On Week 6 and 7 of the Hannah Made diet

Piece of piss my ass!  The first problem I had was that in Week 6 I did pretty much the opposite of the first goal I set the week before.  I was out every night of that week.  There was only one night that I got home before 8pm.  I didn’t get to cook at all.  The healthiest meal I would have eaten was the stir fry my husband cooked me.  I didn’t eat any hot chips though.  I guess that’s something.

By the end of Week 6 I wasn’t only upset with my diet, I was upset with how completely out of control my life was.  Some of the things in my schedule could be moved, but I couldn’t move my father-in-laws birthday, mum going into hospital for surgery, or the first anniversary of our Civil Union.  The time I had managed to set aside (one night), was booked by my husband who was nobly trying to help out a friend of ours, and by that time I was starting to go completely insane.

So last week I decided that I was going to properly hibernate.  I was going stir crazy, the mess at home from not being at home was making me anxious, I was about to start another job (temporarily) and on top of that it was bloody cold.  And in Week 7 I achieved this hibernation.  I planned to go to be out for two nights (one of which I KNEW tasty, healthy food would be served at), and in the end, was only out for one night (the tasty food night).

Even with the hibernation, and plans for more hibernation, I have decided to take my diet a little less seriously and (for now) give up the food math.  It has started to become a chore, rather than a fun thing to do.  And to be honest, now I know what is in most of the things I eat, I am pretty reasonable at self monitoring.  I have kinda been doing this for the last four days, and it seems to be working ok.  I’ve also decided this as it is coming in to Winter and my body is rebelling with how strict I have been attempting to be. 

I will be a little easier on myself.  There are foods I will not eat, and haven’t eaten – even on my free days – since I started being accountable for my consumption.  Continuing not to eat these foods will help.  And I’ve gotten into the habit of eating a LOT more fruit and vegetables, which will definitely help me to avoid snacking on high cal, low nutrition foods.  The exercise plan is pretty much out the window just for now.  But I changed my morning work walk route so it’s now more of an up-hill battle, and I still walk about 3 k’s every day I work at my usual job.

And I lost some weight over the last two weeks.  Not much, not quickly, but it’s still a loss.  And to be honest, the goal was to fit back into my jeans by Winter and I have a feeling that I’m less than a kilo away from achieving that goal.  I’m still aiming for 56, but I’m going to be a little less urgent about it.  I am very keen to get back into the 58’s next week though, so I’m hoping I lose around 400 grams this week.

My weigh in days will be changing to Wednesdays.  My normal Monday’s at home will cease to exist from now until August as I go back for a short stint at the video shop to help out my old boss.  The pro about the video shop is that it’s at the end of my street, and next to a vege shop, so I can be home by 5.15pm to cook a proper dinner on Mondays every week, eat fabulously, then settle down to watch a free movie.

Wednesday 11^th April current weight:     59.2 kilos

Ultimate goal weight:                             56.0 kilos

Weight loss so far:                                  3.4 kilos

Weight to go:                                          3.2 kilos

On Week 5 of the Hannah Made Diet

Due to Easter I wasn't able to weigh in until today because I weigh myself on the Pt Chev chemist scales and Monday was a public holiday. According to Food Math I should have lost around 600 grams since I last weighed in. What actually happened is that I gained 600g. We had a weekend fraught with adventure, manual labour, Easter treats, teppanyaki and sake. And I was a little lax on accounting for everything. Because there was a lot to account for.

The week went like this:

Monday: Tried to join the gym. Failed. Did some washing.

Tuesday: Work then pub quiz. Hot cross buns make me want to go on murderous rampage.

Wednesday: Work. Desire for murderous rampage.

Thursday: Extreme eleven hours of work followed by drive up to bach. Feelings for murderous rampage hampered by the end of Easter working week. Thank God!

Then the weekend went like this:

Friday: Pruning trees then paving. Bricks and spades are heavy.

Saturday: A little paving, then drove to Auckland, then went to Action World for Lucy’s birthday, then to teppanyaki and sake

Sunday: Watched TV and played Angry Birds. My entire body rebelled against the day.

Monday: Still in pain. Damn you bricks! Went to mini-golf then Thai for dinner for my father in laws birthday.

Yesterday: Work then pub quiz. Yay for no more hot cross buns!

So it was a mess basically. I did weigh my dress and playsuit. My playsuit is 100 grams lighter than my weigh in dress (which I was wearing today) so I really only gained 500g. It kinda sucks, but it’s Easter. It’s better than gaining a kilo. And I am 100% certain after doing all the brick laying and mad running about that at least half of the weight I put on will be muscle, which is a win. The only time I did join a gym I gained one kilo in the first week due to weight training. I’ll try and lose 500g this week and get back to where I was in Week 5, but with more muscle. The more muscle mass you have, the faster your metabolism naturally works, so this isn’t a bad thing.

Last week I was totally gung ho about joining the gym. My workmate had told me it was only $25 a fortnight for the gym around the corner from work. What I didn’t know was that there was also a joining fee of $100, and a card fee of $25. For someone only planning to go to the gym for a short while, and who is saving for a house and overseas trip and currently living in central Auckland, this kind of expense just isn’t feasible. If I went to the gym for three months it’d cost $31.25 per week. I didn’t let this get me down. I then visited Club Physical on my way home. This gym cost $30 per week to visit on a casual basis. So when I got home I called the Unitec gym. This costs $12 per session for casual visits. This would be the most financially feasible, but I’d only be able to go once a week.

The allure of the gym is all about magical machines. Most of the machines count how many calories/kilojoules you burn. That’s a very handy job for them to do. It would mean I don’t have to work it all out myself. Also, there are a lot of machines that do many different things. And they’re all in one place. And you’re guilted into going because you’ve paid some crazy fee and have to make it worth it. I am time poor and lazy like many. It’s easy to see why the gym is the ideal exercise solution.

But after the financial reality check (how do normal people afford the gym?), I had a rethink. I went home and put on my Strip to Fit DVD (please don’t stone me in the street). Just so’s you know, Carmen Electra may be hot, but she has no idea about fitness DVD’s. Her DVD’s are cut so you go from sitting to standing in half a second. Not physically possible. Love to see Carmen try to do it, and I bet a bunch of people would pay to see Carmen try to do it. Anyway, I digress. I figure I can buy another non-Carmen-made DVD, do DVD exercises for strength training once a week, use my step machine once or twice a week and try and go for a swim at the Mt Eden Pools ($6 per session) once a week. I’ll have to count stuff myself, but I love math so I should harden the fuck up about doing more of it and become more like Rain Man.

Now that the insane Easter period is over, I’m also going to try and get my life into more of a routine. I think we managed to spend two nights at home in the evenings last week. I’m aiming for at least four to five. The nights where I’m not at home I don’t eat properly, and end up eating crap. Even if I’m careful with kilojoules of what I eat, I usually eat high fat foods of little nutritional benefit because that’s all there is within my budget and the sushi places close at night time.

Also, I love cooking. When I’m out a lot, I don’t have time to cook and I get sad. I really like eating the food I cook because I’m a pretty good cook. Also, I get sick if I eat crap food all the time. My skin goes horrid, I feel exhausted and get sick more easily. It’s very important to my physical wellbeing that I get to eat home cooked, proper meals. As well as it benefiting me, it’s how I show my husband I care about him, so I feel very out of sorts when I don’t have time to cook.

So how I’m going to get back on track this week is through applying some simple tricks:

1) Attempt to be home more so that I can eat home cooked meals.

2) Take pre-made meals with me to eat if I do have to be out at night.

3) Eat 6+ a day fruit and vegetables.

4) Keep more accurate food math records to increase accountability.

5) A little regular exercise including cardio and strength training.

6) No more combating murderous rage with chocolate.

7) NO MORE hot chips.

So there is the plan people! Now it’s just a matter of actually sticking to it. I’ll let you know how I get on. Only five days to lose 500 grams? Piece of piss.

Wednesday 11^th April current weight:     59.9 kilos

Ultimate goal weight:                             56.0 kilos

Weight loss so far:                                  2.7 kilos

Weight to go:                                          3.9 kilos

On Week Four of the Hannah Made Diet

I was completely astonished by my weight loss for last week. The week was a little up and down, and I realised that actually, it’s quite hard to eat 5 plus a day. Nevertheless, above is what the Pt Chev Pharmacy scales told me this morning. It’s really weird because it means I’m EXACTLY half way to achieving my goal weight. My hope for last week was to get back into the 50 kilo range, which I thought I’d just manage based on how many kilojoules I ate this week. I didn’t expect to make it quite this far in!

I think there are three contributing factors which joined forces to show this big loss on the scales:

a) Eating five plus a day

b) Wearing clothes to weigh in that are probably lighter than what I wore last week

c) Shaving all my hair off for Shave For A Cure

I was lucky enough to see my most favourite customer at work last week, whom I haven’t seen in a long time. We had a chat about health, weight loss and the five plus a day thing. She said she had read somewhere that eating more fruit and vegetables helps boost your metabolism thus resulting in quicker weight loss. I can’t find anything online to back that up, but there is an obvious reason as to why eating more fruit and veg has contributed to my weight loss. Instead of treating myself with a chocolate easter egg (only 350 kilojoules but just fat and processed sugar) I have been eating an apple or a banana (roughly the same kilojoules, but zero fat and only natural sugars). So even though I still have been having sugary treats, I’ve had a lot less of them.

I also bought a gorgeous new playsuit from ASOS which I wore to weigh in because my normal dress was in the wash. I’ve been wearing a very light summer dress, but I think the playsuit is even lighter than the dress, which makes sense as there is a lot more material in the dress. This playsuit makes me feel sexy and happy. I will wear it a lot.

And as you saw in yesterdays post, Jade and I shaved our heads for Shave for a Cure on Saturday. On the day, someone made a comment on how getting rid of the hair would contribute to my weight loss. I was curious, so the next day (please don't think I'm weird), I weighed our bag of collective hair that hadn’t blown away in the wind or stuck to people. This bag weighed 140 grams. Jades hair was probably three times as long as mine, which means that my hair in that bag weighed around 35- 40 grams. So to be honest, I don’t really think that this hair cut really contributed to this week’s weight loss (but it was cool to mention it).

In all honesty though, the dress change maybe contributed 200 grams and the hair maybe 50 grams. So I am surprised that I've lost over a kilo by myself because I was a little naughty this week. I didn’t record absolutely everything I ate on Tuesday because I felt bad about it (it was lollies). And then I made my free ‘meal’ a free ‘afternoon and evening’ because of the Shave for a Cure thing. I had four glasses of wine over that time which is 1800 kilojoules in itself (a third of my daily kilojoule intake), plus dinner out, plus snacks. And even though I didn’t go too crazy on the snacks, this would have equated to an excess of kilojoules which would negate all the good work of one of my good days.

Even so, I'm now at the halfway point and I am really starting to see a difference in my body. I am proud to say I am (almost) back down to a DD cup from an F. Men, and busty ladies out there, please don't hate me for this. I love boobies, especially big jolly ones, and mine have always been sizeable, but not F cup big! It would have been ok had it been for a successful pregnancy, because big boobs are to be expected with pregnancy. But to have to buy a whole lot of new bras for no end result seemed really unfair. Just before I found out I was pregnant I had bought new bras that I hardly got to wear. Now I can (almost) fit them again, it feels like I just got them. And I can have more than three bras in my wardrobe rotation.

Today I am joining the gym. Now I’m feeling a little bit better about my body, I feel more confident about hopping on a treadmill. I am a bit of a stranger to gyms having only been during physio for my ankle. I have this weird fear of people seeing me exercising. I feel like then they’ll see how unfit I am, and judge me for it and I’ll feel bad about myself. The gym I am joining is open 24/7 so I can go in when almost no-one is there. It’s also just around the corner from work, so very easy for me to get to. I want to go because I know that building lean muscle helps speed up your metabolism, so long term a little exercise helps your body regulate it’s weight a little better. I think my body deserves that.

Monday 2^nd April current weight: 59.3 kilos

Ultimate goal weight: 56.0 kilos

Weight loss so far: 3.3 kilos

Weight to go: 3.3 kilos

On Shave For A Cure 2012

So yesterday I went under the knife – well the razor, along with my fabulous friend Jade in order to raise money to support Kiwi’s dealing with blood cancers. Thanks to our generous friends and whanau we managed to fundraise almost $600, which is pretty bloody fantastic! Jade and I had both talked about doing this, but didn’t know when the next Shave for a Cure event was. Jade looked into it, and saw it was in about three weeks time. So we set up a Shave page.

In the weeks preceding our shave day, I told as many people as I could and was honestly surprised by some of the responses. I had assumed most people would be like ‘Cool!’, and maybe give a donation if they were in the financial position to do so – and many did. But I definitely hadn’t expected people to say ‘What are you shaving?’ (really?) or as I heard back from one friend via text ‘Ew!’.

I was surprised at the shallowness of this ‘Ew!’ response. Hair is just hair, and for those of us not going through chemo, and who don’t suffer from alopecia, it grows back. I can absolutely understand that many people are precious about their own hair, and I don’t think any less of them for that - we all have our vanities. But I would never be disgusted by a friend who chose to shave their head – unless it was for a white supremacist gang affiliation.

I also don’t understand how anyone would be surprised by my choice to do this. Appearance has never been something overly important to me. I cut my own hair. I wear mismatched clothing and sports shoes with everything. I don’t really understand make-up. I also have a very strong sense of ethics. I post about politics on my Facebook page. I work for an ethical business. I participate in a range of charity events and give regularly to a specific charity. My eventually doing Shave for a Cure was kind of a no brainer.

Jade was surprised at the many people telling her ‘You’re so brave’. Although I understand people saying this, I understand Jade’s surprise. You’re brave when you have surgery. You don’t actually have any nerves in your hair - it doesn’t hurt when you cut it. It’s not brave like running into a burning building to save someone. What people are meaning is it’s culturally brave. Beautiful women are generally depicted with flowing locks of shiny hair. We are perceived as brave because society perceives bald women as ugly, or masculine. So we must be brave to voluntarily look this way. This is why my friend said ‘Ew!’. This is a reflection of a society with poor priorities. I say ‘screw you’ to this society. I am a beautiful, feminine woman regardless of the length of my hair.

Despite these responses we went ahead with our plans for a shave day and we made it fun! We invited a few special people over to join us for the shave. When do people get to randomly cut hunks off someone’s hair without a law suit being hurled at them? We let everyone who wanted to have a turn at cutting off our hair. Few husbands can say they’ve shaved their wives heads, but mine can. He shaved it down to a number one. Then down to a number none.

I had my head shaved first. People kept asking if I was nervous. I wasn’t. I had no idea what I looked like so I wasn’t worried about it and once it’s done, it’s done. It must have seemed a little traumatic to people who weren’t me or Jade. Lucy said she felt a little like we were in Auschwitz, and was apologetic when cutting our hair. I think it’s just because shaving women’s heads is not something we associate with happiness. We aren’t in India where hair sacrifices are common, and our Hare Krishna community is small. We associate loss of hair with the big C, the holocaust and masculinity.

Jade and I look great. Both of us have pretty good looking skulls, and neither of us have dandruff. Someone even said I look like Sigourney Weaver (yay Aliens!). It’s not a style I plan to sport for long just because I like the flexibility of a bit of hair, but it’s all good for now. And it’s cold. I wasn’t planning to be one of those hairless people who wears hats (society can just deal with my bald, happy head), but at the moment it’s too cold not to. Being a knitter comes in handy when you have no hair.

So far in total, this Shave for a Cure has raised $766,896 to help the 10,000 Kiwi’s with leukemia and blood cancers. And there is still time to donate. Without people donating, doing the shave is pretty pointless. So thanks again to everyone who has donated, no matter who to, no matter how small. Every dollar counts and it all goes to the same place. And thanks to those who shared our profile with friends. Visibility is so important to causes like these. 3040 groups registered for Shave for Cure this year, so don’t be surprised if you see a few ladies sporting kinas on the streets. And if you see us, smile. Our lack of hair does not reflect a time of mourning. It reflects our positive action towards helping those who need it.