How can gaining weight be a good thing?

Okay, so here are the facts ... I've busted, BIG TIME.

I got cocky over the fact that I maintained my weight over the school holidays (even without going regularly to the gym) and as a result got REALLY over-confident over the last couple of weeks. In fact, last week I lay in bed, ate chocolate and drank red wine - when I wasn't drinking copious amounts of Chai Tea laced with full-cream soya milk and honey.

Recipe for total disaster.

Last week I was ill with the 'flu and was suffering with dreadful PMT and only went to the gym once, but I wasn't expecting the horror that greeted me from the scales yesterday. I can't reveal the figure (I'm too embarrassed) but it was higher than I have been in years.

So how can this be a good thing? Well, the shock of the figure scared the recent complacency completely out of me.

You see, I've been very slack about a few things of late;

• recording my food intake
• recording my exercise
• drinking 8 glasses of water
• eating 2 fruits a day
• eating 5-7 vegetables a day
• eating unprocessed grains
• avoiding alcohol
• restricting sugar
• leaving biscuits and chocolate alone
• cutting down on bad fats

In fact, of late I have done the complete opposite of all of that. Not deliberately of course, no-one actually wants to gain back lost weight, but I haven't been consciously following the Weight Watchers program.

Part of me totally resents having to be on the WW program - I hate having to restrict what I drink and eat, I am a total party girl after all. But the reality always hits me eventually, I have Poly Cystic Ovarian Disease and until they find a cure I will never be able to eat like a normal girl. Wine is like liquid fat to my thighs and stomach, and exercising 3 hours a day will not keep my weight down. The only thing that works for me is the WW program.

So I am reinvigorated. I got up at 5am and did 30 minutes walking around the suburb and then drove to the gym and ran on the treadmill for 45 minutes. Then I came home and had a healthy breakfast filled with fat free protein and veggies.

I have slipped, but I have not fallen. I am back and I will get these kilos off before Christmas.

Regards

Kate

Week 3 over and starting on Week 4

Weight Watchers has proven a very useful tool (of course, it always is when you actually follow it). I have started losing weight again and I am tracking everything that goes into my mouth.

One of the things I have discovered that really helps me stick to me diet is having a breakfast smoothie made of blueberries, bananas and soy milk. It seems to stick to the ribs more than porridge or toast manages to.

I've been hitting the gym everyday, and yes I am overdoing it. Today I hit a wall during my cardio workout (although I did leg-press a new record as well as breaking all my other previous limits). PT told me to take tomorrow off and walk Nelson around in the sunshine and just rest. I'm not sure that I know how to do that anymore.

My current regime is

* 60 minutes on the treadmill 7 days a week
* 5 Yoga classes a week
* 2 sessions on the weights with PT

Body is starting to tone up, but weight is only just starting to drop this week.

I still have another 9 weeks of personal training sessions so I should be on target to get into a bikini (and do a better job of than Britney did in Vegas this week).

Until next time.

Kate

Whoo Hoo - Week 2 and still powering on

Okay, so I've hit my stride. This week just gone I managed to get to the gym everyday. I did 5 Yoga/Body Balance classes and I can feel the difference already. I now have the most incredible leg strength and I'm able to complete the balance postures without falling over. Also this week I managed to leg-press a new all time record. My trainer Gary is most pleased.

I went back to Weight Watchers after conflicting family schedules, exhaustion and late-nights caused me to miss more than a few classes. The news on their scales was pretty dire, a 2.8 kilo weight gain, but was much better than I suspected it would be.

I noticed my abs definition for the first time this week, I actually have indents just under my rib cage from the muscle tone. It's weird because I've never had this before and it's quite amazing to see your body shape change so dramatically for the better.

The vegan diet has proven a bit challenging this week, but only in the fact that I discovered vegan desserts with a vengeance and I put on weight (even after exercising like a demon).

BTW, I hate vegetables. I know that is a quandary for a vegan, but I really hate vegetables. After 2 years of Weight Watchers I feel as though vegetables should be wiped from the face of the Earth. The only way I can face them at the moment is by disguising them in other foods such as pasta and legumes. I thought by now that I would embrace my vegetable friends, but all I think about when I see them is how much better they'd taste if they were covered in batter and deep-fried and then, possibly, coated in chocolate and icing sugar.

And please, let's not get started on fruit. YUK! Although recently I have discovered that I can mix celery, apples, pecans and a shit-load of vegan mayonnaise and make a fairly nice Waldorf salad so at least I've overcome one hurdle but put in another, too much fat.

I have the feeling that I'm going to get this all sorted out, right around the ripe-old age of 80. I wonder if we'll all still be so obsessed with our appearances then?

I Survived !!!

Well, this is the end of my first full week back in the gym and I have come through with flying colours.

So far I have attended three Yoga classes (with another two scheduled for the weekend), done five hours on the treadmill, and had two sessions with Gary on the gym equipment. Yesterday I was in the gym for two and a half hours as I had Yoga, PT, and Cardio (plus I also walked the dog for half and hour). I woke up this morning feeling tired but okay. Of course, I am avoiding going down to the gym by typing this blog.

I have been thinking about doing Yoga on the 2 days I have off (Monday and Friday), but on Friday the class is at 5:45am and frankly, I can't see anyway that I can get myself out of bed by 5:45am, let alone be at the gym, dressed and ready to bend my toes to touch the back of my head but 5:45am.

Funny story, yesterday I was feeling very proud of myself for managing the swan pose and sitting upright whilst holding my leg until I looked up and saw the woman beside me touching her foot with the back of her head. There was a 1 meter gap between my foot and my head an I was as stretched as I could get.

Oh well, if Madonna can manage it at 50 I'm sure I can get there at age 40 ... couldn't I ?

My New Goals

Okay, so that they're down in print, here are my new training/weight related goals

1. Lose 10 kilos of fat by Christmas 2007

2. Tone up thighs and stomach (shed fat and gain more tone)

3. Build bigger bum muscles (I'd like to have a bigger bum)

4. Continue the great work that I've achieved with my shoulders, arms, back and chest (I'm actually really happy with them)

5. Continue to improve my cardio fitness. I already have an excellent level of fitness for my age so I'd like to get into the "superior" category.

I'm Back in the Saddle Again - Week 1

Okay, so a lot of my postings have had a bit of "seriousness" about them that I believe takes away from the enjoyability of reading a blog. So I'm going to try to inject more humour into my postings, after all, as Oscar Wilde once said "Life is too important to be taken seriously."

I've started back with the Personal Trainer, Gary. I'm sure some of you were unaware that we'd stopped our sessions, but I reached the end of the 12 weeks and decided to have a month off to re-think my training. You see, I picked up one of those "Over 40 and gritting our teeth and loving it" magazines that the Americans are so fond of writing. The articles have the best titles such as "Learning to Love Your Sagging Boobies", "Finding Jeans to Fit and Flatter the Over Forty Body" and many, secrety sponsored I supsect, articles about Botox.

Oh, and BTW, I know there are several of you gals out there who are having Botox and aren't admitting to it. Don't think I haven't noticed that you can't frown anymore. That's okay, you can do whatever you want to your faces, just don't get on your hobby horse about my other friends who are openly talking about their procedures. It's just naughty to feign indignation when you're office having "Bessie's Botulism" injected into your "Who knew tanning in the 80s without sunscreen was such a bad idea?" lines.

Anyway, back to Gary and the training sessions. This article for over 40s (I just typed over 50s by mistake, it's a sign!!!) and here's their proposed training schedule for us 40+ gals

Weights - 2-3 x 30 minute sessions a week, with a gap of up to 72 hours between sessions to recover

Cardio - 3-4 sessions a week of 35 minutes (well, I do an hour a day 7 days a week because I am trying to shift my vegan cheesecake spare tyre)

Core Strength - Pilates 2-3 times a week

Stretching - Yoga, Body Balance, Tai Chi - 3 to 4 sessions a week, OR 10 minutes a day.

Seems like an awful lot of work to me, but if you include your 10 minutes stretching immediately after your weights and cardio it makes it a bit easier.

So anyway, here is my new revised schedule

Weights - 2 a week with Gary
Cardio - 6-7 times a week for 1 hour
Stretching - 3-4 yoga classes a week

On other news, my weight started plummeting with the new Vegan diet, but then I discovered Vegan wine and this week I gained 2 kilos. I'm hoping it's fluid retention that's causing my Miss Sixtys to look like Miss Eightys at the moment.

My goal this time around to keep a better record of my achievements for the 14 weeks and give you a posting of how I'm progressing.

If I slip a week, please send me a reminder to pull my fucking finger out.

Love to you all

Kate

Korean Bath House

My darling friend Louise (Arty Lou) introduced me to a Korean Bath House in South Brisbane and now I'm hooked.

If you feel the need to unwind for the bargain price of $19 ($16 concession) then get yourself over to Hotel Diana (across the road from the Mater Hospital) .

The set up includes a massive hot spa bath (and a nipple tweaking Arctic counterpart beside it). I cannot remember the last time I soaked in hot water up to my chin. Divine!

There is also a dry sauna that totally soothes the chilled out bones from this current cold snap.

You can also book a massage or any other sort of treatment to compliment your day of relaxation.

Progress Report - Well, at least I'm fitter

Okay, so this hasn't been the easiest of years for me, and getting a dose of PVS right in the middle of my 12-week body overhaul program, NOT A GOOD THING.

The long and short of it is this ... I weigh more than when I started the program (1 1/2 kilos) and I'm slightly fatter (D'oh !!!). The good thing is that my health has returned to where it was when I started and I can now run 1 hour on a treadmill, so technically, I'm very fit.

I think that I'm less-flexible (joints-wise) than when I started as I have been doing little to no Yoga, despite my best efforts to get to classes I rarely manage more than 1 a week.

However, I have fairly consistently managed to work out three times a week and run on the treadmill for four to five times a week, and now I am achieving seven days a week, for an hour at a time.

Now that I have taken an early retirement from work (for at least twelve months) I have more time to put into my exercise program, which is what I have been doing for the last couple of weeks.

From next week I will be attending every Pilates, Yoga, or Body Balance (a mixture of Pilates, Yoga and Tai-Chi) that the gym offers (about 6 or 7 a week) in an effort to stretch and strengthen my exhausted and very tight muscles.

I'm taking a brief break from my PT sessions to re-assess my goals and will be back into training in about a fortnight.

I have re-hung the bikini and am I re-focusing on my goal

BIKINI BY XMAS 2007

Veganism - Is it the new black?

I have decided to try Veganism as a lifestyle choice for a while.

I guess that's fairly confronting to a lot of you, it doesn't seem to be a particularly healthy life-style choice based on some of your personal experiences with food-related diseases, so I can understand if you think it's something dangerous for me to try.

It's not a decision that I've come to overnight, I've actually been thinking about it for a few years, I just haven't been able to see a way that I could work it into my life - perhaps I just wasn't ready to take the leap as it seemed so intimidating and I felt that I lacked the resources to do it in a tasty and successful way.

My health has been, I think we can all agree with this, fairly appalling over the last few of years. On my reckoning I have had 3 potentially life-threatening medical emergencies in the last 36 months, plus assorted other non life-threatening, but terribly annoying medical conditions.

I really don't understand why I have been so plagued by these conditions, but a part of me thinks that they could be stress-related. Stress is different for everyone, and the things that may stress you out might have no effect on me (such as mis-matched clothing pegs, and messy desks), whereas customers who insist on telling you every last detail of their computer problems long after you have solved their problems may not effect you but it sure as hell makes me want to scream at them "Put your computer in a box and send it back to the manufacturer! You're too stupid to own a computer!"

The other factor influencing my health is food. I think I still eat too much of the bad stuff (coffee, wine, processed foods, and until recently, meat). So I have decided to undertake a vegan detox for a while, ensuring that I intake two pieces of fruit, five serves of vegetables and all that I hit all the other nutritionally-related benchmarks.

I have bought a libraries worth of vegan cookbooks, all American unfortunately. Americans love the idea of convenience ... FAST FOOD. Everything in these books comes out of cans or is dried or pre-packaged in someways, and when you cook it up, it tastes like it's pre-packaged.

I have trawled Amazon's for some more interesting vegan cookbooks and will be purchasing a few more in the next couple of months.

Meanwhile, I dine two or three times a week at "The Forest" (Boundary Street, West End) which creates the most divine Vegan food that I have ever eaten, including a dairy-free chocolate cheese cake - which simply was the most amazing, delicious, and wicked thing that I have ever consumed. I ate it and then drove to the gym and ran on the treadmill until I had burned off 880 calories (that's calories, not kilojoules) which I figured should have covered the cheese cake.

I will do a separate post about my progress so far, it's a mixed bag.

Love

Kate

Progress Report

Okay, so I probably didn't explain about the appetite suppressants too clearly in my last posting, but just to re-iterate, they're herbal and they contain no gurana, caffeine or any "speed" like product. They're simply an extract from some wild exotic fruit rind, and about as useful.

After spending a small fortune on a month's supply of this product I can report (albeit, not "cheerfully") that I might have had better results if I'd used actual speed. I am at the same weight as when I started.

I have decided that the only way I'm going to shift this weight is start by making every meal vegetable-based and add some protein (rather than the other way around). This should also go someway to ensuring that I have my 5 vegetable serves a day.

Having spend so many years starving myself, and living with anorexia and bulimia, I have developed the ability to ignore hunger and have a much reduced ability to understand when I have had enough to eat (due to my body compensating for the starvation buy storing away fat supplies for the next round of self-induced famine).

I have been extraordinarily stressed-out over the last 4 months and I suspect that it has something to do with all the emotional issues I have with my weight - I could go into it all, but mostly, it's personal and as such really only relevant to me. I will say that having had a Father who made me very aware all of his life that being even slightly over-weight made me "less good" in his eyes has played a lot on my sense of self-worth and body hatred.

I also realise after much therapy/discussion/cups of tea with a fellow recovering bulimic that it's very likely that my Father also suffered from an eating disorder. I know that he certainly jumped on every weird food craze that was going around in the 80s and followed me into the Herbalife shake & pills weight loss program. He was obsessed with watching what I ate, even when he was dying he was still lecturing me about eating too much (I was breastfeeding at the time and I dared to have 1 1/2 toasted sandwiches in front of him).

Whilst I can intellectualise that on some level my Father thought he was doing the right thing for me I also know that he must have known the damage his words were having on me. To this day I still think that skinny girls have happier lives than normal-weight or over-weight girls do (which is clearly wrong - When was the last time that you saw Posh Spice smile? The woman is miserable!).

I have set myself a mini-goal to lose 6 kilos by August. I'm hoping that this smaller more achievable goal will re-focus my efforts and provide a moral boost.

Exercise wise- I'm trying to get to the gym first thing in the morning, before breakfast, to kick-start the metabolism and make it strip off fat stores to get the energy from there first. It's a fucking nightmare getting up at 4:30am (I have to walk the dog first!) but I have decided that it's all about balancing my "wants" i.e.:

1. I have to want to be slim, toned, and fit more than I want to sleep-in
2. I have to want to be slim more than I want to snack on chocolate
3. I have to want to be a happy slim person more than wanting to stay in my current situation

Tomorrow morning I'm going to try a RPM spin class at 5:25am, if that doesn't strip some fat off I don't know what will.

Wish me luck.

Kate

Well, Fuck Me !!!

Pardon the French, but frankly, I'm pissed off. I've managed to gain back the 1 1/2 kilos that I recently lost after much strenuous gym effort.

So what happened?

*I didn't weight myself for 3 days (I normally weigh myself every day)

*I ate bread & butter pudding (but made on skim milk, no butter and gluten free bread)

*I didn't do any cardio workouts for 3 days (due to total and utter exhaustion from an earlier boxing workout where I over did it)

* I left my appetite suppressants at home on those 3 days

Fuck Fuck Fuck !!!

This is so unbelievably boring. I have been dieting and exercising for 18 months and frankly, I'm so totally over it. Of course, I won't be quitting because the alternative is more depressing than diet and exercise, but Gods, I would do anything to be someone who doesn't have to worry about this sort of crap.

The exhaustion brought about by the PVS affects my abilities to exercise - I can do about 1/2 an hour of cardio and 1/2 an hour of gym work in a day and that is it, otherwise I wind up trying to recover for 3 days afterwards.

I know some of you must wonder why on earth I do it to myself. Well, I'll tell you why - I simply cannot go back to being that miserable fat girl that I was in 2005. I couldn't shop in regular clothing shops, going out was a nightmare - trying to make myself look attractive, and I was sick to death of the snide fat jokes at my expense. I am glad that there are fat-campaigners out there, doing what they can to make life easier for overweight individuals, but frankly, I'm rather battle on to be in the 10 percent of people that lose weight and keep it off for more than 5 years.

It just doesn't seem to be getting any easier at the moment.

I have taken up knitting as a distraction and hopefully I will create lots of masterpieces and distract myself from my obsession with wintery puddings. Mmmm, pudding.

Until next time,

Kate

Not Very Nice Shop Assistants, and How to Start Changing Things

It has been remarked on occasions, but not usually very nicely, that I am a great one for writing letters to people that have pissed me off. This is because I think it's pretty mean to gossip about people and not tell them directly when they have really upset you to at least give them the chance to change things or to talk with you about them. When I get really upset I cannot clearly articulate myself so I have to go away and write things down.

Recently I was in a sporting store (I won't name them and I will explain why further in the story) to purchase some new training gear (Good ole Tar-zhay only supplies so much) as I had left my gym gear at home and was meeting the PT straight after work so I'd have no chance to go home.

Fortunately there is a gym shop near my office (of course there is, it's in New Farm, it's right across from the Sass & Bide shop, the Espresso shop, and the expensive European shoe shop) so I dived in during a lunch break to pick up a top, some yoga pants and some new runners.

I won't go into all the boring details but needless to say, I was treated like Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman", pre-makeover. I was completely ignored, my questions were treated like idiot ones, and the final insult was this blonde Amazonian shop assistant crossing her arms and looking at me as though I was something she scraped from her runners after her afternoon pose-run through New Farm park as I asked her a question about the shoes.

I thought "there is no way I'm giving this bitch one red cent of my money" and walked up to the Valley and purchased everything I needed in shops there instead.

I got back to the office and typed up a letter to the company's head office and sent it via e-mail immediately.

Not 1 hour later I was called by the company's owner in a red-rage about my treatment and apologising profusely for the way his 2 New Farm assistants had treated me. Furthermore he sent me out a gift voucher for his shop with a letter again apologising for how I was treated.

When I returned to work on Wednesday I note (without any glee I can assure you) that a new woman was opening the shop that day.

At the time, part of me felt that I shouldn't have bothered writing the letter, and another part of me said "No, write it." I would rather know when things are going wrong than wander along in ignorance of why people have suddenly dropped off visiting me.

I won't name the store because I genuinely believe the owner has tried to do the right thing and that that their store motto isn't "target size 14-16 women and make them leave their store without purchasing anything" (unlike some of the other stores in New Farm).

I said in my letter that I just wanted support in my efforts to lose weight and gain fitness and that I had hoped their store would be able to help. I guess store owner can't always know how truly awful some of their staff are unless we tell them.

Anyway, it appears as though Amazon woman is looking for a new job, I'm sure I haven't reduced her size-prejudice by my actions but maybe in the future she'll start considering her day-to-day behaviour.

If pills and shakes don't work, why am I using them ?

Okay, I am a big advocate of learning to manage your body and health with real food and as much organic food as possible. I don't believe that diet shakes or diet pills ultimately work in keeping your weight off because the minute you're off that shake and confronted with real food you still have to learn about appropriate food and recognising when you're full and what your body really wants to eat.

I don't know anyone who has done the "shake diet" who has said "Oh, I'm too full to finish this one of three milkshakes that I will get to consume today." No, everyone consumes the three shakes and the allocated vegies and tries desperately all day not to obsess over food.

I know of one person, and only one person who has lost weight with shakes and kept it off. But he had a team of medical professionals helping him every step of the way and supervising his maintenance program and his new relationship with food. This cost him over $6,000. Some might say that this it is crazy to spend that amount on weight loss. But ultimately in the end, if you've gained back 10-20 healthy years in your life, others might think that it's worth it.

But back to the topic, I genuinely don't believe that you can pick up a box of shakes from the chemist and hope to lose weight and keep it off. Ditto with the appetite suppressant tablets. So this really begs the question "Why the hell am I doing it?"

Okay, let me explain it like this. As most of you are aware, I suffer from PCOS which has a large number of dreary symptoms, not the least of which is being unable to process carbohydrates like a normal person. I sat down with a medical expert in the field who explained how my cells works when compared with non-PCOS sufferers and she drew pictures to explain, visually, why they don't work. Of course, I couldn't explain it to myself the moment I left her rooms, let alone anyone else. On top of that, if I consume High-GI carbohydrates (like some rice, all gluten-free pastas, alcohol etc) I will begin to experience what seems to be hunger pains shortly afterwards and crave more inappropriate foods - hence the vicious cycle I often find myself in.

Protein shakes are a great and quick meal or snack option for me when I can't find anything appropriate to eat, or if I am too tired to cook. I throw in some berries and a tablespoon of some of my organic flavourings and flaxseed oil and I'm feeling very happy and satiated and not at all on a "diet shake" regime.

Now, I have also started taken a Blackmores Weight Loss tablet the reduces appetite and curb cravings for sugary stuff. These two areas (out of control appetite and carb-craving) are the bane of my weight loss life. I simply do not have a rational relationship with sugars and I am happy to try anything to cut the cravings. In the past I have carried a re-active tool (that is, something I use _after_ the cravings hit) in the form of a homeopathic cravings spray. Provided that I use it, it's extremely effective at stopping the cravings, however, if the cravings are completely upon me then very little works. Hopefully the Blackmores product will stop the cravings before they hit (kind of like a nicotine patch, but in the form of a chocolate bandaid ... mmm chocolate).

I will provide feedback on how it goes.

Also, I am going to put out a heap of posts this week on various topics that have been running through my head. Somewhere in there I will let you know how my project plan is going and my run in with the bitch in the sports store (who is know looking for new employment!)

Talk to you soon.

Kate

Box Yourself Thin ...

Okay, so I'm not really sure that you can "Box Yourself Thin", but after my second session of boxing with my Personal Trainer, I'm starting to believe that it is the most strenuous exercise a person can undertake. I'm totally exhausted. I'm sitting here, desperately waiting for the frying pan to heat up so that I can cook my kangaroo steaks (actually the lowest fat meat on the market, and it does not taste "gamey" as I keep getting told by people who don't seem to have really ever eaten kangaroo) and then pass out.

After the Weight Training, I boxed and then I stair climbed for 45 minutes. Yep, I'm stuffed.

Lunch calls, I cannot wait. I will update more later.

Setting and working towards goals

"Goals not written down are just dreams ..."

I'm not sure who said that originally but lately I have found it very true for me .

Due to all the craziness going on in my life, and the way my brain works, I have lost focus on my weight loss goals over the last 10-12 months. Losing weight is very hard, and sometimes is seems as though it is too hard, especially the other day when I came back from the gym feeling as though I had failed because I was still at my starting point of six weeks ago. So I took a leaf from my friend Louise's book and said "Fuck the past, let's reconnect." (Great comment by the way Louise).

I sat down on Thursday night, and again later on Friday afternoon, and designed a new template for tracking all of my weight loss and fitness goals, food intake, and exercise performed, on the one page. I then set myself a goal weight and a time to achieve that by (the date is Splendour in the Grass Saturday 4th August, but the weight is not up for discussion yet - I'm still not prepared to share that yet. But if you want to tell me your weight I tell you mine!).

Next I set up goals for the three key areas of my program
1. Body
2. Food
3. Mind

The goals are as follows

BODY
7 cardio sessions a week (at least 30 minutes, but doesn't have to be a the gym)
1-2 stretching sessions a week (yoga, tai chi, body balance, or Pilate's)
3 gym sessions a week (with the personal trainer)

Now, I know that seems a LOT when you see it written down, but it's actually less than what I should be doing to lose weight. Generally speaking you should be doing 30 minutes of cardio a day to maintain weight and 60 minutes to lose weight.

A good training program should include cardio, muscle building, and stretching exercises. When my health returns I will up the cardio to 60 minutes a day, but right now, what I'm doing feels more than enough.

FOOD

Work on getting a better understanding and use of appropriate portion size (eg meat portions should be the size of the palm of your hand)

MIND

Meditate at least 5 minutes a day every day - Learn to relax and de-stress

Sorting this stuff out in my head and getting it down of paper has made it a reality for me, and seeing it every day as I write down my food intake re-focuses my mind on what is important and removes the stuff that isn't. It seems to be working at the moment, but I will re-visit every week to see how I'm progressing.

Also, I'm hoping that if I follow this guidelines and consume my 20 points a day that I will achieve a weight loss of .6 of a kilo every week. This amount will bring me to my goal weight for the Splendour weekend. This goal isn't my final goal weight, but just one that will allow me to feel more comfortable surrounded by girls in tank tops and shortie-shorts.

I will post more later, but it's the weekend and I have a bear to make lunch for (albeit a late lunch) .

Signing off until the story of the evil-bitch shop assistant.

Regards

Late

Well, that sure did suck ....

So, there's nothing quite like slogging your guts out at the gym only to reach your mid-program assessment to discover that you've gained weight and fat and all your benchmark test points are the same as the were at the start of your test. I'm no more flexible, and I'm 1 and 1/2 kilos heavier and my body fat has climbed to 30% (though I think the test machine is a bit dodgy).

So, yes, there are a few mitigating factors - I'm ill, my Post-viral syndrome is still affecting me - this week it has been excruciating and I discovered that absolutely no pain killers bar one "prescription only" medicine works on relieving the pain at the moment.

Also, I was very fit when I started the sessions with the Personal Trainer (Gary) so there wasn't as much room for improvement as if I had started last year when I weighed well over 100 kilos and worse size 22-24 clothes.

And time is very difficult for me to manage. I used to work out first thing in the morning and now I can barely get out of bed by 7am let alone to the gym at 5:30am as I used to do before I got sick.

I can tell myself all this, but it's still frustrating as hell.

Also, I am still battling with the food; portion sizes, appropriate meals, learning to stop eating when I've satisfied my hunger, these are all things that I am still working on.

Hubbie bought me Kurt Cobain's diaries for Mother's day and there is a brilliant line from Kurt talking about people's struggles with drug addiction and using the 12-step program, or detox (real detox/dry out clinics, not herbal potions) programs to "get clean". He says that from his experiences, both personal and others, he realised that any concerted effort to move on from drugs took at least 5-10 years therapy.

As I've said before, there are a lot of similarities between drug and food addictions. The sad part about food addictions is that you have to continue to eat, food isn't something like drugs or alcohol that you can remove from your diet and never have again. You have to find a way to control/manage your food intake without developing an eating disorder or malnutrition.

I haven't managed that yet. I ended up with a zinc deficiency that caused me to be endlessly ill last year (and a fair part of this year), but I'm working on that. So I can honestly believe that it will take me 5-10 to learn new ways to eat, exercise, and manage my mind. Losing body fat is about those 3 key elements

1. Food, eating - learning what's right for your body and how much

2. Exercise - muscle building/load bearing exercise, cardio exercise, and stretching/toning work is all necessary to create a healthy, happy and sexy body.

3. Mind - working out why we chose to eat when we're not hungry and how to develop more appropriate behaviours. Learning when our body says "I've had enough food. You can stop now. You don't need to load up of food" (I still struggle with this one). The mind is the hardest one to concur, and I fight this battle every day. But if you fight and examine the results and modify your attacks to be more effective, ultimately you win. That is my goal.

So, anyway I have decided that I need to refocus my efforts towards managing the food side of things at the moment, as my brain and body are not co-operating it is the only thing I can control.

Once I have completed my next series of tasks I will let you know what I am trying, and if it is working.

Will update sooner next time.

Regards

Kate

P.S. Jenny my PT is not the commando from Biggest Loser. Gary is much nicer, but still a sadist.


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My Personal Trainer is Slowly Becoming a Sadist

Just got back from the gym and I realise that working out first thing in the day or at least not straight after work is so much more efficient.

My brain fog (from the PVS) is making my writing skills less than cromulent today so my apologies if things seem a bit "strung together".

My PT (Gary) ran me hard through my paces today and every part of my body feels it, but it's a good pain (really).

Last night I noticed that I'm getting the first stage of a six pack, really! It's the most exciting thing I've ever had happen to me in terms of physical fitness. My abs are really becoming defined, just fabulous. Apart from that, the weight fluctuates (as usual) but the body looks heaps better.

1 Kilo down - 14 1/2 more little lessons to learn

Well, I woke up in a foul mood but at least weighed in at a kilo lighter than a few days ago. I'm not sure which set of scales I should use for this forum, the ones I use at Weight Watchers, or my home ones. For the moment I'll use the home scales as I am irregularly attending meetings at the moment.

Went to the gym this morning and foul-mood subsided but now just feel bone-achingly tired again. That's the Post-Viral Syndrome side-effects for you.

Had to cancel the PT today as I have been double-booked to take the young one to a school appointment and I couldn't reschedule. <rant deleted in the interests of preserving marriage> Grrr. See, I told you I was grumpy this morning.

When I find where the bear hid the tape-measure I will take some measurements and start recording my progress in that regard so that when the muscle growth begins it won't create a false picture of my training progress.

Okay, time to hit the showers. More later.

Bikini-Gal

Some Interesting Statistics

28.1 - Average BMI of Australian women (this is classed as "overweight) - I am 27.9
74 kg - Average weight of Australian women (not telling, but I am close to this)
1.63m - Average height of Australian women (I am 1.7m)
Size 12 - Average size in jeans of Australian women (size 14-16)
14C - Average bra size, however (16DD)
41% of Australian women wear a D Cup or above (me!)
87.9 cm - average waist measurement of Australian women (86cm)
110cm - average hip measurement of Australian women (101cm)
70% of Australians think they are fat (I'm in the 70%)

and the worst one

95% of women who went on weight-loss diets regained everything they lost, plus more, within 2 years (source - The Medical Journal of Australian MJA 2003; 179 (11-12): 586

What does this all mean? I'm not sure.

I don't know if I feel better or worse that I'm taller than than the average Australian woman and that my waist and hips are smaller than the national average (how come I wear a size 14-16 jean then ?? Maybe size 14-16 women don't buy as many pairs of jeans as size 12 and below women. Of course, I have over 15 pairs of jeans now so hopefully that will rebalance the matter in the next round of surveys)

What about the fact that 95% of dieting women regain their lost weight - Do I feel as though I am running an unwinnable race? Some days I do. But I have to try. I don't think that, even knowing those odds, I should give up. I mean 5% succeed. Is that crazy self-talk that I'm indulging in?

It might interest you to know that 90% of heroin addicts go back at least once to heroin. So it's actually harder to lose weight and keep it off than giving up heroin (I know, that's mis-using statistics horribly, but it's true for me some days).

I don't know anyone who's lost weight and kept it off permanently. No-one. I did have a friend once who lost an enormous amount of weight once and kept it off for about 5 years, but then a tragedy hit, and the weight (and much more) came back.

I do have a friend who lost an enormous amount of weight but fluctuates between 6-8 kilos so I don't know if she classes as part of the 95% or part of the 5%, but I'm sure if I asked her she would say that her weight loss battle continues still.

Why do we think fat people are lazy and stupid (I say "we" in the greater sense of the community, not me)? It's clearly stupid behaviour to indulge in starvation, mind-control and torture (known as "dieting" to the clinically insane). Maybe "overweight" people have realised that it's a pointless exercise that eventually costs you more health wise than being overweight does.

Recently I discovered that my PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome) was most probably self-induced from my years of constant yo-yo dieting. New medical research has discovered that the fluctuating hormones brought about by starvation and dieting (I've done both) led to a much higher-incidence of PCOS in those woman. I wish I'd known that when I was 10. Of course, it probably wouldn't have stopped me because I wanted the "fatty fatty boomsticks" comments to cease more than I cared about my future fertility.

Anyway, I do believe, on some level, that I'm extremely stupid at attempting this. But I know that I have been so brainwashed by the media and my father over the years that I am never truly going to accept that I am beautiful at any size other than a size 10.

I admire women who can say "This is me, get fucked if you don't love it, because I do." That wasn't the message I received at home. Both my father and my grandmother (his mother) made it clear from early on that they thought I was too fat and that strenuous dieting would be rewarded by extra love and attention from both of them. Obviously they both had ISS-EWS!

I wonder what I could have achieved if I had diverted my energies into causes other than my weight loss... I'd probably be bullying people with statistics about productivity or something ;-)


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Introduction to "Bikini by Xmas"

WELCOME

Welcome to "Bikini by Xmas" the blogg site I have set up to track my progress towards my goal of wearing a Bikini by Xmas (as if the title didn't give it away).

In the previous year (2006) I lost 23 kilos but have been yo-yo-ing since about September last year to the point that at once stage, fairly recently, I realised that I had gained back 7 kilograms. Needless to say I panicked and decided to revisit my old weight loss tools and refocus on what was important to me, namely never, EVER, gaining back those lost kilos.

So recently I have been hitting the gym, tracking all my food intake and making a concerted effort to "be good" and I have shifted 5 of those kilos (some days it's 6 but I do fluctuate a lot).

It hasn't been easy, in fact, some days it feels like the hardest thing I've ever done (sorry Qld Anti-Smoking Group, losing weight and keeping it off is _harder_ than quitting smoking!).

I'm not naturally interested in fruit, vegies, or exercise, the 3 vital components to maintaining or losing weight, and I've certainly never been interested in "portion control", but I've had to face some hard facts on this journey and here they are

* Some people may be able to eat what they like and never get fat, I am not one of those people
* It will always ALWAYS be a struggle, and I will have to struggle more than most
* I will always have to exercise
* I will always have to watch what I eat and how much I eat
* I can drink alcohol if I want, I can also watch the kilos hop on for a free ride if I do so - I have to accept this
* None of the above is fair, but where is it written down that life is supposed to be fair?
* I will never have a healthy relationship with chocolate fudge, it's best that I never let it into the house
* Diet shakes will never work - they just delay the inevitable, learning to manage real food responsibly
* I am the ONLY person who can do this for me, and I am really the ONLY person who will do this for me
* People who think I am weak or unattractive because of my weight are shit-heads and shallow. I am better off without their poisonous thoughts and behaviour in my life.

So there you have it.

Every week at least, possibly more often if I am home or have exciting news to share, I will update this page with my progress. Please feel free to post questions or comments, we all know that I'm opinionated and hot-headed but I actually do listen and think about your thoughts more than you might believe.

All I ask is that you don't use my surname or yours in the postings. Just to keep things secure and safe.

Regards

Kate, Bikini-Gal