I've got body fat!

Ok... so not necessarily something to shout about. EVERYONE has body fat - duh!

But, I bought some new scales when I moved to Australia in October, and I was really excited about them because they measured body fat percentage. I took them out of their shiny box, put them on my shiny bathroom floor, stood on them, and they said 'TOO HIGH'. Yep. That's right. I had such a high percentage of body fat that my shiny new scales couldn't even read it.

I've been using the quick scale mode ever since. You just stand on the scales and see your weight. And thanks to the 12WBT program my weight has been dropping and dropping. Yesterday was week 8 weigh in day and I was down to 92.2 - a loss of 11.3kg. Awesome.

But today I decided to just try the body fat mode again. I stood on the scales with bated breath. And not only did they say my weight was 91.5 (a loss of 700g since yesterday and a total loss of 12kg) but they also, for the first time, recorded my body fat percentage!

Now, I'm new to this world and so I have no idea whether my body fat percentage is good, bad, ugly or indifferent. It read as 27.5%. According to wikipedia (which is OBVIOUSLY the authority in this matter) that puts me slap bang in the 'average' range for women. Not only do I have body fat but I'm average! I have never been average in anything weight related in my life.

I'm feeling pretty awesome right now!

Super Saturday

Today really has been a super saturday - and it's only 2pm!

Went to the gym this morning and burnt 934cals - my biggest ever in one session so very pleased with that.

And have just come home and created a recipe for the week 7 weekly surprise. Thought I'd post it up here as I'm pretty proud of it!

Jo’s Indian takeaway - Channa Massala and Vegetable Samosas

Meal: Dinner

The average Indian takeaway is likely to blow your daily calorie limit in one fell swoop. But why shouldn’t we enjoy the beautiful spices Indian food has to offer? This low cal version is yummy, filling and will not break the calorie bank!

Ingredients:

1 can chickpeas (drained) – 257

1 can chopped tomatoes – 88

1 onion – 43

2 teaspoons curry powder – 14

2 handfuls of spinach leaves – 16

2 sheet filo pastry – 112

100g Frozen Australian Mixed Vegetables (Coles) – 60

2 teaspoons curry powder – 14

Olive oil spray

Total = 604 (302 per meal)

Method:

1)    Pre-heat oven to 200.

2)    Slice onion into fine wedges. Spray pan lightly with olive oil spray, heat over a medium heat and stir-fry for 2 minutes until soft.

3)    Add curry powder and stir-fry for another minute until fragrant.

4)    Add chickpeas and stir, before adding chopped tomatoes. Leave to simmer gently whilst preparing samosas.

5)    In a small pan, heat frozen veg combined with curry powder.

6)    Lay out one sheet of filo pastry and slice horizontally into three (so you’re left with three long strips of filo). Spray lightly with olive oil spray.

7)    Put one teaspoon of the mixed veg and curry powder mixture onto the left hand side of the filo pastry strip.

8)    Fold the top left corner of the filo pastry over the mixture to make a covered triangle.

9)    Take the bottom left hand corner of the triangle and fold over, then take the bottom left hand corner and fold up to and seal the triangle. Repeat folding over until you’ve run out of filo pastry and the parcel is sealed. Repeat with the two remaining strips of the first sheet of filo pastry and the three strips of the second sheet of filo pastry (so you end up with 6 samosas – three per person).

1)  Line a tray with baking paper and bake for 5 minutes or until golden and crisp.

11) Add the spinach to the channa massala for the last five minutes of cooking.

Week 7 weigh in

Just a VERY quick post to say that even with rest week I still lost 800g - AWESOME! Smashed through the 10kg barrier and have now lost 10.6kg. I'm over the moon!

Rest week is over - let the fun begin!

Rest week

I had an awesome week last week and my weigh-in last week resulted in a 1.8kg loss. But as I posted, this somehow left me feeling a bit deflated and wanting more. This has kind of resulted in me taking a week off mentally to give my body and my mind a bit of a break. I have still followed the meal plans (although have had one or two extra glasses of wine) but I haven't done ANY exercise at all!

Fat Jo would have got to this point and given up. She would have thought 'see! I've proved I can lose weight! No need to do any more now!'.

But that's not thin Jo's way of thinking at all.

I have taken my foot off the pedal a little bit this week and I've relaxed a few things, particularly the exercise. But I am now rested, relaxed and ready to get back to it.

So tomorrow morning I'm going to get up and jump on those scales and accept that my weight is pretty much the same as it was last week. I may even celebrate that I'm not facing a gain. And then I'm going to go out for week 2 run 1 of couch to 5k.

I'm going to have a 'doozy' of a week this week! (I think that's the correct terminology - this isn't a word we use in the UK so who knows if that means what I think it does!). But I really mean it - I'm going to SMASH this week's arse!

And my body is going to thank me for the rest and reward me with a kilo off by next week's weigh in. And I can't wait!

Self-sabotage and shiny shoes

I've been meaning to sit down and think and write for the last few days, but life has begun to get in the way.

Since Wednesday's weigh in it's been a difficult few days. I know this goes against last week's mind set video but I really just lost motivation for a few days. Old habits began to creep back in and I began to sabotage myself and this journey.

It really came to a head on Thursday evening. My lovely hubby was out for the evening at a work end of financial year party. A slap-up meal and free drinks. I skipped my step class for a drink with a friend, and got home late and starving. This wasn't a complete disaster - I got home and made my 12WBT pizza for dinner. But the old habits began slipping back in as I polished off the pack of prosciutto whilst waiting the 8 minutes it too for my pizza to cook.

I then managed to consume a ridiculous amount of snacky food throughout the evening. I didn't enjoy any of it - I was just emotionally eating from habit. And I was so cross with myself. But the crosser I got, the more I ate.

I still felt grumpy the next morning, when I woke up. But I got straight back onto the diet, and even managed to avoid all the tempting food that was offered at our work awayday.

But still, I felt grumpy and cross and was very irritable with work colleagues.

This pattern continued until I left work at about 5:30. I went straight from work to the closest shopping centre, and bought a beautiful new pair of shoes! A camel coloured pair of healed boots. And they were on sale - 50% off!

Finally I felt all the stress and tension from the last few days melt away. It didn't matter that I hadn't lost what I'd been hoping for. It didn't matter that I'd fallen off the wagon and had let the exercise slide for a limited time. It didn't matter that I'd been grumpy with everyone in sight.

I'VE GOT NEW BOOTS BOOTS!

So finally I was ready to start back and have a positive weekend!

And I have had a wonderful weekend. Footy, drinks and a beautiful treat meal date on Saturday, followed by Harry Potter 5 at the cinema today. All my food for the week has been bought and I've prepared all I can in advance. I haven't managed to exercise this weekend but I'm all set to get back to eating perfectly and exercising tomorrow. And all because I have beautiful new boots.

And to top it all off, my sneaky peek at the scales this morning showed 93.5 - my 10 kilo mark! All is right with the world!

When losing 1.8kg is a bad thing...

Today was the week 6 weigh-in for round 2 of the 2011 12WBT program. And I recorded a 1.8kg loss!

This brings my weightloss total to 9.8kg. This is exceptional, amazing, brilliant, wonderful.

But yet I feel really despondent.

I’ve spent the day sitting at my desk, asking myself why. And to be honest I still have no idea. So I hope by sitting down and committing some of these thoughts in black and white I’ll have a clearer idea of what the problem really is.

There are lots of good things happening at the moment – things I’m proud of and really happy about:

1.      I have well exceeded my expectations.At the start of this program I set my 12 week weightloss goal at 10kg. It is only week 6 and I have already lost 9.8kg. So definitely I am not ‘down’ because I haven’t been achieving. And achieving is really important to me. I have been a super-high achiever all my life. I’m a perfectionist and I work really hard at everything I do.

2.      I am already feeling fitter, healthier and happier.
I have started to notice a real change in my body shape, in the way I’m feeling and my ability to keep up in group exercise classes. I’m feeling better than I have for years. So the real benefits of losing weight are already obvious to me.

3.      I am still sticking rigidly to the nutrition program and my commitment to exercise is rising and rising.
I am loving the food I’m eating. I’m loving being organised. I’m loving that I don’t feel hungry the majority of the time but I’m learning to recognise what real hunger is. And (I NEVER thought I’d say this!) I’m loving exercising. But yet I still feel very grumpy today and almost ready to pack it all in.

But yet there are also things that I’m feeling anxious and upset about:

1.      I haven’t lost 10kg.
I started telling people at work on Monday that I’d lost 10kg, because I knew I was so close and I thought I’d lost those extra 500g by Wednesday. I haven’t. I’ve ONLY lost 9.8kg.

2.      I don’t think I’m going to reach 88kg by 24^th July.
This might sound like a rather specific and bizarre comment to make. BUT my parents are coming to Australia to visit me and arrive on 24^th July. They don’t know that I’m doing the 12WBT programme. The last time I remember being happy-ish with my weight was when I was at uni and I weighed between 13-14 stone. So when I get to 88kg I’ll be in the 13 stone bracket and my parents will really notice a difference. I guess this is a stupid success measure to impose on myself. My parents will notice a difference anyway and the difference between 88kg and 92kg is not going to show greatly to them!

But I think actually writing this has begun to help me realise what my despondence and anxiety today is all about. Hitting the halfway point in the program has made me realise that these 12 weeks are going to end. The past 6 weeks have flown by, and soon enough I’m going to be back in the big wide scary world and not within the comfort that the rigid program, and the network of support that the forum provides.

I guess I’m already starting to question whether I will be able to cope on my own.

And this is being made even worse by the fact that I know my family are coming to visit, and they will be on holiday – they will want to go out to all the best restaurants in Melbourne and I will want to be with them, enjoying everything they do.

This is exactly where my previous self-sabotaging behaviour would have begun to kick in. Fat Jo would be saying to herself, ‘you’re going on holiday in a month anyway, so what’s the point of trying to be good now?’.

Well, do you know what? I’m not going to let Fat Jo win. Fat Jo has gone – there’s no place for her now. I’m going to be following the program to the letter until my parents arrive. And when they arrive, I will have to relax somewhat – more treat meals will creep in. But there are some things I will still be in control of:

1.      I can make sure I exercise regularly.

2.      I can make sure every meal I eat at home or at work is within my 300 calorie allowance.

3.      I can cut down on my snacking in between meals.

4.      I don’t have to clean my plate at restaurants, or have 3 courses.

And, I’ve already signed up for round 3, so I know that when my parents leave Australia on 27 August I will be ready to start again and I will be able to lose more and more weight.

Thanks for listening – I already feel so much more positive!

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner, that I love London so!

Over this weekend we found out what tickets we have been allocated for the London 2012 Olympics. This is a really big deal to me. I was born in London and have lived in London all my life (that is until I moved to Australia last October). I am so excited about being a Londoner during the 2012 Olympics (even though technically I'm currently not a Londoner, I'll always be one at heart!).

So to find out that we did REALLY well with our ticket applications was totally amazing. As a family we have got tickets for 7 events, including 2 athletics sessions, beach volleyball, synchronised swimming, canoe slalom, water polo and rowing. It is going to be absolutely fantastic and I am so excited.

But most importantly of all, having tickets for the Olympics means that I will be going back home to London for a couple of weeks in July 2012. In fact, that's about 13 months away. And when I go back I WILL BE AT MY GOAL WEIGHT.

This will be such a huge celebration for me. I will get to see all my friends and family and I will weigh less than I ever have as an adult. I will weigh under 65kg and I will be in my normal BMI.

The Olympics are also about 3 months before my 30th birthday - which means I'm also not going to be fat and 30 but fit and 30!

I feel like the 12WBT program will start my life afresh. It already has, and I am so grateful.