Stress

My weight jumped straight back up to over 66 and last weigh in was hovering dangerously close to 67. I’ve never thought of myself as an emotional eater, thinking instead I’m someone who just likes to snack, but I’ve noticed I’m really reacting to feeling stressed at the moment.By reacting, I mean any urge to say no goes completely out the window and I feel hungry all the time.

I always thought that emotional eating means you want the comfort food as in you actually feel yourself saying I need this because I’m stressed/sad/happy whatever but that you knew you were doing it because of an emotion and because I’ve never had thoughts like that, I figured my emotions never affected my food choices but the last fortnight has made me realise I react to feeling stressed pretty badly.

I found myself doing things like cutting 2 (or 3 or on a really shitty day 4) slices of cake that I cook for the boys that I normally bypass without even a sideways glance. Sneaking an extra tsp of sugar into my coffee and then having more than 1 a day. Not really caring that there is a fruit bowl over there and instead wanting the biscuits. I’m actually really upset with myself and that adds even more to the feeling out of control.. leading to even less of a willpower.

The list of things stressing me is not really that monumentous and are short term but I am feeling so overwhelmed at the moment so I’m going to list them out and see what they look like on the page and not cluttering up my head. Some are passed but they were definate factors.

1. Last week I had to squeeze 4 days of work into 2 days as last week we had a public holiday on the Monday and my boys school was closed on the Friday due to a ciriculum day and the alternate to taking a leave day was to take them to work.

2. This week I had to squeeze 4 days of work into 2 days as my youngest son had an operation on the Wednesday and I needed to take Wed-Fri off to be home with him. On the plus note it was a tiny operation and he probably will be right to go back to school tomorrow.

3. Uni started again 3 weeks ago and the feeling of being behind is incredible. I’m the only person in the honours class who is working pretty much full time and while I knew it would be busy realising I have a 2000 word essay due on the 2nd April, a 2000word(ish) reseach proposal due on the 5th May and 4000word essay on subject related to my thesis due on the 18th June is freaking me out as I’m also expected to be regulary working on my thesis itself so I can have weekly meetings with my coorodinator to discuss my progress.

4. I haven’t actually narrowed down a question for my thesis yet. I know my topic but I can’t find the original angle to explore that a honours thesis requires.

5. I haven’t yet had a weekly meeting with my coordinator. Working every day except Wednesdays means I have to meet on that day.. shouldn’t be an issue as that’s the same day class is but last week I had to take my son to the doctor before class  so we put it off unilt the Friday seeing I would be home given point 1. Then when it was decided L was going to have the operation I had to find somewhere that could do a last minute hearing test  and you guessed it the only place that could get him in before the op, had only one appointment at the same time I was going to see my coordinator so we reseduled to this Friday coming except an hour later I get an email saying he forgot he had a meeting at the same time so we’d do a phone call in the morning instead as I couldn’t make the morning (I took the oportunity of having to be off work to finally get my car in for a service as it’s a few months over due.. another stressor seeing I drive 90km each day for work)

6. Given how it feels like every time I have free time, I’ll be sitting somewhere and writing, the house has slowly been getting untidier and untidier which make me feel horrible each time I look at a pile of clutter as I’m not normally an untidy person.

7. I know i have put on 1+kilos due to have extreme snacking attacks the last week and a bit and it makes me disgusted and scared. Where the hell did all the willpower I have that got me through the hard parts and forced myself not to snack and to get out and fun go.

It just feels like an immense snowball at the moment even though point 1 and 2 are over now.

Point 3 I can’t do much about but keep plodding away at the essays. In 3 years of uni I was never late for an assignment due date, I keep telling myself this.. but then a nagging voice reminds  me that I never had to work 4 days a week with an hour drive each way.  Yesterday at the hosppital I managed to write 1000 words to add to the 1000words I had already written giving me a total of 2000words.. except I know that is not 2000 quality words so the culling and editing will drop that total down and there’ll still be writing.

And everytime I’m doing something other than writing.. such as offloading on my blog… I feel guilty that the energy I’m putting into whatever I’m doing should be spent putting more words on paper/screen.

Hopefully now I’ve actually identified what/how I’m feeling I’ll be more aware of it. But for now it’s time to go collect one of the boys from school.

Trying to eat for health not weight loss

So my weight this morning was 65.8, putting me right on 3 kilos away from my lightest and 6 kilos away from my goal (57 is in my head as the number to aim for) though if I’m utterly honest 59.9kg will have me screaming for joy. The last time I saw a 5 starting my weight number was high school.. way too long ago.

Anyway so the scales are moving, slowly because my focus hasn’t been there but moving. I’ve taken to writing little motivational notes to myself: In 3 months you could be at goal with focus, motivation and perseverance. Don’t look back in 3 months and think if only… I’m good at writing notes, not so good at following my own advice.

What I have been looking into a lot though lately is not so much how much food I should be putting into myself (I know the answer to that… less calories than I’m putting out) but what sort of food I’m putting in.

I’ve been doing a ton of research into different types of eating, Paelo, Low-Carb, High Protein, High Fat etc etc. For every good review there is, there’s a negative one too. I swear navigating your way through what is the healthiest style of eating probably requires a master’s degree in nutrition. I’ve come to the conclusion that what is probably the healthiest for me (everyone’s different) is a sensible balance. I don’t think I could stick to something that means never any processed foods or never any carbs or meat at every single meal. What I want to eat is a lot more unprocessed foods, so more vegetables and fruits etc and less of anything that comes out of a box pre-made.

My fruit intake is fine, funny how easy it is to have 2 serves of sweet fruit but finding ways to put in 5 serves of vegetables is damn difficult. Why are vegetables just not appealing to me? I have no problem serving up a massive mixed salad or steamed veges on the side of a main meal (I aim for 1/2 my plate vegs, 1/4 rice/grain 1/4 meat)  and if I’m having a sandwich it’s usually full of lettuce to really bulk it out but finding extra ways to add in filling but low calorie vegetables seems to be a stumbling block for me.

For the past few months my afternoon tea snack has included a chopped up carrot, and the last few days I’ve been adding 2 halved baby tomatoes to 2 crackers (ignoring the fact they are from a box!) to add a bit more vegetables as snacks. This is something I really need to work on.

The other thing I’ve been really getting interested in is the health benefits of grass vs grain fed meat and dairy products.  If you read the hype sites Grass fed beef contains higher proportions of omega 3 fat (we really need omega 3 as our body can’t make it) and a lot of western diets are heavy in omega 6 fat (also essential) but low in omega 3 when the 2 should be in balance. The claim is also there that grass-fed meat is leaner and usually contains a lot more antioxidants than meat from grain fed animals. It sounds better right?

So I went looking for grass-fed meat and dairy products in my supermarket and I couldn’t find dairy products that was promoted as coming from grass-fed animals though I’m thinking maybe organic might be.. that makes you think of dairy cows wandering over the paddocks.. or it might just mean they are fed organic grain. In one supermarket I looked at there was no grass-fed meat advertised and in the other there was a few cuts of high-end steak,  like porterhouse, that had “grass-fed” on it at highly inflated prices compared to the rest of meat (tbh I would expect this I guess if the animals are allowed to wander the fields rather than cooped up in a shed). But the general cuts of meat I would buy just didnt’ have any indication of whether they came from grass or grain fed animals.

I wandered out to the butcher that was outside and he had a sign saying “grass-fed” beef available so I asked him about what he had. He was actually really negative towards grass-fed, saying it is tasteless compared to grainfed meet and from his point of view much cheaper meat than grain-fed as “grass is a cheaper product” and he finds that he can keep his grain fed meat for weeks longer than his grass-fed meat (hmm, I’m thinking preservatives here) but overall he was really negative about  it.

So while he’s one opinion only, it really makes me wonder how the heck do you wade through the many differing opinions over what is healthy and what has the best benefits for your health. Not just weight loss but overall health.

Anyway that’s where I’m at now, trying to find healthy options, eat less processed packaged food and move more to burn up a few extra calories along the way. Speaking of that Uni goes back today and I’ve decided that I’m going to ride my bike to uni rather than take the car. I live 4.1 kilometres from uni so there’s no real reason to take the car if I can ride that in about 15mins. Having to  pay $5 a day for parking and battling peak hour traffic could be totally avoided if I rode. I just need to work out the best route, there is a slightly longer bike track I can take which takes me off the road completely or I can ride along the roads (tbh I’ll try to stick to the footpaths) it’s a 2-lane either way main road and pretty scary at peak hour. My state is looking at allowing adults to ride on footpaths but the law hasn’t been passed yet. Atm you can only ride on footpaths if you are over 18 if you are with a child under 12.

You know what would be nice…

Cafe and restaurant menus that list the nutritional  breakdown of foods so I could eaily track them, even the overall kilojoule/calorie content would rock as I could easily tell the better choice.

Im looking at a vegetarian  focacia  and it’s a hidden minefield; is the bread buttered, are the semi-dried tomatos in oil,  are the veges steamed or sauted in butter… argh. I know these are questions I could ask but asking for every choice on the menu is ridiculous.

I think I’ll  have to start the search for a cafe that does that. So far where I  am the only food places to do that is Kfc and Macdonalds. Helpful  but I dont want to go there 🙂

How do you eat out?

Hiding from the Scales

I didn’t post my weight stats on Saturday, then I didn’t post on Sunday. On Sunday night I decided to change my weigh in day to Monday but I didn’t post again. I wasn’t actually even going to write about it but I decided since I started the blog for me to think through this journey I better do what I started it for.

Monday’s weigh in had me sitting at 67.4, with no change in my measurements. Which is nearly a kilo gain in one week. It’s really easy to sit back and say I don’t know what happened and even easier to say screw it all, I’m obviously not meant to get back down to my healthy weight range but that is just so dumb.. but omg I do want to scream and shout and ask why is this so much freaking harder this time. The first time I was losing weight I might have had a few weeks of maintaining the same weight but never did I have a weight gain. I’m not exaggerating either, in 8 months of losing weight determinedly I never put on weight. Plateaus suck but weight gain is something else.

Anyway, I looked through my tracker for ideas because I had run every day and as weight loss is 90% food related that’s the place to start and I saw that I hadn’t tracked for 3 days. I know I’ve been keeping a running tally in my head of what I’ve been eating but if I’m not writing it down there’s probably a jolly good chance I’ve been sneaking in extras. Even healthy extras like a few extra nuts here or there is going to add the points up.  I also know there were a few lunches out with the family and while I know what the average BLT Sandwich is going to set me back in points, I could possibly be underestimating. And let’s not forget the creamy Indian dinner my son asked for his birthday tea… and add in the generous portions of birthday cake (that continued over a few days not just the day itself). But what I don’t get is why the heck it has to go on so much faster and easier than I can take it off?

What is frustrating me is how slowly I am losing this time compared to last time. I’m definitely not as focused this time as I was the first time which I know is adding to the struggle. I’m finding it a lot harder to lose weight with a partner around than when it was just me. What actually prompt me to lose weight the first time was M and I had started talking via an online group and when I knew I wanted to meet him in person,  I realised I didn’t want him to meet me at the weight I was. He knew what I looked like but didn’t know my size.. you’d be surprised how much an artfully angled camera can hide.

I dropped from 85kg to 75kg before he came over to meet me (he lived on the other side of the country) and then I dropped from 75 to 63kg in the few months it took him to move over here permanently. So all that weight loss was happening when it was just me and the boys at home so it was easy not to have to deal with temptation like meals out or another adult’s input into the meals cooked/groceries bought etc.

I’m definitely not exercising as much, while I know weight loss is mostly food related, I was doing a ton of exercise the first time which helped with the weight loss. I wasn’t working,  so 5 days a week my day would consist of walking the boys to school (less than a km), a 5km run home around the long block, then off to the swimming pool for a 30min swim, after a while I swapped the swim for weights in the gym. That amount of exercise on top of the reduced calories I was on stripped the kilos off fast. Now I’m working full time my exercise is a run in the mornings which varies between 2km (15min) and 5km (35min). Nowhere near as much exercise now so my weight loss is really going to rely on monitoring what I eat as I’m not burning the calories as much.

The weight gain is definitely an issue and deep down it’s scaring me that maybe the weight loss was a one time thing and I can’t do it again. Such silly catastrophic thinking but it’s hovering there in my mind so much at the moment. I’m trying to really tighten up my eating again and try to get focused. I want to know that I can get back to where I was and go a little further even into my healthy weight range (damn being so short, this would be easier if I was taller and could carry a few extra kilos).

I know this probably reads like a whinge and it partly is. I know the reality is, as long as my calories in are less than my calories out I will lose weight. Therefore the fact I’m not, means more calories are going in than out, and I’m responsible for that. So the only way to get the scales moving again is to face up and focus. We’ll see what Monday brings.

Weigh in Week 6

The week seemed to fly by. I really intended to write way more blog posts but just didn’t get around to it.

I was so nervous this morning  about if I would actually see a reduction in weight after last weeks little movement. My sneak peaks at the scale during the week showed a downward trend but I never trust it until the actual weigh in day.

Progress this week

Measurements	Week 5	Week 6
Weight	67kg	66.3kg
Arms	30cm	30cm
Chest	86cm	86cm
Waist	89cm	89cm
Hips	98cm	96cm
Thigh	60cm	60cm

Created with the HTML Table Generator

700g loss. I’m pretty happy with this, it also means I’ve dropped down into the next kilo range so that is always a really nice feeling. If I can just get rid of that 300g this week I’ll be down into another range which would be uber cool, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. My body seems to like doing a large(ish) loss than a tiny loss so I don’t want to get too hopeful now.

I earned 18 points in exercise from heading out on a jog every morning. Uploading my runs to fb was actually a pretty good idea, I got enough comments to definitely keep me motivated and want to keep putting up my jogs which made sure I headed out the door so I could do so. I also ate within my points ending up with 15 of the weeklies left over.

I finally spent my voucher on a new pair of running pants. I was at the shops and thought I’d duck in and have a look and  a pair of pants I was eying off a few weeks ago was on sale. From $65 down to $50 which meant my gift voucher covered their cost perfectly. They are a size smaller than what I’d normally buy but it was the only size they had left so I thought I’d try them on anyway.   I think they look ok and means they’ll still fit as I lose weight.

I didn’t buy the pink top I’m trying them on with in the photo, but I think I’ll definitely go back and get it as it gets closer to winter, I love the two pieces together. My phone holder is also pink so it makes a cute and bright set. For the last 18months I’ve been wearing black running pants with dark colour t-shirts so these make a real change from what I’ve been in.

 

Non-scale achievements

1. Ran 5 times this week.

2. Chose a grilled chicken salad when eating out instead of a burger type option when having lunch out

Goals this week to focus on

1. Sleep. This was on my list last week and I pretty much failed miserably at it right until the end of the week. Making sure I got out and ran 5 times this week meant by the end of the week I was super tired. Both Thursday and Friday I feel asleep on the couch really early in the evening which is not a good sign for how exhausted I was feeling. I don’t know why I can’t make myself get off the computer and head to bed at a reasonable hour during the week, I know how much better I will feel. So this week being in bed by 10.30pm at least 5 out of the 7 days is on my list. We’ll see how I go.

The one where I blabber on about jogging

I’ve been using mapmyrun to record my shuffles. There might be better apps out there but it’s pretty simple and I like that tells me how fast I jog each kilometre at.  It also has an option to upload my runs to the social media of my choice which I haven’t done before but I did this morning. I’m thinking that even more public accountability.. this time where my friends can see it might help motivate me even further. I don’t really know anyone who lives close enough to be a running partner so figured that some of my friends my be hiding an inner runner and be happy to chat exercise or something :).

I was reading one of my weight watcher magazines from ages ago and it had a brief snippit that positive talking to yourself while exercising can keep yourself motivated to go longer. I was surprised to read that because I constantly chat to myself on my jogs (in my head.. I don’t want to look crazy nor do I actually have the breath to talk out loud that much), nice to know I’m helping myself to keep at it.

I’m slowly getting faster in my pace which means I’m starting to go a little further each time I run which is pretty nice to see. I’ve found that my pace varies a lot whether I’m doing short runs or longer ones. The days I work I do a short run in the mornings before work; about 2km and I’ve got my time down to between 6:50 and 7min per km (from a starting pace of nearly 8m/km). The off days are a longer jog of 4km and my pace is up around the 7:30m to 8min/km mark. I need to do some google research and figure out how to get faster, it’s not something I ever really looked into before, maybe speed will just come with better fitness?

I still haven’t spent my rebel sport voucher, but with the way the mornings have been really chilly this last week (and it’s still summer!), I’m thinking I might hold off spending it until closer to the real winter and buy some cold weather running clothes. I stopped jogging before winter hit last year so I don’t have anything other than t-shirts and 3/4 pants. This morning was so cold so I wore track suit pants and they were so flappy around my legs. I’m blaming the pants completely for my slow pace on a short run. Completely the pants fault!

Anyhow I’ve carried on about jogging far too long.

Have a good one!

Weigh in Week 5

It’s taken me a day to write this because basically all I can think about when I think of the results is what the hell. 100g loss, its absolutley demoralising and making me a lot frustrated about it.

I ate within my points, ending the week with 25 extra points left over and earnt 17 activity points through 4 days of jogging. My Monday and Wed jogs were 4km long and my Tue and Thur were 2km long.  So after all that effort to only see 100g off was really not what I was expecting.

In fact there was really little to no movement in my measurements too so I don’t think it’s a case of the scales lying to me from fluid retention but I just didn’t lose anything this week. I’m going to have to put it down to not being accurate in my tracking which meant I didn’t end the week with a surplus of points, though how I misjudged over 35 points of food seems a lot unlikely.

Measurements	Week 4	Week 5
Weight	67.1kg	67kg
Arms	30cm	30cm
Chest	87cm	86cm
Waist	89cm	89cm
Hips	98cm	98cm
Thigh	60cm	60cm

Created with the HTML Table Generator

My darn period still hasn’t arrived, which is making me really want to blame the lack of movement on that, but I don’t want to get to get complacent and think that’s the cause of me not losing weight when it really isn’t.

Non-scale achievements

Since there’s no scale achievements to hang onto to keep my motivation high, lets look at what I am happy about.

1. I put my favourite pair of fitted jeans on which have been steadily getting tighter and tighter the past few months and this time they didn’t feel like they were about to cut me in half yay. What was really surprising, it wasn’t just the waist and thighs that felt looser but the calfs as well. The jogging is having benefits in places I don’t measure!

2. We went out the other day to buy the kids their new uniforms for back to school and we decided to have lunch out. M and the boys immediately voted for meat pies and I saidbut I wanted to get subway because their vege sandwiches are really low in points compared to a meat pit (about 1/2 the amount) but I didn’t mind what they had. In the end of their own accord they all decided to go with vege sandwiches over the meat pie. I can see that just one of us making a few changes is impacting us all

3. I cooked a bunch of chocolate muffins for the boys lunch boxes and I have been successfully ignoring them! I make them to a low-fat recipe already but not snacking on them is a really good thing.

Goals this week to focus on

Sleep! I often don’t come anywhere near the recommended 7 hours a sleep so this week I’m going to focus on being in bed by 11pm each night which will give me 7 hours if I get up at 6am. Being tired is actually why I missed my Friday jog, I slept through my alarm. Maybe if I hadn’t I would have seen more than that crappy little number on the scales.

 Ok, really going to try to keep my motivation high and not dwell on the lack of progress this week. It will have to come off eventually if I’m eating right and exercising.. right?

Weigh in Week 4

  A lot better this week. I clocked up 25 points of exercise through running/walking 5 days this week as well as a bike ride. I ended the week with 36 of my 49 extra points left over even though I had KFC take out during the week which was quite nice. I factored it into my points and dipped into my weeklies for it. 1 burger, small chips and a piece of chicken came to 22 points which alone is pretty much all my daily points. Thank goodness for the weeklies which allows me to have a treat now and again. I also didn’t skimp on desert, making a few weight watchers fruit based versions a couple of times this week.Maybe if I skipped the takeout and the deserts I could have lost a bigger figure.

I don’t see much movement going on in the measurements for my waist but I’m hoping that’s due to the time of the month I’m at. The first weigh in after my period last month I had a massive centimetre loss from my waist, much larger than any of the other parts, so hopefully the lack of movement is down to a bit of bloating.

Measurements	Week 3	Week 4
Weight	67.7kg	67.1kg
Arms	31cm	30cm
Chest	88cm	87cm
Waist	89cm	89cm
Hips	98cm	98cm
Thigh	61cm	60cm

Created with the HTML Table Generator

600g loss for the week.

Non-Scale related achievements

I have a really nice work skirt that I love, grey with a little frill around the bottom that I bought a few months ago and only wore a few times before I noticed it getting tighter and tighter to the point where I wouldn’t do up at all. I tried it on yesterday and it does up! I think I might actually wear it next week. I’ve also noticed my regular work skirts feeling a little looser, It’s still not really noticeable for others to see but I can definitely feel the nearly 4kg loss in my clothing.

Running is getting a bit easier, on the runs I do on work days I started only doing 2km as that was about 15mins, I save the longer 40min shuffles for the days I’m not working and the weekends, and I’ve found that my pace is getting quicker so I can go a bit further, I’m up to about 2.3km in the same time now. I also took a different path the other day; normally I just run through the streets but I diverted onto a bike path and the bit I was on had trees and grass on either side and it was a whole different feel than running past houses. It actually gave me a brief (about 800metres) feelign of wanting to run for ages just surrounded by the trees.. then it was back to houses on either side. I would love to be able to go somewhere where the whole run would be like that. Maybe when I get fitter I can consider taking the boys and their bikes to a big park or something with a path for me to run on. I’m still way too slow to want to go out to somewhere that’s full of real runners!

Today, is the last weekend of the school holidays. I can’t believe 6 weeks has flown by so fast. We were planning on going to a water park today (yay the 4kgs down will make me feel so much more confident in swimmers in public) but the weather forecast is for hot hot hot so not a day to be out in the open sun, so that has been put off until Monday when the temperature is due to drop a little and instead we’re going indoor rockclimbing. Which is a secret so the boys will be surprised when we get there and as one is buzzing around here trying to find out where we’re going, I’ll head off and get ready before they read over my shoulder.

Have a good one!

Just bumping along

Exercise is not yet a habit at all, it’s still a bit hit and miss whether I can motivate myself each day.  I didn’t feel like getting out of bed yesterday morning so I snuggled under the covers just long enough to convince myself it wasn’t worth going so I had a Sunday sleep in instead. I was feeling guilty all day especially as the 400g is nagging at me so that afternoon I said I was going for a long walk and the boys asked if they could come along on their bikes. I’m actually really glad they did as I decided to jog alongside (sometimes behind.. they can be so fast) and actually jogged for longer than if I was on my own. It certainly made up for snoozing in the morning.

This morning I was just about to head off when my youngest came out of his room and asked to come along too. I really didn’t feel like running as much as I had yesterday so it was just a walk most of the way. I read all the weight watchers stories of people who loved exercise once they start and get really involved in running etc. I love the idea of running and would love to be a runner but I really don’t like it when I’m doing it. My chest hurts, my legs get tired… does it get easier? Even when I was doing it regularly it was hard work. maybe I need to go to rebel sport and use my gift voucher on a pretty pair of running pants to motivate me. But I do want to hold off until I’ve dropped a bit more weight so I can get something really pretty there.

I’m sitting here starting to get really hungry so I better go and rustle up something healthy for tea otherwise if I get too hungry temptation kicks in big time.

Back to work tomorrow so that means a quick 15min shuffle in the morning. Oh the job interview.. it was a screening one, I didn’t learn much about the job but have made it to the 2nd stage where I get a proper interview with the two directors in a fortnight. Fingers crossed for then.

 

Weigh in Week 3

Today’s weigh in was not really exciting. There was a little loss but I know I should be able to do better. Let’s get the figures out of the way and then I’ll dissect it.

Measurements	Week 2	Week 3
Weight	68.1kg	67.7kg
Arms	31cm	31cm
Chest	88cm	88cm
Waist	90cm	89cm
Hips	97cm	98cm
Thigh	61cm	61cm

Created with the HTML Table Generator

So all in all a 400g loss and not much movement on the scales. On the exercise front I only headed out for a shuffle 3 times this week; 1 long one (4km) and 2 short ones (2km) interestingly though the short ones earn me the same exercise points as the long one because I jog the full 2km where I drop into a walk still for the 4km.

On the food front, with my birthday dinner out and 2 slices of that yummy cake, I ended the week with about 3 points left over, that’s including my extra weekly and exercise points.In addition to that, I know the last 2 days I haven’t been drinking anywhere near the amount I was drinking last week. I actually have one of my water bottles I took to work yesterday sitting here over half full. Normally I would drink both of them at work and refill at least 3 times during the day.

So there’s a ton of room for improvement for next week; do a bit more exercise, don’t use up all my points and drink way more water.

Still a loss is a loss even if it’s a tiny one and I’ll take it and be happy.

I