Love Yourself!

#health #wealth #kindness


by 2 Comments

Food, running and Michelle Bridges. (If Not Now, When? Courtesy Greg Searle)

Last month I signed up for Michelle Bridges 12 week body transformation.  I had seen Michelle on Australia’s Biggest Loser and she looked a pretty good sort (fit too!), and boy, did some of those contestants on the show lose some weight and change their lifestyles.

After five weeks of debauchery consumptionally speaking, while I was overseas taking care of my mum, and with the only exercise pushing a shopping trolley along the gleaming isles of Marks and Spencers, Waitrose, Tesco’s and the like, buying treat food that I hadn’t eaten for years for entertainment (I can feel Michelle’s eyes rolling in her head right now…) I decided that the time had come to DO SOMETHING.

Signing up   was pretty easy, and I spent quite a bit of time reading a lot about what WAS possible, and what other people HAD done.  It was looking like a pretty good idea.  Over the last decade since hitting forty, the scales had slowly crept up, from being quite a skinny malinky healthy young mum, to slightly plump, to pushing wobbly, with a wardrobe of clothes that didn’t fit, but were my ‘grown up’ clothes with hefty price tags some of them, so was reluctant to throw them away and move up a size. (The shame, the shame….!)

Also, there is nothing like extended time with someone who is very poorly, with dementia starting to sing its sad song, to make you realise, the time to act is now and enjoy the good health I have for as long as I possibly can!

So, when I got back to Oz I hopped  on the scales (or rather stepped delicately, hoping lightness of touch would help the outcome – it didn’t…) and found myself to be 67 kilos (deep joy…not!) right back to when I embarked upon the 17 Day Diet a year ago, and ended up on A Current Affair (but that is another story).

SO, I decided to knuckle down to my pre-season ‘tasks’.   We are up to Week 5 now.  The first four were pretty straightforward. 1. Get real.  Decide on your goals and face up to your excuses.  I have a million excuses, am very good at them, made my list though and ticked the box! 2. Set your goals.  I wasn’t quite sure what my goals were, except for a rather vague lose weight (and keep it off) and ‘get fit’.  I will re-visit this later as time goes by.  3. Gear Up.  I LIKED this bit.  I don’t think Michelle really meant go out shopping and buy lots of fancy gear, and new trainers, and magazines, and DVD’s and books (well she probably quite liked that bit, as they were HER dvd’s and cookbooks! 🙂 and I must admit, I bought a couple of her workout tops from Big W which were fantastic value (and no, I am NOT being paid to write this blog) but that is what I did!!  So now I LOOK the part, apart from the various wobbly bits.  I am soon to be introduced to the joys of compression gear, but am getting ahead of myself…

Pre-season Task 4.  Say it out loud.  I AM ON THE MICHELLE BRIDGES 12WBT PROGRAMME AND I AIM TO LOSE WEIGHT AND GET FIT  – loud enough? Well, I did tell anyone I could bore with the details, mostly the reaction was along the lines of ‘that’s nice’ and mumblings of ‘proof in the pudding’ and similar curmudgeonly comments.  Goodness knows why, YES  I HAVE been on about 20 different attempts to lose weight in the last five years, YES I HAVE lost the same 3 kilos (yes only 3, miserably pathetic isn’t it!!!) about ten times in same last five years, but REALLY you would think your family would give you a little support.  Humph….

Pre-season Task 5. Kitchen Makeover (yes please if any DIY show with big budgets are listening).  No, sadly kitchen makeover simply involved ditching the junk.  Surprisingly, my cupboards are NOT full of junk (I suppose full is a relative term though).  I have a lot of great food in there.  Healthy stuff.  Oats, chia seeds, acai berries all that sort of malarky.  Now I suppose the trick is to ACTUALLY eat them….

Michelle reckons it’s okay to dump everyone else’s food if sub standard too.  To that I say: fishcakes!  Come and face up to my three teenagers and partner.  My partner by the way, is ten years older, eats well, exercises, also eats some junk and fit as a butcher’s dog (was never quite sure why a butcher’s dog would be fit, ALL that red meat :))) Bastard….Anyway, ditching the 18 year old son’s chocolate birthday cake, was NOT going to happen.  Suggesting a healthy carrot cake for next year – not going to happen.  Sorry Michelle, ‘some things will never change’, as the song goes…

Personally though, I have ditched all the junk, metaphorically speaking and my mouth is a closed shop to such trash for ever more!  This is my mantra from now on.  No more Mozart Kugein balls with my decaf coffee for me, the little buggers are 100 calories a pop!  Notice the spring in my step and cheer in my voice as I say this, knowing the little darlings are sitting twinkling in the kitchen cupboard just waiting for me…I will know I am completely cured when they hit the bin.  In the meantime, I have hidden them under several layers of bags of flour (wholemeal of course) where my sticky fingers cannot find them without turfing out half the contents of the cupboard.  That SHOULD slow me down.

Now you may wonder, how I am such a whizz on calories.  Well the BEST and biggest surprise so far, and let me tell you there are 12 days to program Kickoff so it is still very early days, so clearly a lot more to come…..! was being transported from the very useful Forums to a wonderful group called 12wbt Northern Beaches on Facebook.  Having joined just over a week ago, I have learned about an app called My Fitness Pal, to record what you are eating and how much you are exercising (lots of interesting calorie facts, they had my Mozart balls even!), been for a run/walk at 5.50am twice! which is completely unheard of, and am still slightly in shock that I managed it…  Signed up for a Learn to Run Clinic, embarked upon a journey to run 5km non stop using another app called c25k both of which the lovely Gail told me about.  And having stuck to my 1200 calories a day using the Crunch cookbook as a guideline, I am very HAPPY to say when I hopped on the scales this morning (weigh in Wednesday!) I had lost 1.5 kgs YOO HOO!

So this is the journey so far.  And today, I have worked out (to a degree) how to ‘write a blog’ so all is rosy

in Louise’s garden….   

One slightly unhappy pooch though, my choccie labrador whom I had been promising BIG THINGS with my new and improved exercise regime (yes I can talk to animals 🙂 was very disappointed as she was ditched from the 5km training for sniffing too many lampposts and holding me back from my GOALS, and now I am a VERY goal oriented  person, let me tell you!  So in recompense, will take her for a stroll down to the park to make up for her very disturbing earlier outing where she watched in dismay as we whizzed past her favourite stopping places and looked at me, as if to say, ‘HAVE YOU COMPLETELY LOST YOUR MIND?’

Hopefully not, and hopefully will lose lots and lots of wobbly bits – please god let the back fat go first…

Now THIS is why the Northern Beaches Group are so brilliant! After posting my weight loss today, there were numerous words of encouragement including:

Jacqueline Allen Well done Louise. That’s fantastic. Tell yourself you are not on a wagon or horse this time that you can fall off or get on but you are building a healthy house for the rest of your life. You have made the commitment, I promise you can do this.