It's 2021, and has anything changed?

 2021. 

We are entering into the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Vaccinations have started, but variants still evade total elimination. At this point, I know of three - UK, South Africa and Brazil.  Australia remains lucky - we are barely touched by community spread.  Our cases are from returning international travellers.  We have limited restrictions and occasional snap lockdowns, with only a few states with mask mandates.  Of course social distancing and hand sanitiser remains ubiquitous. 

I started this blog 9 years ago.  Back then I weighed 97 kgs, and I thought that was too much.  27 kgs too much.  The original title for this blog was 27 Years Old and 27 Kilos Too Heavy. 

9 years later, I am 119 kg.  In 9 years, I haven't lost anything, I've only gained.  Seeing it in black and white like this is upsetting. I've gained 20 kilos in 9 years. I'm going to die from my own poor health.  

5 years ago exactly, I set up an April Challenge to exercise more consistently, and to cover a total distance of 30km.  This sounds like something I should do again. I'm one week into April in 2021. I am not restricted to a 5km radius (like Melbourne was last year). I can go outside and exercise. Exercise is good for mental and physical well-being.  I can make it a priority, and I must.  

Sunday just gone (4th April - Easter Sunday) I went out in the rain, and walked for around 30 minutes, covering 2.59km.  I'm calling that day 1, and my first part of the 30 km to cover in April.

As before, I am going track with a ticker, hopefully if I can remember how to make it, and upload it. 

That's me done.  Good night for now. 

-SunnyDuckling

Another Year, Another Time to Try Again.

I came to the realisation the other week that while I'm miserable and hate my working conditions and my family sitch, I don't need to make it worse on myself by also making myself miserable about my size and the fact that I don't fit into my clothes.  In fact, out of the big 3, this is the one I have the most control of.  So I should control it, and be responsible for it. 

I'm gonna get a hold of this eating sensibly and moving meaningfully business.  

I've started relogging in my MFP diary, and I sat down this weekend to foodplan what I was going to eat for each meal & when I was going to cook what. 
     Not gonna lie, it took a while.
   
Thinking about what I wanted when was time consuming.
     I had trouble thinking so far ahead to Thursday & Friday.  I wrote the meal plan out on a sheet of paper, with a basic idea of what I was going to eat for breakfast, morning tea, lunch & dinner.  For example, tonight for dinner I am having tortellini with a spinach based pasta sauce.  I sat down and planned out (as best I could) for a whole week in advance.  Probably took me over 60 minutes.  I got distracted or frustrated along the way too.
     Writing the specific details into my (paper) food diary wasn't too bad.  That only took about 15 minutes for the whole week, given I had to flip back and forth between pages as I realised that I would need to create a recipe for the green sauce, so I needed to list the ingredients for that.  I keep a paper food diary in a notebook so I have somewhere to write down how much everything weighs.  This is especially useful for when I am creating my own recipes and I don't measure out my quantities in something as arbitrary as 'cups' when the food I am eating isn't liquid, like a stir-fry.
     I would love to know how people know how many cups of food they've cooked without ladelling their whole dish from one container to another 1 cup at a time.  For me it's easier to create a 'recipe' listing the raw weights of the ingredients, weigh the whole thing when it's finished, and then create portions based on 100g serving sizes.  Then, when I do weigh out how much I've eaten, like 335g, I know it's 3.35 servings.    I find it a quicker process.
     It was entering everything in advance in MFP that was trying.  Nearly 1.5 hours to enter a week's worth of logging in advance.  I did it though, so that when it came time to log the weight, I could save time during the week, by already having the ingredients/foods already entered and I wouldn't have to search for everything.  It was quicker on my phone too, than the webpage.  Recipes were easier to do on the computer, but everything else went through the phone. 

On Saturday I went to a butcher to get quality mince and chicken breasts.  I shopped at a Fruit & Vege grocer first, before going to Coles to get everything else I needed.  For the first time in a while, I set myself a food budget, and I think I stuck to it.  <--- This is another much needed motivation.  I was finding myself going through Drive-throughs and spending $20-25 for a meal, sometimes three times a week.  I don't have that much free money to just throw away. 

I decided to join MFP's April 2016 Running Challenge.

I have never really paid attention to how much I walk in a month, so I set myself a fairly low goal of walking 30 km this month (~18mi).  I'm trying for consistency more than I am concentrating on distance.

I always start out with good intentions, and walk 2-3 days in a row, and then... fizzle.  I get lazy.  Or find excuses like I don't have time, or I'm tired.  I'm trying to tackle that by taking the time to evaluate: am I physically tired, or mentally tired? Because there is definitely a difference and I need to work on recognising that, and not letting it get in my way.

I'm re-evaluating my goals.  I'm currently at 110kg and I wanted my first goal weight to be 90kg because that's the BMI cutoff between being obese and merely overweight.  I've stepped it back a fair bit and am going for 105kg, because that becomes the distinction between Obese Class II and Obese Class I.  I'll look into setting myself 5kg goals after that.

I've also measured 7 points around my body to keep a track of too, because it's not really about weight for me.  I honestly couldn't care if the scales said 400kg! It's the fact that I don't fit into clothes that really gets me down.  So taking (and writing down!) those measurements and entering them into my spreadsheet is going to happen the first Monday of every month.  I won't share them publicly I think, but I will be graphing them to see what happens.

Sun 26 July

In the last two and a half weeks, I've been doing better.
I've been exercising more regularly.  Not super regularly, but picking up the habit.
I've also been working on the eating.  That's taking longer to get right.

I've also had hectic weeks back at work.
And with looking after my mum & her house.

All of the next weekends in the forseeable future have something one.  Every weekend in August, plus the first few in September.

Crazy.

Gotta keep working on getting those good habits in.

Because they have made a difference so far.

Wed 8 July, I weighed in at 110 kg.  My official highest weight ever.
As of Wed 22 July, I was down to 104.7 kg.

That's progress.

I need to keep doing what I've been doing, but better.

Better eating
Better journalling
Better logging
Better sleep
Better exercising

Better looking after myself.

So I can get better results.

Wed 8 July

The Bridge event was pretty cool.  VERY packed and busy though.  Apparently 20,000 people per session time (1.5 hrs).  At first I thought that 90 minutes would be plenty of time.  Nope!  We barely got the the end of the bridge bit and to the music by the time 70 minutes had passed.

There was a whole lot more food stalls and music stages and events that we didn't get to see because there was still so many crowds.  I missed out on the Filipino food stall, which I was most looking forward to.  I LOVE Filipino food.  Would have to be the best food from another culture, as far as I am concerned.  Love it.

The day care mum up the road from us when I was young, looked after me while mum was at work.  She had three kids of her own, plus there were I think four of us? that she looked after also, at various times and days.  Anyway, she was Filipino.  Whenever there was a family celebration for either her family, or her sister's family, they would all get together at Fe's house.  And there would be food.  Oh my word!  The biggest variety of noodles you've ever seen.  The best collection of barbecued meats.  Spring rolls.  Oh,  my mouth is watering even now.

Isn't it funny how food makes such an impression on us?  Whenever I meet someone who is Filipino (or at least half Filipino) I always comment on how they must eat the best food at home.  They always agree.  Sometimes, I think it is to be polite, but a lot of them are genuinely pleased and agree wholeheartedly!

So, I missed out on Filipino food, simply because I didn't get to wander down the bridge far enough.  Where I did wander to though, I found the food that was my second most-looking-forward-to food:
Lángos.

Not my hand by the way, just a pic I nabbed from Google images.  URL credit in the alt-text (hover text). I just wanted to give you an idea of the size of what I was talking about.
My langos didn't have anywhere near this much cheese by the way!  Mine was topped with a sort of tabbouleh mix of parsley, red cpasicum, red onion, garlic, sour cream and a generous sprinkling of cheese (about 1/3 of the amount shown here!)

It's a Hungarian fried dough-bread thing.  I have no good way to describe it.  Google pages tell me it's "Hungarian Pizza", while every time I've eaten it, stall signage has always called "Hunagarian garlic bread".  Whatever it is exactly, it is delicious!  Garlic is right.  I don't know whether it's in the batter, or just as a dressing, but, gosh I love it.  First came across it when I went to musical festivals in my youth.  I look out for it now ever since.  Yum!  I got one with the lot, which had a tabbouleh kind of mix of parsley, diced red capsicum,  diced red onion, garlic, sour cream and cheese.

I also managed in the course of the day to walk over 10,000 steps.  First day in a long time I've done that.
:-)

Sun 5 July

When I woke up this morning I went for a short walk.  2.1 km.   It felt good to do that and made me question why I don't do it more often?  It only took about 20 minutes.  And despite it being winter, it was a lovely morning.  Guess that's what happens when you live in Qld  :-)

On Friday night I went to the gym.  Not my regular one that I signed up in, but rather the one closest to my house.  I joined one of those 24-hr gym franchises.  So glad I did.  It meant that on Friday when I got the guilts for just sitting and bumming around the house all day, I could pack my bag, get into gym gear and go exercise - at 10pm at night.  Loved it.

For starters, the gym space at this second location is bigger - way bigger.  It had more weight machines and better layout, so that I actually have space to do ab work at the end of my routine.  The gym that I signed up at, well, it's looking a little bit sad and pathetic.  I even questioned whether I had made the right choice when I first went in.  (I picked this franchise because it had locations that were most convenient to me - for where I am studying (1), working & living (2) and even near my mum's house(3) ).  Now, as it turned out, I saved myself the $180 joining fee, because the (1) gym I use is actually going to relocate soon.  Luckily, it's still convenient for me.  It's little closer down the road, and its meant to end up with more parking, more change rooms, and more equipment.  If (2) is anything to go by, then (1) is going to end up great!

The other reason why I liked (2) is it had better music!  The music at (1) is crap.  Even through headphones, you can hear it.  Overall, (2) feels more modern and updated too.  So I can't wait to use it again.

Although not today.  Today, I'm off to a major celebration milestone that my city is putting on.

For a bridge.  

Yep!  One of Brisbane's iconic bridges is turning 75 and the city is making a pretty big deal out of it and making it pretty spesh.  Tickets were only available online through an allotment?  allocation?  system.  Not entirely sure how to put it.  There were only so many tickets made available and you could only reserve up to 10.  And they were gone within minutes!  Like, 25,000-tickets-snapped-up-in-less-than-20-minutes kind of thing.    I'm a bit worried about how I will go with the crowds today, but I've been having a good run of people interactions lately so I'm feeling confident?  calm?  Like, I have to leave the house in an hour, and I'm still not panicking yet.  Normally, I'd have been feeling sick and dread from this time yesterday.

But so far so good.  :)

Wish me luck!