Happy New Year and more of the 100 day challenge

Well I can't believe even though I'm on holidays I haven't got around to posting for more than 2 weeks. While I'm not being a teacher at the moment, my other job of being a mother seems to have kicked in. As I have two teenagers and a "tweenager" this seems to translate to driving people everywhere and feeding them. And it takes a lot of time! Anyway, it's all good, as I do find driving time often equates to talking time, especially where my teenage son is concerned.

I am slowly getting back into the swing of things with my weight management. On reflection, I really didn't try as hard as I could in the last few months. It's one thing to say "persistence rather than perfection", which I think is such a critical mind shift for me. . . rather than the old boom or bust mentality "Oh well, I've blown it now, I might as well keep on eating". However, clearly I have been eating too many points compared to the exercise I have been doing and if I want to lose weight I either have to decrease one or increase the other, or preferably both those things!

On one level, however, I am happy to just be maintaining my weightloss. Hopefully this does mean that I can keep the weight I have lost thus far off forever and never go back to being 100kg+. I will admit that it's darn scary how little I have to eat to maintain this current weight though! Sooo, sooo soo much less than the old me used to eat. Is it any wonder that I got to 112.5 kg in the first place and that I kept gaining 5 or 6 pounds per year for years and years??? Hopefully that cycle is broken forever, now.

I am wayyyyy behind in posting my 100 step challenge photos, although I have found or taken images for the past two weeks. Some of them are taken on my mobile phone and I will need help from my teenagers as to how to get them off it, so here is week 4. I will try and post week 5 before week 6 is over!





Day 22

It had to happen. I finally had to get on the scales which I have avoided all of the Christmas period. I found out I gained 1 kg which is incredibly annoying as it took me most of November to lose that kilo . . . grrrr. On the bright side, it could have been so, so much worse . . . at least I know where I am now.

Day 23

After more than a year of pretty religious tracking, I have really slacked off over the past few weeks, so today I began again in earnest. I know the resolution is not clear, but you should be able to see that I am more than 10 points over!! This is because we went to see Avatar (GREAT Movie, btw. I only went to get out of the house and because everyone else was seeing it and I didn't want to miss out, but I loved it!). Usually I position myself at the end of our family so the popcorn doesn't come my way very often. But this time I wanted to sit between Mark and Fergus, because I thought Fergus might be scared (don't usually let him see M rated movies!) and because, hey, I don't get to go out to the movies with Mark that often. Well for some reason, Fergus was the custodian of the popcorn this time so that meant that I kept passing it back and forth and having a handful each time. Anyway, in the past I have managed to get back on track through tracking EVERYTHING, even if I know I am wayy over points, which is what I have done this week. Hence the fact that I am 10 points over on the first day!
Hmmm, just realised that I took a screen shot of the wrong day . . . this was the day that I had chocolate royals and nougat for lunch, rather than the day I ate a ton of movie popcorn! Ah well, just shows that I'm being honest with my tracking, right!

Day 24

Turtle Swim! My husband swims with a group of Islanders who call themselves the Turtle Smugglers. Originally, this group was mainly comprised of middle aged men, who when they participated in swim/run events looked like they had a turtle shoved up their tee-shirts rather than budgies in their togs, thus the name Turtle Smugglers. I am really keen to participate in the "Channel Challenge" which is a local event whereby people swim 500m across the Channel between San Remo and Phillip Island and then run 2km over the bridge to finish outside the pub. Mark has participated in this about 8 or 9 times and my son Jacob has been in the race twice (and beat his father, but that's another story). This year I would like to participate in the run, swim part, rather than just the third leg--in the pub! So I went with Mark for my first open water swim (I can swim 500m in the pool, pretty much). It was HARD. Much harder than swimming the distance in the pool. I have a long way to go and don't know if I can get there by the 30th January. I'm not fussed about my time, just as long as the surf life savers don't have to fish me out. Anyway, we'll see, but I've made a start

Day 25

I finally tried the WiiFIT! This is my Mii. It was fun. I tried step, yoga and boxing with a little bit of running. Boxing was my favourite.

Day 26

New Years Eve. We went to the Yacht Club with my parents as both our older children had plans. I was a bit sad, to be honest because usually we play board games together as a family but Jacob had a better offer with a party and Josie had to work. After she finished she came down to the yacht club with us, which was nice and she was happy to dance with the old folk which was great. We didn't stay that long after midnight, as I felt Fergus was missing out. I tried to take healthy nibbles like rice paper rolls and sushi and I minimised alcohol points by drinking Jewel champagne.

Day 27

My Adelaide cousins are still visiting and today I took my cousin Paul and his wife Amanda and their two children Jack and Tom for one of my famous rockpool rambles. We all had a great time and found some interesting sea creatures such as hairy mud crabs and brittle stars then we walked to this remote beach which is only accessible by climbing up a very steep headland. It is quite a treacherous beach and we wouldn't let the boys swim but they had fun just laying at the waters' edge and having the waves break over them. THere had been helicopters flying over us while we were at this beach and we found out later that a fisherman had been swept off the rocks in only the next cove and drowned which was really sad but re-inforced to the boys how dangerous such environments can be. Luckily we didn't know about the poor fisherman at the time and had a lovely afternoon and although not strenuous (apart from that climb up the headland) it certainly was an energetic afternoon that would have helped burn a few points, I'm sure!

Day 28

Now that I'm quite good at walking, my normal half hour walk is about 3km which means I'm walking at about 6kms per hour. I find it hard to push myself to go faster or work harder. Tonight I found these little weights and carried these while I walked. They only weigh 1kg each, but boy did it make a difference! When I came back I was quite sweaty! Funny how I used to carry around an extra 30kg, but now just 2kg more feels like hard work.

Well that's my week, or rather one of them. Will try to get last weeks up soon.

I'll finish with a silly picture of Mark and I just off to my cousin's Mexican themed 40th birthday celebrations.

Good Luck to you all!