Photo Journal on my way to becoming a Skinny Bitch

I started this blog to keep me honest, to keep me focussed and to make sure that I don’t hide from the truth ever again.

Grumpy old fart

Nobody wants to be an obese fat person – right?

So why did I get myself into that state?  How did I allow the quality of my life to degrade to the point where I was hiding from life and the world at large?

There was never a conscious decision to pile on the kilos.  I guess I could have fooled myself still for years to come that I was ok, that I was fine and that I was just a little “chubby”.  Mirrors were easily avoided – after all I only looked at myself in the little make-up mirror for many years and completely discarded the fact that there was a whole body from the double chins down.  So easy to play ostrich and detach yourself from daily life by weaving this whole mental fabric of lies around what you are becoming.

We all need to reach that place of “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH” ourselves – for some its a health scare, for others its a cataclysmic change in our lives and for people like me its terrifying photographic proof in living colour that left NO margin for error on how big I truly was.

Next time – I’m going to stand on the other side of them!

I guess I could have carried on ignoring the proof that was in front of my very eyes and avoided facing the truth, but the metal gears in my head shifted when I saw our holiday photographs.  Suddenly I realised that I had become a spectator in life and that I was just “existing” and forgot what it was to truly live.

Its nearly 6½ months since I made that final decision to do something about my weight and while the journey has been tough and lonely in some instances, sad and emotional in others, scary and terrifying at most – it can now only be described as spectacularly jubilant and amazingly life changing!

There is not a day that goes by that people don’t comment or congratulate me on my amazing progress.  Yesterday I bumped into a friend who I had seen last seen the beginning of January 2013 and his jaw literally dropped.  He couldn’t stop talking about the change in me and even asked me if I had plastic surgery.  So cool!

Scary up close pictures

Truth be told its rather embarrassing and sometimes I wish the earth would open up and swallow me whole – but I’ve learnt to just accept the fact that the changes are astronomical and that I must just accept the praise gracefully while going all delicate shades of pink, purple and cerise.

I still have about 20-23 kilos to go – but my goodness its a whole lot less than the original 51.4 kilos mountain that I had to cross when I started.  I’m revising my original thought to stop at 60 kilograms because the dietician said that it won’t look right on a woman my age – but I will assess for myself when I get closer to the mark.  I will know when I finally weigh the right amount.

In the meantime my journey is filled with living my life!  I eat out when I want to, I treat myself when I need to and I enjoy myself when ever I can.

As long as I know the repercussion of my choices and I’m willing to pay the price for that delicious Caramel Sunday.  I enjoy it once a while without beating myself up – just as long as I know that it will take that much longer to lose the weight and that much more time to spend in the gym to loosen the resultant clinging evidence from my tummy and hips.  As long as I don’t obsess about food every day of my life and as long as my days are now filled with healthy choices.

I allow myself and I forgive myself when I indulge.  I don’t make a habit of it and I sure as heck don’t allow food to rule my life anymore.  I CHOOSE to eat the low oil vegetable pasta just so that I can have a Walnut Crème Brule afterwards. I CHOOSE to have Green Tea when we go out for a coffee date just so that I can have a bran or carrot muffin with it.  I CHOOSE not to eat chocolates and chips during the day just so that I can have a Milky Bar Hot Chocolate at a lunch date.

Its all about choices now and its working for me.

I’m still steadily losing and I’m still going to the gym every morning before work to tone up.  As long as I don’t become obsessive and as long as I enjoy the journey called life no matter where it takes me to next.

NEVER AGAIN!

As an aside  – they just delivered my new Samsung Galaxy S5 – which I am going to play with the whole day!  whoop whoop!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What a 25.4kg weightloss look like…

I can barely see the difference between the last photographs and this one – but I know its there because my skin is feeling tighter and my clothes are sitting a bit loser on me…

Well – its only a 5.4 kg difference – so I guess I shouldn’t expect miracles.

However when I put all the photos I took in a row – then the story it tells is incredible.

I lost 25.4 kilograms people – that is brilliant.  That is a whole big bag of building cement…  a horrible amount of weight that I don’t have to lug around every single minute of the day…  And it feels great!

So here are the updated pictures lest I forget where I came from and lest I forget why I’m doing this…

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AND COMPARING TODAY WITH 30 SEPTEMBER 2013 – THE DAY I STARTED

THIS IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN 30 JANUARY AND 30 MARCH 2014

Its small – but there…

Well here is to the last 25 kilograms…  my vow to myself is that no matter how long it takes and no matter what curve balls life throws at me = I WILL GET THERE!

 

Fatty in a gym….

This morning was my first furore to the gym and I wish I could say that I took to it like a duck takes to water, but the reality is that I felt like a fly without a turd or a teenager without his attitude.

I was SOOOO out of my depth it wasn’t funny…

The night before I packed my little sports bag!  Like an anal attentive squirrel, I separated my shower toiletries from the others, my swim cap and goggles went into its own little bag, my sweat towel I put with my lip ice and I chose clothes for the next day that didn’t wrinkle…

I guess if you really want to analyse this disturbing OCD behaviour, then clear signs are there of me trying to control the unknown.

At the ungodly hour of 4.30, I crawled out of bed, took the dogs for their toilet, packed my food in for the day and made my way down to the gym.  I was NOT the only lunatic there, but I was the ONLY idiot who didn’t know what the hell to do.

I made my way upstairs to the stepper because I figured that ANYBODY knows how to climb stairs – so surely the machine can’t be THAT difficult?  Right?

WRONG!

The stupid steps kept on sinking to the bottom and no amount of cajoling and swearing from me could get the damn things back up again.  After about 2 and a half minutes of me floundering around like a fish out of water, I finally figured out that the impedance setting counteracts my weight and will keep me up in the air…  Of course my first setting was too high and I couldn’t get the step back down again.  It took about another minute before the machine and myself got to understand each other!

BUT… I could only do 10 minutes of the stepper because that machine be TOUGH!  Its not like my little baby stepper – this thing takes steps so high that my upper calf muscles started screaming in terror…  But I toughed it out and after ten minutes I went downstairs on VERY wobbly legs.

I got into my bather and went into a room to take a quick shower as per gym rules…  but after bundling around in a VERY hot room – I finally realised that I was in the Steam Room….  So I sat there for about 5 minutes JUST in case somebody saw me groping around in the haziness. With my glasses finally fogged up to the hilt – I eventually got out to make my way to the Swimming Pool.

And THAT was when I realised that I had to walk through the breakfast area to get to the pool…  NO man!  I don’t want to wobble all over the place in my bather through the area where healthy looking people were sitting drinking their smoothies….

But with my towel firmly around me – I shuffled to the pool and finally got into the warm water.  FINALLY I thought….. THIS is were this fat chick is on equal footing with the rest of the gym lunatics…

WRONG AGAIN!

By my fourth lap I was seriously hoping to drown just to stop the torture…  I am so out of condition that I’m not even capable of doing four laps without paramedics standing by.  So I started alternating my freestyle with breaststroke and at least THAT got me some respite until I spent a total of 20 minutes doing laps…

I got out of that pool looking like an overcooked beetroot and just before I could do my shuffle of shame back through the breakfast area – some skinny woman came walking through a door that I honestly didn’t see before!  I opened it and peered gingerly inside and realised that it was the locker room where I got undressed.

*groan*

I can’t begin to even imagine what the people must have thought watching me shuffling the LONG way past them when I could have just gone through that small little door and step right into the pool.

Was that the end of my clumsy first time at the gym?

Nope!

I managed to get my lock stuck in the locker door and no matter how hard I tried – I just couldn’t get it out again.

And THAT your honour was when I decided to leave the damn thing where it was and just get the hell out of there before I embarrassed myself further!

If I wasn’t such a stubborn old mule – I would just forget about gymming and stay on my stepper… but I’m just too damn obstinate to give up like this.

I DID go back that evening for an Aquarobic class…. and even though I didn’t embarrass myself again – I was completely abused by Atilla the Drowning Nun who nearly killed me with the HECTIC pool exercises.   It was only afterwards that I was told that THAT was the advanced class…

*groan*

So now I’m going to sleep to try and erase this day from my memory.   Tomorrow is another day and hopefully THIS time it goes better…

As a final note though – look at the BEAUTIFUL sunrise as I left the gym – isn’t it stunning?

*snore*