Still going strong

So here I am, more than a month into the new year and a few weeks in into my really truly serious attempt to loose weight. I am currently down eight pounds and half an inch from every measurement!
Before thus wouldn't have seemed big enough but my heads in a better place and I am well and truly ecstatic about these results!
I also have my phone back so better access to a camera etc hence the few snaps in this post starting with NEW HAIR!!!!

I LOVE DYING MY HAIR!
and it is always a snap decision. I woke up this morning and was like "fuck it, why not!
and this is the result:

And yes I need to dye the top of my hair and I planned too. I bought the dye and everything and my dear boyfriend decided to "tidy" one day and they disappeared. I cannot find them anywhere.

I am just a colour whore. I love them, these colours in particular, if everything in my house/life were a variation of these colours I'd be happy.

I've been good for some tasty healthy meals over the last few days perhaps not including the one above but for a chocoholic I need a bit of chocolate every now and then. I can't deal with cold turkey.

 This one was definitely a bit better, some delicious grapes and bananas and a lovely chicken curry!
I'm starting to enjoy healthy eating again! It can be more effort to prep but I'd rather do that and see the scales go downwards tbh.

I've also been out and about all week with the kids. It's freezing (for ireland) at the moment here but the weather is stunningly crisp. I love this weather. Wrap up well and you don't even notice the cold. It's just so beautiful out!

My job is great and sees me in parks(above) and on beaches (right) and back in the park invariably most days. Kids love slides. "Big slide" is the phrase of the day for me most days. When I walk in every morning that's what I hear. "Sher Sher (James is only two and can't say Caoimhe) biga slide?" the "biga" is on purpose, he can't say big without an added "a" yet.

I was sick last week all week long..it was horrible. I hate not being up and about. I kept trying to clean etc but I'd get super weak and have to sit down. It was frustrating, probably more so for my poor boyf because I was like a demon. I hate not doing anything. But because of it I didn't exercise all week. In fact aside from work this week I didn't get much this week either. I was still too drained but I'm going back to Pilates tonight (god love me I wont be able to move in two days time!) and I'm very much looking forward to it. Also I am thankfully down half an inch from everywhere so I'm feeling quite bolstered about that!

In other news I watched the good wife season 5 episode 15 this week. I wont give away anything so no spoilers don't worry but let me just say bravo writers. I am a tv show person and I love a good one. I'm a battlestar fan, a firefly fan, I watch the walking dea and all the other hip shows, in fact my repertoire of shows is an embarrassing tell of how much time I spent watching tv in college but the good wife is my current obsession because...well its wonderful. Friends have tried in vain to make me watch it before this but I resisted because I'm a fantasy/sci fi kinda girl and lawyer shows have never caught my attention before but when it popped up enough times on Netflix and I was in need of a good old binge (tv binge mind you) I gave it a go. I soon had my boyfriend and myself hooked and it has been our nightly routine for weeks. Hanging on every word screaming with frustration at every up and down and most importantly getting extremely invested in the characters. It is safe to say that we are addicts. And then season five happened. As I said no spoilers here but my heart will forever be just a tint bit broken. It was so out of the blue and devastating. I honestly think it affected me more than most other bombshells from most shows including the red wedding and other such awful moments from all the greats. I have gone cold turkey. I spent the ep crying and insisting i hated the show, especially because they'd made me love it so. I have refused point blank to watch it since. I just can't. My boyfriend has told me I can have the week and then I have to push through. And I will. Reluctantly. Very very very reluctantly. So I advise people to watch it but steel yourself for pain. And I mean pain.

I also had some good news today. Mydoctor took some bloods last week and one of them was to check for diabetes. I was terrified that I had gone too far and irreparably damaged my body but thankfully it was all good news. In fact excellent news. My bloods were perfect. My cholesterol was perfect my liver, kidneys and heart functioning to the best of their ability. Most importantly, no diabetes. I think this was the fright I needed. I might not be so lucky the next time if I continue without changing anything. So I was really pleased to hear this and I was able to take a proper breath for the first time since I had the bloods.

Just because I'm in a good mood I'm going to throw in a bonus pic of my adorable little worm kitten sitting in my washing machine!

So that would be my update for the moment. I am, again going to try do this more regularly (I don't think it will ever happen) but we'll see. I'm now going to go back to pacing in my kitchen watching tv and trying to hit 10,000 steps today!

Who even came up with the idea of New Years resolutions?

Now I am not trying to back out of mine here, far from it, I think I may be one of the few people in the new year who actually set sensible, attainable and most importantly, realistic goals for the New Year.

I haven't failed yet three days in but I haven't had a perfect day either and I have, as I outlined above, set actual attainable goals.


January is hectic enough. Winding down after christmas, and often (especially for me) a lack of money after christmas. Nevermind the fact that most people have had at least a week off and are totally of of gear and need to be rolled down the hill to jump start them (see my clever wordplay there?). And yet this is the week where everyone decides it's time to start fresh. Anyway my point wasn't to come on and complain but to quickly jot down my days wisdoms (ahem ahem, I use this term lightly).

Myself, it's week 1. Back to reality. Two blissful weeks off where my time was sudden a less valuable commodity. Usually I get to the weekend and say "ok we have two days, how much can we fit in?" so two weeks of not having to do anything was bliss. And if anything, and yes I'm going full first world problems here, it is actually harder to go back to work after two weeks off. You are painfully aware of what you're missing. So I'm back with a bang this week with a fifty hour week, and a fifty something hour week next week, hence the rushed posts before I collapse each night. This of course is causing hiccups. We're restocking our fridges after the christmas wipe out, we're flat broke and me being unused to half six starts and ten hour days means the last thing I want to do at night is prepare dinners and lunches for tomorrow. Unfortunately this left me eating waffles and chicken dippers at lunch time and an oreo ball in the morning. For those who have not tried this most glorious of sins, don't once they are eaten you will never be cured. I also had to run from one job to another this evening and I wasn't prepared. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail is blaring in my head right now, but my point is sometimes you just can't. I will have more weeks like this and other weeks will sail by without a hitch. The point is to try and learn damage control. I ate into my exercise today so to speak (I ate back calories I burned working out) but I also worked out. I know its not ideal and my defict was only 200ish calories but it was a deficit. As long as I'm getting them I'm happy. As long as this doesnt happen every day I'm happy.

So I guess what I'm saying is I'm happy. I left the house this morning at seven and got home at seven and I still made myself get up and step out into the torrential rain and walk 2.5km. It's not much but it's fantastic for me. I also had a 400 cal deficit but I baked banana bread for my lunch tomorrow and obviously I had to try it. I admit it was silly on my part but I'm tired and it looked goooood!

On the plus side tomorrow I have both dinner and a healthy banana bread mid morning snack to take with me!

Day 363 down, 362 days to go!

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/diary/queasy

Day 2.

Long, long, long day.

I had to stay on two extra hours on my first day back in work and I'm feeling the christmas blues!

Not a great day, some eating happened because I had to stay late in work and wasn't prepared for that (i.e I was hungry but had no food of my own left) but not a terrible day either. I got in 20 minutes of Pilates. I am going to pay for that in the morning. I also got a new job today, another one and this is definitely going to relieve some stresses and stuff thats not conducive to the healthiest lifestyle ever!!

So I'm going to take today as a win. I'll probably try take every day as a win, I'm an optimist but it was a good day considering and I was also back on my feet all day as opposed to at home lazing on the couch as I did quite a lot over christmas!

Day 364 down and won!

363 days to go!

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/diary/queasy

Day 1. I think the fit people are on to me.

So this will be short and sweet, I'm back to the daily toil tomorrow and I am turning in ealry to compensate for two weeks of breaking good habits and staying in bed till ten every day.

Today was alamost a disaster.

But I turned it around. Yes I did. (I may be listening to James Morrison right now, I'm getting all soulful!)

I started off great. Up relatively early, healthy brekkie (ish, its  the first day after Christmas a completely healthy breakfast would be a shock to the system) some rice cakes for snack time and then an absolutely delicious lunch of spicy stir fried turkey and some sweet potato wedges. Don't worry I'm not going to document my food every single day, there is a point to this. I was doing good. Being resolved. There's definitely strong cravings for choccy after pretty much giving  into every craving after Xmas but I was doing it in moderation but then my boyfriend suggested a relaxed evening in for our last day off and things caught up with me.

We sat down and tucked into "The Good Wife" and two eps in my resolve was waning. I was tired and the thought of making something healthful for supper was just so daunting. I was also failing on the first day  to get some specifically exercise related activity into my day. Feeling a bit silly and sorry for myself I went over for one pancake, just one of course, with nutella because you can't have pancakes without that.

Fast forward to half eight and I'm sitting on the couch having eaten three, yes three pancakes with Nutella.

The old me would have thought "well, fuck it there's day one gone, we'll start again tomorrow".

I wouldn't have logged my failures, I would have left my diary unfinished and sat there pretending I was actively trying to loose weight. By sitting on a couch scoffing Nutella. So that was a bit of a reality check for me.

Failing three of my four resolutions on day one. Same old me. However something in my head slid oh so gracefully into place and I sat up, entered all my nutella, every last gram (because I weighed it as I binged, cause obviously if you know how much you're eating the calories don't exist, right?) and the three pancakes and then I turned to my boyfriend and told him to get his shoes we were going outside.

So at nine o clock at night we hit off down the road and half an hour later (he's a slower walker than me I would have done it in 25 mins, I swear) we'd done 2.5 km which doesn't seem like much but it was a little success for me. I didn't give up completely because I made some bad choices. I didn't hide from said bad choices and pretend they didn't happen. I owned up to every calorie and I got up and moved.

It's a small but important victory for me. I will sleep comfortably tonight knowing that there one day down of 365.

It may not have been a perfect day but it was a success.

One day down, 364 to go.

p.s just to verify, my diary is viewable here. You'll just have to trust I'm honest. In the end of the day I'm only fooling myself by...ahem ahem...omitting.

New Year New Me? Most definitely!

Here we are again.

New Year, New Me. Everyone says it about one thing or the other and most people get to the the 10th of January and give up, but every year a some peoples resolutions stick and I want this year to be my year.

Every year since I can remember my resolution has been too loose weight and every year it doesn't happen I feel like a bit more of a failure. So this year I am resolved (that's what they are for after all right) to make it happen. I am slowly eating away my life. In a few years I'll be in my thirties and I could be looking back saying I won't waste my thirties being six stone overweight now's my time to loose it all. Or I could do it. Really, really do it and hit my thirties and look back and say thank God I didn't waste one more minute of my life being overweight.

I am 24 years old and I will not be 54 years old and still trying to deal with my weight problem.

This is my year. I have gone on too many years already and I am determined to do it.

So my resolution will be shared with the Internet. I will document it every single day. 

The good, the bad and the damn ugly things you can expect to hear from me.

I will blog for 365 days in a row and I will document my journey from fat to healthy.

In 365 days I will revisit my resolutions and see how I've done.

And what are these resolutions you may ask?

Well the usual stuff eh?
1. I will get fit.
2. I will eat healthy 80% of the time. (And make reasonably sensible "bad" choices the other 20% of the time.)
3. I will weigh in once every two weeks for the next year.
4. I will log my food and do it honestly on My Fitness Pal every day.
4. I will keep this resolution.

This is my year, and my journey, my turn to be a success story and I am not starting this tomorrow or the next day I am starting it right this minute. I am going to cook a lovely, healthy, meal in a bit and it will be my celebratory meal. It will be the start of the new me.

Ups and Downs

This shit is tough.

No like unbearably tough but I have bad days. Days where I cry because I get tired. Tired of watching everything  I eat and feeling guilty if I don't work out for more than two days! I know that this is mainly because of my diet and that I really need to beat myself back into a routine but it's tough.

I know excuses, excuses right? But it is. I'm at a point in my life where I never have an excess of money. I know most people don't these days but week to week it is a struggle. I only have about 25 euro a week that I can spend on food ad my boyfriend pays 25 too so we have 50 in total but that has to be for both of us and he definitely does not eat all the same stuff as I have to. So with my meager budget I do the best I can but inevitably by the end of the week we'll have a night or two without proper dinners.

I try my best every week not to let it happen but it does.

We shop normally on tuesdays so I often end up with several bad days of eating at the end and it is ruining my diet. Any weight I lose during the week I put on at the weekend.

So I'm ahead in some ways. I know my problem. I have the same routine every week. I buy food tuesday evening and I eat well and I'm good till friday and I loose weight and then saturday comes and two things happen, or three. Firstly I drink. Normally once a weekend, sometimes twice and what is affordable? Beer! so thats what? Six gazillion calories? Empty ones at that! The drinking inevitably leads to hangovers (Why I can't understand?)  and hangover leads to cravings for CARBS!!! My very best friends! Carbs and sweets! And hangovers don't exactly breed the best moods for whipping up healthy meals and going for long walks. No they lead to me eating a bag of doritos and a jar of dip and sitting on the couch all day long! Oh ye and take aways happen too. God I need to learn to avoid these pitfalls!

The next big problem is my boyfriends mother! Now don't get me wrong! I love her! She's larger than life, funny, and a great cook. We go to her house every sunday (again usually hungover) and she plies us with masses of food! She will ply us with rasher sandwixhes before our butts hit the chair and then it's "Tea? Tea? would you like some tea?No? Well some coke then! Or a glass of milk?" and then of course we have to stay for dinner. Obviously. And I say ok...just a little cause it's always so damn tempting. Of course a little in her mind is enough to feed at least four people! And if you don't eat every last bit she's convinced you hated it!

The next thing to happen is dessert "sure you'll have some won't you?Just a little!You will! and my will power on those days is just not strong enough. And she just won't let you say no! Now I can hear people already shouting "Woah!No! She's a sabeteur and evil etc etc" as people are want to do on the interweb but she's just an Irish mammy and that is the long and short of it.

So I suppose others are also thinking well if you know your problems you know how to solve them. I suppose all excuses aside I can solve them. This weekend we have my dear Paulies birthday and I'm plannig a mahoosive surprise party for him! So that means drinks and cake and other such stuff but I will try my hardest to be disciplined and to drag myself out of the hangover slump and make some damned healthy food!

I need to stop thinking of the weekend as different and to start treating it like every other day when I work my butt off.

On the upside I am feeling fairly positive but then again it is wednesday and that is always one of my high motivation days! I busted my ass off while walking to work and I sweated buckets! I was very proud of myself!

I've got a very busy evening ahead of me. However last night, after the shop, I did something I always plan on doing but never actually do. I came home, took all the veg I'd bought and chopped it all up and put it in lunch boxes and threw it in the fridge! I then prepped my lunch last night for the first time in ages and now I have a lovely quesadilla for my lunch!Woop! I feel so organized and good! And then I beat my ass in the road this morning and I'm really feeling positive.

Lets hope it lasts!

One disaster after another!

So I got home yesterday super duper super excited.

MY PHONE WAS HERE!

I was so excited.

I opened it all up, all shiny and brand new, and popped in my sim card. I turned it on and started set up and...it crashed. FOUR TIMES! And then basically everything started going wrong. I don't know why shit like this ha[[ens but it really got me down last night. I'm still pretty down about it. It was a spontaneous, luxury buy I definitely couldn't afford and it bit me right in the ass. It kept crashing and there were stupid little pixelated lines flashing randomly on the screen and most of the apps wouldn't open when I tried them. I'm actually devastated. It was one of those buys that you do it and go "Oh shiiiiit, I shouldn't have done that, but now it's done I'll just go with it" and now I'm well and truly paying for it. I'm sending it back of course. I was going to get it replaced but then the guilt set in. I know I can't afford this, I know I need the money and I know I have to send it back and get a refund. It was so close though. I held it in my hand, I took pictures with it!

And now I have to send it back and go back to my awful little ten euro phone and accept that I won't be seeing a phone like that for a long while. And it's pretty shitty. But I'm going away for a weekend in three weeks and of course i have mountains of bills coming up so I just cant afford a phone, and probably won't be able to get one any time in the near future. I checked my next upgrade, it's not until november. Huh. Depression session.

So now I'm going to return it and do the sensible thing and take the refund. I hate being sensible.

So still no camera for Caoimhey. I need a better job. Or for my furniture to start selling. Then I'd be flying.

Huuuuh. When I'm older and rich and all that, then I'll be fine, right?

I'm going to try and commandeer my mothers camera (which is awful) so we'll see where we're at in a few days but anyway. That was my shitty day yesterday.

On the positive side of things I did some hardcore pilates last night and I felt so good this morning that when I woke up I felt like, yes felt like going for a run. So I did.

A run is being seriously optimistic now, overstating to say the least!

I got up with one intention to run for five minutes or just under. I wasn't going to push myself too hard. So I set off ran for three and a half minutes which seems like nothing but it was tough. I then sprinted for like ten seconds and you know what I feel great about it! Even if it was nothing compared to other people for me it was a marathon! My chest was burning, I had a moment of going oh god maybe I'm dying but I was being dramatic.

But still a run, however short is still a run. And I'm going out horse riding this evening. More calories!!

So in short while I feel this is a bad thing (about my phone) I know that in reality it's not. I'll wait seven months for my upgrade and I'll try afford a point and shoot in the next few months! And on the fitness/health/my life going well side of things then it's all pretty good!

I'm better than I was yesterday and thats enough for me!