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.

Am I making any progress? Part 3

Hmm, I hadn’t initially thought of making this a three part post, but it makes sense to share this here and now, and not later.  It makes a nice little summary to what I’ve already discussed here and here.

 So, this year, I haven’t been blogging very well.  In fact, for the last year I haven’t been blogging very well.  Nor have I been losing weight.  Last year I experienced some success in losing weight – using myfitnesspal – in June last year.  But of course, I slacked off and the weight went back up.  New Year, new chance to start again.  I really want to make getting healthier & losing weight a priority this year.  I know I eat better when I log.  So I’m going to keep logging.  I know I eat better when I exercise.  So I’m going to keep exercising.

I haven’t really noticed any correlation to my daily weighings and my eating habits.  Nor mood.  Like, I’m happy to see it go down, but if it goes up, it’s due to what I ate, or the amount of water I didn’t drink, etc, etc.  I’m thinking I’m lucky and I don’t get scale obsessive.  For me, it’s about the data and trends and numbers.  Couldn’t care less about what the actual numbers are, I just find it fascinating to see them. 

I’m still only considering my weekly weigh-in on a Monday as my “official” weight.  I could I guess use the weight on weightgrapher.com, but I’m happy just using Mondays.  Additionally, because weightloss shouldn’t be all about the scale, I’m also going to take measurements.  I figure for those I’ll only do it once a month, because I’m not really do high intensity exercise like aerobics or weight lifting, so a weekly measurement is not going to be drastic.

So to sum up:

• I’ve been exercising by walking two or three times a week.
• I’ve restarted dance classes
• I’ve been avoiding buying foods I can’t moderate
• I’ve been logging (almost) every day since the start of the year.  There have been days when I couldn’t get on, but I backtracked and filled them in as best I could.
• I’ve been weighing myself daily to see if there is a trend of me losing weight

Has it made a difference?  You be the judge.  (And I know I don’t take photos very well.  Yes, these were selfies in the bathroom mirror – sorry!)

Rainy Rain

Hi there! 
I've been away the last few days for a conference, so good eating and exercise have completely left me for the time being.

So, back in town today and working on getting the eating back together - very busy time at work at the moment, certainly until the end of next week.  So crazy times, and the thing that is sliding at the moment is proper food prep!  Urgh! :(  I'm finding I just don't get enough time in my lunchtime to sit and eat, so I am eating more in the evening.  And because I'm tired and hungry, I am trying to get food into me quickly - so it's not the most nutritionally balanced food.  One more week, and then I'm on holidays - yeah!  Time to clear out space in the freezer and cook foods for the next couple of months! :) 

So, eating hasn't been great.  But, I'm happy to keep up the exercising.  I didn't get a chance to much this past week, unless it's been walking from the building where we stayed, up the hill to the dining hall, down the hill to the 'outdoor teamwork' area, and so on. 

After work today, I was so keen to head out for a walk, clear my head, stretch my legs...  except it's raining.  And not a light drizzle, but a steady downpouring of rain that could turn into flash flooding.  If it were a drizzle or shower of rain, I'd take my brolly and just go.  But this is the sort of rain that no matter how much you wrap up, dress up, you are going to get wet. 

So no.

Instead, I decided I needed to move regardless, so I thought I'd see what YouTube could offer me.  I wasn't really feeling a 'bodyweight' workout or anything yoga like.  So I did a Leslie Sansone 'Walk At Home' video I found. 

WOW!  What a workout!!  I picked the '1 Mile' walk just to see what it was like.  I can't believe walking in place can get you so sweaty and raise your heart rate so much!  Whew!  According to Nike+ Fitness app, I burnt 321 Calories. 

Niiiiiice.

Am I making any progress? Part 2

And we're back for another round.  This is a continuation of this post

Four - somewhat counter-acts what I just said in my previous post, but oh well.

I've been weighing myself everyday, since the start of the year. 

It's been absolutely FASCINATING!!!
I have always been against daily weighings.   I've always been told that it's not accurate because you always have daily fluctuations due to water retention, muscle, etc, so it's normal to see -0.5, +1, +2, -.3 in your day to day and then you start to lose sight of what's happening!  So a weekly weigh-in works best.  
Two things made me change my mind. 

One, a colleague of mine who is also trying to lose weight - not very successfully at the moment mind you - is very much for daily weighings.  She likes to keep track of what's happening and likes the collection of all the data.  Additionally, she feels it keeps her accountable.  She sees that if she goes off-plan with her eating, then it reflects the next morning on the scale.  So she has an app that she enters her daily weight into and she can see what's happening.  She feels if she goes out and has Hungry Jack's for dinner, it is evident the next morning on the scale.  So she uses it as motivation for herself.

Two. I found a really groovy website to put my weight into.  I originally tried it for weekly weighings, but it just wasn’t working, so I decided this year I would give it a go for daily weighings.  

weightgrapher.com is a website where you enter your daily weight, but it then will average out your past 10 (by default, but adjustable) weights and give you a trend line of how your weightloss is going and even gives you a prediction of when you’ll achieve your goal weight.  I think it’s pretty cool!  Here’s what mine looks like for the past month.  The upper blue line is the trend line of where my weight was one month ago.  The blue line connected to the red tags (which are my actual weight) is my trending weight.

And from the start of the year – this one’s a bit messy because it has my attempt of weekly weighings still in there.  The blue are predicted weigh-ins, because I was at mum’s (or wasn’t weighing in yet).  The green are for when I’ve added any notes – for example, ate takeaway burgers, or was sick so I didn’t eat properly.

What do you think?  Pretty cool huh?  And… well… this graph doesn’t lie.  I’ve lost some weight and am currently hovering around 100kg (220lbs).  As you can see from the graph, I’ve been there for about two weeks now, so I think it’s time to readjust my goals on MFP to reflect the fact that I’ve now lost… 7kg since the start of the year. :D  Yay! Go me!