speed of 22 km/h, as opposed to my average speed being 14.2 km/h.

I decided I would use the trick they tell you when walking and trying to get a good heart-raising pace going.  If it takes effort to carry on a conversation, then you are doing a good pace.  Well, I decided to sing as I rode.  Swallowed one bug, but carried on, and you know what?  It was hard to keep singing.  I kept having to catch my breath.  And I've decided that's a good thing!  It means I'm working on getting better and getting fitter.

Yesterday, I also went for a bike ride.  It had been raining all day, so I sat indoors waiting until it would stop.  It finally did about 4 o'clock.   And I was so excited about it!! I thought "yesssss!!"  Not, "oh it's stopped raining, I should probably go out and exercise".  Not "Hmm… it's overcast and going to be dark soon".  But "Alright! Finally!  I'm going to go out and ride now while it's stopped raining! Yes!"  I didn't make any excuses to hold me back.

So I changed, called into Imogen's house to see if she wanted to come along (she didn't), and get on my bike!  The route I have planned out is 8.99km according to mapmyfitness.  I did it for the first time a few weekends ago.  I discovered parts of my town I never knew existed!  Benefits of riding a bike   If you try to explore new pathways when you are walking, you tend to look suspicious.  I had barely gotten 2km along the road when it started to drizzle again.  And I decided 'stuff it, I'm going to keep on going!'. 

So I did.  I even decided to do the full route even though it had started to drizzle, because I figured, I'm out here, why not make it worthwhile?  So I did the 9 km in 37 min.  This time includes the time I had to stop at the 4km mark to rest and a second stop in order to get a drink from a tap.  Some things I learned though:
  • The pedals of a bike get really slippery when wet
  • Glasses fog up when you stop and are warmer than the air
  • You need to have a dry cloth in order to clean your glasses when it's raining
  • Mud splashes up all over your backside
  • Cycling the road to the lake is way harder than cycling the exact same distance back

The last one really surprises me.  I had trouble with it on Wednesday, which is why I dug out my FM radio.  Oddly enough, the exact same thing happened.  It was a struggle to keep pedalling to get to the entrance for the lake, and yet, strangely easy to pedal back.  Maybe there's a slight slope I'm not aware of? 

In either case, it's just something I need to keep working on.

-SunnyDuckling

Saturday 28 April 2012

Friend Support!


Ha!  Super exciting news!  I have a friend who lives close by me who is also wanting to lose weight.  We've made (at this stage) a loose pact to keep tabs on one another and be accountable for weight-loss.    I say a loose pact because we were talking about it in the carpark after a late session at work on Thursday, but still need to work out some details.  We did decide somethings however.
  1. We would weigh-in once a week, and take measurements, and show them to one another.
  1. We would be honest about what didn’t work so well this week and would choices we could make that would be better.
  1. We would be 10 kg lighter before our next holidays - which will be June 23. 

Now, I think 10 kilos by that date will be tough, but I do agree with her in the idea that even 10 kg (22 pounds) will make a difference to our body.  That's less weight our body is carrying around, less pressure on our heart, lungs, knees... 

http://0.tqn.com/d/orthopedics/1/7/4/6/anatomy.jpg
I injured my knee 18 months ago when skiing and ended up having to have surgery on my knee.  As a result I now have less cartilage between my femur and tibia.  The job of the meniscus is to provide cushioning between those two bones. So, carrying around extra weight is not doing myself or my knee any favours!  Even my orthopaedic surgeon recommended that I lose weight to take the pressure off my knee - especially as I am getting older.  So now that I've done enough physiotherapy that my knee has recovered it's full range of motion (even twisting! That took a while) it's time to get fit!

I'm, really excited that Imogen is keen to lose weight and get fit along with me!  It will be nice to have someone to moan to when I don't feel like exercising and have them turn around and tell me to 'suck it up' - basically, 'get over it and get moving'.  That's probably going to be the biggest help.  We are heading into colder weather, so getting outside to get moving is going to be harder and harder.  (I discussed this on Monday about why I joined the gym).  So having someone else nearby to motivate me, or have me motivate them will be awesome!  In fact, we made plans to go for a bike ride this afternoon.  Hopefully it will stop raining by then! 

-SunnyDuckling

Wednesday 25 April 2012

End of Week 3


Well.  Hmm….
Mixed feelings about this week.  I know I haven't eaten super well - overeating.  I need to find some good strategies to tell myself I've finished eating for the day.  Monday I did alright, but last night, I ate my dinner late-ish, around 7.30pm.  Even though I ate the right amount of food (bolognaise pasta bake with salad) I still felt like I wanted to eat something.  I ate some (air popped) popcorn and yoghurt and cream cheese sandwich.  And even them, I still wanted to eat something.  All good food on it's own, but too many calories in one go.   I need to find a way to convince myself to wait the 20 minutes after eating in order to feel the fullness.  Maybe I need to see if I can eat more during the day, reducing the amount I should need to eat later in the day.

I went to another gym class, and stayed behind to ask the instructor what exercises I could do to strengthen my wrists.  In yesterday's class, I could feel a bit of pain as well as from time to time, them giving way.  Not great if you're needed to use your hands to help push you off the ground (to turn over) or to support your weight (mountain climbers anyone?). 

But! I'm happy that I went to the gym.  I said I would go and I did - twice!  I have a late meeting on this Thursday night, so I won't be going to Thursday's class this week. I do hope to be able to go next week three times.  I'm planning it like that at this stage.  Oh! I also asked the gym instructor if I would be able to keep up in Thursday's class and he said it was worth coming along.  The class I went to Monday - circuit training - is good fun.  We only spend about 30-60 seconds on each station, and rotate through anywhere between 8 - 15 stations .  Jeremy (the gym instructor) mentioned that it focuses more on lower body strength.  Yesterday's class - TBT - stands for Tummies, Bums and Thighs.  Hmm… wonder what that class was designed to target?  :-)  Another good class.  A touch of cardio and a lot of core and strengthening exercises.  Little sore from it today.  Mostly in my shoulders and my abs.  Jeremy tells me Thursday Fitbox is supposed to be more about cardio and upper body.  I think I can handle that.  

RESULTS!
Well at the end of this week, this how the results look. 

I forgot to get up early enough to weigh myself first thing today, but I did remember to do so before lunch.  This was after a 20 min walk into town and back.

Since Sunday, I went to 2 gym classes.  Ate well portion-wise Sunday and Monday.  Had a bit of a blowout Tuesday night.  Sensible breakfast today.

Summary:
Weight
96 kg
Waist
86.5 cm
Hips
117 cm
Bust
102 cm
Thighs
114 cm
Thigh (R)
72 cm
Belly
113.5 cm
Upper Arm (L)
36 cm
Neck
35 cm
Some weird results here, and am not sure what to make of them.  I seem to have lost cm around my arms, neck and waist, but have gained on my hips.  Can I really have lost some weight on my body in two days since I last measured?  I worry that I'm not measuring myself accurately, but I have been in front of a mirror in order to do it so I can check the tape measure is sitting horizontally properly and where I measured last.  Maybe I'm just reading too much into this, given I've never checked my weight loss in such a structured manner before.  

Here's to next week being better in my food choices and in keeping up with exercise!

-SunnyDuckling

Monday 23 April 2012

Joined the Gym!

I did it!  I joined the gym this afternoon!  I did say yesterday that I would, I just didn't expect myself to want to still do it today.  I guess the threat of rain this evening cemented the idea that going for a walk would be out of the question.   I know I have complained about the gym (a PCYC) in previous posts.  I am still unhappy with the gym being not open on weekends.  It shuts at 7.30pm weeknights.  7pm Friday.  There are only a handful of different classes available. 

Now, I do volunteer work on Wednesday afternoon/evening, so that night is out, but the rest of the week I can exercise.  But there is only 1 class an evening, and I'm worried some of them are beyond my fitness level.  I'm pretty sure the morning classes are beyond my fitness level.  In fact, I struggled in today's circuit class.  Don't get me too wrong, I am glad I went, but by the time we were halfway through, I wanted to pack it in.  So then getting through the rest was tough.  I couldn't even star jump properly.  : (

However, as I was working out (oh yeah, did I mention that part?  Not only did I join today, I also exercised. Yay for me!)   I kept thinking, 'in a few weeks, I'll be able to do this much better and much easier'.  I had to remind myself that while I might be whinging about it now, it was all for my benefit.  That sooner than I realised, I would start to notice the effect of going to the gym would have on me. 

Especially, as I have mentioned earlier on, it was looking to rain tonight, and seems the same way for the rest of the week.  And we are heading into winter soon, so getting outside for a walk before it gets dark may not be possible.  So, that's one of the main reasons I joined.  The other was that I wanted to speed up my results.  Walking is all well and good, but I really want to lose weight.  I'm so determined to lose this extra weight.   I'm sick of the effect it has on my posture, my confidence, my choice in clothing, my ability to participate in activities.  I feel so self conscious in my overweight state.  My face even looks overweight.  So by going to the gym, I want to kick-start my body into burning more energy. 

Also, I don't want to plateau too soon.   And I really don't know how much more I can change my eating habits.  Other than taking longer to eat smaller portions, and making sure I eat something in the middle of the day, I think I eat fairly healthy.  I eat a mainly vegetarian diet - no red meat or chicken, but I do eat fish, eggs and dairy.  I do eat processed foods, such as a muesli bar (sometimes all I have time for in those lunch breaks I mentioned) or stir-fry sauces in a jar, but I don't eat take-aways, or fried foods very often at all.  Cheese is probably the biggest thing that I eat that is unhealthy when not moderated.

One of my colleagues at work was telling me the other day how she's cut out all cream and butter and things of that nature from her food and cooking about three weeks ago and had lost 4 kilos.  Good on her!  But, I don't eat cream and butter, so I don't know what I can cut out.  I've never been a big a sweet tooth and have stopped buying cheese (if it's not in the house, I don't eat it!) and chips.  So, I guess, I'm also a little jealous that she was able to lose 4 kilos so easily.  I eat overall healthily, and I was exercising that first week I started, and I only lost 1 kilo.

But anyway, moving back to the gym.  I went today.  There is a class on tomorrow 6-7pm that I want to try.  Wednesdays, as I mentioned are out for me, although it is the circuit class like today's.  Thursday is a class called FitBox.  This is the class I'm worried I'm not fit enough to be able to do.  And there's no class on Friday, so I need to get a program done up for the weights room so I can do some exercise on a Friday after work.   

But for this week and next, I'm just going to stick to the classes and see how I feel.   For all I know, I won't be able to walk tomorrow!

-SunnyDuckling

Comic by Julie Faulkner Promises webcomic

Sunday 22 April 2012

Weigh-in, week 2.5

These are not my weigh-in results as I had wanted to use, just something to try keep me on track...

 
RESULTS!
This is the results as of Sunday morning, having eaten breakfast about 40 minutes ago. 

Didn't weigh myself this week on the Wednesday, I need to dig out my bathroom scales and find a time when I haven't just eaten.

Summary:
Weight
96 kg - will assume from last week
Waist
90 cm
Hips
116.5 cm
Bust
104 cm
Thighs
114 cm
Thigh (R)
72 cm
Belly
114 cm
Upper Arm (L)
37 cm
Neck
37 cm

What a wasted week

Well, it's been 1 week since I've returned to work after holidays.  As I suspected, my exercise and diet plans, went out the window!
This week was hard.  I didn't lose any weight and I only exercised the once, and that was a quick 1/2 hour walk on Tuesday, because I was short on time.  And, obviously, I didn't even blog until today!  I didn't weigh and measure myself on Wednesday either.  This week was a step backwards.

A number of things I think contributed to a poor result this week. 
For starters, every evening this week, I got home, sat down and basically just crashed.  I fell asleep on the couch by 8pm.   And spent the entire night on the couch.   I only woke up at around quarter to 8, leaving me just fifteen minutes to shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, pack lunch,  and drive to work! 

So my energy levels were incredibly poor and if I wasn't at work, I was asleep it seemed!  And the food I was eating, and the quantities, were not the same as what I was eating on my holidays.  Sunday night when I got back, I had some fresh filled pasta - spinach ricotta angniolotti - and a creamy tomato ricotta sauce from a jar. I probably ate a serving and a half of that. I took the left overs to work Monday and Tuesday, and I felt I ate sensible portions of it, around 200-250g worth.  Monday night I cooked up some wholemeal pasta, cous-cous and leftover tomato & basil pasta sauce.   The total quantity amounted to probably three servings, if you check proper serving sizes.  I ate it all that night.  Vegetable soup Tuesday night that I ate Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights.  Wednesday I also ate a heap of Anzac biscuits.  Over a dozen.  Even today, I ate too much food, double dose of breakfast, then a really late lunch so I stuffed myself with four cheese sandwiches, two beers, two packets of popcorn and a microwavable pasta pack.  Can you see a trend in my eating and food habits yet?  LOTS of carbs (pasta in particular). 

However, over the last day I have been relatively more active than I was in the beginning of the week.  When I came home yesterday, I set to work cleaning my floordrobe in order to move out an armoire that I had no more use for.  And in my living room, I set to work clearing out the furniture in there, so I could give the couch back to my neighbour, who I had been borrowing it from.   In the process of cleaning and moving stuff, I also came across my pedometer, so I'm super happy about that.  For ages now, I've had to guess the distance I've travelled when on my walks, but I won't have to now.

I also think I'm low on iron.  If I have been crashing like I have been it's usually a sign that I'm down on my iron.  Time to start dosing up again! Bonus side effect is increasing my vitamin C levels in order to help absorb iron supplements and plant iron will hopefully boost my immune system.  Helpful as we're heading into cooler weather and in about three weeks we'll reach winter.

I have decided that on Monday, I will look into joining the gym in my area.  As much as I whinge about it, I think I need to get my butt into gear and really start exercising.  Diet alone will only go so far.  And as I've discovered this week, if I'm caught up and busy with work, by the time I get home, I have limited time to exercise (walk) before it gets dark.  So I need to somehow pick up activity levels somewhere else in my day.  I was thinking/hoping if I can get myself organised properly, I might also see if I can get myself to the gym in the morning before work. 

So, things I am going work on this week:  Portion sizing of my food.  Packing lunch the night before.  Exercising at least three times this week - Gym class Monday, walk on Wednesday, and gym again on Thursday or Friday.  Weighing myself on Wednesday.  Cooking appropriate amounts of food.

Lots to work on! Better get to it, including more housework  :-)
-SunnyDuckling

Saturday 14 April 2012

Set-back?

Hmm… well, I'm in mixed feelings about how my weight-loss goal will carry on next week when I'm back at work and no longer on holidays. 

I don't work in an environment where there's a cake every week for birthdays, or things like that.  However, I do work in an environment where the work I get done each day is variable.  There are set times for lunch, but even those aren't guaranteed.  That's the time I have available for photocopying, answering emails, researching,  conferencing informally with clients, and prepping things for the remaining sessions in the day.  It honestly feels like my day never stops.  Add to that my day starts from quarter to eight and can carry on until 6pm, that's a long time to go without eating food properly.

Then by the time I pack and get out of there,  I have no desire to exercise.  We're heading to the time of year where it is dark by 6.30, so that limits how much exercise I can do outside. 

In general my personal favourite ways to exercise are to go for a walk or ride my bike.  At the moment I'm aiming for 45min walks three times a week.  My natural walking speed is around 6km/h, which is a moderate to fast pace.  I started off with 30 min walks, because I felt that any movement was better than none, but I'm happy to say I've found other routes to walk that take me longer.  Then, if not walking, I ride my bike.  I have no idea what speed I ride my bike at.  The only downside to both walking and riding my bike, is how flat my town is.  There's very little by way of hills in which to challenge myself.  In fact, I think there is only 1 hill for the whole town.

I haven't a lot of room in my flat, so exercising indoors is tricky.  My living room (the only room that isn't the kitchen or the combined bedroom/study) is only 3m x 3m.  And in there I have crammed a two-seater sofa, an armchair, my TV and cabinet, two bookcases and side table.  Not a lot of room to stretch out, or even do aerobics on the spot. 

Now, I know I can go to a gym and exercise there, however, the only gym class I can keep up in is on Mondays.  And it starts at 6pm with no late admittance.  Alternatively I could just use the gym-gym, with all the equipment.  In order to do that I have to get over the mental block of how much it bores me, no matter how much I mix it up.  I also find it hard to push myself in the gym-gym because there isn't anyone there yelling at me (encouragement or ridicule, both work to motivate me).  Our gym is too small to also have personal trainers for hire. 

I also worry about the fact that I haven't eaten during the day, so I'll be lightheaded if I go and exercise.  I've discovered in the past I need time between eating and exercise to properly digest my food or else I get reflux.  To the point where I begin to retch.  Ick.

Another worry of mine is the fact that the gym closes up by 7.30pm, 7pm on Fridays.  So even if I am able to go straight from work, I only have 1 hour to properly utilise the gym.  So really, to be effective, I have to go in all guns blazing to really work for the full hour.  Not spend 10-15min warming up and cooling down, leaving me with 40min to workout.  And as I mentioned above, I can't exactly cool-down at home.

And if you think I can make up for my lack of exercise during the week, by attending the gym on weekends?  Unfortunately not.  The gym isn’t even open on weekends, not even for team sports.

Maybe I need to spend some time thinking about this, and see if there is some way to build up the exercise I do at the gym.  And stop making excuses?  Is it really going to be that easy and say to myself "Right.  I'll go to the gym three times a week" and just do it?  I really think I can come up with a negative outcome for every suggestion put my way.  When am I going to make dinner?  If I spend an hour exercising, that gets me home even later, pushing dinner back even further.  I can't imagine eating dinner as late as 8.30pm.  And often I still have work to do at home after eating. 

Am I coming up with too many excuses?  Problems and reasons to avoid exercise?  Do I just need to get over it and start doing exercise and get myself into the routine of doing movement?  Any movement, no matter how small, right? 

Feedback and suggestions on this well appreciated!  :-)  Leave a comment or email me.

-SunnyDuckling

Wednesday 11 April 2012

And 1 Week down....

I started the week and this blog feeling confident that I could do this.  That I had what it takes to lose the 27 kilos I want to lose. I wrote a food diary most days - even trying to calculate the calories I've eaten. I wrote down when I exercised.  I thought about ways to increase my exercise.  Tried to implement some of those ways.

Monday night while watching telly I decided I would do one of the exercises I learnt at Pilates last week during the commercial break.  Then I decided I would do a different exercise each commercial break and use the time length of the commercial break to be the length of my 'set'.  In a half hour program I got three different exercises in.  So I feel good about that.  I hope that I can continue to do this. 

I also had the urge to go for a run.  Despite the fact that I hate running.   And it was 11 o'clock at night. And I have poor knee joints at the moment thanks to being overweight.  But I really wanted to go for a run.  I haven't gone, but the thought? Urge? To go running is still there.  Maybe that's still a good step forward?  It means that I am thinking about ways in which I'm going to be able to achieve this.

To sum up, I have kept a food diary and exercised three times.  3 Pilates classes and the walk on Sunday.  

RESULTS!
Well at the end of this week, this how the results look. 

Now, I don't know whether this is wishful thinking on my part, or if my scales are a bit off, but it appears I am 96 kilos.  I've lost a kilo! Yay!

Summary:
Weight
96 kg
Waist
90 cm
Hips
114 cm
Bust
108 cm
Thighs
116 cm
Thigh (R)
71 cm
Belly
119 cm
Upper Arm (L)
37 cm
Neck
35 cm

Now, seeing that I didn't take my measurements, other than my weight last week, I'll take these as my base measurements for size.  I don't know if I'll remember to measure myself every week, but I'll do my best.  

At the very least, I need to find a day of the week when I can weigh myself at the same time each week.  Recommendations?  First thing in the morning?  Before dinner?  Before bed?  This week and last week I weighed myself before lunch, but I won't have the luxury of doing that after this week.   I think at ths point, I'll try and do it before dinner Monday evenings.  It's worth a shot.

-SunnyDuckling

Sunday 8 April 2012

Winner is you!

Haha!

Am sticking to my plan of watching what I eat fairly well.  Some slips ups obviously, what with it being Easter this weekend.  I'm not a chocolate fan, but I am a food fan.  So, some seafood salad, and potato salad and bread rolls and salmon on toast and smoked herring and oh-so-many foods.  But, I ate a little bit and I stopped when I was full.  Normally I keep eating and eating and eating til I'm in pain from so much food.  But I felt I did really well yesterday for lunch and stopped.  I even managed to ignore my mother when she tried to force more food onto my plate - win!

I've also exercised twice since my previous post.  Win again!
This I do have to credit my mother for: we went to a pilates class at the community centre.  One with mat work and resistance bands.  Never done anything like it before.  Must admit, I did enjoy it!  I wish that I weren't just on holidays and visiting for the week.  I would love to undertake exercise classes like this, but where I live, we have slim pickings when it comes to fitness activities.  Boo.  I also went for a 6 km walk along the beach front this afternoon too.

Third news of Win!
I had the massive-ist craving for chips -> corn chips/potato chips the other evening.  I was full, had eaten more than enough food, and then out of nowhere, the desire for chips came upon me.  Of course, it was 10 o'clock in the evening.  I wanted them so bad!  I even started going through my mind, bargaining out "well, I have time tomorrow, I can duck out to the shops and they should be open and I can buy a packet then."  Problem was, then I started to think further and even tried convincing myself that maybe I should buy two packets, in different flavours, in case I get the craving again. 
       Now, I don't know about you, but I know what happens next.  I buy the two packets, open one and eat "just a handful", "saving the rest for later", right?  That's how it goes doesn't it?  It certainly is the intention.  However, reality means that what occurs is that I eat "just a handful", then, just a handful more, and more.  I eat until the taste becomes so salty/strong that I finally ween my self away from gorging on the entire bag.  To see that I have eaten approx 4/5 of the bag.
      So not only do I feel sick from too much salt, and additives and flavourings, I also feel sick from guilt, that I allowed myself to eat *so* much of the chips, when I was only supposed to have "a handful".  If this is like you, I can offer some suggestions that have been given to me, or that I've read.  I try and use them both.
  • Pour a small serving into a dish and put the bag away and just eat the amount in your dish.  Why this works? You portion control the amount you are eating; physiologically, you've satisfied your craving (sweet tooth, or savoury crunch); and psychologically you feel satisfied that you've eaten everything in front of you.  I've also found that if you're a couch potato and in the middle of a good movie, you don't want to get up and get more - lazy bonus! :)
  • Use your non-dominant hand.  Why this works? Because you are doing a natural action, with an unnatural hand, it makes you more mindful of what you are doing.  You actually end up having to concentrate on what your hand is doing and it helps you realise what you are doing. It's in part connected to the concept of the left brain-right brain training.  
The craving got so intense that it got to the point where I thought I was going to scream for not having the chips.  And yet... somewhere in the depths of my memory came a tidbit of information that I read on another weightloss blog.  I wish I could remember which one.  It may even have been a post from 'Promises Promises Webcomic - a humourous look and fitness and weight loss by Jules Faulkner.  Link here! --> Promises Comic. This information was the "scientifically proven fact" that cravings only last for 15 minutes. 15 minutes?! But I was dying over here....!
        So I dstracted myself, mainly by going onto Google to see if I could find anything else that mentioned how long cravings lasted for.  And I read some interested information about how eating other food, no matter how healthy, may not be the best strategy when you have a craving, because it doesn't quite satisfy the same way. Then you overeat calorie-wise, meaning you've gone over your energy input anyway!  So you may as well have had some of the food in the first place!  But then as mentioned above, I have trouble stopping when that crave is over.  Weight loss and healthy choices are a battle, but a battle worth winning!
       However, essentially google, and other people's weight loss blogs agreed with this idea that food cravings do only last a few minutes.  And I won!  That craving did not beat me! :)  I felt so good at the end of the evening, realising that I had a craving and this is the first time that I have not succumbed to it at all.  Normally if I don't have the food I'm craving, I eat something else in the hope that works.   And as a result, overeat badly.  This time round, I just staved it off - hurruh!!  Very pleased. 

Cartoon for the efforts!

Thursday 5 April 2012

I couldn't think of a better blog title...

I want to share the funny stuff I see, and occasionally say, and wanted somewhere to do it. So here it is!

On top of which, I also wanted somewhere to document my attempt to get fitter and lose weight.  Right now, I'm about 20-25 kilos over weight, which makes me unhappy.  I don't fit into clothes properly.  (Or doorways or in my car for that matter).  I don't have the energy to do all the things I used to enjoyr doing - like going out dancing.  Now I just sit on the couch and brood about how overweight I am.

But I'mma gonna change that! (I hope!) 

Resolutions:
 1.  Eat better.
  • By this I mean not eating when I'm bored.
  • When I do feel I want to eat something, but I don't know what, I need to remind myself to go for vegetables and fruit and dry crackers and healthier things than I have been eating. (Namely chips and microwave pasta 'n' sauce packs).
  • Choose to eat smaller but more often?  I dunno if this will help
  • Think about what I'm going to cook for the week and plan to shop for those things
  • Not bring chips and other savoury goods into the house.  If they're not there, I can't eat them, can I?
 2.  Move more.
I don't exercise very much either, so I want to increase the amount of exercise I do.  I used to be slender enough that friends of friends used to ask if I was a dancer.  Alas, they ask that no more...
  • Walk for 1/2hr at least three times a week.  This is valid for starting out right?  I want to eventually increase it to 45min x 5 times a week.  
  • Find a space in which to do some exercise videos.  I live in a tiny 1 bdr flat, so I haven't really the room to do it at home.
  • Commit to actually getting out and moving!  As I just mentioned, I don't have room to exercise at home - I barely have room to even do push-ups and sit-ups.  I have to move the desk chair out of the way and lay down just right.  So I need to get out of the house to move and exercise.
  • Go for a bike ride on the weekend.  You know, just to mix it up a little! :)
  • I don't have much money so I'm not going to try a gym just yet.  Besides which the gym in my area isn't open on weekends (when I would have more time to exercise) nor is it open late on weekdays (shuts by 7.30).  The times they are open there's a lot of people there, and I'm too self-conscious at this stage to want to exercise in front of people I know.  
What do you think?  Acheivable or too much at once?  Help me out and comment if you read this! :)

P.S.  Look! A cartoon to motivate !