Given Up - Focusing on my relationship with food

I have been physically quite 'extra' unwell the past few weeks and I am mentally struggling. I have a lot of things I am processing in my mind about my life that have nothing to do with my weight. I need to change so many things and make decisions about situations in my life and I find that all takes guts and time and energy. I am very tired and pretty fed up with the situation as it stands and I don't really know what to do, where I am going or how to get there. As a result, I feel quite depressed.

I am still conscious of my food intake and what I am eating, so I am keeping somewhat of an eye on it. I reckon I am eating about 1,500-1,600 a day on my 'looser' days and 1,250-1,450 on my more controlled days. I have logged on and off over the past month. I haven't lost more weight since I last posted weight loss. Exercise is still challenging due to the not feeling well and I have only managed walks here and there. If anything, I would love to change this aspect - if the weather was nicer and the sun was shining, I could imagine myself getting outside... but it's been flooding here and so grey (am sure this does not help my mindset).

At the moment, I am aiming to either stay the same weight or perhaps lose if I can get a deficit. I am logging on the days when I feel like it and not bothering on the days when I don't. I am not going to waste time and energy on worrying about logging when I could be using that energy to do something else. I am hoping that being kind to myself and being less obsessive about the whole 'diet' and 'exercise' regime will actually allow me to revisit a more structured regime  in a few weeks or a month or two. I don't know when, but I want to get back there.

AIMS -

So my biggest aim is to not gain.
To be able to be comfortable with what I eat and not to be so hung up on everything.
I don't want the emotional state to result in comfort eating or eating without thinking.
I want to deal better with my situation from a food perspective... perhaps to focus on repairing my relationship with food, so it is not the enemy and neither is it the friend - it just is... fuel, that I enjoy, but that I eat because I need it, not because my life is a mess and/or I feel down.

The past week & challenges

I guess I had 2 days off this week. Thursday, I didn't really totally have it off as breakfast, lunch and dinner were all okay and my usual fare. It's just that I felt so exhausted, I didn't have the strength to come online and calorie count/log. I also ate 4 chocolates from a box of chocolates we had. This month has been terrible for PMS and PMS eating. I am learning... learning to be okay with a couple of days of eating impulsively. It's better than 30 or 31 days of eating impulsively, after all!

I have met the challenges this week and I pleased about that. The ones starting tomorrow are:

1. Only 1 weigh-in
2. 90 minutes of cardio or walking
3. 2 sessions of weights or strength training exercises of your choice
4. 3 blog entries
5. List 5 or 10 things you have learnt about yourself and your relationship with food since you started your recent weight loss journey (this can be 1 blog entry)


I am about to go for a walk with the dog and then finish cleaning the bathrooms and make my bed. I won't be online Sunday-Tuesday this week as I have a guest staying.

OMG

Okay so I thought I would be doing TurboSculpt tomorrow, but we'll see as I have spent literally like 6 hours on my feet without a break. I was cooking and doing chores to help my mum. I did manage to squeeze in a 30 minute dog walk (with 5 minutes of that standing talking to a group of 10 children while they stroked my dog haha... nice rest time).

I realised that I need to start spring cleaning, so the next few weeks will be full of that. If I am doing that and walking the dog, it may have to sub for my exercise. I also realised today that I have not made any progress with doing any art or researching making hats, so I need to get onto that as it's March's challenge!

Update - Exercise

Last night I barely slept a wink because I was feeling anxous and my leg muscles were so painful that I could not get comfortable in any position. Normally I would not have exercised because of this, but today I thought I would push myself and I literally forced myself to do TurboSculpt.

It's a strength training workout - 39 minutes long - and you have the option of using whatever weights you want or none at all. I did a little bit of it last week without weights, and figured that this week I would try doing the whole workout. Oh my gosh... talk about challenging! I picked 1 kg (2.2 lbs) weights to do it with and managed to do about 1/2 the workout with them. Then I switched to 0.5kg (1.1 lbs) weights because I was nearly about to die and have a heart attack. By the end of it I had resorted to using no weights. The result: I had serious jelly legs and my right calf muscle was doing a twitchy dance of its own LOL.

The upshot of this is that I feel I am learning to listen to my body a little more and to recognise when I need to either put the weights down or switch to lighter ones. I realised while I was doing the workout that, if switching weights or not using any meant I could complete the workout, then it would be better to do that than to just completely give up.

I have a Yoga for Beginners DVD that I have not tried out. I am hoping to try that on Saturday if I can muster up the enthusiasm.

Weight Loss Update & Weekly Challenges

Weight loss update - so I weigh now each week on a Sunday and I aim to weigh no more than once a week. My weight loss continues to be slow and steady. I am on target to meet my first major goal, which is to reach 130, sometime around October. Whether I do or not depends on whether I can keep my body in this current state of loss. I am calorie cycling (naturally I guess) between 1,200 to 1,400 on counting days and on my day off, I am probably reaching anywhere from 1,700 to 2,000 (in the maintenance range).

Thoughts -

• I am pleased that I am losing and that I am able to have a 6 day counting/1 day off schedule. This works well for me. I have managed before to not do a 'day off', but I think this time around I would struggle with that, as I do tend to go out with family or friends once a week, and it is so much more difficult and complicated to eat at those times and stay in count. It actually takes away the enjoyment for me, so I would rather have the day off and a rest from counting.
• I am conscious that this week just gone has been a poor week in terms of exercise for me. I did exercise and I met my challenge goal of 3 sessions of at least 15 minutes or more, but looking at my log I can see that if I do more intense exercise, the net calories would be greater or else to achieve the same type of net calories, I need to eat less, which I don't really want to do. This week just gone was TTOTM, so I think I am just going to have to accept that one week every so often will be a less intense exercise week (which is not a bad thing!), as I really can't be doing crazy exercise like TurboJam when I am having my lady issues.

Weekly Challenges

This week are as follows:

1. Weigh-in no more than twice this week (to check fluid issues due to TTOTM)
2. Exercise at least 3 x 20 minutes
3. Blog at least 4 entries
4. Write 5 goals for the next 5 months (should write 1 goal for each month - things you want to change, or to do etc)
5. Eat a portion of fruit or veg at EVERY meal on 5 out of 7 days 

Re: #5 - I am going to try increasing veg and fruits but without messing around calories... so veggie sticks will be my friend and swapping some snacks back to fruit

Weekly Challenges & 10 Good Things!

Each week I challenge myself...

Yes, that's how I roll... I work well when I set myself goals and challenges. I usually try to either pick things that I find difficult and will help me to move forward in my life and weight loss journey or else things that I know should be part of my plan for health.

This week the challenges have been as follows...

Challenges:
1. Only weigh-in once per week (difficult for me - getting better at this)
2. 3 x 15 mins exercise per week (should be part of my plan for health)
3. 3 journal entries per week (Motivating and helps me to work through issues I have)
4. List 10 good things about yourself (difficult for me)

So far I have stuck to # 1 and, as of last night, I have completed #2. I have obviously completed #3 already! (Yes I like to talk!) So that leaves me with #4 to do...


10 Good Things About Myself 

1. Extremely loyal
2. Caring
3. Creative
4. Enjoy helping other people and do try to help other people a lot
5. Sense of humour
6. Good at cooking (ha!)
7. I have gratitude (most days I try to make time to think of things I am thankful for and to remember how lucky I am to have a family, a warm & cosy home, to never be hungry or worry where my next meal is coming from etc)
8. Friendly
9. Animal lover (I think this is a good thing!)
10. Conscientious

To be honest, this list has taken me ages (several days) to compile. I would add one and then leave the list  for ages while I tried to think of something else. I find this type of activity really hard and I think that has a lot to do with not feeling good about myself and worrying what other people will think; both of which I have been working on for a few years. It's good to challenge yourself sometimes and I am finding making myself do these type of activities to be really helpful.