my journey to health

So let me catch you up, I got through christmas and new years eating like a pig, drinking more than I should have, and when I finally got the motivation to venture back to the gym I was absolutely stoked to find I had only put on a kilo, I am not kidding I was expecting around 10 because in the past it would have been!!

This got me thinking that perhaps this exercise thing is actually working, perhaps it has actually done something with my metabolism and I am actually burning more than I used to.

I have decided I am simply going to be more active, I walk with the kids, hell I even walked to the gym, I am enjoying being out and about rather than just going to the gym which admittedly was starting to bore me.

So I walk/run the track behind my house, yes run!!!! Not huge distances but I can do over 100m now I used to struggle to run 10 so we are getting there, I have walked/run the track at the stadium and the stairs a few times and I am going to the gym at least twice a week. so it is just about slowly getting there. In total I am nearly 8 kilos down from 6 months ago, once this would have gutted me, but you know what 8 kilos is 8 kilos and it took me around 10 years to put on the 70 odd kilos I did so I figure it should take me just as long to lose it and I am good with it.

I am so stoked with the small things, the ability to jog ( admittedly I can only do it once or twice a week cause it takes that long for my calves to stop hurting!!!) That is huge, massively huge and I am super stoked with myself.

So onwards and upwards from here!!!

Today I cried, why?? Cause I am so fuckin sick of being fat, so fuckin sick of it, it has never particularly bothered me this much before, it is uncomfortable, the heat is killing me, I work in a kitchen so I sweat like a bushpig which then gives me rashes and bad rashes that hurt like a mofo, every part of me where skin rubs skin fuckin hurts and it smells  and I feel horrible!
I don’t give a crap if I am skinny, that has never bothered me I just want to wear clothes that I feel comfortable in, to not have to choose particular knickers on the morning of a hot day in case they rub in the wrong place, I want to wear tops that I don’t have to keep checking if they are covering my stomach.
I want to buy a fuckin bra, just walk into a shop and buy a bra that fits me, that supports me, that doesn’t rub or look like  it belongs to my nana.

I am fitter, so much fitter but that is it, when the fuck is the fat going to go?? Seriously it is doing my head and the thought of surgery which is something I have never really wanted to do is right there at the front of my mind all of a sudden, right there!!!

I apologise for my foul language

So I have been struggling a bit lately, I started working and that took away my gym time, it leaves me with literally an hour each day to get my ass there, as you can imagine, the slightest thing goes wrong, kids sick, work late, you name it, I cannot go. I did sneak in at 5.30 one morning even though I was not supposed to, that was okay but getting up an hour earlier, not so easy!!

I still struggle with my eating and have really just not had the motivation to eat properly, it has really gotten me down, I even spoke to the doctor about a gastric bypass even though I really don’t want one, I just hit the stage of having had enough!! My doctor god bless him obviously reads me well, he suggested it to me a long time ago, in fact tried to talk me into it, this time he wasn’t interested in hearing about it, obviously guessed I was at a down stage and just needed to move my ass.

I left the doctors in tears thinking fuck, I am going to have to be on this path and have this struggle for the rest of my life, why can it not be easier I JUST WANT IT TO BE EASY!!!

Today I was back at the gym, really enjoyed it, I like doing it, I feel good when I do it, then I found out something I did not want to find out when I got home and when I went to the supermarket to get dinner I grabbed a bag of chips, why the fuck do I always turn to food aaaarrrrgggghhhhh!!!!

Anyway I figure it took me 10 bloody years to get this fat, it will probably take me that long to lose it – the food struggle is something only those who feel the same will ever understand it is a never ending struggle

So it has been two weeks since I joined and apart from the dreaded crosstrainer and the medicine ball I actually enjoy it!! I started only doing 30 of each exercise but didn’t take me long to get up to 50, hell the first time I did the sit ups and side pulls I hurt for like 4 days, now I get no pain from it at all so may need to up some things, I feel nothing the next day, barely any pain!!! And I am getting strong too.
I just have to say I love vanessa, she supports me so much, she comes with me even when she doesn’t want to, she turned up this afternoon and just didn’t want to be ther but she still did!!
Everyone at the gym seems to know my name, and they are all really nice to me, I think I am the token fat chick, hence the reason they all notice me!

So today I joined the gym, well actually I joined on tuesday, and today was my first proper session – hurt?? Fuck yes, my legs are killing me I am dreading tomorrow!! But it was good, good to have no excuses, good or bad weather Ican go, and having ness make me is good as well. I gotta say she is pretty awesome as a motivator, she came to my session yesturday so she could learn my program and help me out and today she did my workout with me instead of her own, and she is coming with me monday and tuesday as well, wednesday however she goes away and I will have to go to the gym on my own, that will be a true test!!! And nerve wracking, but I can do it!!!!

It is funny as I never saw myself as an emotional eater, I have discovered I truly am, I have been struggling lately as I have mentioned, well last night I saw my son off at the airport and it was pretty sad, what was my first thought, alcohol and junk food, sure enough pre mix bourbons and fish and chips!!
Then today I had a moment of sadness, straight to mcdonalds for a couple of double cheeseburgers!!! Not long after I went to my first session with my new trainer at the gym, and he said to me are you an emotional eater?? Well considering I had just done the above I honestly answered and said yes I am!!
So thinking about it some more, since I was told dad was now terminal I have struggled with my eating – I just never put the two together before. Now I know what makes me do it, I can start to work on it.

I am kind of at an impasse with my training, I have been training with amy for a few months now and she has done wonders for me, I can do things I never thought I could, but I need more, not more from her but more from me, when my motivation goes I only have her one day a week to push me and I need someone to push me more often, so I joined the gym, I am going with vanessa who really does push me and motivate me but in the nicest possible way.
Now this whole thing was a bit nerve wracking as I have come to trust amy and the thought of another trainer was a bit weird.
Eric however I loved, I had an instant affinity with him and he just seemed to get me so am stoked it wasn’t as bad as I thought. I will however continue with amy as I can as she started this journey she can damn well finish it lol!!!!

So last time we spoke, I was struggling after having a weekend off, I came right and I got back into it but now I am struggling again, this whole thing is a real mind fuck!! I am so much fitter and I feel so much better, but my weight is going back up, why?? I am not 100% sure, I am eating okay, I am eating a million times better than I ever have, I am exercising, some weeks probably not as much as I should be but I still do at least my PT day and 2 others even if it is just a walk – yet still the weight comes back on.
This weekend I had a friend up and I was a bit naughty I ate things I shouldn’t have but I didn’t go crazy, I should have logged it to give me a little more perspective but I didn’t. And I know I have put on even more weight. Today I am going to weigh myself just to show how easy it is for someone like me to pile on weight and how I got to the point I did.
Don’t get me wrong I am not giving up, I need to be healthier and fitter which I am , but the weight loss has been too bigger focus for me and for others I need to forget about that side of it, I need to focus on exercise. I need people to stop asking me how much weight I have lost, to stop looking for progress because I feel like I have let people down and if they can’t physically see how well I am doing they will just assume I have given up. It has taken me 4 months to get where I am today, 4 months of changing my world, 4 months of doing things I never thought I could, 4 months of exercise, 4 months of eating well, 4 months of losing old habits and a few days to put it all back on again. And this is where I feel like I have failed and I shouldn’t, so the weight is back but the fitness is still here, and that is where my focus needs to be or I will just give up.
There are few people in this world that can possibly understand how hard this is, I think kylie ann is perhaps the only person who gets how fustrating it is to work with a body this big, everything is so hard, trying to exercise with this much fat and this much weight is a killer, my mind wants to do it, my body tries but fails me over and over again.
I go for a walk and I try to jog in between, which I can do but only for short bursts my breathing is not stopping me, it is this enormous body that just won’t keep up with my head, unless you have been here you can’t even begin to get it.
I know I am probably babbling a bit but i am fustrated that it is that hard to get off and that easy to put back on, that it takes me a few days to undo the good of a few months and I wonder if this will ever end, will I ever get to the point that I can lose more than I can put on or will this always be a never ending mind fuck for me?

I have a friend vannessa who kind of blows my mind a little in her never ending support of me, she rings me all the time and sees how I am going, she rarely talks about what I eat or if I have been naughty, she focuses on the exercise, she is the one that is willing to come with me to the stadium, and plod along with me, even though she is 20 x fitter than me, who has invited me to come do her circuit with her, who encourages me every day, who wants me to come to the gym with her even though she knows I can never keep up with her, she is the one who at the class we did, jogged next to me at my slow pace, even though she could have kept up with the others, she stayed with me so I wasn’t the on my own. She is slim, really slim and for some reason she just gets it, she gets how hard it is for me, she gets that when I do things I am doing it with three times the weight she is. I don’t know how but she just seems to understand and I appreciate her more than she will ever know, she has made this journey so much easier for me, and she has never ever made me feel bad about any part of it.

Anyway I am sitting here in tears of fustration because this is going to be me forever, this is never going to change, the struggle to be a slimmer me, even though I may get there one day it is not going to happen overnight, it is probably going to take years and I think I will battle with it every day for the rest of my life – that is a depressing thought

I seem to have lost all motivation, I struggled with my PT session last week, I felt like I did when I first started really out of breath and unfit, but I did make the effort and go  and do it again on thursday in the rain!!
Then saturday night we had a party I ate badly, and drank naughty things, then I continued that trend on sunday and even on monday, took me to tuesday to get back to normal but the  motivation to exercise has left me, I think it will just take a while to get back into it, I am going to join the gym this week so I make more of an effort, I refuse to go backwards

So I do coffee!!! Generally we try to do this once a week, with a bunch of what I loosely refer to as ladies – now none of us are really the fitness types, and yet today I sat there listening to us all talking about our eating, the exercises we have done etc – I blame Amy, Amy is my personal trainer and also my friend.  Amy coffees with us and I am starting to wonder if she is a witch, it is like she has cast a spell over everyone and all of a sudden we are no longer slovenly coffee mothers with feral children running free, we are now woman who want to exercise and enjoy(I also use this word loosely) doing it, we are watching our eating and laughing at our mistakes – our children are still feral and run free though!!!

It is awesome, it is awesome to have others who are sharing this with me, it makes it so much easier to bounce stuff off others and motivate each other!! I am very lucky to have these crazy bitches in my life!

Today before coffee I went to the stadium and did my workout, I have been trying to push myself to do a few extra of everything each week this week I did 40 star jumps and 7 interval runs – stoked!  Last week with amy, we decided to run the stairs, I made it up I think it was 3 flights running then we walked the rest, on monday with vanessa we ran them again and we made it up 4 flights, then walked one flight, ran one flight for four flights.

Well today I went to the stadium and I ran the whole stairs, I lie actually I missed the top two, why, because my legs just refused I physically could not do them, my brain was telling me two more, my legs were saying fuck you I am done!!!!
So proud though that I could even begin to do something like that

I just wanted to say how good I am doing with night eating, I used to be really bad, I would eat dinner, then around 9-10pm I would want to eat again, now it wasn’t that I was hungry I just needed to eat, so I would have a bag of chips or another helping of dinner, whatever happened to be around.
This was a habit I really needed to break and tonight after a friend talking to me about her late night habits, I realised I actually have done it, I no longer even think about eating at night!!! Yay!! I didn’t even realise I had done it.

I started with swapping things, having a piece of fruit, some sorbet, a big drink of water, a coffee, pretty much anything that would give me the sense I had, had something – and I honestly do not remember when I finally stopped having anything.

BOOM one habit down