No-junk January

New Year’s Day:

Happy 2020 everyone. 2020? Seriously? I can remember when 2000 was still years away - from the other direction!

I had a mostly nice Christmas, we hosted dinner as usual plus BBQ and leftovers on Boxing Day. Unfortunately I was not at peak health, just a cold but that was enough to make cleaning and cooking for 18 even more exhausting than usual. I stayed home the day after, when everyone else went to Star Wars, and that helped my recovery. I’m fine now. We hosted a NYE party last night (I say party... we played board games. Wild!) Sadly, I didn’t get to see Poppa and my side of the family a few days before Christmas, I was at my sickest then and didn’t want to infect a 101-year-old. I’ll have to organise another trip over there.

I ate in a very unrestrained way over the past month or so, and haven’t exercised for months, and my weight reflects that. 76kg on the first day of 2020. So I’m making this ‘no junk January’ (chocolate isn’t junk!). I turn 50 this year! I know keeping control of my weight is going to be an ongoing job, but a very important one. I still have another 50 years to live in this body!

The bushfires continue all over my state, the sky is orangy-brown more often than blue. Several people have died and many homes destroyed. I’m lucky to have had only the relatively minor inconveniences of staying inside on the worst air pollution days, being unable to put washing outside, and being unsure if we’ll be able to get to our beach holiday as the roads have been closed a couple of times and it might be safer to just stay home.

Both children will be learning Spanish at school next year, so Jasmine and I have started practicing on DuoLingo. And I’ve started playing World of Warcraft again. Aside from that, some intensive resting.

Goodbye 2017, Happy New Year 2018

Monday:

Time to look back, time to look forward.

Since this a weight loss blog, start with that! This morning I weighed 75.4 kg. I lost a total of 3.8 kg over 2017. Actually of course I gained a bit then lost more. Looking at the total difference over the year explains why people didn't notice my weight loss and I don't need a smaller size in summer clothes, I'm not really that much different than I was this time last year. But 3.8 kg loss is still a win! And I lost 0.8 kg this week, despite Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Eve, several family events. I'm restarting the BSD (blood sugar diet) in earnest today, I've been sort of doing it for four days already but with added treats.

Yesterday I arranged with my cousins to go out and see Poppa for lunch, since he wasn't available at Christmas. My mother's father is 99 and still living in his own home. His younger son lives right across the road but he still looks after himself.

I let myself get a bit worked up about seeing that side of the family, all my cousins (and aunts, for that matter) are thin and I hate that I'm always the fat one. The only fat one. They are all very attractive, too. And nice people. Don't you hate that? Anyway as usual I got quite stressed and unhappy when I should have been excited to see them. But it was ok once I got there, it was nice to see everyone. And I was reminded not to assume that thin = happy. My favourite cousin was stressed about some stuff going on in her life, and clearly had low self esteem about some things. Also, when I complimented the salad she brought, she mentioned that she and her sister ate it often when they were trying to lose weight. So they are no magically thin with no effort! It's always seemed to me that they eat what they want, but in reality now we're adults I only see them at celebrations like Christmas and weddings when of course everyone is having dessert and other treats. They don't eat like that every day!

We had Tim's side of the family over here for dinner, they stayed until about 9:30 but most have young children so didn't stay until midnight. I usually go to bed myself, but for some reason allowed myself to be convinced to stay up. Not really worth it in my opinion, I'm paying for it today with tiredness.

Overall 2017 has been good for me. I've really enjoyed doing my TAFE course, our swimming pool is finally finished, and I lost a bit of weight. Probably bad stuff happened too, plenty of frustrations along the way, but I'm going to focus on the good.

And 2018? The two big goals are to finish my TAFE course and find a job as a Library Technician somewhere that doesn't have a hideously long commute, and lose some more weight. Ultimately about 18 kg but I'm not putting a time limit on that. I'm not in total control of what I weigh, only of my behaviours. I'll do the BSD for 8 weeks as a start, exercise for 30 mins five days a week, drink more water.

Still me

Thursday:

I hadn't realised I'd gone so long without a post... only four days I think but I used to post every day and even now at least every second day. Haven't had a lot to write about I guess. Health/diet has been much the same; I start every day well but end up eating some kind of unhealthy treat by the end of the day. I'm maintaining my weight, which is better than gaining but not as good as losing! Somehow I yet again deluded myself that a New Year would transform me into a different person who reacted differently to temptation and found exercise appealing. Well guess what, it's 2017 and I'm still me!

Tim is back at work this week. Today the kids and I went to see the movie "Sing" which we really enjoyed. It's animated, animals in a singing competition. Themes of being yourself, striving for goals etc. Cute and great singing.

It's only a 15 minute drive from here to the movies but Aiden fell asleep in the car on the way there, in the middle of the day. We've all been sick, on and off, since before Christmas with some kind of flu. Sore throats, headaches, runny noses, sneezing and coughing. The usual, nothing too serious. It got to Aiden last. I thought he seemed well today but I guess the falling asleep during the day - very unlike him - shows not.

Today I did some Xbox Kinect dancing, I only managed 15 minutes. I remember the days when I could do more than an hour. Jasmine danced with me, I don't think she broke a sweat. I had to go and have a shower. One thing I hate about exercise is I continue to feel very hot and keep sweating for at least half an hour or more afterwards, even after a cool shower. But annoying or not, I can't let that stop me. I'll build up again! And maybe when I'm fit I won't get so red-faced and sweaty for so long!

Happy New Year

Wednesday:

Happy New Year everyone!

After a troubled night's sleep due to the heat, I got up and did an 8 minute standing yoga session then a 30 minute walk so that was a good start to the New Year. I didn't actually enjoy the exercise; yoga is difficult and boring (I am getting so old and creaky!) and outside was hot and full of flies ... but I did it anyway! Tick.

I just read through the last couple of years' NY resolution posts and it was a bit depressing. Same talk of weight loss, finishing my novel, drinking more water etc. Things I still haven't achieved. I weigh more now than I did in either of the previous two years. I think reading those posts was a bad idea. Forget them and look forward.

Starting weight for 2014 is 82.5 kg.

I worked out my Uni timetable and full time would be five pretty full days, with three days going past the end of my children's school hours, requiring after-school childcare. And that is not including study or assignments. No time for writing my novel, grocery shopping without kids, exercise, helping kids with homework or anything else. And the children already have extra-curricular swimming lessons, dance, karate, and violin to fit in. I am going to investigate part time. It will take a lot longer, of course, but who knows what tomorrow will bring? For now, I just can't manage 19 face-to-face hours per week plus study and homework. I have a course advice session this Friday so I will be able to chat to someone.

New scale

Tuesday night - NYE:

I'd been feeling very tired all day and this evening my lower abdomen was having some ominous pains so I sent Tim and the kids out to see the 9.00pm fireworks without me. Couldn't risk being far from amenities, in case of a digestive emergency. I do feel a bit sad, home alone on NYE, but they'll be back in a while.

The last time I bought bathroom scales, when my digital ones stopped working, I decided to get old fashioned dial scales. I felt that getting ones that digitally showed your weight within 100 grams plus fat percentage and hydration and twenty other things was silly because they just weren't that accurate. You could get a variation of a lot more than 100 grams just by getting off then on again. But now, I dunno - six months later maybe? I'm terrible at estimating time past - I've changed my mind and bought a new set of digital scales. Nothing fancy, just my weight. I got sick of trying to estimate where the dial was - is that 81 and a half or 81 and three quarters?

I was fully prepared for my old scales and new scales to register very different weights. I got out the new one tonight for an unofficial weigh-in to compare them. I won't tell you the number - evening and fully clothed doesn't count! But to my astonishment they gave me exactly the same number (as exactly as I could estimate the dial one). So I am going to trust my new scale.

Not weighing myself every day has NOT worked. I have put on quite a bit since I stopped in April. So from tomorrow I will weigh myself every morning and plot the number on my graph like I used to. I have to learn from my experiences of the past few years since I seriously started trying to lose weight and use what works. Weighing every single day keeps me accountable, and daily fluctuations don't stress me because I've done it for long enough to know that that can happen. As long as the up and down jags tend downwards overall.

See you all in 2014.

Thrive

Tuesday - New Year's Eve:

'Tis the time for reviewing the old year and looking forward to the new one.

For 2013, a couple of stand-outs for me are writing half a novel and finding out my mum has cancer. One good, one bad. Did anything else big happen? Not that I can think of right now. Health/weight stayed much the same (overall probably a bit worse). Same house/husband/children/friends as before.

2014 is shaping up to be a big year. I'd been wavering about Uni but my Poppa (grandfather) gave me some money at Christmas so I feel less guilty about that side of it and decided to go for it. I've enrolled to start full time in February. We'll see how that goes, might have to change to part time.

As I mentioned, I wrote (nearly) half a book in the second half of 2013. I was hoping to complete it in that time, but didn't. And then I stopped entirely with worrying about my mum, then going away on holiday and Christmas and now school holidays plus finishing reading nearly 200 short stories for an award I am judging. But I am not going to abandon my novel, even though I'm planning full time Uni and have all the usual other commitments of family and health. It was going really well and it is something I've always wanted to do. I'll just have to make time, somehow.

As usual, my main NY resolution is to work on my health. Good food (not too much), exercise, drinking water, sleeping, enjoying life. A few blogs I read this morning talked about picking a word or phrase as your theme for the year, and I loved "Thrive". Not just staggering through my days, but unfurling the tendrils of being. Looking after my health without punishment or guilt. Nourishing my body and my mind and appreciating the results. Feeling gratitude for what I have.

(Mother's Day 2012, my mum and me and the kids)

 

 

(December 2013, my mum and the kids)

Sunday weigh-in: 79.5 kg

Sunday, 1 January 2012:

I didn't weigh in last Sunday as it was Christmas Day but I was approximately the same as today. The Sunday two weeks ago I was 78.7 kg; so I'm up 800 grams since then. Not too bad considering we had the Christmas and New Year festivities in between.

I might chat about my non-weight-loss resolutions occasionally, but I will review my weight-loss goals every Sunday with my weigh in.

To review, my goal is to lose half a kilogram (about 1 pound) every week. I will achieve this by exercising five days a week and sticking to a low-calorie plant-focussed diet five days a week. I will track my food every day, even the days I don't stay under the calorie limit. I will also concentrate on drink 6-8 glasses of water (with a squeeze of lemon juice) every day.

Any week, day, or even moment can be a new starting point; but the New Year has a certain glamour to it.

I know this is a bit of a rehash of yesterday's post, but I want to reinforce my goals and plans in my own mind.

At a starting weight of 79.5 kg, it will take me 9 weeks to get down to my first goal of 75 kg. A few days after the end of February. Slow and steady is fine, much better than my previous track record of ... fail. This is the year to win!

What I learned in 2011 and New Year Resolutions

Saturday:

New Year's Eve, 2011. Time to look backwards, then forwards.

What did I learn in 2011? Weight-loss wise, I learned that exercise alone is not enough for me to lose weight -- at least not at the fairly reasonable intensity of an hour five days per week. I gave it a good go for about four and a half months, and lost not a gram nor a centimetre. Of course I'm sure if I exercised three of four or more hours a day there would be a different result; but one hour five days a week seemed to me to be achievable consistently even with work and family to consider. There are health benefits to exercise other than weight loss, but if weight loss is what you are after then exercise is not enough.

Anything else? I love love love to read. I already knew that, obviously, but the knowledge has been reinforced recently. I've had a hectic reading schedule as a judge for a fiction award -- at the moment I need to read a book every two days for the next two months -- some are great but some of the books are atrocious and I certainly don't want to be reading those ones. I look forward to this committment being over. Why? So that I can get back to the long list of books that I want to read that aren't part of the award! I want the time to plunge back into the George R. R. Martin series, to re-read some old favourites, to read a new-found 'Anne of Green Gables' prequel (not by the original author) in the bath. To find new interesting bloggers and read their entire archives. I want to finish this batch of reading so I can do some more reading!

I've learned I'm not such an outsider in my mother's extended family as I have always felt. They are all fit and tanned and athletic and not at all academic. Always lovely to me, but I've never felt really comfortable with them since I was a little kid. There seemed a long period when I just didn't fit in. Whether I am more secure now with my own little nuclear family, or they have all grown out of sulky teens/tweens now (I am one of the eldest of my generation), or some other reason; Christmas was really comfortable this year. I had seen them more often than usual due to several events like my cousin's wedding (I live in a different state) so maybe that helped too. Maybe the change is in me.

I have learned that working from home is hard to juggle. I get easily distracted (I'll just stack the dishwasher/check my blog feed/ pop up to the shops/watch this segment on TV...) and have trouble separating work time from home time. When you are in an office you are away from other things that need doing and also have the "police" of your workmates and boss. At home, if making a cup of tea takes 20 mins there is no-one to care but yourself. And, eventually, your client. So managing that issue will be one of my resolutions.

Which leads neatly into ... 2012 New Year's Resolutions

Since this is a weight-loss blog, I will start with that. There is some acronym I can't remember that says goals need to be measurable and achievable and accountable and a couple of other things. Whatever. I will start 2012 at approximately 79 kg (174 pounds), and I want to get down to 58 kg. That is 21 kg to lose -- but as I've said before I may be happy with 63 or something around there. We'll see when we get closer.

*I'm not going to make a final long-term goal for now. For the moment, I am only looking at the short term. Two months, four kg. By the end of Feb, I will be 75 kg. Earn my first glitzy weight-loss charm at last. When I've done that, I will look at the next bit.

How is this to be achieved?

Firstly, continue/get back to the exercise. An hour of vigorous exercise five days a week. More would be fine. Until the kids go back to school at the beginning of February, this will mainly be using the Kinnect. Dance is good, and some of the games on the Adventures disc are really high cardio. I've been doing well on this front so far, the trick will be not to slack off and get lazy with it. Five days a week! I can go to the gym on the weekend to get some weight training in.

Secondly, sort out something with my diet. Very restrictive diets certainly make me lose weight, but I can't stick to them. I don't want to give up my "treats". But I quite liked the meals I made for myself when detoxing; so my plan is to modify meals to reduce fat and calories. Cutting down on calories will probably mean cutting down on (but not cutting out) carbs. Less, not none. Tonight I made fajitas -- lean meat marinated in spices and lime juice, lots of vegetables, a little bit of oil. But the two tortillas added about 300 calories and plenty of salt. I will, in future, wrap my fillings in lettuce leaves instead. Just as delicious; far fewer calories, no artificial preservatives or added salt or sugar. I'm sure I can make modifications like this to many meals, yet still have some chocolate when I want to. And stay under my calories limit of 1340, five days a week.

Non-weight-loss goals?

*Organise my work time better so I am doing paid work in the hours allocated for it. My time while the kids are at school will include exercise, lunch (and tea breaks), and work. Other things are for outside work hours. Oh, except grocery shopping is much easier without the kids, so I will be doing that in school hours. And things like hair-cuts and waxing ... you see how easy it is to fill the hours with non-paid-work? But not TV or blogging or housework. If I'm going to make a real go of this freelancing business then I need to devote a reasonable number of hours to it. Three billable hours a day.

*In 2012, I am not going to over-commit myself. No work scheduled for school holidays. One week buffer between projects to allow for illness and emergencies and rush-jobs for special clients (I started doing this a few months ago and those buffer weeks fill up quickly!) I am not going to judge any awards in 2012 -- this year's 66 entries meant hundreds of unpaid reading hours. No free proofreading or manuscript critiquing for my writing guild. I need to take a year off all the volunteer stuff to make time for some other things. This doesn't mean no volunteering ever again, but in 2011 it has taken me away from my family and my own writing and paid work so much that it has become a huge burden and I need a break from it. I will continue reviewing the free books I get -- I get to choose which ones -- and slush reading for ASIM magazine as that only means a couple of short stories a week. So I guess I am still doing some unpaid work. But not nearly so much. I remember the good old days when I had time to volunteer at my kids' school; helping out with the home readers and in the library. When I could spend time with my family on the weekend instead of catching up on work. When I could play computer games in the evening without feeling guilty about it because I had so much work to do. In 2012 I am pulling back a bit.

*My own writing. My novel. My word-child. 2012 will be the year to finish the first draft. I have paid work projects booked in until the end of March. I have blocked out the first two weeks of April to do some writing; then it is school holidays. I stress about booking out May to write my novel; it would mean that if I get an enquiry now I would have to put them off until June, five months away! That is a long time for someone with a finished novel to wait for an edit, and I would likely lose their business. So I am undecided about that one. If I get an enquiry soon I might give them May and block out June for myself. I like to have a couple of clients lined up.

I also want to do some incidental writing. Chuck Wendig has some great short story prompts on his blog, they used to be every Friday but I'm not sure if he has kept up with that. It's good practice, and would also be great if I could get some short stories out there.

Well, that is enough non-weight-loss rambling for a weight-loss blog. In 2012 I want to be a better wife, better mother, better friend, better person, re-start learning the guitar, sing more, help Jasmine with learning the violin, get the house and garden in order, have more fun ... but my four measurable goals are:
1) Lose 4 kg in 2 months
2) Work smarter
3) Stop trying to do too much
4) Finish the first draft of my novel

See you in 2012