Balance

I gained 5kg after my wedding. I went full crazy and fell back into my old habits of binge eating.

Rather than dusting myself off and getting stuck back into my healthy routine which would have put me back on track I panicked.

I panicked, freaked out, and then tried to change a million things in my life because I had lost faith in my ability to take care of myself. The further I slipped back into bad habits the more I despaired and the more I despaired the more I binged to cover up the stress. A very nasty cycle!!

Basically my head went a bit like this:

• Omg another kilo on!
• Omg, nothing I do will work, I can't stop eating!
• There's something really wrong with me, I'm going to be back to my starting weight within months!
• I'm so stressed, I need to eat!
• Ugh, I feel so disgusting, I need to make a plan. I know, I'll exercise 3 times a day, eat 1400 cals a day and be hard on myself, I'll start tommorrow.
• I've been eating healthy for two days and I still weigh 5kg more than before my 2 months of binge eating, wtf!?
• This isn't working, omg, so fat, must comfort eat.
• I'll hire a personal trainer.
• She says to eat 1900cals per day. Can't do that.
• If I'm going to eat more I'll make it all protein, that's what weight training is about, right?
• Her workouts are too easy, I don't feel like I'm working off these calories,  I feel a bit abandoned by her.
• This high protein diet is boring, don't want the food I packed for lunch, so I'll go buy something.
• Didn't lose a kilo this week, must comfot eat.
• Carb binge ensues...

And so it has gone on and on. I sit down, make a plan, expect to be skinny within days, get disappointed and then have a binge.

This isn't me, I'm not thinking rationally, I'm just in a huge panic. It really does need to stop. I'm playing games with the scales, I won't weigh myself for weeks then I'll weigh daily and get mad if I'm still over 78kg. 

So, two problems I can fix right this minute:

• Set my daily calories to 1600 in myfitnesspal and not get anxious about this, I exercise daily so this is reasonable.
• Email my personal trainer and outline how I feel. I was so excited to start working with her, but so far things aren't working out as I'd hoped.

That last one is a tricky one, but it's my money and I don't feel I'm getting value, even though I think she's fantastic as a person and an athlete.

Three goals I will work on this week:

• Getting back into walking to work and try out doing weights in a lunch break. 
• Finding time to fit in at least two runs, even if they are just 20-25 minutes.
• Eating within my calorie goal each day, taking one day at a time and bearing in mind that one meal in a restaurant that may push me over my calorie limit is not going to make me gain weight. 

I really want to get back on track, my goal is still 68kg and I want to get there! My work midwinter party is in 5 weeks, and I think in that time I can get back under 75kg.

The person I want to be

I want to be that strong, independent businesswoman everyone secretly admires. 
I want to have quiet confidence and grace, to be sharp when I need to, but understanding. 
I want to have a body that says as well as working on my career, I make working on my body a priority.
I want to be that person who always brings a salad, who never gets busy and just grabs lunch from over the road at McDonalds.
I want people to see me in gym gear or at special events and think "Wow".

I may be a complete perfectionist, but I want it all. I don't want to cover up who I am now, that won't work because what you eat in secret you carry in public. I want to CHANGE who I am now.

Just got an email back from a very cool personal trainer who I want to draw me up a programme to get me started on some proper lifting. #Excited!

Some overdue changes

There comes to a point in every weight loss journey where you lose a comfortable amount of weight and then the going gets tough. I have completely come unstuck, I'm back to bad habits and I feel awful. I haven't been for a run since weeks before my wedding and I really feel sluggish and unfit and I hate it! 

I have become really dependent on sugar to make me feel good since I don't have a lot of exercise going on, which worries me. The way I've been eating recently makes me wonder if I have a food addiction.

Anyways. I have decided that for now, I lack the ability to stop at "just one". Be it just one drink, just one lolly or just one sprite zero. My solution to that is to cut it from my life and eat a bit cleaner for the next few weeks. I've also done some thinking about the amount of food I'm using to fuel my body and I think I may need to be a bit more realistic.

Here's some facts:
- I no longer have a wedding deadline looming which means I can take things a bit slower
- I walk to work most days, which burns around 150 calories. I don't count it.
- I aim to eat 1350 calories most days. Sometimes I get quite hungry but fight it.
- Prior to the wedding I was running 20km per week, walking to work, playing netball once a week, playing tennis twice a week and trying to hit the gym a few times as well. All on 1350 calories per day.
- My net calories some days would often be 500. That's 1350 eaten, and 850 burned through exercise alone, without taking into account the calories my body needs just to function!!!

Not eating enough makes your body ask for more. Craving more food can lead to binge eating and making poor choices. 

Eating a more reasonable number of calories = better satisfaction = no cravings and binge eating. Reasonable assumption?

So, as an experiment I have decided to up my calories to 1600 per day. I was initially going to try 1800 but I got a bit scared! The compromise on upping my calories so far is to get a lot more protein into my body and to make sure I am doing some high intensity exercise 6 times per week!

This week's plan:

So, my BMR is: 1572 which I multiply by 1.2 (sedentary) to give my daily calorie needs of 1900cals/day. I subtract 300cals per day to get my my goal of 1,600 calories which gives a weekly deficit of 2,100 calories and I add my weekly burn of 3,000 calories to that which is a total deficit of 5,100 calories which equals a weight loss of 1.4 pounds. 

Whew, got all that???

So, starting point. Will weigh myself tomorrow but here is the lowdown right now:

I'm tired, I have a constant headache, my mouth tastes and feels horrible, I'm dehydrated and my skin feels greasy. My muscles are killing me from netball yesterday and I just feel really out of shape and I'm super irritable.

After 21 days on this plan I hope to:

- Have lost 3kg, feel bright and alert, not be craving unhealthy food, have my skin back to normal and not feel bloated and lethargic. I'd like my fitness levels to be on their way up to a more comfortable level and I'd like not to be so cranky all the time. 

I'm keen to give this a decent shot, so I might post up my daily eats since I have fixed the camera on my phone (yay!). 

The Grumps

So I never made it to the weight watchers meeting. It's like when I'm having a binge the thought of joining weight watchers is the solution to all my problems, it is essentially a free pass to continue eating until the meeting. Then on the morning I intend to go reality hits and I remember the reasons I gave it up, the cost, that calculating points is so much harder than calories, and I think about Dumbo the Elephant and his "magic" feather and realise that's what I'm doing, fooling myself.

Over Easter I literally ate myself sick. I woke up yesterday full of self-loathing and misery. Life got so so crazy before the wedding, I'm really having trouble relaxing and settling back into normal life. I haven't been for a run, I haven't been to the gym, I keep putting things off because I'm scared to start again.

Fear holds us back, it's not a constructive emotion whatsoever. 

This morning I weighed in at 78.1kg. Massive gain. I'm upset and angry, but I've been here before and I can do it again.

I was perfect with my eating all day, and I got home from work really hungry and found that a certain husband of mine had gone to the supermarket at lunchtime despite having food in the fridge to eat and had stocked the house with an easter egg, chocolate muffin, filled roll, chocolate bar, pizza bread, savoury scone and lollies and he had eaten none of it. I was so hungry and on the verge of losing control all over again. I got really angry with him and started crying. Not only was the food in the fridge wasted, but I now have to stare at all that food when I'm struggling with food so so much at the moment.

I took 20 mins or so removed from the situation, made a game plan, went downstairs and cooked a stir fry, ignoring all the food on offer. I'm full now, and while that food is there, it's not calling out to me to have a binge. Thank god I regained some control.

I feel pathetic, I feel sometimes that noone understands what it is like for food to control their lives to this extent. I always knew I would never be cured of this, but I ever expected the BED to come back with such fury. One step at a time I will make small decisions to get back to a healthy weight and a healthy mind.

Phew.

Deja Vu

Remember that time this time last year that my eating was completely out of control and I fell of the train and sprained my ankle quite severely?

Well, 12 months later almost to the day my eating is once again out of control and at netball I sprained the opposite ankle.

I'm taking this as a sign.

Last year despite being injured I decided enough was enough. I signed up to weight watchers and took some ownership of my life, shedding 20kg.

Since before the wedding things in my life have started going awry, and it's really messed me up.
- Husband's nana got really sick a few weeks before our wedding
- We moved house the weekend before our wedding
- The day we started moving house I got a phone call to say my nana passed away
- Nana's funeral was 2 days before our wedding
- Our car died (and won't be coming back) 2 days before our wedding
- Our beautiful Bengal got sick last week and we have spent $650 getting her back to good health
- My father in law is in hospital at the moment

It just feels like there has been this crazy chain of events that just keep hitting us. I keep waiting for life to return to a simpler time just like last year where all I had to stress about was work, exercise and healthy eating. 

I don't want to make excuses, but I started stress eating before the wedding and it became a habit. I feel like I'm back to square one with the only difference being I'm not obese. I'm now overweight, my weight has crept up to 76.4kg... Scary stuff.

On a brighter note, I picked our baby up from the vet hospital tonight and she is in good spirits. The reunion between her and her little brother was so cute to see. So many kitty kisses!

So... what's the plan from here? Because I always have to have a plan!
Tomorrow I'm going to bite the bullet and re-join Weight Watchers. I will commit to 2 months of their plan and then assess how I am going and whether I feel strong enough to switch to calorie counting alone. Their plan always motivates me when I am starting out, because realistically that is the hardest time in the journey.

Exercise - I need to get my ankle healed which may mean putting exercise on hold. I will need to be very careful with the food intake until I'm back into it. I really hope it's a minor sprain although playing a full game of netball after I had done it probably wasn't the best plan.

Wish me luck, tomorrow may be a humbling experience :( I feel like such a phony to come on here after all my success and confess that I have reverted back to binge eating copious amounts of chocolate every day but honesty is the best policy I guess...

Married!

I don't even know where to start, except to say last Saturday was the absolute best day of my life. I thought it would be a great day, a good celebration, but I was in no way prepared for the joy and love that day had in store.

The aisle I had to walk up was very long, the first half was a covered over arch way all green and pretty, the second half was a trek over a green lawn strewn with 5,000 rose petals the boys had lovingly pulled off rose heads that morning (read: they sat watching the cricket in their hotel, drinking beer and pulling apart roses).

When the old Studebaker I was travelling in pulled up and I caught a distant peek at him, my heart stopped beating. It was like that nervous feeling I got when I saw him on our first date, but with eight and a half years of intensity behind it. I've never felt so happy yet terrified in my life.

My mum walked me through the archway and we chatted, I saw him give his best man a "bro-fist" which made me laugh. I could hear Sting's Fields of Gold but I barely registered the words. My mum handed me over to my brothers who escorted me to my groom, who looked so handsome I wanted to kiss him! They shook his hand, found their seats and then the ceremony flew by. We had written our vows in secret and heard them for the first time, he got a bit choked up when he said his vows, and when I heard them I got a bit teary too. His vows were incredible, for a normally quiet guy, he had really put in 110% to make them perfect. 

I looked over at one point and saw the best man fighting tears and glared at him, I knew if he started crying it would be all over!!

We signed the register to U2 All I want is You and shared what I thought was a perfect wedding kiss. We walked out to Queen You're my Best Friend and my little cousins ran behind us throwing left over rose petals on (at) us. 

Picture

Sometimes despite losing over 20kg I feel absolutely hideously huge and ugly. 
On Saturday I was a groomslady in a close friend's wedding, all day I felt fat, bloated and gross as I have been eating quite badly recently.

Then I saw this picture today and it kind of put life in perspective. Yes I've made some poor choices recently, but I have also made good ones. I can get back on track and I have made a good start.

I try to imagine how I would have felt on Saturday back at my old weight and words can't describe how miserable I would have been and how disgusted I would have been to see the photos. I'm so happy I made this change and so determined to make it last.

I'll leave you with that one just because I think it's hilarious. We found an elephant statue and decided to amuse ourselves with it while the bride and groom were off having their picture taken.