The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl

Hello Sunshine

Anyone here from the Northern Hemisphere? Are you sick of winter too? I miss salads, mangoes and sunlight. My sister just got back from three weeks in Australia and all she could say was, "The food! The food! It's so light, so fresh. The FOOD!"

Here it is cold and dark and makes you want to curl up and snooze in a tub of mashed potatoes. I miss walking into Woolies at home and seeing row upon row of delicious summery foods. Like those bins full of mixed lettuce leaves that you just scoop into a bag. Instead of pre-washed plastic bags of leaves that are sprayed with pesticides and god knows what else so they stay "fresher" for longer. I miss weather that makes you crave light salads coz the sun stays around longer than 3pm.

I 'm just homesick for the fruit and veg.
. . .

It's taken me for-freakin-ever to post The New Year's Post. Excuses? Worked Xmas and Boxing Day. Slummed it at Chateau Scottish Companion from 27 - 31st. Worked New Years and January 2. Spent 3 and 4 helping my dear sister pack up her stuff for London. Today I finally returned to Normal Work so it's time to resume blogging duties!

Next week I will clock up four years on the Weightloss Caper. Woohoo! As I said in the last entry, this is going to be the final year of said caper. I've had e-bloody-nough of it, I want rid of the rest of the lard and I am willing to go hell for leather in 2005 just to get the bastard done.

Some specific goals:

• Train for and run in a 5k this spring/summer. My reward shall be an iPod. Hmm. Better start saving.
• Get serious about the weights. I tried on some dresses yesterday, and while overjoyed to find I can fit into stuff from Monsoon, I looked flabby as hell and I almost cried right there in the change rooms. SO, Three Pump classes a week OR two Pump classes and one lot of resistance exercises at home (squats, walking lunges, cavorting with the Swiss ball)
• Reintroduce the Sugar Ban. It was working brilliantly until I was giving a box of shitty Celebrations chocolates by a colleague. I didn't think a inch-long miniature Bounty bar could do any harm, but as usual I didn't stop there and it turned into a good three weeks of stuffing my freaking face.
• WRITE. Take this site seriously as a tool to help my weight loss. Write more about the tedious daily weight loss bullshit, just like in 2001 - The Golden Year - so this site can capture the changes and feed my motivation.

Things are still vague and unresolved re The Future, I wish I had some specific news for you. I have spent all day at work fielding questions. When one of my colleagues arrived today, he raced over to my desk, picked up my left hand and said in crushed tones, "Awww, man!". Another colleague brought me a bottle of freakin champagne, thinking surely I'd have something to celebrate by now. They are all fascinated by the soap opera-ness of my life right now, stopping short of placing bets on the outcome.

As soon as I know I will let them, and yourselves, know all about it. Until then I am hitting the gym like a mofo, because sitting around getting lardy isn't going to help anyone. I returned to Pump class yesterday and decided to maintain my weights despite not having been for four weeks. I am in agony today. Woohoo!

This entry is so dreary and I am sure the fatigue and extreme BLAHNESS is showing through. But the more I exercise and the better I eat, the more witty and fun I will become. Ha ha. So, please don't get bored and run away. I am fighting really hard to be optimistic and upbeat and not fall in a steaming pit of self pity. Mwahaha. So stick around, comrades.

And The Bride Wore Blubber

What a difference 24 hours makes! I finally have some news, groovers. He proposed this morning! I said yes! 

Can you believe it? I'm going to marry Bagpipes, as Airlie called him. Are you excited? I'M EXCITED. I wanted this so badly, it felt so right. The turning point for me was during SC's Rawk Concert when I looked up at him and swooned and knew I never wanted to be with anyone else. But I never really told anyone that marriage was my desired outcome - as opposed to deportation or a work permit - coz I am always afraid if I say things out loud they will never happen!

Anyway, I am saying it now. Woohoo! It took SC a few more months to realise that was what he wanted too, and I have to tell you I have never been so happy in my entire life. Proposing to someone in bed at 2.02 AM is a little different, but to me it is perfect and I will never, ever forget it. The tone of his voice and the happiness when I said yes and the way my whole life just seemed to fall into place. I was so stunned and shocked and kept saying, "I'm so stunned and shocked!". He said to me so sweetly, "Well that's what you get for being so nice to someone. For letting someone just be who they are and encouraging them and loving them. And for being a chick who likes MotoGP."

My eloquent response? "I'm so excited I could SPEW!"

Let's get back to the fat for a moment. You may have guess what I'm going to say. That I am slightly annoyed with myself for not busting some lard last year and eating like a pork over Christmas, as I will be a rather dumpy bride on a budget. Not that we have made any plans yet, but I ain't going to be looking my best! I have 11 weeks til my visa ends, so we'll be getting hitched sometime before then - not much time for a miracle!

But you can't turn back the clock, and as I said the other day, I don't begrudge 2004 and all the fun I had instead of focusing on my weight. I never thought I would feel so relaxed about the whole thing, but I am just so happy that SC and I are going to stay together that the other issues pale into insignificance. I am sure I will scrub up reasonably well, somehow :)

The Awful Truth

In the spirit of honesty and disclosure, here are some of the excuses I used for eating extremely poorly over the past six weeks or so:

• My sister is leaving, we'll never go out to [insert name of any number of restaurants] together again, so what the hell!
• It's the staff Xmas party so I'm having a bacon roll for breakfast with the rest of the guys!
• Soon I'll be moving into Bagpipe's place which is twenty miles from the Fancy Chocolate Shop so I am going to buy two bars and scoff them down even though I'm about to go out for a boozy lunch with friends
• It's my mate's farewell dinner so must celebrate with triple vodka and cranberry and handfuls of chips
• It's Christmas Night and I just worked all day and now I'm in an empty house so I deserve a Thai Takeaway
• It's our Belated Xmas dinner so I will make this huge Heart Attack In A Bowl Butterscotch And Banana Trifle even though I could easily half or third the recipe since it's only the two of us eating it and we'll end up sick on the leftovers.
• It's Xmas and it's cold outside so I will have another glass of port (and so on until I had drank the ENTIRE BOTTLE over six day period)
• Poooor me at work on New Years Day and the shops are closed so I will have to eat these chocolates/ cheeses/ mini quiches/ samosas/ cookies that they're offering me, then go back for more when noone is looking!
• Bagpipes is in the bath so I will sneak a handful of Cadbury Roses chocolates from the giant tin his Mum gave him even though it's rubbish chocolate coz it's THERE and he'll never know if I stash the wrappers in my handbag!
• My future is sooo uncertain and this situation is sooo stressful that I may as well have cheese on toast for dinner and a block of chocolate for dessert!
• I just got engaged so I'm having the scone with butter and jam for breakfast, bringing in cakes for my colleagues and THEN go out for a three course meal with more wine.

The diet books always want you to pinpoint your triggers, to figure out the reasons for your poor choices. But I seem to cover every single one of them. Loneliness, boredom, frustration, anger, extreme anxiety, happiness, mindless intoxication. Secret eating, boozy eating, lazy eating. I've done it all, baby.

All I know is that it started with a couple of tiny Celebrations chocolates, you know those seemingly innocent mini versions of Mars Bars and Maltesers and other cheap, sickly candies. A colleague gave me a box as a gift and I opened them and told everyone in the office to go for it. I stayed away all of half an hour til I thought, "Maybe a little tiny Milky Way would go down nicely..."

Once the cravings were kicked off by those crappy chocs, all I could think about was food, more more more, I craved the textures and the feeling of it. Once again, I just lost that ability to stop and think. All my steady, consistent gymming and sensible eating went out the window. I just didn't let up for weeks and weeks. I just stopped thinking about what I was doing, completely. The voice that knows a whole tub of Ben & Jerry's is not a dinner had fallen silent.

Needless to say I felt like shit. Not only had I been consuming a truckload of fat and sugar, my body was also trying to deal with alcohol, something that had never been a problem for me before. I kept laying on the couch at SC's place (after yet another bowl of leftover trifle), so bloated it was bordering on painful. No energy, no self esteem left. Moaning out loud, "WHY am I doing this to myself? Why don't I stop?!". I kept postponing the "Back On Track" date as different opportunities to eat crap food came up. It got so bad that when SC put his arm round me as he slept, as he does very often, I had to move coz it felt like a log had fallen on me, all heavy and painful on my tortured gut.

So yeah. My eating has been atrocious. On Wednesday morning I decided it was time to face up to reality, so I hopped on the scale. I weighed 95.9 kilos. In the morning. In the nude. Last official weigh-in posted here in November, I was 92.4 in clothes and heavy gym shoes!

Good lord.

I'm a disgrace, kids - this I know. And you will probably be disappointed especially if you have looked up to me as some sort of weight loss success. But now that I have definite plans for my future, goals and dates, I am SO over it, all that anxiety and stress and excuse-making. I ready to move forward. I have done some damage but this past week I did a lot of writing and planning and goal-setting and got ready to rock.

SO, the first thing I did was to sit down and work out my motivations.

Health
I've never, ever felt so shit from a period of bad eating before. Maybe it's the contrast from normal eating/exercise and shock to the body, coz when I was 150 kilos I don't remember ever feeling so ill and in actual pain. Headaches, stomach aches, bloating, insomnia, moodiness, crying from feeling so miserable.

Diabetes is rampant in my family, and I am petrified I will end up with it if I keep doing this. So I am back on track for my health, both physical and mental. I will also go get a diabetes test just to make sure, it's been two years since the last so it can't hurt.

Vanity
A wedding is the mother of all vanity goals! And looks like I'll be having a few of them. Weddings, that is. There'll be a shindig in Scotland and then a wee party in Australia - we're planning to visit in early October. The Australia one is what really has me motivated. I'll have all my friends and family in the one spot, and most of them won't have seen me for anywhere between two and five years. COOL! So I have nine months in which to be looking my foxiest. Never mind showing off the new husband, I want to show off ME! Dietgirl's Triumphant Return To The Homeland!

Ha ha! But seriously, can you blame me for wanting to be dazzling? Short of landing at the party in a helicopter on top of a red carpet, the most spectacular entrance I can think of is to just be looking sexy as hell and actually having some freakin' confidence, instead of being the occassional-joke-cracking wallflower they remember. As added motivation, I've lined up a photographer already. One of my favourite Aussie photobloggers has agreed to do the shots! I am so excited as I love their stuff to bits. It may be a couple years before I see my friends and family again so I want photos to remember the day by, and it wouldn't hurt if I was looking decent in 'em!

So yeah, I gotta say, the vanity motivation is strong.

Insane Competitive Streak
I want to be at my goal by this time next year. The Five Year Plan, baby. I like things to be wrapped into neat little packages. So I will be going hell for leather in 2005 and tie a big red freaking ribbon around the whole project by 2006.

Next entry I'll write about my specific goals and methods for the fat busting. But for now, a BIG FAT LARDY thanks to the stacks of groovy groovers who commented or emailled about me and Bagpipes getting engaged. I had no idea there was so many people reading, and you were all so funny and genuinely happy for us, it really made my day. I have saved every single comment notification emails in a folder called ENGAGED! and printed out all the emails and put them in a file called WOOHOO. This is the sorta shit you look back on in fifty years and think, ahh, humanity rules.

Modus Operandi

A big hello to the anonymous person who emailled me re the last entry and told me to Get Over It and Move On.

Well, DERR! I did! That was the whole point of the entry! Here's the sentence with the big clue: "I am SO over it, all that anxiety and stress and excuse-making. I ready to move forward." But it would have been a bit of a pointless entry if I had not explained to you what I was getting over in the first place.

As I also said in that entry, I'm back on track and this here new entry is about my plan of attack.

First thing I've decided to do what I did waaaay back in 2001 - weigh in weekly and post it on here. Put it in public every week, good or bad, instead of updating only every few weeks when I've had a decent result! Mwahaha. Some seriously accountability is needed. Since Wednesday was Back On Track day, that will become Weigh Day. I might even get myself a blow-up doll and dress it up like a Weight Watchers Weigh Lady, and teach it say, "You coulda peed half a pound", "Did you drink all your water?" or "Well maybe it's coz muscle weighs more than fat" and other banalities.

Fitness wise, I am sticking with gym classes for the next six weeks or so. Soon I'll be moving in with SC and away from my Fancy Gym, so I want to do all the Fancy Classes while I still can. I will have to take my pampered ass to the local council gym once I make the move, but I always knew I didn't belong at such as posh place anyways. Och well.

Since this new gym won't have as many interesting classes, I've come up with some new challenges for 2005.

• After the wedding it's back into the running and I'm going to do the Race for Life 5K in June. It's for a good cause so this means I will have to guilt-trip myself into action.
• Learn to ride that freaking mountain bike without crying like a big baby! Did I tell you about that last summer? I can't find the entry/ SC tried to get me to have a go on his mountain bike and of course, I freaked out coz I hadn't been on one since I was 11 and forgotten how. Rather, convinced myself I had. Made a huge deal about it and got self-conscious after pedaling three metres and cried. Long story. Anyway, I will learn to ride that damn bike come summertime.
• Try SC's kickboxing class that he's been pestering me about for ages. It's 90 minutes - the first half grueling cardio and strength work like skipping and press-ups, then you get into the sparring. It ain't Body Combat - you get to kick and punch REAL PEOPLE. He says it is a grueling workout and really helps the ol fitness levels. I say kicking the crap out of each other once a week will help to iron out any tension in the relationship. I am scared coz he is quite fit and so are his friends, but the other part of me is curious and really loves to KICK!

If I can get these done in 2005, then 2006 will be about me learning to swim again, since I seem to have lost the ability to do more than swallow water and snort it out my nose when I try to do some laps. How the hell do you forget to swim? I guess I am the same moron who forgot how to ride a bike, so anything's possible!

Anyway, the food. I am finding it much easier to eat well without my sister. My tastes are much simpler (okay, lazier) so I am making less complicated meals with fewer ingredients. I'm sticking to around 1500 cals per day, as recommended by Slimming magazine, but increasing that slightly (1750 or so) if the body sings FEED ME on an exercise day.

So today is Day 5 and I've handed some dicey situations really well. I had a good chat to SC and told him about my Hell For Leather approach and he's been really great having healthy food at his place and coaxing me down from the ledge when I went into crazy sugar-withdrawals (mixed with PMS) on Day 2.

I'll be back for Wednesday Weigh Day so stay tuned! How's your week going?

Wednesday Weigh-In - Week 1

Well, here's the stats as promised! Just like everyone in town, I'm going Kimba style for my stats, sorta.

last update: 19 January 2005

age: 27
height: 173cm (5'8")

original start weight: 159.2kg (351lb) on 17 Jan 2001
original start bmi: 53.4

fresh start weight: 95.9kg (211.4 lb) on 12 Jan 2005
fresh start bmi: 32.2

current weight: 93.1kg (205.2lb)
current bmi: 31.2

result this week: -2.8kg (6.1lb)

total loss in 2005: -2.8kg (6.1lb)
total loss since 2001: -66.1kg (145.7lb)

initial goal weight: 75kg (165lb)
distance to goal: 18.1kg  (40lb)

In summary I had a brilliant week with the eating and water consumption. This week will be all about getting the exercise back on track. Got some serious blubber to tone up and can't let shitty weather be an excuse to bypass the gym and curl up with a book. Woohoo!

. . .

Monday was my four year anniversary of starting the lard busting journey. You can read the very first entry here, written after my first trip to WW in which I cried on the scales in front of a whole lot of people.

If anyone here reading is at the start of their journey, and finds it utterly depressing that they have the equivalent of a whole person to lose - please know that someone understands how that feels. But if you've decided to do something about it, I say good on ya, and just take it one baby step at a time. I remember Week One of WW when I walked to the end of the block for exercise and just cried because I was already out of breath, I thought my lardy body and foggy mind were incapable of change.

But you CAN change things. All those tiny little healthy decisions you make in your life add up to something huge. I know I am not done with the task yet, but already my life has changed more than I could ever imagine. If you told me back then that in four years ago I would travel, run and talk to boys, I would have told you to fuck off as I sped off to McDonald's Drive Thru.

I'm not going to get corny here, but if you're at the start and it seems overwhelming, please please please don't ever give up. It will take awhile, but one day you'll wake up full of hope and realise you like yourself again. That feels better than a bath in molten chocolate.

Wednesday Weigh-In - Week 2

So I haven't written since last week's weigh day, I offer no excuse except for me being a lazy, frazzled bastard with a very lengthy list of things to do with an apparent inability to finish bloody any of them.

Anyway, here goes.

last update: 26 January 2005

age: 27
height: 173cm (5'8")

original start weight: 159.2 kg (351lb) on 17 Jan 2001
original start bmi: 53.4

fresh start weight: 95.9 kg (211.4 lb) on 12 Jan 2005
fresh start bmi: 32.2

current weight: 92.4 kg (203.3lb)
current bmi: 31

result this week: -0.7 kg (1.5lb)

loss in 2005: -3.5 kg (7.7lb)
total loss since 2001: -66.8 kg (147lb)

initial goal weight: 75 kg (165lb)
distance to goal: 17.4 kg  (38.3lb)

I'm quite happy with that result, I knew that last week's big loss was what I call Honeymoon Kilos. It's quite easy to drop a couple in a week when you ate and drank like a porker for the weeks before that. Now the hard work has begun!

This week's aim was to get back exercising.

I'm going through this phase lately where I am reading Diet Books. None of the sensational ones like The Glass of Air Diet or Fart Yourself Thin, just sensible tomes like Outwit Your Weight and Dr Phil's Ultimate Weight Solution. I don't know what the freaking hell I expected to find from these books, but lately I've had this crisis of confidence where I think I don't know what's best for me, that I don't have the smarts to shift the rest of my lard. I poured over these books expecting some great enlightenment. I took all the stupid quizzes and noted what they wanted me to eat, and it hit me - I already know all this crap. There was nothing they were telling me, no diet tip or exercise or food combination or mind trick that I hadn't already figured out for myself over the past four years.

What I'm trying to say is, I'm past the stage where I needed my hand held. I now know what to do, I have the tools. I know what exercise gets my metabolism ticking and what foods make me feel good. I just have to trust my own judgement again and take responsibility.

Most of all I have to retrain my thinking and realise I'm longer a beginner. I need to look in the mirror and see Almost There instead of Obese Beyond Belief. After all this time, I still think I go to the gym and see myself as The Really Fat Chick just puffing along in the classes with the beautiful people, and for me just to be there is some sort of miracle. Doing two or three classes and a bit of walking may have been an incredible odyssey when I was 120 kilos but now it is just not enough.

I'd booked in for Body Combat this afternoon, I only did it a few times last year because I became addicted to dancing my arse off at Body Jam. But I remembered how good BC is for cardio, so I decided to take it up again. But when I got off the bus I walked straight past the gym, went home and flopped on the bed. Why? Because the class was taken by Scary Richard who is like a drill sargeant. Because all the blonde whisps go to that class. Because I did Body Jam last night. Because I have wedding stuff to plan, boxes to pack. Because I am a lazy butt.

Twenty minutes before the class was due to start, I decided to put my gym clothes on and see if that would change my mind. Soon I remembered how much I used to love Combat, all that kicking and punching. And even though you're only fighting air, it would have to help get my shoulders all mobile again ready for SC's kickboxing class later this year. Plus last night's Jam class was so focused on learning new steps I didn't really get too sweaty.

So I ended up going and freaking loved it. Why do I always quit Combat? It hammers me like no other class and it's so much fun. My shoulders are still singing and my legs are too.

It's so humbling and bloody annoying to realise that I am not going to find some miracle inspiration in a book, some diet secret on the back of a cornflakes box. I just have to swallow what I knew all along, that I'm the only one who can do this and I'm going to have to get off my arse and move it.