AND STILL MORE TURNING THE CORNER

During July I celebrated another birthday, this one taking me closer to the 50s than the 40s. I’m ok with that though. Age is a number and I’ve been told many times that I look good (fit, healthy, good skin etc) that the number is irrelevant. I have days where I feel 26 and others where I feel 86 so the actual number is pffft.

Our family is BIG on celebrating birthdays. I had a dinner out with my husband where I ate oven-roasted quail with a fairly robustly flavoured risotto. I love both of the dishes so the combination was gastronomic heaven. No room for dessert that night. The following evening my bestie cooked a dinner for me and I shared all my holiday delights with her (my shopping). Another lovely meal with a small dessert and a few wines on both occasions.

A week later my mum cooked my favourite meal including my most favourite dessert (100% home-made vanilla slice). I have it once a year and its superb. For the first time I showed some restraint in my portions chalking up yet another success. Tomorrow mum and I are going out for the day. There will be shopping, a movie, coffee, lunch and a good chinwag. Its such a great day and I know that it wont result in a big pigout as has been the case previously.

In fact through all of these celebrations I have eaten well for all other meals, trained regularly and not allowed it to turn into another big eating-free-for-all. I’ve even lost a small amount of weight instead of gaining the usual 2-3 kgs of bloat (and about 1kg of scale weight) that accompanies such celebrations. Woohoo that’s another first for me and another run on the board.

The other thing that I’ve achieved which has eluded me for years is that today I have completed a binge-free month. Yes there has been no binging whatsoever this month and I’m pretty pleased with myself about it. Until now I’d start every month with the goal of not binging and I’d never make it past a few days. It was so debilitating and made me feel like such a failure so its great to finally kick that destructive habit out of my life.

So here’s to a great August continuing in the positive spirit of July. I hope you join me for the interesting journey I have ahead.

Cheers

Magda

MORE TURNING THE CORNER

Soon after my second session with the SP we left for our Singapore holiday. I must admit I wasnt in good spirits at all. I felt fat and pudgy and very disappointed that my previous efforts to lose weight for the holiday had failed. What was I thinking when I packed a pair of white shorts to wear over there?? Eeegads they looked awful further adding to my feelings of despair. Nevertheless I put on a brave face and pretended that I was having a ball.

OMG then I had to decide how to tackle the shopping. Here was my chance to seriously wear out my credit card but I couldnt think of anything worse than buying all these fat clothes. But the Great Singapore Sale had to be taken advantge of so I made a decision to "buy for the future". Whenever I saw something that I'd normally like and wanted to buy, I'd try it on and then buy the size smaller. In one shop I tried on a gorgeous dress and in a 12 it was a perfect fit. When I told the shop assistant I wanted the size 10 and got my card out to pay for it she was gobsmacked and teetered around asking if the dress was for me (obviously thinking I was insane or totally delusional). So I confidently replied that it was my Christmas present to myself and by Christmas I would NOT be the size I am now. It would fit. I'm sure she then thought I was definitely insane but WHO CARES. It will fit and it'll look fantastic.

So I shopped my little heart out and the opportunity wasnt wasted. In fact I got some fantastic stuff that just made my day and helped to lift my spirits.

The other thing that lifted my spirits was my decision to exercise and eat well during the holiday. Feeling so fat and awful at the start, I stepped on the scales in the gym on Day 1 and decided that I didnt want to see the number go higher. So I didnt stuff myself at the breakfast buffet nor at the dinner buffet. When we had beer-o'clock I had a couple of handfuls of nuts instead of about 10 handfuls. I rarely ate dessert but took a liking to a sweet called nonya way (spelling???) which was of a gluttinous rice texture with coconut and ????? A small piece after dinner was all I wanted and I was happy with that. And this time instead of just talking about exercising every day, I actually DID IT. Sometimes I just did a little prehab work in our room (thanks Liz) or I did weights in the gym, incline walks on the treadmill or a walk or walk/jog along the beachfront. The latter being my absolute favourite. It was about 30 minutes /day but it made the world of difference for how I felt each day and how I managed my diet.

For the first time ever in my life I came home weighing the same as when I went away (and in fact less if you discount the crappy airport food and wierd meal times on the trip home). I have never achieved this before as holidays have always been an eating free for all. A breakfast buffet would mean a big plate of toast, eggs, bacon, mushrooms, hash browns and whatever else looked good in big quantities. Then I'd have pastries. Yes you read that right pastriES (3 or 4 usually - again if it looked good, it'd have to be eaten). And this mindset would continue throughout the day for every day we were away. A 3-4kg gain used to be the norm for me.

So thats another installment in my renewed life. Small changes but huge impact. I came home so much happier than when I went away. I have a lot of work ahead of me to get to a good weight and a shape I'm happy with but the difference is that this time I have a quiet confidence that I'll do it and I'll do it happily without feeling like I'm stuck on Struggle Street, battling my demons every day.

:-) Magda

TURNING THE CORNER

Hello to anybody who may still be dropping by to see if I'm still on the face of this earth.

Yes I am and I have so much to write about that I think it'll take a few installments. In case you're yawning and ready to flick me off I urge you to stay tuned even if just for a few paragraphs as I believe I have some interesting stuff to report. Now less waffle and let me get on with it.

As you may remember from my earlier blog posts I had reached a point of total desperation and complete lack of belief in myself a couple of months ago. My binge eating was constant and I felt powerless to change it. I just repeated the same destructive behaviours over and over again, never seeing a way to break the cycle. So I bit the bullet and sought help in the form of a Sports Psyche (SP).

After my first visit I had some positive feelings and could start to see a way forward. I had a second visit just before going on holidays and I felt like we really made some inroads after some very frank discussion, realisations, analysis, advice and her just being bloody good at her job. I can honestly say that I left that session feeling different, thinking different and ready to act different. So I was quick to put my new approach to the test and that I did (I'll expand on it later) and by golly IT WORKED.

After my holiday (again I'll expand on it in another post) I went back for my 3rd session and reported on all I had done, not done, thought, felt and believed and it was obvious that I didnt need to see her anymore. I HAVE NOT BINGED FOR SEVERAL WEEKS AND I FEEL LIKE A NEW (AND IMPROVED) PERSON.

So what's different? Now I understand how some of my thoughts and beliefs were setting me up for repeated failure. I was giving myself no choice but to binge and continue my negative cycle. So I had to let go of some of those beliefs, remove some of my self-imposed rules and view things quite differently. I had this conviction that eating off plan or having "treat food" or similar was a disaster. If I ate off plan (which I did regularly), all good was undone and therefore I may as well have a complete free for all. The SP kept drumming it into me that food is just food and I needed to remove the emotion from certain foods. So if I ate a piece of cake I was not to view that as a disaster (which then gave me licence to keep eating cake cause well I'd blown it all anyway). So I ate some cake and was able to stop at one piece. AMAZING. So I did it again and again stopped at one piece. I ate cheese and crackers and stopped without feeling like I wanted to devour the whole lot. I was thinking differently so I could act differently. OMG IT WAS WORKING.

Thats a very simplified version of it all but I dont need to go back to the SP unless I hit a "hiccup" (her words) and I need to refocus. I'm doing ok. Over the last few weeks I've faced several situations which previously would have had me eating out of control, justifying that I deserved it, what-was-the-point-of-trying-to-eat-well, OMG-the-diet-will-start-on-Monday-so-I-better-eat-everything-bad-that-I-can-possibly-get-my-hands-on and I've hardly been tempted to revert to my old ways.

I'm still fat but I'm working on changing that. I have new skills and a new outlook that will help me achieve my goals instead of making it a bloody hard battle to fight. But the biggest difference is that I finally feel happy within and not just on the surface for show. It may sound corny but I honestly feel like a different person and I look to my health and fitness future with hope and happiness in my heart.

:-) Magda