Saturday, January 29, 2011

Tattoos and Cliches

It must be at least 8, no maybe 9 months ago now my doctor told me I'd never lose any weight without lap band surgery. Flash forward to last month and it's now well realistically it'll be at least a 3 year wait maybe 2 if your lucky on the public waiting list so we should probably just keep going with what I have been doing and see how it continues to go.

I'd like to be able to say I told you so to him, but in actually fact I went off in a silent steam with the thought I'll show you running through my head. I think the victory is in some small way still mine.

Soon I make a return trip to my dietician, I fear I've done a bit too much socialising this last month too much going out for coffee or eating out for dinner. Hopefully my efforts to counter balance this will have paid off and the scales won't reveal anything too detrimental. All I'm hoping for really is not to have put any weight back on. If I've lost some it will be an added bonus at this stage.

I was reading an interview with a vegan tattooist based in California, and I was quite intrigued. I'm a huge fan of cruelty free cosmetics and personal products, I suppose cruelty free tattoos fit the bill as well.

Why am I talking about tattoos, cliches and weight loss? I think it has almost become a bit of a cliche, a lot of people seem to share the goal at the end of their weight loss to get tattooed. I feel I am adding myself to this cliche, not that I really mind, by saying hopefully come the end of the year provided I've made my goal I'll start looking locally for an artist that suits, if they use vegan inks it'll be an added bonus.
Although I have noticed a beauty spa at the other end of my state advertising vegan manicures and pedicures. I'm just pleased to see cruelty free becoming easier to find.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Today I went out for lunch, and afterwards I did some shopping and spent my Christmas cash.

And this is what I bought....a new bag!


Unfortunately they took all the stuffing out in the shop before packing it in a bag, so it lost some of its ability to sit up by itself. Soon as I saw it I knew I had to have it, it was just so me!

While at lunch we were talking about how the higher an IQ a woman has or the more well educated she is, the lower her chances become of getting married. Which got me thinking about P!nk and her song Stupid Girls. And also about the lust of my life Matt Hardy, just recently on Twitter there was a bit of a cringe inducing flirting with a girl who if I'm honest strikes me as an idiot based on how she comes across on Twitter.
Then people got a bit upset with Matt and wrote to him on Twitter telling him so, stuff kind of got toned down and he was very quick to assure everyone they were just friends and they were just joking.
Lately Matt's been flittering (a word I made up to describe flirting on Twitter) with a woman who comes across as much, much more intelligent. Probably doesn’t hurt she's gorgeous to boot. So far there doesn’t seem to be mass indignation or declarations of horror. I find this very interesting. Very interesting indeed.

Now I don't know what this means to other people, but for me it meant all my fantasies of intelligent conversation got revived after being totally dashed. Because idols after all have to be perfect. ;)

Waiting at home for me when I returned from town today was a parcel and in it was this!

It's a Bokashi Bucket which you can read all about here. I don't have a garden to empty it into, but it has a very tight fitting seal so I should be able to transfer the container to my family's home and into their garden to bury the waste from it. I've been talking about buying one of these forever, and well New Year and new starts and all that jazz here it now is!

Tomorrow is menu planning day, I must get around to getting it organised. And also plan out some more or less ready to go meals that are shelf stable, Velish soups have been given the big tick here.

Sunday, January 09, 2011

The Challenge

I saw my dietician just after new year, I've maintained over Christmas, the best we could hope for.
The next challenge in our process, is to start adding in kilojoule counting.

Now the whole eating process goes like this measure quantities out, write it down in food diary and now count the kilojoules for the day. Like I really needed any more obsessions with food. Still I suppose this is a good set, and in theroy provided I can stick to my daily kj limit I should have lost the required weight by the end of the year.

First major step is working on meal planning, picking 3 breakfasts and 3 lunches, sort of just cycling through to start with.
Elimanting too much choice to start with seems to be key, not needing to decide means hopefully I won't eat what ever random thing I find in my fridge. Half a block of chocolate and a tub of yoghurt is not really a balanced meal.

Admittedly when I saw the dietician for the first time, 2 months ago and we were talking about my eating habits they didn't come off as sounding too bad. Granted if I'd seen the dietician 8 months ago and they asked me what my eating habits were like, they were embarrsingly atrocious. So very bad.

Dinner is the less effort one, really, I just have to pick things that can be both cooked and bulk and frozen.
Both semesters last year I had a late evening class, and I have to drive through a take-away hub to get home from that class. It was so much easier just to get something to go rather than go home and actually cook something.

New year, new start, and hopefuly to continue as we mean to go on. That copy of Appetite for Reduction is really going to come into play here now.

Sunday, January 02, 2011

New Year, New Ideas?

I do have quite a few pictures from Christmas, and lots of stuff to write about both Christmas and New Year. I think that can all wait, because once again I have been over thinking things.

I have been watching a lot of 30 Rock, if you read regulary you'll know I bought Season 2 with gift cards from last Christmas as there were no copies of Season 1 in stock.
I've finished all of Season 2 and since picked up Season 1 on sale so I'm now halfway through these episodes.

And as it approaches the end of year/moving into the new year, I start thinking about what I have done with my past year and what I hope to do with the coming year. There's also a bit of debate about what I'll be doing in 5 years, or 10 years, or where and what I'll be doing 50 years from now. Too much thinking!

Back to 30 Rock and the fabulous Tina Fey charactor Liz Lemon, during season 1 we see her holding the make-up artisits baby and walking the studio hallway to entertain the baby and then suddenly Liz finds herself in her apartment with the baby.
Here is were the continuing story line of Liz Lemon and her desire to have a baby stems from, Liz Lemon 30-something single career gal. Yeah I think we can all see the how this will unfold.

While trawling the interwebs reading up on veganisim and vegetarnisim I was reading some parenting and family threads on some of these forums, I'll admit it's sort of interesting to read other people's dramas and exclaim to my computer screen "Who are these people????" because my family is so mellow evidently.
I was reading a thread by a not yet 30-something girl, talking about if not settled down with someone in the future to start a family, adopting as a single parent.

This thread combined with Liz Lemon had me thinking about me and what I want in my future, children are something other people have. I've always figured there'd be plenty of time if it was for me after all. There was so much I wanted before "settling", so many places I wanted to see, things to I wanted to learn (although I have learnt music and languages are not my forte at all), so much to do and it seemed so much time to do it in.

You know what? There isn't, there really isn't. I don't know how many people saw the Australian documentary Maverick Mother, described as follows from the site as:

SHORT SYNOPSIS
Tired of waiting for the perfect partner, and alarmed by the deafening tic-toc of her biological clock, 39-year-old filmmaker Janet Merewther decides to take life into her own hands and embark on a journey into the new social phenomenon of solo motherhood by choice.

I'm thinking is this going to be me in 10 years? Because from past experience 10 years is barely scratching the surface, I don't actually know what the next 10 years holds or how it will unfold.
There is so much I want to do, and when you have kids, you have to make sacrifices, you can't expect to live the way you did pre-kids.
Someday always seemed an appropiate time frame for having kids, someday dosen't seem quite as viable any more. Now it seems more like it needs a firm time frame, you know x amount of years. Which is a tad a scary actually.