Abducted by aliens

All

It’s true. I realise I’ve been gone for quite some time and the only reason I can give you all is that I was abducted by aliens. Do you believe me? No, well I wouldn’t either.

Okay, so the truth is, I was slack. I’ve been pretty slack in a few aspects of my life. I lost my mojo, went looking for it, couldn’t find it and just couldn’t get back into eating healthy, exercising or blogging. I felt like a big fat failure, and who wants to blog about that? So what’s been going on since April you ask? Okay, so here’s the quick re-cap.

I got fired from my job – the one that I was really hating. I was looking for work elsewhere, but the boss beat me to it and fired me first. He’s made a few harsh (and very, very inaccurate) accusations and I’m pretty much just keeping myself far away from him (which is turning out surprisingly easy, even for a small town). I know that I did nothing wrong, and that my work was up to scratch, and I sleep fine at night. So to be honest, I’m quite happy to be out of that place. I hadn’t really written much about it, but I was so sad and depressed at that place I was working, I hated it. But, good news is, I was only between jobs for one day. I got fired, left on the Thursday, had an interview on the Friday and then started a new job on the Monday.

Took me a while to settle into that place, but I eventually did, just in time to move onto another job. I was torn about leaving this other place. I was finally settling in, and making some great friends – friends I will now cherish for life – but this other position was back with Government. And the government will give me paid maternity leave, which this other place just couldn’t do, so in the end that was the winning decision. So now I’m back with government. Not pregnant, but at least I now have maternity leave when I finally need it.

Now, about this eating healthy and exercising thing. Well, the truth is, I haven’t really been doing either of these things. I’ve let my eating slip back into old habits and I’ve been ignoring that little voice in my head that says to me every time I put something bad in my mouth that I shouldn’t be doing this. Then I ignore that little voice in the back of my head that says I should get up off the couch and exercise. I’ve ignored both these voices so much, that I’ve managed to put back on 3kg. Although, looking at my last weigh in figure, I’ve actually only put on 1kg since my last weigh in back in March. Hmmm I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

So this is me, back again and ready to get back into healthy eating, exercising and just generally being happy and enjoying life again. Oh, and I plan on getting back into blogging again, and maybe adding in some posts about new and exciting adventures (such as crochet club – oh yes, I am part of a crochet club and you know what, it’s freaking awesome!) and some more posts about quilting, and possibly, quite possibly, more posts with photo goodness, because, well I just spent my tax return on a great camera, so now I need to learn to use it and I need to start doing something with all the photos I take, so they’re probably going to end up here. I just started to realise that there has to be more to my life than just eating healthy and exercising.

God, it feels great to have blogged again. I’ve missed this, and I’ve missed you all. I’m back babbyyyyyyy 🙂

Blogger Challenge Week 7: Motivation

Time for the 12WBT blogger challenge for this week. I will be answering a few questions this week:

  1. Why did I join the 12WBT?

    My reasons for joining up on the 12WBT haven’t changed since I put up my first blogging challenge post. I still want to lose weight to get to a fitter and happier healthier version of myself, and also so that one day when I do have children of my own I will be a good role model to them. I want to learn about good nutrition, so that I know when I feed these children one day, I will be feeding them good, healthy, nutritious food and that I will be giving them a proper portion of food – not my over the top portioning that I tend to do now. More than anything, I don’t want my children to ever have to deal with a weight problem and have to join up on their own 12WBT challenge. And yes, being able to wear a slinky dress, or nice lingere is also a bit of a factor for me, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t!

  2. What has been your biggest achievement to date?

    I think there are two achievements. Last week at weigh-in I was only 500g off my end weight of 12WBT in 2010. So close I could taste it. I was pretty chuffed that I’d managed to lose nearly 10kg this year. This was really brought home to me on the weekend when we went out for cricket presentation night. I was standing with Mick while he was talking with one of the young guys, when all of a sudden he turned to me (the young guy – not Mick…) and said to me “You’ve lost weight haven’t you Tina. Like, really lost weight. I’m sorry I don’t mean to sound rude, but you really have, haven’t you?” I was so chuffed that finally someone had really noticed it. I told him I loved him and I could have kissed him ha-ha. It made all the work that I’ve done worth it, and gave me that little kick I needed in the arse to get myself back on track and get going again.

    My other big achievement was that I ran. I’m not much of an exerciser, as I’m sure you will have noticed from my constant complaints on the blog about having to exercise, but I was pretty chuffed with myself when I got out there to do my walk/shuffle/jog/run thing and when I actually did run. It wasn’t even a jog, but a run. It wasn’t for long, but I did it and it gave me the enthusiasm to get out there and keep doing it. Until I fell over that is, and the mornings got darker. Now I struggle to get out there and do it, but it’s a plan for the future. For now I’m concentrating on my swimming, which is also an achievement for me – taking lessons and learning how to swim properly. Now I’m practicing, practicing and practicing some more to get really good at it.

  3. What have you struggled with? How can you overcome these issues?

    I struggle with exercise. More than anything else that is my Kryptonite. I try to like it, I really do, but I just don’t. I’ve waited for that feeling to hit me that everyone talks about – how you start to love and crave it. But it hasn’t hit me and to be honest, I don’t think it ever will. The only thing that I really love to do is swim. I don’t really feel like that is exercise, because I can just totally tune out the world and focus on just moving my arms and legs and I can think about whatever. When I go for my shuffle or am doing a dvd or something else, I can’t get into that Zen zone. I have to concentrate – either on the roads/paths (so I don’t go arse up and fall over again), on my feet, or just on what the instructor is doing in the dvd. But swimming isn’t like that.

    I don’t really know how to overcome this issue I have with exercising. Apart from just getting out there and doing it, there really isn’t anything I can do to make myself love exercising. So for now, that’s what I do. I just force myself (sometimes) to exercise. And loathe every second of it. Maybe, just maybe, one day that love of exercise will come to me. I’m not really expecting it to though. *sigh*

Blogging challenge week six: Adjustments

Weigh in day

Previous weight: 102.0kg.
Today’s weight: 100.2kg.
1.8kg loss! Sooooo close to double figures.

Time for the 12WBT blogger challenge for this week. I will be answering a few questions this week:

  1. What adjustments have you had to make to your exercise regime over the last 6 weeks?

    i.e. Have you upped your training? (Added more weights or can run faster/harder, etc) Or have you gone up to a new fitness level in the 12WBT?
    My exercise regime has been a bit wishy washy and a bit up and down over the last six weeks. I started out strong, earlier this year in pre-season, but when 12WBT officially started I kind of fell by the wayside a little and lost the plot. The one thing I have been very consistent with is my swimming. I set myself a goal to take swimming lessons to just learn how to do freestyle properly, but not only have I learnt how to do that, but I have also learnt how to do backstroke and breaststroke properly, and I have also learnt how to do the butterfly – which I admit I am still struggling with, but I persist, because I really want to master it. Other than that I have tried new things that I have never really tried before – such as running. I also got a stand for my mountain bike to turn it into an exercise bike. The good intentions are there, now if I could get my body into it too, I’d be alright.

  2. What have you changed in regards to your food intake?

    i.e. Do you follow Mish’s plan to the letter? Have you had to alter it due to dietary/family needs?
    I never follow the plan to the letter. I always alter it. I am very much a creature of habits and tend to have the same thing for breakfast every day, and most days I will have the same thing for lunch every day. So for me, having all these different breakfasts and lunches just does my head in and I’m just not interested in having so many different things to make first thing in the morning. I stick to my tried and true breakfasts. I’ll give most things a go on the menu’s, I did try the mushroom and lentil loaf – but it seriously nearly made me throw up, I just couldn’t eat it. So now I figure if it doesn’t sound good, and if I think I’m going to dislike it I’m not going to waste my time or money making it. So ocassionally I will change the dinners around as well. I like to have something I can make ahead for Tuesday and Thursday nights because that is when I do my swimming and get home quite late. Apart from that I haven’t really changed my eating habits at all, just continuing on with what I’ve been doing all year. Oh and I do let myself have “bad” food when we go to the pub for dinner. This is a lifetime change I’m making here, and I will admit that I’m not going to deny myself chicken schnitzel for the rest of my life when I go to the pub for dinner, so why deny myself now. I try to be a bit more sensible when we eat out, but more often than not, I just order something I know I will enjoy.

  3. What is the difference in your mindset?

    i.e. Are you more confident? Are you happier within yourself? Do you still struggle to get out that door for your workout?
    I feel happier in myself when I look in the mirror every day now. I’m not completely happy with myself – with 35kg still to lose, I shouldn’t be completely happy either, but I’m a lot happier now. I can almost see my collarbones and that makes me smile. The day that they really are pronounced I will be super happy.
    In regards to exercise, well I still struggle with that. I never feel motivated for that, I don’t think I ever will. I have never enjoyed exercising, I think it’s just the way I am. I can pretend that I do, and hope that it’s going to change, but let’s be honest, after 36 years, I doubt that I’m suddenly going to start loving exercise. I do however love to swim. So I find I am doing more and more of that lately. It’s exercise, that’s the main thing right?

Running out of time in the day

I have had such a busy few days, jam packed full of excitement and a lazy day thrown in between. So I have to say that I’m sorry for the lack of updates here.

Saturday was full of excitement and joy as we went to the Port Lincoln A grade cricket grand final. Mick plays for Charlton (admittedly, he’s only B grade now – age is not nice to cricketers) and it had been 21 years since the A grade had won a premiership. So of course, it was mandatory that we attend the grand final on Saturday (though there wasn’t really any disagreement from me about attending) and we sat there for 6 hours – though sat wouldn’t be the right word, there was a lot of pacing – until that final run when we won! It was so damn exciting and quite honestly the best game of cricket I have ever watched. I could go into the dribs and drabs of the game, but I won’t, but let me just say. Oh. Em. Gee. Nerves, pacing, nail biting action.

The nail biting action, followed by the win, was followed by a trip to the pub where I can honestly say that I didn’t drink anything, but I did have dinner there – a lovely hearty chicken schnitzel. Yes you read correctly. I had a chicken schnitzel and at the time it was great, but afterwards I felt so sick. No guilt, just sick. Lesson learned. Next time I will have a steak. I’m not in that headspace yet where I can go to a pub for a pub meal and have grilled fish and salad. I can do that at home, when I go out to dinner I want to eat something yummy that I don’t make at home – and I never make steak as good as a pub does.

Anyway, Mick decided he would stay at the pub to drink with all the guys, so I went home and said I’d wait up for him so I could pick him. No drinking and driving in this house people. Finally at 3.30am I got him. Got home, fell asleep and got a grand total of about 4 1/2 hours sleep.

Sunday was a do nothing day. So that’s exactly what we did. I finally got my New beginnings quilt finished, sat there watching movies while I sewed the binding on. Then we started watching season one of Sons of Anarchy. I’m hooked, gotta admit it.

But all this sitting around doing nothing didn’t help my 10,000 steps a day for the Everest challenge, so I’m a bit behind on that. So this week I’m getting up at 6.30am to do an hour of exercise before getting ready for work, and I’ve been to the pool for 90 minutes of swimming both last night and tonight just to catch up on my steps. I may only have one sponsor, but I will not let that sponsor or the team down.

So with all that said, I’m going now, need an early night, for an early start tomorrow. Promise I will do a proper post again in the next day or two.

Winners are grinners

Buying Tim Tams again

Oh. My. God. Put the Tim Tams down woman. Is that what you were thinking when you read the title of this post? It’s sure as hell what I would have been thinking.

But relax everyone. While it’s true that tonight when I did my food shopping, I picked up not one but two packets of Tim Tams, I am very pleased to say they were not for me. Neither packet. No, they were for a wonderful lady in America that I have to send a mini-quilt to as part of a swap (which I am so very far behind in now, so much so, that the quilt is now late.. I apologise) and I like to try and include something so very Australian in the parcels that I send overseas and you can’t get much more Australian than Tim Tams, and Vegemite. So when we did our food shopping tonight I picked up a packet of the original Tim Tams, a packet of white choc Tim Tams and a tube of Vegemite.

Can I just say how weird it felt picking up those Tim Tams. Even though I knew that I wasn’t going to be eating them myself (and I wasn’t even tempted to buy an extra packet for me – yay me!), and that they would be going straight into a padded envelope and sent away, it still felt a little (actually a lot) wrong. Which made me happy. Happy because I’m feeling that way again, not dreading the whole eating healthy and exercise regime thing, which I’ve kinda been feeling lately. Happy because I felt bad that I bought food that a few months ago I wouldn’t have thought twice about buying multiple packets of and scoffing down.

Yeah baby I’m back on track again!

Charting my losses

Weigh in day

Previous weight: 102.7kg.
Today’s weight: 102.0kg.
700g loss!

So I updated my weight on the 12WBT weigh in page today after yesterdays weigh in and I was confronted with my weight loss graph. What I saw almost made me cry. In the 6 weeks I’ve officially been doing the 12WBT all I have lost is 2.7kg!

What the hell is going on with me that I have lost so much of my mojo? Two weeks ago I was at 100.7kg – I could almost taste the double digits, and then I went to Adelaide, gained 2kg and am having such a slow weight loss again. When I set my goals for this round in pre-season task 3 I had my one month goals set down to be at 98kg by the end of February. Here we are nearly at the end of March and I’m not even nearly there yet. So my overall goal of getting to 85kg by mid May when Round 1, 2012 12WBT is over, are nowhere near achievable. I think I’m going to be lucky if I even manage to get to 95kg at the rate I’m going and this saddens me.

I said that I wasn’t going to worry about what the scales said, so long as I was having consistent weight loss and that I was feeling better about myself. But I’m not really having consistent weight loss as you can see by the other graph below (which shows my overall weight loss over the last 12 weeks of this year vs. pre-season weight loss vs. official weight loss). I’m up one week, I’m down the next. The time that I was having good weight loss was before 12WBT officially started. Which is making me wonder what the hell is going on with me – am I sabotaging myself, am I just plain sucky, WTF is going on?

All I know is that I want to lose weight. I want to be slimmer and I want to be healthy. I admit I’m still struggling with the whole concept of exercise – I still just don’t like it, but I do it (grudgingly) but what is it going to take to just have those graphs go down, rather than up, down, up, up , down, up, down… you get the drift.

Okay, rant over. Here’s to a better day tomorrow!

Blogger Challenge Week 5: Health

Time for the 12WBT blogger challenge for this week. There was a wee little glitch last week, so you may notice that there is no week 4, but never fear, because week 5 is here. And the question I’m answering this week is:

So, what does being healthy mean to YOU? What is it that has made you start this journey into being a healthier you?

This is a very interesting question, and one that goes deep with me. For so many years I’ve struggled with my weight – actually, my entire life I’ve struggled with my weight, but it wasn’t until I hit my mid twenties that I ever really thought of my weight as a health issue and what I could be doing to my body. Actually, it wasn’t until my mum was diagnosed with diabetes that I ever really gave it much of a thought at all.

When my mum was diagnosed, I said to myself, that if I was ever diagnosed with diabetes, then obviously I’d do something about my weight, and get myself “healthy”, and that it would be the one thing that could really make me give up sugar. Isn’t it sad, that I had to get diagnosed with something as serious as diabetes for me to want to give up sugar and fatty foods! When I went to the doctor a few months later and was diagnosed with pre-diabetes, that should have got me going on my path to healthiness. And for a while it did. But then I got bored with eating salad and fell off the bandwagon. I had no idea what I was doing, I would follow the diets that the women’s magazines had in there each week and hope and pray that I would get skinny (which I equated with healthy). I didn’t of course. But then, neither did I ever stop to ask someone for some proper help and guidance. This abusive cycle continued on and on until I joined a gym 6 years ago and went on their 12 week weight loss and exercise plan.

Finally, I started learning what it meant to truly be healthy, how to lose weight, how to exercise to help me lose weight and help my heart out. And I did lose weight, and was really happy with myself. For some reason, that I’m still not quite sure about, I kind of stopped going to the gym, and I started gaining weight back. I only knew I was gaining weight because all the new clothes I had bought myself were getting too tight again. I had yet to invest in a set of scales (they were the enemy).

Fast forward to nearly two years ago now. We were invited to a wedding where Mick was to be best man, and I was going to be meeting a whole plethora of his friends I had never met before and I wanted to make a good impression. I want Mick to be proud to introduce me to his friends (which he would have been, no matter what – seriously, what was I thinking?). So I joined up on the 12WBT challenge. This is where health/exercise/weight all started to really make sense and sink into my thick head. I’m proud to say that (including a few weeks before officially joining 12WBT) over that time, I lost 16.5kg and I did make a good impression at the wedding and now that we live over here in Port Lincoln, some of those people at that very wedding are now my friends (though I know deep down – they would have accepted me even if I hadn’t lost 16kg, they’re just great [normal, un-judgemental] people).

Even though I managed to gain back 10 of those kilos since Round 2, 2010 ended, in the back of my mind I’ve always kept that “healthier” attitude. I let myself slip back into some bad eating and not weighing myself and I had a few personal issues that helped contribute to that “feed my face now” attitude. But always, I knew to make sure I was eating more veggies and fruit, eat less fatty foods and exercise. But ah, the exercise – we have a love hate relationship exercise and I. I love to hate it. Simple as that really. And since finishing up Round 2, 2010 I have barely exercised at all, even though I know it does my heart and body a great deal of good.

The reason for me joining up again, is because I want to get it into my thick head once and for all that being healthy, doesn’t necessarily mean being skinny. That I can still have a bit of flesh on me and be okay. But that eating wisely, and doing regular exercise are only ever going to be good for me, while at the same time, being able to recognise that occasionally enjoy a piece of cake with friends is okay too. But most importantly, I want to have a child. I love Miss Princess, but she’s not mine, she never will be mine and she will always have her mother no matter what and I missed out on the first 12 years of her life. I admit it, I selfishly want my own little piece of Mick – a Mini-Mick! But before I do have a baby, I want to be able to get my head screwed on properly in regards to the food and exercise issue, because more than anything, when I have a child, I want to be able to teach him/her about healthy eating and about having a healthy well balanced life. I never want a child of my own to have to make use of a 12 Week Body Transformation challenge. I don’t care if my child has a little extra “flub” one day, so long as they understand what’s happening to them, and know how to change it and fix the problem – or issue – before it becomes a problem. I want to end this cycle of bad food and no exercise that seems to run in my family once and for all.

Phew, that was a novel almost, but there you go – that is what being healthy means to me and that is why once again I am doing the 12WBT, and why I will in all probability continue to do 12WBT for the rest of this year at least.

Going AWOL again

I admit it, I’ve been slack lately, and that is in all areas of my life.

My exercising has been very slack, my eating has been – well, not the best, my blogging has been almost non-existent and my quilting has also suffered. I’m not sure really what’s been going on with me, but ever since I went to Adelaide and had my appointment with the specialist, that black hole has just been sitting there in the background wanting to swallow me up. I’ve found it so hard to get excited about anything, or to really care about anything.

I really want to get back into my healthy eating and exercising and get back on the weight loss track, but I’m really struggling and I don’t know how to get my mojo back. I’m trying though, I really am.

Mick and I went fishing yesterday and I counted that as my Super Sunday Session (SSS), and wore my HRM the whole time. Two hours, fifty six minutes and thirty three seconds of surf fishing later, I had managed to burn myself a nice hefty 1587 calories. Pretty proud of that. Not so proud of the fact that all I caught was one wee little mullet (which I had for dinner tonight, quite yummy he was…) and Mick only caught one little salmon. Depressing, I love catching the big fish, the ones that give me a challenge.

1,587 calories gone! Yeah baby!

Tonight I had another swimming lesson and I learnt how to do the butterfly, and really, it’s probably the funniest thing you would ever see watching me do that, so even if I myself am not laughing very much at the moment, I could at least make someone else laugh! But having gone fishing and having my lesson has made me realise, that I can’t wait for my mojo to come back to me, I have to go out there, find it and drag it out from under the rock that it’s gone and crawled under.

So on that note I’m going to leave you with a couple of pictures from yesterday, the first day I’ve been really happy in quite a while. I will get back to my happy place, I really will! Starting right now.

My catch from a great day fishing. (On a side note, I gotta say I'm actually liking this photo, because I can really see that I've lost weight. Finally, I can see it.)

Super buys from Adelaide

Weigh in day

Previous weight: 100.7kg.
Today’s weight: 102.7kg.
2kg gain! I was expecting this though after the weekend.

With winter fast approaching us (I know, I know, I can hear you all shouting now “We’re only just into Autumn” – but seriously I don’t think summer actually ever really made it here to Port Lincoln!) I have been thinking about what exercise I will be doing in the coming months. I would like to say that I will be super fantastic and get out there and go shuffling/jogging/running, but I’m not so sure I can say that in all honesty. I haven’t been out running for the last couple of weeks to be honest. The mornings are so dark and gloomy now, that the thought of going out there for a run at 6.30am is just off putting to say the least. In the back of my mind is that whole thought of falling over unseen rocks, or getting attacked by some weirdo along my lonesome path (why I think these things will only happen to me in the dark I cannot explain, but that’s how my mind works). So with these thoughts in mind I really had to start thinking about what I was going to do to make up for that lack of running. I have to admit, that I’m also not a huge fan of riding my bike in the wet weather either – and I hear vicious rumours that it can get quite wet over here in Lincoln in winter.

So I can hear you all shouting now “join a gym woman!” but I’ve been there, and done that, so many times actually. I like the idea of a gym, where they have all the pretty shiny machines to use. But they cost so much money, and there’s always the extra added factor of having to bypass home to go there and then drive home all smelly. My memberships just never end up getting used properly and to their full advantage so I’m spending money on nothing. I can find other ways of spending my money on nothing to be honest. Like buying quilting fabric and cutting it all up to make “stuff”.

Enter my trip to Adelaide and a visit to Anaconda on the weekend. It just so happens that they were having a big sale on while we were there and I managed to pick up to very nifty little(?) items that I believe are going to help me get my exercise groove thing happening over the coming dark, cold and gloomy months.

First up, let me introduce you to Frank – my new Fluid bike mount. Frank will be helping me by holding up Bert (the bike) and allowing me to daily pedal my way to nowhere, all in the comfort of my dining room (we are heathens at home and hardly ever use the dining table…) and in front of a TV. No getting all cold and wet outside and having to deal with cars driving past me really close and spraying up dirty gutter water on me as I ride my way around Port Lincoln. I am trying to source some DVDs at the moment that are spin class type programs, something that I can follow along to, just to help me vary my workouts on the bike. So far, I haven’t found anything. Might have to go to one or two spin classes at the gym just to see what they do.

Secondly, we have Trevor the timer. Trevor here will be measuring my distances travelled, my speed and the time it takes me to do my training, allowing me to better my times and work on improving my speed vs. distance.

I’m actually considering putting up the pedestal fan in front of the bike and turning it on full blast when I get on the bike to help simulate riding outside in the wind, but I think that might be overkill. So between Frank and Trevor, some exercise DVDs and actually getting outside and shuffling/jogging/running on days that aren’t too bad, I do believe I may have winter covered. I’ve really got no excuses now do I! I was wondering though, if any of you wonderful people out in the wide world have one of these bike trainers. How do you find them, do they work for you, and do you notice a difference when you take the bike off and go for an actual proper ride?

Adventures in Adelaide

Hi everyone, did you miss me? I missed you all that’s for sure.

Have had a really busy and jam packed four days over in Adelaide. Had a late getaway on Thursday night and didn’t get in to Adelaide until 2.30am on Friday, had a quick sleep then it was off to the specialist first thing on Friday morning. That was the general theme of the whole weekend. Lots of doing “stuff” and not a whole lot of sleep. I’m desperate for a good sleep-in – which I’m planning on getting this coming weekend.

Plans for the weekend went a little awry, I didn’t do Mt. Lofty due to unforseen circumstances, which was a little sad, but at the same time, there was a wee little part of me that breathed a huge sigh of relief. Having said that, I’m planning on going back to Adelaide again in 8 weeks or so – at the end of 12WBT and I will climb Mt Lofty then, so it’s not all over red rover yet. The fat lady (that would be me) hasn’t sung her last song yet!

What the fat lady has sung her last song on though is softball (insert big sad face here). I know that I’ve complained about softball on here before, and there was a certain love hate relationship I had going with the game, but at the end of the day, it was always my choice on whether or not I continued to play the game. But I had a specialist appointment on Friday for my wrist – our whole reason for going over to Adelaide in the first place – and the news I received wasn’t as good as I was hoping. So let me explain…

I was expecting to go in and have the specialist look at my wrist, do a few little exercises and have her tell me that things had improved and would continue to. Well that was what I was hoping – not necessarily what I was expecting. I walked into the appointment with Mick – I made sure he came with me so he could ask questions I would likely forget to ask – and then started the grilling. There was the whole back story on how I had broken my wrist, what things could I do, what things could I not do, how had these things changed over the last three years etc etc. Possibly one of the worst parts of my appointment was where the doctor asked me what I weighed. First thing that popped into my head was “thank god I’ve been doing 12wbt and lost about 10kg, otherwise I’d be even more embarrassed than I am now”, second thing that popped in was, “how do I get Mick out of the room before I answer this”?

Because in all the time that we’ve lived together Mick has never, ever known what I weigh. It’s always been my deep dark secret – that I share with everyone out there in the world via my blog, but have never actually told Mick. So I had to answer her, in front of Mick, and I wanted to die of shame. All the pride that I had in having lost 10kg went out the door, and in it’s place was the shame of having gotten so overweight that I had to tell the doctor in front of the man I love and adore that I weigh 100.7kg. You know what, Mick just held my hand and gave it a squeeze and smiled at me. I think I fell even more in love with him at that point.

Which brings me back around to what I was saying about softball. My wrist hasn’t gone so great over the last three years. I have to go back to Adelaide as soon as I can to get an MRI done, as they think there could be some separation of the bones and perhaps some ligament damage (I’m hoping not, but in another way, hoping there is so that there is some explanation for the masses of pain that I still get). The doctor asked if I did any exercise or played any sport (and I was quite happy when I could tell her all the exercise that I now do, as compared to last year when I was doing nothing) and told her that I was playing softball as well.

Who knew that softball was an impact sport? I didn’t. The doctor did. Which she then kindly informed me was now off limits. No more impact sports for me, because apparently, that doesn’t do the wrist any favours whatsoever. So no softball, no hockey like I was hoping to do, no cricket. The doctors suggestion? Golf. Seriously, she suggested I take up golf. What I didn’t tell her was that I’m planning on taking up mixed touch footy lol. I don’t think she would have really thought that was a good idea. I might have also forgotten to ask her if fishing for big salmon was still an okay thing to do. I can’t give up everything I love can I!

As for the rest of the weekend, well it was go, go, go. Appointment and catching up old friends on Friday, shopping for some great bargains on Saturday – picked up some goodies which I plan on sharing with you tomorrow – and more shopping and family dinner on Sunday night. Please though, don’t ask me about my eating over the weekend, it wasn’t great and there wasn’t any exercise to help combat all that food. Needless to say I’m not really looking forward to weigh in tomorrow. But at the end of the day, I had such a great weekend surrounded by family and friends (and my sisters new 12 week old Bernese Mountain Dog who I have fallen madly in love with!) so for me, any gain is okay because it was a gain of love (that’s how I’m spinning it to myself. Do you think Michelle Bridges would agree? I don’t think so…)