And then comes CLARITY

I now feel safe to write this blog as the last two weeks finally saw me with two losses of 1.2kg!  I started the round in the same style as the last however after the first fortnight it all went to shit.  I realise now that my 3 week standstill hasn’t been a total waste as I have had to do much soul searching and become even more honest with myself than I had been before, something I actually thought had already happened, apparently not.  Finally my Type A “All or Nothing” Personality was trying to undo me.

So what happened?  Week 3 saw me with a gain, the first I had to enter onto the 12wbt website.  I was gutted to say the least and was a big emotional miserable mess for the entire day.  All that was going through my mind was what if Michelle happened to look at my stats that very week?  It wouldn’t reflect all the hard work I have been putting in since May and just how much I have achieved on the program.  If it had been a deserved gain then that would have been one thing however I had eaten clean and trained hard for the whole week.  I knew I hadn’t done enough for a huge loss, however a gain - really??  Fortunately for me that changed the very next day and it appeared a number of things were messing with me, I had a bad cold and some suggested that may have contributed to the dodgy weigh in but then I also had TTOTM rock up that very night, two weeks early!  So with the scales showing a loss the very next day I should have been back on track, right??  Oh I wish!

The next fortnight saw me still planning my weeks meals, shopping for them and even following them however I was snacking far too much.  I had some slices in the fridge I had made as part of an event I had to contribute too and I found myself “sneaking” them in.  It got to the point where I was actually running to the fridge to scoff one or two while my husband was out of the room.  Suddenly I had this horrible binge mentality, I couldn’t let him see me “failing” and yet I needed to get in as much as I could so I didn’t miss out later.

Now what is with that?  I mean seriously I am an adult I have money I can “spoil” myself whenever I want to and yet this stupid mentality I have from my childhood keeps biting me on the arse! As kids we rarely had any junk food, purely because we couldn’t afford it and so when those sorts of foods were available it became a big gorge fest, get as much as possible in before it’s gone.  Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy…..happy, happy, happy!  Only this time when I did it I wasn’t feeling happy, the sugar instantly gave me a headache, my stomach was gurgling and growling at me all day and mentally I was feeling so confused that I was allowing myself to keep doing such a weak act.  I knew better!  And so I stopped.  I got out my sticky tape and some paper and thick black texta and fixed the problem once and for all………

So this helped with the food demons biting me in the arse at home now I had to work out why it was I was letting them bite me.  Time to sit down and do some serious soul searching and find out what was really going on.

The first thing I realised was that I was still hanging out for “the end”.  I couldn’t wait to get to goal so I could relax.  I was constantly trying to eat perfectly and exercising like a demon.  I couldn’t wait to get to goal so I could allow myself some indulgences and scale back the exercise a bit.  My son is only 2 and the majority of my exercise is done with him and so that can also be quite challenging and tiring in itself.  If the weather is poor I am stuck working out at home and getting through a workout uninterrupted just does not happen so a lot of the days it isn’t only the push to get going it’s also knowing I am basically going into battle with him just to get my 500 calories done.  This round I was trying to plan my exercise and follow the Lean & Fit program to the letter aswell as adding in training for the Half Marathon.  Last round the only plan I had was to move, I rarely prepared what I was going to do but instead just knew each day I had to do something to burn my 500 and then depending on the weather and the mood my son was in I did whatever I had to do, it was easier as a Mum for me not to plan!  The flexibility enabled me to work better and get it done with less stress.

The second realisation I came to was that I was already in love with how I felt and looked!  What the……????  Me, happy with my appearance??  This has NEVER been the case for me and so it’s no wonder my attitude was becoming lax.  I was getting compliments, I was also getting people telling me I could stop now and I was actually getting dressed each day and feeling frigging awesome with what I was seeing.  I can now see all the hard work I have put in and yes you know what….I could stop if I wanted and look “NORMAL”!!!!  I can stand by even the skinniest person and still not see myself as the fat one.    So how low do I need to go to be happy?

This led me to my third AHA moment.  I was fixated on my goal as a figure.  We set a goal weight and for those of us who have been overweight for such a long time how do we come up with it?  I don’t know what I am going to look like at that weight, the last time I was that low was in my early teens…I am now a grown woman and my body physically has matured in so many ways since then is it even possible to get that low.  Our boobs disappear, our hips go….so what is the right weight to decide on??  My own doctor has already told me I am at a healthy maintainable weight for my age and height…hmmmmm????  A couple of months ago I bought a fitness magazine and it’s safe to say I was disappointed in what I saw.  Yeah the women in it had awesome bodies but I think it would be safe to say the majority if not all also had awesome fake knockers to go with them.  So for me I worked out that I want to find that happy medium, I want to be fit and healthy but I still want to be “real”, for me I still want to have some squishy lady bits to go with a perky butt and flat belly.

And lastly my goal weight was bugging me.  Not knowing what I was going to look like at the weight I had chosen I was concerned with thoughts of going too low, not going low enough.  As I was getting nearer I was actually wanting to raise my goal weight (refer to previous paragraph for some of the reason) but then I didn’t want people to see me as a friend recently put it – a quitter!  And then deciding what to change it too…how do I do that????

So what is my answer?   A few things have changed recently for me that mean my future is a little undecided and will be for maybe the next 12 months or so, lots of changes to come and having to wait on other people to steer those changes.   Initially I upped my goal weight from 62kg to 65kg but even that still isn’t sitting right.  So as of this week  I don’t have a goal weight or even a goal BMI as such.  Instead I am finding balance now.  This  morning after weigh in I am 1.1kg off being inside the healthy BMI range for my height and that is my first goal.  From there I want to be 2kg inside that and reach 68kg by end of round as I figure that gives me room for the normal fluctuations without popping back into overweight territory.  Once I have hit that target I will be scaling back my exercise if and when I need to.  Most days I want to exercise and I feel jittery if I haven’t moved so I am confident that I will do what is necessary for me to maintain.  I just also know that there are days where I don’t feel like fighting with my boy cos he is in a terror of a mood and those are the days that I might just go for a half hour walk with him, hubby and the dog instead of slogging out a hard workout.  Exercise has already become my life again and I won’t lose that for a second time.

I’m also not going to be so hard and fast on my food.  I don’t want to be the person hiding from people she loves the secret binging sessions.  If I choose as an adult to allow myself to indulge in something I will do so and do so proudly knowing that the rest of my week has been clean and that I am training enough to know the extra calories I am allowing into my system will soon be gone.  I love my fun runs and will continue to enjoy them and as I said to my friend I know that I am not a quitter, in the past two weeks I have run two 10km fun runs and for the first knocked off 5 minutes from my previous PB and then a further 2 minutes this weekend, a quitter wouldn’t or couldn’t do that!  This is now my life and I will still be continuing with everything I have learnt I am just choosing that healthy is enough for me.  Suddenly all the advice I have been given is making sense and the numbers just aren’t as important as they used to be.   The friendships I have made, the memories and the new way of “being” that my family has is all that is important 

I have realised finally with total clarity that this is how I want to see out the rest of my existence here on this planet.  There is no end and therefore there is no need for me to sit here and randomly select a weight for me to achieve.  I am doing this for me because I, want to be healthy and here for a very long time to come.  I want to set my children up with skills that they can take into their adult life so that they hopefully never have to face the battles I have nor waste the years I have lacking in confidence and being overweight.   For me it is enough to be in a healthy BMI, and the rest of that will even out as time goes on.  If I consciously choose to wake up each day and live this life the way I have for the past 6 months then my body is going to show me what my goal weight is.  And finally I feel at peace and at ease with where I am headed.  Thankyou Michelle Bridges for giving me this beautiful life, there is no way I can ever  truly show you my gratitude.

MrsHinchie XXXXX

 PERTH CREW

MARGARET RIVER FUN RUN 2011