Musings – Currently Clueless

A loss… and a win (or two)

Posted on December 4, 2012Leave a comment

Tuesdays are supposed to be my super smash it day, the theory being that I get up first thing in the morning and go for a swim, do my 40 laps and then have a nice relaxing spa for ten minutes before heading home to start the day, whereupon I finish work and head back to the pool to do an aquaerobics class. That’s the theory anyway. The reality was that I spent way too long watching tv last night and ended up turning my alarm off this morning and sleeping. It was bad and it was the wrong thing to do, but I know my body well enough by now to know that if I had gotten up, by 2pm today I’d have been a walking zombie (note to self, get some more iron tablets from the chemist…) So I felt quite guilty this morning when I finally got up and Mick asked me what happened to my early morning session. I think the look I gave him was enough for him to know that this was NOT a conversation to have with me first thing without any coffee (bless him, he really is so patient and tolerant with me). So that was my loss.

But – and yes, there’s a but – I had a win. Actually I had two wins. One a physical win, and two more mental.

First off, I did actually make it to aquaerobics tonight. Got home from work and put up our new Christmas tree (not a lot involved really, it’s just a wooden one, that really doesn’t require decorations – I’m going for minimalistic this year) and pottered around and contemplated – I hate to admit it, I really did contemplate it – calling my mate and telling her that I couldn’t make it to aquaerobics. But that’s giving in and I can’t continue to do that or I’m never going to get where I want to go (and I’m still trying to decide exactly where I want to go) so I struggled through the laziness and went off to do the class. And I’m so glad that I did. It was just fantastic. I could really feel it in my core and I think I’m going to continue to feel it tomorrow. I feel so refreshed and pumped now, that I’m really sad that I didn’t go swimming this morning. But it’s okay, there’s always tomorrow and every day after that.

Second little win was a thought that I had on the way home from work. Normally, when I get home from work, I scoff down food. Sometimes it’s healthy, most times it’s not. I have no idea why I thought of it as I was driving home, but I suddenly realised that A) I only eat when I get home because it’s habit, not because I’m actually hungry and B) I haven’t done that since I started 12WBT and OMG I’m still alive and haven’t starved to death… Hmmmm. So that just made me happy, because I realise that I can come home and just do things, without having to shove food in my face and that habits can be broken. Not that I think this habit is broken yet, but it’s a work in progress.

Third little win, was again a mental thing, and actually happened last night. I was watching TV last night (the reason that I was up so late and missed swimming this morning, so maybe this isn’t a win after all…. Might call it a draw) in particular the documentary “Fat, sick and nearly dead”, about Joe Cross who started drinking fresh juice every day for two months. Not just drinking a little juice, but only juice. He stopped eating and just drank. He convinced another few people to do the same and the whole time I was watching it, I was thinking “Wow, what an easy way to lose weight” (okay, now that I’m not half asleep, rationally, I know that wouldn’t be easy, would require a lot of willpower – we know I don’t have much of that, read above to see my exercising willpower *sigh*) at the time, I really thought that would be great. I watched him lose so much weight in two months and kept thinking to myself. Two months, that’s eight weeks, that’s two weeks less than the end time of this round of 12WBT. I could totally almost get to my goal weight in that time just by drinking juice! I almost convinced myself that I should do it. But then I mentally slapped myself. What the hell was I thinking? Why would anyone in their right mind (and I’m really sorry if you’re a fan of Joe Cross – if you are, maybe stop reading now…) why would anyone who is mildly sane, willingly cut out every other food group except for fruit and veggies to lose weight? That’s all he was doing to start with, drinking juice. Not exercising, not actually cooking food up, cutting it up, chewing it and swallowing it. Just drinking. WHY? Personally, I think he took the cheat’s, easy way out (and again, I know it wouldn’t be easy…) And that’s where I’m counting my last win. For brief moments, I seriously considered cutting out my eating and just drinking juice for a couple months. But I’m so glad to say that I thought better of it. I love that on this program I don’t have to give up any food group. That I can learn about healthy eating, that I can still enjoy the occasional piece of chocolate if I so wish to. That I am learning about exercising and creating a healthy balanced life. So to Michelle Bridges, I say Thank you. Thank you for not getting me to only drink juice (and it really was vile looking juice too!)

Now here’s hoping that tomorrow morning I get my lazy butt out of bed at 6am and do some exercise.

Contemplations

Posted on March 2, 20121 Comment

I’ve had a little time to contemplate my life, the universe and the meaning of live over the last couple of days. Okay so I might not have done much contemplating of the universe or working out what the meaning of life is, but I did get to thinking about my life and 12WBT and weight loss in general.

I was talking to one of my dearest friends on the phone the other day (who I haven’t seen for six whole long months now since we moved) and she asked how I was going with 12WBT and weight loss in general and in particular how was I going with my exercising.

Mrs N knows me too well. She knows all my deep dark secrets (there really aren’t that many), but in particular she knows about my loathing of exercise. I told her how I’d started attempting to run. Mrs N knows how much I want to be able to do this, we’ve attempted C25K a couple times, she’s held my hand as I thought I was having an asthma attack and couldn’t breathe – turned out I was just short of breath and had a panic attack about it – and she’s always been supportive of me trying.

I told her about my little “trip” on the Parnkalla trail, but that I’d gotten back out there and was still attempting my shuffling. Then she asked me, quite seriously, but are you still exercising in general? Really? Who are you exercising with?

I told her I was. I told her I was hating it, but I was still exercising and I was exercising alone. I told her how I had my exercise DVDs I was doing, my shuffling, and swimming twice a week with Miss A. But in general that I was exercising alone.

Mrs N was shocked. Totally shocked. Because as she explained to me, usually I always rely on someone else to keep me exercising, and I allow myself to be swayed and talked out of exercising if something better comes up (and okay, to a certain extent that’s still true – but come on, I hate exercising!). She couldn’t quite believe that I was actually the one keeping myself motivated and was regularly exercising.

Then she hit me with a line which I’ve been dwelling over the last few days. But how are you going this week? Because it’s usually around this time Tina, after about 8 or 9 weeks that you start getting bored, and you start to let yourself drop off.

You know what? Mrs N is totally right. The last week or two I have been struggling – this week because I’ve been sick – but in general, the exercising has been harder than normal. Eating right has been harder than normal. I started going over some of my journals from when I first did 12WBT and again last year, and I did it both times. At around this point on my journey it’s like I start to sabotage myself. I know we’re only in week three (going into week four), but I’ve been doing this since the beginning of the year, so for me, it really is week eight (or nine, I’m losing count) and I feel as if I’m doing it again.

My exercising has been slacker than it has all year and while I haven’t actually gone to McDonalds and bought myself the cheeseburger I’ve been craving all year, I have been making some bad snacking choices. I’m always right up there in my calorie intake and I’ve found myself going over a few times. I’m not sure why I do this to myself. I want to do well, and I want to reach my goals, so why don’t I do as much as I can to help myself get there. How do I shift my brain back into gear and be as happy as I was at the beginning of the year when I first started? And seriously, when is that love of exercising going to hit me, I’m waiting for it, but I’m getting impatient now.

I don’t have answers to my own questions, and being the obsesser that I am, I will probably continue to wonder about this. But hopefully, I can trick my brain into thinking that I’m still super happy and excited about not eating cheeseburgers and that really I love to exercise. Enough, so that I won’t crave the cheeseburger and I really will start to love exercising.

Okay everyone, question time. How the hell do I trick my brain into believing these things?

Uneventful isn’t a bad thing

Posted on January 20, 2012Leave a comment

Today’s daily food intake…

Had quite the uneventful day today. Nothing exciting, nothing earth shattering, nothing at all really.

Which isn’t to say that’s a bad thing. Sometimes uneventful, plain days are a good thing. No stress, no crap, just a good old fashioned take it easy kind of day.

so that was today. Went to work, sat at my desk, fought with getting our company website (which I’m currently re-developing) to work with IE6 (not all that successfully actually), went home, got our meal plan ready for next week and did food shopping.

But the one thing that I did learn about myself today is a bad habit that I had no idea I have. When I build websites I go into a little world of my own. I will sit and obsessively code away for hours, working on one problem – again obsessively – until it’s fixed. When I’m in that little world at home I quite often forget about food, I’ve been known to go all day without eating when I’m doing things like this. But at work, it’s a different story. I’ve always had snackies at work. Maybe lollies, or chips, or nuts – something. And I still haven’t cleaned that draw at work out, so at the moment there is a little snack-pot of nuts in my draw.

As I sat down this morning and opened up my programs and started working on the website, I almost instinctively reached into the draw to grab out the snack-pot, so that I could nibble on the things in there as I worked. Thankfully I stopped myself in time, because that’s a high calorie snack-pot I have sitting there. It made me stop though, and that was when I realised that it’s a habit of mine. Not a habit at home, but it’s a habit at work, which I’m going to put down to the fact that when I was living in Adelaide my jobs were, shall we say, on the stressful side – and to combat this I would eat. And eat a lot. I don’t have that same problem here, my job here is great, I love the work and I have the freedom to work at my own pace without someone breathing down my neck, but apparently, I brought my bad Adelaide habits with me.

So the snack-pot is gone. Now I just have to start trying to remember that it’s not the thing to snack while I’m working.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a list of excuses that I need to work out and write down. I hate this pre-season task, but love it at the same time, because it really makes me think.

Started with a loss, ended with an aha moment

Posted on January 11, 2012Leave a comment

Today’s daily food intake…

Weigh in day
Previous weight: 111.1kg.
Today’s weight: 109.1kg.
2.0kg loss

I’ve learned a few of things today.

The first is that even though you might be hungry at breakfast time, don’t go overboard. Perhaps the cheese and Vegemite and butter was overdoing it. A little.

The second is that I need to learn to eat slower. I noticed while I was eating my lunch that I was eating as if there were a hundred hungry people behind me just waiting for me to put my fork down so they could grab it out of my hands and finish my lunch off. I don’t know why I eat so fast, but if I ate slower, I think I may actually eat less, because I’d give my body a chance to actually realise it’s full, before it gets over-full.

The third is that I can’t rely on Softball training on Wednesday afternoons to give me any kind of a work-out. Especially when only four people turn up and you don’t actually get to train. There is another day of exercise wasted – v. unimpressed about this too. I was planning on giving myself one day of rest over the weekend, but now I will have to make up the time that I missed out on today.

Last, but not least. When we go out for dinner I need to make smarter choices. Either that, or not go to pubs for dinner.

Tomorrow is going to be a very clean eating day for me I think. Might try and stay off the carbs (after breakfast, I need my carbs at breakfast), and stick to some lean protein and veg. Lot less calories tomorrow is a must.

Oh and one more thing that I just thought of – just because it’s weigh day and I lost weight, does not mean I should reward myself with food. (Let’s revisit that cheese and Vegemite thing…)

Yesterday bad – today better

Posted on January 11, 2012Leave a comment

Yesterday wasn’t one of my best days. To an outsider it would have been like any normal day – I looked the same, I acted the same, hell I even smelt the same. But on the inside I was just a jumble.

I’ve been working on rebuilding one of our websites at work and it’s been going good, but yesterday it seemed like it was one hurdle after another with this stupid site. In particular yesterday, I was working on the menu structure and a search function and for the life of me, I couldn’t get either of them working. What is normally something so simple for me turned into what felt like a complete waste of a day’s work. It was just doing my head in. Combine that with some extreme tiredness and it just put me right on edge all day. By lunch time I had finally gotten my menu sorted and working, but the search function – well that’s still an issue today, but today it doesn’t seem like the end of the world. To top it off, I got called into a meeting – that was already half finished – and told that I was being given extra duties – completely different to my current job role. Duties, I’m not so sure I want, because it means being taken away from the web and design end on a more regular basis, leaving me only a little time to get all of that seen to (the part of my job I really love). At the moment, being new and on probation until February, I’m only employed on a casual basis, and now I’m not sure what I want. I have conundrums. And I don’t do well with conundrums.

Then, to really make the day complete and utter crap, I was hungry. Not just “hmm I feel like a nibble” kind of hungry, but that “if I don’t eat now, I’m going to murder someone” hungry. That kind of hungry that just comes from deep down within. Which is stupid, because I’d eaten well the day before, I’d had normal breakfast and was filling myself up with water. I’m going to put it down to me being stressed at work. When I’m stressed, I usually eat. Except now that I’m really trying to count my calories and take a bit more notice of the food I put in my mouth, I can’t just eat whatever is in sight (which isn’t actually very much, because I don’t keep food at work – just in case). I still managed to keep to my 1200 calorie intake, but God it was hard. I just didn’t need things to be hard yesterday.

Last, but by no means least, I feel like I wasted my exercise opportunities yesterday. I walked to the pool after work to have my first buddy exercise time with Miss A and it was just great to catch up with her again, and have someone to physically “talk” to about 12WBT and how I was feeling – not that talking to everyone on here isn’t great, but you know, sometimes it’s nice to have that face to face contact thing happening – that when we were at the pool, there wasn’t a whole lot of swimming actually going on. I think all up I managed to do about 300 metres, which is crap, when you think about the fact that I normally do 1km when I’m there. So on the one hand it was great to catch up, but on the other hand I did crap exercise. But we have plans to do the swimming thing on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so tomorrow I’m just going to DO IT! There will be no chatting – well okay, lots of chatting before and after – but maximum exercise. I have to do this otherwise where am I going to be when 12WBT is over? With another wasted couple hundred dollars and weighing even more?

So that folks, is why I didn’t post last night. I knew what I wanted to say, but I just didn’t know how to put it all into words and there was that overwhelming tiredness that was creeping up on me. An early night, and back at work and suddenly things are looking better and brighter again. Today I can look at my work and realise that while my search function might not be working right now, if I leave it for a while and stop obsessing over it I will sort it out. I might not want the extra duties, but it’s a new challenge for me, and if I don’t like it, I can always look for another job. The hunger? Well that’s still here, but it’s not going to make me fall into a dribbling mess today.

And woohoo – weigh day today and I am happy to report that all my good eating and (excessive for me) exercise has paid off in the form of a 2kg loss. That certainly made the day a little brighter.

Another round of 12WBT

Posted on January 3, 20121 Comment

Last year I flirted with the 12WBT challenge (12 Week Body Transformation Program), joining up for Round 1. I made it through pre-season and I made it into the first week or two and then I let everything slide. I can’t really explain why I let it slide, except to say that I was in a very bad headspace for a lot of last year, with everything starting right around the time of my birthday and the official beginning of Round 1. Yes, these are excuses I know this, but I also think it’s a little bit of explanation thrown in. I knew, as I was wolfing down cake and making calorie rich spaghetti sauces what I was doing to my body, just as I knew that every moment I sat down watching TV instead of exercising that I was ruining all the work I had done the previous year and that this was all bad news for me. But I just couldn’t seem to stop myself.

I remember from doing the pre-season training about having to sit down and write out how we would combat our inner demons and our list of excuses, but a problem for me is that I don’t make excuses. I totally block out the noises and voices in my head that say – eat healthy, exercise more. I don’t even reach the stage of making an excuse not to exercise, which is where I find my downfall really begins.

But that was last year. 2012 is going to be a better year. I can feel it in my bones. I’ve not felt quite so happy being in my own skin and body for such a long time, not to the point where I’m happy with my weight – I’m really not at all – but I just finally feel as if I’ve pushed that black cloud far away from me and I’m letting the sun back in. A lot of this has to do with moving away from Adelaide, moving to a gorgeous town, with the man I love and starting a whole new life away from all the bullshit that I seemed to find myself in back in Adelaide. I feel calm, content and just happy. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve just felt happy.

So yesterday I started my pre, pre-season training for Round 1 of 12WBT. Officially pre-season doesn’t start for another two weeks (so if you’re at all interested in doing the challenge, then you still have time to sign up. Don’t look at my failures and think it’s crap, it really is a fantastic program that works!), but I’m raring to go, I’m in the right headspace so I have to start now and get myself rolling and set myself up for a great year ahead.

So far, I’m doing great – two days in and I’m eating well, and at least thinking about exercise, even if I’m not actually doing it. I’ve set up my spreadsheets and set up another blog where I will be recording all my monthly measurements, as well as my daily food intake and exercise. I don’t really want to clutter this blog up with all of that, but I will be linking daily to my intakes so that when I look back at the end of the year I can see where I did well, and where I fell off. Because I have no doubt that I’m going to fall off once or twice, but that’s life and there will be lessons learned from that.

So on the issue of exercise – what can you suggest to get me out there and doing some. I’m going to be totally honest here with you all. I hate exercise. I have tried to love it, but I just don’t. I hate getting hot and sweaty and in pain from my muscles all screaming out at me, and knowing this puts me off doing anything. I know I need to exercise, but I just can never seem to push myself to do it. So what gets you motivated and raring to go? What do you find are the forms of exercise that make you sweat the least lol.

W1-D1 – Daily food intake
W1-D2 – Daily food intake

And just to completely seal my fate I offer you my first set of monthly measurements. Oh god, they are so very not pretty, but lets see what they look like at the end of Round 1.

Date	Weight	Chest	Waist	Hips	Thighs		Arms		Total lost
					Left	Right	Left	Right
02/01/2012	110.0kg	109cm	110cm	133cm	72cm	73cm	45cm	47cm	–

Resolutions and To Do list

Posted on January 5, 20111 Comment

So today I finally sat down and wrote up my list of resolutions for this year. I had 10 resolutions and then I thought of one more, so I thought why not – it’s 2011, let’s have 11 resolutions and see if I can actually keep them up. Every year I vaguely think of things that I am resolved to do, but I never really write them down or even try to stick to them, but this year I thought why not. Then I thought of the things I would like to do – craft-wise, so I made a list of 11 crafty things to do/finish. So here we go – my Resolutions and To Do list for 2011.

Resolutions:

Tell Mick that I love him more often.
It’s not that I never tell him, but I don’t tell him often enough. I think it many many times every day, just how much I love him and how I cannot imagine him not being in my life, but I never seem to tell him. I want to change that. I want him and everyone to know just how important he is to me.
Learn to say no.
I’m a yes person. Most of the time I like being a yes person. But occassionally, saying yes to people means that I’m putting off things that I would like/need to do for myself. But I don’t like to disappoint people, so I always end up saying yes, even though I know I’m not happy about it. So this year, I’m learning to say no and be fine and happy with that. It doesn’t mean I love my friends any less, it’s just that I want to put Mick, Snotface and myself first this year. 2011 is the year of ‘us’.
Get back onto the 12wbt program.
I fell off the wagon over the last couple of months. I was doing so well, and then it ended and I lost my own motivation, the wedding came and went, I had my pretty dress for it and I seemed to think it was okay to start eating crap again and not going to the gym. Well it’s not okay. I still have a lot of weight to lose (a lot), so I really need to go back and read over my pre-season tasks and remind myself of why I am doing this, what excuses I use and how I am going to curb my excuses. I have done it before, I know I can do it again. I would love to be at my goal weight by the end of this year, but no stress, so long as I am losing weight and not gaining, that’s the main thing.
Go to the gym at least four times a week – all year.
I’m paying for a membership I’m not using, such a waste. And truthfully, I do miss the gym. I miss that rush I get when I accomplish something new, the feeling of power I get when I do my weights. I really miss that feeling of fitness that I was getting, and which I have now lost. So, time to get my butt back into it.
Spend less money on stupid things.
I’m terrible at saving, I admit it. I also tend to spend money on stupid wasteful things. So this year, I’m going to watch what I spend, how I spend and stop myself from spending on stupid dumb things, like magazines I buy, maybe read, and then pile up before throwing them out.
Not let my family walk all over me.
2010 was a year of a lot of ups and downs for me with my family. In fact the last 34 years have been ups and downs with my family. And I always let it get to me, I go and see my family and I end up coming home in tears. I’m not going to allow them to do that to me this year. I have the right to be happy. I have the right not to be used. So from now on, if my family want to see me, then they can come and see me. I’m not going traipsing all over the countryside to see them, when they can’t even be bothered to come and visit me. If they don’t approve of the way I live my life? So what, maybe I don’t approve of their life. Not my business, not their business. It’s an even playing field this year people. Times are a’changing. (I do fear that this will be the hardest resolution for me to keep, because it’s so ingrained in me to try and please them, not matter how many times they hurt me. But I’m prepared to be strong and cut people from my life who are toxic this year – and this goes for friendships also, not just family. No more toxicity in my life!)
Have fun and be more spontaneous.
I’m not a very brave person. I don’t do things spontaneously. But this year I would really like to try to be a little more spontaneous and try new things. I would love to go hiking with Mick, and do more outdoorsy things, on the spur of the moment, not when they’ve been organised down to a minute detail. Gonna be a hard one also.
Stress less over the stupid things. Chill out.
Mick quite often jokes at how anal I can be. But it’s true. I can and quite often am very anal about things. I like to have everything organised down to a tea, and I stress if things aren’t going just so. I get cranky if Mick leaves the cloth lying in the kitchen sink, so it gets all smelly. This year – no stressing about stupid things like that. Instead I’ll just crack him over the head…….. Okay I’m joking I won’t. But it’s not really worth starting an argument over is it. So, less stressing and less being so anal about things (except the order of the CDs and DVDs – they must stay in order…)
Keep the house more organised.
Okay I know I just said I was going to stress less. But the house really needs to be de-cluttered and organised better so I know where things are. My kitchen is the only place in the house that is completely organised. I have coniptions if something is out of place in my kitchen, but with the rest of the house there is a whole ‘it’s too hard’ feeling happening. But this year is the year of de-cluttering and organisation. Starting with some new filing cabinets and the filing of paperwork, and gradually moving to the rest of the house. It might even mean the getting rid of some of my books *gasp* *horror*.
Stop having road rage.
Yes this will be a hard one for me. I struggle with stupidity on the roads. I think I’m a fairly safe driver, but small things really annoy the crap out of me, like people not using their indicators, and people just cutting in front of others, and when people just can’t be bothered to give a little wave when you let them in front of you…. So from now on it’s all Wooshka, peace and Enya on the iPod so I don’t get all hot and bothered when I’m driving around.
Be a better friend.
I feel as if I’ve been so caught up in all my own problems and dramas of the last few years that I’ve let friendships slip a little. So this year I’d like to work on being a better friend. Not sure what this one is going to entail yet, I’m still working on it.

Phew, long list for me. But all important things for me to be doing for 2011 and beyond. So onto my crafty to do list:

2011 to do list:

Finish off my ‘Welcome’ lady cross stitch.
I love the idea of cross stitch – but I don’t really have the patience for it. But this year I really would like to finish off the cross-stitch I started about 10 years ago and have done maybe 10% of. If that. Big project, not entirely sure it’s doable…
Finish the scrappy quilt for our bed.
2 years ago I started a scrappy quilt for our bed. I cut out 320 squares of patterened fabric, 320 squares of cotton wadding, 320 squares of wool wadding and about 100 squares of backing fabric. I have sewn up about 16 squares in total. So. Bloody. Slack. I thought it would be a great way to get into quilting, but it turns out it’s not really the sort of quilting that I like. But I’ve got these squares cut out now, so damnit I. Will. Finish. The. Quilt! And it will be finished in time for winter. Now, to get the rest of the backing squares cut out…
Finsh rain or shine quilt.
This won’t be hard, I love this pattern and it’s all cut up, just needs to be sewn up now. It’s a case of finding the time for it.
Make a new quilt for baby G, who will be arriving in September (not our baby btw).
This is still up in the air a little. Not sure if it’s a boy, girl or twins yet, but either way a quilt is in order.
Make a caravaning quilt for Mum2 (Mick’s mum, as I call her).
I’ve seen some gorgeous fabric (the Beach Mod Circa 60 fabric) which is going to be absolutely perfect for her as they go caravaning and camping every year for about 6 months, so a quilt for her birthday in May is in order methinks.
Cut out a minimum of 365 hexies – one for each day of the year.
I’m off to a good start cutting out 31 of them yesterday (there’s January’s lot lol). I want to get as many of them cut out as I can, but I won’t sew them together until I have enough for a quilt, so that I can put them in some sort of order, rather than just a random pattern.
‘Make it’, Stitch me Rabbit.
I bought this pattern a few months ago now and it’s still sitting at home waiting to be cut into and made up. I just love the wrongness of this rabbit, so I can’t wait to have it sitting on my bed all finished.
Finish the quilt I designed.
Yes it’s true. This pattern that I designed back in October still hasn’t been completed. In fact I haven’t even completed the test one that I was making to see how it all went together. So rather than making the test one, I’m just going bite the bullet, get some fabric and hope for the best. But I just need to make it. (Maybe I should combine this to do list item, with item 5?).
Read all the books on the Facebook Booklist Challenge.
So I, with a friend, took the quiz to see how many books we had read. Turns out I’ve read about 29 of them. So I randomly said, ‘wouldn’t it be a great idea to make it a challenge to read them all in 2011?’ Famous last words. So I sucked myself into it, so that’s what I need to do. I have most of the books now in one form or another (mostly ebooks – time for an ebook reader maybe?) it’s just a case of reading them now. I’m not looking forward to War and Peace or Anna Karenina, but there you have it. I’m not including the 29 of them that I have already read, but if I have time then they will be added to the list also.
13 Scrapbooking pages – one per month, plus a full year page.
I would really like to create a visual diary of sorts of the year, with one page dedicated to a month, and one page dedicated to highlights of the year. I’m pretty slack with scrapbooking, I have lots of gear, but never seem to do much with it, but it’s time to pull the gear out and start cutting up those photos.
Finish Wintermeadow and plan the sequel.
So I haven’t touched Wintermeadow (previously titled ‘The Adventures of Snotface, Boogerbum and Soggy Scab’) since NaNoWriMo ended in November. While I got to my 50,000 word count, I never actually wrote the ending of it. So this year is all about finishing Wintermeadow off, editing it and getting a couple of copies printed up. And because I had such a (~~stressful~~) ball doing NaNoWriMo last year, I really want to do it again, and do a sequel to Wintermeadow, because quite frankly, I fell in love with the characters and story and want to go back there.

Phew. I have to say, I’m tired just reading my resolutions and my To Do list. I’m also starting to wonder exactly where I’m going to find the time to do all of this stuff, in between working and going to the gym. Hmmm I think there will definitely need to be a bit more planning happening to get all of this off the ground.

So, what resolutions have you all made for 2011 if any? And what does your To Do list look like for the year? Any thoughts on how I can get all of this scheduled in and finished in only 360 days now? *eek*

My 12WBT extraordinary story

Posted on July 28, 2010Leave a comment

Well our weekly surprise challenge this week was to do either a video blog or a post explaining why we are extraordinary. I’ve never really thought of myself as extraordinary before, quite the opposite in fact, but I tried to put some coherent thoughts together and wrote it all down, when I thought hmmm why not try a video blog, I mean I write on here all the time, let’s do something new. So voila – here we have it, my first ever video post, explaining why I am extraordinary. It’s a bit of a shocker. It’s just me. I was going to do a whole practice run first, and then go and do my hair, put on some makeup and gussy myself up, but I thought that was a bit silly – I mean, this is me, this is what people see every day, so why pretend to be something else? Oh and there is also a guest appearance by our cat Maximus Catticus. He’s just got to be in the action. Seriously dude!

My 12WBT extraordinary story. from Tina K on Vimeo.

So this is what makes me extraordinary.

12WBT days twenty five to twenty eight – Feeling like a failure

Posted on July 19, 2010Leave a comment

I have so many mixed emotions going on in my head right now I don’t know if I’m coming or going. I haven’t blogged for the last few days, because there wasn’t any point. I wasn’t going to be able to write how I had gotten in some great exercise, or how I had eaten fantastically. All I would have been able to say was that I was eating – crap food – but eating. Thrown in among it would be a bit of good food, and of course the thought that I should be eating this good food all the time. But even knowing that I should be eating healthier, and knowing that I can do it, that I have been doing it, the past week has just been hard and I admit that I have caved. Oh and let me not forget the no exercise bit. I didn’t do my mini milestone, and I haven’t done my fitness test. Those two things I can honestly put down to being sick, but it still doesn’t make me feel good that I’ve missed them.

I could make a lot of excuses, like how we have hardly been home, but out and about, coming and going at odd hours of the day. I could even use the excuse of how I have a raging cold, that is quickly turning into the flu, but the truth is, I was weak and I should have prepared better and not let the temptation get to me.

So that has brought back all my feelings of self doubt, feelings of failure, which is starting to affect me in my day to day life. I woke up this morning to go back to work for my first day after taking last week off, having the worst case of the flu. I have issues with my car not unlocking first thing in the morning, and of course, today was no different. I went outside to get in the car, and the doors wouldn’t open. I broke down. Just completely lost it. Sat there bawling my eyes out. So now I’m just trying to work out if my eating and lack of exercise is connected to these extreme emotions that I seem to be going through, or just because I’m sick.

I have decided though that I am going to use this last week as an example of how easy it is to get lulled into a false sense of security. That yes, there are going to be times in my life when I’m not going to be home to make dinner and get my proper food organised, but I’m going to have to make sure that I still try to make the correct choices wherever I am. It has also made me realise just how on the ball I’m going to have to be for the rest of my life. There aren’t any easy roads where I can sit down, munch on a bag of chips and not have it affect me in some way. Pity it’s taken a bad couple of weeks into such a great program for me to realise that huh?

So haven’t had dinner yet, and to be honest, not really sure that I will tonight. Not so hungry with all the mucus I have sitting in my head right now, but I shall put my daily stats up a little later.

A bit disillusioned

Posted on July 8, 20103 Comments

When I joined the 12WBT challenge I was full of excitement and joy. Excitement that I was finally doing something about my weight issues, and doing it correctly for once and joy, because I knew that if I followed the program I could see a light peeking out behind all the fat. Please don’t get me wrong, that excitement and joy is still there. But it is now tainted with just a little disillusionment.

The forums were a huge part of why I joined. I loved that there were so many other people out there like me, people that could share in my journey, as I could share in theirs. This was a place that I could open up and be honest (apart from on here), where I could ask questions and have answers and I could be free to be my fat, losing weight self.

I’m very sad to say that the forums for me now, just aren’t the same. There have been posts on there, that start with “Apologies in advance if I offend anyone but….” And surely you know, that if you have to start a post with something like that, then it is going to offend at least one person, and in an open place like these forums, why post it. To then have pointed digs at certain other members, was I think a little below the line. I myself got greatly offended by this post, even though I know that it wasn’t directed at me, but it made me realise, that it’s just not safe to be able to go in and say “I stuffed up” without it eventually getting thrown back in your face, and this isn’t what we need when we are on this ~~journey of hell~~ journey of healthy eating. Now there are posts in there about forum etiquette and making sure you don’t post things twice. All I want to say is “Lighten up people” It’s a forum, if you think you’ve read it before, just don’t go in and read it again. Not everyone has all day to sit there and sift through all the posts, not everyone is completely computer savvy and knows about correct searching techniques. Lighten up and let people be people. Would you say to someone’s face, “Don’t ask me that question, I’ve already been asked it” if it happened in real life?

I personally feel that I just can’t be bothered with the forums anymore, which is very sad, because I did feel I was getting something out of it. And there is still a lot of positivity about in there, amongst the crap. But I find that my own temper is getting shorter and shorter when I read posts that just denigrate others, and as those that know me in real life know, when my temper gets short, my mouth tends to run away with me. In this case it will be my fingers typing furiously away and I can tell you, I won’t hit Delete Post afterwards.

This hasn’t changed my desire for following the program. I will be following it wholeheartedly just as I have been doing, but I think it will free some more time up for me to go and do something off the computer now. It really just makes me rather sad, and makes me feel like I have lost a friend. (Or a lot of them).