Daily Journal - Day 60 February 29, 2008

Thoughts/feelings:  Yep, feeling good.  A bit tired, a bit busy - but good.  I’m feeling like I am making progress now and that makes me a lot happier and helps keep the motivation levels up. 
 
Exercise:  A bit disappointed I didn’t do anything exercise wise today; will go to the gym tomorrow though.

Food:  Ate well today.

• Breakfast: Cerial with soya milk
• Snack: THE BEST SMOOTHIE EVER!  Banana, SoyaMilk, Ice Cubes and cinnamon.  It seriously tasted like banana cake mix.  It was sooooooo good.
• Lunch: Tuna salad (it wasn’t that great), I am going to try Cammys’recipe next from  http://tippytoediet.com/ as hers sounds a lot better then mine!
• Snack: None
• Dinner: Dragon fruit.   I couldn’t face my tuna salad and I didn’t want to eat rubbish… so I just had fruit.   Not a balanced meal.   I really need to make a repertoire of recipes and start enjoying eating my own food!

Diet coke free days: 22

Daily Journal - Day 59 February 28, 2008

I did it!  I went to the gym… I really didn’t think I would, I procrastinated all day but I went. I have broken the ice and gone back to the gym.   The only thing about procrastinating, 8.30pm is the worst time to go – it was packed!  I’ll stick to morning gym sessions from now! 

Food:  I’m really missing not living in New Zealand as the food here is so different and well… I just miss the familiarity of the supermarkets at home.    I went to the supermarket today, got:
- cinnamon
- tuna in springwater x2 cans
- bunch of bananas
- lite mayonnaise (to go with the tuna)
- a capsicum
- 4 limes (not sure what to do with them, I was thinking of trying lime with the tuna)
- whole-wheat pasta (I think)

I decided not to stock up my dark chocolate stash as I have stopped craving chocolate and seem to just be eating it because its there.   I’m surprised and pleased with this decision.

Food eaten today:

• Breakfast – cereal and soya milk
• Snack – 2 chicken wings
• Lunch – Banana and more cereal (at this stage I realised I needed to go to the supermarket)
• Dinner – Tuna sandwich (whole wheat bread, lettuce, mayo, onion and tuna)

I think I am going into a forang food zone!  Oh well… at least when I make my own food I know what goes into it (Thai food is surprisingly greasy).  I think tomorrow I will search the body for life website for some easy healthy recipes. 

Diet Coke Free Days - 21 (thats 3 weeks!)

Pondering what has worked in the past… February 28, 2008

Today I was listening to the Weight Loss and the Mind podcast (very good podcast by the way) and they had this suggestion…  ‘Do what has worked for you in the past’.  

Thinking about it….   I lost weight twice… the 1st time was having an exercise buddy and following weight watchers (it took a while, but we got there).  The 2nd time was doing Body for Life, as part of that I ate well, worked out at the gym and drank protein shakes.   The protein shakes really helped as it meant I was eating 5 small meals a day.
 
Weight Watchers is good because it follows the logical equation of:  calories in – calories out = weight loss (or weight gain).  BUT, I don’t like weight watchers as I don’t like having to count everything.  Also I don’t like how it promotes the idea of replacing a bad food (ie coke or ice cream) with a low fat version of a bad food with more chemicals in it (ie diet coke or diet ice cream).  In fact that is when my diet coke addiction started - thanks Weight Watchers! 

Body for Life on the other hand was an amazing experience…  I loved it, I felt so amazingly good, I looked amazingly good and I was so strong and healthy.   But, body for life wasn’t for life… it lasted about 10 weeks and I burnt out, got sick, changed gyms… and well… that was the end of the gym (the new gym sucked).  The weight slowly crept on… and now it’s harder than ever to loose.

Since loosing weight those two times I have tried (hard) to loose the weight twice.  Once in Belgium, I had an exercise buddy and probably lost 3kg (very slowly) before going back to NZ.    The second time was when I got back to NZ and did a 12 week program at my gym.   I changed my eating, I exercised regularly and my weight went up and down like a yo-yo over the 12 weeks… end result….  No gain (same dress size, same scale result, slightly lower body fat %).    When I think about it, there was one thing on their program that I refused to do…. drink protein shakes.   It seems to be coming back to protein shakes.

I don’t think I could do Body For Life again (not sure why, probably because I am scared of failure)… but I think I could do a toned down version that gives me routine, keeps my cardio fitness up (last time I did BFL it went down), works on my strength (doing weights) and pushes me to loose this weight.   As part of this… I think protein shakes might be helpful as I know I am not eating enough at the moment and I find it hard (really hard) to recover from working out.  

But I am hesitant.  I’ve shyed away from them because I worry if I take protein shakes now, I will have to have them forever… I don’t want to drink protein shakes for ever.    Has anyone had an experience with protein shakes?     To protein shake or not to protein shake - that is the question!?

Daily Journal - Day 58 February 27, 2008

Thoughts/Feelings –  ok, a bit naughty but I felt sooooo good this morning I wanted to take a little peep at the scales to see how I was doing…. I was very pleased to see they were down another 400g from yesterday – I reckon next weeks weigh in is going to be awesome. 

Exercise –  I didn’t want to but I forced myself to do a 20 min power walk on the treadmill.   I did 5 mins warm up, 5 mins with handheld weights (while walking, it was a bit awkward I don’t think I’ll do that again) and 10 mins on an incline.   This was before breakfast so I didn’t have much oomph!   But the walk wasn’t my planned workout, just a wake up walk (and me trying to make friends with the treadmill).

The plan was to go to the gym… for the 2nd day in a row I packed my gym bag…. but found a reason why I couldn’t/shouldn’t go to the gym.   GRRRR…… JULIA!         Oh well.. at least I did the 20mins walking this morning.   Tomorrow I will definitely 100% without a doubt go to the gym!

Food – today I was really hungry all day, I guess it’s the exercise.   I need to start planning meals in advance…  dinner time is particularly difficult. 

Breakfast – fruit smoothie (banana, oj, strawberries and some passion fruit)
Morning tea – some dried apricots
Lunch – I was presented a giant plate of pork skin/fat… I declined to eat it politely and picked out some rice and a few bits of pork meat.  I also had some noodle soup.
Afternoon tea –  banana fruit smoothie (soya milk, strawberries and banana)
Dinner – a small bowl of cerial (I know, not great).

Drinks/H2O consumption –  good.  Lots of tea and water.

Diet Coke Free Days - 20

Daily Journal - Day 57 February 26, 2008

Well…  again, I lost count of days!  I guess that’s what happens when you press pause on your daily journal… but I worked out 31 days in Jan, plus 26 so far this month… makes it day 57 of trying to be healthy.   Wow that sounds a lot.

Thoughts/Feelings – feeling REALLY good about everything.   I’m ammped to be getting back into my ‘Healthy Me’ mode.    After the little analysis of my goals I can see that it’s the lack of exercise that is letting my body down.   

I am still a bit miffed that to be fit, healthy and thin for the rest of my life I’m going to have to do exercise daily.  I don’t mind eating well but I am yet to find a type of exercise I really love to do.   Hopefully that will change as I get fitter and exercise becomes less of a struggle.   In the meantime, its going to be a battle of the wills – the good me better come out on top, as I really want to reach my goal of being thinner when I fly home at the end of April.      

Exercise – I broke my cycle of excuses and walked 45 mins on the treadmill today and worked up a sweat by raising the incline.   This was a good move, I need to make friends with the treadmill.   My only problem is my hip/knee/ankle are playing up again – walking helped, but I’m not ready to run yet.  Will give it a week of walking and see how it feels next week.   I wish I was at home and I could just go to my osteo and get it fixed like last time – she was awesome!

Food – did well today until someone brought over donuts and cake this afternoon!  

• Breakfast – cerial with soy
• Morning tea – papya shake
• Lunch – chicken salad
• Afternoon tea – 2 donuts (that were not worth it, they weren’t even nice donuts) and some dark chocolate
• Dinner – more cerial (I didn’t feel like chicken and there isn’t much in our fridge… I need to start planning dinners)

Drinks/H2O consumption – lots of green tea, lots of water.  

Diet Coke Free Days -  19 – I am past detox (only lasted a 4-5 days thankfully) and have wanted a coke only a few times (when I saw advertising in Hong Kong).  I think I am over it… hooray!   It was so much easier to give up the 2nd time round.