No more kale

Just checking in *quickly* (the astericks serve as a declaimer for my comprehension of the word "quickly") :)  But I'll see how I go.

So it's been 3 days of being back in the game, and it's going pretty well.

The end result

I've been sharing the basics of each day on my Snapchat story - thank you for your support on there already xo

Day 1 of my Snap story was mainly about my food prepping, so I had a valid reason not to film myself - because the focus was genuinely on the food...

Day 2 (yesterday) I surprised myself with filming myself speaking.  I have zero confidence right now, so I thought it would take a while to get me confident enough to be in front of the (video) camera again.  I also have a huge ass cold sore in the middle above my top lip.  Not nice.

I decided there was only so many inventive foregrounds I could do voice overs too, so I got over it (with the comfort of a filter), and turned that camera around.

Anyway - so the food prep...

Enough said.

Urgh.  I forgot how much I hate doing it.  And because it's been months since I last did it, it all felt a bit new and I really had to concentrate.  And I didn't even really actually "cook"!  I baked veges and blended smoothies, but other than that it was all about chopping and portioning.  It's not like I made some restaurant quality stir-fry or rice and veges combo!

It was shit enough just doing total basic prepping.  I ordered my groceries to be delivered between 3pm and 6pm, hoping they'd be earlier in the time window than later, but they came just after 5pm.  Which, of course, is what was promised, but it just meant a late prep.  I think I was in the kitchen from 5:45pm till 9pm, including cleaning up.  (I told you I was out of practise!)

I was also really tired from broken sleep the night before, so I was already grumpy and yawning.  I'd hate to have seen me actually cooking something!

I'm sure food prep is like riding a bike; next week it'll feel even easier and within a few weeks I'll have it down pat. 

I kept it simple and just prepared the same meals for breaky, lunch and dinner.  When it's food I love, having the same thing every day doesn't bother me.  And I love this food :)

_______________________________

WHAT I PREPPED:

Breakfast

Concoction A

Lately I haven't been feeling like breaky - which is so strange for me.  I've always had breakfast: as a kid, growing up, and especially the last 4 years of this weight loss game, it's just part of my day.  I don't know what's going on with my sudden change in not wanting it, so I decided to start having smoothies instead.

I love smoothies but never let myself have them, because I hate drinking my calories away.  If I have a smoothie, I want food that I can chew as well, so it's never been something I've regularly done.  So I thought this was the perfect opportunity to enjoy smoothies!

I've made some incredible smoothies in the past, mainly based on milk / yoghurt / protein powder, with fruit.  But I've been watching too many social media fitspo's drink their green smoothies, and I thought I should try and do that.

Do what?  I don't really know - and if you could see the real life colour and consistency of my smoothie's, you'll see evidence of that fact.  I didn't really think it through...I ordered my groceries in a rush and I think I just envisaged part what I used to make / part hipster green smoothie, and that it would taste delicious and look like the green smoothies all around me.

This is what I ended up throwing together:

It wasn't terrible, but definitely not what I had magically dreamt up in my mind.  I think the

main issue was kale....it was actually my first time trying it, and yeah...it doesn't seem to blend too well, and it also doesn't seem to agree with my taste buds...or teeth!

#nomorekale

The spinach and kale combo packs I bought ended up being 80% kale, 20% spinach...so it was very much kale overload.  I think I'll stick to my beloved spinach next time, and try not to think that I'm a hipster...because I most certainly am not.

#nothipster

Eating drinking the brown-green green sludge smoothie the last two mornings have been a little bit of a mission, and I was only able to finish 2/3 of it both days.  So a bit more work is needed in the smoothie department!

I blended the smoothie's for Monday - Wednesday, and then portioned and froze the ingredients out for 3 more later this week, and I'll blend them up on Wednesday night.



Lunch

Lunch

Lunch is my amazingly yummy usual of avocado on toast, with crumbled feta, lemon juice and pink Himalayan rock salt.  I don't think I'll ever get bored of it.

I just had to portion everything with this - no cooking required on food prep day.




Dinner

Dinner

Dinner is my other recent favourite: self crumbed white fish, carrot and sweet potato chips, spinach and feta salad.   

I've been obsessed with making my own sweet potato chips for ages, but because I
wanted All Of The Sweet Potato, I worked out a way to slightly decrease it carb and calorie wise, so that I could have even bigger portions.  I cook up carrot into chips at the same time.  Once they're cooked they're such a similar orange colour that I literally can't tell the difference.  And because I mix them up, the carrot just gets lost in the sweet potato.  I usually do 2 parts carrot to 1 part sweet potato. :)


Snacks

My snacks are really uninventive this week: mainly just rice crackers and yoghurt.

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So that's what I prepped on Sunday!  I have 3 meals I'm eating out (one breakfast, one lunch and one dinner), but I prepped everything else until this Sunday night.  I made enough of the dinners to last me through most of next week, too.

Carrot and sweet potato chips

It wasn't perfect but it's calorie controlled food that I love, and it's a start.  Anything will beat the bingeing crap that I've been inhaling for not only months, but on and off for 2.5 years.

The first few days have gone okay - I've stuck to the food other than forgetting that I had rehearsals straight after work on Monday (so couldn't cook dinner until 10pm, which I wouldn't usually bother with (and didn't); and then forgetting today was Melbourne Cup and that I'd RSVP'd to a work lunch. 

Neither were big deals so food has been going fine.

Exercise, on the other hand.

Sunday's are my usual Rest Day, so Day 1 was Rest Day which was conveniently awesome!

Yesterday though was the first day I planned to move my body.  As I said, I've made no plans, other than having a rough goal to do some form of exercise or moving my body for 20min. a day, 6 days a week.

Smoothie portions to freeze

As I was about to go and get changed to go for a walk, I realised I left half of my heart rate monitor at home.  I did pause, wondering if that was a reasonable excuse, but slapped myself and decided to go ahead without measuring it... :)

But literally at that moment, I realised how bad my knee had gotten during the day.  I wore (small, wide) heels yesterday which I never do, and I think that aggravated my already damaged knee.

It was coincidental timing, for me to realise how bad it was *just* as I was about to exercise, but genuine.

I limped to my car and I looked outside and it had just started raining.

Three things - message received.  So no exercise was done and I spent rehearsal with my knee up, reading my lines from a chair.

Today my knee was a lot better, but I wasn't sure what to do.  In the end I decided not to do anything today either.  The decision was probably 50% "I genuinely need to rest my knee and I think one more day will help"; and 50% "I don't want to exercise, so that other 50% sounds like a good reason not to." 

Unless my knee is really bad tomorrow, I'm planning on walking for 20min.  Watch this space.

Anyway this post is now a ridiculous length for a "quick" update, and it's now 1am, so I should click 'Publish' and go to bed!

I'm going to weigh in in the morning as even though it's only been a few days, I'm so used to weighing in on Wednesday's, so this first weigh in will just be a short week.

Chat soon,
love Kate xo

The best part of meal prep: when it's all done and you have a clean kitchen

 

What can I achieve in 3 months?

I promised I'd be back!

So I just read my last few blog posts so I know where I'm up to in updating you.

One story at a time, I said.

So the most important one first:

Tonight, I'm starting again.

No, I didn't just copy and paste that sentence from 163 previous blog posts...but yes, you have read it before.

As I said at the end of my previous blog post, something has to change.  And as I've been blogging about in the past year, it's obvious why.

My weight has sky rocketed, my fitness has diminished, and my health.... Well you know when you grow up and people say or you read that obesity is dangerous for your health, and how it may not be obvious now but eventually your body will start to show it; things will start to happen?

Well, I'm now at that age.  I'm starting to see those beginning signs that you read about.  Nothing full on, and not really anything worth listing, but they're there, starting to flicker for me.  Those things people say / those things you read about aren't fables, they're science.  Believe me.

I've been getting bigger and bigger for over 2 and a half years now, and I have to stop.  There's so many personal reasons for wanting to do this, and they'll come out as I share more and more again - the health stuff is very much just one of many.  (Before I get slammed, yes it's the most important, but I do have a zillion extra reasons to do this, in addition).

You know what I'm like - I start and fail all the time.  But lately I haven't even done the starting part.  I can't remember the last time I started.

So when I finally accepted that something needs to change, I made today's date the one.  (My date obsession is the only weird thing I'm doing, I promise.  I'll explain in an upcoming post but there's no pink posters or marble jars with this mission).

My birthday is the 29th January so I thought I'd start today (tonight rather), on the 29th October.  And see what I can achieve in 3 months.

I have no real plans (just yet), no goal dates, I'm not following a program, and I've barely planned out anything.

All I've done is chosen to eat 1500 cals a day, with a rough goal of 40% carbs, 30% protein and 30% fats.  And to move my body at least 20min. a day, 6x a week.  

Today I meal planned out this weeks food, and ordered my groceries online to be delivered tomorrow.  Opening MyFitnessPal and meal planning felt so foreign and new - it really surprised me.  It's been second nature for 4 years now, but today I really had to focus - it felt like I was doing it for the first time.  It really must have been absolute months since I last attempted.

Tomorrow I'll do my first Sunday meal prep in however long, too.  I splurged $10 today and bought myself a new set of food prep containers as I recently had a big kitchen declutter and realised most of my old ones are cracked (making small holes in them), or had food stains.

That's all I've done.  My birthday is in 3 months exactly - I'll see what I can achieve in that time frame.

There's so much more to say, but I'll save it for the next post/s.

Wish me luck on Day (Night) 1 and beyond.  I'm aiming to share more like I used to, obviously on my blog and Insta, and also really up my ante on Snapchat Stories, as accountability / sharing my story has helped me so much in the past.

Let's do this. 

Where for art thou been, Kate?

And breaking the blogging drought in 3...2...1...

Hello!

I didn't want to look at the date of my previous blog post...but I did.  11th August!  I'm so not on top of that Rose!

Best.movie.ever.

But that's life, and here I am.  I have an unbelievable amount to say (hahahaha when have I ever not,) but to the point that as mentioned before, I have a list of topics and notes and random things I think of in my iPhone Notes, ready to blog about.  Stories I'm itching to tell. 

It's always hard to get back into the swing of stuff like blogging, when you've been absent for a while, so I decided I just needed to break the drought, come on here, and write something.  My love of my blog has never wavered, despite the irregularity of my posts.  And your reading or checking of it has also seemed not to waver - somewhere along the recent line I've hit over 320,000 hits!  I was gobsmacked when I saw that the other day.  So thank you.

There's sometimes reasons for blogging droughts, and sometimes not.  In this instance there has been stuff.  I just glanced at my last two posts briefly and realised I have no idea what I have and haven't updated you on.  Give me a couple of days, and I'll work out what I've shared already, and start pumping out my usual posts and stories that I've missed.

The feeling I got when I posted in August after another mini break was just so amazing - I really love blogging.  So let's see if I can keep this up and continue this feeling.

Love to you all: thank you for checking in despite my absence.  (On Insta as well - I've been quiet there too - and haven't personally been on Facebook for months, and my exciting new Snap account is a distant memory....for now).  But please check back in a couple of days and I'll tell you where I've been at; and where I'm at.

In a one liner summary as a prelude to my next post; I'm so unfit that I've halted all physical activity out of fear (and stubbornness), and I'm so overweight that it hurts to walk.  

Something's gotta be done.

See ya very soon - I PROMISE! Xo