Wisdom Teeth Weigh HOW MUCH??!!??

Well I didn't weigh-in last week because last week hardly existed in my little world, but I must say the scales this morning were encouraging:

Last time: 74 kg
This time: 72.6 kg
Loss of: 1.6 kg

Total loss: 3.4 kg
Way to go to goal (68kg): 4.6 kg

They must have been some pretty weighty teeth! I've been eating wrong food and not exercising. Maybe I should get another lot out and see if I can duplicate the results (or not).

Sabotage! (Givinya)

I sent Mister de Elba for three grocery items, then immediately smacked my head. He can't say No to his temptations (because he doesn't have to) and his temptations become my temptations because he brings them into my kitchen!

"He's going to come home with two blocks of chocolate," I said out loud. And he didn't. Good man.

"And a packet of corn chips," I continued. And he didn't. Awesome.

"And at least three packets of biscuits." And he brought home four.

My only defense against eating crap is not having it in the house. Then he brings it into the house. Doesn't he love me? Apparently he must love me so much that he wants more of me - much much more.

I got mad, but kept my cool as I said, "Honey, I'm going to need you to take every pack of biscuits to work - I can't have them in the house, I need you to help me not pack on the weight."

"Okay," he said.

So please explain why today there is a pack of Mint Slices in the fridge, a pack of Caramel Tim Tams in the cupboard, and the packs of Monte Carlos and Custard Creams were both emptied out into a giant biscuit tin and placed in our cupboard.

Mr de Elba is not taking my weight loss seriously. Maybe I should show how seriously I am taking it by throwing the whole lot in the bin.

Manda

I am also back. Thanks, girls! Last week, on the morning of the day I came across your recommittments, I stood on the scales and thought, 'I wonder when I'll go back on skinny cow?' A mark of how long I've been MIA is the fact that I loaded the blog page and stared at it, wondering, 'how do I sign in again?'

My plans have changed a little over the last month or so. I continue to aim to lose weight, but I am equally concerned now with developing good eating habits.

(Are you rolling your eyes? Stop that! Let me expand on it a bit first).

My biggest goal remains to break the hold food has in my head. This doesn't simply mean gluttony - it refers to the way I idolise food, waiting for the next morsel, daydreaming about dinner, an so on.

My housemate is obsessed with a book about Intuitive Eating. The thoery is, your body craves things it needs (or at least it will, once you start listening to it). So eating what you crave when you crave it - and not eating more than what will satisfy you - teaches you to eat the way your body needs you to. I'm not 100% sold on the theory, but it's not a bad idea: eating only what you need to eat, knowing that if you're hungry, you can get more later... satisfying cravings by having a little, rather than defying them by eating lots of other foods you don't crave.

So now, I'm eating when I'm hungry, and I'm eating the things I'm hungry for. Sounds simple, right? Well, in all my previous food habits (eat all you can and don't care about the consequences / eat exactly what will fit into the Weight Watchers plan and never anything else / eat mostly what will fit into the plan but be a tiny bit more relaxed) this has never occurred to me!

Weight: 71:8

Goal: 70

Weight to goal: 1.8 kilos

Time to get to goal: as long as I want! As long as I'm eating good food that I want to eat, I'm not too fussed about the timing.

Count me in, too (Femina)

Well, what now? I guess this is the bit where I make excuses about where I've been and what I've been doing, and make sensible food-and-exercise plans. As it happens I have no real plans at the moment but I need to get back on track, wherever that track might be, so publicly declaring my re-allegiance (is that a word?) to Skinny Cow is where I'm starting. Step one - check.

So... I'm back! Yay! I have had some messy things going on over the past three months and chocolate has been my friend. As has bacon. And the occasional hash brown. Mmm, and sausages sometimes too. Ooh, and hot chocolate. Turns out my mother was right... some friends only pretend to be your friend but really they are bad news. Sigh. I now weigh more than at my last OSC weigh-in but still less than when this whole thing started so I suppose that's a good thing.

My goal for this week is to plan meals, shop and cook. I have plenty of junk food in my house but nothing that would make a nutritious meal so that's my first step. I recently bought a meal planner notebook so I'm going to start utilising that. I am generally pretty good at the meal planning thing so that might be a good kick-start for me. (Yeah - here's hoping.)

Exercise goals will come next week. One step at a time for reluctant little cowgirls. :)

I'm back, Cowgirls (Givinya)

Inspired by Hippomanic Jen's recent post, I too am back at Skinny Cow.

Three weeks ago, I lost something huge, like 7kg or maybe more. This is how:

Giving birth to one stinkin' cute baby boy. Joseph Samuel is his name, and he accounted for 3.105 kg of the extra 14kg above my goal weight. See? Not all my fault.

Losing weight while flat on back

And the night after my caesarean as I lay helplessly flat on my back, I lost another 6kg or more. I have never lost so much weight so quickly while doing so little. How? you ask. I peed. And peed. And I peed and I peed and I peed and I peed and I peed and I peed and I peed. Well, I had a catheter in, so I didn't know I was peeing, much less how MUCH I was peeing until a midwife came for a chat and said upon leaving, "I'd better empty your bag - it looks like it's going to burst."

My bag? Oh yes, the catheter thing. Going to burst? Well, I had been very thirsty since the caesar, no - since falling pregnant late last year. And admittedly I'd had a lot to drink that afternoon in between feeding little Joseph. But also, I assume I'd retained fluid I hadn't noticed in my tissues, and it was all a-comin' out.

She emptied the bag into what looked like a two-litre jug, then emptied the jug. She emptied the bag again into the same jug, and emptied the jug again. Then she emptied the bag a third tine into this jug, not quite full this time, but lemme tell you, this wasn't the only bag-emptying-into-jug thing they did for me over that 20 hours.

I think I must have lost at least 6 litres in fluid, hence 6kg. While lying flat on my back.

And I've lost other bits and pieces of weight over the last 3 weeks, then gained it back with the incessant drinking you do when you're breastfeeding. And the breastfeeding itself - let's just say that parts of me are definitely making up some of the extra weight that's still on me.

ANYWAY.

Return to Skinny Cow

Here I am, back at Skinny Cow. And weight-wise, it's an interesting time of life for me - twice before I have seen that I crave the most amazing amounts of food when I am feeding a baby, and the promise that "the weight will fall off you when you're breastfeeding" turns out to be no more than a FABLE for me.

So now, the rubber hits the road.

What will I eat when it's 2pm and I am craving 4 chocolate biscuits, 7 marshmallows, 1 whole chocolate cake and a drink of hot Milo with sugar?

Will a banana and an apple REALLY cut it?

Plan of Attack

Current plan of attack: I don't want to keep any/much bad food in the house. And I want to eat leftovers instead of junk when I'm craving, as they will be filling and healthy.

Good luck, me.

Undutiful Porker returns to Skinny Cow again

So it was a really good idea to get back on the wagon.

It's a pity that I didn't, really.

However, I have been paying a bit more attention to healthy eating and I've rowed a couple of times during the last few weeks. And I thought about going for some walks with the Little Black Dog.

The exercise was mostly spurred on after my pre-admission phone call from a nurse asking questions about my health issues and any medication that I'm on. When asked about my level of fitness I did confess to being at the bottom end of the fitness range. She needed more information:

Her: "Do you walk for half an hour each day?"

Me: "Well, that's my aim, but I haven't been meeting it for the last few weeks."

Her: "If you walk up four flights of stairs would you be breathless?"

Me: "Is there anyone who wouldn't be breathless walking up four flights of stairs?"

Her (somewhat impatiently): "Yes!"

And although I didn't challenge it at the time, I'm certain that even when I was at my fittest (during high school when I rode my bike for 5 km to school and back about 4 times a week) I would have been breathless if I tried to walk up four flights of stairs.

Even when I was at college and walked everywhere and did indeed have four flights of stairs to climb to get to my room I was breathless at the top of them.

However, at least the hospital know how out of condition I am. You would have thought that they could have worked that out when I confessed to my height and weight!

I work best from a position of strength. I'm 1.4 kilos down since my last weigh-in. Or maybe exactly the same weight, but I took best two of three attempts.

So I rowed this morning and feel all good.

I had a balanced breaky that include fruit and milk and toast and I feel all good.

Then I finished off the packet of cheese Twisties that lured me yesterday at the supermarket.

I have to work on my just-say-no control mechanism.

Onwards and downwards.