Super Saturday Session

... and I think I have burst a foofer valve!   OMG my knees are aching, my thighs are too, so are my arms, so much so that the thought of lifting a knitting needle whilst sitting by the fire tonight was just way too much exertion!

I met up with some of the girls from the Warrnambool & Surrounds 12wbt group where Jane had organised a PT group session.   It had been raining, the ground was wet, but it didn't stop us, we got towels from our cars and laid them down, and then we were into it ... push ups, sit ups, pull ups, step ups (notice how everything goes up?), skipping, lunges, squats and the dreaded burpees.  Lets just say my style with the burpees leaves a lot to be desired, but at least I gave the girls a giggle, when I jumped up with my arms wide open it looked like I was greeting the world each time! ha.

Here's a photo of us after the gruelling session, and we still had smiles on our faces.  To be honest the aches and pains didn't take affect until this afternoon.  Ouch!

That's me on the left.   And not long after we had finished this session, got in our cars and drove away home, did the rain absolutely pour down, which you can see was coming by that dark cloud behind us!  So the exercise session was timed perfectly.

Tick tick tick

And you may have noticed my ticker ticking along nicely after the last Wednesday weigh in.  I lost another 1.2kg.

So that is now a loss of 6.1 kg officially since 12wbt season began.

But a whopping 10.4 kg since I signed up at the beginning of May and began the 4 weeks pre-season. 

Being that we are now at the four week mark, we needed to load up our new statistics of our fitness test to compare it to the beginning of the round by 6pm tonight.   Every day this week I kept thinking I would get home early so I could do my 1km run and time myself, and every day I got home in the dark.  So probably not the most ingenius thing to do, but I finished the 1 hour training session this morning, popped over to Lava Street Cafe for a coffee and and bite of breakfast (herbed eggs in a tortilla), down to the supermarket to grab some much needed items for my cook up tomorrow, and then home ... to do my 1km time trial.

I smashed it ... by 1 second!   Oh the shame!   

At the beginning of the round I ran my 1km in 8 minutes 24 seconds.   Today I ran it in 8 minutes 23 seconds.  See what I mean about not the most ingenius thing in the world to attempt that after the morning I'd had.  Oh well.  I can only keep building on it, right?

Now I am going to take these old aching bones and head off to bed.  All this exercise is exhausting!

Food Glorious Food

Life as a fat person revolves around food, that's just pure and simple, or at least in my case it did.  I would console myself with food, I would reward myself with food, I would celebrate with food, I would commisserate with food, I would drown my sorrows in food, I would binge on food.  Basically I was eating as if all the food in the world would disappear tomorrow.  Now don't have a visual that I would be gorging at the fridge, not at all, but if there was a block of chocolate to be had, it wouldn't be left half eaten.  Enough said.

I'm really enjoying all the new meals I've been making on 12wbt.  The recipes are great.  I'm not following the food plan religiously, but I am trying to stick to 1200 calories a day, so have been mixing and matching a bit.  

And I love to photograph anything and everything, so my food has been no exception.   

Mike has been loving all these new meals I've been making.  I'm just giving him extra's with it, like I made him garlic bread to go with the spag bol, he has toast with the soups, he got cheese and a bun top with the burger, so he's happy.

Favourite so far would be Alison's Penang Chicken.  I have no idea who Alison is, but God Bless her !!!   And the banana bread has been a fabulous quick breakfast for me, it's so yummy.   So thumbs up for the food on 12wbt, it's certainly not all lettuce leaves and carrot sticks, for sure.

Wednesday Weigh In and 2 Achievements

Boy, Wednesdays rock around quick when you're on this program.  Ahh heck, who am I kidding, the whole year is flashing by.   But today is Wednesday and I jumped out of bed, went for a wee, nuded up and hopped on the scales.   I swear the cat has it in for me, she kept bumping round my feet and at one stage tried to stand on the scales too, I don't need that added weight thank you cat!

And yahooooooooooooo, a loss of 1.7 this week.  Even after all the trials and tribulations of the girls night out.  I ramped up the exercise and ate extra well from Sunday onwards.

So that is a loss of 4.9 kg officially since 12wbt season began.

But a whopping 9.2 kg since I signed up and began the 4 weeks pre-season. 

Holy heck!  One of the girls I work with told me today she could notice in my face that I was losing weight.  Err that may have been her polite way of saying I still had a big stomach!  But I accepted the compliment, something I'm not really good at, but am working on.   

So, not one but two achievements to report on

The first big achievement I have accomplished since starting 12wbt, is that I have finally ... read FINALLY ... been brave enough to tell my hubby how much I weigh.  Now I don't know if you realise just how huge this is.  He's quite up front and open about his weight, but when you weigh 75kg what's not to be up front about.  Hey, I'd be shouting to the world if I were that.  

But it was hard.  I have never told him before.   But something I knew I wanted to do now.  And you know what, the sky didn't fall in, lightening didn't strike, the earth didn't open up.  And he didn't laugh.  Oh heck, I would have snotted him one if he had.  But he didn't, of course he didn't.  He just hugged me.  And I shed a little tear.  And I felt like the weight had been lifted off my shoulders.  

And my second big achievement is my rings.  My wedding, engagement and eternity rings have been progressively getting tighter and tighter.  It would break my heart to have to admit defeat and get them resized up.  I don't wear them 24/7 and take them off at night.   Of a morning I couldn't get them on without rubbing hand cream on my hands first.  And of an evening, forget it!  I would have to hold my hand in the air for a few minutes so the blood would run from my fingers and so I could get them off.  It looked like I was making some grand alien gesture.  And again I don't think Mike quite knew what I was doing, I think I told him I was reaching for a cobweb one night when he wondered what I was doing walking along with my hand up in the air.

And now ... they go on and come off without a struggle.   Another thing I was hoping to achieve and it has come to pass.  And I'm so happy.

Before I go

I just want to shout out to my beautiful bestie Sonia.  She's not doing 12wbt, she's on her own weight loss journey, and we don't even live in the same state any more, but she's been behind me every step of the way. Thank you Sonia!  Love you heaps.

I can't explain it, I've been up and down like a yo yo my whole life, but it just feels different this time.   And I aim to succeed.  

Fizzy drinks are BAD for you!

Well I knew that anyway, I have even stopped having diet fizzy drinks, although they are still in the house.  Mike drinks Pepsi Max, but it's safe from me, because Mike drinks it out of the cupboard at room temperature mixed with bourbon, he doesn't refrigerate it.   Urrgh.

But I definitely found out that fizzy drinks are bad for you today.

I was getting the cafe press out of the cupboard to toast some turkey wraps I had made for lunch and knocked the 2 litre bottle of Pepsi out, it hit the floor, the cap shattered and it exploded like a rocket.  There was Pepsi EVERYWHERE!!!!!!

I have had to scrub every single surface of our kitchen, cupboards, floors, walls.  Well actually Mike mopped up all the floors, I did the rest.

BAD BAD BAD !

I caved last night

Went out for a girls movie night with some friends here from town.  What that usually entails is a trip into the next town, dinner, movies and then coffee and cake afterwards.  A night I've usually enjoyed immensely.  But this time I went with trepidation.

I tried to search the restaurant we were going to but it seems they don't have a website, so I wasn't able to check out the menu.  When we got there it was a very limited menu as it was Parma Night!  Urrgh.  Now don't get me wrong, I love a good chicken parmagiana, but not right now.  And it seemed that unless I was willing to pay $30 or so for a meal, then Parma it was.   I only ate the chicken and salad, I didn't have the chips.  Small mercies perhaps?

I resisted every time my friends passed the fantails in the cinema.

But afterwards for coffee and cake, I caved. It was just easier to have a dessert than to face the wrath of the girls looking down their noses at me.  And to be honest, I didn't even given them the chance, who knows, they may have been fine with it, but I felt like I had a big old target painted on my forehead, DIETER!   I found it so hard to be the only one out of a group of five at the table to sit on a cup of coffee, when all of them would be having a dessert of some sort.  I ended up selecting a piece of lemon slice, and truth be told, it was way too sweet for me.  And now I'm disappointed in myself.

What would you have done in this situation?   It's easy to be righteous after the fact, but be honest.

This is now my mantra, keep calm, accept who I am, ignore all the foods I can't have, or won't have, or don't want.  Be up front.   And I guess one hiccup doesn't mean I've ruined it for the 12 weeks, I have jumped straight back on the wagon, it didn't sent me into a spiral.

But having said all of that, I'm still disappointed in myself.

Wednesday Weigh In

Wednesday has rocked around again, and I bounded out of bed at 6am and onto the scales.  A loss of 2.1kg for the week.  Go me!!!!!  I was so excited I did a happy dance in the nuddie!   And then I realised how jolly cold it was and quickly got into my work out gear.

So that is a loss of 3.2kg officially since 12wbt season began.

But a whopping 7.5kg since I signed up and began the 4 weeks pre-season.  

Plus even better, I've noticed my size 18 jeans are decidedly loose, in fact I look like a regular home boy with my pants dagging down when I wear them.  I've dragged out a pair of size 16 jeans from my drawer, that I had long since put away because they were way too tight and tried them on.   Now bear in mind they are old and the denim is quite relaxed, but I'm back into them.  I've resisted trying on clothes that I stopped fitting into to date, I had decided to do that in week 4 when we measure up again, but the jeans were a necessity.

New Friends

Now I need to introduce you to some new 'friends'.   Recently I went to Athletes Foot and got professionally fitted for new runners.  A terrific experience.  Up until then I had been having a bit of pain under my ankles after a workout session, not from running, but from ill-fitting el cheapo sneakers.   

So meet these new babies, aren't they pretty.   Actually I shouldn't say that, Michelle said she would snot us one (maybe not in so many words) if we picked on colour alone.  But how lucky for me that I like purple  :-)  I was assured that these would suit the type of training I am doing, gym and walking and running, and were suited to the dropped arch I apparently have in my left foot.   I did find the whole video/isobar thingy of me walking and standing quite amazing, seeing where the most pressure was being used along the sole of my feet.  It was a process of elimination, they recommended three specific runners for me and it was a matter of choosing.

They're New Balance something or other, and they are TERRIFIC, best investment I have made.

We have a work lunch to go to tomorrow so I've just been online to check out their menu to see what looks safe.  Quite frankly not much of it does.  What to do?   I am probably just going to cut my losses and go with the soup of the day, whatever it is.  Surely soup can't do too much damage?

Hope any 12wbt'ers that are reading this have had great results on the scales as well, and they got to do a nuddie happy dance too! 

Please forgive this little hiccup in posting

I didn't mean to go away and not come back.   The program is off and running and so I am.  Wednesday weigh in, my first OFFICIAL weigh in, although my tracker below also includes the pre-season, I lost 1.1kg and I was over the moon.

But come Thursday evening and I had a huge red flag moment, let alone a pissy night.

I had gone to gym after work and had had a great work out session with the trainer and the girls group I have joined.  I stopped in at the supermarket on the way home.   I was floating on air, or endorphins, or in any case I was feeling REALLY GOOD about everything.

And then I had a car accident.   In the dark.   In the middle of nowhere.   On the way home.

All I can think of is that someone up there was looking out for me because it could have been a heck of a lot worse.    There's a lot of farmland between the town I work in and the town I live in.   I was about 15 minutes from home and knew there had been roadworks, there's been roadworks forever on that road, so I knew to slow down and did.  But they'd laid gravel on the road and the car skidded and went onto the wrong side of the road (... thank you dad or grandma or grandpa or whoever up there timed this so that one of the many trucks that frequent the road were not coming the other way at that time ...).

I tried to correct the car and then couldn't get out of the skid and all I could see was the big tree I was aiming for.   The car ended up skidding off the road and down into a ditch which broke the momentum and that's where I stopped and where my car broke  :-(     I was okay, there was no one else involved (apart from some very disgruntled cows beyond in the dark paddock that were making their presence felt for being disturbed out of their slumber), and there was no property damage, so we can thank heavens for small mercies.

Now in days gone by this would have sent me straight into a food binge like no other, I mean I needed to comfort myself right?   But no I didn't, I stayed strong.  Shaken but strong.  Even this long weekend with Mike going away camping, that was usually my key to get some yummies in to feast on, but again I have stayed strong, I've actually gone jogging (if you can call it that) each morning and come home exhausted.

Turning point?   Or delirium?  You be the judge.

The Weekly Surprise

The Weekly Surprise this week on 12wbt is to create an Inspiration Board.    Things that drive us, things that inspire us, things that will keep us going on this path.  One might say this is right up my alley being that I am a digital scrapbooker, and I have worked really hard as I wanted this to represent all the me's, the person I am, the person I am turning into, the person I want to ultimately be.  I know it's all me, but there's a journey to be had and I aim to experience every last bit of it.   Michelle is really getting into our heads and I like that!

So here's my inspiration board.

Funny how I've used red a lot, my power colour!   So many facets of what I want to achieve and how I am going to get there, and yes, I can't swim, I have a fear of being in water above my head if I can't hold onto the sides.  I want to conquer that.  As well as being able to wear some kick ass boots.  I think the last pair of boots I was able to wear was when I was 12 years old and they were white vinyl.  Enough said.  

Ready, Set ...

And almost Go time!   Although I've been really watching myself all through pre-season so I'm ready for tomorrow, bring it on.

Today I went into Warrnambool and met some of the girls who form the 12wbt Warrnambool & Surrounds group.  We had planned to meet and greet and do the fitness test together and then have breakfast at a local cafe.  Well a few of us got there and down came the rain!  We sat in our respective cars with windows open so we could talk from car to car.  Once it stopped and a couple more ladies turned up we set off.

First off was the 1km time trial.   They had already tracked out 1km so we walked up to the start as a warm up.  Then stop watches at the ready and off we went.  My lungs were burning and try as I might to walk a lamp post, jog a lamp post, walk a lamp post, I did end up getting there and even ran over the finish line to some cheers, which was so nice being that I took up the rear!!   Figured this quote I found was very apt for how I went today  :-)

Time trial = 1km in 8 minutes 24 seconds.   Much room for improvement there.  It will be interesting what happens in the next four weeks before we do that test again.

Then we decided the ground was way too wet to even attempt the other tests and we would do them respectively at home which I've just done now.

Push ups on knees in a minute = 9.   OMG!  How pitiful.

Abdominal strength = I could only get up to level 2 (sit ups with hands crossed at chest)

Wall sit = 11 seconds. Yes!  Only 11 seconds before I nearly fell down.  I laughed when I saw where you entered that on the site, there was a box for minutes and seconds and I despaired of ever entering in the minute box.

Sit and reach = Well we won't even go there, I didn't get anywhere near my toes, I only just made it to the ruler.

It was really good to meet up with this local group for added support.  I've decided not to be backwards in coming forwards and gain support from wherever I can get it and in turn hope that I support others in their journey too.

As for meals, I've made the Vietnamese Beef Soup today to freeze ready for next week and actually doubled the quantity.  Figured while I was making it, I may as well make more.  The house smells delicious!  And the little taste test spoon I sampled, YUM!   Mike is actually looking quite forward to the change in pace in our meals.

Although we did go out last night, we were invited to an acquaintance's home for dinner, they are an older couple that Mike knows and I thought, okay, I'll just have to suck it up, I have absolutely no choice over what we're eating.  Mike said that my face just dropped when dinner was served as it was chicken kiev.   So I've been extra good today in my lead up to tomorrow.

Bring it on !!!!!!!!!!!!!!