New Years Eve

59.8kg -
Bedtime Last Night: 2am
Wake up: 8.30am

Breakfast:
cuppa tea
egg on white bread (sold out of w/meal at shops!)

Morning Tea:
cuppa tea and a slice of chocolate mud cake

Lunch:
Cheerios in bread w/ tomato sauce
water

Afternoon Tea:
Handful of pizza Shapes
cuppa tea

Dinner:
Chicken Breast in the GFG (George Foreman Grill!)
Exercise:
Mowed Lawn and trimmed hedges for an hour
5km walk w/ Clem (~150cals)

Thursday 30th December

60.1  +

Bedtime Last Night:  after midnight
Wake up: 8am

Breakfast:
cuppa tea
muesli, yogurt, and kiwifruit

I had really bad indigestion after that - like curled up in bed agony indigestion!  Ow!

Lunch:
6 cherios with tomato sauce

Naptime!
Afternoon tea:
2 x cuppa tea
slice of Rocky road

Dinner:
Lemon chicken and pasta

Exercise:
5k run/walk doing week 3 of the 10k program (4x 5min runs 1min walk)

It felt soo great to get back to running. It has been eye-opening going back to doing the walks and first week of c25k with Clem - I was actually moaning when told to stop!  lol I remember moaning whenever I was told to run the first time I did it! lol  Poor Clem isnt' having a good time of it though - her face gets so red but hopefully this will give her the motivation to stop smoking!

iPhone apps

iPhones are pretty popular these days and I must admit to loving mine!  I use it everyday for lots of things, including my fitness!  So I thought I would share which apps I am currently using and let you know what I think!  Feel free to post recommendations and reviews yourselfs in the comments section so I can find some more to try out!

1. Runkeeper
This is my most used application on my iPhone.  I use it everyday to track my runs/walks and absolutely love it.  I enter in my intervals for training which I get from online sites - like the c25k and bridge to 10k programs and hit the streets with my playlist selected! At the end of each run (or even during!) it tells me where I went on a map, how far I went, and my speed/rate for the whole thing, or during intervals.  And it publishes to facebook and twitter!  Now there are plenty of apps that will let you do that, but Runkeeper seems to have the greatest potential to use more functionality if I get more into my running, I barely even look at the website but there is so much on there which I haven't even thought of using yet!  I am just waiting now to be able to integrate my polar heart rate monitor with runkeeper.  One of the other apps has just added this feature (but not with the polar hrm) so I expect it will be some time in the next 12mths!
What I love though, is when I get an email saying that I have run more kilometers this week then ever before or something like that!  Totally cool!

2. TargetWeight.
Now I am looking at something to log my wieght and I found this which is fantastic - only wish it had measurements as well!  I might go look now and see what I can find!  I do like this one though as it keeps it nice and simple!  I just enter my weight each day and it graphs it, and positions me on a BMI chart (today I just went from orange (overweight) into green (healthy)!

3. Body Body.
I have just downloaded this and it looks fun!  It is a tracker (will replace the above one if it is good) that allows you to choose what you track.. I've started with weight and waistline! The bmi seems to be out.. 24.97 is showing as overweight though I am sure the cut-off is 25.  The language is a bit out as well e.g. says 'remained' instead of remaining but the writer is Japanese I believe so English would be second language.  The layout is sooo adorable though! It is also password protected and allows up to 7 people - so you can record height and weight for your kids as they grow as well! I'm thinking this is a keeper!

I have a few more apps which I don't really use much so I won't bother putting them in here until I start to use them more regularly!

Wednesday 29th December 2010

60.0kg (Going Down!)
Bedtime last night: about 2am - couldn't sleep!
Woke up: 7.30am

Midnight Snack:
tin of baked beans

Breakfast:
cuppa tea
muesli, yogurt, a strawberry and some blueberries

Morning Tea:
handful of doritoes with salsa and a bit of cheese
cuppa tea

Lunch:
sweet chili wrap w/ seared chicken
coke zero

Dinner:
w/meal pita bread with salsa, ham, tomato, mushroom, and cheese (ie. mini pizzas!)
a bit of Rocky Road
cuppa tea

Supper:
bowl of choc chip icecream

Exercise:
General activity level low
5km walk/run with Clem

Tuesday 28th December 2010

60.1kg
Wake up: 9am

Food:
Breakfast:
cuppa tea
egg on w/grain bread

Lunch:
Beef Tortellini (Lean Cuisine)

Afternoon Tea:
toasted cheese sanga (wholemeal)
cuppa tea

Dinner:
beef pattie (woolies butcher type) on a wholemeal bread sanga
cuppa tea

Supper:
some cheap choc chip icecream

Exercise:
General Activity level low
Took kids to park in rain!

Monday 27th December 2010

Wake Up: 8am
Weigh in: 60.7kg

Food:
Breakfast
cuppa tea (milk, 2 sugars)
yogurt and muesli with blueberries and half a banana
(mmm either the yogurt or the banana didn't agree with me.. bad indigestion)

Morning Tea
cuppa tea (milk, 2 sugars)

Lunch
Creamy pumpkin cup-a-soup
w/meal roll with beef burger

Afternoon Tea
water

Dinner
lamb roast with steamed vegetables
and mini roast potatoes (ie fried)
an inch of JD's sour lolly

Supper
chocolate milk (quik)

Exercise:
general activity level was low
5km walk (c25k week one w/Clem)

Bedtime:
11pm

Setting Some Goals

Time to set some goals and make some plans!

Weight is pretty obvious - I want to lose about 10kg to get me down to 50kg.  It is within my ideal weight zone, and given my small frame, it is probably more my maximum healthy weight!  Now the hard part is working on the time frame for achieving this.  At half a kilo a week, it will take 20 weeks.  If I set my start day as Jan 1, 2011, then that will take me until the end of May.  Not bad timing really as the next 12wbt challenge ends on May 14th but we have holidays planned for the two weeks prior to that!   Hopefully I will make it a good camping holiday with lots of exercise!

So the plan:

27th Dec 60kg
3rd Jan 
10th Jan 59kg
17th Jan

Preseason Begins
24th Jan 58kg
31st Jan (Kids back to school; Dyllan's B'day)
7th Feb 57kg
14th Feb (Holidays; Party for Dyllan)

1/  21st Feb 56kg 
2/  28th Feb
     3rd Mar (Graduation)
3/  7th Mar 55kg
4/  14th Mar
5/  21st Mar 54kg
6/  28th Mar (PhD begins)
     3rd Apr  (Cam's B'day)
7/  4th Apr 53kg
8/  11th Apr
     16th Apr (School holidays begin)
9/  18th Apr 52kg
10/ 26th Apr (School starts back)
11/ 2nd May 51kg (Holidays)
     5th May (Vanessa's B'day)
12/ 9th May
     16th May 50kg (End Challenge)


So that is all the major stuff but I want to focus on the next month in particular.

In the next four weeks I shall:
Lose 2kg so that I will weigh-in at 58kg for the 21st Jan (Pre-season start)
I will acheive this by:
Beginning the ease into 10k program and get up to week four (weeks 1-3 will be my first week of running, then week 4,5, and 6 will be three runs each over three weeks);
Doing strength training twice a week;

Things to do now:
[done] enter the 10k program into runkeeper (first 6 weeks)
work out a strength training programing for myself
set alarms in my iPhone!

Weekly Schedule:

Mon: Running
Tues: Strength
Wed: Running
Thurs: Strength
Fri: Yoga
Sat: Swimming (am); Running (pm)
Sun:  Rest Day

Okay, so now I will head off and do what I need to do!

Food Today:
yogurt and muesli with blueberries and strawberries
apple
egg and lettuce sandwich (wholegrain bread; no butter)
Beef and Mushroom stirfry and pasta (oyster sauce)
several cup of teas!
tin of baked beans before bed

Exercise Today:
Walked 5k with Clem

Morning Exercise - Habits take work!

So far this isn't working!

Firstly, someone changed the time on my alarm waking me at midnight (well, four minutes too) with the shocking sounds of a saxophone booming out at top volume!  Not pleasant!  Of course my 6.30am alarms were deleted in the process.

The night before last, I crashed at 11pm after imbibing a lovely bottle of wine so exercise kinda went out the window!  Then last night I went to bed around 1am so waking up this morning at 7am was pretty impressive, exercise or not!  Maybe I was pushing for too much???

Breakfast is doing well though so I am pretty happy with that! 

Now, to solve my 'waking' issue I am taking on a new tact.. a star chart!  Well, kind of anyway!  In the Women's Health Magazine, there was a free calander care of John West Tuna Slices with a lovely 'well cut' man decorating each month!  This calander is my start chart for the year!  Each month I will chose a habit to focus on and change, something from a health perspective and something from a 'mum' perspective.

January will be spent reinforcing my morning exercise and getting the kids and myself to make our beds in the morning!

In case I don't get back in to blog today - Merry Christmas!

Not such a grand morning!

Not such a grand morning this morning!

Bedtime last night was 11pm so I will have to change that. Fair enough that the kids took a bit to get to sleep, but I still stayed up an hour later until heading to bed. I need to get over the ‘when the next show is over’ thing!

I am not doing strength training this morning – mostly because I have none to do (but also because my niece is awake and I am too shamed to exercise in front of anyone!
But the more practise I get waking up early the better! I might go hang out some washing while it is still cool!

Morning Exercise!

So this is turning into more of a 'seven habits of healthy people'!

1. Breakfast
2. Morning Exercise!

I am so proud of myself.  I bought myself an alarm app last night and set it for 6.15am with a gentle reminder to 'Go running!'.  It even tells me the current weather at my location so I knew that it was raining but I woke up and used the 10min rule!  It took me a while to get ready (D wanted a coffee and his lappy in bed) which didn't work in my favour as it soon started pouring!  Umbrella in hand I decided to go for a walk for 10mins and see how it went.  The rain settled a bit so I set my runkeeper to my training program (5 intervals of 3/1mins), tucked my umbrella under my arm and did my 5km.

So what are the advantages of morning exercise...
1. gets it out of the way for the day!
2. in summer time it is a lot cooler!
3. you burn more fat as your sugar stores are low from 8hrs with no food!
4. kick starts the metabolism for the day (and your circadian rhythms!)
5. feels great!

It is great knowing that I have done my exercise for the day - no procrastinating!  And breakfast was yummy because I was so flippin hungry! lol  I think I will keep this up!  It is well worth the effort!  I can only hope I start going to bed a normal hour now!

Breakfast...

.. is the most important meal of the day!

Why?

We have all heard this but how many of us start the day off with a truely healthy nutritious breakfast?  Myself, I usually have a quick bowl of cereal washed down with a cuppa tea or a bacon and egg McMuffin washed down with Coke Zero and a hash brown a couple of hours after my morning cuppa!

A quick scope of scopus (a scientific database) gives a scary picture of what this means for my health.

Women who skip breakfast (based a college student survey followed up for five years) were more likely to have absent or irregular periods and to suffer from constipation, and also had a poorer perception of their own health (Fujiwara & Nakata 2010).  Now I only read the abstract but I could surmise that this may be an affect of a lack of fibre - which is what I perceive as the main dietary benefit of breakfast.
Another aspect to the importance of breakfast is the timing of food consumption - both in kick-starting the metabolic processes in the body and also the importance of cicadian rhythms.  The amount of sleep we get is also linked to obesity.  There is a nice review (Laposky et al 2008) titled "Sleep and circadian rhythms: key components in the regulation of energy metobolism." which provides a good overview of research on this topic.
As a non-expert I would say that breakfast is important because:

•  it's already been 8+ hours since you last ate - your body would be in some kind conservation mode after that long without food - longer will make it even worse.
• it will kick-start your metabolism and have it working in balance with your sleep/wake cycle
• you can make sure your metabolism is healthy and balanced setting you up for the rest of the day
• an opportunity to ingest a healthy balanced meal and get important nutrients like fibre, without cravings influencing you
• can prevent over-eating or bad choices made due to extreme hunger and cravings that happen if you dont' eat breakfast
• any meal at home is one you have more control over ingredient wise

So I think it is a pretty easy leap to say that breakfast is vital to a healthy lifestyle.  I am sure some people can remain thin and 'healthy' without it, but not my definition of healthy in which my body is metabolically efficient.

What makes a healthy breakfast?

While it is pretty easy to spot a healthy meal from a perspective of being low in fat and sugar and additives, what makes a healthy breakfast?  What is a good balance of nutrition with which to kick start our metabolism and set ourselves with a balanced system to prevent cravings?
Firstly, I would think that fibre is hugely important in the mornings.  Fibre lines our gut to protect the microvilli that absorb nutrients, it also provides a chemical barrier so that the nutruients (particularly the sugars) reach those microvilli evenly rather then in bursts. I dont' 'know' this however, it seems intuitive to me from the various things I have learnt over the years - please double check these 'facts'!
Secondly, a complex carbohydrates for energy are a must!  Some fruit and cereal should provide a good source of energy to get through till lunch.  This is also a great way to get fibre as most complex carbs come with fibre!
Thirdly, protein would also be essential to providing the nutrition required for the early half of the day - often the most productive physically!  Protein is also great for long-term satiation - so we feel full longer.  Where to get protein?  Egg or diary is pretty good for a breakfast protein given most of us couldn't stomach a steak at that hour!


So what are some breakfast options?

No cooking required!

Muesli, fruit, and yogurt

170g Forme yogurt
40g muesli (Select crunchy)
Blueberries
1 Lge Strawberry
1/2 banana

This is my fave breakfast, only I don't always have fruit on hand!  It can also be a pain having to finish a big tub of yogurt as I hate the thought of old yogurt!



egg on toast

more to come....

Sad

Today I am sad.  My neice just left my place in a huff with her daughter. 

Apparently I wasn't as gracious a host as I thought I was being.  I feel torn between the injustice of her being angry with me when I have opened my home, rearranged my house and my life, changed our routine, put my children out, etc etc  but then also feeling like maybe I am just a horrible person and maybe I should have bought thier daughter presents, cooked more, cleaned more, been more 'nice'.  I don't know. 

Right now, all I know is that I don't know if I should pack away the blow up mattresses and go through the hassle of moving Dyllan's bed back into the other room (if it is even possible!) so he can have his bedroom back, and I don't know what I am going to do with the kids tomorrow as she was meant to babysit for an hour for me while I go to uni. At least I can redecorate the Christmas tree with the baubles that haven't been broken!

I feel like crying.

12wbt Final Post - My Birthday

Well, my gift to myself today was meant to be a healthy body.  Instead I am eating chocolate cookies and a hot chocolate (albeit low fat versions) at the exact same weight I was at the beginning of this process.  It is now time for the evaluation:  what have a learnt?  What have a done well?  What have a not done well.

1. Meal plan:  I was unable to keep up with the commitment of the meal plan.  That was the first aspect to go - I am a creature of habit and I found the change difficult.  The meals were wonderful, I loved trying new things, but I didn't enjoy the extra work - my husband normally cooks and he is 'unable' to cook to a plan or recipe.  If I am to make permenent changes in regards to at least dinner time meals, I will have to do a lot of work on changing my husbands patterns as well as my own.  The family meals will need to be adapted and a general shift in how we manage meal times will have to take place.  Without this aspect of the program working for me I returned to the usual 1200 calories on Calorie King which I was doing before.

2. Exercise program.  I had come into this expecting a little more in regards to exercise programs.  I had hoped to get a proper running program - similar to the c25k program but for increasing speed and distance and more 'all round' fitness as well.  I was able to keep my running up and meet several goals - I ran 10km for the first time, and I ran my 5km in under 30mins.  I also started up swimming and have reached my first goal of being able to swim a full lap of the pool.  The strenth training aspect - I went with Mish's 'outdoors' training program and went well the first week.  But... I found it difficult doing the exercises with masses of printouts to try and learn the program from.  If I had of stuck with it, I am sure it would have gotten easier.  I would recommend to Mish that she considers a iPhone app (or just videos available online) which has the program listed (what to do and reps so you can mark it off as you are done) with the exercises described in video format.  Strength training has always been the hardest aspect for me... the times I have done this successfully was through gym membership and through the sparkpeople site where I made my own program.  I really liked the exercise program given though - I just wish it was more user friendly or that I knew how to do the exercises already (or that my iPhone app dream would come true! lol).

3.  Videos, Live Feeds, Surprises and Prizes.  The level of interaction was great although I felt like a teenager waiting for someone famous to acknowledge my existence!  It sucks that the program is sooo huge and there are so many people out there - a little more personalisation would be awesome.  I am thinking that if I participate again, I will organise a group and meetings for this area.  That level of real accountability would help a lot I believe!  The videos were great, and Mish has an awesome attitude which is infectious!  It is absolutely the one thing that holds the program together!  Prizes were great as well - I managed to win something in the final weeks! Seriously though - fitness tests should NOT be a part of the weekly surprises!  Also, the live chat format is a bit weird - a great opportunity is lost as everyone is so busy throwing out questions.  I would say it would work better to have a general live chat forum available on a few nights each week with Mish coming online every now and then and then have a seperate video made up where people submit questions by a certain time and then the video done up by the next day or something.

4.  Forums and blogs.. fantastic.  There was a real support network happening but it is really about how much you put in.  The blogs were really supportive with lots of commenting happening to begin with but it peetered out toward the end unfortunatly, as did many of the blogs!


I have had a bad couple of weeks to finish up with.  My Neice and her husband and child have come to stay in my tiny 3brm home and their work fell through thanks to the huge amount of rain we have had up here.  Then I found out a friend of mine has had her children removed from her care.  And now I have found out that a former neighbour's child - who was friends with my eldest son, was killed last week.  We haven't seen her for the last 6mths as she went to stay with her father but she was a great kid and we miss her already.  I have helped out by sending a box of groceries and pet food around but that is all we can afford.  Oh yes, and our tenents in our rental property have not paid rent for 6weeks and have been breaking the law and terrorising the neighbourhood (literally - Australian federal police were called!).  We have no money - I have thankfully got most the Christmas presents but things like the PS3 and Cam's iPad (which was to be his new communication device at school now the funding for his 'talking computer' at school has dropped) are now on hold.  I can only hope we sell the house now as Cameron needs that iPad for school next year and I was hoping to have the holidays to be able to set it up for him.  (For those who don't know, Cam has severe verbal dyspraxia and is not able talk as yet.  this year he has started saying mum, dad, yes, no, I don't know, and a few other key words but the communication program allows him to tell teachers when he is hurt, to participate in show and tell, say good morning to everyone, and answer questions in class.).  

sigh.. so with a few major things happening the last two weeks have disappeared in a blur of stress and commitments and helping others.  Hopefully by next year I will be able to have some me time!