Walking on sunshine

What a difference a weekend makes - especially when the sun shines! How much more cheerful and positive everyone is. Of course an All Blacks win over the Wallabies helps as well!

Had all the kids and their partners over for brunch yesterday. It's always lovely to get them all together in one place - and see how well they get on. And of course it's nice to be able to sit in the back yard instead of huddling inside.

I have a pretty busy week coming up - off to Auckland on Wednesday, then to Melbourne Thursday (for one meeting) and back to Wellington Friday. The shitty flight schedule means the only direct flight gets me home just after midnight.

This means it will be a challenging week for fitting in exercise - if I can manage something for two of those three days I will be going well.

Speaking of exercise - the fitness class on Saturday was lots of fun. Craig really sucked at Fight-do; the co-ordination was just beyond him. But he's never done anything like that before, so I think a few more tries would find him quite enjoying it. We both fell for spin big-time - not sure how well we can fit it into our schedule though. I'm going to try to do a class of something each week (apart from this week).

Pathetic whiny begging

Hi guys

I hate to sound all needy and pathetic...but you folk with private blogs....because I changed my email address on blogger I lost all my access....and there are some of you who have never invited me....and I'm feeling sooo unloved.

Please, please, please ask me to be your friend?

I promise I'll be nice as pie.

(and I won't sob too much if you don't invite me)

Trying not to complain...

...but really, this weather is past a joke. Feels like it's been winter for four months already. Of course, being Wellington, it will stay winter till early September and then blow 40 bastards till Christmas...

Starting to see some downward movement on the scales. I'm feeling very motiviated, but know I need to watch this because I've been here about a gazillion times in the last two years.

Exercise is great - it's all what I'd call 'high value' stuff; basically working really hard at it instead of faffing about. Tomorrow I'm aiming to do 10,000m on the rowing machine and Saturday Craig and I are booked into an introductory fitness class at our gym - a sampler of all their different fitness classes. Craig has never done a class before (and I've only done a couple) so it should be interesting. He enjoyed this style of exercise while we were at Outward Bound - although the co-ordination of grapevines and box steps had him a bit buggered. Maybe I can smuggle a camera in...

In the meantime, trying to stay warm - and using photos of our big trip in January to remind me summer will come again.


Henderson Bay in the Far North - this one was a must-stop for a swim!

Do I look hot and bothered? I should hope so! We rode into Pandora Bay (north of Spirits' Bay on the way to Cape Reinga). There are no roads, just this rough track, most of which was impossible to ride. But the reward - a completely deserted and absolutely beautiful beach. This photo was taken at the top of the ridge on the way back out; over an hour of pushing the bikes uphill and the temperature was over 30. Wouldn't have missed it for the world.

Sunrise over Houhora Harbour. Bliss.

Shenanagyms

There's this woman at our gym who I call Tinkerbell (not to her face - just in a bitchy way in my own head). The nickname came about the first time I saw her run backwards on the treadmill - yes, you did read that right. Why would you even come up with the idea to try something like that? I think it helps her see who is watching her.

She obviously is/was a dancer and is very supple. Which she like to show everyone. One of her more disturbing habits is stretching on the treadmill (not while it's moving). She likes to bend down to touch the ground with her legs straight. Which makes her very short shorts ride up and give us all a most unbecoming display. We are left in no doubt this woman has had a Brazilian. Not something we needed to know.

Tinkerbell spends hours at the gym every day. Seriously, she's always there when we arrive and still there when we leave. No matter what time or what day we go. Maybe she's stalking us and manages to arrive just before we do? Or maybe she lives in the changing rooms - they're pretty comfortable with the sauna, steam room, television, lounging chair thingies, hair dryers, ghds...

But you never really see her do anything. She'll get on the treadmill, walk for a minute or two, treat us all to her stretching display, maybe throw in a quick backwards run for good measure and then just wander off again. Or you'll see her wander past with a couple of weights in her hand, and then wander back and put them on the rack.

Maybe it's just that in the winter, the gym is a warmer place to be than living in Neverland with Peter Pan and the Lost Boys.

The weight and food thing

It’s now over two years since I ended my previous relationship. At that point I weighed around 78kg – a loss of around 55kg.

I then proceeded to fall madly in love with most unseemly haste. Craig and I have been together for two years. Along with insane happiness came the apparently inevitable weight creep – about 5kg in the next six months or so.

And then the great crash – bike crash that is. That cartwheel on my mountain bike on New Year’s Day 2008 resulted in a grade 4 dislocation of my AC joint and a ruptured rotator cuff. My decision to avoid surgery left me inactive for six months.

So there I was in May last year, just back from a trip to Europe with two of my sisters, pretty damn unfit and weighing in at 88kg.

I determinedly buckled down to some serious exercise and weight control. Well, the exercise thing has stuck – and so has the weight!

I can maintain the discipline about my eating for a couple of weeks, maybe a month and then I get all slack again and the weight creeps back up. Or we go on holiday and I eat and drink like the end is nigh!

So, the lightest I’ve been in the last year is 82kg and the heaviest is 88kg.

I’m not despondent about this, but I DO want to do something about it.

One of the problems here is self-control. Oh dear, what a blindingly obvious thing to say! Let me explain a bit further…

I want to control my own eating. I don’t want to go back to using something else to control my eating – like counting points, planning every last mouthful or following a food plan.

I need to be able to do this my way – because I need to be able to do this for the rest of my life.

I want to just cook everyday meals – but make them healthy and get the portion size right for me. I want to have the occasional treat – occasional has to mean once or twice a week, not a day.

So, here I go again, trying to get this last 15kg off. And the first week has been a huge success – I weigh the same today as I did last Monday!

Oh well, try harder this week….

Just stuff

Remember those random bullet point posts from the past? Here's another one, as a sort of general update.

Would I like to have won that $36million lotto draw last week? Of course. Would I swap how my life is now for that money? No way.

What's Jake doing? Trying to get into the Fire Service. He was unsuccessful in the last round (they only had four vacancies) but at least he passed all the fitness and other testing, so he's happy to wait for the next round in August. He has an absolutely lovely girlfriend and they are currently looking for a flat together, with a whole bunch of others. And yes, having him back in Wellington is wonderful.

Have we got more adventures planned? You bet. Taking a couple of my nieces ski-ing in a few weeks. Doing the Tough Guy (just the 6km version) in August. And a luxurious and hopefully very restful holiday in Tahiti in September.

How's my exercise going? Bloody great. I reckon I'm the fittest I've ever been - I still won't run though. Hate it. Most weeks I'm at the gym at least four times, and Craig goes almost as much. We try to get our exercise in the great outdoors in the weekends, but the Wellington winter hasn't been co-operating much of late.

But what about my weight. Well, not flash, but not awful. I'm at 87kg, which feels a long way from my lowest ever of 76kg. But I'm working on it - and seriously this time. But I will no longer let it take over my life - and I no longer need it to, I've got other things to concentrate on.

House renovations? Well, it's been a long time in the planning, but we're ready to take the plans to the council. I'm starting to think small houses are even harder. We're changing our 72 square meter cottage considerably, but it will still only be 80 sq.m. so the juggling of space has been fairly intense. Just so long as I can fit the Thermomix in my new kitchen.

And a couple more photos to wrap it up...