hello stranger, remember me? i've wanted to come back here so many times . . . i've snooped around your blogs, sussed it out, checked your progress every now and then, and have thought about how much i've missed you . . . but i was determined to return here with good news. finally, i have some.i guess i'll start with a rundown of my last . . . erm . . . almost-nine months. wow, it's been a long time.
i wasn’t in great shape when i last posted. yep, my body was a mess, but so was my head, which weighs me down so much more than excess kilos. i had planned on taking a blog break because i was going away for a bit, but i was also having a pretty crappy time with anxiety and really needed to shed some pressure. i shut up shop here, let go of some other commitments, and decided to face my fear of admitting i sometimes have an itty bitty problem.
it's hard to talk about because right now i’m feeling good. great, even. right now depression + anxiety inhabit a dark and distant planet, soaring around the galaxy, as old as time itself, but it’s certainly not in my orbit. i do know, though, that at any moment the tiniest bump could send it hurtling back in my direction. any of you who cop the often-random depression +/ anxiety slings and arrows will probably understand the fear of admitting to people you struggle. you worry it will feed the problem . . . empower it . . . give the parasite permission to raise its ugly head in public where you’ll no longer be the only one who knows it’s in the room (and attached to you).
but talking to someone about it was a good move for me. great, even. i don’t know whether something was said that really sunk in, or whether just knowing i was doing something to help my situation gave me enough of a jolt to power on.
so with my head more on track, i went away on my trip and had a blast. yay! but . . . along with my worries, i left my food conscience back in sydney. booo! i ate like a beast: smorrebrod and remoulade in copenhagen, ghoulash and dumplings in prague, croissants and crepes in paris, phal and pudding in london . . . i walked for miles every day which counteracted my indulging . . . but when i returned home and went back to work i continued eating like a beast on vacation, and, well, as far as exercise goes i walked about three metres each day to my car and back.
and so began a new phase in my life: bigger-than-ever.
i continued to eat way too much and barely exercised. my mind had returned to that dismal, unresponsive, purgatorial, ‘whatever’ mode. my focus was gone. my food+exercise conscience had abandoned ship. my spirits were diminishing, while my weight was soaring to new heights. i rapidly put back on the weight i’d managed to lose here (12.5 lbs) and by the start of this year i was up another 4.5 lbs on top of that. i'd reached an all-time high. ugh.
my 'big' clothes were starting to look like a g-string on a hippopotamus. and, what's worse, i was actually starting to feel content with that. i'd accepted that this was my life. i would only ever have this life. it was my destiny to lack confidence, feel less-than, feel old, feel unhealthy, feel miserable. wtf?!
then, miraculously, my conscience decided to resurface. it slowly began poking and prodding me, reminding me that i was still alive and that accepting a less-than life was . . . was . . . well, unacceptable.
phew!
the 'even-bigger' clothes i’d formerly refused to buy began feeling tight on me. POKE!
i had the sneaking suspicion that people (many people) in the office were giving me those god-awful ‘is she pregnant?’ sideways glares. no! i’ve just been eating way too many pies! POKE POKE! POKE!
i started thinking that if i actually wanted to have a baby, my body couldn’t even support it. POKE POKE POKE POKE POKE!
and then my heart started misbehaving and freaking me out. POKE, PROD, POKE POOOOOKE! P-P-P-P-P-POOOOOKE!
which was all sending me back into that senseless cycle of fatter, miserable, even fatter, even more miserable, which was just what that dark and distant planet needed to send it back on a crash-course with me! POKE, PROD, POKE POOOOOKE! P-P-P-P-P-POOOOOKE!!!!!
it finally clicked again for me. i decided i needed a plan. i needed to eat better and exercise more. i’d commit to at least half an hour of exercise every day, rain, hail or shine. a pretty solid effort, right?
hmm, not so sure.
i mentioned my plan to a girl in the office, saying how i was going to commit three and a half hours of exercise a week to my cause.
bluntly, she said to me, ‘that’s not enough.’
i jumped to defend myself. ‘but i don’t have time for any more than that. i have too many commitments. i’m so busy. i get home so late from work. and then often i have more work to do. i’m exhausted. i don’t want to set unrealistic goals.’
she looked at me blankly, but her response was written all over her face. i’m a mother of two, i work full time, i put dinner on the table every night, i have a million grown-up commitments, a hectic social life, and i manage to make time.
‘what about your weekends?’ she asked me.
i had no response. i had no excuse. if i was serious about losing weight, then i needed to be serious about taking the steps necessary in really making it happen! three and a half hours a week was never going to cut it!
cue departure from bigger-than-ever and enter phase: hell-yes-it-is-on.
now it really clicked for me. i knew i had many tough months ahead of me, and that maintaining motivation would be my biggest problem. i grabbed a fresh calendar and started day one on january 9. i found new batteries for my sadly neglected and dusty scales and finally lumbered on them once more, terrified of seeing the awful number that would undoubtedly flash up at me. it was a shock, to say the least, but i bravely picked up a pen and wrote the ugly number down. major obstacle one, down.
fast forward to ten weeks later. after a heck of a lot of walking and a more cautious diet, so far i have lost 10.5 kg (23 lbs). i am really starting to feel the difference and am so motivated to lose the next ten (and the next ten!). i want to move. the more i move, the more i want to move. that’s a vicious cycle i do like.
there are three key players that have kept up my all-important motivation momentum:
number one, myfitnesspal app. this has been unbelievably helpful. i am guessing this app and others similar are helping lots of people? i've always been against counting calories, but this app has honestly changed the way i view intake and output. making sure i add every food item and exercise session to my app is as crucial right now as weighing in every day. and it only takes seconds! it shows me that a mess-up does not spell disaster. you don't have to give up, you just have to pay for it (around the block a dozen times or so).
number two: having my partner’s support. when you spend so much of your time together eating out at restaurants and watching dvds, you know you're in for a fight! but he’s been a great support, joining me for tennis (upgrading to a hotter+happier girlfriend every time!), boxing, kicking a soccer ball around at the park. if we eat out, we walk to the restaurant or make up for it the following day.
number three: audiobooks. on my own i’ve been walking at every opportunity, and something that has kept one foot in front of the other, day after day, is audiobooks on my iphone. i walk to the shops to buy groceries, i walk to the video store, i walk around the block over and over, and when you're listening to a 'page-turner' the time goes really quickly and you stop dreading the process. instead of turning pages rapidly, you walk faster! magic!
so, in a pretty massive nutshell, there you have it. i've made progress but still have a long way to go. i hope to come back here again soon, but am really trying to spend less time at the computer - i swear, it can be like disappearing into a black hole where time and reason and filter cease to exist. you just read a few blogs, check out a few of your fave pages, read a few emails, then you look up at the clock and a week has passed!
thanks to those guys up on the right who've stuck around in spite of my epic hiatus! xx
do you ever feel invisible? like anyone could just walk right through you at any moment? (maybe the background in your life looks like your pyjamas, and that's the problem.)
whether you were the be fri, or the st ends . . . on a freezing cold night there's nothing better to feed your spirit and your soul than laughing with your bestie over steaming-hot bowls of dumpling soup. having an old friend around can remind you to laugh, can remind you that you're loved, can remind you to love, and can remind you of your youth - a time when your dreams were tangible and within reach
