Update!

The Last Day Of The First Year Of The Rest Of My Life

  So I am almost a month behind on my daily blog and it is likely to take me quite some time to catch up but I thought I would make a special incidental blog today as this is an important time to update you all on my progress and learnings.

        Day 1 vs. Day 365

  On Day 1 - July 1st 2012, I weighed 126.7 kg (just over 279 lbs).  Today, Day 365 - June 30th 2013, I weighed 96.8kg (213.4 lbs).  Total loss in one year has been 29.9 kg (66 lbs).  I did make it to 30kg even on May 18th but I've been fluctuating since then.  That's an average of 575g per week, though most of it was in the first six months.

  I've also lost substantial measurements.  Since I first measured up on Day 59 - August 28th 2012, I have lost a staggering 23 cm off my torso (the bit where the bottom of my bra sits), 18.5 cm off my hips, 14 cm off my right thigh, 13.5 cm off my left thigh, 13.5 cm off my waist and 13.0 cm off my bust!  Not a bad accomplishment really.  My current measurements in full are as follows:

  So what are some less obvious achievements brought about by all this change?  What's beyond the facts and figures?  Well...

• My pre-diabetes is under control.
• My back strength has improved, thus reducing my back issues.
• People no longer ask 'Have you been running?' when I pick up the phone after walking to my office.
• I can go for walks for the pure pleasure of it.
• I can recover much more quickly from exercise. 
• I can feel when I'm full and, most of the time, stop eating then.
• People listen when I say 'No' to food.
• I have received many compliments on my progress from family and friends.
• I can now use just one peg per pair of day to day knickers on the line!
• I can wear size 18 jeans off the shelf from Big W and no longer need them to have an elasticated waist band!
• I can stare at my naked body in the mirror and actually find bits of it attractive.

  That's all awesome and I hope to continue with the improvements, and appreciating my gains (or losses as the case may be).  At the moment though, my life seems to be in a state of flux.  Things are going from good to bad and fluctuating wildly between the two, often in the one day.  I feel demotivated and have pretty much only managed to maintain my weight in the last four months.  This is still a positive so I've not lost hope, but I'm definitely in a rough patch.  One thing I've learned is that it's very easy to be positive and healthy when everything is going well.  It's much much harder when life throws shit at you.

  Gub will be pleased to hear I got retested for hyperthyroidism last week.  I don't really have many of the symptoms but certainly exaggerated anxiety has abounded.  The doctor said she couldn't hear my thyroid when she put her stethescope to my neck, which was a good sign that maybe I was just very stressed, but she sent me off for the blood test anyway.  I get the results on Tuesday.

  I've achieved a lot this year not only with weight loss, but personally and professionally as well so I want to just say thank you very much to everybody who has contributed to my successes.  There are too many of you to name individually but special particular thanks to Mr Smart, for his continued support and forever nagging at me to get on the cross trainer (I know that's been an almost thankless task of late, but I really do and always have appreciated it), to Gub for always being on the other end of the phone on the other side of the world to cross examine the bumps in the road I come across when I'm lying in bed trying to sleep at three in the morning, and to Bertie for regularly measuring me up and laughing with me about the increasingly flappy bat-wings.

  Thank you all, and eventually I'll finish up the blogs for the remainder of this first year.  Where to from here?   For the blog... while life has been a bit tumultuous it's become difficult to keep up with a blog a day, so that may well change.  I'll still be wanting to update you all but I may look at changing my format to suit my current lifestyle.  Stay tuned for that.  For my body and health... well I'd like to aim to lose another 20 to 30 kg in the next year, and start to tone everything up a bit as I go, after all, tomorrow is also the first day of the rest of my life.

  Jess

Jun 6 - No Outline Written

  Well this was definitely a day in my horror week, June 7th was the worst of all the deadline days so I'm not surprised I wrote no outline, nor did I photograph anything other than my food, which lets face it, was almost entirely of convenience.  I know from my previous blog, and the fact that I didn't have muesli bars for breakfast, that I stayed at Mr Smart's last night, but beyond that I know that my entire focus for this day was on work.  I know I worked late, I do remember thinking that were he still with us today would've been Perry's 18th birthday (he was my family's black Labrador), and I do remember that my awesome neighbour Swervyn left a box of veggies on my doorstep and put my bins out.

  It doesn't make for very interesting reading though, so here is a list of ten books in no particular order that have been important to me or influenced my life.

1. Marcovaldo by Italo Calvino
2. Recipes Of All Nations by Countess Morphy
3. Zen & The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M Pirsig
4. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
5. The Consolations Of Philosophy by Alain de Botton
6. Real Gorgeous by Kaz Cooke
7. A Matter Of Honour by Jeffrey Archer
8. My Uncle Oswald by Roald Dahl
9. The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doige
10. Hectic by Terry Lane

  I like books, rather a lot really, so it's safe to say that there have been far more books that have been important to me or influenced me than just this tiny selection, but these all have special stories attached to them, which I shall share with you on future boring days.

  Thursday's food was:

• Breakfast was a golden delicious apple, cored and sliced.
• Lunch was Breadtop, clockwise from the top left: two mini burgers, a teriyaki bacon bun, a ham bun, a tuna bun and in the centre, a red bean walnut filo.
• Dinner was three Vietnamese rice paper rolls from Roll'd.
• Dessert was a Monte Carlo, a Kingston and a Shortbread Cream.

  What are some of the books that are important to you?
  Jess

Jun 5 - Small Child On The Loose

  There is nothing quite as nice as being woken up by a happy cuddly small child, even if it is at 4:30 in the morning.  It was even nicer the second time at 7:30.  He hasn't quite got the hang of tickling yet.  He sneaks up on you and then says "Tickle tickle tickle" in the right sort of tone, but he doesn't actually tickle you.  It's hilarious, so you laugh anyway, and so does he.  He's such a happy little kid.
  I like the way that small children have absolutely no shame whatsoever, just openness and unbridled curiosity.  When I was in the bathroom, having just had my shower, he was walking around the room nearby loudly wanting to know where I'd gone.  When he was told I was in the bathroom to have a shower he waltzed on in to find me leg up on the bathtub drying myself.  "You're naked." he said matter of factly, "Yes I am." I responded.  There was no shame, no embarrassment, no guilt, just observation.  It's very refreshing and leaves me wondering why on earth we learn to suppress it.
  After I was dressed and ready to head to work, Mr Smart dropped me at Clifton Hill train station and then took my car back to his place.  I got lucky on the train, I only had to ride standing up for one station then someone near where I was standing got off so I had a seat after that.
  You see some fascinating people on trains.  I was seated opposite a young lady who despite the cold wore stockings instead of pants, despite the gloom of winter wore sunglasses, and her head was dwarfed by her enormous scarf and headphones which made me think of the Goombas from the Super Mario Bros movie.  She had her eyes closed behind the dark glasses as she zoned into her headphones, so I allowed myself the voyeuristic luxury of a quick photo.  My parting memory of this stranger was how easily she hand rolled a cigarette from a pouch of tobacco and papers in her handbag just before alighting at her station of choice.  Her presence was somehow comforting.  A unique being, like all the others.
  Work itself was ok.  I got underway with sales collections and got through a bunch of aged invoices.  My desk is getting cleaner and cleaner which is a good sign.  I felt pretty calm today which I think is partly self-delusion that I've got it under control and partly just waking up in such a nice way that the high kind of stayed with me.  At the end of the day I caught the train back to Preston.  Mr Smart met me at the station and we went and grabbed dinner from Preston Noodle.

Wednesday's food was:

• Breakfast was a 45g Carman's apricot and almond muesli bar and a 35g Carman's dark choc, cranberry and almond muesli bar.
• Morning snack was an unripish banana.
• Lunch was 300g sweet potato and pumpkin skinny soup with two slices of toasted Bürgen wholemeal and seeds bread spread with one 17.5g portion of The Laughing Cow cheese spread.  This was followed by a 160g Gippsland Dairy Twist mango and blood orange flavoured yoghurt.
• Dinner was thin egg noodles with seafood and satay sauce (prawns, squid, crabmeat, fishcake, snow peas, mushrooms, capsicum, carrots and beanshoots), and three steamed dim sims.
• Dessert was a 50g Whittaker's Hokey Pokey milk chocolate bar.

  After dinner it was study and blog writing for each of us, or rather blog editing for me since I was putting up a guest blog.  I didn't get a lot done though as Mr Smart put Crimson Tide on in the background.  We both find have the noise of a TV show or a movie on in the background helps us work better, but it doesn't work so well for me if it's something I haven't seen before.  Then I get very distracted and end up watching it instead of doing what I'm meant to be doing!
  Jess

Jun 4 - Grease Traps & Sewer Pits, Oh.. And Soccer!

  Grease Traps and Sewer Pits.  They are as charming as they sound and that's all I worked on today.  Fortunately, my side of this rather icky sounding process, is office based.  I don't actually have to go anywhere near them thank goodness!  I just have to arrange billings related to them.  The billings were a few months behind so it took me the whole day to get everything set up accurately and billed up to date.
  After work I headed straight to Tuahine's for dinner with her hubby, a mate of theirs, Mr Smart, and his nephew.  His nephew was being very sweet and cuddly tonight.  We were sitting on the bar stools around the kitchen bench as Tuahine's husband prepared delicious homemade pizzas for us all.  Mr Smart's nephew kept asking to come up, and get down, and asking why I wasn't in a picture on the wall (obviously because it was taken years before I came onto the scene).

  We had a lovely time chatting around the kitchen bench.  The boys talked soccer and various aspects of play, included how money has affected the game, and I listened and played with Mr Smart's nephew.  Soon our pizzas were ready and the four and a half of us sat around the table and enjoyed the meal together.  Good people, good wine, good food.  Almost enough to make me forget my troubles, and so I did temporarily.
  After dinner, Mr Smart's nephew was put into bed - a couple of times, and the boys took up poll positions on the couch and I settled myself at the table with my netbook to blog.  Although I enjoy watching the soccer, I continue to feel anxious about the blog, and with Tuahine out having dinner with friends, I didn't want to intrude any further on a boys night than I already had.
  The game was the Japan vs Australia world cup qualifier round.  We got a goal late in the game and the boys were overjoyed, then on the 90 minute mark, Japan got a penalty for a hand ball and evened the score.. dammit!  This means that Australia now has to win their last two qualifiers, or rely on results from other games, if they are the make the World Cup Finals in Brazil.

  Tuesday's food was:

• Breakfast was a 45g Carman's Classic fruit and nut muesli bar and a 35g Carman's yoghurt, apricot and almond muesli bar.
• Morning snack was a 160g Gippsland Dairy Twist blackberry and pomegranite flavoured yoghurt.

• Lunch was a 300g tomato, lentil, and bacon skinny soup with two slices of toasted Bürgen wholemeal and seeds bread spread with one portion (17.5g) of The Laughing Cow cheese spread, followed by a banana.
• Afternoon snack was a golden delicious apple, cored and sliced.
• Dinner was a delicious thin-base homemade pizza topped with capers, anchovies, hot salami, tomato paste, chilli oil, olives, roast chicken, and mushrooms.

• Drinkies were, a 500ml Rekorderlig pear cider on ice, a small glass of The Chocolate Shop chocolate shiraz and a small glass of Kellermeister 'Sable' chocolate port.
• Dessert was assorted types of chocolate, thanks to Tuahine's evil husband who knows my desserty weaknesses.  There were three different types of Lindt, peppermint, orange, and coconut, and Toblerone.  I suspect I ate about ten pieces but I didn't count.

  Tuahine came home some time during the second half and joined the boys on the couch.  I finished the blog I was working on just minutes after the match concluded, and we all settled down together to watch the latest episode of Game of Thrones, Mr Smart and I taking up the front positions on the bean bag beds!  I had been avoiding spoilers on imgur and facebook for a week and I won't spoil it for anyone else but Oh.My.God!! I did not see that coming.  We all headed off to bed pretty swiftly after that.
  Jess

Jun 3 - Long Day

  Work was a 10am start and a 10pm finish.  It was a long day.  Finishing up car park stuff for May and refining the spreadsheet for June took up a lot of the day.  Tiresome, but it had to be done.  The more I learn about the car park the more I have to amend how I've been doing things.  Understanding begets improvement and all that.
  The highlight of today, was the opening of the QV Hotham Lodge!  There is snow-making, and 100 free lunches every day, and little activities and things.  It looks amazing!  The marketing girls certainly know how to create an enticing place.  I'm really impressed with it all.  I'm scheduled for snow-making duty on Friday.

  For what was left of the day after the dribs and drabs of May had been cleared, I did a bunch of invoice entry that I already had prepared since the May cut off, and then I planned out tomorrow's priorities, thought at this point, since almost everything is due on Friday, my priorities are pretty much all urgent and important.
  I am slowly slowly catching up with blogs, but since I'm writing this one up on the 16th I guess you could say that's going to be the case for a while.  It's definitely hard to feel like going home and blogging after a day like today.  The best I could manage was to sit on facebook and click mindlessly until exhaustion overtook me and sent me to bed.
  By now you'll have read the guest blogs by Mr Smart, Pengi and Gub.  It was awesome to have that support.  Thank you so much!

  Monday's food was:

• Breakfast was 50g Uncle Tobys creamy honey oats with a small serve of tinned blackberries.
• Lunch was a baked pasta bolognese from the QV Hotham Lodge, provided by Squisito.  It was really yummy and creamy, like lasagna but with penne.
• Afternoon snack was a golden delicious apple, cored and sliced.
• Dinner was leftover lamb casserole with quinoa.
• Dessert was a 35g Carman's macadamia, coconut and apricot roasted nut bar.

 

   And so begins the most horrible two weeks of my working year.  It's not the worst thing in the world, but it's extremely tiring and I stress myself out during it trying to get everything done.  At least I have the calm after the storm to look forward to, not to mention my holiday in July.  Once these two weeks are over, I'll start thinking about that.
  Jess

Jun 2 - Quiet Sunday

  My day started with a quick trip to the shops for the forgotten 400g tin of tomatoes.  I bought three so that I'd have some for next time!  When I got home I prepared the lamb casserole in the slow cooker and set it going then I went on with some more chores.  I loaded the dishwasher and set it going then went through to the office and blogged and blogged and blogged.
  At some point in the early afternoon, Mr Smart sent me a link to very interesting article on female sexual desire which led to quite an in depth discussion of it's content and strayed into 'why are we monogomous as a species'.  It's the sort of conversation that I find really very intellectually engaging.  At some point in the conversation we got on to talk of dinner and Mr Smart decided to take me up on my invitation to share casserole for dinner and he headed over.
  He studied while I blogged and we also chatted more about the article and then moved on to thrilling things like which books I could live without were I to move to a smaller dwelling.  I'm still debating what I'm going to do with all that.  Time marched on and after dinner we cuddled up on the couch and watched Crazy, Stupid, Love.
  The movie was interesting but it presents a very idealised vision of love and romance ie. the soul mate.  I don't believe in soul mates.  I worked out a long time ago that I was never going to find everything I wanted in one person, that's why we all have friends.  Your friends give you things your partner can't and vice versa.
  I think the measure of how close someone is to that idea of a soul mate is how many facets of yourself you share with that person, how close you are to being 'all of you'.  We all show different parts of ourselves to people.  All of them are us, just selective versions of us.  You don't show your coworkers that you can do a shot off your own boobs for example, or that you'll say things like that just to make your Granny laugh.  A fun enough movie, and it obviously gave me food for thought.

  Sunday's food was:

• Breakfast was 300g of cubed pineapple.
• Lunch was a 300g Asian style chicken and corn soup with two slices of toasted Bürgen wholemeal and seeds bread spread with one portion of The Laughing Cow cheese spread (17.5g, followed by a medium banana.
• Afternoon snack was one dried peach half, one dried pear half, five Brazil nuts and five almonds.
• Dinner was a slow-cooked lamb casserole, made from a Masterfoods Lamb Casserole Slow Cooker Recipe Base, accompanied by quinoa.
• Dessert was a navel orange and a green nashi pear, shared with Mr Smart.
• Additional snack was two Cooling Peppermint Vicks VapoDrops.

  Poor Mr Smart has a cold at the moment and a nasty dry cough to go with it, so I did plenty of making of hot green tea with lemon and grated ginger.  I tried to convince him to take honey in it too, but his no sugar rule got in the way of Nurse Jess.  I hope he gets better soon as he seems currently to be existing solely on tea and Vicks VapoDrops!
  Jess

Jun 1 - Happy Birthday Granny C!

Although it's now very belated (since I'm posting this on the 13th) a very happy birthday Granny C for the 1st!  Granny C turned 79 today.  I'm so proud of my Granny, she never lets age keep her from doing what she wants to do.  She reads my blog online every day, emails and skypes me regularly, as she does with her relatives all over the world.

  My day started relatively early for a Saturday.  I got up and ready, Mr Smart drove me to my car, and I headed off to the dentist.  I know.. what kind of fool makes a dentist appointment for 10am on a Saturday?  On the plus side my dentist said everything looked like I'd been taking good care of my teeth, but unfortunately a small pit had formed on my 4/5 tooth which needed attending too.
  My dentist is fortunately very patient, very good and very careful not to cause pain or discomfort.  I hate having my lip numbed, so at my request he tried to do it without anesthetic but I had to stop him not long in because it was too painful to get through.  I was really happy he let me take a picture while he was working.  I think it came out well!

  I went to the supermarket on the way home and grabbed supplies.  Some instant dinners of soup and ingredients to make a lamb casserole in the slow cooker tomorrow.  I forgot the 400g tin of tomatoes again!  Mr Smart and I had a chuckle about that when I told him.  It was a bit quiet in the house so I put on a string of movies in the background to keep me company:  Anastasia, The Princess & The Frog, Wreck-It Ralph, How To Train Your Dragon.  I also realised as a preview came on, that I'd never watched Shrek Forever After so I expect a four part Shrek marathon is in order at some point.
  I did a little laundry and a few other minor chores, just enough to feel like the day wasn't completely wasted.  Apart from that I did very little today.  I had a catch up with Chook on the phone which was nice, but I didn't really do much else.  I couldn't even eat until 3pm because until then the anesthetic was still effective!
  I've been thinking of going in to work tomorrow and Mr Smart did suggest that if I wanted to I could come back and stay over tonight as well but I just wanted to sleep in my own bed for once.  It's been a bit overwhelming lately, not knowing where I'll be or when I'll ever get home.  It makes me feel disjointed.  I sat on the couch and peeled off my shellacs.  They were starting to lift and one of my nails broke necessitating a full cut and file.
  I caught up with Earnest on the phone later in the evening.  He has the kids this weekend and Caboodle woke up at one point after a bad dream and had to have a little chat with her Auntie Jess before she'd go back to bed.  She's very excited that she, Bugalugs and Earnest will be visiting me later in the year.  I'm very excited about that too.

  Saturday's food was:

• Lunch was two toasted sandwiches, each comprising two slices of Bürgen wholemeal and seeds bread, one slice spread with Rosella mustard pickles then topped with two slices of Woolworth Select Tasmanian light tasty cheese and 100g silverside.  I also had a just ripe banana.
• Afternoon snack was a 35g Carman's macadamia, coconut and apricot roasted nut bar.
• Dinner was a 300g red Thai chicken soup with two slices of toasted Bürgen wholemeal and seeds bread spread with 17.5g of The Laughing Cow cheese spread (split between the two slices because I acknowledge that two portions, while creamy and delicious, was overkill).
• Dessert was a trifle of sorts... I took a large glass tumbler and layered Dairy Farmers Thick & Creamy 98% fat free vine passionfruit flavoured yoghurt, canned blackberries, a slice of heated banana bread, more yoghurt and topped it with a sprinkle of slivered almonds, sunflower seeds and craisins.  It was very satisfying.

  I still can't decide whether I'll go in to work tomorrow or not.. maybe.. depends on how productive I end up being here I suppose.  My lamb casserole will be on by lunchtime in the slow cooker, ready for dinners in the coming week.  Hopefully it goes well!
  Jess