Reaping the Rewards

Weigh in this week was good! As I stood in line, I muttered something to the lady in front of me about how I'd be happy to lose just the 700 grams (1.54 lbs) I had gained last week. After what seemed like an hour of standing in line to weigh in, I finally got to the front. I paid my money, hopped on the scale and waited. Sure enough, I lost 700 grams. So, I'm back down to 135.8 kg (298.76 lbs) and back to 22.8 kgs (50.16 lbs) lost.

It's a good feeling, to know you have lost that much.

It's a good feeling, to know that you can really do this thing.

It's a good feeling, to feel your clothes getting bigger and bigger.

But. It can be very discouraging to look at the numbers and realise just how far you still have left to go. Very disheartening. It can make you want to give up, when you look at the numbers and do the math and realise how long this road can be.

So what can you do to make that road a little more bearable? What can you do to stop yourself from giving up, throwing in the towel and drowning your misery in fried foods and fat globules? How do pull yourself out of the depths of I-can't-possibly-carry-on-so-I'm-going-to-eat-my-fat-ass-weight-in-cookie-dough-ice-cream ?

Well, you could have someone slap you and demand that you pull yourself together immediately. Or you could blog about it and hope that you get enough encouraging comments to eradicate the ennui (which you totally would, because us bloggers are good like that!).

OR!

You could reward yourself!!

Little rewards along the way can boost you. Your self esteem, your confidence, your happiness levels...all boosted when you have a reward.

In the last while, I have bought myself new pants and a couple new shirts. I suppose you could think of them as rewards but I rather think that I bought them out of necessity. There's just so long I can wear my other pants before I find myself accidentally mooning some poor old gal while I'm at work. I hear they frown on that kind of behaviour in my job!

Clothing aside, as I'd have to buy them anyway, I began to think about how I could reward myself for hitting the 50 lb mark. Ideally, I'd like one of these pretty baubles:

That's a Pandora charm bracelet in case you weren't aware of their existence. The jeweler here in town has them (or ones like them) and you can buy charms for them for reasonable prices. I'd like to get one and buy a new charm for every 5 or 10 kgs. I'll be pricing them out this week.

So then I thought, well, I'll get my nails done.

Yeah right. Get my nails done so that the next time I'm helping some old girl shower, I can slice through her paper thin skin. That'll be fun to explain to the bosses. Plus, long nails interfere with my stellar typing skills.

In the end I decided, on a whim, to get my hair done. Not just cut, as I'd been planning for weeks, but coloured as well. And you know what?

I. Feel. Fantastic.

I do. And now I can look down this long road of mine, just a little bit further, and totally picture my next reward. And the one after that!

Oh you want proof? (Oh, I want to show off?)

Me, before (note, messy mop of naturally blond hair, no shape to it, usually worn in a ponytail):

(This pic was taken about 8 kgs ago)

Me, after (looking incredibly bored in the picture where I pose sans glasses):

I really encourage you all to reward yourself along the way. We're all working towards the same goal - to be fit & healthy. That in itself will eventually be the giant reward, the Oscar to our award winning performances. But it is important along the way to keep ourselves going.

For me, a couple of hours at the hair salon was enough. I came away feeling new, feeling refreshed, feeling....cute! For you, it could be something else. Figure out what it is, and do it!

If you're already doing it....how do YOU reward yourself?

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If you're a "fan" of Looking For My Feet on Facebook, then you may have noticed the challenges I've been posting lately. Rest assured, I am doing them too! Those 100 sit ups just about killed me the other day because I was left with 50 of them to do right before bed. OUCH! So join in!

A couple quick things

Welcome back everyone! I hope you're finding the new design of the blog up to par. I was somewhat dismayed to find my template had disappeared the other day but I think it was a blessing in disguise. After spending hours fiddling with things and playing with settings, I think I have it to where I am happy. I invite you to check out the tabs at the top and the sidebar to your right.

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I'd really like to have guest bloggers featured on a fairly regular basis. If you are interested in writing a post for Looking For My Feet, about your weight loss journey, path to fitness or anything else health/fitness/weight loss related, I'd love to hear from you. And don't be surprised if you get an email from me asking about this!

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I gained 700 grams (1.54 lbs) at last week's weigh in. I knew it was going to happen because I had a bit of a stressful week and spent a few days eating anything that wasn't nailed down. More on THAT in another post! I've been back on track this week, so I'm hoping it will be reflected on the scale at tomorrow's weigh in. Fingers crossed!

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See over there on the sidebar, that lovely Facebook badge? Please come visit there!

I'll be doing a couple of giveaways in the next little while. One will be from the followers here, and one will be for the fans on Facebook. Or "like-rs" I guess.

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Well. That's it folks. I hope you're all having a great week. I'll be back tomorrow after I've weighed in. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Please excuse the ugly

Gah! Came by to read a couple comments left by some of you wonderful folks out there and found my wee blog here lookin' a tad uglified! Seems the place where I got my blog template is having a bit of plastic surgery right now and my template has vanished into the ether along with Michael Jackson's nose. (Too soon?)

I'll hopefully have it lookin' all beautified again soon, so please don't be alarmed. Just cover all the mirrors, don't make direct eye contact, and come back soon ok?

Enjoyment is the key

Hey everyone! Before I get onto the topic at hand, did you notice when you clicked over here that the little icon next to my web address has changed? It is no longer the boring old Blogger icon! Yup...it's cool. I know. I was lucky enough over at my other blog to win a "favicon" from Angela over at Striking Keys. So once I had installed the one over there, I went searching and figured out how to get one over here too! Ain't it cool?

Also...I weighed in this week and was down 1 kgs (2.2 lbs) bringing my total loss to 22.8 kgs (50.16 lbs) and my current weight to 135.8 kgs (298.76 lbs). Thank you, hold your applause!

Anycoolness, I wanted to talk about exercise today. I know, I know...it's the end of the week, you've been working hard since Monday, you just want to relax and have a beer and some chips, blah blah blah. Well, suck it up princess (or prince...I have no idea if any guys are reading, so if you are...say hi!) because we're going to do this!

"Movement is a medicine for creating change in a person's physical, emotional and mental states."
~ Carol Welch

We all know that exercise is good for us. It's common knowledge that the more you move, the healthier you are. And moving from the couch to the kitchen and back again doesn't count! Our doctors, nutritionists, personal trainers, families, friends and opinionated strangers on the street will all tell us that if we just got off our fat asses and DID something, that we might be able to lose some weight.

They're right.

Sorry, but they are. I hate to burst your bubble of ignorance, but they're right. It took me a while to come to terms with that, but I had to. If I hadn't come around, if I hadn't acknowledged that exercising needed to become an essential part of my life, I would very soon not even have the chance to change my mind....because I'd die. Plain and simple.

For some people, fat or thin, exercise sucks. It's just not an enjoyable thing for them.

For a fat person, exercise sucks more than a two dollar whore. (Sorry, was that rude? Get used to it, I'm here to stay. )

It sucks because:

~ you look out of place at a gym and everyone, including you, knows it

~ it puts pressure on all your joints & your back

~ it's hard to breathe and when you do, you often end up wheezing

~ it puts extra stress on your heart & lungs

~ you think you have to be running or doing some sort of heavy cardio

~ you haven't found a workout you enjoy

Well here's the simple answer: You deserve to be in that gym as much as possible, the pressure on your joints will ease as you lose weight and your breathing will improve, your heart will be less stressed as you lose weight, you can do something other than running and there ARE workouts to enjoy.

Ok. Now that we have that out of the way, let's pick just one of those bullet points and run with it, shall we?

Finding a workout you can enjoy!

Exercise = Enjoyment ??
FAIL

For a long, long time that was how I viewed things. I knew I needed to lose weight, I knew how to do it. I just didn't equate the two. And for some things, I still don't. For example, I don't see the fun in sitting on a hard bike seat, in a hot room, with some bitch at the front yelling at me to pedal faster because I'm a lazy, fat cow....yet others think spin class is great!

The key (ahhh...and now the title gets tied in!) is to find something that you can do, do well, and have fun while you're at it. So I thought, for the purposes of this little project, that I would let you in on my feelings about some of the stuff out there. Ready?

Walking - I started this journey by walking. A lot. Everywhere. I still do it. Once I am plugged into my iPod, with the tunes playing in my ears, I get lost in my own little world. This is a great exercise for anyone, whether you're morbidly obese or at your ideal weight. Walk slow, walk fast. Just walk. Enjoyment factor (on a scale of 1 to 10)? = 7

Running - I am only just getting into this and honestly, at 135 kgs, it's still a bit hard on my knees but I am beginning to enjoy it. I can feel myself building a rhythm and with the music in my ears, it's just me. I think to get to the point where you enjoy it, doing a program like the C25K is important. Enjoyment factor = 6 with room for improvement

Swimming/Aqua Aerobics/Water Walking - Being in the water makes me happy. I started off slow, swimming about 10 lengths in the pool and now I can do 80 lengths (2 kms) with and without fins. It's very freeing, floating along, weightless. Enjoyment factor = 7
Aqua Aerobics gets the heart rate up but with no pressure on the knees and back. Enjoyment factor = 6
Water Walking is fantastic. You get the resistance of the water, with no pressure and you can just keep walking til you get tired. Enjoyment factor = 7

Gym Slog - That's about the only good name I can come up with for it. I have a gym membership and I use it...but only because it's a nice alternative to walking in the rain (where I might melt) and it has the weights for toning up a bit. Beyond that, meh. Enjoyment factor = 3

Yoga/Pilates - Never tried them...plan to soon.

Kickboxing - Been a few years but liked it when I did it. Very good for stress relief. Enjoyment Factor = 7

Wii - Meh. Good in a pinch or if it's miserable outside. Too stoppy/starty for me. Enjoyment factor = 4.

Zumba - I've saved the best for last. In my opinion, this is THE best thing to hit the world since the day I was born to make your lives complete. I have never had so much fun at an exercise class. EVER. It's a latin dance based workout and REALLY gets the heart pumping. There are people of all ages, sizes and abilities that attend. No one cares what you look like....mostly because they don't notice, they're too busy keeping track of their own thing. It's fast paced, it's fun, it's ....awesome! Enjoyment factor = 12!

What kind of workout makes YOU feel good? What you truly enjoy doing?

Now, get off your ass and go DO something!!

Weighing the alternatives

In the Middle Ages, they had guillotines, stretch racks, whips and chains. Nowadays, we have a much more effective torture device called the bathroom scale.
~ Stephen Phillips

Ain't that the truth?!

People the world over have a set of scales in their house, usually in the bathroom, and they spend incredible amounts of time hopping on and off them. Digital scales, dial scales, you name it, we've got it. We get up in the morning and step on the scales. We go to the bathroom and we step on the scales again, just to see how much weight we lost by peeing. We have breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks and after every meal we stand on the scale to see the change. It can drive us nuts.

Personally I have an older dial scale in the bathroom but it only goes up to 130 kgs. Only. HA! That's a lot. And yet, I'm still not there.

I have a Wii Fit which will weigh me but I can stand on it 5 times in 5 minutes and it will give me a different weight every time. Plus, it weighs me at 4 kgs LIGHTER than the Weight Watchers scales.

This obsession that we have with scales and constantly weighing ourselves in not healthy! Our weight can easily fluctuate up to 2.2 kgs (5 lbs) a DAY, so why do we put ourselves through it?

Wouldn't it be better to concentrate on:

~ how satisfied we're feeling through the day?
~ our measurements over the course of a month?
~ the way our clothes are fitting?
~ how much exercise we've managed to do that week?

I see the desire to chart our weight, I just don't see the point in doing it daily or multiple times a day. It's great to keep an eye on our weight, but dangerous to become obsessed with it.

I weigh in on Wednesdays. I stand on my bathroom scale and wish that it would magically drop below the 130 kgs mark, but the scale I depend on, the scale I go by, is the one at Weight Watchers.

If you are someone who stands on your scale more than once (or twice) a week, I beg of you to put it in the deep dark recesses of a closet somewhere until you have broken yourself of the desire to jump on it. Start looking at other ways to measure your success, that will support the numbers on the scale. Start believing in those other ways so that if the scale shows a gain, you can look at your measurements or your clothes and say to yourself "my weight may have gone up this week but you know what? I feel great!"

As for me? I'll continue to weigh in at WW, but I'm going to put the bathroom scales away for now. It doesn't matter how much I plead with them, they don't want to drop below 130 just yet anyway. So they can just bugger off until they're willing to cooperate.

So. How is YOUR relationship with the scales going?

10 Things

I forgot to update after my last weigh in. I lost 600 grams...which is half of what I had gained the week before, so that's a plus!

Now.

Often on this adventure we can get so fixated on the things that we don't like about ourselves and the things that we want to change or get rid of, that we can lose sight of the good things. Be honest with yourself for a minute - how often do you stand in front of the mirror and say to yourself "Ugh...I really need to tone up my arms, they look like they're having a disco of their own whenever I wave at someone" or "I wish I had a better body/face/hair style". We're hard on ourselves.

What I would like to challenge all of you to do this week is this. Find at LEAST 10 things that you like about yourself, and write them down. Blog about them. Tell your spouse or your best friends.

I promise you'll feel better afterwards. Don't think about, just do it!

I'll start.

10 Things I Like About Myself

1. I love my hair. I have awesome hair. It's long. It's blonde. It's thick. It's lovely. Plus, it falls out in handfuls. This can be mildly irritating but, for the purposes of this post, I'm going to keep the fact that I lose copious amounts of hair in the "I like this about me" category because I find it funny that The Man has to pull so much of it out of the shower drain on a regular basis.

2. I have pretty eyes. I really do. They're a crystal clear blue and they shine. I have always been complimented on my eyes and I fully plan to keep those compliments coming. I think that they're probably my best feature.

3. I am a good mother. Sure I yell and scream and have my own little temper tantrums occasionally but I am a kick ass mother to my children. They will always know that I am here for them and will love them and make time for them.

4. I work very hard at being a good friend. I try to be there for a laugh or as a shoulder to cry on. I'll help plot revenge and cover up the evidence for you too. I'll be there for you in whatever capacity I can and enjoy doing so.

(this is harder than I thought, ya'll!)

5. I am tall. This means I can reach high shelves, change lightbulbs on my own, and rest my head on my husband's shoulder. I have longer before my children will be taller than me and if I ever get the chance to stand next to Tom Cruise, I can be added to the list of women that tower over him.

6. I have a great sense of humour. Alright, it's sometimes warped and always dirty...but it's fantastic.

7. I have really strong legs. My arms may be pathetically weak much of the time, but my legs are incredibly strong. They carry me through my life and allow me to run after my children. One day, they will take me through a running race. One day.

8. My brain holds onto all sorts of weird facts. I know a lot about movies and random literary references. This means that I often have an advantage in trivia games...but I try not to let that go to my blonde head.

9. I am stubborn. Many would view this as a bad quality but in this case, as it pertains to my weight loss especially, I think it's a great thing. It means that I'm not going to give up this time. I'm determined to succeed and anyone who tries to get in my way had better watch their back.

10. I love. Deeply. If you fall into the group of people who I love, I will go to the ends of the earth for you. Not in a weird, stalker-ish kind of way...but I will do whatever I can for you. I will love you, support you and be there for you.

So that's my 10 things. What are yours?

Flop. Fizz. Fumble. FAIL!

Well. Have any of you seen that website called Fail Blog? If you haven't, you should check it out. It's rather funny, except that there should probably be a section on it for me now, complete with a screen shot of my blog from the beginning on June. Like this...

Because, unfortunately, that's what my June Challenge turned into. A fail. It's funny because Tex even commented on the original post and said to just pick one of my goals and go with that. And yet, I didn't even manage to succeed in ONE of my goals. *sigh*

This whole journey can be rather frustrating at times. Just when I thought I was back on track, I got sick. So those goals I made? Drinking my water, exercising 4 days a week, tracking everything I eat AND losing 4kgs in the month of June? Yeah, I'd say they turned into quite the big fat

FAIL

I drank a fair amount of water, especially when I was sick, but did not exercise anywhere near 4 days a week and my tracking fell by the wayside for awhile there. As for weight loss, thanks my June 30th weigh in showing a one week gain of 1.2 kgs (2.64 lbs) (yes really! I swear the caramel lumps pinned me down and jumped down my throat! They've since been evicted from my house), my grand total for loss in the entire month of June was a wopping 100 grams (0.22 lbs).

AAAAGGGHHHH!!!!

So what do you do when this happens? The instinct, for me at least, seems to be to crawl into a hole and give up. But I'm fighting that urge and I've been tracking diligently this week. I've also been wearing my pedometer and I'll be off to Zumba tonight.

I have not given up on my Virtual Bike Tour of NZ but, needless to say, it too fell off the radar.

Let's set some new goals shall we?

JULY CHALLENGE!

Water: Drink it, drink it, drink it! I have started carrying a water bottle with me in the car so I have water with me most of the time. It makes me feel like I'm floating but I know it's good for me. I'm probably getting at least 6 glasses of water a day, just from the bottle alone.

Food: I really, really need to eat more fruits and veggies. My aim is to try a new fruit or vegetable, in some form, every month. At LEAST one new one.

Tracking: Track. Everything. I. Eat. It really is that simple. You'd think that after 8 months it would have clicked by now eh?

Exercise: At least 3 days a week, for at least 45 minutes. I already have two days a week accounted for because I'm going to Zumba on Monday & Tuesday nights. Soon there will be a class on Fridays as well. They're hour long classes, so that's great! I'm also still attempting to train for the 5K in August, so hey...looks like we're sorted eh?

Weight loss: I think 4 kg was a bit of a reach for last month. So, for July, I am aiming for 2.5 kgs (5.5 lbs). If I manage more than that, cool! If not, oh well. We have 4 weigh ins this month, so I'm hoping that's an achievable goal.

Blogging: More than once a week. It keeps me accountable. Plus...it gives you something to do.

ONWARDS & UPWARDS! .....ERR.....DOWNWARDS!