No Excuses!

I have finally set up my home gym in my new place- complete with TV, DVD player and air conditioning. Over the years I have looked at other people and thought, I would lose weight too if I had access to a gym in my house. I have told myself that I can't afford a gym membership or don't have the time to get to the gym.

I officially have no more excuses not to exercise anymore.

Food For Thought

I have been thinking a lot over the past year and my thoughts led me to a place I never thought I would go. I recently attended this information session for Bariatric Surgery.

There was a moment during the night that really hit home for me. A girl my age got up to speak about her experience of having a lap band and how it has changed her life. She said for her that it has freed her mind and her obsession with food and she just feels normal for the first time in her life. I can't say I didn't cry.

I have a lot to think about over the next few months.

Ouch!

Do you ever just feel like if it isn't one thing it is another? That is how I feel at the moment. Like my girl Cinderella Big Butt, I have had some horrendous mouth/jaw pain that has turned out to be my wisdom teeth being impacted and infected. The pain started on Friday but I had a weekend away in Echuca for my girlfriend's birthday so I didn't have time to see a dentist until Tuesday.

It may sound weird, but I have had an extreme fear of going to the dentist, not because of normal reasons, but because of my fat. It was just one more possibly awkward situation that I wanted to avoid. The last time I went to the dentist was about 8 years ago and that was an emergency because I sculled a bottle of Jim Beam and passed out face first on a BBQ and smashed my face and teeth in. I haven't been able to drink any kind of scotch or whisky since, it just turns my stomach at the thought of it.

Anyway, I went off on a tangent. Like most of my fat phobias, it turned out to be completely unwarranted and irrational. I can't tell you how lovely the dentist and his staff were to me and I felt totally comfortable. The only thing that was uncomfortable was the cost. The dentist has recommended that I get all four wisdom teeth taken out before Christmas because of the infection and they are just going to continue to get infected and be painful. I am not covered for wisdom teeth on my health insurance for another few months, so I will just have to wait it out. I am just so glad that I am covered at all because I only just took out health insurance. I am on antibiotics for the infection which has put a dampener on my weekend plans, who wants to attend a dress up party sober?

So I should take a leaf out of Cinderella Big Butt's book and be positive because 99.99% of my posts these days are whiny. So here is some stuff that makes me happy...

~ My jaw is so swollen that I couldn't eat even if I wanted to, which makes being on this liquid diet much easier.

~ Only 16 work days until the Christmas holidays.

~ I finally have a house that is big enough to put up a Christmas tree, which I'll be doing on the weekend. Yay!

~ Optifast now makes a strawberry flavoured shake which is soooo much better then the chocolate.

~ The weather has been perfect for some gorgeous evening walks around my new neighbourhood.

~ Gossip Girl, ANTM, 90210 and so many other cheesy American TV shows that I love are all starting for the non-ratings summer line up- I love trashy TV.

Scale Shock Horror

I decided a while ago to steer clear from the scales until the new year because I was tired of them screwing with my head. When I started back on my optifast shake diet I decided that it might be time to come back to the scales because anyone who has been on a shake diet knows you need the scales as motivation.

I expected to see a pretty bad number, but nothing could have prepared me for just how bad it was. OK, I am just going to say it, I was 120.9 kilos. Keep in mind that in March this year I was 96.7 kilos so that is a gain of over 24 kilos in 7 and a half months. I know, how bad is that?! I didn't even think it was humanly possible to gain that much weight in such a short period of time. Maybe I should commission myself to actors that need to gain weight quickly for a movie role?

I was beyond shocked and if I was the crying type I would have burst into tears. The first thing that came to my mind was "How could you have gone out with your old friends from high school last weekend, they must have thought you looked revolting. They were probably ashamed to be seen with you". See how the scales screw with me!

So superficial embarrassment aside, I was deeply disappointed that I let myself get back to such a high weight. I did not ever think I would see a number above 110 kilos again and god forbid that I actual saw 120 kilos again. It has been years since I have been that weight and I thought I left it well and truly behind me. Every time I step on the scales I half expect it to go back to about 105 kilos and for the whole thing to be one big mistake. I have moved the scale onto other surfaces and stripped down to be bare naked, but it doesn't change. This morning I even held my hands up to check I wasn't 'accidentally' holding a 10 kilo weight.

Anyway, There is no point dwelling on the situation, I just need to move forward and learn from my mistakes. This weight does not feel like who I am anymore and I am determined to get it off.

Thanks Mum!

I spend a lot of time complaining about all the bad things that come with being fat and the people who have been unkind and downright nasty because of my size. Something I forget to mention is that I have had one person my whole life who has been nothing but supportive of me. My mum.

Something my mum has always understood is the importance of clothes in a girls life. When I was a young, the school uniform shops didn't make any uniforms in bigger sizes and so my mum got a seamstress to carefully copy the school uniform so as you couldn't tell it wasn't bought from the uniform shop. Despite the fact we were very poor when I was growing up, she would scour the shops to find 'cool' clothes in my size for school discos so that I would fit in with the other kids. Then for my high school graduation she took me to the one plus size shop in Melbourne at the time and bought me a gorgeous skirt and top that she then had her friend alter to make it trendier and it was probably the first time in my high school life that I felt good about myself.

In more recent times she noticed my weight gain and quietly went about making me a number of dresses to wear in Hawaii, a dress for my friend's wedding and a dress for the Melbourne Cup. She didn't ever mention the fact that I had put on weight and had nothing to fit me, she just made them and casually said that I might find somewhere to wear them. She doesn't have much money, yet she has spent all her spare money on material and patterns at Spotlight to make clothes for me. She doesn't even really know how to sew, she just decided to follow the directions and see what she could do.

It wasn't only clothes, she always fought for me and my right not to be humiliated because of my weight. When we used to take swimming lessons at school and I couldn't pull myself up out of the pool like the other kids, my mum quietly asked the swim teacher to have my lessons close by the pool ladder. During bike education some of the safety vests were too small for me so my mum asked the instructor to hold aside a larger one for me each lesson. During the hellish years of PE at school my mum would blast my PE teachers when they made us weigh ourselves in front of everyone or when they would scream at me for being 'fat and slow'. Once I was so desperate to get out of a school cross country race that my mum organised for me and her to go to Melbourne for the day and go shopping so that I didn't have to go through yet another humiliating school sporting event.

Unlike a lot of people in my life, she has never made me feel bad or like I deserve less because I am overweight. She has never acted like any of my concerns about fitting in at school or wearing nice clothes were frivolous. There are just too many examples of how she has helped me to even mention them all here and right now my head is swarmed with funny memories of my mum doing crazy things to help me out. I honestly don't know what I would do without her.

Hot Date!

I have a hot Saturday night date with... myself!

I haven't had a Saturday night to myself in months and I won't have another for many more months. So I made a commitment to stay at home all weekend and just have some much needed time to myself. Lucky for me, the weather is unexpectedly cold and stormy and just perfect for a quiet weekend at home.

Here is my plan for the evening:

1. Soak my body in a steaming hot bubble bath and read a trashy book
2. Exfoliate my entire body (prep for fake tan tomorrow)
3. Wash my hair
4. Wax my hairy legs
5. Pluck eyebrows
6. Pore minimising face mask
7. Pedicure and polish with gorgeous new pale pink OPI nail polish (gift from mum)
8. Moisturise my entire body with delicious Victoria's Secret appletini body drink (gift from my brother's girlfriend)
9. Snuggle up in bed with a DVD of The Big Chill
10. Feel beautiful and relaxed

P.S. Yes, this post is meant to distract you from the post below. Thanks for the kind comments and for not telling me I am crazy to go on a liquid diet.

Again.

In March of this year I managed to fight my way down to my lowest weight in years. I dieted and exercised myself to about 96.7 kilos and I felt amazing. Since then I have steadily gained weight, even though I have made numerous unsuccessful attempts to lose weight. I could feel the weight that I had gained but I didn't realise how bad things were until recently.

Over the past few weeks my level of physical discomfort has become extreme, so much so that I constantly feel like I just want to rip my skin and fat off my body because it is making me feel claustrophobic. I feel so bloated that my legs feel like German sausages that would explode if you pricked them with a fork. I found myself feeling short of breath on a short walk and everyday tasks leave me exhausted. None of my clothes fit me and planning what to wear to work has become a tacticle exercise. On a recent flight I could barely get my seatbelt done up and the tray table would not sit comfortably flat. At my dad's house I was worried the old wooden chairs in the outdoor setting would break when I sat on them. I forgot how difficult life was like this.

Even worse then this has been the mind games. I can feel myself reverting back to the person I was when I was at my heaviest. I haven't felt like this in years and it is quite scary because it is bringing back a lot of painful memories and some dark thoughts. I have lost a lot of confidence and have started to try to avoid seeing friends or meeting new people. I am constantly worrying what people think of me and have it in my head that people must think I am stupid and useless because I am fat. Not only that, I am obsessing over food, always worrying about when I can next eat and then binge eating. I would eat left over cake for breakfast, a creamy pasta for lunch at work and then often a take away for dinner. I would keep eating when I wasn't hungry and not even taste the food.

I knew I had to do something to stop myself from falling into a black hole and decided that I had to go back on the Optifast shakes again. A few years ago, when I was at my heaviest, I tried Optifast and lost about 15 kilos. It was at a time in my life when I really needed a kick start and it changed my life. I started on them again on Monday and it is amazing how much better I feel already. My mind feels at peace finally. I can stop obsessing about food and what I am going to eat next. My body feels lighter and less bloated already. I actually feel like I have regained control of my body and life. I can only compare it to how an alcoholic who has given up drinking must feel. I know that this is probably not a solution to my problems, but right now it is the only thing getting me through the rest of this year.

I am so tired of this.

Ahhh, The Memories...

When I was a little girl I used to come down from the country and stay with my grandparents in Melbourne every school holidays. The highlight of this stay would be a trip to the the local shopping mall to see a movie and the chance to spend our birthday money in Toys R Us. Every visit to the mall would culminate with a much sought after treat at Donut King. I always got the pink girl shaped donut and I would savour every bite. I remember these visits very fondly, it wasn't just the donut, it was the excitement of being in the big city and the happy times spent with my grandparents. Over the years, all these happy memories have been wrapped up and encased in that pink girl donut.

Years later, when I moved to Melbourne, on my occasional visits to the shopping mall I would still finish my shopping trip off with a visit to Donut King. Even as an adult I would still go and buy my pink girl donut and always remember my time with my gran and pop and it still made me happy.

Since I moved out to the 'burbs, my local supermarket is positioned so that it is literally impossible to get through the door without walking past Donut King. Instinctively, every time I go to the supermarket I now buy a pink girl donut. Every time. I have taken fond memories and turned them into a bad habit. I realised the other day that I don't even like these donuts that much. This has to stop.

Stupid

I am officially a moron. I left for Wellington in New Zealand on Sunday and when I packed my stuff I was slightly hung over and some how left behind most of the clothes I intended to pack. I had put them aside in the 'things I have to iron before I pack them when I can be fucked' pile and I failed to iron or pack them. So this means I have 2 tops to wear for 5 days of work. I wore one of these tops on the plane and spilt food on it.

So I went on a desperate clothes search yesterday but I really couldn't find much. It is hard enough to find clothes in Melbourne when you are fat let alone in bloody Wellington. I went to Farmers and bought a dress that I don't totally hate and can't afford. So I guess I'll wash my other top and that gives me 3 days clothes and I will just rinse and repeat.

I have been struggling enough as it is lately to find clothes to wear to work so you would think I would be more careful. Clothes drama aside, Wellington is a really lovely city and I just wish I had more time to enjoy the sights. Next time...

Busy Times

Holy crap I have had a busy week. I made a pledge to not eat out during the month of November and I have had a bloody lunch meeting every day this week and no I didn't choose the healthy option. So I am kind of failing my challenge to eat at home, but at least I have only eaten out for work purposes which is something I can't avoid if I want to keep my job.

MONDAY
A 3 hour lunch meeting.

TUESDAY
Tuesday I went to the Melbourne Cup for work (yeah yeah, drinking champagne for work, tough life). It was an awesome day, the weather was beautiful and we had fun sitting on the grass drinking champers and eating our gourmet picnic hamper.

I did win some money, but I still haven't checked my ticket yet so I don't know how much. I had $5 each way on C'est La Guerre at 20-1 and it came third, so hopefully I'll get a few bucks.

Work even paid for me to stay in a gorgeous hotel in the city because I live out in the 'burbs. This turned out to be most advantageous in sleeping off a terrible hang over the next day before I stumbled in to work. I tried to tell people I had sunstroke, not sure if anyone believed me...

WEDNESDAY
A 3 hour lunch meeting, combined with a hang over- someone kill me.

THURSDAY
Another 3 hour lunch meeting.

FRIDAY
Flew to Sydney for the day to meet clients for lunch. Bloody exhausting and I hate flying.

TODAY
My high school best friend is coming down to stay and we are meeting another old friend for dinner and drinks.

SUNDAY
Going to Wellington (New Zealand) for work until Friday night. I suspect I'll be hung over again so that'll be a fun flight.


OK, I'll leave you with some photos of the Melbourne Cup. I had to be careful not to post any photos of anyone from work because I guess they'll crack the shits if they find it.



Me at home before I left.



Me getting ready at home- fake tan much?! Note to self, less is more when it comes to fake tan.



The crowd at Flemington race course.



The jockeys before the race.



The race that stops a nation... well what I could see of it...



Me at the end of the night- what a mess. In the battle of fake tan and sunburn, I think sunburn won!