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 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!

Gogglebox

I watched that (newish) show on Thursday night called Gogglebox.   Hilarious!  Going to be part of my regular weekly viewing, hands down!

Basically it's a reality TV show, where 10 households are filmed while they're watching television.  They're all told what shows to watch, and the reactions to what they are watching are edited and shown.  Priceless!  There are families, couples and flatmates.  It's really cool to see 1 - how other people watch telly and 2 - how other people talk and comment on what they've seen.  I think it's great because I was watching it and thinking they are so Australian.  The reactions they have to things are are brilliant.  Unfortunately I'm trying to think of an example and I can't quite think of one.  Most of the people featured swear a lot, which suits me.  I'm a big fan of curse words; I use them fairly liberally myself.  There's a swear jar at work just for me.  :-/  But back to the show: it's those throw away comments and one-liners.  It's the randomness.  I need to get to somewhere with free wifi and catch up on the first 6 episodes I think!!

**

I did end up going for that walk on Friday afternoon.  2.4km (1.5mi).  I'm relatively happy with that.  Although it did make me start coughing again.  : S

I need to plan out food that I am going to make for the upcoming week, and workout my schedule/routine for the new few months until my next holidays,  I'm always leaving everything until the holidays, and then when the holidays come around, I waste them.  Like all this last week, I've been meaning to call the tax department.  Have I though?  Not a chance.

There's also organising a doctor's appointment, dentist appointment, plumber, fixing a bookcase (that I've been meaning to do since I moved in 2.5 years ago!),  repainting, replanting, changing over clothes and bedding to a winter wardrobe.  And maybe donate some things that I've been meaning to donate.

I also got it into my head that I want to buy some lino or vinyl to line my kitchen cupboards.  It was exit-cleaning my best friend's rental over the New Year that gave me the idea.  Her kitchen cupboards were lined and it made it so fantastically easy to clean.  They weren't even her idea, they were already in the house when she moved in.  I had been meaning to do it ever since then, but put it off because I knew it would be a tedious task to measure every cupboard to work out how much I would need.  But when I got back on Tuesday, I opened a cupboard to discover a tin of fruit (that, to be fair, I'd had for a fair few number of years) must have rusted through because there was a dark syrupy type substance on the shelf.  So I after I cleaned it up, I figured that it was no time like the present to organise and look for some lino/vinyl for my shelves.

In fact, I may as well do it for all the shelves in the house - my wardrobe shelf is not very smooth and occaisionally my clothes catch on in.  I originally taped down some butchers' paper, but I think lino may go much nicer.  I want to get some of a decent thickness that won't slide around.  Otherwise there's no point is there?

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?

You know it's hot when...

It gets to 6 in the evening and you realise you haven't eaten anything all day   :S

Seriously.  I've been drinking lots of fluids, but I don't recall actually eating anything yet.  Lol.  Maybe my body knows that eating food will just mean my metabolism will create heat energy.  And it's just too hot for that today?  Who knows.  The prediction was for 40*C, but I think we only got to 38*C (100.4*F).  It certainly didn't feel as hot as 40*C (104*F). 

Oh wait!  I've nibbled at bits and pieces today.   So I haven't gone completely food free.  I'll tell you more in just a minute...


We have a long weekend this week because of the G20 summit. 

I have seriously never known my neighbourhood to be so quiet!  There was lots of media noise about Brisbane being a ghost town and I would have to agree.  It was actually kind of eerie.  I live in an inner city suburb - normally there's lots of movement and action and noise.  Friday it was silent.  So strange.

Instead of getting out of town, like most of the people must have done, I chose to stay at and get some things done at home.  Namely cooking.

That's right.  I chose to spend a weekend when the temperature was 35+ both days, in the kitchen with the oven on or the stove going.  Often both at the same time. 

Why?  Because I'm crazy.  : /

No, of course not really. But I needed to make hay while the sun shone.  And my hay making was getting myself organised meal-wise.  I've noticed the past few weeks I've been busy, both during the week and the weekend.  So busy that I've been neglecting to eat properly.  I've been grabbing lunch from a local greasy spoon often backing that up with some form of takeaway for dinner.  Or worse: ice-cream for dinner.  O_O  So, I realised that had to change.  So I took the opportunity this weekend to cook ahead some foods to keep in the freezer.

      Oh Yeah!  Did I say?  I bought that upright freezer I'd been thinking about back in October.  The Good Guys had a model that was going on clearance.  Whilst originally a few litres smaller than I was thinking about - for half the price of similar sizes, I wasn't going to be choosy!  Only paid $445 for a 180L freezer.  Bargin!

 I made:

• Mexican Mince - My take on chilli con carne.  I dose it up with cabbage, grated zucchini, grated carrot, spinach and 5 bean mix, on top of the mince, onion & tin tomato.
• Mushroom & Bacon quiche - with light shortcrust pastry, light sour cream, zucchini and shallots.  The bacon I use are those cubed bacon bits.
• Chicken & Mushroom quiche - using leftover roast chook.
• Devilled sausages - Look ma, no packet mix!  Added carrot for extra vege.
• Chicken Curry Pasta Bake - this I used a jar of curry simmer sauce for.  I added some grated zucchini for extra vege.
• Peanut Satay stir-fry - chicken, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, onion, celery, carrot, zucchini, green capsicum, green beans
• Beef stroganoff - again, not using a packet mix.  Lots of mushroom.  Steak, zucchini. 
• Creamy tomato sauce & filled pasta - you know, using those fresh filled pastas?  Angiolotti, ravioli, and so on.  And apart from using the most vegetably tomato pasta sauce I can (I LOVE Five Brothers' Summer Vegetables pasta sauce!) I add in (have you guessed?) grated zucchini and carrot.  

Not bad for a weekend's work, right?  And some of those I have already portioned up with a side of frozen vege.  So all I have to do is take a plastic carton from the freezer, defrost it and nuke it, and tuck in!

I am also going to get a salad mix going too.  Red cabbage, lettuce and baby spinach.  Chop/Shred a big bowl of it and put it in a ziplock bag - grabbing some to add to lunch each day, or as a side with dinner.  I came up with this salad mix a few years ago and I tore through it like there was no tomorrow.  It became the base for other salads that I adapted from day to day.  Sometimes adding cold brown rice, or carrot, or beetroot slaw, or cucumber, or whatever I had handy.  I even adding dressing some days, other days I didn't.  I'm hoping that I get a similar reaction this year.  I figure because I haven't done it for a few years, I'll be all excited and "why did I ever stop doing this?  This is fantastic!"  Lol. 

In any case, being busy this weekend cooking food, washing dishes (!) and portioning food, I ended up only eating the scrappy bits left over in the cooking dish in order to clean them up before dumping them into the sink.

So, with that in mind, it seems about time for me to portion up the next chunk of cooking.  That Mexican Mince is still really warm and I finished cooking it at 4pm.  !  That's how hot it is here.  O_O 

And I'm going to put on some rice so I can have the stirfy for dinner.  With a side of salad.

These boots are made for walking

So this week has been better mental health-wise and food wise.  I've actually stuck to my food plan and have eaten lunch everyday at lunch time.  (The emphasis is necessary!).  There have been a few not so great food choices in there too, like a 5-pack of Tim-Tams, but that was on Thursday, and it fit with my calories, as you'll see below.

In terms of exercise, well... not much.  No swimming, no zumba, no couch to 5k.  :(  I was not able to get up early and exercise in the morning, simply due to my doona being far too comfy.  Mmmmmm : ).  I did however walk out of my way a little in the past few days.

I dropped off my car for servicing on Wednesday afternoon (yes!  I finally managed to get that organised! : D ).  I purposely chose the dealership only so I could walk home!  I managed to rack up an extra 4.2 km to my day by doing that.  And saved money by not going through public transport.  Brisbane happens to have some of the highest public transport fares in the world (so I've been told).  If I had chosen to walk the 1km/10min to the train station, and caught the train home, I would have travelled ONE station, b/c my station is the first on that suburban line, and I would have had to pay $3.53.  To travel 4minutes?  No thanks, I'd rather walk the 40 minutes instead!

This also meant that on Thursday, I walked to work (35minutes) and walked from work to where I dropped off my car (~45min).  I actually kind of enjoyed doing that, because I ended up walking paths where there were a lot of other people who walk as their commute.  I felt so cool, because I was walking like everybody else.  I work just outside the CBD, but still within inner city boundaries, so there's tons of people walking for commute.  If at anytime I felt tired or like I should have taken up the offer of the bus or taxi, I just reminded myself that thousands of people do this everyday.  And it does them no harm. 

Makes me want to try and recommence walking to work everyday again. 

Well okay, let's be realistic here.  Maybe like, twice a week! :)

An apology of sorts, and trying to get back on track.

First off I want to apologise and thank people for yesterday.

I want to offer an apology for those of you who felt upset or hurt by my comments in yesterday's post.  I know some of you will have parents who are ill.  Or who have parents who have already passed.  And there I am whinging like an immature brat about having to spend time with my mum.  That's not fair for you to bear the brunt of my anger, when you will obviously have different feelings on the subject.  I 'm sorry.  I know that whatever I say, will in no way make it better for you, but I am sorry. 

For those that left comments on yesterday's post, thank-you.  I didn't actually post it expecting sympathy.  I was more prepared for the "Get over yourself" type comments, which quite frankly, I deserve.  I openly acknowledge I am not a nice person.  But thanks to everyone who read; and read and took the time to comment.  You didn't have to, but you did.  And I appreciate it.

To close up, I do think yesterday was beneficial in a way.  Almost as soon as I wrote the post, I was beginning to calm down, and feel less anxious and stressed and angry.  I ate my dinner, made a cup of tea, and then watched Disney movies on the couch until I fell asleep.  It seems to have helped, because I woke up today feel somewhat more positive and pro-active.  And I got stuff done today, stuff that I wanted/needed to do, like the car insurance, laptop dropped off for repair, and am closer to making a decision about a phone, multifunction cooker & upright freezer. Five big, time consuming things and I managed to start to get it done.  Early tomorrow I'm going to call up and organise the car servicing and buy the multi function cooker and upright freezer.  The place is just down the road from me, so hopefully delivery will be able to be organised quickly.

In light of all that was going on in my head yesterday and today, I decided to check out my horoscope this morning. 

I love the vagueness of horoscopes don't you?  I read this one as relevant, given my rant yesterday.

Monday, Sep 29, 2014 -- Although you are eager to change the dynamics between you and others today, it's challenging to regain normalcy once the energy begins to shift. There could be a lot at stake in a relationship now, but don't try to force your will on anyone else. The more you attempt to control the outcome, the more distant you grow from your goals. Express your passions and remain open to the many possibilities ahead

So, I just need to breathe out and let it go.  Accept there are things out of my control.  Get over myself and let myself take care of my mum.  And not let it take me from my goals.

I'm off to mum's tomorrow, for the next two days, then I get Friday and the weekend before I'm back at work.

I can use the weekend to finalise my time budget plan thing.  I'm having trouble manipulating excel to come up the layout I want.  Every time I think I have set the cells to the size I want, when I do a test print, they end up smaller.  I have a particular size in mind, so I can write necessary details in them.  Oh!  And they keep running over to 2nd/3rd page, even though, by my calculations, (working in metric measurement units) they should fit onto the page size I want, even with a margin allowance for printing.  Grrr.  But I'll get there.  I need to by Monday anyway, because that's when my work week starts.

Aaaaand... given I still have about an hour before I need to be in bed, I'm going to use my remaining time to go work on that.

Once again, I'm sorry to everyone for yesterday's post and I thank-you for your comments.  

So, what now?

So, what's next?

I ran my 5k on the weekend, what do I do now?

Well, at this stage, I have no other events I am entered into.  I've been thinking about the 5km NEON Run in October, which is a night event, kind of a 5km-disco-nightclub type event.  It sounds like it's going to be a lot of fun.  I had been thinking about it last year, but hemmed and hawed and missed it.  It's for one of my favourite charities, Beyond Blue.  Australia's national initiative to raise awareness of anxiety and depression.  I think the work they do is fantastic and so, so, so important.

After the B2B, I'd been spending most of the afternoon, whilst recovering, looking up other 5km events that are occurring this year.  There are still a few more coming up, so I am starting to put together a list of dates and costs.  More to come on that L8R (later).

I'm also counting down the days to when the swimming pool at work re-opens.  I have access to a 25m pool outside of work hours.   Cannot wait until the covers come off and the pool is cleaned and treated and ready for use again.  Even though I didn't swim as much this past summer (2013/14) as much as the summer before (2012/13), for the past two months or so I've been really missing swimming.  A lot.  So much so that while I am waiting for the work pool to be ready, I might (if I have time, the next two weeks are really busy!) duck into the council pool to have a swim.

I think at this stage I have two goals I want to accomplish.

1. To complete Couch to 5k and run 5km by the end of the year
2. To swim 1km non-stop by the end of the year.

Now, I haven't run them through SMART yet to see if they are reasonable/achievable goals, but they are what I want.  

• I'm already making progress on being able to run 5km.  

• When I was swimming in 2012/13, I was swimming around about 700m each session, three times a week.  

Given that I have been working on exercises that are more aerobic in nature (running & Zumba), I'm keen to see the effect that it will have on my swimming ability.  I've been (hopefully) building the muscles in my legs by running, so my kicks should be stronger.  And Zumba & running should be improving my cardio & lung function so I won't get as out of breath as quickly.

I'll be back with another post soon, ~2weeks and let you know my plans for getting there.

Oh!  And probably up date my weight & measurements!  : )

Quick check-in!

Hi there!
Quick check-in from me.

This morning I ran in the Bridge to Brisbane fun-run.  It has a 10km and 5km course, and I ran the 5km.  I say ran, but really, it was more of a jog.  In intervals.

When I entered (back in June) I was planning on completing the Couch to 5k program.  Well, I started, but then got waylaid.  I hadn't actually made it past Week 3.  Such a shame.  However, I took what I learnt from that and tried to run in interval fashion.  I decided, when I entered, to take my chances on entering into the 'Joggers' category as opposed to the 'Walkers' category.  The Joggers were meant to finish <45min.  (Runners <30min).  I actually got rather worried about that because I hadn't finished my C25K training, I was worried that I would take longer than 45minutes and I'd be disqualified.

Turns out, after emailing the organisers, it's not a <45min but more ~45min.  <Rolls eyes>.  Urgh... being a maths person, those terms are pretty darn concrete.  LESS THAN is not the same as AROUND/ABOUT/APPROX.  Grrrr.....

My biggest worry was that I wouldn't finish in the time I was meant to for my category.  I actually felt really anxious and keyed up about it before the race.  I have to wonder if I felt nervous/worried in my other races or more excited?  On reflection, I can't recall.  I want to keep an eye out on it though for next time.

So anyhow, ran the race this morning, not all at once, broke it into to walk/jog intervals.  Think I managed to jog the whole 1st kilometre!  After that, I ran to music, making sure I ran for the duration of an entire song - those with pumping jams at least.  I think it helped, because I ran faster when I was running along to music.

And.... drumroll please.....

My official finishing time was......



UNDER 45 MINUTES?!?!?  Wahoo!!  I'm so very excited about that, yay!

 *yawn*

Aaaaaaanad... I guess the toils of the day are starting to take affect (effect?) on me.  Time I think to heat up some dinner (Rich beef casserole) and curl up on the couch with some TV.  It's my plan, and I like it : )