When in Rome...

Yes that is gelati on my face and no I didn't realsie until I got back to the hotel...

I'm so god damn unfit!

I remember back when I was in Japan last October that I vowed never to travel again until I got fit. I forgot how seriously hard and exahausting travel is when you are overweight and unfit. I am so annoyed at myself for not putting in more of an effort before I went away. At least I am now building my fitness with all this walking, I just wish I had the energy to do more- it is so frustrating.

The good news is that it has revitalised my desire to exercise more and work on my fitness. The past 6 months all my focus has been on my new job and I have definitely put my health on the back burner. When you work 14-16 hour days there is literally no time to fit exercise in so I need to find a balance and put my health first. Travel has a good way of putting your life in perspective.

Also, I am seriously considering doing weight watchers when I get back, just to have the support and accountability. I must be the only overweight person I know who has never tried WW or Jenny Craig. I think what might work for me with WW is the points system because I have a tendency to be too strict when I am trying to lose weight. Having a set amount of points to eat a day might help me with the guilt I feel when I eat and I wouldn't feel bad as long as I stayed within my points. Plus I would die if I had to go to a meeting and post a gain, so that would keep me honest! I would love to hear all your stories (good or bad) about doing WW.

Holiday!

Only one more day of work until I go on holidays! I am actually leaving Oxford tomorrow morning to go to my London office for the day and then Saturday I fly out to Rome. I don't know if I am more excited because I am going to Rome or just because I don't have to work for two weeks!

I have been having a nice time in Oxford, it really is a beautiful little town. I haven't had much time to explore, but I hope to come back soon!

Here is a photo of me in Oxford... as per usual I have to do something slightly silly to make the photo more embarrassing!

I'm In London Still, la la, London Still

Hello from sunny London. Yes you read that correctly, SUNNY London! Who would have thought it would be so hot here, certainly not me when I packed...

So the flight here was horrendous. Not only am I fat, but I get claustrophobic and normally don't use public transport at all because I panic, so 23 hours on a packed flight- not fun. Oh and babies on planes, well I know there is no way around it, but jesus christ it's annoying. Sorry to all those parents, I know it must be awful to get filthy looks from people around you while your poor baby is screaming all night.

So I arrived in London at 5.30 am last Saturday and managed to get a train into Covent Garden to my hotel quite easily. I was wide awake so I set off to do some exploring right away. I would like to blame the jet lag for the two photos below that I took...





I was smart enough to arrive on a bank holiday weekend, so I spent Saturday and Sunday touring around and exploring.


A double decker bus tour


Changing of the guard, Buckingham Palace


Changing of the guard, Buckingham Palace


Trafalgar Square


My big head in Trafalgar Square


A traditional Sunday roast with Yorkshire pudding- Yum!


A spot of shopping at Harrods

Then Monday night I headed out to Oxford for work. It was easy to forget that I am actually here for work, but I soon remembered when I got into the office... So I have been pretty busy all week at work. It was great to meet all my colleagues that I work so closely with. I hear their names so often that it was almost like meeting celebrities!

I left work a little early today (Friday) and caught the train back into London for the weekend. I am staying in the West End, so I am going to see Chicago tonight and hoping to see a couple more shows over the weekend. I also want to go on the London Eye, to the British Museum, West Minster Abbey and lots more. I am not going to have time for everything I want to do.

Oh and I have met the devil in the shape of a chocolate bar and it is the Peanut Butter Kit Kat. Oh good god this thing is amazing and chocolate is so cheap here. Lord help me.

Au Revoir Melbourne

I am leaving for the airport in a couple of hours for a 23 hour flight to London for work. I'll spend the first 3 days in London, then 5 days in Oxford, 2 days in London and 5 days in Oxford. Then I will go to Rome for a week and then to Paris for a week, both of those are holiday- yay! At this point I am just looking forward to getting some sleep on the plane because I am so tired.



This is my first trip to Europe so I am excited to see everything and experience everything. Anyone have any tips for plus size fashion in London, Paris or Rome? The clothes over here are just so awful at the moment, I am really struggling to find anything to wear.



I haven't planned anything because I just haven't had time, but I have my flights and hotels booked and my Lonely Planets so I guess I will just take it as it comes. I am looking forward to just waking up and doing what ever I feel like. Of course at the the top of my list of things to do is eat pizza and gelati in Rome and drink French wine in Paris! Oh god, I can already feel those kilos piling on as I type...



OK, I have some last minute packing to do. Ciao. Au Revoir.

Hungry Hippo

I realised a couple of weeks ago that I am sick of being hungry. I have this idea that to lose weight I need to be hungry. I try to convince myself that I should eat when I am dieting, but I still find that I unconsciously restrict myself to the point that I am uncomfortably hungry. I generally try to stick to 1200 calories to lose weight, but I know that I purposely over estimate my calories and that I would rarely eat more then 1000 calories.

The whole idea that deprivation equals success has been with me for over 20 years and it isn't easy to shake. My whole life I have had people tell me to stop eating and I thought that was what I had to do to lose weight and be happy. Of course I now know that deprivation just leads to binging and it is a perpetuating cycle that is really hard to break.

I decided things had gotten out of control when I was at my mum's for dinner a few weeks ago and it was a warm night but I was wearing a thick jacket because I was so cold. My family commented on how strange it was that I was all rugged up and I casually replied that it was because I hadn't eaten in days (was drinking diet shakes) and not eating makes you cold. My brother laughed and said how weird it was that I was so open about my eating disorder and that most people try and hide it. I then proceeded to eat 5 plate fulls of food. I walked away from that evening and realised that something wasn't right.

I've been spending a lot of time trying to work through what I can do to make things better. My motto recently has been that I need a lifestyle that is sustainable for the rest of my life. I don't want a short term solution I want a sustainable and happy life. This may mean that I will lose minimal amounts of weight or even no weight at all which is terrifying to me. My whole life has been about striving to lose weight and while this is still the case, I am not prepared to continue doing things the way I have been doing them because I just can't be happy this way and I am sick of being hungry.

Of course while it will be hard to force myself to eat more, it is going to be even harder to learn when to stop. It is also going to be difficult not to get consumed by guilt and self loathing because I only feel like I am 'good' when I am punishing myself. I think this will be harder then if I just followed a 1200 calorie diet and exercised everyday and lost 25 kilos. I have done that numerous times and I know it doesn't work me. I need to change myself from the inside out and that starts with being kind to my body.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

THE GOOD
Saturday I went for a drive with a friend to Kyneton for lunch in a beautiful French restaurant. We had been trying to learn French, so we thought it would be fun to eat French food while we spoke French. I guess French food and wine improves just about every situation! After lunch we went to the most divine cupcake shop called Life's Sweet. It was AMAZING and I highly recommend going!

THE BAD
A guy offered me his seat on the tram tonight, I don't know if he was just being polite or if he thought I was pregnant. There was no reason to offer me his seat and I wasn't the only woman standing. So, because I am crazy, I considered pushing my stomach out and rubbing my belly to look more pregnant because I thought it might be less embarrasing if people actually did think I was pregnant. The guy who offered his seat looked like he was from the country and slightly like a Christian, so I am hoping he was just being a gentleman. Well that is what I am going to believe anyway.

THE UGLY
I had a bit of a traumatic changing room experience on Sunday. I have been starting to feel better about my body lately and it turns out I may have been delusional. I was trying on a clingy top in a change room with 4 mirrors that showed every angle and I was shocked by the rolls of fat on my back. I guess I don't really see my back very often and I literally looked like a 3 tier wedding cake. The worst thing was that it made me wonder how often I have worn tops that looked that bad and not realised. I was surprised by how down I felt about the incident after, maybe I was more embarrassed then anything, but it was a good reality check.

A Life in ID Photos

I decided it was about time to get my Learners driving permit redone because my old one had expired in 2000. Oh the shame! When I was getting it organised I was shocked to look at my old photo that must have been taken when I was 16 and I was bigger then I think I remember being. It is quite hard to tell if I was bigger when I was 16 then I am now because I was cursed with some pretty shocking style. My eyebrows were the size of two moustaches, my hair was slicked back from my face and I wasn't familiar with make up or even moisturiser back then! You have to remember I was from the country...

I got the new photo taken and somehow I seem to have either left my old license at Vic Roads or they took it, which is a shame because I really wanted to have it as a comparison. Luckily for me that is not the only shocking ID photo I have so I have been able to compare my new photo with some other old ones. The photos are quite small, but I think if you click on them they should open in a bigger window.

The first photo is my new Learners permit taken just yesterday. It is not the best photo but not a bad photo, so probably a pretty accurate representation of me now. I am not totally happy with my weight and how I look now, but when you see the next photo you will realise why I am quite pleased with how far I have come.

The second photo is a doozy and there are not many photos of me at this weight. This was me on my first day of my second uni degree at Monash University. I was 22 years old and weighed 126.5 kilos (278.5 lbs) which was only 2 kilos lighter then my all time heaviest weight. It is pretty hard to look at that photo now because that was at a really unhappy time in my life. I am not sure if I would say I was clinically depressed, but if I wasn't, I was pretty close to it. Apart from my weight I was having personal and family difficulties, I had pretty much no friends and I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. It was a really sad time.

The third photo was just after I had turned 18 years old and I had recently lost quite a bit of weight. I was really happy because I was about to leave home and go to university and start living an exciting and independent life. Almost 10 years on from that photo, I would love to go back and tell that girl a thing or two...



P.S. Special thanks to computer savvy Marshmallow for converting these files for me!

Wedding Pictures

I went to my friend's wedding on the weekend in Apollo Bay. I had a great time, the wedding was beautiful and everything seemed to go without a hitch. My biggest drama was that my vision for my hair didn't work out and I panicked because my hair was a mess half an hour before the ceremony. I don't know why I try to curl my hair, it never works. I also didn't realise just how much my breasts were popping out of my dress. If I was standing straight they were ok, but when I sat down they were on full display and I had quite a lot of comments on them!

The ceremony was on a secluded beach in the afternoon and we just missed the rain and the tide coming in. Though as the bride walked down the aisle a huge wave came in and got half the guests, which was quite funny. I did a Shakespeare reading (116 sonnet) and I was so nervous I can barely remember the ceremony. We were all barefoot on the beach and myself and two of my friends stood in dog shit on the beach which was just lovely.

Then the reception was in a stunning mountain top restaurant overlooking the ocean. The food and wine was amazing- it would have cost an absolute fortune. I drank way too much and was my normal loud and crazy drunken self but I don't think I did anything particularly bad- unless you count my dancing! By god I was sick on that winding road on the way home this morning, we had to stop a couple of times because I thought I was going to vomit. The hang over is still lingering tonight.

Anyway, here are some photos from the wedding. They are mostly of me because I don't know how to pixelate photos to protect the innocent. Hopefully my friends won't mind and won't find this blog anyway!




Getting ready in the bathroom- look at that concentration on my face. I also look like I am about to do the chicken dance.




A full length picture of my dress, this isn't the best photo, but not many of my photos worked out.



The ceremony



The girls I went to uni with



Almost about to have a wardrobe malfunction...



After the drinks started flowing the silliness began.

Don't Worry, Be Happy!

I have been doing a lot of whinging and moaning lately about work and weight loss*. It has been a really tough year and it feels like nothing has been easy. Sometimes I forget that things aren't that bad and I have a pretty good life, so here are just a few of the reasons life is good at the moment.



I am happy because...

I can sit in my office and blog and no one can see what I am doing.

My favourite team (AFL) Geelong are on top of the ladder.

My flatmate started a job right near my work and now we can drive to work in his brand new luxury car (hello leather seat warmers) and I don't have to use revolting public transport anymore.

I only have another hour of work before the weekend.

Right after work I am going to go to Apollo Bay for the weekend for my friend's wedding tomorrow.

I get to dress up and drink champagne at my friend's wedding- two of my favourite things to do.

When I get home on Sunday the house will be sparkling clean because my cleaner would have cleaned up for me.

I have Monday off work to make up for all the extra hours I have been working.

I am going to the UK in exactly 3 weeks for a month.

See life isn't that bad! Have a good weekend.

*Oh you noticed I have avoided discussing this topic today...