Bingeing, breathing and bouncing back

Hi hi!

It's Weigh in Wednesday today, and I'm down 1.8kg :)  So 7.8kg down in two weeks - woo!

Today!

I had a couple of nights of binges this week - both Sunday and Monday nights - so I'm happy I was able to still pull that off.  It's not luck, I think it's just biological, and part of it is that my body is still in shock as it's only Week 2.  Meaning yes, I ate crap for two nights plus my usual Saturday, but overall, because I've stuck to my planned meals the rest of the week, it's still better than I was eating a couple of weeks ago.  Whatever the reason, I'm very pleased with it!

Speaking of the binges, I Snapped about it all last night so I won't retell the story here.  But if you're interested in how I dealt with it and moved on, I'll be putting my Snap stories on my YouTube channel ...soon...when I get the chance.  I mentioned ages ago that I was going to do this, and I'm still going to - I've been saving all of my stories on my iPhone!  But I didn't realise that the way I was splicing and uploading them was really poor quality, so I want to redo the ones I already put up, and then of course I have to do all of the weeks since.

But... that'll take a while so I keep putting it off.😉  But watch this space!

Anyway back to the binge - the really cool thing is, I bounced back from it so quickly -

Immediate post binge Snap

Sunday night: binge, Monday night: binge -------- Tuesday and Wednesday (today): no binge.  I don't think I've bounced back that quickly before.  I usually allow it to linger for an average of 7 weeks.😉  It'll happen again, but if the bouncing back time is reducing, then I'm definitely moving in the right direction.

I had another little win tonight, I went out for a quick sushi train dinner with a friend.  It's my favourite sushi place and I've been quite addicted to going there over the last few months.  I've been going there for years, but I realised that the amount of times I've dropped in to get takeaway recently was getting a little epic when I went in and they recognised me and knew that I wanted takeaway.  So embarrassing....!  I've had that happen at so many food places over the years.  Once it was a sandwich shop, and the owner would start making my favourite sandwich when he saw me walking down the street - I went there that often.

Anyway, tonight I managed to hide behind my sunglasses and they didn't recognise me haha - which was helpful, seeing as we were dining in.

My usual 'sushi train plate' quota when I'm dining in is 5 plates.  I always order the

3 plates

same thing.  But tonight, I ate just 3!  It wasn't planned and I didn't overthink it, but I just tried 3, felt ok, and naturally chose not to have any more.  Such a tiny thing, but a step in the right direction.

Also as I type this, it's almost 10pm and it just occurred to me that I was supposed to prep my green smoothies for the next few days, tonight, as I had my last one this morning (the ingredients are prepped in the freezer - I just blend them up 3 or 4 days at a time to keep them fresh.

My first thought was "I don't waaaaaaaaant to."  It's not that late, but it wasn't on my list of things I planned to do tonight (well it was, I just forgot).

Post binge Snap

But in the next breath (thought), I told myself off and told myself to go and do it - it won't take long, and then I'll have everything ready to go for the second half of the week.

Food prepping is my saviour - I knew it was for weight loss, but I'm realising it's also just so helpful for convenience, meaning I don't have to think - it's just there.  I had a really overwhelmed day today - a mixture of things, but including some more bad news (seriously - can February be over already?  If you follow my Snaps you'll know some of it).

Anyway, apart from my food being prepped helping me, I'm trying out a new relaxation thing tonight to keep me centered and keep things in perspective, and it's working.  I'm drafting another blog post about relaxation etc. so I'll save the detail for then, but I just wanted to share that I've found some good tools recently.  And of course, breathing. :)

Slowly but surely, baby steps, one day at a time, all of those things...just gotta keep going, the best that I can.🙂

Sunday night check in

11 days later and I'm still going strong 😊

When I say 'strong', I haven't given up, I haven't binged and I've mostly stuck to plan.

And, following on from my previous post, I could really have named this post "How to lose 6kg in 1 week"...because I did! 

6kg!

Obviously it was my body's result of utter shock of me not eating absolute crap 100% of the time!  First week weigh-ins are always awesome, but I think this one is my biggest weight loss in one week, ever.  I think I lost 6.3kg one week a couple of years ago - maybe - but otherwise this has been my biggest.  And it was exactly 6.0kg😊

It hasn't been a perfect 11 days, but when is a weight loss journey perfect?

I shared my daily ups and downs on Snapchat and Instagram stories, but basically to summarise for my blog, I just had chocolate on two nights and enjoyed my calorie free days on each Saturday I've had.  Other than that I've pretty much stuck to my cals.

I haven't done any exercise yet, for a few reasons I'll chat about in a later post, but that will come. One step at a time.

I did a 4 hour food prep last Monday night where I made enough breakfasts, lunches and dinners to last me for approximately 2 weeks.  Each night I've packed my lunch

Last weeks food prep

Last weeks food prep

Last weeks food prep

bag for the next day and doing this has, as always, been a saviour.  It'd be so easy to slip up without doing this.

My lunches

My calorie free days are awesome in the sense they help me not to feel deprived - I can have what I want - just on Saturdays.  And boy, have I gone to town.  They've been hard to come off on each Sunday, as I want to continue them, but so far I've jumped back each week.

The amount of crap I've eaten on both Saturdays won't do me any favours further down the track, once the weight loss slows down or plateaus.  I'm sure I'll have to scale it back at some stage, but for now it's helping me - and I need all the help I can get.

Being down 6kg so quickly (by the scales anyway - I'm sure a couple of the kg's were just water weight) is definitely encouragement to keep it up.  I'll check in after Wednesday's weigh in and let you know how I go.  In the meantime I'll keep chatting about the daily hits and misses on my other social media.

For now, I just wanted to let you know how I'm going, on Attempt #189354.

Love Kate xxoo

 

How to put on 10kg in 4 weeks

Despite the instructional sounding title of this blog post, it's probably going to be very short.  ("A short blog post" Kate said....)

But...!  I am serious.  Because the answer to how to put on 10kg in 4 weeks is very simple:

You binge eat a lot of crap, day in day out, and don't move your body.

There you go folks!

The end.

But it's not the end - because, as I'm slightly known as the girl who will never give up, that's still the current situation, and always will be.  My little foray AKA Attempt #341189 that I started at the end of October was going well.  If you follow me on Instagram, Facebook and all the rest, you would have seen my little Post-It notes going strong.  Every Wednesday I posted how I was tracking:

That was up to early January.  Up until then I'd managed to hold onto that 10kg-ish lost for a few weeks.  I was hovering... I wasn't losing, but I was maintaining - which was progress for me.

But early January I just went nutso.  January 1st is supposed to be the day we're all 'perfect' from, isn't it??😉

Aside from the fact that there's no such thing as perfection, I also had a family emergency on New Years Eve that threw me way more than I was expecting - it took me about a week to recover - and it wasn't even about me.  On either side of that, in mid December and twice in mid January, I had three horrible experiences that sent me spinning.  Really, it's not much to expand on - it's just stuff that each and every one of us face every day - that thing called 'life'.  But with so many hard moments smooshed so closely, as well as the heightened emotions of Christmas and my January birthday, I really struggled to keep up even a 'Kate smile' for most of January.

Anyway - that kind of explains the month, but back to the 11th Jan....that day I just couldn't face the scales.  I'm not someone who lets the scales affect me emotionally.  I use them as a tracking tool because I'm obsessed with numbers, planning and goals - but 99% of the time, they don't dictate how I feel.

But that 1% occasionally pops up, and that's how I felt this day.  I decided that they would do my mindset actual detriment rather than simply recording digits, so there was no point in checking them.  (I still took a photo of the scales without looking, so that I could still keep my tracking up to date, because I'm slightly OCD like that.)

So instead, I posted this:

Cute - if it was a once off.

But, the next 2 Wednesday's...there were no Post-It notes on my social media.  I didn't explain their absence, and for any faithful followers, I of course didn't need to - their pure omission explained it all.

I still weighed and recorded (and checked my weight from that emo day), but while I wasn't sharing my weigh ins, I was essentially sitting back and watching my body inflate as I shoved food down my throat with well rehearsed vigour.

I just checked my previous post and yeah - basically I've continued that type of meal

Regular dinner shot on my Camera Roll

plan...hot cross buns lathered with margarine for breakfast.  Fish and chips for lunch (no salad + extra chips).  Takeaway dinner every night: Dominos, KFC, sushi, the local RSL or the Thai restaurant across the road...  Some nights I wouldn't have takeaway though!  On those nights I'd have 2 more dripping-with-butter hot cross buns, followed by 3 ice blocks.  So it wasn't all bad. #yesimbeingsarcastic

In between those staple 'meals'😑, I'd litter my diet with half a tub of ice cream in one sitting - more ice blocks - (I'd even suck one down before my hot cross bun breakfasts some days) - chocolate bars - packets of chips - jam drop biscuits - those Malteser bunnies - frozen Cokes and soft serve cones... and did you know that Easter eggs are currently available to buy?  I do...

This food intake is my norm, when I'm not focusing on my diet (and by 'diet' I mean 'dietary intake', not 'diet to lose weight').  It has been since I was 16 years old.  I've made it no secret that I've struggled with eating disorders and I believe I always will.  (That's not me being pessimistic, it's me coming to peace with it, releasing the pressure of years of agony and realising that I can instead learn to manage it.  But that's a whole other blog post (that I've already written!)) 😊

So yep - I'm definitely no stranger to this kind of eating.  (I just happen to be being a little more explicit in my public descriptions lately...eeek!)

And it becomes quite hard to hide - well it does if you don't want to be embarrassed.  There was one day last week where I just failed with the hiding from morning till night.

I have many 'hiding food in public' techniques - I should write a blog post about that one day...  But anyway - my 'hot cross buns lathered in margarine technique' is to cut them in half, and place them into a non see-through Tupperware container that will become your plate as well.  Put them in the microwave, hopefully before the kitchen gets busy, and get your margarine ready and as hidden as possible.

Once the kitchen is clear and the buns are warm, hunch over the Tupperware container, pouring margarine onto one half at a time, using the lid as a plate.  Quickly shove the margarine dripping half back into the container, and get out the next half, and repeat.

Secure the lid back on so that the smell of yummy warm hot cross buns doesn't waft too far and make more heads turn than absolutely necessary.

I won't go on, but you get the idea.

The other day though, I miscalculated the busyness of the kitchen or wasn't using my peripheral vision to it's full capacity, and mid 'hiding hot cross buns', a girl came in to put something in the fridge.  This girl, of course, is a gym junkie and works her backside off every day.  

Just as she opened the fridge, I accidentally dropped literal margarine 'globules' onto the kitchen bench, instead of onto my hot cross bun that I was attempting to hide.

'Globules' is the only way I can describe it - it wasn't like I dropped the knife and smeared a bit of marg on the table top.  No - this was margarine that I could pick up.

I was going to describe the whole day, but you get the picture when it started with picking up margarine globules as a fitness lover put her protein shake into the fridge right beside me...

I got given a birthday present in this bag💝

Anyway somehow over the last week and a half I managed to pull myself together and organise to get my shit together!  Starting today.

I said to a fellow weight loss friend just tonight, that I'm sure people read my blog or social media posts, shake their heads and think "here she goes again" - as I'm forever falling and standing back up.

But how else do babies learn to walk...smokers manage to quit...job seekers get employed...any of us master anything...they/we get back up again, no matter how many falls, fails or knock backs.  Otherwise we'd never achieve anything.
 
I weighed myself today and I've literally put on every single gram of that weight that I had been losing since the end of October.  Plus 400grams.

That means I have literally put on 10.5kg in the last 4 weeks.  Steller effort there, Kate.

So that's how it's done.

But we always have the chance to get back on the right path... So, back to this morning.

I screwed up before I'd even gotten out of bed today - I had a bit of reflux before my alarm went off for my grand return to boot camp... it was only reflux, but it was enough that I grabbed my sick bowl from under my bed because I thought I was going to throw up.

When the alarm went off, I stood up, snoozed it for an hour, and blonde-ly lay back down and tried to decide whether I should still go.  I promptly fell back asleep, and woke up an hour later, at 6am, as boot camp was kicking off, a 25min drive away...

My food prep last night

As much as I was really down on myself for that (because I realised that the reflux was most likely an overdose of sugar, from me gorging on my endless last supper last night before starting afresh today - #stupid), I don't have any exercise expectations for the first couple of weeks.

I intend to go to boot camp next week, and I've tricked myself into going to parkrun this weekend - but other than that, anything extra is a bonus.  My injuries etc. are so rife that I'm just not able to do much anyway.  But - start small....

What I can control, though, is my food - which was on point today.

It's Day 1 (for the 600th time), but I got through it and did myself proud.  Day 1 sux, but we all have to take that first step, say no to that cigarette for the first time, and apply for that first job, in order to eventually succeed, in whatever we're trying to do. :)

On a completely different note, just because it's 8th February as I type this; this is me exactly 3 years ago today:

8 February 2014

I'm going to try to use myself as inspiration. xx