I've decided it's time to expand...I wanted somewhere I can host progess photos (when I make some progress) and other niceties... so I've moved to a new and improved spot.

-->> iDiet V 2.0

Over the last week or so, I've been walking in a mega-block around my house. I clocked it in the car and it's about 3.5 km. So, every time I walk I've been meaning to time myself then forget. I did it today and my time was 38 minutes. I think that is a big improvement even without knowing my earlier times because every other time I've done it I've got 3/4 of the way then died and had to drag myself home. This time I had a lovely - my goodness, I'm almost home - moment.

I noticed this in Boxercise the other day too. Usually I start watching the clock in any class about 5 minutes after it starts and pray for some time-space continuum thing to happen so I can get out alive but, on Thursday, the first I looked at the clock was 50 minutes into the class. Just before we started cool down. Woohoo! I don't know if that is a sign of increasing fitness or increasing senility but it makes things easy. I am rather over Boxercise after my second class - I have an injury, not from my own exercise by from sparring in pairs - the girl kept punching low down on the pad and I've jarred my arm. It is a real pain because I don't want to use it too much in case I make it worse.

So yeah, back to the walking. My goal at the moment is to keep walking that block until I get it under 30 minutes. When I do that, I want to add on another km then get that under 30 minutes. I think that is a good way to keep pushing myself and to keep it interesting. I know I have a tendency to slack off when exercising on my own so this might keep me honest. Having said that, I want to throw in a walk somewhere else at least once a week too - somewhere new and interesting each week, like a nice park or at the beach.

I also want to keep up the swimming. Tomorrow night they have "ladies night" at my pool so I'm going to give it a go. It is only $3 and, as well as use of the pool, they have swimming lessons (I do need to improve my swimming technique) and free aqua classes plus that includes use of the spa and sauna. I love a bargain.

Whoa, I'm long winded today but I have also been looking into gym memberships. At the moment I can't afford it, but I do go to one class a week and just pay the casual rate of $10. Hopefully, I will be working before the weather gets too bad to make regular walking impossible. I was looking at some of the chain gyms like Fitness First and Fernwood but then I thought about it.

My local gym, while a bit crumby, is run by the council (I think) so the memberships are just flat rate and openly advertised - take it or leave it. I like that. Some gyms, well let's just say they'd shame a used car salesman with their pushy sales techniques. I guess that can work in your favour if you are a good negotiator, I worked with a girl who used to work at a gym and she said NEVER pay the first price offered. She actually said to walk out a few times and you'll get a good price - sounds like shopping at the markets in Bali.

But my local is also within walking distance and pretty friendly and nice so I think if I join, I'll join there.

Tonight I was feeling discouraged, like I'm making no progress at all. You can't even notice the 6 kgs I've lost. I tried on a dress that used to be tight on me; it's still tight on me. It just felt like nothing was happening. I wanted to give it all up.

Then I thought - what else is there? What is the alternative? And, in all honesty, there is none. It isn't like this is a diet for a day or a month or a year. My health is failing and this is the ONLY way to fix it. The only way. Without these lifestyle changes I'll become increasingly dependant on drugs while my body deteriorates. I'll risk blindness and amputation and recurring outbreaks of thrush. To paraphrase - diabetes is for life, not just for Christmas.

So I told my inner petulant child to shut the hell up; told my inner bimbo to get lost. Deep down I know that I'm doing the right thing, the only thing. This is my life now. This is the way it has to be.

I have been procrastinating about exercising all day today. I've wanted to go but felt too tired, just not had the energy and it seems too hard. As the day's worn on, I've felt sicker and sicker; been trying to work out if I am really sick or if it's just head tricks.

Around 3.00 this afternoon, the walk vs nap debate was raging strong. Nap won. Now I've woken up and realised this is no head trick at all. I've been sneezing and got the chilly sweats.

So now I feel guilty. I know I shouldn't but I do. To make it worse, I've been stuffing myself all day so feel like I've overeaten. The thing of it is that I've overeaten on homemade vegie soup containing nothing but vegetables and some pulses. I could probably eat 8 bowls of the stuff (in fact, I think I have over the day) and not do any harm. My head knows that, my stomach doesn't. Stomach thinks full = overeaten = BAD. And, I guess it is bad to overeat no matter what the food is.

One bonus about today, when I was hunting in the cupboards for the soup mix I found a few things I'd forgotten were in there including an unopened packet of green tea. I think a friend bought it over when I was having a Japanese dinner party one time. Maybe that's what I need right now. A nice cup of green tea.

Tonight I got weighed and I'd only lost .4 kgs. I was pretty disappointed. I did overindulge on Friday night and probably ate more than I should on Sunday as well but I've been exercising every day and mostly been good about my food.

I did another measurement as well. My friend did one last week and I was sure his results weren't right (according to his measurements I'd put on 6 cm on the waist... wtf!). So I've lost 2cm from my hips and waist. I was a little disappointed at that too.

So the plan for this week is:

1. make sure I use my diet diary to write down everything I eat
2. make sure I keep up the water
3. keep up the exercise and try to increase incidental exercise as well. For example, when I do classes at my gym the price includes a swim, spa and sauna. I have only been doing the classes but maybe now I'll do some light swimming afterwards. It will be a nice cool down for me and will keep me working (the spa could be nice too especially if I get in early before the hairy backed old dudes).

I was discussing the amount of fruit I eat (ie. a lot) with my friends and they had differing opinions. Firstly, some background about my friends - they are a gay couple. Neither of them are overweight but, like most gay guys like to look their best. S swings between overeating and the latest diet plan - no carbs are big at the moment, and is always doing things to work out, be it swimming training or triathalons or whatever. He is always making a conscious effort to keep his diet and exercise just right but tends to go from one extreme (eg. eating cream straight from the fridge) to the other (total no carb diet).

T on the other hand doesn't believe in diets or making an effort to exercise or anything like that. He eats what he likes, when he likes but seems to have pretty healthy eating habits about 90% of the time, the other 10% mostly involves icecream. And, while he doesn't exercise, he walks about 10 kms a day - to and from work then during the day as part of his job.

So when the whole fruit issue came up, T had the opinion that eating as much fruit as you liked, whenever you liked was the way to go while S thinks that fruit is pure carbs and should be eaten in small quantities and never at night.

I'm not so sure. Of course, like everything else, moderation is probably the key. Maybe I should try to restrict myself to a few pieces of fruit everyday and keep it at that.

***

This morning was boxercise class. I woke up and that voice in my head was telling me all the reasons I shouldn't go so I decided to treat it like I treat my mother and just let it go on talking while I calmly went about getting myself ready.

I was reading some more of Sark today and again I found a line that really resonated with me. In her book, Transformation Soup, she says how her therapist told her she had to "learn to love the fat girl inside".

I've always had this inner battle between wanting to lose weight to become this person I could love but also thinking that I should be able to accept myself as I am. It was an either/or situation - to love the fat me and stay fat, which I didn't want or to lose weight and be someone I could love, which wasn't happening.

And, to be honest, neither of them worked.

When I read that line it made me realise that I can do both. That I have to learn to love myself as I am and to work on the physical changes from that mindset. I think if I can't love me as I am then I'm never going to love me - no matter what weight I am or how I look. I also think that if I don't love me as I am then I can't lose weight, that ultimately I will fail.

It isn't about choosing between being fat and happy or rejecting my "fat" self in order to be thin - it is about accepting my "fat" self as part of me but also accepting my "thin" self.

I read on someone's blog the other day, and I can't link it because I've forgotten who it was (please let me know if you are reading this) that we store our emotions in our fat and, as we lose weight, those emotions are released and have to be dealt with. While I don't believe this is true in a literal sense, I do believe it is in metaphorically.

Eating, overeating I mean, has always been my way of dealing with situations that I can't handle any other way. When I was a kid, I had an extremely bad temper and my mum would say that I scared her. If I didn't learn to control it, I would end up killing someone. But no one ever taught me how to channel it in sane or constructive ways and, once I left home, I'd repress it by .. you guessed it, overeating. That is just one of the issues I think I need to deal with at the moment. One of the main layers of my complex psychological onion.

So, I'm off to the shrink this afternoon. I don't know if it will do any good, but I'm willing to give it a go. Meanwhile any advice on learning to "love the fat girl" would be really helpful.

The other day I dragged out an old photo from the box in the laundry. It's a photo of me at my lowest ever adult weight. I stuck it on the fridge.

I'd hidden this photo away because it used to depress me - I'd look at it and compare how I'd once looked with how I looked now and get all upset with myself for putting the weight back on. Now I look at it and think - I did it once, I can do it again.

At the time I was working out every day, well every weekday. My son was an infant (and now he's 18, shows how long ago it was) and in childcare while I went to uni so I'd drop him off then go to the uni gym which was hella cheap and do either an aerobics class or weights. I'd get up and dress in my work out gear so I had no choice in it - either go to uni in trackies or work out then get changed.

I had a really good holistic doctor then, and we did accupuncture and relaxation exercises to help me lose weight and to build up my self esteem. On top of that, I had a couple of other motivators: after losing about 5-6 kilos, a friend visited from interstate. I waited all weekend for him to say something but he never mentioned my weight loss. Finally, I asked him if he thought I'd lost weight and he said that he hadn't noticed. He was coming back to visit a few months later and I was determined that next time the loss would be so blindly obvious he'd have to notice.

The other motivator was, of course, a guy.

When I look at the photo and think about myself back then, I remember not so much feeling smaller - my whole focus was on how far I had to go not on celebrating my achievement - but feeling much happier and more alive. I was a ball of endorphin-stimulated energy and couldn't sit still. I glowed.

Best of all, I could put my toe in my mouth. Now that might not seem like a big deal, who wants to put their toe in their mouth anyway, right? But when I was a kid, my sister could bend her foot to her mouth and I couldn't. I was a chubby kid and not very flexible. I used to try and try but could never do it. I remember the day, sitting on my old brown vinyl couch in my old fake wood panel lined lounge room - for some reason I had decided to test my flexibility and I got my foot in my mouth. Sure I've down that many a time, but this time it was literally my foot in my mouth. For once that was a cause for celebration... who'd have thought?

I rang my sister and told her. The victory was mine, twenty odd years later. She couldn't even remember doing it. She had on her lets-smile-and-nod-and-back-away-from-the-crazy-person voice.

It all fell apart of course. I found out the guy wasn't interested and that sent me into a state of the blehs. Then I stopped going to the doctors. It was all or nothing back then. Either 1,000 calories a day or 10,000. Once I missed a few days at the gym, I stopped going altogether. I had exams at uni and personal shit and god knows what else. So it all fell in heap. All I have left is that photo.

I look at that photo and amaze myself with the drool-inducing hotness of my legs. Why did no one tell me back then? I remember I used to do leg exercises all time - I'd point and flex my feet while talking on the phone, sometimes even do air pedalling. They must have worked.

I look at that photo and amaze myself at the flatness of my stomach and the nothingness of my boobs (hey, can't win them all). I am wearing baggy clothes, many sizes too big. It never ended my head to shop for a smaller size.

I look at that photo and admire the things you can't see. The energy and the glow. I want to be that person again. Maybe not with the bad perm this time though.

Well not slackness with the food or exercise but slackness in general. I was supposed to go to my short story class tonight but it is just too hot. I've actually been feeling sick from the heat. I should have gone for a swim but I did a huge walk this morning. I guess I can walk and swim, right. No law against that. Oh well, too late now.

Since I'm not going to class, I thought I'd spend some time thinking about the reasons I want to lose weight so I can have a reminder when I'm feeling less motivated. I think this list will be a work-in-progress.

1. My mum and sister are going to Weight Watchers and I don't want them to be thinner than me. And I want to do it without paying $16 a week. So far my mum has lost more than me but she started a few weeks earlier and had more to lose. My sister has lost less but she was smaller to start with.

2. To get sex. Maybe even a relationship. But just sex would be fine. Not, damn it, I do want a relationship. I find it hard to say that, like I will be mocked for thinking that someone like me is worthy of a relationship. But I am. I really am.

3. To enjoy sex more when I do get it. Just being honest, ok.

4. Clothes, nice clothes and cheaper clothes. My dream is to be able to walk into any shop and buy clothes (well except for really expensive designer stores where I couldn't afford a sock, even then it would be nice to just browse). I shopped in the regular sizes the first time I bought my own clothes - it was a green cheesecloth top and would be very funky nowadays. I was 12 years old and it was a size 16. Not long after that, I no longer fitted regular sizes.

5. I think I'd like to have thinner fingers so I could buy a nice ring. That might even end up being one of my weight loss rewards. My fingers are too big for most rings at the moment. The only one I own is a silver band with love hearts that I tried on once at a market. It got stuck on my finger and I had to buy it.

6. I want to get off my diabetes medication. If I can keep my blood sugar under control with just diet and exercise, I'll be a very happy girl and a very healthy one.

7. I want to like what I see when I look in the mirror.

8. You know when you get on a plane or go to a cafe with booth seating or anywhere that the space is limited, and your mind starts trying to figure if you can squeeze your ample frame into that space. I'd like to never have to do that again.

9. I want to get a job as a stripper. Well maybe not. But I'd like to know that I COULD if I wanted to.

10. I'd like to make guys who rejected me regret that decision.

I think that's enough for now. And, of course, they aren't in order of importance. Naturally my health is far more important to me than good sex. Yeah, right.

You know something that really shits me? Whenever you read about exercise, they always suggest walking up the stairs at work instead of using the lift. Where the hell do these people work? Being a temp, I've worked in zillions of offices and, with one or two exceptions, you CAN'T use the stairs.

We live in a paranoid world, people, and everyone knows terrorists lurk in stairwells.

Until I started on my 'diet', Andrew and I would get a family sized block of chocolate to share a couple of times a week (ok, maybe more). One of my excuses for not losing weight was that he always nagged me for chocolate. I wasn't my fault, it was his.

After telling him a few times that I don't want chocolate and if he wants it, he can buy it himself, he's stopped asking. It was really easy. I should have done that years ago for both our sakes. Of course, having lots of snacks like fruit and corn thins free available helps.

***

When I got weighed last week, my friend took my measurements as well. I compared them to the measurements I took when I started and the results seemed a little biazzre. My hips had gone down about 8 cm but my waist had increased by around 6 cm. I think there could be a lack of consistency in the measuring points. There is no way jose, that you could lose weight and put on 6 cm around the waist. I think maybe I went under the fat rolls and he went over or something like that.

My sister has suggested getting a tattoo so I know which point I measure at.

***

Crumpets with banana and cinammon are the best.

***

I went swimming last night earlier than my usual time and it was awful. Except for 3 lap lanes, the pool was all closed off for swimming lessons. That meant the lap lanes were hideously overcrowded. As one woman said to me - it was worse than peak hour traffic. On top of that, a bunch of teenagers decided to play around in my lane. For once the pool attendants actually said something but the kids just argued back. I think the problem is that they have these really young pool attendants so they have no authority. It bugged me too that they will tell off a bunch of kids but never bother about the middle aged dudes that just stand around in the lap lanes not swimming. One guy just stood at the end of the pool for the whole time I was swimming watching everyone. He really crept me out.

On top of that, some woman kept hoiking up phlegm and spitting. How frigging gross.

Then there were a few women with their kids in the change rooms. I can understand having to take young boys in to the women's change rooms - like infants, but these boys were about 8 years old. Surely they are too old to be in there.

So I've decided that I'm going to go to a different pool. There is another one quite close, although not walking distance, that is new and clean and far more regulated. I get the feeling that my local pool only cares about the cash they make from swimming lessons and doesn't care about anyone else.

The eating was more under control today, I must remember to fill out my Slimmers food diary though so I can keep track of these things. I was thinking about why I was such a little piggy yesterday and decided there were a few factors at work:

Firstly, I was feeling down and glum so the whole emotional eating thing was happening.

Secondly, I was eating out of habit... walking to the cupboard and grabbing something to eat without even thinking about what I was doing.

Thirdly, I remembered after breakfast that I had bought crumpets and as soon as I thought about them I wanted one but didn't want to eat one because I wasn't hungry so all day I wanted crumpets but didn't have them. Just knowing they were in the fridge was driving me mad... they were calling to me. I should have just stopped eating and had the crumpets for lunch or a snack even.

That made me think about something though. When I was a kid, and even now, I have always felt that I had to eat something as soon as I got it otherwise it would be gone. This happened a lot when I was a kid - when we had yummy treats it was every man for himself. Nowadays, I often go to get something and find Andrew has eaten it all. Maybe something I have to work on is having food that is only for me and offlimits to Andrew. Then I can feel secure in knowing that I don't have eat everything immediately.

One time I bought some Weight Watchers icecreams and left them in the fridge for ages. I was proud of myself for saving them for a special moment but, when I went to eat one, they were gone. Andrew had eaten them. Then he had the gall to complain about how they weren't so tasty anyway. Grrrr!

It amazes me to hear stories of people hoarding food. I've never been a hoarder, never had hidden supplies of chocolate bars, not because I don't eat them but because they never last that long.