ani pesto

the wanderer returns

2010-03-22T08:47:00.003+11:00

He came home!

The day after I'd leafleted the neighbourhood and the morning after I cried myself to sleep fearing we'd never see him again, our daft wee cat turned up with a big whinging meow at the bedroom door. Such a relief. I've no idea where he'd been, he was hungry and covered in scratches and scabs but thank goodness he's home and safe - and grounded!

I let the cat traumas take over my life for the last week or so. What with Higgins' absence and Alfred's constant care, medication and vet visits, everything else had been put on hold and that included exercise. There was a lot of walking around the neighbourhood, but not a lot else.

There was some VERY good news in all this though. Despite all the stresses and anxieties, for once I didn't emotionally eat. I stuck to the plan religiously. I think the main thing that got me through is that I'm not doing this alone. Hubby and I are on the same eating plan. I'm doing the shopping and preparing both of our meals; what he eats, I eat (albeit slightly smaller portions). Tempation to veer from the program feels so different when it's not just me I'm accountable to. It's made such a difference. I've shared healthy eating and diets with friends before (and bloggers of course), but for the most part you're still on your own with your own actions. It's always great to have someone to share the stories and let off steam with, but when it comes to the food and daily grind, in the past I've only ever been responsible for myself. This feels completely different and I really rather like it.

Another thing that happened last week in the midst of all this cat-nonsense, is that I met the lady I'm going to be home English tutoring. I meant to write about it but had to rush straight home to take Alfred to the vet, then that was the night Higgins went missing. My new student is from Eritrea and has only been in Australia for two months. To thank me for volunteering my time to teach her, she and her sister treated me to a traditional Eritrean Coffee Ceremony and meal in their home. The whole experience was amazing, enriching and incredibly humbling. Being so new to this, I'm still quite nervous about the lessons themselves but I felt so very welcomed it most put me very much at ease. After all, what's not to love about turning coffee into a ceremony? They're my kind of people.

if it's not one thing...

2010-03-16T13:50:00.006+11:00

...it's the other!

Alfred is home after his operation and hobbling about. The injury was a lot worse than the vet had originally thought, but after a weekend living in a makeshift kitty-hospital in our bathroom, he's starting to walk again and the vet is really pleased with his progress.

However, our other cat, Higgins, is now awol and hasn't been seen since yesterday. I'm already totally frantic, he always comes home for dinner without fail. Only exceptions were one time when he was stuck on our neighbour's roof and another time when he managed to get himself trapped in an empty half-renovated house a couple of doors down. He's a total homebody and quite the wuss, he'd never stay out if there were any way of getting home.

It's only been a night but I'm honestly an emotional wreck right now. I don't do optimism very well. I just can't tell myself everything's going to be OK and allow myself to relax for fear of having let my guard down to the alternative outcome. I don't know why I do this, it's just as much of a rollercoaster whichever way you look at it. I don't know why I so often chose to fear the worst. It's definitely all part and parcel of the same issue I have with goals and dreams. If only I could get a handle on my emotions.

One day.

In the meantime I just want my daft wee cat to come home.

busy being good

2010-03-11T07:30:00.006+11:00

For once my few days' absence is not attributable to a slippery slope slip to a downward spiral. Nope, I've just been rather busy, and busy being good n'all.

A lovely girlfriend of mine was visiting from overseas. Just about every waking hour was filled with shopping, sitting in cafes, shopping some more, sightseeing, shopping a little more, interspersed with ever more frequent cafe coffee breaks. Despite getting caught out in the worst hail storm and flash flooding Melbourne has seen for many years, it was the very best of times. I talked so much I lost my voice (hubby would say this is hardly surprising, but I think he rather enjoyed the mini-break himself - from me, I mean)

I'll admit that I had fretted a little before her arrival about how I'd be able to keep up my clean eating and exercise, but I'm glad to say I took the sensible option and told her upfront. We ate well and she even joined me in a combat DVD on Saturday morning. So great to share that smug "we deserve everything we eat from now on" feeling.

Now it's back down to earth and the regular routine. Well almost routine. Today's going to be a difficult one in terms of pantry picking and emotional eating; our furbaby Alfred has an operation this afternoon to try and repair the skin and tendons on his leg after coming a cropper yesterday. We're not sure if it was a car or what caused it, poor wee kittyboy. My plan of attack is to distract myself as much as possible, eat only pre-planned meals and snacks and keep drinking so much water there's constantly something reassuringly near my mouth. Get well soon Alfred.

hiding

2010-03-04T08:40:00.004+11:00

Yesterday I had lunch with my most lovely friend Miss Milo. It was a fabulous highlight to an otherwise underwhelming day.

Truly underwhelming: I'd freaked myself out by looking at jobs in the local paper; disappointed myself by purchasing size 20-22 (sob!) PJs in the Target sleepwear sale - only to find they still clung to my belly; picked on nibbles for the rest of the afternoon when I should have recognised the signs of thirst and anxiety, not hunger; and finally, and most disappointingly, ruined a perfectly good ham and made a revolting dinner - which I still ate, why did I do that?

But back to the lovely Miss M. She wisely recommended that I write this post when I said how I'm feeling, blogwise. That is, I'd told her how very selfish I feel now that I'm posting again but still not really visiting other people's blogs. Sure, blogging is a great means of journaling and outpouring, but I used to find the real value was to be found in how it opens the door to a whole community. The support and inspiration received from others was worth countless more than any amount of self expression.

I just don't know where my head is at right now. I want to be an active part of this community, to offer support, feedback and appreciation to others. I used to feel kinship with those who struggled, be inspired by others' successes, pick up tips and fantastic ideas from folks' experience and experiments, and generally feel good to be part of a loving and supportive community. But now, even after 10 days of being good to myself by eating clean and exercising, I'm still struggling to read other people's blogs. It doesn't matter whether they're fighting to keep themselves afloat or rejoicing at the top of their game, I'm getting the same internal reaction. I feel edgy and anxious, self-disappointment, self- hatred even. Above all, I think what I feel is shame.

I thought it was only my friends and family in the UK and Perth I was hiding from. I hadn't realised how much I was hiding from my virtual friends too. Strange really, these are people who don't know my real name, haven't even seen my whole face, and who I've known only a very short time. But in their presence the emotions are very much the same.

I need to deal with my issues because no matter how much writing this blog is, by its nature, all about me; it's only worthwhile when it's also a gateway to you. Has anyone else felt this way? How did you get past it?

don't lose your head

2010-03-03T11:37:00.008+11:00

I really hadn't wanted to do my exercise today. But as I settled down to procrastinate in front of the TV, a piece came on the breakfast show about obesity; containing (of course) the ubiquitous montage of headless fatties.

My recurring dread of one day recognising my own torso on the telly was MORE than enough to whip me back into focus. Exercise done.

p.s. something else I've been procrastinating about is to update the sidebar with my current girth since getting back up to 120kg again. Until I can bring myself to do so, I apologise for the false advertising.

*update* simply fixed by removing the numbers altogether, d'oh! why didn't I think of that?

domestic goddess

2010-03-02T07:46:00.006+11:00

I think I've been bodysnatched by a 1950's housewife!

Seriously.

Whoever has the real Ani, please look after her. This alien-Ani's having a ball and might not want to leave.

You see, lately hubby's upped his own exercise and has been following a pretty serious programme of weights and cardio. With it comes a nutrition plan, which, until recently, he'd been largely ignoring. At the weekend I sat down with his plan and my fab kikki.K meal planner pad and worked out the week's food for the both of us.

picture borrowed from kikki.K website

I figured out my shopping list and trotted off to the supermarket, filling my trolley with a wide array of food and multi-size food containers.

I realise this may be very run of the mill for many folk, but for me - a non-cook; sure I'll bake a cake from time to time, but meal-preparation is not a task I've ever really enjoyed - this is bizarre and unusual behaviour.

Monday:

awoke at 6am to blend a beautiful mixed berry and banana smoothie to start us on our day
dropped hubby at the train station complete with a lunchpack containing turkey, ham & pickle sandwich (made all the more perfect by the delicious homemade sourdough bread hubby was busy creating while I was with the girls on Saturday night) and a handful of pecans for attacks of the nibbles
slotted in an hour's exercise before returning to the station to catch a train into the city for my volunteer position, resplendent with my own lunch pack and ham sandwich (no free-food lunch panics for me today)
arrived home with just enough time ahead of hubby to pre-make the homemade turkey burgers (using, of course, breadcrumbs from hubby's sourdough) and started prepping veg before it was time again to return to the station for "how was your day dear?"
after a yummy, (and very healthy), dinner, it was back to the stove to grill chicken breasts, dice feta and create a salad for hubby and my lunch today. The pride I felt at the sight of his perfectly compartmentalised salad container (salad in the main part, grilled Portuguese chicken breast in another, feta in a wee pot and a snug little space for more snacky pecans), should honestly not be allowed.

Today:

began again with another fabulous breakfast and even more exercise
with Dr. Phil providing background noise, I spent the next short while roasting pumpkin for homemade soup; experimenting with a few spices along the way even (this is getting exotic now) and working up the perfect hunger for my own grilled chicken salad lunch
with the soup ready for tonight (more sourdough naturally), all that's left to do is make the tuna bean salad, and more importantly pick out the perfect storage container, for tomorrow's lunch pack.

And the moral of this story?

So long as it involves fabulous stationery and can appeal to my creative (and perfectionist) tendencies, I really can do anything.

every day a new day

2010-02-27T15:16:00.003+11:00

I wouldn't quite go so far as saying I had a spring in my step, but I certainly awoke a little chirpier today. I caught up on my exercise, even doing pull-downs in the rain on our rusty old gym equipment, and I've eaten clean. Tonight I'll be meeting with some of the lovely lady bloggers of Melbourne for dinner. All up, a good day to be had.

ups and downs

2010-02-26T14:22:00.003+11:00

Struggling a bit today.

There are a number of possible reasons and I'm not sure which are the symptoms and which are the causes. Prime suspect at this stage is the simple existence of a To Do list and how much that's filling me with anxiety. I'm procrastinating badly.

I'm also suffering with a few aches and pains; a strained shoulder, stiff knee, and general muscle fatigue, all adding up to the reason I haven't exercised today. I'm pretty sure it's more likely to be just my flatness that's really preventing me, and not the twinges, they're most certainly not insurmountable.

I ventured back out to blogland to see if I could take some inspiration and catch up with a few old friends, I don't think I'd opened my reader for about 6 months. This brought with it mixed emotion; some good, some sad and some just a bit too much for me. I certainly wasn't mentally prepared to stumble across someone who had been heavier than me last May, but has since reached a slim and healthy goal weight. She looks amazing. She deserves every inch of that illuminating smile.

Problem is I'm now struggling not to turn the positive emotion I feel for her into negative energy towards myself. What she has done, I once almost did... and then f*cked up. What she has done, I've been recently failing to do. These are things I can't change. I'm not her and she's not me. Why waste my energy on things I cannot change? Truth is I'm not sure I know how to make that choice.

I have no particular message, no conclusions or lessons learned from this. I merely wanted to document where I'm at and to get back into the habit of facing up to the downs. You'll have seen by now I am far more comfortable baring the ups in public, the downs get eaten mostly in private.

So far no eating....

the clean continues

2010-02-24T13:44:00.003+11:00

Another couple of clean days gone by and I've even managed some exercise. It wasn't a pretty sight. My 120kg body has a strong memory of what it could do at 85kg and gym-fit, and forgot to adjust for the extra blubbiness factor.

I was doing my best to follow a DVD program when my legs simply gave way and I collapsed in a slow motion heap on the floor. I'm sure it would have been the funniest spectacle, I flayed about and tumbled, somehow simultaneously banging my knees and falling on my backside. The entire movement was reminiscent of one of those mechanical contraptions where it starts with a ball-baring rolling down here, which tips the cup over there, which then hits the cog thing somewhere else and eventually that tiny first movement crescendos into the big whoop bang crashing finale; only instead of the ball-baring and a bunch of mechano, there lay a fallen Disney dancing hippo.

I sat on the floor for a moment and then like a toddler, in shock about what had just happened, I bawled my eyes out.

But what happened next is no doubt the reason I've been flying high ever since: I walked my knees out to loosen them again, changed the DVD to a simpler program, and knocked off a 30 minute workout. 'Course in it's evilness the darn new program would have the very same exercise that had me flying in the first place, but I managed to take it easy and make it all the way through.

When I awoke this morning all my muscles gave me that reassuring scream of post-workout glory, read: pain! Muscles that had forgotten they even had a purpose in my body are now smugly letting me know they exist.

It's a small step, but so very very huge in its significance. Thank you for sticking through it with me, and giving me your support.

replay

2010-02-22T21:42:00.004+11:00

Only got a moment to write - and it's going to take longer than that to reply to the wonderful comments I got yesterday. There was a lot of truth and wisdom in them, I even showed my hubby, thank you ladies (and no you were neither offensive, blunt nor babbling) - but just wanted to speed-blog to say that I've had 3 clean days. The day after yesterday was just fine.

I recognise there's a process at play here. By the time I'd come to post my shame, and before anything had come good, it had already begun. The same every time. If I could only burn it to disk and make a handy play button ready for next time, then I wouldn't have to go through this cycle for more than a day. No more 10, 20 or 30kg weight gains EVER again. That would be bliss.

Night all. Day 4 here I come.....AGAIN

yesterday - a case study

2010-02-20T12:34:00.002+11:00

It's been a while and my brain's been over-working. I've written so many blog posts in my head, but nowt translated into actual keyboard action. Now that I'm here though, I risk taking you on a messy path through a whole lot of self analysis in one giant befuddled muddle, and we all know how much you'd want to read that. So instead I'll narrow the focus down just a little:

Yesterday:

As with every day, I woke up with plans of how to get through the day in a healthy manner. All the while trying to hush the hateful thoughts directed towards myself in my head. Carefully considering how to find a balance:

getting a little exercise without risking overdoing it and setting myself up for non-perfection failure;
eating healthily, but not so restricted that I feel deprived, now that I'm out of the habit.

Balance is most definitely the key that has worked for me in the past. I was aware of the potential danger points:

supermarket shopping,
going out without breakfast,
being forced to venture into a cafe then being swayed by yumminess if the healthy options are less than yummy.

I planned counter actions and avoidance.

So that was the plan. How did it work out?

It wasn't the best of starts, I found myself running late for the train and left without breakfast - wa wa oops! But with a clear head I popped into a cafe and ordered a coffee (small) with a slice of banana bread (on the large side, and a tightrope trigger that could have gone either way). I ate half, decided it was enough and threw the rest in the bin - woohoo!

Arriving at my destination I felt pretty good. I settled down contentedly into the morning. This was my first day in a new volunteer role; a bit daunting but so far so good. At lunch time, so it transpired, all volunteers get fed for free. Danger, Possible Diversion Ahead! I waited in line, holding my plate with a lot of trepidation, I'd seen a plate of pies being carried in ahead of me. This was a charity after all and they serve whatever has been donated that day. To my relief I was able to fill my plate with steamed rice, vegie stew, roast carrots and potatoes and a small side serving of tomato salad, a potential minefield overcome - woohoo!

Problem was in that word "fill". I felt full. I'd deliberately ensured I had enough to eat so that I wouldn't go hungry but instead I'd gone the other way. Sure it was good and healthy, this was the kind of full that feels extremely satisfying during a smug healthy kick, but my brain wasn't going to be fooled. Oh no, my brain connected all the dots and spelled out b-i-n-g-e. Yeah I know, totally wacko crazy right. Don't go looking for logic round these parts.

So what next?

Well I went to the nearest food court and systematically ate my way around it of course; cheesecake, pancakes, apple pie, cookies, even some strange savoury sausage donut construction. BINGE.

I know it makes no sense. I know what I have to do. I know what a mess I am. I know how good I could feel. I know a lot, and much much more. If there's one thing my career coach and previous counsellors are all in agreement about, it's how self aware I am.

I know, right.

So why am I not doing?

lookawaybook

2010-02-19T18:40:00.009+11:00

If I ever told the whole truth about what's on my mind, it might look something like this:

* and if you do happen to know me on Facebook please don't mention a thing on it, I find it hard enough opening up in private, I'd be gutted if anyone joined the dots.

the meaning of life

2010-01-12T10:10:00.008+11:00

Career coaching is going really well. My homework for this week is to set myself a vision. I have a worksheet to fill in, covering questions about my passions, interests and purpose in life.

I've never had much direction, I'm sure I've spoken before about how hard I find it to make goals. Previously in my career, as in my life, I've merely followed the twists and turns in the road as they open. For someone like me, this exercise is no mean feat. To help with the task of defining how I want my life to look, my coach gave me a "Life Purpose Guided Meditation".

So this morning, after dropping off hubby at the train station, I settled down in a comfy chair and started to listen. The meditation took me to a gorgeous beach with pristine turquoise sea, not at all difficult to let my mind go there, it was already 33°C and barely 7am, I really could have done with dipping my toes in the ocean. In a beautiful rockpool I was to start seeing a glimmer of how life is going to look in 10 years' time; where is home and what does it look like, what occupies my time and keeps me busy; what does work look like, what kind of people, what type of atmosphere?

I could picture exactly what I wanted my home life to look like, but I really did struggle somewhat with work. I tried to imagine walking in somewhere and saying "good morning" to my colleagues - what type of people were they, what kind of a building is it, am I office based or where am I, and most importantly (of course) do we have coffee breaks or is there a nice cafe nearby?

All my answers were rather vague.

As the meditation finished, I filled in a couple of questions on my questionnaire then had an overwhelming desire to do some gardening. Believe me, my husband will have just fallen off his chair as he read that. Ani - gardening - unprompted?!! I did mention the crazy hot temperature today yeah? I whipper-snippered the lawn until the funny plastic red string ran out and stopped me in my tracks. Then, undeterred, and despite not being quite inspired enough to get my butt into gear and go to Bunnings to buy some more, I moved my energy inside and hoovered the whole house instead.

I'm now feeling somewhat smug, and so far not at all inclined to overeat, I've even worked up quite a sweat. So there you have it, my life purpose is to do chores and housework, hubby will be delirious ;-)

later

2010-01-05T13:24:00.002+11:00

Happy New Year! I hope you're all doing well out there and 2010 is bringing good things.

Christmas hiatus is over and here I am jobless and not quite sure what I should be doing. Should I be running out there to do this and that, poking my head into every crevasse in case it might become an opportunity or a direction clue? Or should I be taking it easy, having a break and learning how to relax, trusting that all good things will come in good time?

The stress and anxiety hasn't lifted and I'm scared that with no focus it wouldn't take much to turn into depression. My weight is still on the up. Life is a constant battle to overcome procrastination. One teensy thing at a time I'm getting through it, but I know I'm not functioning on all cylinders. I keep putting off everything, writing here in the blog for one, I even have some Christmas presents still not yet sent. Most of all I've avoided making resolutions - at least that way I can't break them hey.

the lasts

2009-12-17T08:29:00.003+11:00

The finish line is in site. I'm into the "lasts" - I'm into my last week in the job, I finished my last client project, sending out my last emails, just had my last pay cheque (eeeeep!). It's all untrodden path from here on.

Thing is, I still feel stressed out and I'm still bingeing. I think I expected to feel a huge weight lift off and just be able to walk away into the sunset a brand new woman. I've now come to realise it's going to take a little while to adjust before that's even close to being possible.

Thank you so much K not Kay (and of course MizFit and Kathrynoh) for your comment to my last post. Learning to losen the safety belt is definitely a good goal.

I've been doing so much thinking lately - about opportunities, triggers, being true to myself - about all sorts of things. I hope to find some time to get these thoughts out in forthcoming posts. Pretty soon I'll have all the time in the world to do so.

eye opening

2009-12-06T13:24:00.003+11:00

I go through the same processes each time.

At the beginning I'm just lost, then comes self-hatred as everything starts to unravel. I hate what I see in the mirror, hate what I've become, hate what I've done. As the weight piles back on I'm uncomfortable in my clothes, uncomfortable in my skin. I go into hiding, disconnected and angry at myself. I beat myself up, all the while continuing to spiral out of control.

Eventually there's a shift. A subtle one. Instead of anger and hate I start to feel regret. I mourn what I've done to myself. It's an eye-opener, I can't really describe the subtle difference. It's not like I couldn't see the weight piling on all along, but I couldn't *really* see it. This new way is quiet, it's calm, it's loving, not hating.

I can't really say what I mean, can't quite describe what I'm trying to get at. I figure that's not such a bad thing, someone once told me that when thoughts are so jumbled that you can't communicate them, that's when they're the most honest; the most raw, most true to your emotions. It's then that my feelings are trying to communicate directly, without over-analytical brain having a chance to edit and re-interpret.

I think of myself as an emotional person, driven far too much by my emotions. Yet do I ever really listen to them?

At the moment I'm a bit stuck in the self hatred. I have no clothes that fit, I'm paying no attention to my appearance, taking no pride or care in myself. But just now, I had a glimmer, a fleeting thought based on genuine care and love for myself. I need to figure a way to turn to that thought and keep it going. It might be the same process each and every time, I might have a good insight into it but I still don't have a lot of control over it.

Here we go again...

This is the third time on this cycle for this blog alone. Just like the last time I'm questioning the repetitive nature of it all, wondering if people will get sick of me. But I need to learn and I'm just going to have to keep going round this rollercoaster until I've figured it out.

Safety belts on, here we go again.

ani in a nutshell

2009-12-01T14:51:00.003+11:00

In my quest to find a new path I just dug out one of those personality assessment thingamajigs I did for a job interview a few years ago. It was the kind where you answer a couple hundred questions and it churns out an automated report.

You'd think I might have picked up on the hint back then that computers weren't really my bag of fulfillment, but curiously this still ranked me as suitable for the software consultant job I was going for at the time.

Its summary:

Ani's task preferences are (in order of preference):

doing something artistic
thinking about and trying new ways to do things
working with her hands
doing something that helps others or society
analyzing facts
problems and decisions
organizing something
teaching
fixing or repairing something
researching or learning new information.

Ani prefers to avoid the following tasks (listed according to greatest dislike first):

working with numbers
driving a vehicle
working with computers

doing physical work

Ani would be interested in work that involves animals, travel, writing/language, food, health/medicine and plants.

Ani lacks interest in electronics.

Ani needs a work environment that involves working as part of a team, working with the general public and working indoors.

I'd forgotten just how spot on it was:

Ani is currently somewhat discouraged about the future. Ani is helpful and responsive to others' needs. Ani has a very strong intention to improve herself. Ani is extremely empathetic and warm, however Ani may at times become a little overly emotional. Ani tends to be reasonably open-minded, making it easier to communicate with people who have different ideas. There are some interpersonal areas in which she could improve. Ani may often have difficulty being frank or direct. Ani has difficulty expressing her own wants and needs. Ani has very low self-esteem. Although Ani has a very strong intention to improve herself, Ani may tend to be very hard on herself while trying to improve. Ani may at times be inflexible.

hello Ani, universe calling

2009-11-24T20:36:00.002+11:00

I really should get back into the habit of blogging again but it's funny to consider writing (well typing) down my thoughts when I've blocked them up so successfully lately.

I've had the most enormously positive response from my big decision (thanks, you folks, you're gorgeous!). Relaxation still seems a long way off while I'm still in the middle of craziness. Last night was another 2am finish. But I'm definitely getting the message it's time to go. First my laptop swallowed and melted my work ID card (it doubles up as a smartcard for authentication) then last night our blessed wee darling of a cat protested in the only way he knows best - he peed all over my work laptop bag. Lovely!

Finally just today my other work card, (the one that gets us in the shared building lift and car park), stopped working.

I get the message. Time to go.

my future is a blank canvas

2009-11-21T13:53:00.006+11:00

Yesterday I resigned from my job.

I've got a month's notice to work, including finishing off the stressful project I'm behind on, followed by a week's as yet unknown project, then finally two more weeks back in Perth. A month's more stress but then that's it, this will take me to Christmas Eve and then... nothing.

Nada!

Total freedom and an absolute blank canvas.

As you can probably assume from my absence for so long, life carried on going downhill for me. My stress levels got higher and higher, surpassed only by the speed at which my weight also went up. I curled up in a hole. It's easy to disappear when you're in a new city.

I need to learn how to manage my anxiety levels and at the same time reduce the source of that anxiety. This week I made appointments to see both a Career Coach and a Counsellor. I hadn't planned to resign with nothing to go to, but somehow just those two actions, and the support of a loving husband, seemed to give me the strength to do just that.

I had also never planned to be in the industry I'm in. I just found something I had an aptitude for and I followed that path blindly into a highly stressful, highly competitive role. I've no passion for what I do, no antidote for the way my job has been swallowing my life. It's time for a totally clean break and, for the first time I'm my life, to take a positive action instead of following the way of passive least resistance.

I've no idea what work I'll do and how long it's going to take me to decide on a direction. But I'm going to be as open as I can in finding out my true strengths and values, and in learning how I can apply them to a job that will fulfil me, even if it takes a while and I have to stack shelves in the meantime.

Thank you to those of you who've checked in on me, your thoughts have been so heartening. I know I can lose weight - I've done it enough times (and as exhausting as it is I'm going to have to do it all over again (!!)) - what I don't have experience in, is losing stress. I have a weight problem, but food has never been at the heart of the issue. When there's no stress or anxiety, there's no desire to stuff my face. I've tried for a long time to tackle my reaction to stress but with mixed success (as you've all seen by my public meltdown and disappearance) so here I am, and I'm humbly trying again.

with added salt

2009-09-08T11:41:00.002+10:00

It's 11:30am, I'm standing in my PJs and slippers making myself a cup of coffee with what's left of the milk after my opportunistic cat took to lapping it out of the jug when my back was turned. Life is back to normal.

Well *close* to normal. I'm still 106kg and so exhausted and fragile that I cry at anything, my eating and exercise is all over the place, it's months since I last took photos, wrote an email to a friend, caught up on blogs or did anything just for me, and even today I'll be spending what's left of it working. But it feels close, like I'm almost there.

Seriously though with the crying thing. Yesterday at lunch, my dark rye and roast vegies toastie was being made up and the cafe woman started spreading avocado onto both pieces of bread when I'd really wanted pesto onto the other side - the tears welled up behind my eyes. A couple of nights ago when I'd gone out to pick up a coffee and they told me at the counter they were shut - more tears. The morning of my birthday - LOTS of tears. Anything and everything is making me cry at the moment. I wonder if flushing out that much salty water might have a detoxing effect?

Thank you for sticking by me and for your kind words, I'll pop by to yours and say "hi" soon enough.

birthday blues

2009-09-06T22:05:00.005+10:00

It's my birthday. Hubby has been an absolute sweetie and done all he can to make me feel special - pancakes for breakkie, coffee on demand, dinner AND the washing up - but all in all it's been a benchmark birthday for all the wrong reasons.

It's the first birthday I've EVER worked. In previous years I've always taken my birthday off as annual leave and never so much as opened a work email. This year - a SUNDAY - I've spent the entire day sitting at my laptop finishing off the document from last week's Perth job, despite having worked on it on the plane yesterday and back at the house in the evening before falling asleep. I guess I'm just a bloody slow document writer.

Unsurprisingly then it's also the first EVER birthday when I haven't had that special warm and fuzzy "it's my birthday" feeling. 36 warm and fuzzy birthdays isn't' a bad tally though hey?

Age-wise, this birthday also brings me into my "should-be-a-Mum-by-now" age. My mum was 36 when she had me, the youngest of three children. For years now I've had it in my mind I'd be 36 when I had kids, can't explain why, just always seemed poetically right somehow. Today I turned 37.

A couple of days ago Facebook played it's part in reminding me just how far behind the curve I am on this one. It's the start of a new school year back home in England. On this day 32 years ago, I celebrated my 5th birthday with my first ever day of school.

That's three girls from my own class in school and note how we're talking high school already for their kids.

Me? Well I set myself the limit of 100kg and a healthy head before considering parenthood and you'll remember how I triumphantly reached that target in April. Now, just five months later and the healthy head's as much a distant memory as the sub-100kg weight. It's going to take a lot of effort and energy to turn it around again and I'm flat out of both.

Now I really am just feeling sorry for myself hey, but it's my party and I'll cry if I want to [target reference for 80's gals out there]

The good news is I'm back in Melbourne and shouldn't have to go away again for two weeks now. The bad news is tomorrow's no longer a leave day. I've got my annual review, a document to finish and a meeting in the afternoon - holiday cancelled. And yes, I plan to do all that I can to voice my concerns and rectify my current situation. Tuesday I'll most likely still be finishing off the work lose ends.... but Wednesday that freeeeeedom is still safely on my schedule.

This year's birthday has been postponed, schedule permitting.

the view from my corporate hotel room

2009-09-01T00:27:00.006+10:00

I'm still travelling.

Adelaide finished last week and this week it's Perth again. I never intended to sign up for a job that meant I only get to see home at the weekends, especially when I only moved into that home in one of those weekends and am not entirely sure where "home" is.

15 long hotel weeks.

I'm still unsettled, still overworking, still hating my job (there I said it! why am I so scared to admit I hate my job?), still bingeing and still repeating that record.

Last week I worked until 2am on two nights, 3am one night and a magical 4am on yet another. Clearly no boss expects this of his team members, so I can't help but take a large dose of responsibility for letting it all get so out of control. However many mistakes have been made by those around me to lead up to this; the project was over-sold and the client under-resourced and quite frankly in cloud-cuckooland, yet I still took all the pressure upon myself to deliver.

I'm just so darned hard on myself. The perfectionist in me wants perfection - it's one of the few times in my life where there really is just a black and a white - there's to be no allowance for doing the best job I could possibly do given all the constraints. Oh no, it has to be p-e-r-f-e-c-t. And it's my responsibility to work myself to the death to get there. Of course for that I torture myself too, telling myself that it isn't right that I should admit to my bosses how hard I'm working or charge the client for my time; they shouldn't be asked to pay for my inadequacies.

Funny thing is, while I'm in the midst of this, I don't see it as perfectionism. I just see it as what I have to do.

This isn't a life. I flew home from Adelaide on Friday night, worked on Saturday and Sunday (as I did last weekend and the one before that) then flew to Perth on Sunday afternoon, working on the plane and then again when I arrived at my hotel until 11pm. Today I was at a new clients where I took a workshop attended by 17 managers and senior managers. The workshop thing is an odd one - you'd think people who do that kind of thing might have a glimmer of self-belief?

Everything's suffering and I'm failing to find the balance that will allow me to get through it all, while also figuring out a plan how never to find myself here again.

I've taken a week's leave next week. I'm fully prepared for the first couple of days to be swallowed up tidying up the lose ends of leftover work, but then I'll be free. FREE!! Jeepers, listen to me, it's not like I'm the only one who's ever had to travel, ever had to put in an extra effort at work for a couple of months - woe is me, boo hoo.

There seems such a connection in my work behaviour and beliefs as with those in every other aspect of my life. I feel like there is probably a very simple cipher, just the one single key to unlock everything. It's all so inter-related.

When I was a teenager, my mum need only look at whether my bedroom was tidy to know whether my homework had been done or how my eating was. If any one of them was a mess they all were, if any one of them was in order, they all were. When I can feel good about work, I know I'll feel good about myself again, and vice versa, if I could feel good about myself perhaps I could feel good about work.

Next week I have my annual review with my boss (yes in my week off!) and I intend to start putting my plans into action. I don't want to change employer, just change role.

Anyways, for a first post in a while this is a bit of a rambled one. Three months of solid travel hasn't served me well. I truly hope that when I look back I can spot all the lessons I need to learn.

I get back to Melbourne on Saturday afternoon and shortly after that I plan to get back to me. I miss me. I miss feeling good, I miss all my new discoveries, I miss how fantastic it is to feel healthy, I miss how great it feels when food's not the enemy, I miss being open and I miss my skinny jeans.

Thank you again for popping by and checking in on me. I sure do get a smile when I see your messages.

left behind

2009-08-05T23:12:00.003+10:00

This is the time when I need a blog the most but I ran away. I'm sorry. Thank you beautiful people for checking in on me.

Life's still at hiatus, I'm now in Adelaide and still working around the clock at a job I'm not sure is right for me. I didn't manage the 2 good days I talked of in my last post during that week, but I did manage 4 good days last week. This week's not so hot, heaps of stress and heaps of food. I'm seeking help and I'm looking into my options work wise.

I'm trying, I really am. Problem is my virgo sense of perfectionism says any effort just isn't good enough unless the result is perfection.

I'll do my best to be back.

panic

2009-07-20T13:39:00.003+10:00

I originally made it through lunch without excess and as I walked back to the office I started to think about how I should pop my head back up out of my pit and post about it. I thought a little about how ridiculous my story is – triumph followed by crash, rinse and repeat – but those thoughts didn’t stop me, I still felt OK, a glimmer of control and positivity. What did stop me however, was the thought that if I post, I can’t binge this afternoon. That single thought sent shivers of panic through me and I practically ran out of the lift to the cookie jar.

Food has once more become my crutch. It’s not even a very good crutch, I’ll be the first to admit. But the idea of taking it away seems horrific to me. Logically I know it might only take a few days of fighting this discomfort before I gain momentum and build up strength again, but I’m not getting there anytime soon.

I’ve ballooned back up to 99kg, I look tired and bloated. Babies are back off the agenda, I’m unhappy and very lonely (both of which I know are in my head and my doing, people have reached out to me but I’m unable to come forward, I don’t know how to right now). I’m still spiralling and I don’t know how to short circuit it.

I’m still away on business and my work is suffering badly. This in turn is affecting my insecurity as I know I’m letting myself and my client down with a substandard effort. I need a break but I’m not sure that in my current state of mind, annual leave at home on my own is going to be the best course of action. I get to go home on Wednesday night and won’t have to travel again until at least a week. I have a meeting with my manager this Friday and plan to ask that I don’t have to travel again for as long as possible. It might be a career-limiting request but I’ve learned I’m just not suited to it, this is the 9th week out of the last 11 I’ve been away from home (though moving house in the middle has only compounded matters).

My goal for the week is to have 2 good days. That's all my new trainer asked of me at the weekend when I showed up 2 kilos heavier than when I'd met him for the first time just the week before. Today was to be one of those days. He said for me to plan intentionally which days to aim for so I didn't run out of week. Of course in my perfectionist-thinking head, I was only paying lip-service to just two silly days, no e-v-e-r-y day was going to be perfect, two days just seemed silly and too forgiving of the other 5... see how All or Nothing tips the balance for Nothing every time!

again

2009-07-08T22:38:00.004+10:00

This is what self destruction tastes like.

banana bread
caramel slice
slice baked cheesecake
6 arnott's cream biscuits
slice regular cheesecake
chocolate muffin
2 pizza twists
6 mars bar cookies
8 chocolate chip cookies
a box of Sarah Lee baked cheesecake bites
regular onion rings
boost bar
salted kettle chips
timeout bar

I'm becoming such a cliche.

So blind to myself.

My day started well. I was feeling really good, wearing a new dress, reading the newspaper over breakfast at my fancy hotel, feeling quite the city slicker. Sushi rolls for lunch, all's good. But then as the afternoon drew on I started sinking, feeling out of control, wanting to stick my head in the sand because I haven't got enough to show for the time I've been on-site at this client's. Starting to feel the weight of all the work I've to do and not knowing how to get a handle on it.

As I started to eat I told myself that I have to be 100% cognisant of what I'm doing. If I was really going to do this, I had to make it count, learn from it, understand the processes at play and make it right, learn enough to see it coming and know how to avoid it next time.

I spend my working life telling clients the folly of fixing a short term need without consideration of a long term strategy. Yet that's exactly what I'm doing, satisfying an immediate food fix despite the negative long term outcome. So what exactly is the short term gain? What is it the food does for me? And how do I meet that need without food?

Is it just giving me space? Letting me stick my head in the sand? When I'm eating I'm not spinning, not thinking about all my worries. Is that all it's doing? If so, there are many far healthier ways to relax, why don't they occur to me?

What's going on? I had 4 good days then fell at the very first hurdle again. Why give up so easily? Why when I've been doing so well and feeling so good?

The more I was spinning and getting anxious about my work, the more every aspect of my self-belief was being eroded. It's no wonder I gave up so easily. In that moment I had zero confidence in myself. In my head I was already a failure. The very same feel-good-city-slicker-chick from the morning, now seemingly worthless - can't both be true.

How do I give myself the space to see all this for what it is, right there in the moment when I most need it? The moment when I have the choice whether to eat or not, whether to deal with an immediate need in a way that also helps towards a longer term goal.

associations

2009-07-06T19:20:00.005+10:00

So far so good. A clean day. I've just ordered room service from the "Healthy Selections" section of the menu and the road ahead is looking clear.

I decided on a change of scene. Instead of the apartments I stayed in last week, I chose to come back into a CBD hotel. It means getting a train to the client every morning, but this hotel was the location of my triumphant couple of uber-stress-filled-but-ultra-healthy weeks last month, and I could do with some positive reinforcement right about now.

Association is a very strong force for me.

When I used to smoke, which I did for 14 years, I had strong cigarette associations with all sorts of things: coffee, phone calls, car journeys and of course beer. I'd put the phone down after an hour of blethering away to a friend and there'd be two or three fresh cigarette butts sitting in the ashtray that I'd barely even registered smoking.

The associations were so strong they were sub-conscious. When I gave up, I tackled one associated habit at a time. I'd still go out with the girls for the morning smoko break (read: "gossip") but I'd keep my hands and mouth busy with a clementine instead of the cigs. The coffee fag, the driving cig, the morning smoko... each association, one at a time all the way to the booze sticks - the hardest ones of all.

I knew myself, I knew cold turkey wouldn't fly, Telling myself I can't have something is a sure fire way to ensure that's the very thing I'll gorge on, a spot of those deprivation issues you talked about Chub?. For 3 whole months after my last cigarette I still carried a packet around with me, telling myself "if you want one, you CAN have one.... you're just *choosing* not to". I think that half full packet is probably still sitting in a drawer somewhere.

I regularly ponder how to apply those same self-aware principals to my eating. Six years after I kicked the habit, I can still get an urge to have a smoke, but I haven't - not one single cigarette in all that time. Why can't I do that with food?

Some weeks I literally cruise by, whole chunks of time can go by like a breeze, at other times it's a little more touch and go, a tightrope balancing act, and then there are weeks like last week. Last week, all associations were negative. Everything was a binge trigger, a sweet taste didn't mean a pleasurable treat, a full tummy didn't mean satisfaction, everything meant binge. All paths led to food.

I'm hoping for some better associations this week. They've even put me in a room just along the hall from the hotel gym, there has to be a message in that.

the morning after

2009-07-05T17:56:00.002+10:00

It's evening and actually a few days after, but I finally feel like the foggy cloud is lifting and I can see a little clearer again. This is a side to me and my life that I wouldn't talk about with most of my closest loved ones, let alone friends and colleagues. It's quite confronting, despite the anonymity, just how public I've made all these private thoughts here. I cannot thank you enough for treating them - and me - with such respect. Thank you for your support and for being so understanding and thoughtful in your responses.

My own thoughts are still a bit of a muddle though I do feel they've been going in a useful direction. The weekend has been clean. I fly back to Sydney again at the crack of dawn and I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I'm rather apprehensive about slipping effortlessly back into the bad habits I practiced all last week.

lost

2009-07-02T19:05:00.004+10:00

I have no idea where I'm going to go with this, I just feel the need to get it out there, offload and tell someone - anyone - everything. For that reason I must apologise that I have no idea what I'm going to say and whether it will contain details you'd rather not read.

I'm sitting in a busy food court, in a shopping mall, in the middle of Chatswood, NSW, having just binged then purged in the restrooms. How the feck did I get here?

The day started clean, I had toast and coffee for breakfast and was taken out for lunch. Lunch was disgusting taste-wise, but it wasn't too much of an issue health and fat-wise (next time anyone asks me if I like Yum Cha, please remind it's an emphatic "NO"). I was hanging out for my afternoon coffee to take away the taste. I had slight concerns that the lack of satisfaction I felt about lunch might present a potential danger for me, but it didn't prove to be a problem. I ordered a skinny cap, didn't give a second glance to the cakes and cookies and happily went back up to my desk.

So what happened?

A bloke came around the office with leftover cakes from a training course is what happened.

The tray was mostly lamingtons with a few friands sliced in half. Now I hate dessicated coconut, so if only that whole tray had been lamingtons I may have gotten through just fine, not even tempted. But no. I took a piece of friand and that's the very moment where I gave in. The first of many moments in fact, there were numerous turning points presented to me and I chose not to take the right path at each and every one.

At the taste of the almondy muffin, my brain just clicked into binge mode, "oh goody, we're bingeing, fantastic! what's next on the menu?"

I'm just so damn fragile at the moment. The slightest thing triggers the slightest thought, and then that slightest thought assumes enormous power and control.

Just two weeks ago my brain was quite happy to cope with the taste of a cake and would know to leave it there, enjoy it, but don't let it spoil all my good work. But not now.

So where was I? "what's next on the menu? I happen to know there are cookies in a jar right next to the kettle"

Off I trot to the kettle. Logically I know this is not something I want to do. Logically I know this does not meet a single need or fix a single problem. Where's the logic?

I ate 2 cookies.

I'm still reasoning with myself, telling myself just to leave it there, "it's OK, so you ate half a friand and a couple of cookies, that's OK, stop now. It's simply not a problem".

But I couldn't leave it there. It was a problem (where's the fecking logic????).

I took the lift downstairs and went back to the cafe whose cakes I'd previously ignored, ordered a toasted banana bread (indeed, bingeing on things I let myself eat when I'm being clean - now there's a personal rule broken and a line crossed) and a strawberry cup cake on the side - for while I'm waiting for banana loaf to cook of course.

At this point, I realise I'm bingeing (how passive "I realise", really? ) and there's no return so I'd best try and do something about it to make sure these calories aren't going to ruin a perfect 2 day run. This is broken perfection, this needs to be righted. I go into a second cafe so I can buy a drink "to help the medicine go down". Oh and while I'm there I might as well pick up a giant chocolate cookie.

Now I'm committed to the binge, I might as well make it a good one: eat a few of the things I've been missing and "enjoy" them (as if you actually can enjoy a binge). So I pack up my laptop and finish for the day. As I'm walking out of the building, I'm feeling pretty bloody pathetic. I was telling myself what a disappointment I am and how I'm letting myself and my husband down. Did you see how fantastic he is? That's not going to last, why would I do this to myself, why would I do it him? But telling myself how weak I am being is only serving to reinforce the weakness, it's not giving me the strength to overcome it.

Even despite the gaps in the process where I'm arguing with myself I'd decided I'm in this for the whole hog now. I go into a bakery and buy a piece of cheesecake and a caramel tart. Once consumed I scout the streets for more cafes and shops and in the next bakery I buy a second piece of cheesecake and a second caramel tart (nothing if not original). While I'm still eating, I continue to walk and find a shopping mall. I zone in on the food court. Here I order a banana crepe with banana and chocolate. I'm starting to feel pretty full and disgusting now, but still not sure if I'm quite full enough that the purge is going to be as easy as it could be. A giant caramel muffin seals the deal so that I'm fit to burst and can make my way to the restrooms to get rid of it all again.

Here's another danger point. This can end in one of two ways. Either I feel the joy of an empty stomach and the high of being back in control again after having had my cake and eaten it, or it could end with me feeling a little full and a bit of a failure, like I didn't achieve a thing and the whole process starts again. This wasn't a particularly big binge to begin with.

Like I said - how the feck?!

So what's different this week than a couple of weeks ago? Why am I stuck in this way of thinking again? What happened? How do I get back out?

I've been wracking my brain trying to work out what's going on. OK, so I'm on a stressful project (again!), I'm away from home (again!) and I've just moved house (again!) but is that really what's at the heart of this? Problem is, whatever the cause is, it's something I'm not dealing with, I'm not emotionally connecting and processing the issue, so when I question myself whether I've hit on the root cause, I'm so emotionally detached, it doesn't feel real.

I've been through eating disorder counselling of various types as well as general counselling (a fantastic counsellor I left in Perth but have reconnected with via email and the phone from time to time). I'm very self aware but yet there's a giant white elephant standing in my way that I simply can't see. I'm hoping that someone else out there can help me put form to it.

I know I'm testing everyone's patience, I'm not helping myself, I'm letting my husband down in ways that break both his and my heart. I know you'll get sick of the wolf-crier who keeps tripping up over the same damn mistakes and falling in a heap. But what do I do?

Now I'm going to stop writing and hit publish. I expect I'm going to feel very fragile and exposed after blurting out all this nonsensical rubbish - AGAIN - but I feel the need to bring my problems into the light and get a bloody good look at them.

What the fuck?!!!!!

2 clean days

2009-07-01T19:45:00.005+10:00

Hubby says I'm to celebrate my successes where I can, but I cannae help feeling a tad disappointed to be celebrating something I'd gone back to taking for granted.

I'm a smart girl repeating a lot of dumb mistakes.

But hubby's right. In fact these last couple of days he's not only been right, he's been down right adorable.

I've been having another tough time over here in Sydney. First the airline lost my luggage, then things started not going to plan with my project, I couldn't even begin to tell you how badly one of my presentations went. You know the rest.... I binged bad on Monday, but then on Tuesday, this is what I received in my inbox right around danger time:

Hi Ani Pesto!

This is your 11am motivation ping! I hope you're feeling great, we are!!!!

Feeling tired or a wee bit tempted to try a muffin with your elevenses coffee? Stay away from Bad Mr Muffin and try Miss Nice Fruit instead!!!!

Miss Nice Fruit will give you the energy you need to make it though to lunch, without adding to your hip line! Now isn't that great!!!!

Have am AWESOME day, and we'll be seeing you for your mid afternoon ping!!!!

* This email was brought to you by the *great* folks over at We Smile and Exclaim Too Bloody Much Corp!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then come afternoon tea time:

Warning! Warning! Ani Pesto! Danger time approaching!

Chin up, sweetheart. You can make it though the day. xoxo.

Dr Smith says:

When attempting to take over the universe, it's important to always keep your end game in mind. Being constantly thwarted by 10 year old brats and idiotic robots can wear one down, so always come back to what it is you *really* want to achieve, no matter how distant it seems at the time. Oh, and never monologue your plan when you *think* you're alone.

How gorgeous is he?!

Too funny!! He may kill me for showing you these, but they quite literally made my day, so I just had to share.

And the good news is - I did make it through the day.

parting lines

2009-06-30T10:59:00.004+10:00

This is how my weight chart is looking:

Orange line is my weight, green line is my target. Look how beautifully aligned they both were until just a couple of weeks ago.

First day back in Sydney and I binged again – at lunch time, downstairs from the client’s office. If they knew what a personal f**k-up they’ve got for a consultant they might question the $$ they’re paying per hour for me :-(

I’m being accountable but doing it anyways. Hardly the point.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this, around the areas of control and trust. I’m aware that I’m passively following a direction I don’t actively want to go in. As *Fitcetera* said, it’s got a lot to do with thinking I have no control in this. My clean day on Saturday is testament to that, I reminded myself in the morning that I have a choice about how I would like to approach the day and each twist and turn it brings. It worked. Come Sunday and the anticipation of being on a tough new job meant I instantly forgot I had that choice. I felt stressed, I felt out of my depth and subsequently I felt out of control.

I don’t trust myself to take charge when things get hard. That might sound a little crazy. "I" don't trust "myself". I’m exhibiting multiple personalities here, if sensible-me’s not in charge and stressed-out-binge-me has the reins, it’s still all ME right?

I think it’s no coincidence I’ve never had a career plan. In my career I’ve passively followed opportunities as they’ve arisen, climbed the ladder slowly and then wondered why I’m more junior than my less experienced colleagues (don’t have to look far for the answer to that when you see what I do in my lunch hour though hey.... hrmm too funny, even when I’m writing about having no belief in myself, I feel the need to demonstrate why I’m not worth believing in).

Personal dreams, career aspirations and the simple daily stresses of life. In all of it I'm exhibiting the very same fear of failing. Not only do I not aim high for fear of falling, but I genuinely don’t believe I have the right to either.

I see so many contradictions in all this it’s hard to write about. I say I don’t believe in myself and don’t deserve to achieve high things and yet I get defiant and frustrated with my lot – if defiance isn’t the action of someone who believes then what is it?

I don’t know that any of this is making sense. It’s a scrabbled mess of thoughts being typed very quickly, disguised as an email while the client’s not looking (so not a good professional look for me!).

Hopefully I’ll come back to make sense of it all later.

checking in

2009-06-28T19:39:00.002+10:00

Thank you for words of support. I think like many of the comments said, it was very much a pressure cooker reaction which hadn't fully blown until after I'd made it safely through the stress.

The last few days haven't been all that much better. Another big binge Thursday, a mini one Friday, a clean day on Saturday (and finally a fabbo ride on the motorbike with hubby discovering a nearby winery - very very nice) and then more stress-grazing today.

I'm off to Sydney tomorrow morning (K not Kay I'll be in touch - would be great to meet up again) for another 4 weeks straight (home at the weekends). I'm in denial about it, I haven't booked the 4:30am taxi or even thought about packing yet. It's also looking like it will be another stressful project, more overblown client expectations and pressures. Oh joy!

I'll do my best to check in. I sure do need the accountability. Despite my doubled-up gym membership I've only been 3 times in the last fortnight, I've stopped wearing my GoWear fit and my food and bingeing is back out of control (3kg gain and counting).

In a perverted way, I'm secretly hoping that the pressure of another 4am start and a new project will click me back into a sensible food frame of mind.... how backward is that?

losing it

2009-06-24T08:26:00.003+10:00

I'm totally losing it right now and I don't mean the weight. I binged again yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that.

I fully lost it in the car last night. I had an appointment with a tax accountant to lodge my (extremely overdue) 2008 return. Despite possession of a map and a GPS, I just couldn't get to their office. 50 minutes for a 5km journey. I screamed my throat roar when I found myself back on the freeway once more driving in the opposite direction to my intended destination.

I seriously all-out screamed, a deep-throated, guttural, horror-movie, scream. And then I just couldn't stop screaming. Screaming and swearing and screaming and cussing and screaming. I pity the poor folk I accosted for directions. I was a crazy woman, a total banshee.

I don't understand how I could cope so well with what was probably the most stressful period of my entire career, only to fall apart when most of the stress has disappeared.

However, today's another day. I'm here and accountable. And I promise to try harder.

snakes & ladders

2009-06-22T20:06:00.005+10:00

It's a good news / bad news day today.

The good news first: I have interwebs!!! Woooohoooooo!! There's a whole wide world out there just waiting to be surfed.

Still no ADSL and no cable, but after a ridiculous amount of time wasted in daily phone conversations to my favourite TelCo [grrrr! grumble mumble... nasty-horrible-lack-of-customer-service-gnarly-monsters that they are] the wireless dongle I bought a week ago has finally been activated.

So for the bad news: I've re-opened Pandora's food-box again, lost control and binged my way back up the scale a couple of kilos.

I've had such active internal dialogues, reminded myself very clearly of my goals and that my actions are contra to reaching them. But the problem is, in that very moment, my goals don't feel tangible. My immediate desire, nae "need" to shove my face full of food, does.

Time to start putting one foot ahead of the other on that ladder rung again.

340 unread items

2009-06-19T07:23:00.002+10:00

I finally opened my RSS Reader for the first time in weeks. You've all been busy, I can't wait to catch up. So funny, I feel like I know so many of you, I've been wondering how you're all doing, how the stories have been developing.

I'm sure I've probably got a few stories of my own I need to tell too. My first week back to almost-normality has proved difficult food-wise. I guess it's what happens when you let your guard down and feel as though you have permission to relax. I'm going to be keeping a tight reign on it for a wee while, the scales have stayed the same this week which I don't like one bit after all my recent triumphs.

I've joined a new gym close to our new house. In fact for a 3 months overlap I'll have gym membership both at work and at home for no extra cost - bargain! I tried out the cycle class last night in their swanky blue-lit, neon, cycle-room. It was one hard work out and and all the more worth it for the lollies she handed out at the end ;-)

I'll be slowly making my way through the posts, so I look forward to seeing you all soon.

almost normal

2009-06-14T20:02:00.002+10:00

I'm back in Melbourne, the Sydney project is done and dusted – mucho relief all round. The big house move is tomorrow but I've yet to finish all the documentation for the Perth job and promised the client they'd have them the beginning of this week. Hence why right now I find myself sitting on the floor of an empty house with a laptop appropriately on my lap.

Turns out too that I'd tempted fate with my “internet in the new house” comment. We can't get ADSL! There aren't any ports left at the exchange so they say. There's no cable in the area and no other providers. We've been trying to bend our heads around the prospect of either dial-up *gulp* or potentially robbing a bank to fund the extortionate wireless dongle options that lock you into a 36 month contract and are darn slow as they're so over-subscribed by all the other poor folk who can't get ADSL in the area. Hrmm. Hobson's.

Best be getting back to work. One day very soon, life will return to normal once more, I can practically smell it.

skinny jeans

2009-06-07T15:38:00.006+10:00

As a mens size 36" waist, they're hardly "skinny" for most folk, but when I bought them nearly two years ago, they were the skinniest jeans I'd worn for almost 20 years. Yet, only 6 short months later and they were once again relegated to the untouchable "too skinny" pile.

Well guess what? Yesterday I WORE THEM ALL DAY

The last time I tried them on was about two months ago, I'd wanted to see just how far (or close) they were from me. There was a wasteland of flesh between the button and its buttonhole, and no amount of contorting would permit the zip to budge.

When I chanced my luck to try them again yesterday, I was expecting a similar story, but hoped just to feel reassured they were getting closer. I certainly hadn't expected them to fit!

I'll be away again for my official HYC weigh-in, so in the midst of my skinny-jean-celebration-dance this seems like a rather appropriate time to check in:

today's weight: 95kg / 209.5lb / 14st 13lbs
loss of: 3.9kg / 8.5lb (since 12th May)
total loss this year: 21kg / 46lbs

There are even a couple of major milestones in there:

Lowest Melbourne weight. I'm now 0.1kg lower than I was when I arrived in Melbourne a year ago. A whole year of frantically running just to stay still.

BMI under 35, making me just plain "obese". No longer "severely" and a long way down from "morbidly". Next stop "overweight" oooh how I long to leave obese behind.

Feels bloomin' great I must say!

I'm still a work-brained fuzzled mess and we're also mid house-move. Most of our belongings have made their way to the new house (thanks to my fabulous hubby for all his hard work), with only a few boxes and all the furniture left to make the trip. We've lots still to organise but yet again I'll be away for most of it and trying to live by remote control. I'm back in Sydney all this week but at the moment it's looking good I might get to slow down a bit after that. Fingers crossed.

I've let my life become such a dishevelled and disorganised mess while I've had my work-blinkers on - I missed my sister-in-law's birthday, my cousin got married last week and I still haven't been in touch and I'll even be without a driving license next weekend as I've let my Western Australia one expire without having had a chance to organise a Victorian one.

I'm just so grateful that while everything else has been a mess, for once my food's been under control - so far touch wood!

Have a great week everyone. I've made a date with myself to catch up on how you're all doing next weekend so long as the internet's connected at the new hoose of course. Looking forward to it.

not run away

2009-06-02T22:32:00.001+10:00

Quickly popping by to say I haven't run away. Sorry for my prolonged absence. The work hiatus is yet to subside, I'm still eagerly waiting to get the "life" part of my work/life balance back.

The Perth job is finished, well not actually "finished" I'll be spending my long weekend doing even more documentation - joy! After a brief day at home in Melbourne with my husband I've flown back to Sydney and am once again holed up in a hotel and back on a stressful project and oh my goodness if only I could talk about just how stressful this one is! Is there any other kind these days?

Unlike my previous blog absentee periods though, things are going pretty well food-wise. Despite the stress levels I've not binged - very proud of that!! I've been missing the gym but walking a little more than usual.

I did weigh myself on Sunday night for the first time in over two weeks. It was a good number, but it was also straight after a long flight when I tend to dehydrate and my weight can bounce all over the place... I'll wait until I'm back home again to get a more reliable and consistent number.

My attempts at hotel food aren't getting any better. Tonight was comical. Typical but comical. The steamed vegetables on the menu in this hotel are described as being served "with Little General olive oil". Knowing that these hotels seem to justify their high prices with complex calorie per cents calculations, I figured I couldn't ask for just "no oil" or they'd find some other way to drown my veggies in calories. Instead I ordered a plate and asked for the oil to be on the side.

I very specifically said "just plain steamed vegetables, I'll add my own oil thank you". So what turns up? Oil in a bowl on the side as requested and steamed vegetables that taste of butter. When the menu says they're served with oil, it really didn't occur to me to have to specify "absolutely nothing but vegetables please, no oil and no butter". Seriously!?! At least it was truly only a hint this time and not a flood.

Anyways, excuse the garbled typing. I'd best run, it's past my bedtime and I was up at 4:30am today. Can't wait to be back to normal. I have so much to talk about. We're moving for starters. In fact my marvel of a husband is carrying the can right now and organising the whole lot on his tod - he really has been fantastic while I've been so work-blinkered.

steaming

2009-05-25T21:56:00.006+10:00

If someone ordered steamed fish, a side plate of steamed vegetables and hold the rice. Wouldn't you get the message they might have a preference for their meal not to be drowning in butter?

Gah!!

I'd had a treat for breakkie (a large toasted banana cake) and another treat for lunch (huuuuge yummy toasted avocado, pumpkin, mushroom, cheese & pesto sandwich) and wanted something ultra light for dinner. Infuriatingly I would have requested "no butter", but for the fact this is the very same meal I had last week (bar the absence of rice) in the very same restaurant - last time there was no butter.

Even more infuriatingly, I didn't send it back.

Sorry, I'm turning into such a broken record with my failures to order healthy food. Note to self: learn to be more assertive in restaurants!

I'm also starting to spin out and stress about my project. I didn't get any work done over the weekend and I'm now very behind and can't see the wood for the trees. After I'd done so so well last week *sigh*

the unknown

2009-05-24T22:23:00.003+10:00

Oh how I wish I knew what I weighed right now.

It would be great if I were one of those strong types who could be happy just knowing that I've been eating clean and so eventually my waistband will start to loosen again. But I'm not. No, I really need the reassurance of a number; a cold hard fact.

While I was out shopping yesterday, I trailed the town for a pair of scales and couldn't find any. None of the pharmacies I visited even had a coin operated set. I toyed with going to the bathroom section of the department stores just to "try out" the scales for sale. But unlike when I did this in the States last summer, it had turned rather autumnal here in Perth yesterday and so removing my boots and winter woolly coat would be rather less inconspicuous than slipping out of my sandals was in Seattle.

My GoWear Fit's telling me I've had enough of a calorie deficit to have lost 1.3kg over the last week and a half. I'd so love to put that to the test.

the key

2009-05-23T21:18:00.007+10:00

Look who's been shopping....

*squeee*

Tiffany's have opened in Perth since I was last here, it seemed only fitting I should pay them a visit. How can any girl resist those magical little blue boxes with their pretty white bows?

I'm not generally one for extravagant impulse buys, but this gorgeous key was calling me, after a lengthy indecisive dither between the entire range of keys and their assorted chains, tried on in every possible combination, that is.

I may not have the key to life, happiness and weight loss yet, but I'd like to think I'm on the right track.

taken the evening off

2009-05-20T22:53:00.002+10:00

This evening is the first evening I haven't worked for quite a wee while. It feels right good to be doing nothing (and I'm so far successfully fighting off any guilt thoughts at what else I could be doing). The formal presentations and workshop part of this job are over - phew! I've never pushed myself so far outside of my comfort zone before, three whole solid days of it. Next on the agenda, I have a few meetings and then I have to write up all the results and findings in just two days (hmm, a document! - we really don't get on) before moving on to the next part of the project next week.

There are so many things I would like to have written about over the last couple of weeks. My GoWear fit arrived. I've been wearing it religiously and so far, it's done a great job of showing me just how sedentary my stress days really are. Seriously! For example, on days when I worked crazy hours, I didn't even top 3,000 steps and burned no more than about 1,700 calories the whole day (no deficit left so no loss). Top that with the hormonal upsets of lack of sleep and increased stress and it's no wonder I don't lose when I'm like this.

I made it to the gym again this morning. I only did about 20 mins on cardio machines, but it's something. I've managed to keep my eating on track, tonight I had a mushroom and spinach curry with saffron rice and a side of eggplant crush (even got heaps of leftovers sitting in my mini-bar fridge and had the hotel leave me a microwave so I can re-heat tomorrow).

I'm still stressed, I'm still not drinking enough water and my ankles are swollen. But right now I'm counting blessings - not beating myself up over negatives.

Anyhoo, must go to bed now or my evening off to re-coup will be wasted. Night all.

getting through it

2009-05-18T23:48:00.004+10:00

First of all a HUGE thank you to you all for your words of encouragement. You never fail me, even when I'm blatantly ignoring my blog reader and sitting in a hazed fuzz of stress-induced nonsense, you had kind words of support and advice for me.

Thank you xxx

I've made it to the end of the first day in Perth - a place I couldn't even envisage yesterday while sobbing uncontrollably to my poor hubby, not wanting to get on a plane and questioning why I'm doing any of this.

Today's been a personal triumph - I woke up early (helped by the time zone difference) and went downstairs to the hotel gym (yay!!). I then got through a whole day of delivering presentations and workshops to an all male technical audience. Not as slick as I might have liked but I got there. For dinner I had steamed snapper with coriander rice and a side of steamed broccoli. No excesses, no binging, no stress-eating. The toblerones, dairy milks and boxes of pringles chips remain untouched in the mini-bar. I might actually take hubby's advice and have the hotel remove them from the room.

Result! Day 1 down, 12 more to go.

It bemuses me how well I must outwardly mask my fear and stress. The folk around me at work see a competent professional. One of my colleagues even jokes about what a demon I turn into on client site. He has absolutely no idea of the stress and self-doubt I put myself through. If he could have seen the tiz I've been working myself into these last few days he'd be horrified. Why can't I see myself like others do? Instead of letting their perception of me alter my own, I just let it add to the pressure I put myself through - fearing constantly they'll find out the truth of my incompetence at any moment.

Tomorrow the workshops start getting a little more in-depth and focused and I'm even less prepared - I foolishly put most of my effort into preparing the first day, thinking that I would be able to prepare subsequent days in the evenings (d'oh!!). But that's for tomorrow. Today I'm proud of myself for making it through.

not great

2009-05-15T10:32:00.004+10:00

I'm in a hole. I hate typing self-indulgent-woe-is-me posts so I'll try to keep this brief. The first week in Sydney is over, but after 16 hour work days, two 4am starts, four flights, zero exercise and a whole heap of stress (not to mention 2 binges) I still can't yet see the light for anything other than an oncoming train.

I now have to fly to Perth on Sunday and I'm still nowhere with my preparation. I'm crazy with stress. I'll be staying in a hotel for two weeks (yet more chances for nasty kitchens to serve me greasy fried oily salmon steaks when the menu said "steamed" thanks Sydney hotel for that one, my lack of resistance-energy meant that was the catalyst for binge number, two when all the large bars of chocolate from the mini bar fridge disappeared) , I haven't even contacted my friends to say I'll be back in Perth (my home for five years) as I'm not anticipating I'll have any time to see them. Just as I did with Sydney I'll take my gym clothes, but just as I did in Sydney I don't hold out much hope of actually doing any exercise. And I've gotten to really love my exercise.

I haven't lost any weight for over two weeks now. I'm tired, like REALLY TIRED. We didn't get the rental house we applied for so we're also still looking for somewhere to live. I had a training session this morning for the first time in nearly two weeks and it was tough. I was exhausted. I couldn't do anything near the weights I'd been doing and all I wanted to do was cry. To add to all this hubby's just heard his job is going to a 9 day fortnight which is a 10% pay cut and a lot of worry for how bad it might get in the future.

Told you this was going to be self indulgent misery. I'm just tired of it all. This job is taking everything out of me and jeopardising all that was going so well for me. But with lay-offs all around, I can't see any options and alternatives.

I also can't help but feel like it's me, not the job. It's me that lets myself get this stressed, it's me that takes on all the responsibility and won't say "no", and it's me that's failing to cope while all those around me look peachy.

p.s. I'm sorry I haven't read a single blog for a week now, I really hope you're all doing better than I feel at the moment. I miss you all. I really need to see about finding the time to catch up in the midst of all this, as the inspiration, support and boost is invaluable.

the best laid plans

2009-05-09T18:10:00.002+10:00

Wasn't I supposed to be increasing incidental exercise, decreasing stress and increasing sleep?

So far it's a big "wah wah oops" on all three. Oh and water and formal exercise have fallen by the wayside for good measure.

Yesterday I had to fly to Sydney to back-fill on a project at the 11th hour. If it wasn't enough recovering from the upset and stress of Wednesday, Thursday brought with it a whole new gamut of emotions. There are a lot of clients and projects who've just lost their key people and those of us remaining will have to pull together for a while. Call it survivor guilt if you will, but I spent the whole day feeling like I'm about to get found out at any minute for being not up to par; that everyone's going to wish it had been my name on Wednesday's list. I just felt really inadequate.

I'll be back in Sydney all next week and then for the fortnight after that the next job is in Perth. The knock on effect of this is I've had to cancel all my personal trainer sessions at the gym, I'll be eating hotel and cafe food for three weeks and my stress-levels have soared, not only due to the pressure of this project and the awkwardness of replacing someone who's been made redundant, but also because the Sydney job has stolen all my much needed preparation time for the next one. Very very stressed!

How's this for spooky though? Turns out my body clock keeps perfect time.

The night before Sydney, I didn't get to bed until some time around 11pm having spent most of the evening trying to get a rental application together, hey, when life's not complicated enough, why not add a house move into the mix? I'd set my alarm for 4am (*yikes*) but in my fuzzy-headedness I didn't notice it was only set to go off on Saturday and Sunday. Now I don't normally wake up at all throughout the night. I'm a sound sleeper, right through, no bathroom breaks or anything. Yet on the morning I needed it, I woke up on the dot of 4am!! No alarm. Spooky huh?!

I may be a little bit scarce (blogging and reading) for the next three weeks. I'll do my best to check-in when I can. With all the hotel food, stress and lack of exercise opportunity I'm surely going to need it, plus I've missed you all the last few days of blog-silence.

p.s. nearly forgot - major NSV in the midst of all this - on the flight to Sydney I sat in the middle seat of three, reasonably comfortably and with plenty of seatbelt to spare. Result! When I fly again on Monday I must remember to try out the fold-down table. I'll be sure to report back.

the falling hammer

2009-05-07T08:22:00.002+10:00

Yesterday was the very worst of days.

We had lay-offs at work. The atmosphere in the office was suffocatingly tense as we watched colleagues go downstairs for meetings with their managers and not come back; all the while hoping with all hope that we weren't about to get a meeting request ourselves.

Not nice. Not nice at all.

The good news is I still have a job. I'll admit I did catch myself wondering if I wouldn't rather the decision had been made for me to force me into a change. But in the current economic and job market, I don’t think that would have been a good idea at all.

The even better news is that stress of the day didn’t drive me to comfort anxiety eat. I will admit the thought did cross my mind, but I managed to stop it from settling in my head as a potential option. I should be proud of that.

I’m not looking forward to today. I have to prepare for a two week packaged client job where I’ll be delivering workshops, demonstrations and reports within a period of 10 days. It’s my first time tackling this and I have to learn all the presentations and demonstration scripts, get my head around the aspects of the subject I don’t yet know and familiarise myself with the report documents I will be required to complete – and we all know my track history with documents (both here and here)!

My thoughts are with all those who lost their jobs yesterday. And with their managers who had to be the messengers.

checking in: hyc week 18

2009-05-05T20:33:00.011+10:00

HYC weigh in day already:

today's weight: 98.9kg / 218lb / 15st 8lbs
loss of: 0.1kg / 0.2lb - i.e. "nothing"
total loss this year: 17.1kg / 37.7lbs

Can't pretend to be overjoyed with that. My eating has been close to healthy-heaven perfection all week, and on the exercise front I can report 3 personal training sessions, 2 spin classes and 1 walk in the park.

The thing is, in between all those 30 - 45 minute intense bursts of energy, the rest of my days have been nothing short of sedentary. It's a 10 metre walk to the car, then probably no more than 100 metres from our parking space to my desk. Where I've sat ALL day ALL week. I'm on the 7th floor and can't even take the stairs without setting off the emergency alarms.

I've recorded what I've eaten and exercised for the last six or seven weeks religiously. This week's calories and formal exercise are almost identical to previous weeks where I've lost a kilo or more. So where's the difference?

How about all the incidental exercise I don't note? Walking to client meetings, meeting my man for lunch, walking to his office after work on a Friday, running errands, shopping and household chores. Haven't really done any of the above this week. And of course there's my stress levels - high - and sleep levels - low.

And this is where the GoWear fit comes into the picture. Yes indeed, I bit the bullet and ordered one. Woooohoooo! It's going to tell me e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. How many calories I'm burning in my workouts as well as in general everyday life, how many steps I've taken, even how much quality sleep I'm getting. Cannae wait for the number crunching to begin!

In the meantime, while I'm waiting for it to arrive, for the coming week I'm going to concentrate on the incidentals - going for a walk at lunch, taking the stairs (where I can) and going back on the cardio equipment after my weights sessions.

Have a great week everyone.

update: "Can't pretend to be overjoyed with that." Why do I do that? Why can't I just be honest and say "I'm pissed!". It doesn't change anything, I know I'm doing really well, I know I'm not going to let it derail me, I know it's not all about the numbers. I'm still allowed to admit I'm not happy about it.

learning to dream

2009-05-04T10:15:00.004+10:00

I mentioned yesterday that I've been doing a lot of thinking about how my emotional reserve may be holding me back, in weight loss and in life. Unfortunately, at this point I've got more questions than answers, but in the spirit of 'identification being the first step' I'm going to put my questions out there and hope to work through to find the answers.*

My first question is about dreams. Cammy commented in response to my post,

Writing about your hopes and dreams is an excellent way to get them sorted out!

And that’s exactly what I want to be able to do.

I've found my mind wandering and daydreaming recently about getting slim and becoming a Mum. It really scares me to have such thoughts. I have a real issue with dreaming. I never let my mind go to places I don't trust or believe I can find in reality.

I've said before how I've always had problems envisioning myself slimmer. I just couldn't let my imagination take to me to a place of such immense hope, only to fail and have that hope painfully shattered. A couple of years ago I got so close and now that things are back to going well again, I catch myself imagining getting even closer. It lasts all but a fleeting second before I put such thoughts back in their place: either that I'm not going to get there, or that when I do, my 159 kilo's worth of excess skin will put pay to any chance of feeling good about it.

Now that I've reached my OK-to-start-trying-for-babies weight I've also been looking at young families and daydreaming about that being us one day. My next thoughts are then often around everything that could possibly go wrong, I'll get twinges in my tummy and be convinced I'm about to have early onset menopause or I'll fear that I'm just not fertile. I won't let myself dream without putting it back in its place.

I was the same with my wedding. I have been a guest at over 50 weddings throughout my life, and yet never ever let myself dream about my own big day, not even as a young girl. My own wedding dreams didn't start until I was engaged and knew it was actually going to happen - it's no wonder then that I drove myself to distraction with the pressure and stress of perfection during the planning.

I think it's all a part of my over-developed sense of self-protection. The same parts of me that would rather numb emotions than let myself actually feel and process them, would also like to protect me from the crash landing of a failed dream. I know it's held me back with my weight loss and I suspect it holds me back from pushing myself to find a new career too.

When I read this out to my hubby, he agreed and said how difficult he finds it that I will never share aspirations with him, never push ourselves towards a bigger house and a better life. He despairs about how much I'll worry about bad things that may never happen and yet won't get excited about the good things that also may or may never happen.

How do I learn to let myself dream?

I can't expect to achieve my dreams, if I won’t even let myself dream them.

*Sorry if you had high hopes about insightful observations, it's nothing but question marks here :$

dog cats and reservations

2009-05-03T12:30:00.001+10:00

Caught!

I've just gotten back from spin class, (no Aicha today but still plenty of Phil Collins and a spot of Jai Ho thrown in for good measure) picking up a skinny cap on the way home of course. As I drove up the road, one of our cats recognised the car from a few doors down and ran full pelt up to the house, he knows how to make a girl feel loved hey.

The other cat was waiting at the door. He followed me in, watched patiently as I took the lid off my takeaway coffee, then pounced to get to the froth left on it. Having removed the lid from his reach, I finished my coffee and made a start with the laundry, only to hear suspicious noises coming from the next room. Our caffeine addled cat had climbed completely into the bin under the desk, trying to fit his whole face into the empty coffee cup to lick the very last dregs.

Our boys have issues.

They seriously don't know they're cats. One of them even plays fetch. He proudly brings his bouncy ball back to us and even drops it on the floor at our feet ready to throw it again. There are slight cat tendencies involved though, in that he'll only do it when *he's* in the mood and certainly not when we want to show him off to other people. He likes to make the point that he's not here for *our* amusement.

We can't leave muffins or cake cooling on the counter. The time they helped themselves to the defrosting sausages my husband had been looking forward to all day was certainly one to remember.

But enough about the cats, they get far too much attention as it is in our household. I intended to write about something entirely different. I've been having a lot of thoughts recently that all seem to have a common theme - my emotional reserve, both conscious and subconscious. I've come to realise just how much I struggle to let myself dream or feel good about my achievements and I think I need to learn.

I've tried to write about it for a while, but it's all been such a mess of tangled ideas that I've found too hard to unjumble. I started on the subject in this post but it became extremely long - no, really Ani? so unlike you - so I think I'll break it into a couple of entries over the next couple of days. I'm not sure where I'll go with it, but it feels important for me to find out.

saturday.....zzzzZZZ

2009-05-02T20:02:00.002+10:00

A fabulously lazy and stress-free Saturday. It's a good job I made it up for spin class this morning, because ever since then I've barely ventured further away from the comfort of my sofa than the kitchen. Ani, you sloth!

Such a lazy Saturday, in fact it feels more like a Sunday. We even had our traditional Sunday pancakes this morning, and what a palaver that was. Living with our cats is like having dogs who not only beg, but can get up onto the counters. One's busy distracting me with his offensive on the pancake mix while the other sneaks in behind to get his face right into my coffee. I thought cats were supposed to be fussy!

I've been trying on clothes again. The pink floral dress I'd flagged as being next in reach, finally fits. Full-on future girliness awaits. My suit jackets are just about there and I can even do up one of the pairs of trousers, but it'll be a couple of kilos more before they actually look flattering.

It does feel amazing to fit back into my smaller clothes, but what I'm most excited about is the day when I can start throwing out my bigger ones again. I have a small bag of my hugest monstrosities set aside (size 30 jeans, size 28 tops) for goal-day comedic value, but apart from that everything else has gone to Good Sammy's.

Despite my recent clothesless weight-gain year, I fully intend to continue this endeavour. There's absolutely no reason for keeping my fat clothes. If I let myself rely on the knowledge there's a safety net ready to catch me, I'd be giving myself permission to take my eyes off the trapeze.

Oh and the reason for my lack of stress....?

I FINISHED MY DOCUMENT!!!!!

a year in the life

2009-05-01T20:37:00.006+10:00

In honour of my ani-blogoversary, I started to read over my early posts. Some of them have surprised me in their level of introspection, others have surprised me by how hidden my true feelings still were. There are posts that read like there’s a real bounce in my tone, yet I remember the level of despair I felt at the time of writing. I've spent so much of my life bottling up my feelings in food, I guess it's hardly surprising I'm only just starting to learn how to let them out.

This time a year ago, I was a newlywed, married four months, living in Perth and preparing to move interstate. It was a spur of the moment thing, we'd applied for jobs the other side of the country and decided that if we got them, we'd go for it. We both got them.

My new husband went ahead to Melbourne, he started his new job and had begun to look for a place for us to live. I was serving out my notice period at my own employers, arranging for our cars, motorbike and cats to be picked up, our furniture and belongings to be packed up and our house to be rented out. I was also slowly imploding.

For years up to that point, I had been losing weight and working through my food issues. I had gotten down to 84kg from my all time high of 159kg. But now I was starting to unravel, and unlike the stress I put myself through in the run up to the wedding, I could no longer keep it totally under the surface and the weight was creeping back on. I started the blog to keep me accountable. Things looked up for a week or two but before long, my lose grip loosened even further. The blog entries disappear.

A month or so goes by. By then I had moved to Melbourne and since flown to Seattle for a month's worth of training. While there, I continued to implode, this time a little less slowly.

I was bingeing badly and drifting into depression. My anxiety levels had gone through the roof, I swore f-ing and blinding at a poor post office worker for heaven's sake (any one who knows me will know how crazily out of character that is). Two more blog posts then again I disappear.

By the time I find my voice again in December I was in a deep dark pit. I had now regained over 30 kilos and the potential reality of re-gaining every one of my lost 75 kilos was looming overhead. Something inside of me knew to click into self-protective action. I started posting again, I ventured back to the gym and I called and reconnected with my old counsellor from Perth. The bingeing continued for a while but eventually I started to get a handle on my food intake and turn myself around again.

The rest, you know already. I'm still here. I've had my bumpy moments but I've blogged through them and I'm still finding my way. I still haven't learnt what it was that helped me turn it around - the magic formula that got me out of the pit and back on track again. Even though I wrote most days, I don't see it. I can't bottle it up for future use.

Life surely has many more twists and turns ahead for me. Stresses are in store that will be far greater than getting married, moving and starting a new job. I still don't know if I am strong enough or well equipped to get through them without resorting to my food demons. What I do know though, is that with the help of this blog, any time I start heading down that wrong way again I no longer get so far that I can't find my way back.

This blog has been more than just an outlet for my thoughts. It's a level of accountability and the doorway to a support network of loving and wise people, some of whom have become very dear friends. You've never let me down.

I would love to have written a wise retrospective of all that I've learned over the last year, but I just don't yet have the distance or the clarity to know what that is.

Whatever it is, it's working. I plan to keep on doing it.

p.s. how's this for a freaky coincidence? At my first blog weigh-in I report being 97.3kg having lost 1.7kg. Meaning my blog starting weight was the EXACT same weight I am now: 99kg. Spookiness!

happy ani-blogoversary

2009-04-30T19:30:00.001+10:00

A year ago today I wrote my very first ever blog post.

A year on and unfortunately this also happens to be the day a client's project wraps up, so I have a heap of work to finish up. I'll be back tomorrow to reflect on my year of the blog. In the meantime...

Happy Birthday Blog! Thank you for all that you've done for me.

checking in: hyc week 17

2009-04-28T20:22:00.006+10:00

It's weigh in day again.

today's weight: 99.0kg / 218lb / 15st 8lbs
loss of: 0.9kg / 2lb
total loss this year: 17kg / 37.5lbs

Happy with that.

I had a bit of a toughie again today - another "almost-binge" averted. I was stressed out and head-spinning - again - I'd eaten one large piece of cake and headed back to the cafe to buy a whole bunch more. Thankfully sanity prevailed, I bought nothing more than a coffee and got in touch with hubby so he could talk me down from the ledge. Phew!

Now I've something you may be able to help me with. I'm struggling to find a consistent calorie estimation for sushi - cooked tuna roll (generally seems to include mayo), chicken teriyaki or salmon and avocado roll specifically. I keep searching and find all sorts of wildly varying numbers, from 30 to 300 for the tuna alone. They rarely say the size. I'm assuming the first is for a small slice and even then seems kinda small, not sure if the latter is a full nori sheet or if it's what I'm looking for. I think the ones I buy are 1/2 a nori sheet in size and they're made with white rice.

How do you count them?

Good luck to all you HYCers. Have a great week.

happy monday

2009-04-27T14:11:00.003+10:00

Despite the finals fabulousness (big congratulations to Talia for winning Dance, I quite literally jumped out of my seat whoooping when it was announced, bless 'er) I'd been feeling pretty flat all weekend. I'm glad to say the flatness has now passed and I'm actually having a pretty happy Monday. It's early days yet and I'm on-site at a very frustrating client, but so far, all signs are curiously positive.

I finally made it out to the shops yesterday afternoon too. If ever I needed proof my lifestyle and priorities have changed, it was right there in my shopping bags. Three hours of mall-trekking to buy nothing more than a pair of trainers (sneakers) and a couple of bras (1 sports, 1 everyday) all of which made me pretty darn happy. It's a pleasant change to get to the end of the day with a relatively healthy wallet and a bag empty of food wrappers. In days of old, not at all that long ago, retail therapy also meant food therapy and an overwhelming need to empty the food hall of all it's sugar goods.

I proudly wore my purchases at the gym this morning. I kicked the bejeebies out of the boxing pads with my sparkly, new, pink (of course) trainers and while wearing, rather less visibly, my fabulous new crazy coloured berlei sports bra in shades of orange, grey and mauve, in my head it makes me look like an 80's throwback futuristic-style pop-star but I may just be letting my imagination stretch a tad there.

On the heart monitor question, I'm currently leaning towards the GoWearFit/Body Bugg but unfortunately neither have stockists in Australia and their websites won't ship outside the US. I'll need to investigate options for having it sent to someone in the States and forwarded on.

Aussie Biggest Loser final tonight! Sooooo excited!!

podcasts and pancakes

2009-04-26T21:47:00.002+10:00

It's a little Sunday morning tradition of mine to listen to Jillian Michaels' radio show podcasts while I'm making breakfast pancakes - the irony of making pancakes while listening to diet and exercise advice isn't entirely lost on me, but in my defence they are wholemeal and fully calorie counted into my day.

In the one I listened to this morning [available to download here] Jillian said she'd been having the toughest time with her diet this week, not bingeing but still spiralling a little out of control. She'd found herself back in what she called the Dante's Inferno 7th circle of "I deserve this". The times when our heads tell us what we most deserve is a binge when we actually deserve so much more. Instead of saying "I deserve to relax and watch a movie" or "I deserve to go for a great massage" her head had been full of "I deserve these brownies". Playing mind games with herself despite having done so much to get past this and put that kind of thinking behind her.

Sure is humbling to hear someone as famously fit and healthy as her talking about how she had to throw out all her "bad stuff" from the cupboards as she'd spent the week not being able to portion control. It was a timely reminder that this journey's never going to be over. There's no magic finish line tape.

I've always done what I can to ensure that my weight loss is due to a healthy lifestyle change and not some unsustainable fad diet, yet there's still a niggly part of my brain not quite with the program. A part of me is happy to pay lip service to the whole lifestyle nonsense but is secretly preparing to kick back and relax the day after getting to goal. Wrong diddly wrong wrong. This is for life now.

I may not have to write down what I eat every single day and I might not have to weigh myself every week, but I will always need to eat well and I'll always need to keep active. And I'll probably always need to fight the binge monster from time to time (in just the same way that stressful days take me back to a phantom desire to smoke, something I haven't done for over five years now).

Finally, just have to share this. I'm in love with this song. It might just be due to the endorphin high but it's really growing on me. It was one of two very gruelling hill climbs in this morning's spin class (the crazy ripped European of course) the other hard slog being Phil Collins with "In the air tonight" boy does he make us burn in that one.

finals weekend

2009-04-25T10:44:00.003+10:00

It's a big weekend in Ani-ville - the finals of The Biggest Loser and So You Think You Can Dance - yes, yes I live a shallow life, I know

In Dance I think my vote is for Talia. I'm not sure about Loser. I'd like a lass to take the crown, but then again I really wouldn't mind if it went to Bob either (he's such a lovely chap).

I slept in this morning and missed spin class grrrr! Not ideal, but at least it answered my body's need for sleep which had certainly been lacking lately. No space for such apathy tomorrow morning though, early night tonight lady.

Hrmm now that I've started typing, I've realised I have very little to say.. ah well perhaps it'll be a short one for once.

I'm off shopping this afternoon to see about buying some new trainers and investigate the heart monitor options.

Hope everyone's having a good start to the weekend.

“lose some weight!”

2009-04-23T14:41:00.002+10:00

...that’s what the scruffy little teenage scrotum shouted at me last night.

He delivered this directive as he cycled past me in the park, his jeans hanging off his backside, his finger and outstretched arm pointing accusingly at me and his face screwed up in disgust.

To give the little turd his dues, it certainly wasn’t the cruelest or nastiest abuse I’ve had hurled at me from strangers in the street. But, despite the instructional nature of this command, it was still only designed to hurt and belittle and not to motivate.

In the past this would have had me running to a food shop. My inner demons would have stood shoulder to shoulder with the scruffy little shite and used his words to further torture me. She wouldn’t have been satisfied until every last glimmer of positivity was removed from my brain and I was left in a crumpled mess of self loathing with no option but to drown myself under a mountain of sugar.

Funny thing happened last night though. Last night, I just held my head up high and walked on. His words barely even registered with me - let alone weighed me down - I just walked past and said inwardly “I AM losing weight!”.

I guess the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. I was still riding high from my milestone victory, plus I’d eaten well all day and I’d done two whole lots of exercise: spin class in the morning and a walk around the Tan with fab fellow bloggers Miss Milo and K not Kay after work. In fact this particular incident happened just a couple of minutes after we’d parted on my way back to the car. I was feeling right good, nothing was going to hurt me in that moment.

It’s just like something my manager said today. He was telling me he was “busy, but good-busy”, to which I replied “so long as it doesn’t become stressful-busy”. His response was “stress is only from the inside”. At the time I think I quipped something dismissive about that being a very hippy-zen attitude, but the more I thought about it the more I saw the truth in those words. Stress is a state of mind, you can be rushed off your feet busy and still not be stressed, or you might just have one task in front of you and still be totally stressed out of your box with it [ahem...finished your document yet Ani??].

I figure it’s the same with that teenager; the hurt would only have been from the inside. He’s not someone who’s opinion I respect, so why should I let it ruffle me? He’s not a friend or loved one who’s words can still have the power to cut me to the core, he’s a nobody to me. The decision whether to let his words hurt me or not are entirely in my hands. Without consciously knowing it, I definitely chose the right way.

Now, back to the happier little detail of this story you may have picked up on. Through this blog I have had the pleasure to meet some fantastic and lovely people: there was our walk last night, a lovely coffee with Ashwee a couple of weeks ago and with Kathryn last month, lunch with Miss Milo (at “Australia’s Favourite Cafe” no less), and of course the guest-of-honour special Melbourne bloggers meet with DietGirl herself.

When I started this blog, the chances of real friendships coming out of it wasn’t something that had even occurred to me. I humbly admit I have been totally blessed. You guys ROCK!

checking in: hyc week 16

2009-04-21T21:17:00.005+10:00

Turns out this little lady should have gotten a pedicure, if only I'd known my peepers were going to be on display.

Look at this: *drum-roll please*

For the HYC record that's:

today's weight: 99.9kg / 220lb / 15st 10lbs
loss of: 1.5kg / 3.3lb
total loss this year: 16.1kg / 35.5lbs

Woooooooooooohoooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!

Major milestone moment indeed. This is enormous for me on so many levels:

it's my DOCTOR'S ORDERS weight for trying to conceive (okies calm down, dinnae get too excited and start knitting baby booties just yet, I'd like to lose just a wee bit more first. But this does mean that when the moment's right for us to start trying - SO AM I!)

easy rider baby! I'm BACK ON THE BIKE. I've really missed being able to go on the back of hubby's harley (put the back rest back on baby - we're going for a cruise!)

exactly HALF WAY to losing the 32kg re-gain

a THIRD of the way to goal - 34% to be precise (again from January re-start)

it's just an all round prettier number

Thank you SO MUCH for all the amazing support, I quite honestly and simply couldn't have done it all without you all *mwah*

Phew! I think I need to get down from the clouds now, I'm starting to feel giddy.

30.9 kilos left and counting :-)

Have a great week everyone.

to bugg or not to bugg

2009-04-19T09:53:00.004+10:00

Thank you so much for your well wishes, my tummy has *finally* settled.

Not much to report from ani-land. I've been cracking on, doing my exercise and eating well. I'm about to go to another spin class this morning (the crazy European again) and then the rest of the day will be spent avoiding finishing my document for work.

I've been wanting to get a bit more accurate and accountable with my exercise levels and calories in/calories out. It'd be great to know whether I'm pushing myself enough and to have more predictable results. I've been researching heart rate monitors like polar and calorie management systems like the body bugg or the go wear fit. I'd like to know just how many calories I'm burning, but what puts me off is the monthly fees. I hate that programs like the Body Bugg and Go Wear Fit rely on an online system to which you need to subscribe. Who's to say the fees won't sky-rocket just at the point I'm reliant on the tool? I'd rather pay up-front, download the software and have continued guaranteed access to all my data.

I'm not sure whether to suck it in and go for the bugg or just stick to buying a simple heart rate monitor for now. What do you reckon? Do any of you use either?

excessive consumption may...

2009-04-17T14:48:00.007+10:00

When I talked of my tummy being an “upside-down-screwed-up-rumbly-mess” it was by no means an exaggeration. I didn’t last an hour at work this morning before I had to pack up and come home. I’ll spare you the details (poor hubby wasn’t so lucky, he’s heard e-v-e-r-y detail. Whoever said the magic and mystery disappears when you get married?) suffice to say the public conveniences just weren’t going to be quite convenient enough, so I’ve come back to the relative safety of home comforts.

I don’t know what it is about sugar-free gum and mints, but I’ve clearly built up an intolerance to something in their “diet-friendly” ingredients list. I used to get through packets and packets of gum but, just in this last year it’s changed. Now I can’t have more than half a packet a day without my guts LOUDLY vocalising their protest. And believe me, in the last couple of days, with current stress levels, I’ve given them plenty to protest about. Time to go cold turkey on the gum again.

Before getting to work I did brave a personal training session. A silent mantra of “please don’t make me do squats, please don’t make me do squats” got me through it without causing any public embarrassment(!) As I walked into the changing rooms there was a pretty and petite blonde straightening her dress in the mirror. She had on a hippy, blue, flowy, mini dress over a pair of knee-high tan boots. She looked fantastic, you could tell from her face that she felt fantastic and knew she looked good too. It brought back memories of when I reached my lowest ever weight (the bridal lingerie pic to the right there) and how I used to try on dresses I could never afford just for the simple pleasure of seeing myself in the mirror in them. I wasn’t at goal yet but I felt fantastic. Seeing myself like that, I would grow an inch in height and feel a million dollars. It was very same feeling I saw on this girl’s face. It made me smile to think that I will feel that again soon.

As I showered I thought about it a little more. I’d recently read a blog where girls who were trying to lose weight had made really nasty comments about an already slim celebrity. It got me thinking of times where I might have been inclined to be less positive in my thoughts about the hippy chick (or more likely about me in contrast to her, I rarely “compare” per se, but just like how looking at that other lass’s perfect boobs led me to mourn and regret how much I’d damaged my own, I might turn a positive outward thought into a negative inward one) and what the difference might be. I realised that if I were to begrudge her for feeling good about herself, when it’s exactly what I’d like to feel, I’d be declaring defeat of never getting there.

I don’t know a better way to explain it than in terms of food (funny that). Imagine I’m standing in line at a gelato stand because I really really want a mixed cup - one scoop of tiramisu flavour and another of choc chip cookie dough ice cream. I see a girl in front of me buy the very same flavours and start tucking in with sheer delight on her face. I would most likely smile in anticipation, knowing just how good that feels and how fantastic it’s going to be when I get my own pastel coloured tub of creamy goodness. If then the very same scene played out, but this time I watch her taste her ice cream, yet my own request is denied and the shop keeper pulls down the “closed” shutters in front of me, I'm sure I’d be less inclined to feel quite so happy for her. Not in any mean-spirited way of course, I just mean I won't share her joy in anticipation of my own in quite the same way.

I’m not sure if I’ve explained myself very well, but what I took away from it all was the realisation that deep down perhaps I’m finally starting to believe in myself and that I can actually do this again.

If I could only settle my tummy down and finish my document that is ;-)

freak outs and fake food

2009-04-15T16:47:00.002+10:00

I’m having a really stressful day.

The good news is I haven’t succumbed to my former response to such levels of anxiety. I haven’t binged or overeaten, well not on “real” food, instead, I’ve eaten so much sugar-free fake food that my tummy is an upside-down-screwed-up-rumbly-mess.

If I still smoked, today would have been a multi-pack doozy of a day. But I don’t smoke and I don’t comfort eat either (how’s that for positive language?) yet I still have this instinctive need to put things in my mouth when I get stressed. Water’s just not cutting it, as evidenced by all the empty diet coke bottles, sugar-free gum and other assorted sugar-free confectionary item wrappers in the bin next to me.

So I’ve avoided the binge monster, but instead of dealing with the issue at hand, I’ve simply substituted my misguided band-aid for something even less effective.

This isn’t going to work at all. What’s to stop it being real food again the next time? I need to deal with the source of my anxiety and stop just masking the symptoms.

And what is the source of my anxiety, why is my day so stressful? I don’t have deadlines or half a dozen things to juggle, I don’t have bosses jumping down my neck or folk competing for my attention. No one is bugging me, no meetings are scheduled.

All I have is “a document”.

A single document.

Sound familiar?

checking in: hyc week 15

2009-04-14T21:12:00.001+10:00

HYC weigh-in time.

today's weight: 101.4kg / 223.5lb / 15st 13.5lbs
loss of: 0.5kg / 1lb
total loss this year: 14.6kg / 32lbs

It's been another big week. First my triumphant bike-athon and then the return of the binge monster. But here, on the playing field where all this is measured, it's another win for the good guys. A loss. Woohooo!!

Getting closer to magic double figures... perhaps next week? The week after? Pleeeeeease! I cannae wait.

Have a great week everyone.

shining a light

2009-04-13T13:49:00.005+10:00

Thank you for all your support, wisdom and encouragement yesterday. You too make me feel less alone.

I hate that my first instinct following my food panic was to revert to bulimic thinking. If I'm 100% honest, the reason I followed up the pizza by consuming the contents of my larder, was not entirely due to "f*ck it, I may as well go the whole hog" thinking. It was also to do with eating enough to make purging a little simpler; purging I then didn't do (small mercies).

It was just how Losing Waist described. I'm a control freak, I'd done something that felt out of control so I wanted an IMMEDIATE solution.

If I eat bad I want a solution... It is why I struggled with bulimia for a couple of years... that post consumption relief (not actually a relief...it turned into a nightmare).

I know that I have to practice accepting what I have put into my body, and realizing that I have a chance to turn it around tomorrow or later today

It's that acceptance part I struggle with. In reality, it was just a pizza, probably not that bad and maybe something my body even needed, just as Ashwee said:

Your body was probably thinking "woh! I'm shrinking! Feed Me! i need to preserve myself" after burning all those calories yesterday.

I need to learn how to accept my choices - good or bad - and move on. The pizza was absolutely nothing compared to what I consumed in the end; consumption which a simple act of acceptance would have stopped from happening. The Better Idiot said it so well:

when your actions don't go to plan it's your reactions that can save you

Yesterday my immediate reaction wasn't so great; today though, I still have a choice where to go with that.

A post Cammy wrote last year has stuck in my mind and shaped so much of my thinking in this area ever since. She introduced me to a beautiful piece of prose by Portia Nelson which contains so much wisdom in its 5 short verses (I'll include it at the bottom).

When I lost my way last year, it took me months and months and a 32 kilo gain before I found my way back. Where as the last time I binged, it may have led to an even bigger binge, but it was only a matter of days before I found that balance again. With the help of this blog I'm doing just as chubrubb said, I'm "acknowledging my behaviour and trying to understand why I act this way". I'm gradually shining a light around the pit so that each time I fall back in, I can find my way out more quickly and easily.

This time I plan for it to be even quicker.

Positive thinking. I am trying to let myself "be proud, for writing about this rather than sweeping it under the carpet" (thanks Miss Milo), I've planned a day full of healthy food and I'm doing my best to accept my choices without beating myself up for them.

Perhaps next time I will have learned enough not to fall at all. I know I can do it, I've done it before.

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters
by Portia Nelson

Chapter One
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost....I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter Two
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in, again.
I can't believe I am in the same place.
But, it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter Three
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in.....it's a habit....but, my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

Chapter Four
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter Five
I walk down another street.

pride

2009-04-12T15:50:00.007+10:00

...comes before a fall.

I'm such a cliche it's unreal. So there I was, glowing in smugly goodness, I'd even looked up to see exactly long ago it was that I could barely even cycle 5km and all was good with the world.

One stupid decision later and all that positivity disappeared in a flood of tears.

Hubby and I had taken the beast out for a drive and chose to stop at a bakery for lunch. I took one look at the grease-fest on offer and knew there was nothing I'd be happy with myself for eating - but - sick of always being the boring one who puts a downer on every meal (constantly fussy about where and what to eat, never has a drink, never splashes out for special occasions, never lets her hair down any more) I thought to myself that it would be OK. After all, I cycled a marathon yesterday. I can have the greasy veggie pizza, I just won't have any chocolate or hot cross buns and I'll watch what I have for dinner.

The pizza wasn't even very nice but I finished every last oil-covered mouthful. The whole drive home it sat in my stomach like a ball of lard. Panic started to fill my head. Perhaps I could get rid of it, perhaps I could do some exercise, perhaps it wasn't actually that bad (it was). Then just like misery, it would seem bad food loves company too, so I proceeded to eat all that I could find in the cupboards - crackers, meringues, fruit bars and easter chocolate.

Just this morning I'd been sympathising with Miss Milo in a similar situation and saying how I wished I had some insightful wisdom, if only I'd realised how immediate my own need was. I know I need to learn from this, recognise a pattern, give myself credit for being accountable (I felt so foolish and ashamed I had planned to keep it secret) and move on.

I know there's a fantastic place where balance lives, I've been there before and I should know how to find my way back. One big bad greasy pizza doesn't undo a 47km bike ride, it doesn't regain 14 (or even 57) kilos, it's just a silly pizza - it just means to be careful on the extras and get back to the goodness tomorrow.

Now if I could just bring myself to press the "publish" button and show my face (full of shame in the midst of all your encouragement and support from yesterday) I will try my best to do just that - move on - back to the exercise smugness, nothing to see here.

bike-athon

2009-04-11T21:15:00.009+10:00

It's been a huge couple of days.

I had fully expected to spend it as a bike widow. Hubby had plans for a long cycle with his buddies today and a motorbike ride for tomorrow or Monday. I was just going to amuse myself.

Instead, together we cycled a grand total of 76.5km (47.9 miles).

Before now, the longest I'd road-cycled was 17km. Yesterday I'd hoped to take a slightly longer route than normal (between the banana cake and the hot cross buns I'd been over my calorie-guide limit all week, plus I hadn't exercised since Wednesday and with it being Easter there wouldn't be any gym classes all weekend) so hubs and I set took off along the Bayside from Brighton to the Westgate Bridge.

29.5km (18.4 miles) there and back.

Ride 1, Good Friday : 29.5km - Brighton to Westgate Bridge and back

It felt fantastic and the Mr. was so proud of me, the spin classes are definitely paying off. We hadn't even got half way before he declared to me, "you're so coming with us tomorrow" and texted his buddies to tell him I'd be joining them.

I was so apprehensive. I planned to write all about it last night. Even after the triumph of that day, the thought of being the slow-poke, trailing behind and making people wait for me, kept me awake.

Thankfully there was still a part of me sure I could do it. So I went along and I DID do it.

47km (29.4 miles) and they didn't have to wait for me!!

Ride 2, Saturday : 47km - Point Cook to Williamstown and back

Fan-bloody-tastic!

My joints were toast by the end of it, it was probably a good hour or two before my knees would bend without extra persuasion again, but by that time I was tucking happily into barbecue chicken and potato salad so had very little care.

I know I'll sleeep well tonight and will no doubt be stiff tomorrow but right now I'm very very proud of myself.

hot cross ani

2009-04-09T16:00:00.004+10:00

Well I’m neither hot (the layers are going back on, autumn’s most definitely here) nor cross (does stress count?), but I’ll be both soon enough if I don’t stop eating hot cross buns.

Part of the joy (and sometimes stress) of going to work on-site at a new client is to be found in exploring all the new cafe possibilities. This week my morning coffee-stop of choice has been the illy cafe on Little Lonsdale Street. While the coffee is great, what’s really commanded my attention and loyal patronage this week has been the fantastic bread. The organic wholegrain toast my honey has adorned each morning is quite simply delicious. The very first day I found it I went straight back three hours later to have another slice with soup at lunch time. The next day I was 10 minutes late for a meeting as I chose to prioritise toast and coffee over the project status meeting hrmm way to get a project manager offside hehe!

I asked about the bread and it’s from an artisan bakery in North Fitzroy called Dench. They too have their own cafe which is now firmly at the top of my list of other places to try out... though I rather suspect I’d be safer if their pastries and cakes remained unseen and out of my reach. Dench also do their own traditional organic hot cross buns, the Illy store had fresh ones in yesterday. What can I say, they’re expensive but they’re SOOOOOO YUMMY!

I bought a box of 6 yesterday afternoon.

By morning I'd eaten 3.

Darn that pesky Easter Bunny. I was so focused on avoiding a potential chocolate barrage, I didn’t even see the hot cross buns’ flanking manoeuvre in my rear view mirror. Time to start being more careful again Ani, got to leave space for that fantastic toast.

The buns really are scrummy, very dense and spicy... I'll take a photo when I get home if there are any left

[Update] added the piccies - poor hubby had to wait drooling for his bun while I spent forever setting up my tripod hehe

checking in: hyc week 14

2009-04-07T22:24:00.005+10:00

A funny week so far.

Work: Stressorama!! Suffice to say it's not been fun and has left little time or brain space for blogging or working my stuff through... or my photography homework for that matter.

Food: Shaky but stable. I've had a few food panics and even a couple of fleeting binge fantasies but fantastically no actual blowouts. I even put the most ridiculous amount of temptation in my own way by making banana cake at the weekend - very yummy - I calorie calculated and weighed every bite so that it fitted in with the day's plans. Pretty proud of that.

Exercise: Pretty happy with my efforts but a mixed bag mentally. I went to spin class on Saturday and Sunday. Sunday was the crazy European again. Boy is that class intense... in a fantastically painful but brilliant way. On monday my sweet free personal training deal was finally broken. There were two of us in boxercise class.

My partner was somewhere around 6 feet tall (perhaps I exagerate, well possibly, but definitely later in her stilettos), slim, beautiful and with the most perfect boobs you've ever seen (sorry, but they *really* were). I was completely intimidated and just wished she wasn't there.. or that I could eat a donut. Don't get me wrong, she was absolutely lovely - it wasn't her, it was me. Such a mixture of feelings involved here, even if when I get to goal I'll never have her body or anything close to it. My own boobs are already deflating and what's left isn't pretty (sorry tmi). I did that to myself, no one but me, it's a confronting thought and a lot to take in. And, anyways, isn't this all about being healthy (both physically and emotionally) and not about some false body-perfect aspiration? So why did I let it bother me so much?

Anyway, back to see how it all added up. HYC weigh-in time.

today's weight: 101.9kg / 225lb / 16st 1lb
loss of: 0.9kg / 2lb
total loss this year: 14.1kg / 31lbs

In truth the scale varied between 101.8 and 102.2 but who's counting. Still fab!

And finally, this week's photography assignment is all about relationships so, at the special request of Miss Milo, here's a couple of pics of our boys and their own love hate relationship.

progress

2009-04-06T22:32:00.000+10:00

I updated my progress picture. It may just be with the power of my super-sensitive ultra-critical detail-spotting self-perceptive eyes, but I'm actually starting to see a real difference again.

left: 22nd January 112kg
(4kg after the restart, by which time I'd stopped being quite so camera shy)
right: yesterday 102.9kg (at last weigh-in)

There's a little more square to my shoulders and a little less tummy-rolling, it's not much and you may need to squint to see it but it's keeping this gal happy :-)

saturday successes

2009-04-04T17:31:00.003+11:00

Hooray for the weekend. I'm really not sure how most of Saturday's been and gone already, the day just ran away while I wasn't looking or while I was busy doing the household chores more likely.

I made it up for spin class this morning which was a minor miracle. I'd laid in bed until the very last second, just willing the clock to get to the point where it wasn't worth getting up after all. I don't know why I play those silly games as I always feel so blimmin great afterwards.

Yesterday morning had been a benchmark personal training session. I bench pressed 40kg - my most ever - I only got out 5 before my trainer relieved me of 5kg so I could finish the set, but that's 5 bench presses at 40kg! Woohoo benchmark indeed baby! I felt like a powerhouse. There's definitely muscle underneath all this blubber, I just can't wait to peel all the layers away so someone other than me can see it.

Yet another thing I'm proud of this week is that I had a really shaky food panic but for once didn't follow it all the way down the rabbit hole to bingeland. I'd gone to hubby's office after work where he and his buddies were playing poker and drinking beer. Being closest to the fridge, I had the honour of passing out the beers and spied a packet of Arnott's Venetians in the fridge which I duly tucked in to, not a moment's thought. I stopped after just one biscuit another miracle but was pretty annoyed at myself ne'er the less. The biscuit itself wasn't the problem - it's only 64 calories after all - it's the compulsive, out of control way in which it happened that bothered me.

This continued into the Indian restaurant we went to after, the waiter placed poppadoms on the table and I instantaneously scoffed one without giving it a second thought. Again, really not such a terrible action or food in itself, but it was so out of control and as a result I became very anxious and panicky about my eating, fearing a binge to be inevitable.

In hindsight I realise it all came about because I'd left far too long between eating and was simply hungry, but at the time all I was aware of was the compulsive desire to eat whatever was placed in front of me and then hunt out for more. My brain was ready to resign itself that Miss Binge was back in charge again. My saving grace was that I had to pop out to get cash from an ATM (the waiter had come to tell us their card machine was broken) which gave me just enough of a breather to let me settle down so that I could enjoy the rest of my meal in more relaxed comfort.

I hope one day I'll start to recognise hunger for what it is, without it sending me running for cover from the binge monster.

happy april fools'

2009-04-02T20:34:00.004+11:00

A busy and stressful day down my way. I started a new project at a new client's today and boy oh boy is it a doozy. I was fully introduced to the level of stress I'm about to endure, not much to laugh about there. By the time I got home the energy just drained out of me.

Last night I had dinner with some fabulous ladies. All fellow Melbourne bloggers and one extra special international guest - Shauna the DietGirl herself. I really hope we all get to catch up again soon.

Speaking of which, it's only been a few days but already I've got 99 unread posts in my reader... I really didn't think I subscribed to that many, you guys must have been busy.

Will be back to read and write soon. I sure am looking forward to a chill-out-do-nothing weekend with plenty of posts, spin and sleep to catch up on (in no particular order).

checking in: hyc week 13

2009-03-31T22:17:00.001+11:00

HYC weigh-in as promised.

today's weight: 102.8kg / 226.5lb / 16st 2.5lbs
loss of: 1.3kg / 3lb
total loss this year: 13.2kg / 29lbs

Very happy with that.

...and I'd have been even more unquestionably stoked if the doc's scales hadn't gawn and said 101.3kg this arvo gah! An extremely pleasant surprise that turned out to be a bit of a false promise. Silly isn't it, how the glimmer of something even better takes the teeniest edge off of something already great. So let's forget what her silly scales said and be happy with mine.

Have a great week everyone.

donuts and buttons

2009-03-31T16:44:00.005+11:00

I survived the food stalls.

They gave it their best shot and sang their best siren songs. At one point the lure of a freshly baked cookies & cream donut even had me standing in a queue, but I was mercifully saved by a well-timed “out of cookies & cream” sign going up - plain old fashioned jam donuts just weren’t worth breaking a healthy mojo for.

I did have a fantastic pizza though, a lovely fresh thin stonebaked base with roasted veg (zucchini, sweet potato, broccoli, cauliflower... the works) and just the right size - not too big, not too small. Not at all bad for an events van, you really didn't want to see the state of poor hubby's chicken schnitzel (not particularly appetizing to look at or eat by all accounts).

It was a really great day overall – even better for a Brit like me – Go Button Go!! I’ll hold on to my nationality with my support, if not my voice: despite 31 years in England and Scotland, already I’ve had Aussies tell me I’ve no discernible accent after being here for only 5 years [sigh].

We couldn’t get ourselves much of a view but the noise was phenomenal and just being there and getting to walk on the track and see pit lane afterwards made it all worthwhile.

In food and exercise news I’ve been pretty pleased with progress. Monday morning I scored myself another personal gym class, who knows how long that situation can last but I’ll not ask and not rock the boat, it’s one heck of a workout. Tuesday night I had a drink with a friend over from Perth for the weekend. It was only the second (!) time I’ve had alcohol since getting my eating in order again. I counted it into my daily allowance and didn’t drunkenly pig out afterwards. A BIG tick for me. And with such a long abstinence came the bonus that I’ve become a very cheap date. I only had a couple of glasses of wine and I was totally tipsy. hehe giggle hic.

Today is weigh-in day for me, I'm going straight to photo class from work so I'll be along after that to check in. And with all this hiatus of activity I'm totally behind on my blogs *again*, sorry all. I hope every one is having a great week, I'll be over soon to catch up on all your news.

vrooom vrooom

2009-03-28T21:38:00.003+11:00

Got my earplugs and camera packed. We're off to Albert Park for the Grand Prix tomorrow - wooohoooo!

I'm super excited, I've never been to a Grand Prix before. We've been able to hear the cars from the office for the last couple of days, the anticipation is rising.

Funny really. Growing up I was the reluctant kid sister in a family full of F1 fans. Every Sunday meant a family roast in our household, very traditional, the same every week -except- when the Grand Prix was on. Family table traditions got thrown right out the window and we'd all sit in front of the telly with trays on our laps. It was quite the relief not to have to suffer the endless noise and commentary when I left. Fast forward 18 years and here I am jumping up and down with excitement to experience it all in person.

It does mean food stall temptation and no formal exercise, but I got a spin class in this morning and I'm sure there's going to be plenty of walking around the track.

Woohoo!

all worked out

2009-03-27T21:52:00.002+11:00

You know you've had a good tough workout when you're body and brain are such mush that you step into the shower, pour conditioner onto your hand then remember your hair isn't even wet yet, let alone shampooed - as if I could have lifted my hands high enough to reach my hair anyways.

This morning's personal training was a right good one. My trainer had a circuit all set up, weights, machines, medicine balls and a spin bike. Felt bloody good.

Speaking of which, I'm glad to report I made it to spin last night. It was good but I'd kept too much in reserve though. The leader had us all stretching which I thought was a recovery stretch before the big push into the final couple of tracks - but then we got off the bikes. Don't you just hate that? When you haven't timed your effort well enough, it's every bit as bad if you hit too hard too soon and leave nothing left.

I hope to get another spin in on the weekend. Might balance out the delicious dinner we just had out tonight - a yummy Moroccan veggie tagine which I just couldn't stop eating, long after I'd had plenty enough. For desserts hubby picked up an upside-down banana caramel cake to take home - yurrrmmmm - only to find when we got here that he hadn't been given caramel or banana at all, but sticky ginger. He hates ginger... I on the other hand LOVE it.

No surprises then that right now the giant cake in question is sitting in the bin, covered in washing detergent, with more than just a couple of mouthfuls missing. Hrmmm. Believe me it took strength to pass that one down.

a new norm

2009-03-26T10:32:00.007+11:00

I haven’t done any exercise since Tuesday morning and already, 48 hours later, I’m feeling stiff and sedentary. It’s fantastic how quickly my body has adapted to the increased levels of activity. So much so that it tells me when it’s missing out. It’s a whole lot easier to get into the right mindset to pick up the bike or find time to go to a class when it’s my body telling my brain to get with the program, rather than the other way around.

I’ve brought my gym clothes to work and will do everything I can (barring personally controlling the freeway traffic – grrrrr!) to get to a spin class on the way home. My body will thank me for it.

It’s been a busy couple of days. On Tuesday night hubby and went to the pictures to see “Love the Beast”. It’s a movie-length documentary about the love affair Eric Bana has with his car.... no, come back, don’t run away – it’s actually really good – honestly! If you’ve ever had to put up with a loved one’s obsession for some crazy hobby that consumes all their time and makes very little sense to anyone but him/her and their similarly crazy-minded friends, then this movie may just make sense of it all for you. I think I’ve always had a pretty good understanding of my Mister’s all-consuming engine adoration, what I hadn’t fully appreciated was just how emotionally attached I’ve also become to his car (pictured here) too.

And not forgetting his motorbike either. I’m certainly not forgetting it for one minute. It’s a race against time for me to get under 100kg (our self-set safety limit for pillion riding) before the summer weather has completely abandoned us and the bike remains garaged for another winter. Can’t wait to feel that buzz again.

Last night was photo school, another location practical - Melbourne at night – I’m getting the hang of this but it’s slow progress. My best shots are always the ones where teacher’s told me the exact settings to put the camera on, it’s going to take a while before I master it for myself. Practice practice practice.

Righto - back to work. Why can’t work ever be as fun as writing or reading blogs? How do I get a job like that?

pics from last night

checking in: hyc week 12

2009-03-24T21:40:00.002+11:00

HYC check in. Another weigh and run. I don't know what it is about Tuesdays, I always seem to be in a rush.

today's weight: 104.1kg / 229.5lb / 16st 5.5lbs
loss of: 0.9kg / 2lb
total loss this year: 11.9kg / 26lbs

Fab :-)

Have a great week everyone.

smartypants

2009-03-23T21:28:00.001+11:00

I realised I haven't fed back on my March S.M.A.R.T.s for a while. Mainly because I also realised they weren't so smart after all.

I'd set myself some daily goals that left no wriggle room. If I missed more than a day or two's hour long training, the chances of catching up got less and less. Anything other than 100% success would be failure. D'oh! I'm a bit new at this goal setting thang.

I'm going to have a good think about some better April goals. Prolly on a similar theme, but with a tad more balance. Perhaps a target number of hours exercising for the whole month - at around 80% of a month's worth of an hour a day... ooh I could get right mathematical about this. Much better to set goals that will continually stretch me, and might stretch me even further to actually surpass. After all, the intentions behind my goals were great and as a result I have increased my exercise considerably.

Not only have I started spinning again (kilos heavier than I ever thought I would dare and loving it) but this morning I got an extra bonus. My trainer has been trying to persuade me to forsake my regular monday lie-in to get to the gym for his 7:15am boxercise class. So this morning, we got up super crazy early, got on the freeway before our eyes were barely open and made it to the gym with time enough to spare for a wake-up pre-workout skinny cap even. When I walked into the aerobics studio, I was the only one there. Result! Instead of paying a mini fortune for 30 minutes of personal training, I got 45 minutes one-on-one personal training for no extra cost on top of my regular gym membership fee.

Fingers crossed they don't cancel the class, I could be on to a winner here.

wedding dinner: a blow by blow

2009-03-22T18:02:00.000+11:00

The setting was stunning, the bride simply gorgeous and as predicted, there was *a lot* of food.

After the ceremony we were directed towards a bar where bottomless glasses of bubbly awaited consumption and an endless stream of waiters played tag team with trays of oysters, bruschetta, beef wellington, arancini balls and plenty more. I'm so glad all I took was one mini mushroom and tomato bruschetta because it just wouldn't stop coming and wasn't even the starter.

When we were seated I stared for a good long time at my side plate and the turkish bread roll I'd fully intended to ignore. In the end I caved, but only had a small piece and was protected from further temptation by hubby helping me out with the rest. For the real starters we were presented with either beef or salmon. I had the smoked salmon which was served on a small fried potato and corn fritter with a small salad garnish.

Main course was either steak or chicken. I was served a steak bigger than my whole hand, perhaps a hand and a half even, but thankfully hubby came to the rescue again and I swapped for his chicken. The chicken was beautifully tender and served with asparagus and dauphinoise potatoes. The chicken skin was stuffed with something green, which I thought might be spinach or perhaps herbs but didn't taste like either and had the texture of meat... very odd I must see if we can find out what it was.

I left the skin and ate only half the chicken. It wasn't a big plate of food but the proportions of food groups were vastly out. At home my plate is normally over half full with vegetables (generally steamed) and whatever's remaining is halved between lean protein and carbs (beans, rice, pasta or more veg such as corn or green beans). Here the chicken made up about 80%, maybe even more, of the plate. There were three very thin stalks of asparagus drizzled in oil and the half dozen small slices of potato were deliciously covered in cream. The calories per bite ratio would have made an alarming number.

Dessert was a chocolate mousse, beautifully presented with white chocolate pieces, dark chocolate shavings and yet more chocolate pieces around the sides. yuuuuurmmmumumMMUMMUMMUMMM!!

I got through about a third of it before the calorie police stepped in,

"ANI!! put that fork down this instant. Keep your hands where I can see them and walk away from the table!"

Phew!

A good meal. I felt happy with my choices and was able to enjoy it.

I'm not even going to attempt to count how many calories I consumed, think of a number then double it for the amount of oil involved.

As it turned out the food was in fact the least of my worries - the demise of my social skills was of far more concern. The groom was a work buddy of mr. pesto's and so I barely knew anyone. I felt way out of my depth and far from my comfort zone. I sure am looking forward to re-discovering my confidence. I know it's in here somewhere. I suspect I just need to peel off a few more layers of fat before it's revealed to the world once more.

being prepared

2009-03-21T11:36:00.002+11:00

Another glorious summer's day. I'll say one thing for the ever changeable Melbourne weather, it is giving me a true appreciation for the perfect summer's days I began to take for granted in Perth.

Hubby and I got out for a bike ride this morning. After my spin classes I was expecting it to be a breeze but the headwind sure put pay to that. Really hard work! The way back was fun though and I really did feel like I kept up with the Mr's pace a lot better.

We're off to a wedding this afternoon - certainly a good day for it. I'm a little apprehensive about the catering. I've found a pretty good groove with my eating but (as recent events have attested) I wouldn't say it's quite sticky enough to get me through every eventuality. I can still get that panicky feeling when I've eaten something more than I'd planned and my brain clocks into binge mode. Like yesterday after work, we were at the pub for a colleague's leaving drinks and the table was overflowing with hot chips (the joys or working in a male environment). I knew if I ate one there'd inevitably be more to follow - you can't just stop at one chip. I held off until the second bowl was placed in front of me and then sure enough I ate one, which soon became two, then three and before long I'd lost count. I really didn't have many but enough that I felt uneasy and just a little out of control, no choice but to walk away and go home to the safety of a healthy pre-planned dinner.

There's no walking away from a wedding reception and no alternative home cooked meal to find solace in. Instead I need to do all I can to keep my head in a healthy place.

First thing I'm doing is volunteering to drive - alcohol-free thinking is much easier to balance. Secondly I'm planning the rest of my day's food accordingly, having a filling but calorie-light, late lunch to last me through the afternoon.

The next is just to think it though, have a mental picture of what is about to happen and what my chosen reactions will be, just like athletes do before a race. If I just dismiss my concerns "she'll be right" style, I will have failed to prepare myself for the inevitable fact that there is going to be A LOT of food and it is most likely going to be rich and delicious and I may indeed find it a little difficult.

And most of all I'm just going to keep reminding myself how well I'm doing and how worth the extra effort this will be. Just because there's going to be nice food, doesn't mean I have to eat it all. There'll be nice food again tomorrow and the next day and for many years to come. It's not going to run out.

I'll be sure to report back whatever happens.

The best part about this afternoon is that the dress code is smart casual and guess what I'll be wearing? My favourite polka dot dress! It's still a little snug, keep your fingers crossed the buttons hold out, but it fits and got the OK from hubby that it doesn't look too tight.

are we nearly there yet?

2009-03-20T14:00:00.003+11:00

The fabness yesterday promised was fully delivered and lasted all day long. I even skipped off work an hour early to get to the gym for an evening Spin class.

After dinner I logged the last of my day's food into my spreadsheet and flicked over to my weight chart to daydream about all the numbers, and the dates I will eventually claim them. I'm such a sucker for a good spreadsheet. This one's originally taken from Dietgirl's Amazing Weight Loss Spreadsheet and altered just a wee bit with extra calculations galore - sometimes I think I can actually find the spreadsheet more satisfying than the loss itself, but that's a different story.

Staring at all those numbers I had the patience of a small child.

I've been aiming for a loss of about a kilo a week (2.2lbs). Even with the slowdown of the last few weeks I'm very pleased - and proud - that I've still managed meet my target average. 11 kilos in 10 weeks so far. In the past I only used to aim and reach about 1-1.5lb so this is fast, in fact this is flippin' great.....or so my sensible head thinks. My childish brat of an impatient head is instead jumping up and down in the back seat of the car, eager only to get to her destination.

If part of me's going to behave like a whining child on a road trip, I figure another part of me needs to step up to be the Mum. I think my chain of thoughts here were most likely inspired by the fabulous Diet Girl - I just loved her analogy of the handbag of anticipation.

So which is it to be - distract me with something so interesting I forget how bored I am (if only they'd invented back-of-seat dvd players when I was a kid) or make the journey so fascinating I start to relish it? (did anyone else play "pub cricket" or "knock knock ring ring" in the car or were they the crazy inventions of my Mum?)

Some days distraction is definitely the way to go - work, a photo assignment, good teev or the movies - anything to ensure weight loss and diet isn't so firmly fixed at front of brain that I'm setting myself for a burnout, read: floor thumping childish tanty.

But on the other hand, if I start to race by without appreciating the scenery and looking at the turns in the road, how will I know where I've been, recognise the journey and find my way again?

In all honesty I'm still hitting the same bumps in the road and stumbling over the very same potholes. The difference now though is they're all recorded here for posterity, this blog is my travel log. It's all here and can be used in evidence against me should I commit the same offences again. Reading over my relatively small archives I see the repetitive nature of my ups and downs; my excited squeals followed by the bruises when I land back on the ground with a bump; I see how the correlation between obsessing with food or weight and stress is a lot closer than the correlation between obsessing about weight and my actual weight. There's already a lot to learn from. If I only listened to my child-like impatience and drove blindly to the finish I'd miss all this.

Losing Waist had short but very inspirational post on a similar theme a little while ago. Reading it I realised just how often I let the loudest voice steer the ship. My child-like impatience has a very important part to play in this journey, it helps increase my enthusiasm and motivate me, but it's not the voice who will ensure I actually get there.

pip pip

2009-03-19T11:10:00.004+11:00

It's a gorgeous late summer's day here in Melbourne and my new-found fab coffee shop ($8.50 for coffee and organic toast with honey - thank cripes it was worth it... hubby, you didn't read that. I would *never* waste that much money on coffee and toast darling) was handing out free apples this morning.

It's going to be a grand day.

To top it off, the infuriating chap whose been causing me so much stress on this latest project, is conspicuously absent today. Happy happy day.

checking in: hyc week 11

2009-03-17T21:41:00.003+11:00

Time to HYC check in. This was the week the binge bit back and I sure am glad it's over.

today's weight: 105kg / 231.5lb / 16st 7.5lbs
loss of: 1kg / 2.2lb
total loss this year: 11kg / 24lbs

After three weeks of not moving, this really wasn't the week I expected to show any loss so this is fantastic.

Usual small print of course, you'll have realised by now I don't trust my losses until I can own them for a wee while. So finger's crossed this one's staying.

Have a great week everyone.

when skinny's not skinny

2009-03-17T15:15:00.005+11:00

Caffeine Ani's got a new pet peeve.

As most of you will know by now I'm a skinny cap girl.

Figure 1: a fine example of a Melbourne Skinny Cap
Chapel Street, circa January 2008

I love my milk smooth and creamy, I never take sugar, but I sure do like that little touch of chocolatey sweetness on the top, hence why I've always had a preference for cappuccino over a latte.

Exceptions to this rule occurred in Seattle where I discovered cappuccino means half a cup of over-boiled milk with washing-up foam on top. Thankfully due to the obliging self-service nature of the chocolate sprinkles in most establishments, I found I could ask for a latte for the perfect milk consistency and self-serve my own chocolatey goodness. Result!

You can't imagine the relief of this discovery, visiting Seattle was practically a pilgrimage for little ol' Anibucks. In my former years, many an hour had been wiled away sitting in the cosy armchairs of that famous Seattle-born coffee house overlooking Edinburgh castle. Four years in Perth having to sit on the flimsy Parisian style cafe chairs of Dome cafes - the closest thing Perth had to a 'bucks - had left me reminiscing and glassy eyed at the prospect of visiting the motherland.

Anyhoo, the one thing that never changes about my cap is the "skinny" part.

Non-negotiable non-fat.

So just now, when I got my skinny cap and the chap before me got a regular latte. Why was the milk poured from the same jug?

I even asked the lady what milk she used and she replied "you asked for skinny, yeah?". Very clever answer Mrs Politician Lady. Clarify what I asked for not what you gave me. I see your game.

It's all in the ordering.

Ask the right questions, use the right phrase and you'll land the magic word that gets you what you're after. "Skinny" might work in most places, "non-fat" might in others, or it might just get you a quizzical look.

The coffee shop downstairs from my old work in Perth even had it's very own codes. After months of asking for my usual skinny cap, I was served by a new guy who unwittingly asked me "is that hi-lo or blue-cap?"

Uh. Wha??

See in that particular cafe, "skinny" meant Hi-Lo - otherwise known as "semi-skimmed" for the Brits, what would that be for the Americans - 1%/2%? - and if you wanted actual skinny, non-fat, milk you needed to ask for "blue cap" because that's the colour of the lids on the bottles their non-fat milk used to come in.

Which incidentally is a whole other thing. In the UK red meant skimmed... eek I can't even remember what semi-skimmed and full fat were... were they blue and green? Anyways, in Oz it's not as standardised so to add to the confusion the "blue cap" milk this cafe now used was actually poured out of a bottle with a YELLOW lid. Go figure.

I'd been ordering the wrong thing all those months but I sure did feel very daft when I upgraded to ask for a "blue cap cap".

It wasn't all Dome and blue cap caps in Perth, there were some fabulous gems of coffee shops, and of course Melbourne too sure knows how to make a decent cup of coffee - in fact, they're famous for their laneways and cafe culture don't doubt it's half the reason we moved here. But despite the fantasticness of the coffee and the creativity of the latte art, Ani wants some standards. I need to know what to ask for and what I'm going to get.

I'm a simple minded lass and don't forget most of these transactions occur before I've had my coffee, the brain's not in gear yet.

/end-soapbox

baby steps babycakes

2009-03-15T14:55:00.010+11:00

The days after a binge can be such a mine field. Even when there are no anxiety or emotional triggers, the fact is, I've made a reconnection with old habitual behaviour and some habits die hard. My brain will often be in "binge mode" without reason so it can take a few days just to reconnect again with my new way of thinking.

So far so good.

Yesterday's food was relatively plain sailing. Mashed banana on toast for breakkie followed by a good dose of exercise in spin class. It was the first chap again, not the crazy french dude, but still a great workout. For lunch I had an avocado, mushroom and jarlsberg toastie and then for dinner a small lean steak with heaps of steamed veg. Some fruit and a skinny cap snacks in between for good measure. Total food goodness.

This morning I had my photography class practical. If you'd been anywhere in the Melbourne CBD you would have spotted us. We were the folk walking around en masse with cameras, tripods and puzzled looks on our faces. We really did look like tools and attracted a lot of quizzical looks and curious questions from passers by. A great morning though, it makes such a difference to have the teacher there on hand to help tell you straight away why things did or didn't work with your pictures. I'll include some of the snaps at the end for you to see.

It wasn't such a fantastic morning to be in control of my eating but I happily came out of it largely unscathed. We had coffee stops at cafes where muffins and paninis only came in XXXL sizes and wholegrains had never been seen on the premises. I stuck to just coffee. Also I hadn't thought to take any water. This meant I fell into a common trap where my brain just knows I'm craving something but hasn't quite figured out it's only water I need. Instead it sends me all sorts of "go buy food NOW" signals. We happened to be on St Kilda road right next to all the amazing smells of the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival stalls in Federation Square at the time and, despite the enticing sights and aromas of Chocolate Playground and the Cheese Market, all I purchased was a single babycake and another one to take home for the Mr. (surprisingly it actually made it the whole 33km journey home to him or else I might have had to very quickly gloss over the babycakes subject). Mine was a rhubarb and sour cream mini cup cake. Very cute and very very yummy. To compensate I then only had one cooked tuna sushi roll for lunch instead of my usual two, followed by a banana for dessert.

All under control.

photography classlesson 1: metering
lesson 2: portraiture
lesson 3: showing movement
contd.we looked so conspicuous. lol
lesson 4: panning

diversion ahead

2009-03-14T14:44:00.005+11:00

I've woken up to a new day. I'm feeling fragile but a lot better. I've been doing a lot of thinking. Hold tight, I think this is going to be a long one.

I recognise I have two sets of diversions going on.

1. Food not feelings

This may be just a little obvious, but it's not about food it's about feelings. In this regard my brain is extremely confused. I have a picture in my mind of my brain being like a game of mousetrap or a marble maze. There are emotions I needed to process and work through, but as my brain tries its best to route these through the maze to the feelings and emotions department, it hits a blockage, road closed - department not equipped to deal - so instead it diverts direct to the food section for alternative processing.

The binges over the last few days were nothing to do with dieting, food cravings or weight loss. They were triggered by feelings of inadequacy and frustration. I don't know if it's a control thing or what, but I know I haven't developed very healthy ways of facing up to life's little troubles. I need to learn how to process these feelings more effectively.

If my coping vice of choice were alcohol it would be a lot clearer to see the difference between the role of food in my weight loss efforts and it's role as the object of my addiction or compulsion. If I numbed out the world by getting high or getting drunk, rather than by stuffing my stomach, the line would be more obvious. One might impact the other but they're only loosely related.

I've never ever binged and purged as a means to weight loss. I binge as a response to emotions I don't know how to process, it's a learned behaviour I've acquired since childhood. I purge because I want to regain control over what I've just done. At times when I feel I've lost all control, the purging subsides.

I know how to eat healthily and how to exercise. In that respect I have good days and bad days just like every one else. Winning the binge battle is not going to be done by focusing on healthy foods. That's how to win the weight and health battle; something I can, will and do focus on when the binges are under control.

Winning the binge battle is about emotions and learning how to let myself feel them - an area in which I need a lot more work.

2. Fatness

I hide behind my weight. This is a tricky one. It's so ingrained I don't see I'm using my weight as an excuse, I see it as a genuine inhibitor. In many aspects the size I ballooned to *was* a physical inhibitor - airplane seats, fun parks, all sorts of places and activities - but my weight should never have stopped me living.

Growing up I was rarely the lead actor in my own life, I took on the role as sidekick. My close friends were the prettiest and most popular girls in school, they had all the boys flocking to them. I was fat, I knew that world wasn't open to me. I never ever put myself out there, I never even tried. I was probably twenty before I even admitted to finding any one attractive. I believed my attention would be nothing short of offensive to the poor subjects of that affection.

I've grown accustomed to using my weight as an excuse not to put myself out there where I might be rejected or might fail. Relationships, friendships, jobs, it's all been the same.

When I'm down and stressed the reflection I see confirms all my negativity. In reality it's the very same body I saw in the mirror on the day when I was jubilating about my clothes starting to get back in sight. I know I've been eating healthily and exercising right so the plateau was most likely due to stress and lack of sleep, my body was under strain. In my inability to handle the stress though, I diverted the focus back to my weight as the issue.

If life gets tough I've a ready made excuse for why it just wasn't meant to be. Why try to advance my career, why try to be a good friend, I'm nothing but a worthless heffalump, who's going to take me seriously - pass me that bucket of cookies.

When I'm strong enough to face up to life, I'll be strong enough to stay slim.

So what now?

I've known long enough what needs to change. Somewhere in amidst all the nonsense I've found ways through both diversions. I've overcome bingeing for long periods of time, I've gotten through trials and tribulations without resorting to food for long enough to now be 50 kilos lower than my heaviest weight. I've overcome my fear of putting myself and my feelings out there enough to fall in love, move to the other side of the world, marry my gorgeous husband and take a job that others have described as their "dream job".

So I know I can do it. I just don't know how.

That's what I need to work out so that I can harness it enough to switch it on when needed - occasions just like yesterday.

no prizes...

2009-03-13T13:46:00.001+11:00

...for guessing what happened next.

This time it was a binge of old: from 5 different cafes, thousands of calories, eating until my stomach folds over with discomfort and I can’t stand upright.

I can’t believe I’M doing this to MYSELF again.

I wasn’t going to tell. Bingeing isn’t a public activity. But I want to be healthy, I want to stop and I want to learn. I can’t keep hiding each time it goes bad. This is about accountability which means owning up. Perhaps when I read this back, the reality of what I’ve just done and what I’ve undone will start to set in enough to force me to face up to my life.

grouching

2009-03-13T12:36:00.002+11:00

“Have a nice day” the smiley postal clerk said.

“Unlikely” my inner voice spontaneously replied.

To say I’m not in a very positive frame of mind right now is an understatement. I’m a total moody grouchbag (husband – usual rules apply here, I can call me names... you still can’t).

I went to bed last night with a scowl on my face, having weighed in at 106.5kg. I awoke to the very same scowl, after not enough sleep and having just received a very short email from someone I want to think of as one of my dearest friends. She was reminding me to send her things I’d promised to post months and months ago, no chat no nothing just a subject of “Request!”. We’ve really drifted lately and I hate myself for that. I was a nightmare to be around in the run-up to my wedding, then followed by the depressive self-obsessed mess I got myself in last year, I haven’t managed to recover the friendship very successfully. I haven’t even done the simple little things I said I’d do, what kind of a friend is that?

I then had a personal training session and I really felt for the poor guy as I scowled my way through every instruction instead of having my usual cheeky smile as he’s telling me “just 2 more...” for the second time. Now, half way through the day and my disposition hasn’t improved any. I had an infuriating meeting this morning and I can’t see it getting any better.

The only tactical response my brain has to all this is “give me food”.

I don’t know if I’m scared to face the emotions I’m feeling or if I’m just not equipped to do so, but I do know food isn’t the answer.

One bright thing to report though, I met Miss Milo last night and she is every bit as lovely in real life as she is on her blog. I had a really great evening and felt like I’d known her for ages. Thank you Miss M – only sorry I’ve overshadowed the fabness with my present negativity.

situation difused

2009-03-11T18:11:00.002+11:00

Thank you so much for your support, it’s so valuable to me to know there are people who care and might even understand.

I find myself back on the wagon but with the loosest of grips on the reigns. My head keeps flitting between new and old thinking. I'm skating on such thin ice it scares me. I just walked out of work and straight into a cafe, I bought a large icing covered cake and ate it hurriedly, I then went to the ATM withdrew $60 and started to strategise just how this binge was going to run.

In the lift down just 2 minutes beforehand a binge didn’t feature anywhere on my agenda, I have no idea how I got from control to chaos in the blink of an unconscious eye.

I can't use enough cliches to illustrate just how much of a tightrope I'm walking. At lunch I looked at all the cafe’s cakes while I waited for my toastie to toast and I thought to myself how lucky I was that, even after last night's slip-up, I wasn't in the least bit tempted. Not 10 minutes later, I’d finished eating my toastie and was questioning myself for why I’d let myself eat something so big, why did I add cheese? My mind instantly followed old ways of thinking as it took me straight to bingeworld again. I’d ruined everything already I may as well do it in style and binge. I could just get a bucket of icecream and a variety of cakes, get the desire out of my system and then literally get both them and the toastie out of my system.

I dodged that bullet at lunch by consuming a large quantity of sugar-free gum and I *think* I’ve gotten through this current situation but I’ll have to wait to see how it plays out. After the ATM I walked into another cafe and stared at the cakes and pies with tears brimming in my eyes. I then miraculously ordered nothing more than a skinny cap and then sat down and opened up my laptop.

This is just what’s happened each time I’ve lost weight, the only difference is how long until I catch it.

A couple of years ago my newfound healthy lifestyle change felt so deeply ingrained, I couldn’t possibly imagine binging and losing control ever again. I’d given away all my fat clothes, I’d rockclimbed, I’d done a 12km city to surf, I was shopping in “normal” clothes shops for the first time in my life. I’d changed my life forever. But even then, I lost control just as quickly and as easily as I did yesterday. It started as bulimic behaviour, I’d purge afterwards meaning I wasn’t gaining any weight so no one noticed. Everyone called me an inspiration, they marvelled at how fantastic I was looking. Only I could see the calluses on the back of my knuckles in my wedding photos. It stayed that way for months before the purges began to subside and the weight flew back on. I’m sure I’ve told you all this before, I have a feeling I’ll keep telling it until something in it starts to make sense to me.

Nothing about this does makes sense though, I know that. My logical right mind isn’t finding anything to grasp in all this, it’s not about logic it’s about emotion, anxiety and things I can’t put into words.

Whether it’s been 2 months since my last binge or 2 years, the ice is just as thin.

So for now all that’s happened is I’ve had cake and coffee for dinner and that's all. It isn’t great, but it’s not thousands of calories and a trip to a disgusting public bathroom.

Crisis over for now. I have my photography class in 20 minutes so I’m going to pack up my laptop walk across the road to the station and get on a train. One step at a time.

breaking down

2009-03-10T22:01:00.003+11:00

I just binged.

Pathetic.

I've got my mid year career review tomorrow and I was struggling to fill in all the forms. I'm supposed to say where I want my career to progress and I don't even know what career I want any more. I tried filling in some self assessments to help me decide but I guess I may have just gotten more anxious.

I then realised it was Tuesday night and went and weighed myself - 106kg AGAIN!!!!

Gutted!

I've been working fecking hard at this and having lost a total of 75kg from my heaviest weight in the past (which is just a fraction of the weight I've lost in total in my yo-yo dieting life time) I know how to do this and yet it's not happening. I know I should be able to consistently lose up to a kilo a week with the amount of exercise I've been doing. I've worked my guts out lately, I've been doing my exercise, writing down all my food intake and doing it all right. I reassure others when they don't lose and don't know why that it'll all come good in the end but I'm not convincing myself.

Instead, the first thing I did after I weighed myself was to walk to the larder and eat a meringue nest. Went back shortly after and ate another one... followed by a cereal bar, a 2nd, 3rd, 4th... lost count then the rest of the meringue nests. I probably doubled my calorie intake for the day and I did it all while my husband was in the room with his headphones on playing on the computer. Just to add to my shame I also have the guilt of sneaking around to cope with, he'll feel like I lied to him.

I know better than this. I know better than to let all or nothing thinking sabotage my successes. I should also know better than to let my stupid job get in the way of my weight loss efforts.

I did other things too, things I do when I know I'm going to purge. I'm not sure whether I will or not yet. I'm just plain disgusted with myself, I want to get control again and that means getting the food back out again.

I'm guessing this isn't the post most people thought I'd be writing after all my exercise smugness. Back down to earth with a thud!

avoidance tactics

2009-03-09T18:06:00.002+11:00

My photography school homework.

Two day's effort for a couple of pictures of a glass of water and some redhead matches, but oh do I feel proud of myself. So easily pleased :-)

The assignment was to recreate these pictures, using manual settings, lining up each of the items in the exact right place, some bits in focus and some bits out of focus, one picture showing movement and one picture stopping it. Not hard for many people, but I'm a bit of a slow learner at this photography lark. The bloopers reel for this exercise contains a hundred and one pictures of water going everywhere and wind blown matchboxes, creatively rearranged by the cats who wanted to add their own artistic input before then drinking the photo subject.

The perfectionist in me is looking up at my versions then looking down at the homework sheet and seeing that teacher's matchboxes had less variance in height so were probably closer together. Thankfully the realist in me knows better. She's smart enough to figure that persuading my husband to come back outside in order to patiently pour the water *again* after I've moved the matchboxes a few millimetres, is perhaps asking a wee bit too much.

It's a public holiday today and while I've clearly got hours of spare time to waste setting up these pictures for my photo assignment, unfortunately I've been less concerned to spend even a fraction of that time exercising.

The gym was only open for a short time today and not doing classes, which is a right shame because I feel like I haven't got enough motivation without a class or PT session to whip me into shape. My alternative options are to use the weights in the back garden or go for a cycle (the weather is just gorgeous today). I just don't feel in the mood to do either. After the triumph that was yesterday's workout, I'm feeling rather lethargic. I need that french man and his crazy tunes to make me do it.

Of course I know that's not really true, yesterday he didn't "make" me get changed into my sweats, drive to the gym, pay $20 (extortion if you ask me) and push myself to the limits any more than he could today. I did it, and I'm just as capable of doing so today.

So there, I've told you. Even blogging about how I should be exercising, rather than just going outside and actually exercising is really just another avoidance tactic. But at least now it means there's no hiding it if I don't do it, I'll have to fess up. Watch this space.

=update=

After writing all that I then sat on my backside in front of the teev and continued to procrastinate for a good hour or more but my choice of viewing made it rather hard to stay inactive for very long - Biggest Loser followed by So You Think You Can Dance - talk about guilt trip. So I'm very pleased (and sorry) to say I missed most of Dance and went out the back to do weights.

My prize for leaving it till 8pm? Polka dot mozzie bite covered skin.

That'll learn me ;-)

oh . my . god

2009-03-08T11:56:00.004+11:00

I have just worked my ass off.

I went back to the cycle class. This morning's instructor was a French bloke, that alone should have set the alarm bells ringing. He was muscly but in an ultra toned not bulky way, extremely lean with not an ounce of fat on him.

Yesterday's class had been very similar to the Les Mills RPM sessions I'm used to. A mixture of pace tracks, hill climbs and interval training with plenty of seated and standing recovery all performed to high intensity, often doof doof, music. It's a fantastic workout. I'd highly recommend it to anyone out there who hasn't tried it. You go at your own rate, you control the resistance. The music and instructor keep you going to a level I've never managed to push myself to under my own steam alone.

Today's instructor innocently told us would be a little different - a hill climb.

Oh My God did we climb:

Track One: seated hill climb
Track Two: seated and standing hill climb; soundtrack: Guns N'Roses ballad with a slow, heavy beat
Track ...I lost count, my brain started to phase out: seated, standing and paced hill climb
Track Is-this-nearly-over-yet?: mountain hill climb; soundtrack: French Rock which felt strangely appropriate for such physical torture, after all most the world's angriest death metal bands are European
Track I-can't-believe-I'm-still-moving: hard and heavy hill climbing; soundtrack: Abba! Yes ABBA!!! How can anyone inflict physical pain to Abba? It's like having your puppy, your reassuring and faithful childhood best friend, come towards you with his cute little puppydog face wielding an axe.

And so it continued.

By the end of it, even the fittest people in the class were glowing with sweat all down their arms. Me? Well I wasn't glowing so much as drowning in sweat. My face was beetroot. I was the biggest person in that room but I walked down those cycle studio stairs (yes the cycle studio is upstairs... after you've worked your leg muscles to the point of jellification you have to keep yourself together long enough to get your sorry ass down a whole flight of stairs - too cruel to have been an accident me thinks) with my head held high. I just cycled up a bleedin' mountain. Yay for the smug afterglow!

I feel absolutely bloody fantastic!!

spinning and shaking

2009-03-07T12:35:00.003+11:00

I weighed in the last couple of nights at 106.2kg again, not only is that up, but it's where I was over a week and a half ago. This won't do at all. I've got things to do, clothes to fit into and goodness to feel.

Yesterday I was practically apologetic about how small those goals were. But already, at goals+1 day, I started the morning with complex head-gymnastics talking myself out of into exercising. Lots of umm-ing and ahh-ing, bargaining with myself that it wouldn't matter if I didn't get to that 9:30am spin class as I could just get a ride on my bike later - in full sight of the dark grey clouds overhead - kidding myself.

In the middle of my to-ing and fro-ing my Mum called from England to find out about the cryptic earthquake message I'd left her last night. Seriously! We had an earthquake here in Melbourne last night. Graded 4.7 - the whole house shook and everything rattled - scary but in hindsight way exciting, I'd never experienced an earthquake before. Anyways, I'd forgotten I'd made the mistake wise choice to mention in my message when not to call because I'd be out at the gym. So there it was, no choice but to go, with my conscience on the other end of the phone I had to zip it, get into my trackies and trot off to the gym....

Way to go post-gym smugness ;-)

I tried out the local branch of the gym I go to at work. It's located at a footy stadium, the treadmills overlook the ground, huge cycle studio, right fresh and fancy. I was a tad apprehensive, this was my first spin class for over a year, but it all came good. I worked my little heart out and streamed with sweat. Felt like nothing had changed, I'm back baby!

The bikes were different so I couldn't compare whether the resistance was that much lower than it used to be (probably a good thing), the only difference and slight downside was when we had to hold on to the back of our saddles for a chest stretch at the end. I put my hands down around my butt but needed a search party to locate the saddle under all my blubber, couldn't even get my fingertips near it. Hey ho, I'll get there soon enough.

Picked up a skinny cap treat on the way home and felt fantastic. I'm even considering going again tomorrow.

=update=
exercise: ü
water: ü
sleep: ü

March S.M.A.R.T.s

2009-03-06T11:39:00.003+11:00

I swear the change in weather round these parts has been ordered by PricewaterhouseCoopers’ marketing department. I work near their office in Southbank and the minute the rain appears, the pavements become awash with PwC umbrellas. A plague of them. Unfortunately my exercise efforts aren’t capitalising on the cold change quite so effectively. Along with my recent emotional climate change, I’ve been letting my exercise slip badly. It’s been cold, grey, miserable and wet. Hardly conducive to cycling.

I figured, therefore, it was high time I set myself some goals.

Because of my tendency to be hard on myself – I expect way too much then beat myself up for failing - my goals must be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-bound. Gotta love those business cliche’s, you can tell it’s mid-year review time for me.

So – by the end of March I will:

drink 2 litres of water daily
exercise for 1 hour daily (all forms count, so today I had a 30 minute personal trainer session followed by a 15-20 minute walk to my client’s office and there’ll be another 15-20 minute walk back to my own office this arvo)
get 7-8 hours sleep every night
lose 3 kilos (1kg per week is attainable. I had a mind to get below 100kg by the end of March, but while that *might* be possible with super human effort, it’s not strictly in the realms of realistic and attainable goals and would have provided me with a spectacular excuse to feel like a failure)

It’s a start, there really isn’t anything too crazy or different in there. It’s essentially what I’m trying to do anyways but spelling it out should give me a new level of accountability.

You have my permission to pull me up on it if I don’t report back regularly with my results.

where to now?

2009-03-05T13:47:00.004+11:00

I haven’t posted much this week. I also haven’t weighed myself much this week, especially not since the disappointment of a 200 gram loss just two days after the scales had triumphantly told me I was down over a kilo. 200 grams! As my husband wittily cruelly pointed out the other day (before the weigh-in I should add) I could have shaved my legs to achieve a similar result. He’ll kill me for posting that, especially after I’d built him up as such a picture of sensitivity.

I’m in the doldrums again. My eating and exercise attitude is pretty bad, I’m fighting binge urges and I’m seeing my food in a negative light again. I don’t doubt this is all as a result of stress and being so tired. I'm finding work very stressful at the moment. We’ve got political project nonsense going on that I’ve been dragged into the middle of, plus I’ve been trying to work evenings to catch up on stuff I’m behind on. Worst part of all this, is that I’ve never yet been convinced this is even the right job for me. It’s one thing to tolerate stressful work conditions if you can see it leading somewhere, but I’ve no idea where I want to go.

I work for a hugely respected company, the pay is good and on paper the opportunities are fantastic. They even relocated us from Perth to Melbourne, and that’s an interstate move not to be sniffed at. I just don’t think I want to do this work anymore, it’s not me and it’s not bringing out the best in me.

So how do I work out what is me?

checking in: hyc week 9

2009-03-04T00:19:00.004+11:00

It's midnight, I'm still up working, still busy and still stressed but it's HYC check in time and I'm present and correct but not entirely happy with this week's effort:

today's weight: 106kg / 234lb / 16st 10lbs
loss of: 0.2kg / 0.5lb (almost... grasping at straws here, many scales wouldn't even spot the change)
total loss this year: 10kg / 22lbs

Tiredness and lack of sleep can't be helping... 5 and a half hours till I need to get up to go to the gym...

night night

dreams

2009-03-02T20:17:00.003+11:00

Bit of a busy and anxious day at work today and I'm not expecting it to get better any time soon unfortunately.

I even woke up this morning right in the middle of a really anxious dream. Dreams are such funny things. If they really are your brain's way of working out the day's issues, then my subconscious mind is no more inventive or better at problem solving than my waking one.

In my dream I had started to eat big and was planning to turn it into a full-on binge. So I'd found a way to leave whatever it was I was doing and go to the store. I'd planned my binge out fully in my head but when I got to the supermarket I bumped into my husband. At the point where the alarm woke me, I was lying to him to cover what I was about to do and planning how I was going to get away with the deception of buying my binge food. It was such a horrible feeling, really distressing to wake up with all those emotions so fresh in my head.

As a teenager, any time I had a good dream all I cared about was trying to remember whether x-y-z good thing had happened to a skinny version of me or the real, blobby one. It was a rare hope, the answer was always the blobby one. At the time I believed my mind just wasn't creative enough to imagine a slim version of me.

It's something that has stuck ever since. I'd always had trouble visualising my goals. I couldn't picture where I wanted to go, I just couldn't picture a healthier slimmer me, it felt too cruel and unreal to let my mind go there.

After all I went from being a tinsy-bit chubby kid (not even chubby judging by some photos) to being an overweight teenager and a severely obese grown-up. My adult mind never developed a concept of what it might feel like to be healthy and slim.

Well that's all changed now. I've got that picture there in the right hand column.

There I am in my wedding lingerie and hoop, pressing my tummy trying to contain my excitement as I wait to have my dress lifted up over my head. I was only 15kg away from my goal, my lowest ever adult weight. I felt good for all the weight I'd lost but at the time (the general time, not the *actual* day, there was nothing could shift the smile from my face on that day) I was equally disgusted with myself for not reaching goal. Oh to be able to take that back and slap that girl, because instead of becoming yet another photo on my way down, that photo and that weight there has become my target.

For the first time though it's a target I can picture, I can imagine and I can actually remember.

...

Eeek I've babbled for pages yet again and it's not what I meant to write about, it just sprung from thinking about that dream. Over the last few days I kept thinking of things to blog about but couldn't catch a moment to get them out. I'm back eating my normal eating plan but after my week off I'm having to watch myself like a hawk. Now that I'm letting myself have that skinny cow ice cream, low fat chips and afternoon cappuccino, I'm having to curb my desire to have them all at once.

So far so good though. It was a big weekend food-wise. My mother-in-law came to stay, I made a banana cake - VERY yummy! - hubby made a Jamie Oliver bolognaise - with bacon, beef mince AND pork mince... VERY VERY yummy - all served with a beautiful glass of wine and at the end of a day that had started with pancakes for breakfast. I did good with my portions though, filled my plate up with veg and kept it under control so I could enjoy it all without feeling bad. We'll see whether the scale agrees with me tomorrow.

Oooh and other fab news of the last few days was that I had coffee with the lovely Kathryn of iDiet. So great to be able to put a real person behind the blog, thank you Kathryn.

Righto - I should be working so as to lessen the stress of tomorrow...

the return of old friends

2009-02-27T15:05:00.008+11:00

My wardrobe's starting to open up to me again. The return of all my old favourites is just starting to feel within reach.

I tried on a dress this morning, a black summer frock with white polka dots. I always loved this dress, I remember how fantastic it felt the day I bought it in a *normal*, non-fat, high street store. It's smart enough for work but flowy enough to let me feel girly on a summer's eve. It's also the dress I wore for our wedding pre-shoot some time around October or November 2007. This summer however, it has hung abandoned on a hanger completely unwearable. But from this morning's trial, I'd say it's only about a kilo or two away from me once more.

A few of my clothes have been very forgiving. They came with me on the full re-gain journey, stretching and covering where needed, tolerating the fact they no longer looked their finest. Other garments accommodated only a few kilos before giving up the ghost. And then there were the hopeful clothes - the ones that only borderline fitted at my lowest but would have been fabulous to shrink into. Many of these items are sizes I really only ever wore in the last couple of years. The only other time I was that weight was when I was a teenager and I went straight from the fitted clothes of my childhood to the excessively baggy, cover-up, black monstrosities more befitted of a moody youth.

Next stop after my polka-dot frock is the pink floral dress I bought in Seattle last July. It's a great one to wear over jeans, again girly but very casual and relaxed. I was about 100kg when I bought it, one of only a couple of mid-gain clothes purchases, having sworn to myself I wouldn't ever buy big again, it was a size 12 or 14 US and a wee bit tight but made me feel great. At 95kg, my two black pants, size 18 UK/Aus (I'm the original pear-shaped gal, at my lowest I managed UK/Aus size 12 tops, size 14-16 flared skirts but size 18 pants to cater for my hips, bum and thighs ) will hopefully join the party and I'll finally be able to wear trousers to work again. There's another frock, dresses were a hugely exciting new discovery as part of my weight loss journey, previously not worn since my age was in single figures, bought somewhere around 87kg. You'll be the first to know when that one fits again. Now that will be a day to celebrate. It might even be the moment I stop hiding and show my face, eyes n'all, around these parts.

The chance of a second shot at all of these clothes is exhilarating. Only recently the sight of them all in my wardrobe had been so depressing but now they're starting to excite me in anticipation. Even more exhilarating is the prospect of even smaller sizes, the fresh, un-trodden pastures of fantastic shopping trips ahead. One day every one of these target pieces will go the same path as my size 28 and 30 jeans and find their way to the charity shops, only to be remembered in photographs once more.

I don't know if it's the surrounds I find myself today or the thrill of my long awaited lunch hour magazine fest to catch up on the Oscar fashions - I missed everything Oscar related on Monday and hadn't even had a moment to surf so hadn't seen a single picture until lunch time today when I dropped everything to insure an hour to myself just me, Who and OK - but I feel quite giddy in my excitement.

I'm on-site at a client's again today. At a place where the security guards have guns and secretaries still call their bosses "Sir". One such boss, a grey bearded chap with a look somewhere between batty old uncle and public school headmaster, is just the other side of the room from me pom-pom-pom-ing a barely recognisable rendition of Mozart's Magic Flute. It's a very different world to where I'm used to working.

Anyways, I really should get back to thinking about work instead of clothes, it sure is nice to be excited about them once more though. Oh and before I forget, the wee devil got safely banished yesterday - no overeating whatsoever and a fab cycle ride with my hubby in the evening to boot.

caffeine ani

2009-02-26T08:52:00.004+11:00

I'm very stressed at work, I've also got a heap of blogs to catch up on and I've got the strongest feeling there's something I've forgotten to do.

I've no idea what it is.

There's a little voice inside my head inviting me to consider the possibility I've forgotten to eat. Or, tempting me with the alternative suggestion that eating will help me to relax my mind not to worry about the stress, the quick way to forget my worries about whatever it is I've forgotten.

This little devil's smart, it has an answer for everything and it's somehow always in the shape of food.

Well, I haven't forgotten to eat. I just had my breakfast and my skinny cap (do you spot a coffee theme, I really should have called myself "Caffeine Ani"). And for once I'm in a place of calmness and control. I'm able to watch this little devil up to it's little tricks, to see it for what it is and chose not to play along.

So little devil, you quick witted cheeky little scamp you, get back into your cave. I'm running the show today and I've got everything under control. OK well not *everything*, work is still all over the place but the catering is definitely all in hand.

checking in: hyc week 8

2009-02-24T21:27:00.003+11:00

I'm back, HYC check in time.

today's weight: 106.2kg / 234lb / 16st 10lbs
loss of: 1.8kg / 4lb
total loss this year: 9.8kg / 21.5lbs

Fab!

No waiting to see if it's a dehydration blip this time, I'm claiming it right away ;-)

Time to be careful and not get complacent though. It's been a few weeks since I got myself back on track and I'm just hitting the giddy heights of my diet honeymoon. I know it's when you relax you lose focus. Accidents mostly happen in the final part of the journey home... you just have to look how close I got to the finish line last time.

But for now - I celebrate - very happy with this.

Good luck to all the other HYCers out there.

an experiment

2009-02-24T19:54:00.003+11:00

I’ve been undertaking a wee experiment in very low calorie diets for the last couple of days. It was sparked by something my doctor said to me last week when we’d gotten talking about weight loss during my scheduled biennial indignity (*pap smear).

I’ve never been a fad dieter, never jumped on all the different diets-of-the-day bandwagons, never even south beached, atkinsed or cabbage souped. And I don’t intend to change that.

These days my eating is based on good healthy nutritious foods. It features well rounded portions from each of the major food groups, low fat, low sugar, high fibre, low GI, lots of water, plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables and nothing extreme. My old dietician back in Perth gave me the best balanced advice I’ve ever received. Unlike my old personal trainer (a fantastic lady I miss very much) my dietician didn’t prohibit carbs, scoff at my honey on toast breakfast or my daily cappuccinos (in fact she was happy I was getting a good source of calcium that way). She loved her food and she cared not just for my weight loss but for my all round current and future health.

So this is just an experiment - nothing more - a strict regime for a few days only. I’d intended to do it for the whole of this working week but today is Day 2 and I’m not sure if I’m likely to bother with Day 3, we’ll see. In the long term I have no intention of abandoning my healthy eating lifestyle changes in favour of extreme dieting. I know that would be neither healthy nor advantageous. I wanted the boost but most of all I wanted to see if I could do it.

It has surfaced some rather interesting learnings.

Absolute Deprivation Panic.

I only intended to do this for a few days but I spent far longer than that considering very seriously whether to or not. There was a time in the past when I had bowel issues and bought a recommended detox plan. Despite all the health benefits, which would have left me a darn site more comfortable, it sat on the shelf and was never opened. Even after all my years of dieting, I couldn't get my head around giving up coffee for 5 days. Plus I was so worried that the deprivation of foods I love would trigger a binge.

Now that I'm in a good place again I wanted to know if I could do it (not the detox, that unopened box was lost in the interstate move). My biggest concern, then and now, was about the food I’d be missing out on. I thought of the Skinny Cow English Toffee ice creams we bought at the weekend and how my hubby would get to eat them and I wouldn’t. It didn’t even occur to me there might still be one left by the time I allow myself to eat them again, or logic be-damned, that there’s absolutely no reason why we can’t just buy more next week. No. All I could focus on was the fact I’d be missing out. OHMYGOD-EVERYBODY-PANIC!!! The food might run out while I’m not looking!!!

So...

Yesterday morning I had my regular skinny cap but didn’t have my usual second coffee in the afternoon - and you know what - I survived.

Last night hubby had an ice cream, I didn’t - and you know what - the world’s still turning.

The food will still be there and I don’t have to eat it all at once.

I say that losing weight and getting healthy is my highest priority, but how much am I willing to sacrifice for it? I’m putting in the extra time and effort at the gym and I’m watching my food intake, but I’m not *really* putting myself out. I’m in this for the long haul so it’s always been my intention to be reasonably relaxed about it. As a rule, no food is completely off limits – of course if I’m feeling a little fragile and know it’s a potential binge trigger then it’s probably still best I leave it alone.

I'm not saying I need to change those principals or do it tough, but these last couple of days have taught me that I've got more to give. If this is my top priority I need to treat it as such. That means making time for exercise however I'm feeling, pushing myself to work harder when I do, and most of all remembering the bigger picture over the immediate desire for gratification.

I'd typed this during my lunch hour but didn't finish it when work got back in the way (how rude!). I haven't forgotten it's weigh-in day... I'll be back in a bit when I've done the deed to report my numbers.

feeling good

2009-02-22T21:26:00.003+11:00

The weekend had been panning out to be a re-run of last weekend's apathy and motivation lull, but it all came good in the end.

Saturday was once more completely exercise-free, although quite a loverly and indulgent day - meals out, a movie and a successful shopping trip to purchase a tripod. I'm a right proper bona fide photographer now, however badly the pics turn out, I'll certainly look the part.

Today, I woke with the greatest of intentions to make up for yesterday's laziness, but the hours went by and I couldn't get my butt into gear. I did, however, have a very strong desire for a decent coffee but hubby had the car. Unlike last weekend, the timing was perfect, I got my bike out and cycled to the nearest coffee shop. It was only 3km away so after I'd fuelled up I took the opportunity to explore the neighbourhood a bit - totalling a ride of about 13km. Not exactly a marathon but not to be sniffed at either.

It just felt good to have overcome my lethargy. It's funny how exercise feels so much better when it's been undertaken reluctantly, somehow the smug-afterglow is that much greater.

Next weekend I need to break this exercise-free weekend habit I've gotten into completely.