Everything will be OK.

I can't believe what a different person I become when I'm surrounded by people I love. I'm happy, bubbly, outgoing and apparently really funny. I just spent two weeks in Melbourne with 20 of my workmates. We see each other twice a year for two weeks, and we have become really close. I had such an amazing time and have a renewed vigour for life, I hope that it lasts!
I think a lot of the problems I was feeling before I left was just too much time on my hands to think. When I was surrounded by friends 24/7, I did not worry or think about food all the time. I was more relaxed. I didn't feel depressed, except 1 day when I just felt off anyway.
I ate really well and did heaps of exercise the first week:

Saturday: rest
Sunday: Interval run session with friends:
4 x 400m
2 x 200m
8 x 100m
(Pushups & squats inbetween each rep)
& a 1.25 km swim.
Monday: arm workout with friends: heaves, pushups, leg lifts & shoulder presses.
Tuesday: 4 km run
Wednesday: 5 km run
Thursday: random gym workout - kickboxing for 30 mins, legs for 30 minutes + 0.5km in the pool.
Friday: 5 km run + 1.65 km swim
Saturday: rest

All of the workouts were awesome fun.

The next week wasn't as great as I got busier with work and injured myself on the Wednesday:
Sunday: 9km run (split into 5 & 4)
Monday: 10 minute swim
Tuesday: rest
Wednesday: 7.5 km hilly run

and then nothing for four days...

My injury was sustained during work, basically I was lifting a generator which weighs 73kg out of a vehicle trailer with a friend, and must have lost my grip, it landed on my foot. Luckily the shoes are pretty good (not steel cap, but tough enough!) So all I sustained was dark bruising, swelling and a black toenail. It really hurts to bend the big toe though, so I've been limping around and not running. I'm hoping it will be fine soon?? I'm very lucky to have been wearing those shoes....

I plan on spending this week mainly doing swimming and strength work so to let it heal properly, but if I'm desperate I might give a go at running tomorrow and see how I feel.

I must mention also that I'm pretty proud of how disgustingly I ate in the second week... I know that sounds crazy haha :P But I literally had like 3000+ calories in the last three days (each day) - mostly in booze and hangover food! Had some AMAZING nights, and they were seriously really fun, so it was worth everything. I even had a Hungry Jacks (Burger King) meal and enjoyed it... mind you at the time I was really, really drunk and probably seriously needed it. The best part??? I didn't feel overly guilty, because I knew it was just a couple of days of fun and then I could resume eating normally and everything would be OK. I also did not count calories for the whole two weeks.

Challenging myself.

So I'm back from my two week trip into the bushes of Australia. As per the previous post on Introversion, it was not all sunshine and roses. Far from it.
The challenges I thought I would have the trouble with was eating unhealthy food and not being able to exercise. In reality the most trouble I had revolved around being bored and dealing with an extremely arrogant, chauvinistic pig who was basically a "workplace bully".

The food challenge went really, really well though. I ended up eating m & ms a couple of times, usually a forbidden type of food. Takeaway pizza one night. Went out for dinner twice - once I ordered steak with fries and ate them all, another time I had deep fried zucchini "balls" (with salad). I also went out drinking with the boys - after which I had bacon and eggs. I also ate the most forbidden food of them all in my mind - a donut. The good part about it though, is that while I felt guilty each time I ate these unhealthy foods, I did not beat myself up about it (too much) or dwell on it to a large degree.

I was not able to work off anything I ate. We were not allowed to wear anything but our uniform and as I only had two pairs and we had no access to showers.... yeah. It would have also been too difficult as we couldn't leave the small square area of bush we were based in, so unless I ran 100 m back and forth!! I decided to just use the two weeks as a break / rest. Although I suspect it will be VERY difficult to get back into it all. It always is after a break! My plan tomorrow is to go for an easy run and just see how I feel, run as many k's as my legs feel good for.

The weirdest part of all? After eating rubbish food and doing NO exercise for two weeks... I lost 1.6 kilos (3.6 pounds). Honestly, every time I do something like this, I ALWAYS lose weight. It's really confusing and frustrating. While I know when I'm away I don't count calories and tend to eat a little more intuitively, it still doesn't seem to make sense that I can eat food with no nutritional value and generally treat my body in a crappier way yet it responds with weight loss. Then I go back home and return to my normal ways and it comes back on.

I usually either respond by attempting to eat more intuitively when I get home (usually backfires and ends up with weight gain) or increase my calories to match what I thought I was eating when away (usually ends up with weight gain too). Hopefully it's not muscle loss or something, and that's the reason why I always lose when I go away somewhere and then it returns when I resume exercising. Hmm... curious.

I will be back tomorrow with a WIAW post. I'm probably going to be eating some sort of "detox" kind of foods. I'm not into the whole detox thing, but basically I mean getting back to eating healthier wholesome foods to rid my body of all the processed rubbish I've been eating. Had a lunch for my grandma's birthday today and there was lots of salad and fruit salad, so that was a great start. I missed fresh food!!!

October Goals & September recap

So here's the goals I had for September, and how I went...

1. Eat something which offers little to no nutritional value once a week 

Had chocolate caramel slice, hot potato chips, a giant sugary muffin and actually loads of stuff on my week away bushwalking... since I didn't have control... and it was OK!

Kinda failed at the rest of these... I think it was kind of hard with the week away and actually starting my goals 10 days into September! Plus cleaning my car is not really a priority!

2. I will complete 2 strength workouts a week - (minus the week away)

3. I will actually follow the 100 pushup plan!

4. I will clean my car... been putting this one off too long :)

So I'm setting some easier goals for October:

1. Reduce the amount of coffee / diet coke I drink - get down to 1 coffee every two days, 1 diet coke a week.

2. Prepare my lunch for the week on the weekend.

3. Actually schedule me-time that isn't exercise related into my study schedule, rather than procrastinating being my me-time.

And that should do it!

So in September I:

Challenged ED thoughts by eating things that had no nutritional value.

Tried pumpkin oats and kombucha

Went for a 90km bushwalk in the beautiful South West of Australia

Beat my 5km personal best time

Rediscovered my love of kickboxing

Wow, it really gives you a boost writing it all out like that and seeing what you've achieved!! 

Oh, and here's this week's plan:

SAT (today): bodypump & yoga

SUN: 6k run

MON: swim?

TUES: run 3km OR spinning (pretty sure you can guess which I will pick..)

WED: weights/bodypump & kickboxing

THURS: swim & kickboxing

FRI: rest

SAT: Run 8km

It will probably change though... it always does!

Losing weight again

So I've been thinking again... I want to lose this weight I've gained. It's only about 5-8 kg to get back down to what I was not so long ago, but it's driving me batty. 

[DISCLAIMER: I am actually bordering on overweight, so although I've had an ED, I'm trying to lose healthy now...]

So I've rethought a few things, and instead of trying to eat intuitively and making myself eat fear foods - I think I'm getting better at that - it's back to trying to lose the weight, since I now have a healthier relationship with food. I've been thinking about different ways of doing this and I've come up with (believe it or not) less exercise to start with - slowly increasing it as I go.

My favourite lunch at uni... usually includes a range of this selection: falafel balls, egg,
tuna, carrot, sprouts, olives, chick peas, mixed nuts, dried fruit, baby spinach,
beetroot, couscous salad, pasta salad etc.

I think I've gone about exercise the wrong way a lot of the time, going all out and overdoing it, burning myself out, injuring myself, that kind of thing. So this week all I have done is gone on two short runs and two short walks, tomorrow I'm doing a 5km run. So three runs, two walks. Feels pretty lazy at the moment but I'm going to slowly work it up. As for the food side of it, I'm not "restricting" as such, but changing the macros - instead of what I've currently been having (roughly 35% fat, 45% carbs and 20% protein), I'll be trying to switch it to 20% fat, 50% carbs and 30% protein. Hoping the extra protein will keep me fuller so I'll eat less - only reducing by 100-200 calories a day. So far today was difficult (mainly keeping the fat down - I love my fats!) but I managed it, with the help of my friend protein powder. Speaking of... 

Found this today, YAY SOY, means I can actually have some without belly issues :D Plus it's chocolate flavour, I was a bit over that vanilla flavour I had.

My delicious breakfast, which was a melted banana mixed in with oats, coconut vanilla butter, raisins, chia seeds and cinnamon.

Lunch - Two pieces sprouted grain bread spread with a small amount of basil pesto, 1 egg, some baby spinach and mushrooms lightly fried with cajun seasoning.

* Just so you know, that isn't all I ate today - just didn't take pics of anything else ;)

I also found these at the supermarket yesterday, and they are SO DELICIOUS. Poppyseed and orange is always a good combination - and the bar is just fruit with poppyseeds :) Yay!

This was also a new product I found, banana and honey soy milk in tetra packs :D Should come in handy...

Oh and I bought this singlet from Cotton On Body, ha, I thought it was such a great play on words... don't get me wrong, I do love the treadmill occasionally, but you aren't actually going anywhere when you're on one ;) I thought it would be fun to wear when I actually go on the treadmill... OK, call me lame :P

Tomorrow I'm doing by first 5 km race... I know, weird, because I've done 3 12kms, 1 10km and two 14 km, but I've never done a 5k! I really want to actually get to the 30 minute mark, that shall be my goal, but of course any quicker would be nice... not expecting to break any records but my own! Looking forward to it!

Intuitive Eating

I forget what blog I read it on, but I have been trying - sort of - to eat intuitively. It's been failing most of the time, because I still count calories. But today I attempted to follow it by buying this monster:

It's a chocolate chip muffin with sugar granules on top. I was in line for a coffee to dull my hunger as it was only 9.30 am, when I saw one of these... I'd always looked at them and told myself no, too many calories, made with butter, flour and sugar - three things I usually avoid if possible. A fear food, if you must. So today I thought... I'm going to get one. Must find out if they are as good as they look. (The pic doesn't do it justice...) Anyway, it was ok. Wasn't fantastic, but wasn't bad either. It reminded me why I don't like floury buttery sugary muffins - because I get that weird feeling on my tongue afterwards! Mostly nobody knows what I'm talking about when I say that, so I don't expect people to...

The other thing - I felt guilty every single bite I took, but I still ate the entire thing. I also denied myself lunch by eating it, which ended up being OK as I wasn't hungry for lunch anyway.

How does one get past the guilt and just try to enjoy the food because you like the taste? Instead of going "I will only eat something high calorie if it offers nutritional benefits / I enjoy it immensely". Instead of eating it and then bingeing because you feel guilty, or denying yourself healthier food because it's then too many calories? How do you eat something just because, and then continue on with your day as if it didn't matter?

Yes, I'm still not really "normal" in my eating habits, yet I'm very close to the BMI of overweight. I don't know how to lose weight without counting calories (even though that's still not working!). If I try to intuitively eat, I tend to go overboard and think I can eat anything, so I eat like crazy and gain weight. I don't know what the solution is, so I'm just going to keep counting calories... wow, did that paragraph make any sense?? Anyway onto some pics because I am rambling...

Here's what I had for breakfast today... two pieces of wholemeal bread with ricotta cheese, pear and a couple of raisins. Was delicious!

Here's a pic of the weird oaty banana coconut slice thing I made.

These are slightly amazing.

I have some plans for some baking this weekend, as well as copious amounts of study...

Other running bloggers

So I've been reading a lot of running blogs the past couple of days, and most of them include the most delectable foods - the kind of foods I love to eat, such as peanut butter!
Then I noticed another trend - like 90% of the blogs I really liked involved girls who had disordered eating.

Seriously, it's disturbing how many girls out there have a story like mine, and the more I look, the more I find. Most of them are in the US, though. The main difference of course is that they're all dead skinny, gorgeous and eating lots of great food, whereas I'm borderline overweight, still bingeing, still having disgusting thoughts about food, still stigmatising "bad" food, and not really running as much as I could (because I keep getting injured and sick!)

One thing I've taken away, though, is that I need to be eating more. Especially on the days I exercise. And that I should attempt intuitive eating, and stop counting calories! Oh, to be free of counting... that would be a wonderful day. I keep trying the last couple of days, then freak out and think I've had too much - so I count it all up to check. Arggh!

So exercise is not something I usually have trouble with but since I've been back from Vietnam and not feeling too great, I haven't been doing much but sitting on my bum watching movies or lying in bed... but still eating a fair bit. I'm hoping that when I go away to Melbourne for two weeks for a course I will be feeling a bit better and have more of a chance to get back into it - although the food there is catered, so that will make it a bit harder.

Anyway, I am feeling a bit better today, so plan on a run this afternoon.

Maybe I'll do a bit of food blogging too... so today's breakfast was oats with a bit of Just Right cereal, spoon of cinnamon and a coffee... snacks included a protein bar, apple, one piece Lindt 70% chocolate with a large marshmallow (ate it together - was like rocky road!) and then for lunch a roast beef & cheese sandwich... this is such a bad day of food, honestly, and where's the vegies???! No wonder I feel so sick still - although hopefully will feel better enough later for a run :(

Edit: Hoorah, felt better enough for a run - sort of. Went for 7.81km, but probably ran about 4 km of that. Stomach was having issues. Was going for a decent pace at the start though, pretty happy with it, then had to drop it, and then eventually walk. Oh well, probably too much too soon anyway after feeling off for so long. Then I got home and had a small chocolate milk & some almonds / dried cranberries.