THE GLASS HALF FULL

What a shocker of a week. My working-from-home day on Wednesday turned into a go-into-the- office-and-deal-with-an-urgent-problem day. I had Mitchell with me and sitting in my office for 3 hours while I worked (admittedly playing on his DS) just about drove him crazy after which he just about drove me crazy. AAAAAAARGH!!

Anyways I was back at work on Thursday and the problem re-presented itself in a different light so there was yet another stressful day of trying to achieve the impossible in 5 minutes. I had several instances of closing my eyes, breathing deeply to calm my mind and then getting on with the actions around sorting out the problem. I paid extra attention to being nice to people and getting involved in pleasant conversations whenever I could just to balance out my inner turmoil.

Days like those have, in the past, guaranteed that I would resort to comforting myself with as much junk food as I could physically manage to get in. You know the old theory "5 minutes of it tasting good is 5 minutes of my pain being eased so I'll take it." Stupid logic, I know but hey, it was my coping mechanism. Well I'm so pleased to say that despite everything, I never resorted to those old actions and in fact I wasn't even tempted to. WOOHOO!!!

My trusty Metal Monster may not be heading downwards as I so hoped he would but hey, at least I'm mastering the art of maintenance and that, my friends, is definitely a glass half full job.

:-) M

THE FIBRE SAGA CONTINUES

Interesting observations since I changed my diet by increasing fibre to improve regularity.

1. A serve of prunes on rising followed by a tablespoon of psyllium in my post workout shake = inability to eat much else for breakfast. Eggs made me feel sick so they were off the menu. I managed a slice of Burgen rye toast with natural peanut butter and with a coffee on the way to work, this combination kept me going until lunch time. No gnawing 10am hunger whatsoever.

 

2. I've started taking a probiotic and can honestly say, I feel no different. 

 

3. Pears = kings of high fibre fruit and including 1 in my daily diet easily gets my fibre intake around or over 30g.

 

BUT

 

with all this fibre going in, my gut is churning and sore and bloated - I could pull off the '6 months pregnant look' no worries - AND I'm no more regular than I was pre-op. SIGH.

 

Next experiment: slippery elm (apparently its like 'nature's broom'.)

 

Oh BTW I've had to ditch some of the above as life was just getting too uncomfortable.

 

M  

YESTERDAY - TODAY

Yesterday had the potential to be one of those days where I end up eating my body weight in cake.

Today I'm pleased to say "I am cake-free."

Breathe, be calm for the storm will pass and there is sunshine around the corner.

Today is a better day.

:-) M 

THE ROUND UP, THE CATCH UP AND LOOKING FORWARD

Today will be an exercise in speed posting as my time available for personal luxuries during the day has severely diminished. We are 1 staff member down for  3 months and there is some big, gutsy stuff that I'm working on and my busyness rating has gone through the roof. So here goes.

THE ROUND UP

March saw me go mostly vego in order to improve my regularity after a very dismal end to February in that regard. By blogging about it, I got LOTS of helpful hints and comments, some of which I adopted and some of which past experience has shown to have no benefit for me. I'm happy to say that I finished the month far better than I started and the things that helped were:

1. Starting the days with soaked prunes and downing the soaking liquid as well.

2. After training I'd add a tablespoon of psyllium husks to my protein shake.

3. My lunches were mainly veges, brown rice and a serve of legumes to boost my fibre intake.

4. I went back to eating pears (the king of high fibre fruits) and drinking my water consistently

5. I increased my activity from virtually sedentary to active on most days. I'm still noticing that a lack of running doesnt help with my cause though.

Whilst there was a good improvement, I must say that I've learnt what is maybe the real cause of my regularity problems. Ironically its IRREGULARITY. Irregularity in my overall meals and water intake. Whilst I eat fairly regularly during the week, come the weekend and skipped meals become the norm. Not for any other reason than my schedule is totally different, totally busy and meals get pushed out to all different times (sometimes dropping right off my schedule). At the same time, my water intake will suffer so I've got these 2 major factors working against me.

I'm no longer eating vego apart from some meals here and there and I'll monitor how I go with this in-between approach. It was an interesting experiment though.

THE CATCH UP

Wow things have been busy at work but Easter was amazing. I got back into walking including taking Mitchell on shorter walks with me so that his fitness improves in time for our OS holiday. He is such an inactive kid. He hates sport, whinges about walking anywhere and has no interest in being active. However he's been warned that lots of walking will be required on holidays so we are out 'training'. I laughed when he asked me if we were doing it (the walking) to burn fat. LOL there aint much fat to burn on his string bean body.

Eating got a little too relaxed before Easter due to farewell morning teas, hot cross buns put on by our social club and lunches out but overall I've coped really well and the change on the MM has been minor :-) The biggest and best change has been in my attitude / headset around the times that I really indulged. I can honestly say that I'm now at a point where I just go with the flow, accept that I made the decision to eat whatever it was, remind myself how much I enjoyed it and not go into a big emotional meltdown over it. There's no 'getting over it' or 'picking myself up and moving on' because as far as I'm concerned I never fell down or fell over or failed or ....insert whatever negative action you want. Life sure is better when you look at things this way and it removes the agony that goes with the redemption act.

LOOKING FORWARD

We have 12 weeks til our holiday and undoubtedly its going to be a stupidly busy lead up to it. There may not be much blogging or reading of others blogs or FBing in that time. My main focus will be to keep eating well, keep training, keep myself and my family healthy both physically and emotionally (not let the stress break me down) and slide up to our holiday looking and feeling amazingly awesome.

Wish me luck and please check back in if I manage to get here for an update.

xx m    

  

I WAS WRONG

Oh I was SO wrong. Everything from the waist down and chest up is in agony. It just took a little longer to come on in full force. Suffer baby, suffer!!

We had a fairly mild morning today despite the forecast being for a cool change and showers. So I took the opportunity to get out for a walk just around my local streets even if I had to do repeat laps of just a few streets from home. It was nice to be out in the fresh air and moving vs being stuck on a bike or rower. Today I clocked up 45 minutes taking my weekly total to 85 minutes. If I get in an hour on Sunday, that leaves 55 for tomorrow and/or Saturday which is a big ask so I can see Sunday's session being a biggie. It'll have to be a combo of walking, biking and rowing which will help make the time go faster. 

On another note we are roughly 3 months away from our OS holiday. Continued slow and steady losses on the Metal Monster will see me in a very happy place by the time that rolls around. Already I'm back wearing some clothes that had been pushed to the back of my wardrobe while I was heavier. Love it when the choice for work clothes increases without spending money on new stuff. I don't know how many times I went to complain about having nothing to wear when in fact I have tons of gorgeous stuff - it just doesn't fit me when I'm fat because I hate shopping then.

OK back to work now. Cheers folks.

M

THE MAGIC PILL

So today my legs are sore but not as bad as I expected. Looking back they were far worse after the squat / DB presses that I incorporated into my 'upper body cardio' sesh  a couple of weeks ago. Life is full of surprises.

Today's workout was mixed cardio using both the rower and spin bike. Unable to face 40 straight minutes on the rower or bike, no matter how much I vary the programs or levels (intensity), I opted to alternate between the two and thankfully the time went much faster and I still managed a good workout. I've set myself a little mini challenge and that is doing 200 minutes of cardio each week. I'm not planning on dropping my weight training so I'll see how I manage this on the time that I have. 

I know a lot of people say that heavy weight training is more effective for weight loss but unless your diet is totally geared to support it (and mine isn't and I'm not prepared to make the required sacrifices) then for me cardio is a must. I've had some of my best drops in weight when I was running 3 - 4 x / week and weight training 3 x / week. Couple that with less carbs during the day, increased good fats and lots of salad / veg and the Metal Monster was coming to the party nicely each week :-) Shame my system didn't appreciate that lifestyle but I'm well on track for finding a happy middle ground, I think. Anyways, I'm a firm believer that we are all individuals and finding the right fit is an individual thing and not something you can copy from somebody else. Don't even get me started on all the different 'diets' or 'lifestyles' that are being touted on social media these days. (That's a whole other blog post).

Today I'll leave you with a quote that absolutely nails it on so many fronts:

The magic pill is .... YOU.

Thanks Mr Harper. Yet again, you are absolutely right.

Cheers all

M      

OH THE PAIN ....

..... I'll feel after this morning's workout. 

Today was leg day. A statement that brought fear into my heart and a sense of dread as I headed out to my studio at 5.15am. Whatever I did today was going to hurt big time tomorrow. There was no escaping it. My last leg workout was on Feb 12 the day before my foot surgery.

Being the big sook that I am, I dropped my weights back by 5kgs on my squats and stiff legged deadlifts. They were still really hard and heavy, just reaffirming that I am a big weakling. I kept my weights low on my static lunges and plie squats as I plan to build them up over time. To rev things up a bit, I supersetted all my leg work with triceps work (gotta keep the arms firm and toned!).

Well I survived it and now I'm bracing myself for tomorrow's DOMS. I guess I'll just have to harden up and ride it out. The trick is to now keep training legs regularly so this doesn't happen again, or only happens on a lesser scale. I won't be able to use the old 'my legs are tired' excuse as I'm not running and lets be honest, walking doesn't exactly tire you out unless you're covering mega distance.

On other fronts, my vego diet is going well although preparing separate meals for everybody in my family is starting to wear thin. I've gotten by with lots of pre-packaged meals for myself but in hindsight they're probably not the best long term alternative. I will re-assess at the end of the month. As far as overall regularity goes, there has been improvement so it would be with some trepidation that I'd go back to meat based meals and getting the balance right will, no doubt, be tricky. 

Anyways that's enough of my boring life for now. Hope you're all having a great day. Talk tomorrow.

M