Tying up the loose ends

If I was a writer I think I'd be really crap at writing the endings to my books.

I know this because I've detected a bit of a 'trend' in my blogging.................leaving too many things hanging!

This is partly a result of my 'scattergun' approach to blogging - I don't plan the posts, I just blurt them out with my fingers on the keyboard....and then I may not think about them again once they're out there in blogworld.

So today, in the interests of resolving a few 'hanging' items, I thought I'd give you an update on my most recent post re our Oldest KAT and the perils of the school leadership contest.

As expected (and well prepared for) she didn't get the guernsey as School Captain....nor Vice Captain.  That honour went to a young lady who chose to do a 'rap' for her speech which apparently made her even more 'hip' and appealing than she already was (as she is a very nice girl with a lovely disposition).

The Vice Captain went to an all-round superstar, great at all sports (rep team this and rep team that) and a good student...to make it even better she's a really polite, unassuming girl who is impossible not to like.

In short, our oldest KAT was happy for both of them....even though she was a tad disappointed, she masked it well and kept a smile on her dial!

With the key positions out of the way, it has then evolved into a 'now who gets what' toss up of all the other 'leadership' jobs that give the kids a chance to shine in Year 6.  Today we found out that our gorgeous girl will be the Learning and Resource Captain which means she gets to be the spokesperson during Literacy, Library & Numeracy weeks next year.  Right up her alley!

Now, onto the second major thing that I've left hanging.......................what was the outcome of my 9 Week Challenge (ie did I win!!!!)

The short answer is YES!

I managed to blow the 'competition' away and was the overall winner for my centre with a total weight loss of 17.9kgs.

Last Saturday I was presented with my prize which includes a bunch of 'goods & services' ranging from Beauty treatments, Runners, Photo Session, Car Wash & Detail and a few other bits and pieces.  Saint Mike hunted in the envelope for a cheque...............which was not forthcoming :)

In the end, the prize had become a tad insignificant as I'm now nearly 4 weeks post-challenge and am well along the road of trying to lose weight without the aid of my Siberian diet!  I'm adjusting to eating more food and managing the 'plan' myself without a daily regimen to follow and this has proved to be quite tricky for me. 

Added to this, my trainer decided to resign and disappear without so much as a good bye which has left me feeling like one of the people on Biggest Loser when the American kick-ass trainer says it's time to go back state-side...............devestated, lacking in confidence and like someone has chopped off my right arm!!!!

My new trainer is really lovely (funny way to describe someone who kicks my butt) but he's not the same as my old one.  It will take a bit of getting used to.

In the meantime, I am trying to give my head time to catch up with my body - I'm physically fitter than I've been in an eternity (definitely pre-youngest KAT fitness levels) but psychologically I'm really struggling with imposter syndrome and look in the mirror and still see a fat person.

I'm just keeping up my exercise and diet routine as best I can and focusing on stabilising myself between now and New Years so that I don't regress.  Then, it will be game on for 2012!!

It really is a journey and in the past I never admitted that and somehow acted like I could get a free ride...I've now accepted that it's a tough road and only hard work will get me there.

Image from here - I was hunting for an image depicting 'loose threads', couldn't find one...settled on this one as I really love the use of the ribbon!!!!

A Bex and a good lie down

Yesterday was the final day of my 9 Week Challenge.  Are you ready for the number...........cue the rocky theme and accompanying fist pumping image..............

17.9kgs!!!!!

An average of almost 2 kilograms a week for 9 weeks!

I was happy for about 3 minutes as I breathed a sigh of relief that the challenge was over and I had managed to keep up my average for the final week given I have been rather under the weather and the furious exercise had unfortunately had to give way to common sense....so I'd been stressing that I wouldn't manage to lose weight in the final week.  My stressing was obviously good for the metabolism!

Why did my euphoria last 3 minutes?

Well after the weigh in and the tape measure were done, it was time for the 'after' photos.

I had been soooooooooooooooo excited about my 'after' shots, envisaging a visual transformation on par with the one that's been going on up in my head.  Unfortunately they failed to live up to my expectations....I got a glimpse of them and almost lost the plot. 

All I could see was a blob that didn't look any different from the 'before' blob next to it.

This is probably another one of life's little lessons about not building something up quite so much....a photo taken in poor lighting with a body that still needs to lose probably about the same amount of weight again to be in any way shape or form on the 'healthy' side was never going to look fantastic in a sports bra and undies!!!!

Cue the snide, nasty voice in my head "ha ha, you thought you looked pretty good didn't you??  Ha ha, you're still a fatty boom baa".  The voice in my head can't spell very well either!!

I kept a smile and a positive face on and left shortly after.  Took myself off to the local shopping centre and had a coffee and sourdough toast with jam as a 'treat' and tried desperately to make the voice shut up.

Alas, I'd opened the door and it proceeded to throw a loud and obnoxious party for the remainder of the day. 

By the time SM got home with a lovely bunch of red roses as congratulations I was a bit of an exhausted and emotional mess and ended up taking a couple of headache tablets and going to bed early....

Do I think my journey is over..............................NO!!!!

I have more weight to lose.  Even more importantly though I have more work to do to drown out that voice in my head that tells me I'm not worthwhile and aren't as good as I think I am.

So exhausting!!

Please don't think I'm hunting for compliments.  I'm not.  This is brutal honesty and no fishing is intended :)

I've stuck this picture on the fridge with the accompanying words to remind myself that the 'voice' is full of SHIT!!!!



Inquiring Minds Want to know

At the request of my younger sister I'm posting a current shot of me to prove that I indeed the incredible shrinking woman (or at least my boobs are!!!!)

As of last Friday I'd lost 11.6kgs

Mid way through Week 7 with two and a bit weeks to go the situation can be summarised as follows:

• I'm buggered!
• I've gone through 2 packs of disposable happy pants having realized that morning walks and my bowels are never going to get along :)
• I'm sick of the monotony of my daily regime of protein shakes, plain chicken, plain lean beef and NO fruit/nuts/potatoes for this last 3 weeks
• I've graduated from 90 min of 'moderate walking' per day with 15 min of 'hard cardio' to 60 min of walking plus 30 minutes of 'hard cardio'....which for me is the "Cliff Young Shuffle" (for those of you NOT Victorian and as old as me he was a geriatric long-distance runner in the 1980's that shuffled rather that jogged....but he got there in the end!)
• I take so many pills at night that the KATs think it's fun to feed them to me...so many colours mum!!!  Don't worry they're all safe...there's just quite a few of them!
• Mark my trainer told me on Monday that's it's all 'mental' from here on in...yes I thought, in one sense it definitely is bloody mental...don't think that's what he meant sadly!!!
• I'm still on top of the leader board...planning on staying there if it kills me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• Have I mentioned I'm buggered?????????????????????

The next few weeks are going to be dire, I can feel it already - throat sore today and feel like I just want to go and have a very long nap!  I will keep going though as "Project L" as SM calls it has been well worth it so far...I like the competitive, goal-oriented, STRONG person that I am becoming :)

Scale Anxiety

Friday is my weigh in day.

Weigh-in day causes me to be extremely anxious. 

Tomorrow is weigh-in day...ergo I have butterflies in my tummy and there's another 24hours to go!!!!

I am trying to challenge my thinking, reminding self that I've done EVERYTHING I've been asked to do.  I eat what I've been told to eat and have put it into the calculator on the Biggest Loser website (which I am still a subscriber to) and I KNOW I'm eating less than (but close to) 1000 calories per day! 

Did I hear you gasp??  I told you it was a Siberian diet!!!!

I am exercising like an Amazon...90 min walking 6 days a week, plus 15min of 'hard cardio' which for me has been running on the treadmill (with breaks to catch my breath) and seeing Mark, my trainer 3 times this week.

Logic tells me that I should have lost weight.

Problem is that my body scoffs heartily at 'logic'....it can be annoyingly unco-operative and may just decide to gain weight instead (or even worse not change at all from last week!!!!!)

Tomorrow will signal the end of Week 6 of the challenge. 

I had lost 10.2kgs as of last Friday (end of Week 5 for those of you not paying attention)

Am I happy with that result for 5 weeks worth of effort??  YES!  Ecstatic!!

Does it mean that I'm not driving myself even harder to keep on losing for these last four weeks (now only 3 weeks)?  NO!  I've turned into a machine...and a competitive one at that!!!!

I'm still on top of the leader board...my closest competition is 2kgs behind me....and I want her to stay there!  She's on my tail though and I can't slack off...

I do keep reminding myself that this should not be about winning....but I'm starting to think that it's easy to say that when you're NOT winning...but when you are, goddamit you just want to stay on top!

Anyway, further updates will be forthcoming tomorrow....wish me luck :)

to spray tan or not to spray tan

I'm experiencing a first of sorts.  It's wierd and scary but strangely addictive....

I'm leading in something.  Given that my usual position in any sort of 'competition' is usually bringing up the rear this is most definitely a moment of wonder for me.

What am I leading in I hear you ask??

That would be my club's 9 Week Challenge....you know, the thing that has been ripping the fat off me faster than a Dyson sucks random objects left on my floor?

At the 3 week mark I am 6.7kg's down and am officially WINNING by a significant margin on the 'leader board'.  My closest competition is some bloke (pretty sure it's a guy)...and I don't care cos unless he's considering a sex change in the next 6 weeks he's in a different comp!!

Unlike the Biggest Loser, this comp is purely on weight loss....not total percentage of weight loss in relation to your size....so kudos to me for being a giant heifer and there possibly being only mildly overweight women trying to lose their last few kilos of baby weight (I don't know this for sure but supposing it's the case I've got an immediate advantage as I have BIG numbers to forcibly remove from my frame).

Anyway, I don't care....I'm just totally amazed that I'm actually the leader at this point.

My trainer from Biggest Loser central casting keeps stressing that I not get complacent....I'm assuring him that's the least of my worries...I'm more at risk from completely self-sabotaging this little campaign as my imposter-syndrome psycho behavior is just itching to get a bit of the limelight and stuff my good work up.

So far, I've kept this under control and am sticking to the rigid, 'take-no-prisoners' food plan like the proverbial chewy on the sole of your best sandals.

As I march into week 4 I am already starting to think about my 'after' shot....I can't avoid them really as they are plastered all over the studio as a form of motivation.  Now, on the one hand they do the trick...but they are also a salient lesson in the perils of spray tan's and how to look like a skinnier version of oneself with a skin tone that has the same tone as a dried apricot!!!

I am sure I will seek input on this as week 9 draws closer - to spray tan or not to spray tan, to go the full blow dry and apply make-up that is usually saved for work only (and usually applied in the car park before going into my workplace) and potentially splashing out on some new bra and knickers to create a spectacular foil to the nanna knickers and bra I was donning for the 'before' photo!!!

In the meantime, enjoy the photo of my smiling face 6.7kgs down from 3 weeks ago...taken by the oldest KAT down at the beach yesterday :)

Chopping My Day Away

Eating well is a time consuming process.

It is completely beyond me how healthy (read thin) people manage to fit anything into their day with the amount of time they must devote to chopping, squeezing, juicing, and all the other 'ings' that go with a healthy diet.

Perhaps my knife skills are just not up to scratch because one of the most frustrating things when you are really famished and are trying (really hard) to stick to your correct macronutrient targets is the preparation involved in getting the food ready to eat!

As I type this, a little voice is saying "yes but that's why you need to be more organized - pre chop food etc" but I am soooooo exhausted from being flogged to death by Mark the trainer from Biggest Loser central casting that I can barely lift my arms to cut another vegetable up!!

Fresh, close to nature still needs to be taken from the fridge, washed, de-ended (can't think of a better description) or de-seeded, then thrown together with the requisite amount of protein (think lots of tuna), cottage cheese and then I can actually consume it....this is all quite daunting when I am still in major 'deprivation' mode...I'm sure it will get better but far out, can someone send me a chef to do all the food prep...I can see why diet food deliveries are so attractive to people.

Regardless of my chopping and slicing angst I remain a bit daunted by this caper but am nonetheless DETERMINED (like my little friend the tortoise) and !  I am recording everything, weighing it as well and have managed to do 195minutes worth of cardio since last Thursday night, plus I got flogged by Mark this morning...so am quite pleased with my level of commitment (nearly burst into tears when he made me do a fourth set of chest presses, felt like there must be a camera hiding somewhere).

SM thinks it's bloody hilarious!  His halo is poised to strangle him!!!

I'd love to hear your tip's on how you manage to eat healthily and still get out of the house...let me know!