Day 28 ~ Resisting the resistance, Running, Weigh in worries and 21 day challenge

I've been away for the last few days because it's just been a very abysmal end to the week and there hasn't been much to report besides that every day was a struggle.

The bladder infection seems to be coming on and off and so that situation is bothering me at times but it's not worrying me.  Funnily enough what is stressing me out the most is this familiar feeling of giving up and restlessness.  For some reason I've lost focus on what the actual objective of this whole new lifestyle change was and all of a sudden I'm finding white processed flour and fatty meats slipping into my diet.  I'm being on harsh on myself obviously because it's not like I've let slip that badly but I think what upsets me most is that my mindset is not right.

Don't get me wrong - I still love the way I was and am living.  I am very passionate about how my life is changing and my new embrace of natural eating but somehow the fire that was in my belly has turned onto a medium setting.  I'm not expecting to be hardcore all the time but I'm starting to panic because it's usually times like this that I just give up and fall back into my old routine.

In a bid to remind myself of why I'm doing this, I picked up "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan and began reading again.  I've been reading this since I bought it but I decided to read some more to see if it would do much.  Within a few minutes I was reminded about some of the reasons why I no longer eat fast food and why reading labels are so important.  I then re-listened to Alicia Silverstone's talk about The Kind Diet on Youtube and now, at midnight, my heart feels a little less panicked. 
It occurred to me that I had not yet bought a copy of The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone so I've ordered it alongside Peter Singer's Animal Liberation. Both books, I'm sure, will be detrimental to my ever evolving eating habits and I'm incredibly excited to receive them in the post this coming week. Perhaps they will keep me on the straight and narrow.

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I haven't been eating too badly recently but my usual 50% fruit and vegetable intake seems to have gone down to a mere 40% and I've been reaching for the starches more often.  The recent weather change has not helped and is possibly the cause of my body's calling for comfort food. 
In a bid to regain my nutrient intake as well as satisfying my feeling for comfort, I will be making a lot more soups, warm and filling salads, porridge oats and vegetarian lasagne. I also have in mind to use my gigantic cauliflower that I picked up from the farmers market as a substitute for rice in a at-home, healthy 'Special Fried Rice'.  Don't know how to do this?  I shall post it up when I do it for you.

I went running again today so that's three days this week that I have exercised!  I am very happy about that and I want to continue making three days the minimum amount of times I work out in a week.  I'm enjoying running and very excited about progressing and running further.  In three running 'sessions' I've noticed that my fitness levels are already changing and I can run for a little for longer and further now.  I find it both shameful and hilarious that old men and women jog past me in the park and more often than not they will lap me over and over again.  Perhaps I can lap a fat kid one day when I get old. 

I almost know that I will not drop any weight this week.  I'm very in-tune with my body and I can tell when I have lost weight or even inches.  I think if there is change it's going to be minimal and I'm trying to work out why this is especially considering this week I did the most exercise.  A lot of people talk about muscle being more dense than fat and hydration issues, body hording fat issues etc etc but the truth is, I have no answer and I'm sure there is more to it than one straight answer anyway.  I take it that this will happen from time to time and I can't allow myself to think that a whole week was wasted (although that is how I feel).  I need to remember that a week of healthy living was a reclaim to life and if no weight was lost then at least life was gained.  Also another important note is that if you watch The Biggest Loser, quite often contestants find this happening in week 2 or 3 and they say this is normal because your body is still adjusting.  OK, I've finally talked myself out of being too worried about it.

The 21 Day challenge is also not going particularly well.  The first seven day has passed and out of the seven days I've only managed to wake up at 8am for three days.  Granted I'm still waking up in the morning but it's usually between 9-10am.  Again, I don't want to be too harsh on myself but I really need to pull the reigns in and start focussing. 

I come away from this post concluding that the new week is officially upon me and now it's time to refocus and keep reclaiming life.  It's time to re-educate and move on to bigger and slimmer things.  I'm slightly nervous about my weigh in tomorrow but what will be, will be. 

Tomorrow, I will make sure the week starts off with a bang.

Helen

Day 20 + 21 ~ Time to shake things up!

Oh weekends, how you mess with my mind. 

Saturday (day 20) went relatively smoothly although counting calories went out the window for some reason.  I wasn't making particularly bad choices but I think it had something to do with waking up so early and then just wanting to rest all day.  I did my grocery haul in the morning and spent the rest of the day cooking for everyone and then working.  If you want to see my grocery haul it's here:

 

I picked up a lot of organic foods this time round and did all of my shopping at the supermarket.  The farmers market that I went to didn't have much to offer so it's much less exciting.  The one thing I came away with this experience is that organic food really is that much more expensive and it shows in comparing my two receipts from last week to this weeks.  I spent very similar amounts of money but I got a lot less.  However I did figure if we ate it all and there was no waste, it would be worth it because we are putting less chemicals into our bodies and eating good quality food that makes us (well, at least me) happy.

Today (day 21) was an absolute shambles.  I've accepted that these days will keep coming along but I'm back at home now and I'm all fired up to get back on track.  When being on a relatively strict regime like the one I am on, it's easy to just go nuts and make bad choices.  I stood in Tae's kitchen and cried because I was going crazy with my food and I think for the first time I showed true vulnerability.  I don't think I've ever let anyone see how emotionally out-of-control I am about food and I just broke down.  He told me to relax and just take it easy.  He said that I was a very determined person and one days rest wasn't going to be the be-all and end-all.  He is right, because the scale may not like it tomorrow and I may be very dehydrated now (possibly come up in spots tomorrow too) but it's not going to be the end of the world.  I shall drink more water starting from now, have a good sleep and eat clean for the rest of the week.

Which brings me onto the subject of the 21 Day Challenge.

There has been debate as to how long it takes for a person to develop a habit but having completed 21 days of my own personal regime, I feel like it's been a great amount of time to develop my mind set and change my body.  By embarking on this challenge I am hoping to add to my life and hopefully each challenge will slowly mould me into the person I want to become. 

For the next 21 days I will make a consistent effort to wake up before 8am.  The reasoning behind this is because I have an extremely awful sleeping pattern.  Generally I sleep around 5am in the morning and wake up around 10am-1pm.  This has not only impaired my hair, skin and weight but I am very sluggish and slow, I have very low concentration levels and all I care about it sleeping whilst trying to stay awake.  The worst thing about that lifestyle is not having enough time to do anything.  I used to complain that there was not enough time in the day but I realised it was because I was sleeping during the day... 
So waking up before 8am assures me that I have the entire morning and hopefully it will encourage me to sleep earlier too.  I originally wanted to make the challenge to sleep before 11pm but some days it will be difficult because of work so I think we will focus on waking up early.  This will also help for when I go back for university.

So I weigh in tomorrow.  I'm very nervous because I haven't weighed myself since around Tuesday when I dropped to 12st 1lb.  I know that was a fake weight and it was really great to see because it pushed me to do well on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday but I haven't been extremely strict and today was a disaster.  I will be very pleased if I hit 12st 3 because that will have been 2lbs loss for my third week. 

Wish me luck!

 

Helen