Back on track

OK, so I haven't been to WW for two weeks. The first was Boxing Day and I think it only fair that I had a short reprieve. And last week was because I just knew it would be ugly.

I KNOW this week will be ugly - I suspect the gain is going to be somewhere around the 2kg mark. There is no way the amount of saturated fat and in particular CREAM I have ingested in the last fortnight could not have pushed me out that far.

BUT, that said, it has been a sumptious two weeks of baking and good food and now I am ready to face this year of further good food and baking, just maybe a bit less butter.

My goal is to be at 85kg by the time I am due back to work - 4 Feb.
My goal is to be under 70kg, ideally somewhere around 68kg by my birthday.
I have a notion of being 66 by 36, but that's just because I like the sound of it.
I haven't been 66 kgs since about 1986, so you know, it'd be a golden goal.


But I'm back. It's going to be a bumpy ride, but knowing how much happier and confident I am when I'm not this size.

Week 12, Day 3

Am in jeans.
Non-pregnancy jeans.
Which I don't think I got back into after Jasper.
But maybe I did.
For a little while.

Breakthrough.

Week 9, Days 4-6

Oy.
This week has been hard hard hard.
My Ode to Nigella is taking its toll.
I feel like giving up and just eating eating eating.
And sitting on my arse.
But I won't.
But I'm getting tired of the seesaw - lose one week, gain the next, lose, gain, beat self up and repeat.
I feel like I need to come over all Mr T with myself - you know, 'quit your jibberjabber' and deal.with.it.
I just don't wanna.

Week 9, Day 3

Breakfast/Lunch - two Whisk&Pin muesli cookies, half a Portuguese custard tart
Afternoon tea - slice of amazing goats cheese and a citron tart.
Dinner - pumpkin and pinenut quiche

Hardly a great day in terms of calory intake, but a wonderful day of flavours and fresh produce.

Weigh In - Week 7

Well, I warned you.
+0.7kgs.
I suppose it was all those chocolate finger biscuits dipped in blue icing.
Or the slices of streusel cake.
Or the multitude of scones. With jam. And cream.

But good must come from bad.

It got me back to the gym on Wednesday night.
And I almost enjoyed it.
I could still (just) balance on the exercise ball up on my knees. Not bad eh. Considering I hadn't been since February 2006.
It was also, on a scale, nowhere near as 'bad' as what I was eating almost every day little over seven weeks ago.
My fat intake has probably dropped by 95 per cent.
My junk food intake has essentially ceased.
The empty calories of juice and the sneaking growth of the amount of soft drink I was consuming have both ceased.
We would eat pasta maybe one night a week now. It was 3 or four.
There are lentils on the menu.
And loads of veggies and salad.
Fish is now at least once a week.
And every day I tell myself this road I am on now, will have peaks and valleys.
As it is my life.
And there is a lot of work to be done on how I use food.
For when I am sad, stressed, happy and virtually any other emotion at the end of the emotional spectrum I use food as my buffer.
For everything in between I use food.
I think that by baking for others they'll like me more. I think making lovely things for the boys will make me a better mother. In their eyes.
When simply being me does that each and every day.
But without food I feel stripped bare. Like 'what have I got to fall back on/hide behind/deflect the attention'.

So this week was a valley in terms of my weight going down. But it was a peak in terms of my third child turning two and him having a family around him who love him to bits and who light up his life as much as he shines a thousand golden orbs of light into ours.
And that is what I shall remember.

Week 7

This week has been madness.
You know what I've learnt? Than when I have a good weight loss, when I start feeling better about my body and how I look, celebrating by eating solidly for five days is not the best response.
It started with weigh in day where I ate a LOT of chocolate post the good 0.5kg loss.
It continued with the three day Festival of Jasper birthday celebrations.
The amount of butter frosting I shovelled into my mouth on the end of chocolate finger biscuits is not worth dwelling on. Nor the number of pieces of streusel cake I consumed. Nor the amount of cream I dolloped onto the top of my scones.
Yesterday the number of calories I consumed was just ridiculous.
I did it as a shoot-myself-in-the-foot approach. So convinced am I that I've put on about 1kg this week I figured I might as well make it come true.
SO
I went to the gym last night.
For the first time since February 2006.
2kms on what I believe is called the elliptical trainer in about 13 minutes? The one where you put your feet on 'paddles' and walk. Some ball work for 'inner core' (GOD it felt good to suck in that stomach and make the muscles work) then 10 minutes on the treadmill. About 40 minutes all up.
SO
I'm going to write down everything I eat here, on this blog, for a week.
And I'm going to remember to find less self destructive ways to celebrate eating better and thereby losing weight and gaining fitness than eating cake.
It will be scintillating.

Week 6, Days 1-6

I've had a pretty good week, which has been interesting because I haven't been feeling as flat. And then I got to yesterday and became all bleak about life and had a whole incident today with rice crackers and spring onion (and then French Onion!) dip (at different times) that we need not go into.
Food to fill the void.

Weigh In - Week 5

-0.1kg
But it might as well have been 1kg such was the mental impact.
The last two weeks have been a struggle.
But I feel like I've come through it and my head doesn't feel as fuzzy.
We shall see.

Week 5

Hmmm.
Has the not posting here been on purpose? In that trying to ignore what I've been doing and how I've been feeling I've therefore been eating?
Filling the void?
Or coping with all.the.crying?
Or the pressure I'm putting on myself about the lack of intimacy between me and Chef at the moment?
All the unspokens that end in the eatens.
It's not that I've been 'bad' or out of control, but I haven't been that 'good' at listening to my body and paying the necessary dues in terms of feeling full, getting so hungry I could gnaw off my own arm.
You know, just the normal 'issues' for the person trying to lose weight over here in the corner.


I'm trying to follow the core plan with Weight Watchers and just feel a bit like I'm free falling.
I think I need to follow their suggested menu plans, just to get a feel for it.

Otherwise I am eating essentially a lot more whole foods - less refined sugar and flours. I love doing this and can feel the effects almost instantly in terms of stamina and energy levels.
I am using a HELL of a lot less oil in my cooking.
I'm back to not eating butter - which I do by not eating toast, because I'm having a bircher muesli or poached egg or weetbix with yoghurt and fruit.

I keep telling myself I'm doing this for the long haul. To establish a better relationship with food, to 'normalise' so this see-saw of weight loss and weight gain ends.

But the competitor in me. The perfectionist. They want to see the rungs on the board. They want big weekly losses. They want the clothes in the wardrobe to fit. Now.

I have weigh in tomorrow and I'm absolutely dreading it.
I suspect I have gained again this week.
So I make myself think it all the way through to the end.
What if I have gained again?
My 'leader' Gayle will give me some tips and strategies to try for the week ahead.
I will still be here.
My family will still love me.
The clothes still won't fit.
So I will have another gain.
And another week will present itself.
For better healthier eating.
For perhaps some more (any!) exercise.
And so it goes.

Week 4, Days 4-7

So this week has been relatively uneventful. Saturday was hard as it was grand final day so there were chips and other assorted things lying around, but apart from that I've been OK.
You watch, I've probably put on this week.

Week 4, Days 1-3

Funny how time flies huh.
This week I've felt a lot calmer with it all.
Like I'm finding that groove.
Enough losses on the board that I feel we're (almost) getting somewhere.
It will be interesting to see if and when last week's emotions replicate themselves and if it is my hormonal cycle returning to some sort of pattern.
I know that when I am getting my period the two days before it I am ravenous. Insatiable.
But I know that last week was largely due to the process and that this weight-loss life-gain process is a long haul one.
I know I will still be writing here in a year and will probably not yet be at my goal weight.
So here I stand. A few good days on the board and feeling ok.
Just OK.
It's tenuous, but better than last weeks panic.

Week 3, Day 1

So today I made muesli slice and only ate one and a half pieces. Not bad.
I'm feeling dreadful at the moment. Frustrated, angry, oh my the anger, frustration and underlying all of it? A gross sense of impatience and panic. Impatience that this weight loss campaign is going to, due to its mere size, take a long time and panic that I might not be able to see it out and retrain my brain that eating huge amounts of food morning, noon and night is just not sustainable or healthy.
Impatient.
Panicked.
Cranky.

Week 2, Day 7

Dark day.
Only really? Only because I was so busy I didn't get lunch.
And the only thing worse than an over-stretched sleep-deprived mother? Is an over-stretched sleep-deprived hungry mother.
It was ugly. I was ugly. I ate a lot of pasta at dinner.
But curiously not so much I felt ill.
I ate a lot of chocolate today (Organic Green and Black if that makes it any better) . Interspersed with raspberries. It was delicious and I enjoyed it thoroughly.
And curiously not like a family Cadbury block but more like 50grams, which isn't that much at all.
In comparison to recent chocolate consumption.
I have issues with when this WW meeting is - it's at 12.30 - so you're starving because you haven't eaten anything and not drunk much because there.is.weigh.in. - and bang in the middle of when Jasper would be having a day sleep, like today when Jasper and Grover were both asleep.
There's a meeting at 10.30 on Thursdays and I'm thinking next week I'll just take the monumental step and change days.