In my last post I spoke about 'liking' my body a wee bit. Well since that post I have had my trainer, my husband and a friend comment on how I seem to be shrinking a wee bit.
My trainer, 'you seem to be changing since the last fortnight'
Hubby, 'you are getting firmer'
Friend, 'looks like you lost some weight'
All comments I will gladly accept and feed off. Yes something seems to be changing. I don't quite know what it is apart from maybe I am firming up. Weightwise I am still around 120 kilos depending on what day or time I weigh myself. Although this is pissing me off, I am ignoring it for the moment as the aim is to be consistent and to copy that from day to day.
What am I doing?
- Trying to keep off the sugar. This means that apart from a teaspoon of honey I put in my yoghurt everyday, and one or two fruit a day, I try not to have any sweet things.
- I have gone back to full fat food and butter. I am no longer having fat free food and feeling eternally hungry and unsatisfied. I have made the decision to go back to full fat milk and use butter instead of margarine. I am feeling less hungry and having smaller portions of food as I am satisfied for longer.
- I have started experimenting with what makes my gut feel better and what does not. Bread does not make me feel good in my belly so I have decided not to have it. I am not anal about it but instead of having bread everyday, I only have it when I really want to. Same thing for rice and noodles and pasta. I am however having more sweet potato mash. I think on a very basic level I am experimenting with paleo type foods without becoming totally paleo.
- I have limited lentils and pulses. This is again with the paleo type experiment I am currently on.
With these little changes I am feeling better - working out is giving me a sense of self worth like never before. Seeing my body changing I am learning to appreciate it more and more. Maybe to an extent having had gestational diabetes when I was pregnant has been at the back of my head ever since and slowly and surely I am finding that I am thinking more and more about long term health, being healthy and active instead of slow and sluggish.
I do have my aberrations and am still a work in progress but I am very much improved from eating 2 medium sized cadbury bars from the local 7-11 every cpl of days to having one dark chocolate Lindt this week, most of which I do blame on my period. However, I think one thing I am doing a lot of nowadays is not giving myself hell and putting myself down each time I have an aberration. I accept it, think about why it happened and then move on with some ideas of how I would approach it. So in this instance, I know that had I eaten the dark chocolate slowly focussing on the taste, texture, flavour I would have not only enjoyed more but would have eaten less as the feelingof being satiated would have come after 4 squares or so. I know that in eating the chocolate I focussed on the taste, texture and flavour the first couple of squares and then went back onto the old pattern of throwing it in without any awareness of taste.
I am enjoying me and little by little I am learning to like me and enjoy the journey. Afterall there is no fun in a journey I dread? I will try and update as I go along a bit more regularly than I have been. Watch this space :):)
The amazing race
Wednesday 20 June 2012
Thursday 7 June 2012
Consistency - my constant desire
Is it possible to always be in serious muscle pain?
So thats how I feel. I have been training my arse off (except the arse is still around) and when I am home I fall like a deck of cards. I train 4 days a week at a fitness studio doing loads of weights and cardio and in an hour they have me focussed and revved up like a mean machine. Its just that when I get home, I just am soooo exhausted that I collapse. What I love about this place is that they really work me out full and proper. There is no room for shamming through the workout as my trainer has an eagle eye on me. I often wonder if I am sooo unfit that I am plain exhausted by the weekend? I have been doing this for 8 weeks now and food woes aside (coz the great Tom cannot come home with me and monitor my food), I feel great.
The other day I surprised myself when I commented ( for the first time since I can remember) that I like my body a little bit when I saw myself training facing the mirror. Usually I do not look at the mirror but this time as it was a new move and I needed to check my posture and whether I was engaging the right muscle groups. I actually thought that my thighs looked firmer than the bulging discs of fat I saw them as. How much of the self criticism is valid and how much is mental. I think most of it is mental. For me, I tend to 'like' (note: I didnt say love), myself a little bit more when I am exercising. I feel better about myself than I have in years. I still have stacks of weight to lose and I still have a gut and big tits but my arms are firmer than they have been in ages, my thighs are stronger and I am slowly - exceptionally slowly getting there.
Food has been the struggle it always has been. I am now trying to eat a lot less bread, rice, pasta, indian breads and trying to replace them with mash - sweet potato, carrot, pumpkin, potato in lesser quantities and increasing the vegetable intake. I have been sugar free for one day. I am trying to take each day at a time and not get bogged down into chocolate and the semantics of I have touched a grain of chocolate and so I can have the whole bar. I am trying to remember that consistency is the name of the game. Hence the new mantra, lets deal with today while we are living today, tomorrow will be taken care of tomorrow. I did end up with a raging headache early evening and all of last night which probably had to do with no chocolate. I will be tightening up on fruit too as itis all too easy to replace sugar with stacks of fruit as I found out yesterday. Fruits I ended up eating yesterday were banana, grapes, mandarin. Although this is a far cry from the day before where there was more fruit when I gave up on sugar, I know that today there will be less fruit on the table.
Consistency has to be the mantra to better living I think. I started thinking of people at work and friends who appeared to be successful in my eyes. Mind you the measure of success has not been by how much they get paid or what level positions they hold but how I percieve them in terms of health and fitness and a general aura of positivity. The key thread common to all these people had to do with their being consistent in how they ate, slept, worked and exercised. They were in control and not the other way around. There was a balance I sensed that they had. They seemed to take care in how they ate and they did this as humans and weren't the freaks who were solely gym machines etc. Yes they did eat chocolate but instead of someone like me who went the whole hog and bought the family bar and ate it in one sitting, they bought a small caramello or freddo frog - you get the drift. This group of people exercised because it was part of their routine and something they did just like brushing their teeth and did not think of it as sometkhing that needed to be ticked off - admittedly they do not have weight battles which I do and I do not think most of them ever did - but they are aware that they can abuse their body with food easily. This I think is the core. I seek more awareness on a conscious level. I eat to drown stress or as a comfort blankie. During the period of eating I am comfortable but the moment the food is finished, I am already on the merry go round to feeling horrible about myself and ona nd on this merry go round goes.
So seeing that I have started again - and again - lets see where this again takes me.
So thats how I feel. I have been training my arse off (except the arse is still around) and when I am home I fall like a deck of cards. I train 4 days a week at a fitness studio doing loads of weights and cardio and in an hour they have me focussed and revved up like a mean machine. Its just that when I get home, I just am soooo exhausted that I collapse. What I love about this place is that they really work me out full and proper. There is no room for shamming through the workout as my trainer has an eagle eye on me. I often wonder if I am sooo unfit that I am plain exhausted by the weekend? I have been doing this for 8 weeks now and food woes aside (coz the great Tom cannot come home with me and monitor my food), I feel great.
The other day I surprised myself when I commented ( for the first time since I can remember) that I like my body a little bit when I saw myself training facing the mirror. Usually I do not look at the mirror but this time as it was a new move and I needed to check my posture and whether I was engaging the right muscle groups. I actually thought that my thighs looked firmer than the bulging discs of fat I saw them as. How much of the self criticism is valid and how much is mental. I think most of it is mental. For me, I tend to 'like' (note: I didnt say love), myself a little bit more when I am exercising. I feel better about myself than I have in years. I still have stacks of weight to lose and I still have a gut and big tits but my arms are firmer than they have been in ages, my thighs are stronger and I am slowly - exceptionally slowly getting there.
Food has been the struggle it always has been. I am now trying to eat a lot less bread, rice, pasta, indian breads and trying to replace them with mash - sweet potato, carrot, pumpkin, potato in lesser quantities and increasing the vegetable intake. I have been sugar free for one day. I am trying to take each day at a time and not get bogged down into chocolate and the semantics of I have touched a grain of chocolate and so I can have the whole bar. I am trying to remember that consistency is the name of the game. Hence the new mantra, lets deal with today while we are living today, tomorrow will be taken care of tomorrow. I did end up with a raging headache early evening and all of last night which probably had to do with no chocolate. I will be tightening up on fruit too as itis all too easy to replace sugar with stacks of fruit as I found out yesterday. Fruits I ended up eating yesterday were banana, grapes, mandarin. Although this is a far cry from the day before where there was more fruit when I gave up on sugar, I know that today there will be less fruit on the table.
Consistency has to be the mantra to better living I think. I started thinking of people at work and friends who appeared to be successful in my eyes. Mind you the measure of success has not been by how much they get paid or what level positions they hold but how I percieve them in terms of health and fitness and a general aura of positivity. The key thread common to all these people had to do with their being consistent in how they ate, slept, worked and exercised. They were in control and not the other way around. There was a balance I sensed that they had. They seemed to take care in how they ate and they did this as humans and weren't the freaks who were solely gym machines etc. Yes they did eat chocolate but instead of someone like me who went the whole hog and bought the family bar and ate it in one sitting, they bought a small caramello or freddo frog - you get the drift. This group of people exercised because it was part of their routine and something they did just like brushing their teeth and did not think of it as sometkhing that needed to be ticked off - admittedly they do not have weight battles which I do and I do not think most of them ever did - but they are aware that they can abuse their body with food easily. This I think is the core. I seek more awareness on a conscious level. I eat to drown stress or as a comfort blankie. During the period of eating I am comfortable but the moment the food is finished, I am already on the merry go round to feeling horrible about myself and ona nd on this merry go round goes.
So seeing that I have started again - and again - lets see where this again takes me.
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