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.

It's Friday already? Oh dear...

So I started the week with a renewed sense of wanting to get fit, organised and healthy.

I went for a 25 minute walk on Tuesday morning.  I planned to go as soon as I got up, but it was around 9:00am before I left the house.  Nearly 2 hours later!!  Mind you, it's the first time I have undertaken any form of exercise in weeks.  Possibly since January to be honest?   It's not surprising then I felt out of it for the remainder of the day.  I split my time between the sofa and my bed.

I still managed to do a bit of washing up, but I also spent a lot of time just kicking back in the air-con (yes!, April and I still have the air-conditioner running some days - it's just that hot).  That's when I wrote the other blog post.  Felt slow and dopey all the rest of the day.

In fact, I kind of felt achy and my skin was tender - like I was coming down with something.  I was originally planning to walk to the shops (1.6km/1 mi each way) to pick up a few things like chicken drumsticks to make chicken soup.  And tomato juice. But I piked out and ended up driving.  And I'm glad I did.  Because when I crave tomato juice, it means I'm getting sick.  A cold or virus.  Urgh!  Just what I don't want when I'm on holiday.  So I made chicken soup with LOTS of vegetables and garlic.  And drank nearly a two litres of liquids before bed.

It helped.  I woke up Wednesday feeling better.  WAY less achy, but with a minor sore throat.  I decided to go for a walk anyway because I figured that a short bout of exercise could only help to boost my immune system.  25 minutes again.

This time, I felt a bit more motivated and later that morning I walked to my nearest hardware store to buy a hose.  I don't own one anymore, and I decided that I really needed to wash out my wheelie bin and my kitchen bin.  So it's easiest to do that in the backyard with the hose.  Especially as Wednesday is bin day, so it was "freshly" emptied.  So that is one of my (many!) holiday jobs done.

I've since spent the rest of the week doing nothing but lounge on the sofa and either be on my laptop or playing games on my phone.  Physically I'm still going back and forth between being better and worse.

For instance, last night I felt really full of phlegm and mucous, and this morning woke with a pretty horrid sore throat.  Gargled salt water, had a few cups of strong black tea with honey.  And am feeling much perkier. I've not got a runny or blocked nose and for that I am incredibly thankful.  Sinus infections just seem to drag on forever don't they?  But I have been coughing a bit.  A wet cough.  *Gross out warning*  I've been coughing up a lot of mucous, but it has only seemed to reach the top of my throat and then I've swallowed it again.  This morning I was finally able to cough some up and spit it out.  Gross I know, but as soon as I did that, I've started to feel better.  

Hmm.... I think I need to leave the house this afternoon and go for at least a small walk.  25-30 minutes like I have been doing.  Try to motivate me again to keep up some momentum.  And plan out what I am going to do with the rest of my weekend.  So I actually stick to it.

7 April 2015

Still here. Still not losing any weight.  Still upset at myself for not trying.

It's Easter  break now.  10 days.

10 days to complete a to do list that has around 25 dot points.  Some more urgent than others. But a lot that definitely needs to be done.  Some of it house stuff, some of it health stuff.  Some of it looking after parent stuff.  Which I hate.  I swear I'm going to end up spending more time looking after her, than she ever had to look after me growing up.  If we were close maybe it would be different.  But my mother is a nasty bitter unpleasant woman and causes far more stress than is healthy for me.  And it never seems to end.

But back to my physical health.

I'm really really over being fat and overweight.  I just want to fit into clothes again properly.

I'm slowly working on the food issue.  I've worked out a fairly good system of making meals and freezing them.  I'm eating a form of dinner at work at 4 o'clock and then only fruit or crackers later at 7pm.   Now I've just got to get back on track with weighing and logging everything.  After all this time, I still find it a time consuming thing to do. It would probably work better if I took more time on Sunday to plan out and log my entire week in advance, just modifying where needed from where I deviated.  Yet another system to set up.  And stick to.

My whole life has been like this. I am full of ideas and plans and projects. I am a great starter of things but not a great finisher. I either get distracted or my enthusiasm wanes. I have so many incomplete hobbies and projects everywhere.  I wouldn't be surprised if they made up around 15-20% of all the stuff I own.  Which I'm still sorting through.  Which is yet another project to work on.  And I've already come up with yet another new project to do. And I can't let it rest until I have more time,or at least a better time because my enthusiasm will wane and I'll be left with this half finished project  that  wont get completed for another two  years.   *Rolls eyes*  This is the way I live my life. Every single day. Does this happen to anyone else? Is it fixable? Is it a learnt behaviour that can be unlearnt?

It's frustrating that's what it is.

7 Feb. 15

Oh dear.  Can you tell I'm back at work again?  Absolutely no time to blog.  Or read other blogs.  Bugger.

Annoyingly too, weightloss is not happening.  But I know exactly why.   I'm not sleeping well, which leads to me not eating well.  I'm also not logging properly or even exercising.  So frustrating, because it all seems to take time, time which I feel I don't have to put into these things.  But I have to have time to do all these things otherwise I'm shortchanging my own health.  I keep telling myself I just need to get my feet onto the ground with what I'm doing at work and then I'll be fine.  *Rolls eyes*.  Yeah, because, like, that ever happens.  /sarcasm


I'm continuing on with the house cleaning and organising and unpacking.  I managed to clear another two boxes on Thursday afternoon, so I'm feeling pretty good about that.  It's starting to really get to me that I have been living in my unit for over two years now and I still haven't unpacked everything.  In every room there is mess and clutter and STUFF.  So much stuff... I mentioned it before how I find it hard to get rid of things.  I hold onto things for such a long time.  In fact, in one of those boxes I unpacked, I found the portable CD/Tape/Radio player that I received for my 13th birthday.  The one that hasn't working properly since I was fifteen and there was a power surge.  This means it doesn't work through the power cord any more, but it will work if you use 8 D cell batteries.  So I've held onto it all these years.  Because it was still usable.  It wasn't broken, just not in the best of working conditions.  

I'm feeling upset even as I mention it, but I decided to throw it out.  

 
By which I mean, I've put it in another area of my flat with the other electronics and appliances which no longer work as they should and I can take it to an e-waste disposer. 

It makes me so uncomfortable to know that I am doing that.  My first reaction when I saw it was 'Oh, I remember this, I remember how proud I was that I had a CD player, how cool it was to have one'.  My second was 'I don't need to get rid of this.  It still works on batteries.  This can go in a storm survival kit!' 

Anything so that I don't have to get rid of it, right? : (

It's so hard, but I'm working on it.  I am telling myself that it just wouldn't be practical in a storm kit.  It's huge.  It's 50cm in length (20in), and bulky besides.  It would take up most of the space.  Plus on top of that, 8 D cell batteries is expensive.  I've had it for over fifteen years, it's time to cut the apron strings.

So, another work in progress.

The Purge - Part 3

I don’t know what it was that made me want to start on the clothes, but I went through and decided to sort, bin, donate or wash, a whole lotta clothes.  Not all of them yet, but I’m on my way.  In particular, I decided to sort clothes into approximate size range. 

 

• ·         8/10/12
• ·         12/14    
• ·         16/18                    
• ·         18/20/Just one size too small. 

I am expecting that most of the smallest clothes will no longer be fashionable and I will donate a lot of them.  Most of those I haven’t seen since 2008, they’ve been packed up somewhere most of this time, and that was when I started to gain weight.

Funnily enough, I thought that when I split up the clothes into those size ranges, it was because I could associate them with certain time-frames of my life.  Small -> second & third year of uni.  12/14 --> high school, rest of uni/early twenties.  My normal.  16/18 --> 2010/2011.  18/20/JOSTS -->  All those clothes I bought because I was going to lose weight soon…

But when I looked at the four piles, I started thinking in terms of kilogram weight and realise that those four size piles kind of match with weight goals I have in my head.

18/20/JOSTS	95kg
16/18	85-90kg
12/14	70-80kg
8/10/12	65kg

My Ultimate Goal Weight is to get back to ~70kg.  My average-normal was 63-68kg.  10 years ago. *shrugs*

The current goal weight I am working towards is 90kg.  90kg is what I was weighing in 2010-2011.  That’s 16kg off from where I am as of this morning.  During the year, when I had a really good run of discipline and logging, I made it down as far as 98.1 kg in May – only 1.1 kg off from my “starting” weight back when I began the blog in 2012!  At 90kg, I can picture myself in the clothes that I was wearing.  I still have memories of pulling them out of drawers or from the wardrobe and putting them on and accessorising them.  It’s a tangible, actual goal because it’s one that I can remember.  Remember feeling how fat I was.  And yet, I know now, that I got fatter.

At 90kg, I can start to wear the 16/18 size clothes.  16/18 is the crossover size range between normal and plus size clothing.  At 90kg, I am a size 18, but could try some 16s, especially the older (non-vanity sizing) ones.  

90kg also puts me at lower end of BMI obese classifications.  Under 90kg, I am only overweight, not obese.  I know that the BMI shouldn’t be the defining point of health, but as it stands, it is a measurement/calculation that is widely spoken about and is accountable and comparable.  At 90kg, I am putting less pressure on my joints, my lungs, my heart, my kidneys, all of it.  So surely that’s a good start right?

An update – what I’ve done, what I’m going to be doing

Okay, I did mention last post that my posting is sporadic, and I would try to update again soon(ish). A month later and here we are.

So, my previous update was in late March.

Early April I bought a fitbit.  I own a fitbit One and I think it’s great.  I really enjoy using it and seeing every day just how active or inactive I am.  The days when I am not at work, I tend to be really, really inactive.  I barely make 5,000 steps those days.  So it motivates me on really lazy days when I’ve been on the couch all day to at least get out in the afternoon and take a 3km walk.  Along the same routes that I took earlier this year when I was going for a walk every morning.  

In June I was particularly busy:

I did (for the second year) the 14km City2South funrun (15^th June).  I walked it, because that’s pretty much all I was capable of.  My goal was to finish faster than last year. 

If you recall, my last years’ time was 2:44:24.  An average pace of 11:44min/km. 

 
This year I managed to finish in…

Time, time, time; see what's become of me

Hi there!

Yes, I disappeared again.  

And it is for the obvious reason you assume – where I stopped caring, so I stopped trying, so I stopped eating good food and I stopped exercising, so I stopped logging food and exercise, so I stopped blogging about it.

I gained some weight back.  I was hovering around 98kg last time I blogged.  Nearly back at my starting weight!! Now, I’m closer to 102kg.  But that’s okay.  It’s not way up there near my all-time high - 108kg - it's just not where I want to be.  But, as I keep saying, “I can change that”.  And I do.  And I’m getting there slowly.  It’s lots of small steps forward, baby steps back, stumble forward again. 

What can I say, but that it is a work in progress?  I’m trying to instil new habits.  Some are sticking; some are slowly sliding off the wall like blu-tack in the summer.  

Something which seems to have stuck is waking up and getting out of bed every morning at 5am, when my alarm goes off.  As opposed to sleeping through it for the next hour & half.  I’m not a morning person. I never have been.  But, I do see the benefit of getting up early of a morning.  I seem to be able to get more done in my day when I’m up early.  And, I’d like to point out that it’s winter here, so getting out of bed when it’s dark and cold is not easy.  But, I’ve been able to do it.  For almost three months now I think?  Even when I’ve stayed away from home, I’ve been able to do it consistently.  

I also eat pretty much the same breakfast everyday now, and I make it the night before.  It’s my yoghurt-porridge thing.  “Overnight Oats” I think is the prevailing phrase on pinterest.

Not much else seems to have stuck.  Trying to get more fruit & vege in my day.  Trying to get enough water in my day.  Trying to get a chance to actually sit and eat during the day.  Trying to exercise everyday.  *Shrugs*  Gotta keep working on all of that.  

It all seems to come down to time, not having enough and not managing well the time that I do have.  And I think that’s one of the main factors that has influenced how I approach this blog and this weightloss/healthiness malarkey.  I struggle big time to fit some of the ‘basics’ in every day.  Eg: Food journaling - then logging in MFP, exercising – then loading that into Nike+, Daily weighing – then filing out my spreadsheet, or weightgrapher app… and so on.  I know that technically I don’t need to do all that, but when I do, it’s a system that works.  I’ve found that just simply writing my food down, without logging it, isn’t enough.  It doesn’t make that much of an impact to just see the food written on my page – I need to see the numbers to see if I’m going over or not.

And with time being my biggest factor, I think I have to be honest and say this: if it comes down to a choice between
                a) taking the time to do something about getting healthier, or
                b) write about what I’m going to do/have been doing…
I think actions need to speak louder than words.   

And so I haven’t blogged.  I’ve been doing some stuff – a fair bit, now that I think about it – but I haven’t taken the time to stop and think and write.

I’m going to keep this blog and keep updating it, however I dare say my posting will continue to be sporadic and filled with empty gaps.  I’ll more than likely only fill in what I have done in bursts and in the past tense.  I can fill you in, in a follow up post, what I have been doing and what my plans for the next little bit are… and that might be the last you hear of me for another month or so.

If you can put up with that, then I thank-you for your comments, encouragement and support.  If you feel you need to leave, then by all means, I wish you well.