Pushing through temptation, no excuses, injuries and the rest

Hey :)

It's almost the end of Week 1; I'm just checking in.  It's been a pretty good week, 'weight loss journey wise'.

Food / nutrition is going well: my kitchen stresses have diminished of course, now that I'm not trapped in there and have all of my meals ready to go!  Thursday was particularly hard

Thursday lunch

though, I just wanted to eat bad food.  I had a bad day and thought that bacon chips, a crunchy pie or a block of Top Deck chocolate would make me feel better.  I pushed through it though and didn't give in, and Friday was a lot easier.  My calorie free plan is continuing to help me so much with days like this - and I got to enjoy some treats this week thanks to it!

Exercise wise I've also been on track, yahoo!  I've adopted a 'no excuses' thing this week and plan to keep it going.  This week I trained on a few occasions when it would have been easier and half valid to make an excuse, so I'm proud.  One afternoon I was going for a walk but suddenly had to call roadside assistance to attend to my car (that was parked at my home).  As much as I was the one who called them and they were coming to help me (!) I was annoyed that it was going to interrupt my planned walk, as I had to wait near my car.  

So instead, I changed my walk path to a very small circle in the immediate vicinity of my house.  The neighbours probably thought I was a nutter 'stalking' my own home, while

11kg lunge weight

constantly peering down the street for the roadside assistance truck, but I didn't care.  I had to burn 280 calories, I managed to get 250 done while I was waiting, then went out for a quick walk for the last 30 after they left.  I didn't sit and wait, I multitasked...

Another night I got asked to look after my 2 year old niece, when I was planning on going to boot camp.  In the aim of not using excuses, I brought her along, to what she has now renamed from 'boot camp' to 'running in the park with puppy dogs.' 

I was *hoping* that she was going to be content to sit patiently and watch me, yet ready to admit that I was a naive aunt for thinking a 2 year old would do that for an hour.  But she proved me very proud and despite the fact I left my specially packed distraction bag of toys and tricks at work, I managed to do the whole session!  

During warm up I held her while I did squats, the next 20min. was helped by the amazing lunchbox full of snacks that her mum packed her, and I just peeled her fruit in between sets. This was followed by a small window of time where me and my boot camp partner Sarah called out things for her to find in the "Where's Wally" type book that I fortunately had in my car.  When she got bored of finding planes and trains that probably weren't even in the book (whoops), she wanted to come over to us.  

I lunged with her on my shoulders, she 'helped' me to farmers carry some weights, she raced Sarah while doing shuttle runs and 'burpees', and then stood patiently by my side as I boxed.  Such a good kid!  Finding a juice popper and tickling her each time I sat up helped

Late night hill walk

me get sit ups done, and then we finished off with planking, whereby she squealed a bit and sat on my neck.  I was laughing so much I couldn't get her off, but it was just the last few minutes and we got through it. :)  And I burnt 400 calories in the process!

Another night I went for a hill walk at 10:30pm, because I hadn't had time earlier.  And a couple of sessions this week I've modified at the last minute to work around my injuries, when they've started to play up.  Unfortunately my knee has been bad and aching for the last 24 hours, so I've been icing it and had a forced exercise rest day today.  It makes me slightly anxious that I'll turn the rest day into rest days or rest weeks, but I'm trying hard to allow myself to recognise the difference between legitimately resting an injury, and just being lazy.  

I've been keeping up with seeing my Osteopath and our plan, and we'll see, but we're hopeful that I'll be able to run again by the Gold Coast Marathon (GCAM) at the start of July. 

Wednesday's walk location

Thanks to Suncorp's Run Free program, I scored myself a free entry into any GCAM event (so cool) so I signed up for the 5.7km.  Time and rehab success will tell, but that's the current aim.

To think that last year I was disappointed to be doing the GCAM half marathon (instead of the full), and now I'm crossing fingers that I'll be able to run the 5.7km....

Speaking of events, tomorrow I have the Mothers Day Classic.  But in a very different way to any event I've done before!  If you haven't heard about this option that I'm doing, it is VERY cool.  They have events around the country: Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne etc., and in many regional locations.  But they've also introduced a "I can't be there but..." event.  Essentially it means that if you can't attend an event for whatever reason, you can still participate.  You pay a (cheaper) registration fee and do what you can (a few steps is fine!), where you can and when you can.  And they send you a medal in the mail!  I'm so impressed by this option!  

For someone like me who was disappointed I wasn't going to go along due to injury and my
mindset, this option is a dream.  I registered a few days ago and tomorrow I will 'participate'!  I was planning on walking 8km, which is the distance of the Brisbane event, but what I actually do will be dependent on how my knee holds up from todays rest.  It may be a very short course that I set myself, or I may do something stationary and upper body.  Whatever it is, it will be what I can personally do at this stage, while being aware of the MDC cause, breast cancer: which is the aim of the event.

Boot campers on Friday

So, a tick for food and exercise!  Other than that, I need to make sleep a priority - that's still not going too well.  Water wise I am going pretty well, but there has been a couple of days I haven't hit my mark.

I also haven't been tracking on the 12WBT tracker, which I was planning on doing.  I've tracked on MyFitnessPal - I am anal about calories in and out so I am definitely recording, as

always.  But I am trying to do this round properly, so I would like to use the tracker as well.  It'll just be a matter of transferring my records over from MFP, so it will be easy to get up to date.  I watched Sunday's mindset video but haven't watched Wednesday's yet.  I'm a few days behind in adding my stickers.  And I still have 1 pre-season task left: of course, "Organise and Diarise."  Augh!  I plan to do all of these things this weekend. :)

Other than all of that, I am going ok!  I lost 4.3kg on Week 1 Weigh in Wednesday so I was very happy with that.  As much as it's exciting and motivating, I know that it's just the first weeks weigh in, which is often high - ongoing weeks won't be like this!  Also it really just goes to show how bad I was treating my body up to just last week - that's how much my body was shocked when I (re)started treating it right!  

In saying that, I also know that a small part of the loss was my hard work last week, and for that I'm proud.  It's taken me a long time to get back on track.  We all know how many dips and up and downs my journey has seen so far, so who knows if this current attempt #8992 will continue.  Just in February I did a post about how I was back on the right path, then SPLAT, I was down again.  Maybe this time will be just like that, but I'm hoping not.  All I know is that I can only try.  If I fail (yet) again, I will get up and try another time.  But between you and me, I'm secretly hoping that this is the (re)start I need, to get back on the main path I'm traveling.  

Thanks for supporting my journey - I still mean what I say: that when I get to goal weight, everyone who is around me and who never gave up on me, will deserve a medal.  I know I'll get there, despite my many bumps along the way.  And I'm very grateful that I have people around me, and followers, who know this too and have been hanging around for the long haul version :)  You will be rewarded ;)  Thank you for your support xxoo

Cook-ups: still finding my balance

Hi hi!

So it's Day 2 of the May round!  And I'm going strong!  Woo! ;)

Week 1 food prep

I've been spending so much time getting organised, and I feel it's going to pay off.  The last few days has been all about my kitchen.  As in, cook-ups.

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I hate cooking.  It's not that I 'hate' it as such; I just find it incredibly boring, and the process gives me no pleasure.  The result, however, I do like that! 

But the actual 'doing'.... blah.  It annoys me.

So this is why I don't understand how someone like me continues to persist to do these huge cook-ups!

Flashback to around a year ago, where I did 2 cookups that were so huge that I actually cooked enough food in one night to feed myself for 3 months, or a whole round.  And I have an average sized freezer!

Cupcake quiches: a freezer staple

I decided I can no longer handle that magnitude of cook-up. It's emotionally taxing and I would end up close to tears and so over it, always finishing at 2-3am, hating the world. :)  It's taken me a while of trying different things out but I worked out a new way of preparing meals: the New Grand Plan.  I would just cook a bit extra when cooking dinner.  Like most people do!  That way, I'm not cooking 'extra meals' as such, I'm just making a larger batch of what I'm cooking anyway, and after a few dinners, I'd end up with a healthy stock of meals in the freezer!

So with this in mind, I spent some time over the weekend customising my meal plan for Week 1 and ordered my shopping online.  I hadn't

ordered online in a long time, so it was a bit exciting!

In my planning, I ordered extra quantities of 4 meals, so that when I cooked them for dinner, I could put the extras away, as per my New Grand Plan.  I also ordered the ingredients to make a double batch of 12WBT Cupcake Quiches because they've been a freezer staple of mine since I started 12WBT, and also the ingredients to make a roast vegetable salad that I made up.

However, despite my decision to longer partake in self inflicted stressful kitchen all-nighters, I somehow I still managed to spend the last 2 nights in the kitchen, till very late!  I drive myself crazy!  The first night I made the cupcake quiches, then 12WBT Spaghetti Bolognese (as my dinner), the vegetables for my salad, and prepped this weeks food. 

During the night I realised that I was going to have to make most of my meals in the next day

My protein pancake tower!

or two rather than leisurely through the week, because I'd bought all of the ingredients already and they wouldn't remain fresh all week.  Up there for thinking, Kate!  Augh!  

I also realised I wanted to eat these meals in the very short term, instead of keeping way too many frozen 'back-up' meals than I need, which end up sitting there for so long.  I may as well enjoy the fruits of my labour straight up!  So I did a stocktake of my freezer so I knew exactly what I had / will have this week, then sat down and meal planned for Week 2 and Week 3.  It was fairly easy as I had a list of meals I wanted to use up, I just had to slot them in.  It worked out that after cooking the other 3 meals that I had the ingredients for, that I would have enough meals to last me from Week 1 through to Week 3.

So, on the second night, I made 12WBT Beef Pad See Ew (as dinner), then made a huge

12WBT Beef Pad See Ew: INCREDIBLE - you have to try it!

batch of my choc banana protein pancakes, then a batch of corn fritters.  It sounds easy, but again, it took me all night and I was so over it!  I was delayed slightly when I went to make the Beef Pad See Ew and realised that I had ordered a microwavable chicken pad thai meal with rice noodles, rather than a packet of rice noodles by themselves!  Augh!  The perils of online shopping.  So off to the shops for one item I went.  There's always one missing ingredient!

It doesn't sound like much when I write it down, but making 3 meals of 22 serves in one night takes so long - especially when you're over it from a long night in the kitchen the night before making the other dozens of serves!  I kept saying to myself, at poignant times, like when I was balancing

Multitasking! Mindset video + meal prep in one!

a huge tower of protein pancakes onto a plate, "why can't I be normal?"  Cook-ups are great, I just need to get some moderation and balance into my cooking life.... I thought my New Grand Plan was a nice compromise, but making 3 weeks worth of meals in 2 nights is still a huge thing.  I am an all or nothing person, even in the kitchen.  I don't do things by halves!

My goal for Week 4 is to be normal! 

My freezer is now absolutely packed to the brim, but together with my meal plan, completely streamlined and ready for the next 3 weeks!  I have to buy fresh spinach and feta once or twice a week, and any fresh snacks I want, but other than that, I have every meal ready to eat for the next 3 weeks!  I kept telling myself last night that I will appreciate my efforts 3 times a day for the next few weeks, so it will be worth it.  And I am appreciating it already.  I got home tonight and I had an amazing looking meal on my plate within about 5 minutes.

Other than that, I'm looking forward to a bit of time to focus on the rest of my goals, and not

My double decker rewards chart I took so long to do

have to spend much time in the kitchen for a while!  I'm on track still and it's the first weigh in Wednesday of the May round tomorrow so it will be cool to see what I am!

I updated Operation Polka Dot Dress and was happy with the changes in 1 week.

I have one more pre-season task to do (my love / hate task, 'Organise and Diarise.'  

I still have to do my personal mini milestone goal for the week and the 12WBT weekly challenge.

I made my new rewards chart on the weekend so that's got me pretty inspired, too.  I wanted to draw the chart up to Christmas, which I've done, but I miscalculated and made a chart double the size by mistake.  (Note to self: don't try and do maths in the Big W aisles when buying cardboard on a very empty stomach.)  I was starving the day I went to buy the cardboard and counted wrong so made double the charts I needed.

Anyway so far so good, last week I got 7/7 days of my nutrition goals, 7/7 days of my training goals, 2/7 days of my sleep goals, and 4/7 days of my water goals.  I'm proud of the first two!  I haven't had a perfect week of eating or training for a while.  I had a 6 week

I relished Rest Day today - only some stretching required!

blitz at the start of the year, before falling down through March and April.  And the whole of last year was one huge fall down.  So I've pulled myself back up again and will try to keep this going!  I'm especially happy that I managed to hit my training goals on my non boot camp days, which I always struggle with (as I have to motivate myself).  But each day I've just made it a priority and routine to get it done.  And it's working!

Anyway, speaking of sleep goals...................I do need to get to sleep, I'm up for boot camp in 4.5 hours.  Talk later! xx

More photos below:

Dinner tonight in 5 min!

12WBT Spag Bol: dinner plus extra serves

This was so good too!  My lunch yesterday and today: the 12WBT Ham, Avocado, Tomato & Cheese Toastie!  Yum!  (It's hard to get a good pic of this) :)

12WBT Beef Pad Thai Ew.  It tasted like real Thai food and the portions were huge!  Just the way I like it!

I used carton egg whites for the first time!  I only needed egg whites for my pancakes....I've never used this before as to me they're not fresh...but the ONLY ingredient is the egg whites, and this way worked out more economical with no yolk wastage on my behalf.

So many bananas (for the pancakes)

How they should look like

Can you guess which one my hand slipped on when pouring the mixture?

Mega pancake selfie!

Last weeks sticker results

#12wbtmayround Pre-Season

Just thought I'd check in to give a bit of an update on how my pre-season is going.

I'll be honest (as I always am!), but even though I'm starting my 13th round, I've only fully, 100% completed all of my pre-season tasks a few times.  I always have the best intentions..... but often I sign up.  I complete a few of the quick ones.  Then I just start the round and 'mean to' do the rest in the first week.  Then I get into the swing of the round and........... some of them just don't get done.  I really believe in them!  I wrote about this on the 12WBT blog, here.  And I meant every word that I said: I really believe in the power of pre-season.  But I don't always apply myself.....

But for the upcoming May round, I am on track, and have done 15 of the 18 tasks!  I'm really proud of myself!  I've felt progressively better and more motivated as I've worked my way through the tasks.

Walking in the rain tonight #noexcuses

As of today, I've done all but 2 of the weekly challenges, and the most difficult task for me, 'Organise and Diarise'.  Every single I round, I find this one so hard to do!  I can't describe just why: because it's also my favourite task!  I LOVE it.  So why do I find it so damn hard?  I've been so bad at organisation and keeping on top of things and correspondence for the past 3 years.  Truly, it has been 3 years, because I remember starting to slip up around the time my first niece was born, and today is her 3rd birthday!

I've improved so much lately, especially with my MCG Dream.  But I'm still not quite there yet, and my calendar is out of date, again.  I'm determined to do all of my pre-season, so I will get this done!  But my favourite / most difficult task may take a few more days.

I did my fitness test this morning, and my score is so disappointing.  I got 13. :(  I'm full of
injuries at the moment and I can't run (so had to walk my time trial), so I'm not surprised, but

Week 1 fitness test result

still, it's pretty bad. :(

As I said in my last post, I had originally chosen to do the Move program, but when the Week 1 plans got released a couple of days ago and I was able to read what the plans involved, I changed to Move 2.  I don't think Move was suitable to me - I'm injured but I can still do more than the Move plans asked for.  Move 2 looked more like what would be good for me right now, and I was excited to see that my fitness score fell into the Move 2 category!  It made me feel satisfied that I had made the right choice.

I tried on my polka dot dress for 'Operation Polka Dot Dress' for the first time, and this was the result.

Week 1 of #operationpolkadotdress

Eeek.

It can only fit better, right?  I have a new page set up (see the link at the top of the page, or here), where I'll upload my weekly update photos.

Lunching with a celebrity chef on Tuesday!

Other than that I've been doing well with food and exercise: I've been on track with calories both in and out and my water uptake has been great.  I've had a few temptations but have gotten through them; there's always temptations.  I've been preparing my meals ahead of time again and have customised my Week 1 menu, ready for next week.

I've been making little changes and putting things in place to get me in a good position for the round (and beyond) - check out my Instagram for an explanation of some of these.  One example is I brought an old pair of shoes to work today, to keep under my desk, so that I can do lunch time walks and not use the excuse that I forgot my shoes, as I sometimes do.

My goals / mini milestones are on track already too, without me having to do anything!  Thanks to me sharing my plans on my last blog post, a lovely Instagram follower of mine has offered to help me do my "Girl in Blue" task as she's a police officer, and a few 30+ friends are keen to join me for heaps of my other tasks!  I feel very lucky!

That's all for tonight, I just wanted to do a quick check in to let you know how I'm tracking with pre-season and the lead up to the May round.  I say this about every round, and I'm not ashamed to say it again: I really want to try hard and do well this round.  If there was one positive to stuffing up so much last year, it was that I got first hand experience (again) in the form of a stark reminder of why I don't want to be where I started (morbidly obese). 

Cheese tasting...another temptation this week

I got insights (reminders) into how that felt, just in case I had forgotten - and it wasn't fun.  It was a good lesson to learn, to keep in mind now, before it's too late, that I want to get to goal weight, and I want to maintain it.  Before then I sort of hadn't thought too much about the maintaining side of things.  I went nuts and was doing well with weight loss, then faltered because I had no insight into the longevity of this world.

I now realise that there's a maintenance part at the end of all of this. So now I'm continuing my journey, but now knowing that this is forever.  I've been going at this for a while now, I know, but I haven't given up.  I've just had to learn my lessons, as we all do.  And my biggest lesson is that the greatest strength lies in turning things around when you really didn't think you could.  The below quote sums it up so beautifully.

Love Kate x

My plans for 12WBT May Round

I've spent some time today planning my May Round and feel pretty on track with knowing what I want from it!  Because I've done consecutive rounds since I began, I tend to only sign up in the week the new round starts, so that I can give my full attention to the round I'm currently doing.  (Note that I said "so that I can give my full attention".  I don't always actually give said attention!  But I allow for it). :)

This round starts on Monday 4th May.  I signed up today, and got stuck into pre-season.  I'm

pretty impressed with myself so far!  When I finish this blog post (my 'Say It Out Loud'), I will have done 8 of the tasks just today!  Go me!  I've got a plan for the rest of them: I've worked out when I can fit them all in this coming week.  I'm determined to complete all of them before the round opens!  I really want to commit to this round.

I've chosen the Move program.  It was pretty tough to select when I know what fitness stuff I've done in the past.  But I have to be realistic - I have so many injuries at the moment and need to be gentle and smart.  I may change after the plans are released, but for now it seems like the perfect program for me.

I also updated a few of my 'little things that I do', including resetting my "I need a second job to afford them" rewards plan, and my weekly mini milestones for the round.  I've been very uncommitted at sticking to my weekly milestones for a few rounds now.  But I've never given up on any goals I've set, I've just pushed each one out and today I reset when I'm doing each one, and added more.

My mini milestones for May Round are:

Week 1: Get organised (I'll explain this in detail in my next post, I'm excited about this one!)

Week 2: Girl in Blue (This is one I was interested in when I first planned to do it, well over a year ago!  Now it's annoying me that I haven't actually done it yet, so I am going to try again!  I'll annoy myself if I explain again what it is, so here is where I first talked about it)

Week 3: Start water running (I've had friends suggest that I do this while I'm injured, to keep my cardio / running up with little/no impact on my body.  I've been 'meaning to' for a while now so I made it an official mini milestone to encourage myself to actually put it into place!)

Week 4: Try a new parkrun (One of many carry over goals. I've tried 4 different parkruns before but there's plenty of others very close to me that would be interesting to check out)

Week 5: Walk home from work (I live about 8-10km from work.  I've done this as a mini milestone when I worked somewhere else, but would like to try it from my new workplace.  It's not something I can do practically all the time, but I'd like to test it out and see how it goes)

Week 6: Learn how to curl my hair (This probably doesn't sound like a normal type of mini milestone!  But I try to set my milestones as things that I've always meant to do, or things to make me feel good about myself, or things that challenge me - and this falls into all 3 of those categories!  In the early days my milestones were all about smashing my body through crazy exercise goals...I try to do different things now - especially when I'm all kinds of injured!)

Week 7: Walk to work (So this is obviously similar to Week 5's goal, just the opposite!  I think this will be more difficult, as walking to, I'll have time restrictions and have the 'needing to get changed for work' factor, but I'd still like to at least test it out.  Note that a lot of these milestones are walking milestones, while I'm not allowed to run....)

Week 8: Research sugar (This is an interesting one that I'm excited about!  I know this has been popular for a while now, but I've never had an interest in learning about the concept, until now.  I take my time with some things..... :)  A work colleague of mine a couple of years ago read one of those 'sugar books' and stopped eating ALL sugar.  All I remember is that she threw out the pain tablets in her desk drawer because they contained sugar, and stopped eating tomato sauce.  (I know it was more complex then that, that's all I remember!)  I had no interest in such a thing back then but now I'm finally interested to at least read / watch about it and do a bit of research.  (Thanks to Gabi and Leanne for helping with sparking this interest!) x

Week 9: Play a game of baseball (Another carry over goal.  Just because I haven't played it since primary school, and loved it back then.  Why not!)

Week 10: Walk one of the Redcliffe bridges (There's a couple of long bridges near where I live, in an area called Redcliffe.  I just said 'one of' because there's a couple of bridges side by side and I need to check which one/s are accessible for pedestrians.  My little brother helped design one of the bridges and I'm so proud of him every time I drive across....so I would like to walk it one day!  Hopefully I can...any Brisbane region readers, advice is welcome!)

Week 11: Do the steep hill next to my old work (I explained this here)

Week 12: Iceskating (Another carry over goal, just for fun) :)

So there they are!

I've also decided on a new 'Operation Yellow Dress'!  It will be called....'Operation Polka Dot Dress'!  I explained on my Instagram post how this came about, here.  I'll post the update

My new 'Operation Yellow Dress'!

photos on my blog and Instagram, starting this week!  Hopefully the dress goes over my head at least, to start with.  Eeek!

That is all from me tonight!  Be back soon!  And bring on the May Round....may I stick to my commitment!
xo

"When do you think I can run again?"

Hello!

I have a few things to chat about today, but firstly, if you're reading this on a computer, check out the side panel of my blog ------> I finally worked out how to add my Instagram feed onto my blog!  Seeing as my blog posts aren't exactly daily (or weekly!) at the moment, this is the perfect way for me to keep you up to date, as I post on Instagram way more regularly!  I feel I'll be blogging more regularly now, but in any case, it's nice to know that I can share my day to day stories here, too, instead of having to retell tales.

Also while I was being all pro with Javascript (or HTML?) and stuff, I noticed something pretty incredible, in that this blog has now reached over 200000 hits.  It's pretty special to see that when I think about when I started this blog, how nervous I was, and how it took me months to even include a photo of myself on here.

To anyone reading this who has been following my journey since Day '1', recently, or anywhere in between, I sincerely say thank you.  I may not always get to answering messages and comments, but please know that I read everything and the support that I get from people following me is one of the major things that keeps me going.

Because it has been (yet again!) :o a few weeks since I posted, there's heaps to catch up on, but first I just wanted to share my exciting visit to the Osteopath today!

It's been way too long between visits to Dr Bec.  She's the most incredible Osteo - I went to multiple Chiros and Physios before I heard about this place.  It's the only thing that's ever assisted with my back issues.

For many reasons, I haven't been to see Bec since...she told me today, December 2013. 

That is not cool.  Back when this happened, it was a sharp wake up call to me that I had to make Osteo visits a priority, not just a "when I can type of thing".

It's now April and I finally went along today.  I've been putting other things in front of looking after myself and it can't continue like that any more.  (More on that in an upcoming post!)

I've been sick in bed for a couple of days and have had some time to do some organising and researching.  I reorganised my health insurance to make it more affordable to be able to go along regularly, and in my research came across something called a "Chronic Disease Management Plan".  In Australia you can assessed to go on one of these from your GP and it creates a management plan that allows you to be able to get Medicare rebates for some visits to health professionals, in my case, my Osteo.

I've been dealing with my back since I was 16, I'm surprised I didn't know this was an option until now - my GP's have only ever given me painkillers.  I asked about the plan today as I was already going to my GP and 10min. later, I had it.  That easy!

Anyway, back to Dr Bec.  I booked a double appointment as I have so many issues at the moment: I needed to give her a full rundown and then I also needed time to get worked on!  I spoke about my back, my knee injury, chest pain (I've had it checked and have been told it's muscular), major stress causing tightness, and my ongoing mystery "O" pain.  She had her

work cut out for her but, as always, was brilliant.  She just knows what's going on and manoeuvred me so well.  I'm in a place where I'm so limited with exercises when so many parts of me have issues.

My back and "O pain" are ongoing things but she still worked on them, she started work on my chest and knee, and focused mainly on my stress / tightness.

With my knee, I was hoping to see what her thoughts were about it, to hopefully get a diagnosis and a semi idea about when I might be able to run again.  I haven't run since I hurt my knee, which was about the 1st February.  I already thought it was an overuse injury, and yes, that's what it is.  It was nice to get a bit more understanding about it though.  It's likely to be "Patella Tendonitis" - in my words: "Doing stairs religiously every day in January caused me to overuse my knee and damage it".

I've mentioned before how I love doing "stairs", my internal stairs in my apartment block, to supplement my exercise.  It doesn't matter what time of day it is, or the weather, I can get it done.  I was so good and onto it in January.  Up and down those stairs I went, from New Years Day, pretty much daily.  It's all fun and games until someone damages a knee though.....

I can't describe how happy I was to get on top of all of this, and to have this stuff seen to.  Organising a little plan with Dr Bec, getting my health insurance updated and getting a pain management plan has done wonders for my mindset.  I've spent the past 10 weeks being patient with my knee and not running, just following my initial care plan, but today was a major step forward into getting 'fixed'.

Halfway through my appointment, I asked Bec the all important question, "when do you think I can run again?"  It's early days in this rehabilitaion plan but at first guess, she said.............

Two months.

Now long time readers will know me quite well and know that this timeframe has probably shattered me to tears.  If anyone recalls my Gold Coast Marathon disappointment and how I constantly overthink things and how I put too many expectations on myself and push myself no matter what (do I need to go on?) ------- you'd be forgiven to think that this news has sent me into a tailspin.

But it hasn't.  I think it's just that I've had time (10 weeks!) to get myself used to the idea.  The past 10 weeks has coincedentally also taught me a lot about how I need to put myself first (I will talk more on this!) and I think I'm just at a point where I know I need to do things properly, look after myself and only do what I can do.  (Kate, is that you??)

I got to have a chat with the one and only Mish a few weeks ago, and it was the most rewarding chat.  I mentioned that I hadn't been able to do my usual exercise of late, because of my knee.  She shared with me that she'd recently had a knee reconstruction and had

been in pretty much the same position as me.  I can't describe how inspiring this spontaneous chat turned out to be.  She understood how frustrating it was, she explained how she instead controlled what she could, and then shared with me, and listed for a couple of minutes, many exercises that we can do when we can't work our knees.  I had no idea there were so many, and it gave me a renewed energy that yes, there was stuff I could do in the meantime. 

I've continued going to boot camp through this knee injury, and that's been my saviour - my trainer Margie is awesome and we have adapted things so that I can still participate.  I would be practically sedentary if it weren't for it.  But outside of boot camp, I've been at a loss as to what I can do to keep active while I have this injury.  This chat gave me inspiration and ideas.

It was also inspiring to me because 5min. previous, I had seen Mish lead a workout, and she was jumping up and down with so much energy that when I realised she'd recently had knee surgery, it made me teary with hope, that one day again soon, I'll too be able to jump up and down, and run, and do all the things I'm so used to doing, once again.  She said something to me that's stuck in my mind, too: "Control the controllables". 

I've thought of that phrase so much lately....

I think I've just had time to get used to this idea and realise that sometimes we just have to be patient.  I'm not in a good place at the moment (I will explain next post), and being in this 'place' has also helped me to feel ready to just ride out what needs to be ridden out, to 'control the controllables', and work hard so that when it all calms down, I will be ready to get out there and do what I want to do.

I had a running break when I hurt my ankle and had my moon boot on 18 months ago.  I had just started to be able to run 5km before I hurt my ankle.  I kept my exercise up (walking etc.) while I was wearing it, and when it came off, I had lost 19kg and was suddenly able to run 11km.  So I have valid personal proof that running breaks can be managed well! 

I'm not saying having a break will be easy: I struggled last weekend when the Australian Running Festival was on in Canberra that I had booked (and subsequently cancelled) my flights to - it was hard knowing it was going on when I had planned to be there.  And I have a wholllllllle list of runs I had planned to do this year.  But I have to be strong and just do what I can.  At least now I have an idea of when I might be able to run again, and now I can start replanning and setting new goals (one of my favourite things).  There are always going to be challenges.  We just have to never give up and we'll get there. 

I'll leave it for there tonight, but I just wanted to share where I'm at with the running side of things.  This doesn't mean I can't control my weight - I still have the ability to do that.  Hopefully soon we'll get the other pains managed as well.  But in the meantime, I will control the controllables, try and stay positive, replan my goals and move forward!

Love Kate xo