Such a sweet man

Another of those unexpected side effects...

Now, when my darling man goes away on business trips, he can bring me back a tee-shirt! I like tee-shirts from different places (so long as they say where they're from!).

He knew getting one that was too small made me feel like crap, so didn't take the risk at all. Let's face it, most places didn't even sell them in my size!

Now, he can just grab a 16. If it's a bit small, I can say 'Okay, I'll just shrink into it'.

Sometime next year he can start grabbing 14s.

Tonight I'm wearing my new tee shirt from Queenstown. Next week I should get one from New Plymouth.

He won't be able to bring me one from Fiji, though. There's no way he taking that business trip without me!

Triathlon update - end of week 1

So, I had a pretty good week of training. In fact, I only missed one thing all week, and that was the extra walk I had in for Thursday. I went skincare/cosmetics shopping at Kirkaldies instead!

Saturday my bike ride consisted of riding 20 minutes to the gym, working out, then riding home. I know EXACTLY where my quads are after that!

A couple of milestones for me this week - ran a kilometre non-stop for the first time, and made it through the series of small hills at the end of our valley without getting off my bike.

Moments like that make the whole thing seem more possible.

Coping with Christmas

Right, you lot - we need a plan here.

31 sleeps till Santa and you know the food temptations are just going to increase.

So far I've come through the first half dozen or so Christmas functions relatively unscathed. But there are more to come, and then the holiday itself.

The upcoming events most likely to cause me problems:
A golf day in Martinborough. I won't be playing golf, but I will go for the wine-tasting and the dinner.
Taking clients to the corporate box to watch NZ vs Aus in 1 day cricket. Potentially not too bad - the way the Black Caps are playing, Australia should have it all cleaned up in a couple of hours.
Countless lunches with suppliers. I'm usually okay with these - don't drink alcohol at them and eat salad!
Work Christmas dinner.
Mum and Dad's 50th wedding anniversary.
Christmas Day itself.
10 days camping with the whanau.

We all know it is going to be very easy to get derailed by the next few weeks. Socialising and the festive season go hand-in-hand with eating, drinking and general over-indulgence.

So, I need to make a plan now. I need a way to cope with all of this without setting myself back a month or so.

I am currently a 22 point a day person. From now until I go on holiday, all days without an 'event' will be 20 point days.

I will continue to not indulge in wine at lunches.

My calendar is relatively clear for the next week, so I can save lots of points for the golf day next Friday. I'll need them, because the wine in Martinborough is superb!

Save points again for the work Christmas dinner the following Friday. I don't usually enjoy these, but this year I will forgo my usual tactic of polishing off most of a bottle of champagne while getting ready to go!

The day at the cricket - limit my alcohol, drink plenty of water.

And then comes the camping holiday, which also encompasses the anniversary party and Christmas Day. Check out where we stay in Kerikeri here.

Food-wise we're not usually too bad when we're camping - lots of salads and barbecues, that sort of thing. It's the drinking, and the nibbles with drinks, that can cause the problem.

The drinking will often go like this:
A beer with lunch.
A couple of mid-afternoon beers or a bottle of bubbles because it's too hot to do anything but sit under the trees, talking and drinking.
A gin (or two) around 6 o'clock as we start getting dinner ready.
Wine with dinner.
Wine and talking after dinner.

My new camping drinking plan goes like this:
No beer, at all, ever.
No drinking alcohol with lunch.
Only mineral water for the mid-afternoon drink.
One pre-dinner gin (some things I can't give up completely).
One glass of wine with dinner.
Mineral water after dinner.
Drinking rules will be relaxed for the anniversary party and Christmas Day.

My camping eating plan goes like this:
Main meals - watch the portions and the dressings and sauces.
No desserts.
Make sure afternoon nibbles include veggies, rice crackers and salsa for me.
DO NOT visit Makana - the most amazing chocolate factory in the world, just up the road.

I'm not hoping to lose weight while I'm away, but I would like to maintain. I will still be doing my triathlon training, so that will help.

I'm also aware that I probably won't stick to these rules every single day. But going in with a plan will help minimise the damage that I could do if I had no plan at all.

So, come on, have you made your plan?

Triathlon stuff

You can see this week's training programme in the sidebar now. I've added some of my own things to it too (the stuff in brackets). There are some gym sessions to keep up the toning and conditioning, and some extra walks so my poor wee doggy doesn't feel too neglected.

Did the first swim session this morning. The 500m actually consisted of: 50m warmup, 300m continuous swimming (still in my mix of freestyle and breast stroke), 50m back stroke, 50m breast stroke and 50m warmdown. Of course it's hard to tell the difference between the warmup and the rest of it - I only really have one speed!

I have a fabulous training partner - a good friend and work colleague who is doing the triathlon as well. At the moment we are doing our two swims a week together and trying to fit in a bike ride in the weekend. However, anyone from Wellington will be able to tell you there was no bike riding yesterday - northerlies gusting to 80kmh put us right off.

Yesterday Mark and I drove to Porirua and had a look at the triathlon course. The bike ride wasn't as bad as I'd imagined - there is a fairly long uphill, but it's relatively gentle.

The run looks like it might be a bit tougher though! Part of it is through bush on a walking track. It climbs about 75m, then, as described by the course notes 'drops steeply' down again. I'm not keen on running down hill. We'll go out next week and walk it to get the feel of it.

So, the serious training has begun. I'm really looking forward to seeing how my fitness improves through this time. I hope to be able to come on here soon and skite about being able to run for half an hour without stopping!

Do a little dance

Do a little dance,
Make a little lurrrve,
Get down tonight!



So many things to celebrate today. And it's all about numbers. Where shall I start?

Let's start with a big round number. 40kg. That's how much I have lost as of this morning's weigh-in. Yep, you read it right. I HAVE LOST 40KG! That's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, ... oh, sod typing all that, you get the picture - heaps and heaps.

How about another number? 30. That's my BMI now, which puts me just out of the obese range and just into the overweight range. My starting BMI was 43!

More numbers? How about 16. That's the size of my new shirts (down from 24/26) and the size of my new jeans (down from 24) - bought from a 'normal' size shop for the first time in 12 years.

Phew!

So, I'm going to use more number to set myself a new goal. My triathlon is in 12 weeks. By then, I want lose another 10kg.

It's been a long time coming!

Compared to (this pic was taken at Week 16, when I'd lost 23kg, so down to 109.5kg)






Added later. Sorry Emily, couldn't load my original profile pic, but here's one from my 40th birthday party! This is a couple of weeks before I started at WW - 132.5kg.

I'm having a passionate affair!

With steamed vegetables.

They are an absolute delight. So easy to make, such beautiful colours, such fabulous flavour.

This is the perfect time of year for steamed vegetables. There is so much choice and everything is so fresh. Today for lunch I will have carrots, beans, asparagus (yummmm) and baby leeks, all sliced and steamed with nine little chicken and corn dim sim, served with a dipping sauce of chilli sauce and balsamic vinegar. An absolute taste sensation for just 4.5 points.

Steamed vegetables are my current top food passion. What is yours?

Glug!

Well, after my rather inauspicious start, I am now swimming twice a week.

I am finding this to be the hardest part of my triathlon training. I am seriously bad at it. Bad enough to have someone snarl at me this morning for being too slow for the slow lane.

I just can't get the hang of freestyle. It's that whole breathing thing, really. Can't get into any sort of rhythm.

I am currently swimming 400m breastroke. So, that's fine, as the triathlon swim is only 300m. If I have to, I can do the whole thing breastroke.

But that doesn't feel right, damnit. I want to do it freestyle. I want to cut through the water like a torpedo.

I've tried alternating lengths between freestyle and breastroke, but still end up going 'Glug' and not being able to finish my freestyle length.

So I hit on a new method this morning. I start each length freestyle and then change to breastroke when it gets too hard. I've counted the strokes I do and will increase it by 2 strokes each week. I'll be swimming the Cook Strait before you know it!

Which is a lovely metaphor for lots of obstacles we meet in life. If you can't beat it all at once, do it a little bit at a time.

Day off

Yesterday I felt incredibly sick of watching my food, counting my points and all the rest of the palaver.

So I gave myself an evening off and Mark and I went out for dinner.

Whitebait entrees of course - fritter for him, flash fried for me.

I then had a rib-eye steak. It came with an ENORMOUS serving of fries, of which I ate less than a dozen. The rest of the plate was occupied by a piece of beef the size of Jerry Collins' bicep. I managed to eat less than half.

We then shared a platter of scrumptious petit fours, of which not a skerrick was left on the plate.

Felt good. No trouble being back on track today.

Jerry Collins is the All Blacks' blindside flanker. The man is pure muscle and the toughest man in world rugby. Bar none.

Whinge, moan, complain - and, furthermore, bleat!

Now I have no issues with being a weekend motorbike widow. In fact, not only do I love the fact that he is so into his hobby, I encourage it.

Quite a few of his mates have been know to comment "Jeez, your missus is bloody good about letting you ride all weekend".

If only they knew the truth. I love having him out of the house in the weekend, because it gives me my own space. In fact, I've been known to wake him before 7am on the weekends with a cheery "It's a beautiful day for riding. Now get up and f**k off".

And there's no problem with him getting things done around the house. Because he's out all day he makes up for it by rushing around in the evenings, doing the washing, hanging pictures, tidying the garage, etc.

So, why the title of this post? What am I complaining about?

Well, he and some of the boys have decided to hire the racetrack at Manfield for the day. They'll tool around on their racebikes, getting in some practice, fiddling with the set-ups and just generally being blokes. Being blokes involves drinking lots of coffee, smoking lots of cigarettes and telling lots of tall tales.

Again, I have no problem with this. Except that today is Friday.

Friday is my no-exercise day. My alarm goes at 6.30am instead of 5.30am. I wander around in a leisurely way, having breakfast and getting ready for work.

But not this Friday. No. His lordship had to get up at 4.30am to get to the racetrack in time. And guess who gets to wake him up, kick him out of bed and then go downstairs to make him a thermos of coffee for the trip?

I've come out!

Everyone in my family now knows about me losing weight. I had deliberately not been telling the ones who don't live locally, as I preferred to keep it to myself for a while.

Over the last few months I've seen my parents and most of my siblings, so they've all caught up with the changes. I realised yesterday that the only one who didn't know was the sister who lives in Adelaide. So I rang her last night and told her. She is very excited about my news.

One of my motivations that I haven't shared with everyone is that we're having one of our family gatherings in December. We like to have these big gatherings for things like decade birthdays - my 40th was the last one, in March. I'm the last one to turn 40 (there are five of us) and the first 50th is a couple of years away.

But this gathering is an extra special one. It is Mum and Dad's golden wedding anniversary - that's right, 50 years married!

We're having the do in Kerikeri on 17 December, which is the actual day of the anniversary (and Mum's 72nd birthday). It is a lunch at the yacht club followed by dessert at Mum and Dad's house.

We're all descending on the place at various times in the previous week, and then most of us will stay for Christmas. We'll basically take over a camping ground - a nice, quiet one just out of town.

My lovely parents will have in attendance: their 5 children, 4 partners of children, 8 of their 10 grandchildren and 1 of their 2 great-grandchildren. As well as lots of other relatives, old friends, new friends and sailing buddies.

Looking forward to a really lovely family time, and to the fact that I will look and feel completely different from last time we all got together.

Don't just dish it out...

Sometimes I catch myself leaving these smug little comments on other people's blogs, dishing out advice on all sorts of things.

What makes me such an expert - absolutely nothing, especially if I'm not even following my own advice!

So, for this last week I've been trying to put some of it into practice - starting with 'Challenge yourself'.

I'm pretty good at the exercise thing - plenty of variety, cardio, fat-burning and strength work. But I wasn't really pushing myself.

So I have now LEAPT out of my comfort zone. No more of this wimpy fast-walking on the treadmill. No more kidding myself that introducing the occasional 1 minute jog makes any difference.

I now run (well, jog fast) for 20 minutes on the treadmill. This produces an enormous amount of sweat. And my face goes bright red, which is an unfortunate contrast with my now-blonde hair. But, boy does it feel good.

In three weeks I'm going to start my 12-week build-up to the triathlon. I had two training programmes to chose from - 'Zero to Heroine in 12 weeks' or 'The Next Level'. Well, I'm not going to label myself a zero, so I'm going for the next level.

Now I just need to get up the courage to go back in the pool.

For those of you who might be interested, my training programmes come from the triathlon site www.tri.co.nz. There are some great programmes and exercise tips, even if you're not actually heading towards an event.

Odd happenings in my bedroom

If you think this is a post about kinky sex, you will be disappointed.

I had about 40 teenagers at my house yesterday. I don't think they were having kinky sex either. At least not at that stage of the evening.

They were all there about 5pm, dressed in their good suits and pretty frocks (boys in suits, girls in frocks). I was holding the pre-ball party, complete with food and (temporarily) non-alcoholic punch. They preened and flirted and tried to drink enough to get a bit of a buzz without having so much they wouldn't be allowed into the ball. It was lots of fun.

Then just before 7 the bus they'd organised came and whisked them away.

I was left with my empty house and not too much cleaning up - except I had to wash the kitchen floor three times.

So what of the bedroom happenings?

Just before everyone arrived, I brought in a load of washing. And left it in the basket on my bed. After they'd gone, I discovered my washing had been folded. And sorted into piles. My undies. Mark's undies. Mark's socks. My tops. Mark's tee-shirts. There was one seriously disturbed 16 or 17 year old in that group of kids.

Weather report

We've had lovely weather for most of the week. The evenings are getting longer and there are noticeably more people out walking and enjoying the spring.

But today is Friday. As I look out my office window, it is damp and grey, with clouds flying by as Wellington experiences one of its famous southerlies.

Why has the weather reverted to winter?

Because it's a long weekend.

To all the Kiwis out there, please take care on the roads this weekend.

Something's wrong here...

Yesterday I finally took my new bike for its first outing.

Just a quiet toodle around the waterfront for about 20 minutes. And it really didn't feel right. My knees were coming up too high, and my legs were still quite bent when the pedal was at the bottom.

So when I got home, I got my resident fitness adviser (the teenager) to help me work out what was wrong.

'It's pretty simple, Mum, you just need to put the seat up further.'

'But then my feet won't reach the ground when I stop.'

'Mother, it's not a motorbike. You don't need to keep your arse on the seat when you stop!'

'Oh, okay, so you just get off the seat before you stop, right?'

I think you can all picture him walking away, slowly shaking his head.

A plan so cunning...

One of the things I decided when I started on the weight loss thing, was that I don't want to be the heaviest in our house anymore. Fair enough, and at 35kg lost I no longer out-weigh everyone else by more than 50kg!

But with the guys both hovering around the 80/81kg mark, I'm still a good 15kg over.

So, I've come up with a two-pronged attack to counter this.
Prong 1 - I keep losing weight - obvious and easy!
Prong 2 - make one of them get heavier. How cunning is that.

I figure that at age 48 and having held the same weight for over 10 years, Mark is a lost cause.

So Jake will have to be the victim of my evil plan.

I started the attack this morning by weighing him. 80.4kg. This is going to take some work.

I then pointed out that while that was a respectable enough weight for a winger, locks need more bulk (he changed from winger to lock near the end of this rugby season). Especially because lots of our forwards are 100kg plus.

So we decided 90kg would be a good mark to aim for, and he has till March before weigh-in for next season.

Our 1st XV gets free gym membership at the local rugby club and will start summer training soon. They each get a position-specific training programme - Jake will need to build up his thighs and shoulders in particular.

So, once he starts that, I'm going to help him increase his protein intake and generally improve his nutrition so he can add bulk. Then hopefully he won't get snapped like a twig when contact training starts.

And the great thing is - he thinks I'm doing all this with his best interests at heart!

Poor sod doesn't suspect a thing.

30 weeks!

30 weeks and 35.9kg gone.

Time for a bit of navel-gazing.

Here's a collection of random thoughts...

This is the longest time I've stuck to a weight-control programme. Which bears out the feeling I had when I started - that this is the right time to change my lifestyle; this time it will stick.

I feel great. I'm fit, my skin is clear, my eyes are bright. If I could find my tail, I'm sure it would be bushy!

At times I've felt a bit selfish and self-absorbed. But it's worth it. Sometimes you need to take time in your life to concentrate on yourself. In the long run, it will be good for everyone. (I haven't articulated that very well, hope you get my drift)

I love all the support, encouragement and compliments I've had from people.

But in the end, I love how I feel about myself even more.

I know I've said it before...

...but, jeez, I just love you guys!

My particular inspiration today comes from the Divine Miss M and her Puff n Stuff post.

She talks about the unexpected challenge of walking with some colleagues at lunch time and finding they exercise much harder than she is used to.

Did she give up when she realised how fast they walked? HELL NO! She kept going, while silently hoping for the lights to change so she could catch up when they waited to cross the street.

Isn't that like so many of our blog-friends? Rising to meet new challenges and constantly pushing ourselves harder.

Life keeps chucking tomatoes at us, and we keep making fat-free gazpacho!

No, thanks!

No, thanks, I don't actually need your weirdo fad diet.

Last week I bumped into someone who knew I've been losing weight, but hasn't seen me in a couple of months.

She was blown away by how much I've lost and showered me with compliments (something I'll never get tired of!).

Then, she told me all about this diet I just had to try - one of those things where you de-tox by eating nothing but raw veggies etc.

Have to say I was pretty dumbfounded by this! Sort of looked at her with my mouth open.

And managed not to say "Look, I've lost 35 kilos. I've done that by eating good food in controlled portions and by getting lots of exercise. What make you think I need this diet?"

I know she was just trying to help. But, really, I think my way is working.

Okay so far

Well, I've had a few days off tracking and still had a good loss this week. Mostly because we were so busy in Auckland I didn't get around to eating much. And one of the good things about staying in apartments is that there's nothing in the cupboards for me to 'graze' on late at night.

I have no intention of staying off counting points for long - just this weekend away at the snow and I'll be straight back into it.

Thanks everyone for your support - it gives me renewed motivation to know I've got such lovely people watching over me.

Not really looking forward to the drive to the mountain tonight - the weather forecast is pretty awful. I'll try to get away by mid-afternoon so I can do most of the journey before dark, and will just take it easy on the drive.

Lots of the family have been up ski-ing all week, so we'll have a great weekend of catching up.