Header

A .6kg (1.3lb) gain today. Entirely to be expected, even if it wasn't Water Retention Week at Chez Tree.

There's a variety of reasons for this gain, but I think Kimba and Airlie's comments on my last entry were spot on.

I am pushing the boundaries, I am testing my limits. I want to know how much I can 'get away with' before the scales leap out from behind the curtains and yell, "Busted!"

Apparently, I can't get away with what I've been doing. Which is not surprising, considering how excessive it was (e.g. an all day drinking session, eating half a family-sized seafood pizza, random choc attacks, rich restaurant food, Baskin Robbins, several days of not exercising). I actually ate worse and exercised less over the last week than I did over the week of Christmas.

So the gain is not a shock, nor is it a disappointment. It's what I can expect for doing what I did. And that's OK. I take full responsibility for that and I declare it done.

Of course, my emotions are at the root of all my binges and bad eating habits. And I'm on a little bit of a down cycle at the moment (hence less frequent postings). Not full-blown depression again, but, as my husband described it, not my sparkly best.

But that is no excuse. Even on my blackest days and weeks, I could eat well, track, drink my water and exercise.

So last week is history. This week is fresh and shiny and new and I'm going to make it a great week (this morning's raspberry friand incident notwithstanding).

I'm really focusing in on my exercise, as the heat has robbed me of some walking motivation. When it's stinking hot even at 6am or 9pm, it's really hard to find the will to walk. I need to find something else, and there is a pool less than a minute's walk from home. So I took a big step today.

A really big step.

I bought my first pair of bathers in over 10 years.

It was revelatory. Usually, buying bathers is a traumatic experience unequalled in our society. All that bare, pale flesh, the teensy bit of lycra, the unforgiving mirror and the harsh reality of the change room lights. Sure, I had all of that, but the revelation was in the fact that I had over a dozen outfits in the change room with me and I was making my choices based on things like price or colour or cut. For once, my choices weren't limited by size.

Sure, I wanted to punch the lights out of the woman in the change room next to me who wittered in a disgusted tone, "Oh, no wonder that was so big on me! It's a 14!", but that was the only traumatic part.

Now, don't get too excited, we're not in itsy, bitsy, teeny, weeny, yellow, polka dot bikini territory yet. It's a practical one piece that will allow diving and vigorous swimming without the girls getting out and about or inadvertent butt flossing. But it's cut nicely and the colour is lovely and I happen to think it looks pretty good (and the husband agrees).

I'm hoping that I can take it on its maiden voyage tomorrow, after a bit of deforestation at the beautician's first. It's one thing to inflict my pale legs on an unsuspecting public, but when they're pale AND furry, then I'm sure I'm breaching one Geneva convention or another.

One last thing. As I was standing in the queue to pay for my WW meeting today, there was a new member puzzling over whether to buy the Points Guide or the Supermarket Guide. I nudged her and told her that in my experience, I found the Points Guide more useful. She thanked me and asked how I was doing. I told her how much I'd lost since last February and she seemed stunned. She told me that I must be close to goal. I said I was about 8 or so kilos away and she seemed stunned by that too. Then she paid for her books and wandered off.

As I paid for my meeting, she came up to me again.

"Do they have inspirational buddies at Weight Watchers?" she asked.
"Er, I guess not. Why?"
"Because I want you to be mine."

Awww, shucks.

It's time to call in the men in the white coats to get me fitted for one of those nice huggy jackets with the buckles down the back.

Why?

Because I have completely lost my mind.

The last couple of weeks have been really tough for me. Appalling eating, infrequent and uninspired exercise, you name it. And, for the life of me, I've not been able to figure out why.

Then the delectable Kimba summed it up perfectly for me. I read this on her blog (I hope you don't mind me quoting you, sweetie):

I have a confession, I don't think I'm going to have a good weigh-in result this week. Because I've felt my focus sliding a bit. Not a lot, but my exercise hasn't been as intense, my eating has been slipping. I've allowed a few too many 'slack-arse' choices, and I shouldn't have. I know that it's psychologically got something to do with achieving my last 2 big challenges/milestones, and thereby subconsciously thinking I can take a bit of a 'break' and let up on the intensity/strictness.

All of a sudden, lightbulbs and alarm bells started going off. It was quite startling.

Why?

Because, somehow, in my crazy brain, the 27.5kg (60lb) I've lost managed to disappear quite of its own accord, without any effort on my part. Like the magic weight-loss fairies showed up overnight and I woke up three sizes smaller.

For some reason, that amount of weight seems so immense, it is impossible to believe that I lost it all by myself. Don't even get me started on the fact that most people cannot believe that I even had that much to lose, that's another subject for another day.

Somehow, all that effort and all those days of eating right and walking and doing all the things I needed to do to slowly peel off the kilos vanished. I'd done it. It was easy. Now I was free to slack off, eat as I pleased and lounge around the house all day.

As I posted in Kimba's comments, I'm clearly smoking crack.

All I have to do is read back over this thing to see what it took to get here. It wasn't easy, it was bloody hard work and I had to work for every single gram of it.

What I was doing then got me to where I am now. What I'm doing now, will get me right back to where I started from.

I'm lazy. I can't be bothered losing all that weight again. So I need to get back on the wagon. I need to remember how hard it has been to get here and how good it feels to be here. I need to think about how much better it will feel when I get to goal.

I need to remember that my new jeans are not compatible with regular trips to Baskin Robbins.

I need to remember that good eating and exercise is what has got me here, not magical weight-loss fairies (although how good would that be?!). That is now my life, these are the things that need to happen every day for me to get where I want to go and stay there.

You think insane asylums have good gym equipment?

Another nice loss this week, .5kg (1.1lb), but certainly not one I deserved.

I've been periscope down this week, going through a couple of crises of faith at the moment.

I've written about one of them on my other blog. The other one? Well, I'll tell you about that here.

But before I do that, I'd just like to rant a little.

I know I've ranted about bad WW leaders before, but tonight's leader really took the cake. The fact that she said up front that she would not be continuing in the job was the only thing that stopped me from getting up during her session and telling her to just shut the fuck up.

Now is a really busy time at WW. All the new people with their shiny New Year's resolutions are coming in and we had over a dozen new members start today.

This woman... dear god, where do I begin? How about the part where she told them that they only needed to eat 14 points (out of around 18-22, depending on your starting weight) of nutritious food and the rest could be made up with 'treats'?

Now, I know what she was trying to say. What she was trying to convey was that you have to eat at least 14 points from the different food groups and you could make up the difference with more points from each group and every now and then let yourself have a treat.

But her presentation style, such as it is, doesn't let her complete one thought before she's off on another and the arrant nonsense she ended up spouting was pure pain.

Don't even get me started about her telling us how diet soft drink is good for you in summer because of the extra sodium in it.

I only understood parts of her presentation because I'm a veteran of WW. What the new members made of it, I have no idea. Needless to say, I will not be staying for meetings until the next leader starts, then I'll give them a go. This woman is a danger to the public and should not be allowed to lead WW meetings. Period.

End rant.

Now for the crisis of faith.

Well, perhaps not so much a crisis, but a little laxity. I didn't deserve to lose this week. Why? Because there was too much 'just one won't hurt' going on.

Now, you guys know me. I generally let myself have what I want. This works for me because I don't crave energy dense food every day. I generally treat myself once a week to something like take away or beer or ice cream or whatever and that doesn't hurt.

What does hurt is when you do it almost every day. And that's what I did last week. I went over my points almost every day last week. Not by a little. But by around 5 points. A quarter of my daily allowance.

I threw in extra long walks again to try and counter this, but that is a temporary measure. I have to stop this 'just one won't hurt' mentality, I can't be complacent about this. Yes, I have my metabolism at a level that is tolerating it at the moment, but it won't for very long.

I know I can have these things. I just can't have them this often.

It baffles me that even after 48 weeks of hard slog at this, I still don't instinctively know this. But clearly it's something I have to keep working on.

This week I have good motivators to keep me on track, though. I finally ditched the size 16 jeans for size 14. Snug, but not for long. And I never, EVER want to buy anything bigger again!

A welcome .5kg (1.1lb) loss this week, leaving me with only 8.6kg (18.9lb) to go. Even the girl at the weigh in desk was impressed as she wrote '27kg' (59.5lb) as my total loss.

Half a pound away from 60lb (27.2kg) gone. It's not a bad place to start for the new year.

Of course, if I'd shown half the discipline Kimba had, I would have kicked much booty on Bootcamp. But I'm pretty pleased with how I went and I'm glad that the effort I put in this week helped peel off the weight I put on last week (believe me, the scales told an UGLY story!)

But there's a reason for the title of this entry. My next goal? To be a flower child. A 60s girl. Like Mia, I want to be shagadelic, baby!

If you want to use this image, right click and Save As!

Unlike Mia, I'm not going to set a time frame for this, I've not set any yet and I'm not going to start now (although becoming a 60s girl in time for my one year anniversary with WW would kick much arse).

I'm going to do what I did for the Bahama Mama Challenge, since that helped to peel 12kg off me. I'm going to keep up the exercise, rain, hail or shine. I'm going to track everything. I'll do my best to stick within my points. I'm going to drink around 3 litres of water a day.

If I fall off the wagon, I'll shrug my shoulders and get right back on again. I'll focus on eating fresh, nutritious food and keeping my no-fail environment.

In essence, I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing since I started this journey last February. It's worked this far. Here's to flower-power and a new leather jacket!

The utterly genius Kimba came up with this idea and I think it's brilliant. We often spend so much time focusing in on what we still need to do, that we forget to reflect on what we've achieved already.

I've seen a couple of these now, some are happy, some feel they could have come further. But all of them show that we've made SOME progress and we all should be damned proud of that. No matter how much you lost, YOU LOST! And that's a damned sight more than what most people managed to achieve in the last year.

So, with that out of the way, let's get onto the numbers...

Weight

Total loss in 2004: 26.5kg (58.4lb)

Kg to goal: 9.1kg (20lb)

Size at start of 2004: AU 20-22 (US 22-24)

Size at end of 2004: AU 14 (US 16)

Average weekly loss: .6kg (1.3lb)

Biggest loss in 1 week: 1.9kg (4.1lb)

Smallest loss in 1 week: .1kg (.2lb)

Biggest gain in 1 week: 1kg (2.2lb)

Most consecutive losses: 15 weeks

Most consecutive gains: none

Total number of loss weeks: 39

Total number of gain weeks: 7

Centimeters lost

Centimeters lost in 2004: 131.5cm (51.7")

Neck: 4cm (1.5")

Upper Arm: 2cm each (.8")

Bust: 15.5cm (6.1")

Under Bust: 13cm (4.7")

Waist: 16cm (6.2")

Abdomen: 25cm (9.8")

Hips: 20cm (7.8")

Thigh: 11cm each (4.3")

Calf: 6cm each (2.3")

These are numbers I think I can be justifiably proud of. I've worked hard for this, steadily exercising and tracking, even on the days when I'm falling off the wagon abysmally.

I have learnt a lot about myself and my body in 2004 and this learning will stand me in good stead to get rid of the last 9.1kg (20lb) I need to lose in 2005.

I will get to goal and I will maintain that weight. It's going to happen. 2005 will be my year.

I hope everyone had safe and wonderful new year's celebrations. The boy and I had a quiet one together which was just lovely.

The dinner wasn't even too bad, for the most part. I did a BBQ and had seafood and lean lamb with grilled vegies. I even indulged in a little champagne.

Then there was dessert...

I could not figure out for the life of me what to have for dessert. Until I walked past the Baskin Robbins on Chapel St and a not very good idea occurred to me.

They sell ice cream in pints. Any flavour you want.

So, after my delicious, low point dinner, I ate half a pint of Baskin Robbins Honey Butter Baklava ice cream. And it was GOOOOOOOOD. Not the best choice, perhaps, particularly when I'm trying to undo the damage incurred over Christmas, but I enjoyed every bite of it.

The real reason for this post, other than to wish everyone happies, is more contemplative.

It occurred to me, as I was reading your blogs, that this time next year, this blog will be redundant. I mean, other than perhaps talking about maintenance, I won't need this blog. Because I will be done. This time next year, I will be at goal and hopefully will have been for some months. I have less than 10kg (22lbs) to lose.

I will be at goal this time next year.

That is a statement. A promise. A vow.

It will happen.

This time next year, I might be putting in some effort to get back to goal after putting on a little over the silly season, but that will only be a tiny amount of weight and I'll be getting BACK to goal.

It's an awe-inspiring thought.

I'm full of motivation and determination (not that you would have guessed with the Baskin Robbins, but yet...) I can do this. I have been doing this for almost 12 months. Sure, my body throws the odd curve ball, but I can work with that.

I have less than 10kg to lose.

I can do this.

I will do this.

Just watch me.

Addendum: I solved the lingerie problem. As Kimba pointed out in the comments of my last entry, the lingerie in question was put on sale, 25% off. It was a sign. So I treated myself to a bra and a g-string as a 'You go girl, here's to the New Year and losing the rest of your weight' gift.

I feel UNUTTERABLY beautiful. [grin]