20 weeks minus 20 pounds equals me in a bikini for

- aim for 10,000 steps every day on my fancy new pedometer - achieved 25,296 steps
- eat approx 1300 cal/day with 500cal to be spend wherever I need over the week - not achieved

- get up before 8am everyday - acheived
- eat plain/natural yoghurt once a day - not achieved
- eat one light meal every day - not achieved
- take the stairs at work every time - achieved

- eat meals away from the tv and my desk at work - achieved
- drink lots of water - achieved
- think about the food I’m eating, don’t just eat it -not achieved
- eat when I’m hungry and alter size of meal to suit hunger level - not achieved

Today is a day with “room to improve” but that’s ok cos everyone has to start somewhere.  Tomorrow I’m aiming to get all my daily goals achieved.  I just need to think about what I’m doing and I need to have faith that I can do it.  I need to cut the crap (like literally cut the food crap) and get serious.  I need to brave the tough days and battle through.  I’m so proud of myself for the progress I’ve made so far but I’m not happy to let this be the end.  I will get to my goal weight and in the summertime I will feel like myself for the first time since I was a kid.  I deserve to feel beautiful and desireable and confident.  I will do this for me and only me. 

I know what I want, I know how to get it - only thing left to do is to put the theory into practice.  I’ll be back in 10 days for my week three weigh-in.  No more posting until then as I need to do it rather than talk about doing it.  And if I need an activity to distract me then there’s always walking or skipping. 

See ya’ll on the 8th August….

They say it takes 21 days to create a habit. I never quite understand who “they” acutally are but I’m not going to question the theory now I’m just gonna run with it.

I have a list of 11 things that I’m going to do everyday and hopefully by Sunday 17th August I will just do them without thinking. Some of the items on my list are easy and won’t take much effort to achieve them (it’s more about just being aware of doing them) and others are actually harder. So here’s my list..

- aim for 10,000 steps every day on my fancy new pedometer
- eat approx 1300 cal/day with 500cal to be spend wherever I need over the week

- get up before 8am everyday
- eat plain/natural yoghurt once a day
- eat one light meal every day
- take the stairs at work every time

- eat meals away from the tv and my desk at work
- drink lots of water
- think about the food I’m eating, don’t just eat it
- eat when I’m hungry and alter size of meal to suit hunger level

- get up at least once every hour I’m at work and move around for a couple of mins.

The whole 10,000 steps thing is cos I have a challenge running with my mum and sisters where we are trying to out-step each other and at the end of three weeks the overall winner gets to decide what we do (movies, dinner out, rockclimbing etc) to celebrate. For every day that you aren’t the winner you have to pay $1 and that will fund the celebratory event. Although I just went for a walk and my counter fell off and broke. So now I’m stuck on 2125… I’ll have to go out and buy a new one ASAP cos I can’t not win!

Eating 1300cal/day is a good level I think. My BMR is 1466 so with that and an additional 300cal (as burned doing usual tasks throughout the day) I should be able to get a deficit of 466cal per day. Over the week that equals 2762 (taking into account the extra 500cal) and I should be able to lose .78 lbs each week. And that would keep me perfectly on track - with the addition of some exercise I might be able to lose more but I won’t plan/rely on it.

Getting up before 8am is going to be hard, but at the moment I have no sleeping routine and it means that I can’t get to sleep at night and then in the morning I want to keep sleeping since I didn’t get to sleep until 3am… So buy getting up before 8am everyday hopefully I’ll get a good sleep routine back into play.

Eating one light meal a day is how I plan on keeping my calories in check. I love soup, I love making it and eating it and it’s winter so it’s a great option at the moment. Soup is usually low in calories too (except for cream of anything…) so it will be my light meal for the day and dinner will be my heavier meal and I will be able to ’spend’ more calories on it. It’s a technique mentioned in the French book that I like so I’m gonna run with it.  Other light meal options include egg on toast, small pack of sushi, salad.

Taking the stairs at work is pretty easy, I work on the 3rd floor so it’s not even tough. I’m ashamed to say that everyone takes the lift to the 3rd floor!

Most of the other items on my list are about thinking about hunger/food and I’m hoping they will break me out of the Autopilot eating that I do so often. I want to take the time to enjoy my food! Food isn’t just fuel for me!

Ok I’m off to buy myself a new pedometer. Here’s hoping I don’t break this one after a couple of hours!

<><> 3pm update:  Well I went and got myself a brand new pedometer and it’s so much cooler than my old one.  I’ve clocked up just over 5,000 steps so far today and I plan on going for a walk on my way home so that should give me another 3,000 or so.  It’s so silly how a little step counter can give me the motivation I need to go for a walk!  Gotta take what I can get though right?!

Ok so I think most people probably eat when they’re hungry right? Well the diet I’ve been on for the last 5 months had strict rules that meant I had to wait 5 hours after finishing one meal before I could eat my next one. So this meant that I ate after 5 hours every day because most of the time I was hungry and if I wasn’t hungry and waited much longer it meant that my next meal would be really late - dinner could be as late as 8 or 9 and I’m more of a dinner at 6-7 person.

So this has left me in a bit of a situation where I’ve forgotten that people usually eat when they’re hungry and now I have to learn to do that myself. I am a typical overeater, when I overeat it’s not the food itself that is providing me any pleasure it is purely the process of getting food, putting it in my mouth, chewing a couple of times, swallowing and then finding more food.

Today I found a blog by round and she went to visit “Dr Hope”. Well between Dr Hope and round’s posts on her sessions with her I have been enlightened to some blatantly obvious things that I can’t believe I never realised before. From what I understand they are similar to the concept behind why French women are skinny and below is my consolidated ideas.

Ok so here are the things that I am going to take into consideration when eating…

- Am I hungry? No, then don’t eat yet. Don’t have lunch at midday cos it’s midday have lunch at 1.15 because you’re hungry.
- Am I full? Yes, then leave the rest of the food on your plate. Or just serve yourself half of your lunch and leave the rest til later if you’re still hungry.
- What do I feel like eating? Feel like ‘x’ then eat it. No point forcing yourself to eat something you don’t want to eat when there are so many other healhty options just waiting to be devoured!
- Do you like what you’re eating? no? doesn’t taste as good as you thought it would? then put the fork down and step away from the “not-so-good-as-you-expected” food! Don’t eat what isn’t yum, enjoy everything you eat, and pay attention to what you’re eating!
- Take time to enjoy the food. Don’t eat on the run, always sit down with as little distraction as possible.
- If you’re going to “splash out” then make it worthwhile. So you want pizza for dinner? then make it or order good tasty pizza. Don’t eat bogus pizza when you could at least spend your bad choice on something that tastes good.

I’m sure that most people out there just eat (in a healthy normal way). And I wish I was like that. My mum, sisters, brother, father even the cat is normal! I’ll get there eventually, it’ll just take me a little more effort than others. Although I have to admit that I think I had a far more normal attitude to food before I started my diet at the beginning of the year. It has consumed my life a bit which makes me obsess and fuss more than I know I should but if I don’t fuss and plan then I feel like I won’t be sucessful.

I really like what I’ve read today though. It has reminded me that food is there for fuel (ie eat when your body tells you to) and also that it is to be enjoyed.

As I ate my toastie for lunch I was thinking about what it tasted like and it was really good with 2 places for improvement. #1 it would’ve tasted so much better on grainier bread (which I didn’t choose cos it has more calories even though it’s actually healthier than the fewer calorie one). And #2 I should have opted for normal tomato relish rather than the low calorie stuff with sweetners etc. When you’re only putting 1tsp of relish on something you may as well put some good stuff with probably 10-15 calories more. Eat for taste not for calorie intake but still within calorie allowance! That’s the plan stan. No more massive lunches with heaps of veges, I don’t need to eat that much and being overfull isn’t cool.

I need to go back to my food diary (that I usually write in the morning and then update as it with slight changes throughout the day) because I only ate half my lunch and half of my afternoon tea - why? Cos I wasn’t hungry! I know. It’s like I’ve just discovered the most amazing thing ever that everyone else seems to know already. Maybe I’m a slow learner?

So today, Day #6 has turned out to be better than I could ever imagine! I’m off home now to have yummy dinner and I might just have a small ice cream cone. I know to some this might not seem like a big thing but I haven’t had ice cream since February. And I happen to know that we have gingernut ice cream at home which is super yummy and very worthwile so I’m using the ol’ pizza rule mentioned above - when you’re going to have something bad make sure it’s good!

Hope everyone is OP and happy happy happy!