365 days of Weight Loss

Today marks 365 days of weight loss.

Over the last year I've lost 19kgs and in total 24.

So many people have asked me how I did it, but as soon as I joke 'healthy eating & exercise, who would have thought it!' they just lose interest. I'm certain my terrible joke wasn't the cause of this. People seem to think that there should be some quick & easy way to instantly drop weight and simply aren't interested in learning about how to do it safely & consistently. Personally I didn't want a quick fix, I wanted it to come off properly. I didn't want it to bounce back on again after a few months, nor did I want to have excess skin flapping about.

24/03/2012 At a Twin Peaks themed birthday party

15/03/2013 Out to dinner at Shinbashi Yakiniku




















If you'd told me a year ago I would lose another 20kgs, I would have laughed. I'd spent four years overweight and miserable as a direct result of the weight gain. I mostly only left the house to go to work, and occasionally to see friends who I'd seen regularly over the years. I lost contact with a great many people, and stopped going to local metal gigs because I was simply too embarrassed for my old friends to see how much weight I'd piled on.

What a sad state of affairs. Surprisingly this didn't motivate me to lose weight, thinking about it all just made me sadder. A year ago I found out three of my good friends were really trying to be healthy & lose weight, and they were starting to be successful. I panicked. I didn't want to be the fattest one! It was on, just like that, a switch flipped in my head. This is probably one of the stupidest, vainest reasons to lose weight but it worked for me, so I'm not complaining.

Every day I log every calorie I eat & drink (My Fitness Pal) & try and estimate the ones burnt exercising (I love my Garmin). After a few months I started 12WBT. I had always known the basic facts of weight loss, and didn't need the support of others, however, I did need recipes. Almost every single one was delicious, and most were simple & easy to prepare. After about 3-4months I lost motivation for exercise, which I had been doing 5-6 days a week (jogging & wii zumba). This was about 1 month into 12WBT, so I ate my 1200 calories per day, and actually lost 2kgs per week while this apathy lasted. When I wasn't exercising I didn't need to eat as much. I'd often eat 1300-1400 on days of vigorous exercise. What I learnt was that you just have to be smart about it, if you don't exercise, be extra careful with your food. It's also ok to have bad days every now and then, it's ok to mess up, ultimately you're only delaying success by a day (this is something a good friend told me).

I don't feel like I've given up anything for this weight loss either, I'm just more sensible. Instead of fast food take out 4-5 times a week it's now maybe once a month. We make delicious, healthy food at home, so we don't even miss the take out, and now when we get it, it's mostly disappointing. We also decided we'd rather frequent locally owned restaurants rather than support huge international corporations like McDonalds. We still eat out at nice restaurants once or twice a month, where the quality of the food is better, and I also make sure to allocate more calories to that meal and try and do extra exercise to accommodate this treat.

I cannot believe how much better I feel now that I'm not fat. I feel amazing, healthy, fit, more energetic & motivated, and everything is just easier. I feel like saying 'thin' or 'average' doesn't really encompass the feeling of where I'm at right now, maybe in a few years when I've forgotten just how awful life was I'll be able to say 'thin' but right now the only way to describe how I feel is 'not fat'. It's a triumphant feeling.

A Food Journey

It must have been just over 3 years ago, on a dark and stormy night. No, just kidding Robert & I were actually standing in Coles having a mini-argument because I didn't want to spend the extra $3 on free range eggs compared to cage eggs, eventually we compromised on barn laid eggs. I remember this quite clearly for a seemingly mundane event. When we got home Robert explained to me how cage hens were treated and possibly even showed me a horrific video of their conditions. Needless to say we never bought cage, or even barn laid eggs again.

Back then we ate meat at almost every meal and rarely had veg/salad/fruit. I also never spared a thought about how the animals that produced our food were treated. Since the original argument over cage eggs, our approach to food has changed drastically. In such a short period of time I/we have had a total mind-shift in the way we look at food. 

Two years ago we bought 2 baby chickens. Agnes & Ripley, are possibly the most loved and spoilt chickens in the whole world.

Here Agnes is deciding which lettuce to sample, instead of shooing her away, I naturally let her sample quite a lot until I was finished taking photos.

 

We raised them from when they were just 3-4 days old, watched them grow and eventually start providing us with eggs. We've gotten to know our chickens quite well, their personalities, individual likes and dislikes and we can even differentiate between some of the noises they make. Being able to tell the difference between a tantrum and something actually being wrong is incredibly useful. Their personalities are distinct and very different to each other. Seeing and experiencing this reinforced how awful it must be for those cage hens.

Our friends recently rescued battery hens, this was even greater evidence that we are doing the right thing by caring for our own chickens and only buying free range eggs if we run short. These three girls are the saddest looking chickens, but they have improved rapidly with care and attention, their individual personalities have started to come out too. They are so cute and I can't wait to see what they'll be like in another few months to a year. 

Along came the River Cottage Veg episodes, every recipe looked amazing so we promptly bought the recipe book. Reading Hugh's philsophy on how people take meat for granted, eating too much and ignoring vegetables struck a chord with me. That was exactly what Robert & I had been doing for the last few years. We decided to cut back on meat, start making vegetables the star of our night-time meals, the Veg cookbook helped a lot. After a few weeks of mostly vegetarian meals, with the occasional meat meal we no longer noticed that our diet had been flipped upside down. Sadly at some point our lives got busy and we stopped going to the farmers market on Sunday mornings, suddenly meat from Coles crept back into being our primary diet since it was easy. It didn't take long to notice that I felt heavier (not weight-gain heavier) and more sluggish and was starting to miss our vegetable-oriented diet.

It was too easy to stop going to the farmers markets each week, and the produce at Coles is appalling. We hated supporting an organisation that doesn't pay the farmers appropriately, and orders in produce from overseas which is kept in cold storage for months before the consumers can eat it. However, this was our only option if we didn't go to the markets. We needed a better permanent solution.

A friend mentioned Food Connect (http://www.facebook.com/FoodConnectBrisbane?fref=ts) to us. Essentially farmers box up fruit and/or vegetables which then get delivered to a city cousin where the end consumer collects it. We signed up last week, and picked up our first box on Wednesday. We ordered a Mixed Gourmet box for $55. The farmers actually receive most of the money we pay for the box, this was the primary reason we chose to try Food Connect, the fresh produce is a bonus.

I could barely lift the box, but considering how weak I am I didn't think that much of it, and then I opened it. There was so much produce it was overwhelming! This box is designed for two people for one week, I was left wondering how on earth two people are supposed to eat this much food.

This poses a challenge. Not only to my fridge tetris skills, but now each Wednesday night we will need to design the coming weeks menu based on the contents of the box. Some of it will be matched to the bulk super butcher meat that lives in our freezer. I cannot wait to test our skills cooking to the constraints/possibilities of eating local, fresh, seasonal produce!

The lady finger bananas, when unwrapped smell like banana lollies, I had no idea the smell of those lollies was modelled off actual fresh banana scent. That is sad, clearly I had never smelled a fresh banana before.



I have talked about the new found importance we place on eating locally grown food and supporting farmers rather than multimillion dollar corporations. I had never really thought about this as a goal to work towards until Robert sent me a delicious looking recipe on the 30 Pounds of Apples blog (http://www.30poundsofapples.com/). I found her outlook on her eating habits fascinating and surprisingly familiar. We were already trying to reduce the amount of money we spend at the big supermarkets in favour of supporting local businesses and farmers, and we were already trying to limit our consumption of fast food for healthy eating purposes. I feel she was able to clearly articulate what we were already trying to achieve and as a result I feel more passionate about the ideas we are trying to implement since it now seems like a goal we can work towards.

I feel like we are trying to achieve something worthwhile, not purchasing sub standard produce nor meat that has been kept in truly miserable conditions. Whilst we are only two people, perhaps eventually enough people will become motivated to eat ethically and the systems in place will change positively.

Knife misadventures

I cannot believe I dropped a knife into my foot. The universe hates me enough to use bad luck and gravity to imbed the largest, heaviest knife I own in my foot. To think about how much worse it could have been if the knife had punctured just about anywhere else in my foot makes me feel sick.

Stitches were something I'd never had to endure before, but the idea had always creeped me out. Think about it, actually sewing skin together! It makes me shudder. Of course the local anesthetic eliminated any pain, but the tugging sensation was still present.

I think in future I may take 'knife safety' slightly more seriously. Transporting knifes balanced on top of slippery plastic cutting boards will be top of my 'things not to do list'.

Weekend Adventures

Saturday was spent at work, 6am-1:30pm no break, I could certainly get used to being home by 2pm, imagine how much more personal time I could have. Unfortunately the service industry demands sticking to business hours (mostly).

Today was quite productive, went to the markets at 6am, they were packed full of people walking really slowly. grr. Then home to make a Maple, Cinnamon & Pecan Cheesecake with the leftover gingerbread house as the biscuit base.

After lunch we headed into the city to see Trolljegeren at the Tribal Cinema (which still smells like a toilet). It was good to see it on the big screen, but it didn't look as good as the Blu Ray rip I saw about 6mths ago, will definately have to buy it on BluRay.

Now we're off to see Voyager!! and Children of Bodom, I have my standards set very low, so maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised :)

A weekend of stitching

Not a particularly eventful weekend. Saturday was spent cutting out the decorations for my skirt, and Sunday was spent starting the massive task of hand-sewing the decorations onto the skirt. I could not have undertaken a more ridiculous project. Including a couple of extra hours tonight, I've now spent about 11 hours sewing and I'm barely half way through the front side of the skirt. The original plan was to decorate the entire skirt, this has now been scaled back to just the front, with the remainder to be finished after Halloween.

I also attempted Couch to 5k day one again, hopefully I'll be able to continue this time... 4th attempt lucky :p. Loving my new Garmin GPS watch thingy, it is strangely motivating.

Very much looking forward to Halloweeen next weekend! end non-exciting weekend update.

Oktoberfest weekend

Saturday morning we were up bright and early to go meat shopping at Yatala. First stop was the Super Butcher, $150 later we left and went to Götzinger where we spent $110, but got a discount and only paid $100 :D. Then we had Yatala Pie (nom) before coming home. With our freezers packed full of delicious meat I headed off to high tea with my uni friend. It was reasonably delicious. There were a few stand out items: the lemon curd tarts and this weird fruit (which tasted like an apple/pear and looked like a cherry) sitting in white chocolate custard.

I pre-ordered Eragon book 4, and got what I thought was a super dodgy childrens book about the world in which Eragon is set for free. It's surprisingly good. Children's pop up books are fantastic! Kids these days are so lucky, I was flipping through the book pulling out all the pop up stuff and things in envelopes before Robert yelled at me to save the suprises for while I read it. What a party pooper! (He was right, but that's irrelevant).

Oktoberfest was awesome fun, I can't believe I was totally cool with being the only person (out of 18) who dressed up. The sausages, potato salad and sauerkraut were delicious! Everything was eaten except for three Nurnberger sausages, two of which I ate for lunch today!

Today has been spent starting my halloween costume! The hat is done, except I'll probably have to glue down a few sections if they come loose during the week (it looks awesome! maybe slightly out of proportion to my head (too large, but that's better than it being too small)).

I have changed my mind at least a half dozen times about what my skirt will look like/ be decorated with, finally I decided on the type & colour of skirt, and as a result it's currently sewn up to the point just before the elastic casing is done. I hate elastic, personally I think is dodgy and a bit bogan, but sometimes it can't be avoided :/.

Every night this week and next is probably going to be spent adding elements to the skirt - and the end product is going to be a surprise, even though I'm dying to tell you what it is :p

Another semi-productive weekend

I started out with grand plans to make feta this weekend. It didn't happen, which is disappointing, however after picking up a few essential stainless steel utensils I'm now only 1 large stainless steel pot away from being able to make most cheeses. I doubt I'll feel like it after Oktoberfest next weekend, so in two weeks plus four days aging I will be snacking on homemade feta.

The weekend wasn't a waste though, I made lasagne meat sauce yesterday and the whole thing is currently in the oven, doesn't look too bad considering I lost my recipe and had to wing it. I even went to the market specifically to buy eggplant and mushrooms to go in it, yet came home with everything other than those two items. frowny face.

This weekend also saw our first attempt at infusing alcohol with fat molecules (thanks The Geek Cookbook). I added melted butter into a cup of rum and let it sit on the bench over night. It then went into the freezer so the fat would solidify and then was filtered through a coffee filter. It smells amazing, but we haven't tasted it yet.

This afternoon I started on my Oktoberfest costume. I SEWED! For the first time since home economics in 1998. I'm disturbed by how easily I remembered everything, it's like because I'm female I'm genetically wired to know this stuff :p. I managed one perfect seam (the first one) then everything went to shit, everything that could go wrong went wrong, 20 minutes later I finished the second seam (a straight line about 1 meter long *rolls eyes*). I had to stop because somehow the threads around the bobbin got caught and had to be cut, but I couldn't remember how to re-thread it. A you tube video later and I'm good to go again. However, I did successfully re-thread the top thread without you tube. A couple more seams, a gathered top edge followed by attaching a ribbon and it'll be done! So excited.

I have also decided upon my halloween costume. It's random but cool. It will also require the acquisition of new craft skills.