A pleasant surprise

Starting off with my new healthy eating plan today and decided to brave those dreaded scales! I was expecting something around the 110kg mark so I was very surprised to see 103kg! Not as bad as I thought I would be, so a nice way to start!

Im on night shifts at the moment, so just a quick little post but I will try take some piccies of the meals soon. Todays menu was:

Breakfast- yogurt & fruit salad

Lunch- vegetable lasagne with fresh salad

Dinner- vegetarian quiche with fresh salad, pasta salad, cheese & a wholemeal dinner roll

Snack- apple

Tomorrows menu is:

Breakfast- just right cereal with skim milk, 1 piece multigrain toast with jam

Lunch- quiche & fresh salad, pasta salad & cheese

Dinner- spinach & ricotta canneloni with carrots, peas & broccoli

Snack- orange

No exercise the next 2 days as im working 12hr night shifts, but im gearing up to go to the gym on Sunday! Lets get back into it!!!!

onto Plan B

Firstly, I would just like to clear the air on how I feel about Michelle's 12 week body transformation program. I think its a fantastic program. The meal plans were great, the exercise plans were awesome, and the online forums & support are the true strength behind that program along with all of the live videos & weekly messages. So why did it not work out for me? Ive been picking my brain and trying to find what went so wrong. There is nothing in the program that was bad, my downfall was myself and how I handled situations in my life when the going got tough. As mentioned previously, the last few months have been abit nightmarish for myself & my husband and having all that extra stress in our lives really took its toll and I didnt handle things the best way I could have. Being so public with my weight battle, which I still believe was one of the best things I ever did, also had the downfall of setting myself up for failure. Putting my expectations so high and at the slightest hint of failure I plummented, the embarrassment of having to face everyone I publicly confessed to did not help my depression at all. Coming to terms with that was probably the hardest thing of all.

Things are starting to normalise again in my life and im starting to feel back to my happy self and at a point where I can get over the past, learn from my mistakes and feel comfortable enough to start this journey all over again.

So, on with the plan! One of the best lessons I learnt from Michelle was plan, plan, plan!!!! Now, im not using this as an excuse, but im being realistic- time is always against me when it comes to preparing healthy meals. This is one of the downfalls I found when I was doing the 12wbt, and having to make time added to my stress. So this time around I am going to go the method of literally being spoon-fed. Delivered diet meals. No before you all send me hate email for being so bad, hear me out. The company im going through isnt like Lite n Easy and those sorts of companies that try so hard to fit as many chemicals as they can into the smallest sized serving of cardboard tasting crap then charge a small fortune for it. The company is called 'Trim a Weigh', they are a locally owned & operated family company and the only one I found that was suitable for vegetarians. Unlike most diet delivered meals which give you only 1 or 2 options, with trimaweigh you pick what you want for each meal from the entire collection they offer. The food is simple, fresh, and wholesome and hardly processed at all. Breakfasts to choose from include a huge selection of low GI cereals, grain toasts, eggs, english muffins, fruit salad, and hot breakfasts like vegetable fritatta with cottage cheese or omlettes. Morning tea is fresh, whole fruit. Lunches can include fresh salads, vegetarian burger pattie with salad and a wholemeal roll, cheese & salad, fruit salad, wholemeal crackers with tomato & cheese, vegetarian lasagne with fresh salad and yogurt. Afternoon tea is a small snack of cheese & crackers or yogurt or light fruit cake or a muesli bar. Dinners to choose from are mac & cheese or spinach/ricotta canneloni or vegetable lasagna with a massive serving of fresh vegetables or a vegetarian quiche salad. All meals are low fat, low GI and low sodium. Its 1200 calories a day, and for the a 7 day program its $128, but im buying mine in 4 week packages which makes it $120 a week including free delivery.

As for exercise, ill leave that for the next post, but it will be fairly similar to what I was doing for the 12wbt as it was such a great exercise program.

As for the other areas of my life, things are going ok. I ended up getting a distinction for uni last semester which im stoked with and am looking forward to this semester which started this week. Work has been good too lately, busy, and ive had students everyday but overall has been fairly stress-free. I got an awesome tax return this year which has really helped us get back on our feet as finances were a huge stress the last few months!

Overall, im looking forward to getting my life back on track and I hope you can stick around for the ride!

Starting to see a light

Hello loyal followers, if there is anyone left. I wouldnt blame you all for jumping ship as its been fairly quiet here lately. I am starting to see a way back though, there is hope for me yet!

It was very tempting to just delete this blog and turn my back on the whole thing but I want to make something good out of this. I want to look back in a few months and see how far ive come. The quote under my blog banner has definitely rung true for me the last few weeks.

Its only after we have lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

I had my first panic attack a week ago. It was very scary. Now, im a nurse and have seen alot of 'panic attacks' before, both real & fake and this was so scary to me. Its incredible how sudden it starts. My chest became so heavy and tight it was so hard to breathe. I started hyperventilating (breathing very very fast) and was crying like ive never cried before- these were no crocodile tears, this was a painful and deep cry. A feeling of impending doom overcame me and I started to feel very weak & dizzy. It was the scariest thing ive been through in my life.

But, in the end I think it was my body trying to release something- a pent up mixture of emotions and energy that needed to escape as it was screwing up my head and im used to thinking clearly and was so not myself with this negative package of emotions doing its damage. After I calmed down I felt a sense of serenity and could finally start to piece things back together. 

Im still quite fragile at the moment, mentally, and right now its just a day by day battle to keep my headspace in the positive light, but its getting there. I have a few new ideas & plans lined up weightloss/exercise wise and will delve into those in the very near future, so stay tuned folks! The healthy & skinny version of me will be with you shortly! And I promise to do more regular posts. I know these deep & dark depressive posts arent exactly a ball of joy but I feel I know im not the only one with demons and I WANT to show people with the same demons that there is hope and we can look back to this one day and feel proud. 

Peace out!

update

Its been a very very long time since I updated and I know there are certain people out there who have been worried about me (im looking at you chucky!). The truth is, the last few weeks have been abit of a rollercoster ride and I didnt really know how to express it, or whether I even should express whats been happening to the public world of blogging. But I guess getting it all out there will either be the best thing or the worst thing and who really knows so ive decided to put it out there.

I have completely fallen off the wagon. I have fallen hard, hit my head on the ground and been run over by the traffic behind me. It all started week 3 of the challenge when I got really sick with the flu. I was so sick I could barely walk up the stairs in my house let alone drag myself to the gym. Also money was getting really tight and I could not follow Michelle's diet plan at all. I did try though, tried to make the cheapest things I could. I had a really awful week that week and started slipping back into old habits again. Of course, this led to me feeling like a complete failure and the last few weeks have just flown by and ive been too ashamed to show my face again. I really set myself up for failure and I did fail and it hurts so much. I made my battle so public and set myself up for such a huge goal that at the slighest hint of failure my mind over-ruled me and I convinced myself to just crawl back into my hole and stay there and thats where ive been lately. The feeling of failure is incredible. Ive failed many times in the past but never has it hurt so much. I thought being so open about my struggle would be the key ingrediant to get me over the line but it honestly feels like the one thing that made me crash & burn. I am so ashamed & so embarrased and its hard for people to understand who have never gone through such things. Getting 'back on the wagon' sounds so much easier then it is aswell. I have slipped back into a very depressed state and I feel like im on the verge of breaking point. The last few weeks have bought up so many feelings of self-hate and lowered my self-esteem to such a low level that I had dabbled in my even worse dark demons of my past eating habits when I was anorexic/bulimic. The starving myself for a few days, then binging & purging cycle all started again and I hate it when I relapse like this. It only lasted a few days but its added to my depression big time and although the binging/purging & starving behaviours have been re-controlled, ive gone back to the same old habits I usually have which got me here in the first place. And the associated depression that comes with it has reared its ugly head again and im having a really tough time trying to get a hold on things again. Im just so lost right now and I hate it.