It’s funny. I’ve jumped into the diet thing so many times. So many times I’ll decide “Okay, Monday morning - I’m getting healthy.”

Half the time, when Monday came I’d be telling myself “Naah, I’ll start it tomorrow.”

The other half? I’d give it a half-assed shot but by Wednesday, I’d be back to my bad habits.

I’m not sure what makes this time so different. To be honest, this one came out of no where. I had been playing with the idea of going back to being good, but I wasn’t serious about it.

Then Monday morning comes along and I find that I’m just automatically doing the diet routine. I’m not motivated. I don’t have that fire burning in me like I had last time. I don’t know what it is but I’m just tired, you know? I’m tired of worrying about never being able to have kids because my health problems may have screwed up my reproductive organs. I’m tired of worrying that, in twenty years, I’ll die just as painfully and horribly as my Dad did. As my Grandfather recently did.

I’m tired of not being able to run or walk far because the added weight causes my damaged ankle to sprain.

I’m tired of it being an entire production in order to just buy something as simple as clothes. “Oh, that’s cute. Oh, wait. They don’t make that plus size. No, I gotta go with the huge zebra-print muumuus.”

I’m tired of people saying “Oh, you look so good!” When the truth is, we both know I don’t.

I’m tired of not being able to fly. Not because I’m afraid of flying. Not because I don’t fit in the seats. And not because I overflow. But because I inevitably sit next to the moron who spends the entire flight moaning and whining each time our shoulders bump, making snide remarks under his breath about diets and Jenny Craig.

Oh, wait. Flights. I’m not done with that one, yet. I’m tired of being petrified that the airline is going to charge me twice the amount they charge everyone else because bias against obesity is one of the few remaining prejudices that remain politically correct. Instead of changing the damn seats (which NO ONE fits in comfortably nowadays), instead we blame the overweight people. Yeah, that’s smart. Put the pressure on your fellow consumer instead of the airlines for outrageous charges where it belongs.

I’m tired of being thought of a drug user since, as someone who isn’t healthy, my face breaks out and I’ve got hollows under my eyes.

Man. I’m just tired of so -much- living like this.

Okay. I better get to the store. I’ve got a whole shopping list to get and only an hour to get it in.

· · ·

Still doing pretty well.^^

I ended up doing the 1 mile instead of the 2 mile exercise tape yesterday by accident. Probably a good thing. The 1 mile wore me out.

Today, I did the 2 mile. I struggled through it but I did it.

I’ll do that one again tomorrow.

· · ·

Really very tired. I ended up going to bed later than I was expecting.

Trying to get a new schedule going on, but that’s not going so well. Though, I suppose, it’d help a lot if I actually slept when I -intended- to sleep instead of several hours later.

Anyway! Yesterday went fairly well. I had a few small hiccups - I really, really didn’t want to exercise, I didn’t want to eat lunch, I didn’t want to make breakfast. But I sort of just plowed my way through that and did them anyway.

I’m beginning to feel like I can -do- this.

So, today, I don’t have much planned - I’ll be taking a short 15-20 min bike ride (extremely low intensity. I got to get used to the motion). Then, I want to fit in some WATP since that stuff really works well. It was funny - when I was comparing things the last time I was really getting into exercise, I noticed the WATP was actually doing more for me than the C25K. C25K was just too out of my league at that point, so I was slacking too much during the “rest” sessions.

I figure I’ll pop in 3 mile and see how that goes.

Wish me luck!

· · ·

It’s been a long time since I’ve been active here.

In the past year, I lost my father. I gained all the weight back I lost. I spent months and months living in the States, living on nothing but fast food and ice cream. I came back to Australia and just didn’t really care anymore.

See, my father died from a heap of complications from diabetes. I mean, the poor guy. The doctors were aghast at the amount of pain he had been in, especially since he refused to take his morphine. (He preferred the pain to the ‘fuzzy’ way it made him think, he said.) It was as though everything that could go wrong with his body, did.

Last week, my grandfather died from complications from diabetes. My 26 year old sister? Diabetic. My 40 year old brother? Probably diabetic.

Me?

Not diabetic, but I’ve hovered on the edge of it for years. At 250 pounds (115kg), I’ve really been so much tempting fate but taunting it.

It got to the point where I figured that becoming a diabetic was a foregone conclusion. Fate, really. Nothing I could do would stop it from happening, so why try? (I know, I know. Horribly defeatist of me, but emotions are rarely ever logical.)

To be honest, I don’t have motivation right now. Then again, I remember something that I once heard - It isn’t about motivation but determination. So yeah. This is me. This is me, determined.

Grr.

· · ·

I spent Christmas a few months ago back in the USA with my family.

I had gained a bit of weight since the last time I had seen them (it had been a few years), and I was very much dreading the trip. I could already hear the snide remarks from my older sister in my head. What I wasn’t expecting was…

“Cel! Wow! You’ve lost SO much weight!”

>.>

Reluctant and nervous laughter would usually follow a bland explanation of “Um, no. I’ve actually gained 20 lbs.”

And every time, they’d argue with me. I’d be told that I look so much better than the last time they saw me and they knew I lost a heap of weight.

Family: 1 Ego: 0

The biggest kick in the shins, though, was when the family was looking through photos and sharing pics we had taken during Christmas morning. To my horror, I saw a picture that Kim had taken of me. And man, did it look terrible. My face looked fat. My neck was so busy hiding that all you could see was a double chin slurping all the way down to my chest, every strand of my hair looked like it was trying to proclaim independence from my head, and all I could see was how incredibly unhealthy and fat I looked. Before I could move it off the screen, a sister comes up and says:

“Oh my god! You look beautiful there!”

I stopped. Blinked at her. And realized she was being completely sincere. At that point, Kim heads over to see what we’re looking at and looks at the picture from hell.

“Yeah, that’s a really good picture.”

Next thing I know, several siblings and my mother are crowded around my shoulder, cooing and ahhing over a picture that had made me want to go hide under the couch and hoped that the earth would open beneath my feet and swallow me up.

Or I get put out of my misery by a plague of locusts. I wasn’t feeling particularly choosy at that point.

All I could think about was how bad I must look if they thought that monstrosity
flattered me. Once I get brave enough, I’ll throw that picture up on the progress page.. but for now, I’ll continue shaking in horror.

Family: 2 Ego: 0

So instead of looking at pictures of the family, I got up and started playing sudoku on my nifty little pda. I couldn’t look any more. I couldn’t handle seeing any more horrific pictures of myself that they thought were oh so beautiful.

After all, I decided, if I couldn’t see it, it didn’t exist.

It’s amazing how interesting sudoku became the more and more the family gathered around the computer to coo over pictures. In fact, I’m pretty sure my family ended up thinking I was addicted.

But it was shockingly easy to ignore. I ended up forgetting about that bad picture, though I didn’t make the mistake of letting anyone take a picture of me again for the rest of that trip.

A part of me knew I was (and was kicking myself for it!) burying my head in the sand, but I couldn’t help it. And, seriously, one you put your head in the sand, it’s really easy to keep it there.

I consider it the Ostrich Effect. You become so comfortable willfully ignoring things, that it becomes easier and easier to ignore even more stuff going on around you.

· · ·

10% Victory!

It’s a cause for celebration!^^

As of today, I’ve officially lost 13kg (28.6lbs), which puts me firmly into the “Lost 10% of Starting Bodyweight” category. It also means that I’ve lost over 25% of the weight I need to lose so I’m 1/4 of the way to goal.

How amazing is that!

Another wonderful thing is the fact that I could *not* reach 105 last time, no matter what I did. I just seemed to be stuck at it, which is one of the reasons I just gave up last time. (I fully intend to keep going even when it happens again. I learned my lesson >.>) So reaching 105 is a victory in itself, too.

The next minigoal is to hit 100kg (that’s 220lbs). That right there will be earth-shattering for me. I haven’t been 220 since early university. (Though I was about 180/190lbs and a size 14 at Oxford, I think) All this stuff is coming up.

It’s just a matter of time.^^

· · ·

Last night, I went out to dinner for Anne’s birthday.

I had been dreading it because I was on a roll losing weight and I feared that going out to a restaurant would kill my self-discipline. But the night was supposed to be about Anne and honouring Anne, not me making a huge ordeal about food.

After all, the goal in the end is to enjoy food, but push it to the background and keep it from running my life the way it has up until this point.

So I decided I’d eat right for the day and while I would make sensible choices while out, I’d consider it a point-free night.

I worried a huge amount about that decision, though. The fear of falling down, of becoming lazy and not continuing on really had me going the entire day.

I want to be 106 next week. And while I know that one night won’t really do much damage, I still worried.

At one point, I decided it was a hopeless case. So I had like two timtams and two of the WW apple crumble bars. (I love the apple crumble bars, but I notice that I have a big slow-down in weight loss if I have them more than once every few days.)

Went to go take a shower in the early evening - to start getting ready - and was about to go grab another couple timtams before I popped in and suddenly, I stopped in my tracks.

“What the hell am I doing?”

I’ve done so damn well. Next week, I will have lost 12kgs. (Technically, I’m already teetering between 106 and 107, so I should be a solid 106 by Monday.) That’s 1/4 of the weight I need to lose. My next major goal will be getting to 94kg, which would mean that I’ve lost half of the weight I need to.

Why on earth would I toss that away? Give me a few more weeks and I’ll actually be 100kg. Then 94kg is just another 6k past that. How insane would it be to stop doing this now when I’m so close?

No, I really can’t stop now. I notice some of the changes in my body and stuff like I can see my double-chin starting to shrink and I’ve actually lost a couple cm around my neck. These are things that have been bothering me for years.

Life will happen. I won’t be able to choose wisely every time. And that’s okay. I got to treat those nights as exceptions and just keep going. It’s the same way a 56kg woman does it - chances are, they don’t go nuts exercising after having an especially high-calorie meal. They just don’t have them very often, so it doesn’t matter too much.

Yeah. One step at a time. 100kg next.^^

· · ·

When one violently dislikes egg, one should refrain from having an egg sandwich for lunch no matter how good it would be for daily points.

This educational moment has been brought to you by Chook Workers Union and a very, very contrite Cel.

· · ·

I have none.

And I mean, I really have none. Some people complain about not being able to touch their toes. Hell, I’d be happy if I could touch my knees.

Bending down (besides being a complete social faux-pas - a rear end like mine needs to remain far below eye-level) is hard enough, so I tend to pick everything up with my toes.

Chopsticks. Coins. Man, I’ve got talented toes. What can I say? When you’ve got it, you’ve got it. >.>

It’s probably one of the big reasons why I lost all flexibility. Then again, I still wasn’t all that flexible even as a kid.

So, lately, I’ve been throwing Leslie Sansone’s “You Can Do Yoga” on after any given exercise dvd. I decided that if I was going to go through all the trouble of losing weight and being healthy, I may as well learn to touch those toes in the process.

Unfortunately, those toes are playing hard to get. Each time I attempt to touch them, their partners-in-crime (otherwise known as my calves) decide to remind me who’s boss. (Hint: so far, it hasn’t been me.)

I’ve got high hopes with this yoga dvd, though. I’ve noticed a very small difference but there has been a difference since I started. I’m already planning to grab a new dvd at some point, once I’ve mastered this one (though, *ahem* honesty requires me to admit that it won’t be any time soon).

So, watch out, toes! I’m coming for you!

· · ·

Hiya there!

For those of you who are new (and that should be about nearly everyone), welcome to this blog. It’s my way of trying to stay on track as I take control of my life and become more healthy. (Run-on sentences for the win!^^)

For those of you who aren’t new, welcome back.^^ As you can probably tell by the drastic change in the design of the site, my previous blog is no longer. In short… the server my site was hosted on took up the nasty habit of smoking. When I told it to knock it off (after all, smoking indoors is illegal here in Oz), it had a hissy fit and refused to work anymore. So, I had no choice to fire it.

Most tragical.

So now, we’ve got a new server here that we have to train to do everything the last one did. But. Um. It’s ancient. Archaic, really. In fact, I’m pretty sure Lucy the Australopithecus used it back in the day to host her site. Which means that we’ll have to get yet another replacement server soon to take this one’s place before it meets the same fate good old Lucy did.

Translate that to mean “Cel is so not going to replace this design any time soon”. It’s a huge blow to the ego (since I enjoy writing sites), but my priority has to be getting my main site back up and running.

Speaking of running…

I’m not. Just so you know. >.> I’ve had the cold from hell lately, so I haven’t done any exercise since Thursday. So, feeling sorry for myself yesterday, I jumped on the stationary bike (which, coincidently, leads a very lonely existence in the lounge) for a little spin.

Note to self: friends don’t let friends exercise when congested.

So. I’m sitting here now, feeling vaguely guilty about the lack of exercise. I’ve eaten fairly well, though I promised myself I would not count points while I’m feeling this bad. I’d listen to what my body had to say about what it needs.

No, really. I mean it. >.>

This is me.

This is me listening to my body. (It’s not a very verbose conversationalist, though.)

In any case, the plan of attack is to just use a little sense when eating for the next few days. When I feel stronger, I’ll try to pick up with walking a little, but I’m not going to force it. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself now. ^^

Anyway! Thank you for listening and, once again, welcome to the site! Sorry there’s not much here to see but gimme a few days.^^

· · ·