I got a new toy...

Got myself a FitBit Ultra. Lordy me, it makes me work hard! Unlike my HRM, it only counts steps, and works out calories burned from there. I'm not really looking at calories burned though, because I'm just trying to stick to my 1200-1400 calories a day.

It's got a couple of cool features, and mainly makes me think about incidental exercise, like getting up from my desk and walking around a bit, using the work toilets furthest from my desk and upstairs, parking further away when shopping etc. Because you wear it all day, it keeps you conscious all day about what you're doing. The website is pretty comprehensive too and provides heaps of data for me to compete against myself with every day.

I love new toys! I really want a Macbook, but that is my 90kg goal present, so I've got another 15kg to lose before I get myself one. By then, I'll probably want something else!

Today was weigh-in day (second last one on the 12WBT) and I lost 900grams. I'm pretty happy with that as I've had a couple of binges this week but got up and exercised straight after (nowhere near enough, but at least I did something). I also have been to the gym consistently most days for the last two weeks. It really shows on the scale - last week's loss was 1.7kg, and then 900g this week.

I've decided that Mish's program doesn't really suit me. While I love the recipes and the general idea of the program, I just can't get into it. I feel like having to hit the 500 calories burned mark every day is what is making me not want to go to the gym. Instead of focusing on being healthy, I was just focusing on going and getting on the treadmill until 500 calories was done. I wasn't enjoying myself at all, so tend to miss more workouts than I do because I don't want to just walk for an hour. The food plan was also off for me - I don't eat a lot of the foods that she put in the plan, so I was having to make up my own menu plan anyway. I'm only using her site to log my weigh-ins now - I haven't listened to any of her videos or anything for about 6 weeks. They don't motivate me at all. It's really quite disheartening, but I'm glad I signed up for the program as it's given me a lot of ideas for new recipes, and lots of help with individual exercises. I suppose I could've got that with a couple of personal training sessions, so I probably would have spent the same amount of money on that. It wasn't a complete waste of my time, but I'm not going to sign up for the next round. I may in the future though, as I like the idea of the Lean and Strong program so once I get closer to goal I may do one round of Lean and Strong, or invest in some personal training sessions.

I've gone back to the gym as the weather has turned to shit and I can't ride my bike any more. Firstly, it's dark so much earlier and I don't have a light. Secondly, I ride on the Eastlink Trail and it's kind of a rapist's heaven (away from roads, along a river bank, surrounded by marshlands). I don't feel safe at night on the trail, and I'm nowhere near strong enough to ride on the roads yet, without endangering both myself and drivers. So I'm back on the elliptical and the treadmill - trying to mix it up so I don't get bored. I'm also making sure I get in a full stretch of my legs after each workout - I'm doing a lot more for cali this year and finding my legs get really stiff if I don't stretch them out.

Cali is awesome. This year I decided to try harder to push myself as I won't be able to keep up much longer if I don't. Last year I spent a lot of time off stage watching the rest of the team, and while I enjoyed the break and less pressure on myself to get things right on the day, I felt a bit useless, like I wasn't pulling my weight. This year I hardly go off stage. It's wonderful! I'm doing things I haven't done in years, and I'm putting the pressure on myself now to 'perform' every time, instead of going through the motions and hoping it'll happen magically on stage. Our coaches know us a lot better this year than they did last year too.. so the work suits us a lot more and we are picking things up much quicker. We're also adapting as a team to their style, which is making us much better performers.

Work is going okay too. Although I'm extremely frustrated most days with our system (it doesn't work as it should, and we don't have the support we need to fix all the kinks), things are slowly getting better. I proposed some changes to my position over 4 months ago to allow me to transition out of management and into a more analytical/support based role. It looks like things are finally falling into place and my dream job may be within reach in the next month or so.

And my beautiful boy and I are moving in together next month. His place is heaps closer to work (he works around the corner from me) and although it's much further away from cali and my family, I'm happy to travel once or twice a week over to the other side of town for cali and to see Mum and Dad if it means my commute reduces to 20-30 minutes from over an hour twice daily. I'll have more time to prepare good meals, spend time on myself at the gym, and most importantly, nurture my relationship with Dave. We're in a really good place right now, and I want things to stay that way! We'll also be able to save money as we're effectively halving our bills if we live together, so we can save for our dream home (and our dream life!). Babies may be happening in the next few years, and I really want to not have to work until all my kids are at school - so I need to make sure I put in the time and effort now so that this is possible. I'm lucky I'm not on a salary - so any overtime or Public Holidays that I work I get paid for. Yay.

Some of my friendships are falling by the wayside with my new life though. Working in the city and living in the suburbs is hard - and when I take the time out for my gym time and Dave as well, it doesn't leave much time to socialise. I feel a bit bad about it, but at the same time I am the one who always initiates contact with most of my friends if I haven't seen them in a while. I'm kind of at the point now where if they don't contact me, I'm kind of thinking that maybe these friendships are a little one-sided, and that I needn't put in the effort if they can't be bothered to. It's sad because I don't have a massive group of friends, and with moving away it's going to be even harder to maintain these connections. I really like where my life is heading though, so I don't regret anything.

And that's my update. I'm leaving this tab open in my browser to remind me that I have a blog, and even if no-one reads it, I should update it more often!!

xx

The Easter Fallout

I'm sure I've mentioned that I'm struggling at the moment... but Easter went pretty well! I didn't eat nearly as much chocolate on the day as I usually would - I made sure that I only ate a couple of small chockies off the heavily laden table for my dessert. Mum had made up a little Easter basket for me seeing as I mentioned that I was trying not to eat too much - and I ate most of it on Monday and the rest yesterday.

Dave made up a big batch of brownies (mmm delicious but oh so much butter and chocolate in them....) and I haven't eaten many of those - in fact I'm taking the rest of them to work tomorrrow so that I'm not tempted to eat the rest on my own. They're pretty tasty but terribly rich so I don't think I could eat too many at once.

I've joined a challenge on MyFitnessPal run by one of my oldest friends on there. It starts on Friday and runs for 11 weeks so I'm hoping I don't get eliminated too early and it gives me a kickstart to finish this job of losing weight. It has all sorts of food-related and exercise-related challenges so isn't only weight focused, but is also fitness focused. I need to get back into enjoying my exercise more often than I enjoy my food!

I weighed in this morning at 108.1kg - about 3kg up on my lowest weight so far. It's a big enough gain to make me stop and think about where I want to be. I don't want to go back to where I was. I want to keep going in the downward direction, and right now I don't really care how long it takes me to get there, I just know that I can't stop trying. This isn't going to be anywhere near as easy as it was at the start, but it's easier than being huge and always worrying if I'll fit somewhere. I've got a couple of things coming up - my birthday is in May and then I have a trip away in July - so I have some small goals to reach by then.

All I can say is... I WILL BE LESS THAN 90KG BY 31 DEC 2012. There is no doubt about that.

Run for the Kids

Today, I did Run for the Kids - a 5.2km fun run to raise money for the Royal Children's Hospital, in Melbourne. The Good Friday Appeal is a telethon that is run in Vic each year on Good Friday to raise money for this hospital, so the entry fees and such go towards the Appeal.

I haven't really had anything to do with the Children's - having never been sick myself, and my brothers were all healthy too. Late last year, my cousin had a beautiful baby girl who was born with a rare condition affecting her chin, and also some other stuff to do with her hips. She's been in and out of the hospital her whole short life, and is thankfully doing really really well.

I didn't even think about it when I signed up, and this morning, after I posted about my success on my Facebook, my cousin commented and thanked me for my support. We just don't think about how little things affect other people...

PS I ran/walked the 5.2km in  45:38 (not the official time... that is released on Tuesday) which I was really proud of. I had a goal of under 45 mins, and probably would have reached that had there been less people to negotiate.