this time last year

This time last year I weighed at my heaviest ever.

I jumped on the scales* one morning and glanced at the numbers. Horrified. Mortified. I stopped in my tracks and went "crap, this needs to change". Between the end of October 2013 to the middle of February 2014 my weight, according to the scales had dropped about 5-6kgs. I was happy with that but needed/wanted to make more of a change

- From the middle of February up until July I was utterly obsessed with jumping on the scale to monitor the change in my body. Outwardly I was making great progress, people had noticed and made lovely comments and in the photos I could see a difference, too. Both in photos and when I looked in the mirror the change was becoming evident. 

- Then life happened. In the last two months with life being so crappy I've not stepped on the scales. And I reluctantly looked in the mirror, not wanting to see how my emotional state was effecting my physical state. Although I can see in photos that my body is changing, it's still a struggle to 'see' the difference when I look in the mirror. Some days are better than others. 

- I had lost almost 20kgs from this time last year up until July. The scales now measure a 14kg loss, but my style of training has changed. I do a mix of cardio and strength training. My body shape is still doing the changes it is doing and I don't take too much stock at the number on the scale says. It doesn't measure the effort I put in over the 9 months. 

My body now does things it couldn't do 4 months ago, 1 year ago or even 5 years ago. Some days my eating is better than others. But that is life. I won't give up. It's no longer about losing weight for me but changing my body and pushing it to do things it couldn't do previously.

*I have since learnt that scales CANNOT define who you are as a person, what your body is actually composed of or measure your self worth.

what did i do for me today

What did I do for me today?

Mind

Day 21 of the Headspace meditation. 20 minutes. I am sure I fell into snoozyland about 7 minutes but felt great afterwards anyway. I cannot wait to see what the next 9 days of the foundation level brings!

Body

Food: I prepared food last night in preparation for today. I didn't overeat, gorge or indulge in high fat foods. Recently my gallbladder has been acting up so I'm wanting to take better care of my body through good food choices.

Exercise: I had plans to go to the gym after work. As I was driving I had the idea to head to my dad's and take Charlotte for a walk. I invited (M) to come with us, we walked 2.29km in 27m22s. That included x3 2 minute jogs!

Headspace

For 18 days now I’ve been using the Headspace/ app for aiding in meditation. The first 10 sessions are completely free and run for 10 minutes. By about day 5 of 10 I was interested in completing more sessions and had already factored into my budget for a subscription. I’ve almost reached my second lot of 10 days and I am still impressed.

Most meditation classes and apps (that I’ve come across) aim to help you “silence the mind”. Headspace however helps you embrace the traffic in your mind. With lovely guided meditations it comes with animations, too!

Headspace seems to be more realistic and caters to the real world. In all of my years whenever I have tried to silence my mind, push thoughts out or actively try to stop thinking about something, everything comes screaming at me. With headspace I embrace my thoughts and actually feel calmer for it.

Sometimes my thoughts are happy and wonderful, and sometimes, they’re not. This way though I am not ignoring them, I’m learning to pay attention to them whilst listening to my body.

I’m taking care of my mind. And it feels great.

changing my ways

A friend on Facebook posted to this article titled I Quit Liking Things On Facebook which in turn made mention of this article I Liked Everything On Facebook. Both really good concepts and interesting experiments.

For a good while now I've sat back and 'liked' friends posts, comments and photos as opposed to commenting. Why? Commenting meant I got a bunch of further notifications that someone liked my comment or made a comment if I made one. For quite a while these notifications bugged me and gave me a random sense of anxiety. I would private message friends congratulations or happy birthday when it was in order instead of publicly posting. If they were a really good friend I'd text or call.

I've been wanting to connect with friends and family on a real level instead of being a friend in the background.

So what I've done is gone through the pages on Facebook that I've liked, some back in the early days of Facebook, and I've removed approximately 500 useless pages and likes.

Next I'll attempt to engage with friends and family in a real (where logistically possible) way. Comments, private messages, text messages, phone chats and heck, even the odd face to face coffee or two.