Exercise is doing it, as is monitoring my food intake

Don't you just hate it when all the weight experts were correct. It really does come down to eating less calories than your calorie output due to exercise and doing your daily activities. It does help to be of good mind also. To have some hope that you will continue to lose weight even if you have a bump in the road for a while. You just have to return to the behaviour that helped you lose weight in the first place. That upwards bump may mean your body will release your fat (to be disposed of again) as it no longer thinks you are starving. It won't clutch on so hard to those calories coming in.

The other annoying thing is the amount of exercise I need to do daily to have that consistent downward trend seems to equal 2 hours of brisk walking or some other aerobic exercise, It is a large chunk of my day and I have so many other things I either have to do (look after Mum and do the housework) or want to do; my writing, my crafts and my reading. I need another 20 hours in the day I think. Less time eating, nibbling and making food is giving me some time back. The positive thing of all the walking is that it puts me in a happier mood. If you don't believe me try it. Walk for at least 60-90 minutes regularly and note how you feel.

Our house is at the top of the hill and I walk a variety of routes through the subdivision below it. There is hills to go up and down, walkways that are used by both cyclists and walkers so you see others doing their daily exercise too. They have a park with a few exercise options so 1-2x a week I hit them too. The area has lots of nice houses, trees and views to see so every day is slightly different. There is also lovely dogs to say hello to as they enjoy taking their owners for a walk. Of course if you go to town you might see something else to drool over.

The bottom photo (my granddaughter Maia using exercise equipment at park) shows a couple of the exercise stations at a local park. You have to be gutsy to do it as others walk past but it is a way of doing something other than walking till I can afford to pay gym fees.

This I have on my desktop to remind me that I am worth the time I need to take to lose the weight and get healthier. I do it for me as I move more freely when I am lighter and with less, or no, pain from my joints. If I don't do it now it would mean more joint replacements in my future. When I was larger I fell over too easily because I was top heavy and my centre of gravity was out of whack. I broke my upper humerus badly due to a fall and had to have operations to fix it. I slipped on wet steps and ended up with a knee joint replacement because of the amount of damage the fall caused. I find with the 40kgs I have already lost that I am much more stable and I don't have massive damage (except to my ego) if I do fall over.Falling right over is unusual now. I might stumble then recover on rough ground now.

Things I did for me this week:

• Attended my fortnightly writing group. We talked about how to start writing, keep on going on your project and possible goals for what you are writing.
• Attended Adult Colouring In at the local library and met some lovely ladies. It sounds like later in the year I might have to demonstrate how to make bath bombs at the Fun Friday craft days they have there. I will have to practice doing so at home before then too ( a new goal)
• Listened to a webinar by Jeff Goin on how to make an income from blogging -very interesting
• Started back into doing a Needlepoint tapestry called "Starbirds" as only have the face to complete on it
• Brought some new plants for the garden and am about to go and put them in. Still eating heirloom tomatoes off our plants daily and beans every couple of days.
• Walked Daily for at least 90 minutes.

What did you do just for you this week? How is your journey proceeding?

Starting to go down again - 0.5kgs

It may be in small increments, and some days are better than others, but a downward trend is starting up again. The steps I put in place are helping. Documenting what I eat makes me think first as I really don't want to write down something I know should not be going in my mouth if I want to lose weight. I am not perfect and the food I eat is not always perfect but I have substantially decreased eating empty calories. Sugar is so addictive. It is also one of the easiest things to eat even with an LGS.

TV1 has a new program "The Big Ward" that follows people through the process of having WLS and what they want them to do before the operation goes ahead. This is being done in the Public Hospitals for free so they are very strict on the criteria you have to meet. I was lucky that my brother paid for my surgery privately but I still had to get down to around 120 kgs to make it safer and a bit easier to do the operation. I took appetite suppressants for a month to help me stopping full time grazing . This was followed by using Optifast for a month . I lost 10 kgs on each of these months.  http://tvnz.co.nz/the-big-ward/6444924     to see how others work towards better health and a much better life.

One of the ladies was up front about the fact that she really had a sugar addiction and I know where she is coming from. Stress, probably accompanied by cortisol release, really wants your body to eat sugar and carbs. This goes straight onto many people's hips(entire body) instantly. It is so hard to fight though as it is the thing that is most prevalent in supermarkets, cafes, food halls etc. Everywhere you go there is a place to eat. I swear KFC pumps the scent out of their extractors directly from a scent pack. Saying that I have only eaten KFC once in the last five years. As we were watching TV last night around 10 pm the  ads for New World and Countdown came on one after the other. My 82 year old mother grumps, "I wish they weren't allowed to put food or chocolate ads on after 7 pm. It just makes me want to eat and I am trying not to have anything extra after tea as it goes straight on my body."

I have asked my daughter who brings non-gluten free, lovely smelling potato/herb/pumpkin bread (and other things I don't need to eat) to start to put it into containers I can't see through so it is not visible to me. For preference I really don't want it in the pantry at all but the house is small and the storage tight. We need to go back to not buying some foods that I know I eat and gain on. It would help Mum  and my daughter as they need to lose weight too.

A 90 minute walk can take 0.4 kgs off at the time and I think if I can do that walk most days it will help me keep going down. Through various small bits of work (doing ironing and giving a massage) I am $84 towards the startup fee for the local gym just a few metres down the road. I need the weights and cardio that I can get at a gym for sustained weight loss. It is a 24 hour gym so you can use it at anytime as you have a swipe card that gives you admittance. You pay just under $11.00 per week for the use of the gym which is direct debited from your account. I will have to cope with the cost, in money, for the pay off in health and weight loss. The cost would ensure I actually use it. I like to exercise before my mother gets up as I find I have more energy for the rest of the day if I do that. I would still be able to go any other time of the day if I couldn't get there earlier so it would be a win-win situation. A couple more weeks and I should have the money.

This mirror in The Warehouse (14th February) gave me a better idea of where I am in my weight. It is less than I have been and more than I was at this time last year. By this time next year I want to be able to say that I have lost all the weight I want to lose. I want to be 70 kgs but to get there I am going to have to go back to working hard at it again. You do lose weight with WLS but you can nibble your weight back up if you fail to keep your eye on the goal. I would love to lose a number of cup sizes on my breasts as I still fill a G Cup. I like the thought of wearing the lovely dresses that are in the shops at the moment but the excess boobs stop me from doing that. I know why small breasted women sometimes want larger ones but we ladies with XXXL boobs often want just a little less of nature's bounty. No more sore and rounded back, no more falling over if you start to trip (top heavy centre of gravity) and being able to wearing nicer clothing are all good reasons for less.

INTENTIONS  FOR THE COMING WEEK:

• Walk daily even when it is raining
• Monitor food/water intake during day and use MyFitnessPal to see how I am doing
• Lose 0.5 - 1 kg before next week.
• Work daily on book
• Do exercises at home to videos on the Net
• Set up a vision board for my weightloss and my book this week, photograph and post them next week
• That more people read this post and maybe leave some comments so I know what interests them.

A few questions that I would like comments on: 

• Do you want more on different exercises?
• Do you want more on food eaten or recipes?
• Do you want graphs showing changes occurring?
• Do you want more on creative things to do to keep your hands/mouths away from food and do something positive?

I am going up in weight - noooo!!!

I am trying to figure out what is happening at the moment. I am getting back to walking for at least an hour or more daily, with only 1 day off a week. I am using my kettle dumbbell to get my arms smaller again. I am tracking my food / glasses of water each day. I am journalling. I joined a Facebook page for WLS people in New Zealand.

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/1596568713949751/permalink/1660344167572205/

 I am still going up and I am freaking out. I am finding out that I am eating some empty calories so am attempting to change that each day, one day at a time. I don't care what they say food can be an addiction to some people, me included. I love my fruit especially bananas. Most fruit is high in sugars though. Peanut butter is another thing I have daily. I won't buy it this week, see how I do.

My mother is noted that I am wearing more flowy clothes again and commented on it. I had moved to more shape conforming clothes as I lost weight but they are not so comfortable at the moment. It is lovely and hot this summer but that can make you sweat if your clothes are too tight. It is maddening as I went through this op to have a good permanent weight loss and regain my younger body weight or at least under 100 kgs and as close to 70 kgs as I could get. I managed to get to 99.2 kgs. Some of it is the food that my daughter brings into the house. Some of it is me wanting to taste that food.

I need to go back to how I ate when I first had this op: smaller portions, no daily puddings, fruit/vegetables in controlled amounts and more protein(eaten first). Hide my mother's lollies so I don't dip as I go past. I snorted at a person who was going on about the pizza etc they were still eating after their LGS and queried why they bothered. I knew it would come back to bite me when I did it.I don't eat pizza and fast food myself, but I have been fooling myself about the amount of so called good, non-processed food that I am eating.

I must work out what I am going to eat the day before and stick to that. I will walk daily and do other forms of exercise also. MyFitnessPal needs to be entered as I eat, I think, or at the end of the day if I note it elsewhere. I think if I manage to get my drinks up to 10 glasses that may help. Documenting how many I have had is getting me up to 8 glasses most days now.

The top photos are today, the left hand lower one was early 2015, the right hand one is November 2015.  I know we dealt with shifting etc and I comfort ate but I need to learn and practice other means of dealing with my emotions. I don't want or need this weight.

These are affirmations I am using to get back into the right headspace again. So, no more whining. The positive things that have happened since my last post:

• I finished a small crochet blanket that will be given to some-one in need to help them stay warm in cool weather
• I attended a Creative Writing Workshop at my local library which even though it concentrated on poetry (not good at that) gave me more insight into writing
• The person in charge of the workshop asked if I was interested in being a local contact for other weekend workshops (YES)
• I met some lovely people at that workshop and some are coming to our Tuesday writing group (woohoo)
• This week's writing group went well and one new member has done a Copy-editing and proofreading course already.  
• The people in the Facebook page referenced above are lovely people to communicate with

Synchronicity in action again.

 

                                 The next time I blog I will record a weight decrease.