Day 15 and another NSV!

Can't believe I can actually say I'm on day 15, I read so many blogs and have never been able to understand how these amazing battlers can say "Day 169" and now I can see myself day after day doing the same thing, somehow not eating chocolate, not giving into the carb and fat cravings of a hangover, not bingeing, not snacking all evening after dinner. I know I'm getting boring about this but I'm still in shock about this.

Today was a great day, I took the cake into work and my colleague loved it. I sat eating my cottage cheese salad and drinking my coffee while it's delicious chocolately aroma wafted towards me less than 50 centimetres away from me. Thank goodness I resisted. I was pleased when I came home to find my house guest had taken me up on the offer of eating the muffin of extra cake batter, that said I had absolved to put it in the bin when I got home, even though I hate wasting food. Win, win.

I'm feeling good this evening and am impressed with my energy levels, I've been feeling better everyday since I started this way of eating, especially after a walk as well. Today I timed my walk around the park, a month later and I have shaved off 2.59 minutes. woo hoo. I think I will have to add a loop of the oval in as well as a trip around the park soon. Maybe I should crack out my Nike+ walking tracker to see how I am going and watch the trend... we'll see. When I go for a walk I get more done of an evening, tonight I cleaned the kitchen, tidied the courtyard, put on a wash, hung out the washing, wrote an email and put away all my clean clothes. Life's better when you are feeling good about yourself.

Day 14 and a major victory!

I love a good weekend!

I'm trying to follow H's recommendation of including one social thing each weekend, either saying yes to an invitation or being proactive and organising something. As I said yesterday it was an invitation to go out for my brother's girlfriend's birthday and I am so glad I did. I had such a great night, the dinner was a set menu, it was all focused around two pigs that are roasted whole so the vegetarian option was not really a priority for them. I paid $40 for a terrible lump of pastry filled with limp unseasoned vegetables and a bit of salad I ate the corners of the pastry (I can't resist a bit of crunchy pastry) and the vegetables, no protein whatsoever. There was a first course of vegetable soup which I had a very small bowl of and dessert was apple strudel (I had a bite of my brothers) At first I was very pissed off that a) I had spent so much money on such shit food and b) I had been looking forward to my 2nd cheat meal of the week, thinking I could eat whatever I wanted... this grumpy mood ended when my brother decided he wanted to get the most out of his $30 all the beer you can drink before 11pm and shared his every beer with me, needless to say many beers and an espresso martini later it was 3am and I was ready for bed and loaded up with calories and carbs. 

Consequently I woke up this morning feeling worse for wear, craving carbs and dying of thirst! I am proud of myself, as yesterday was my cheat/high calorie day today is protein only/low calorie day. I don't think I can explain how hard it was to watch everyone tucking into scrambled egg and bacon rolls as I forked up my little bowl of scrambled eggs, watching their crumbs falling to the ground and listening to the crunchy crusts breaking at their bites. I felt extremely virtuous and pretty jealous, let's be honest here.

I went down to my parents place had a protein bar for morning tea, for lunch I had a tin of tuna and a slice of cheese, more tuna for afternoon tea and dinner was lazy, some low fat ricotta and I'm done I survived what was admittedly a monster hangover and only eaten protein. The big victory is quite amazing, it's a colleague's birthday tomorrow and instead of leaving for work extra early and buying a crappy cake somewhere I just made one, a delicious flour-less chocolate cake I've made a hundred times if I've made it once and I am so fucking proud of the following achievements.

• I did not lick my finger when it got batter on it
• I did not taste the batter
• I did not lick the spoon
• I did not eat the remaining 50g cooking chocolate with my coffee
• I did not did my finger in the butter and brown sugar mix (I love that)
• I did not just eat the extra batter that didn't fit into the cake tray, I got a silicone muffin case and poured it in
• I did not use my finger to clean up the spill from this manoeuvre
• I did not eat the muffin of extra cake that has no specific destination and no one would ever know about
• I still have not eaten the left over cooking chocolate

And the great thing is it wasn't brutally difficult, how did that happen? how did it come to be that all these things weren't even a struggle? Honestly I don't understand, am I perhaps beginning to heal?

It's now pretty late for a Sunday night but I wanted to write at the end of today, 14 days done and I feel great, I dont feel like I am missing out on anything, I don't miss the bingeing or crappy carb heavy eating, It's awesome I can't wait to see the rewards physically.

Day 11, 12 and 13

Things are still going well, I managed my first couple of challenges. On Thursday we had a social event at my place of work which involved all the parents bringing in food, now this of course included lots of healthy and unhealthy main meals buffet style then this amazing smorgasbord of desserts, I didn't even look. I didn't even think about eating dinner there, too many temptations once I started considering it. I just enjoyed chatting to all the families and actually went outside and chatted to people out there away from the amazing array of food and you know what it wasn't that hard either. Granted when I got home I was very hungry but all I had to do for dinner was cut up a few mushrooms,  2 bunches of Chinese broccoli, a clove of garlic and a pack of tofu, stir fry it all for 5 minutes, throw in a bit of oyster and soy sauce and hey presto, dinner for Thursday night and a healthy lunch for Friday! Two birds, one stone, love it, definitely doing it again.

A bit blurry but delicious!

So my Friday challenge was also not easy to overcome, I had a friend of a friend turn up and is crashing at mine for a couple of nights and he suggested going out for a meal, I know what's round the corner, pizza and I'm pretty fussy with pizza and had no intention of wasting my cheat day on one crappy pizza meal. We opted for Thai, I ordered what I always order stir fry vegetables with tofu and oyster sauce, easy safe and I love it and almost identical to my lunch, didn't matter though.

By avoiding using my cheat day on either of these meals I was able to get up this morning and enjoy 2 pieces of toast, one with a little butter and cheese and one with a little butter and honey and a latte and it was delicious.

I'm going to go out to dinner for a friend's birthday tonight, I will probably have a few drinks and dinner will be my other cheat meal for the day, protein and veg for lunch only. Perfect, then of course there will be the challenge of protein only tomorrow but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

My trainer says stop being so doubtful and worried, but I'm not I'm just surprised that's all, I'm surprised I can stick to it, I'm surprised I'm not hungry all the time, I'm surprised I'm not thinking about food all the time (except when I wake up in the morning because I love love love breakfast), I'm surprised about how much better I feel eating so much more protein and so many less carbs. I'm stunned I haven't binged in almost 2 weeks and not even struggled majorly. If I am worried I am worried about how easy I am finding it all and if I am overestimating how much I am losing but I suppose on Thursday my questions will be answered when I jump on the scales.

Day 10

Can't believe it, 10 days.

I managed to remain strong and not let my extra portion of protein at last night's dinner become more than it was, I didn't let it flood through into today on a wave of negative self-talk.

I'm about to head over to my brother and his wife's place for dinner, I've done the prepared thing and told then what my evening meals consist of so there won't be any temptation on my plate. I wont be eating until later so I had 50g of cottage cheese so I don't sit down ravenous!

I had an awesome therapy session last night where we headed straight into the bingeing which I always find really confronting as it's been such a privately controlled thing. I'm working on eradicating it from my life but it's there the urge is still there every day. I'm sure there are many people out there who have had binge eating issues can relate to that. At the moment my tactic is simply avoiding the issue, distraction, I'm focused on this way of eating, I set a plan for myself at the start of the week, I lay a road for myself and try and stick as closely as I can to it. Consequently I haven't had the time or opportunity for the seed of a binge to plant itself in my head because 99% of the time once it's there, it will happen. H my therapist wants me to ride that out, acknowledge the urge and just accept it's there. I have to say I have no idea how to do that.

H also hit a rather raw nerve when she was asking me what my real motivation for losing weight was, apart form being healthy because that's a given. I have a couple of main things but I think the biggest is to feel healthy and comfortable in my own skin, after that to be able to wear clothes that I actually like, to wear clothes that reflect my personality. The other predominant motivation is that I would really like to be in a relationship, not a half hearted see you every now and again thing, not a clandestine hidden thing, a real thing, a take you to my brother's wedding thing and I think I probably really should be totally brutally honest and say I turn 37 this year, I have probably at least another 130lbs to lose and I'd really like to have a baby with that relationship. Dream the impossible dream, isn't that how it goes...

On that note I'm off, too much real for a Wednesday night.

Day 9, I slipped up :-(

I slipped up today, not hugely but I definitely ate too much for dinner Breakfast 1 slice toast with fresh ricotta Morning tea, tin of tuna Lunch tuna and bean salad Afternoon tea protein bar Dinner, this is where thingsf went wrong, I cut a piece of salmon in two, cooked it, at one piece with a salad and then gradually ate the other half as I tidied up the kitchen. I knew as soon as I had cooked it I should have put it straight in a plastic container for tomorrow's lunch. I need to make sure if I am cooking double of anything to put it straight away, out of sight out of mind. Moving on from that I won't let it effect how I go tomorrow or let it side into an evening of snacking as is my want.