Less than four weeks to go

We're in Week 9 of the 12 Week Body Transformation already! Wow.

So far, I've lost 11.6kg since the start of pre-season, 6.6kg (8.67% of my body weight) since the 12 weeks actually started. So it has slowed down; I've certainly not been perfect. There are now less than four weeks until the end, my tickets to Melbourne for the final workout and party are booked, and I have 4.5kg to go until my goal. Time to refocus and kick butt!

I recently looked at some family photos we had done before Christmas. I didn't realise until now that I really was overweight. No wonder people have noticed a change! Best of all, I can move more easily, my digestive system isn't playing up as much, and today I fit into a pair of jeans I still had stashed away from more than five years ago, before my second pregnancy.

(Laziness paid off a bit here. Last winter I needed new jeans, so I went to my favourite op shop on a 50% off day. I didn't have time to try things on, so I grabbed four pairs that looked like they'd fit and were in a style I like. At $2.50/pair, I figured I couldn't go wrong. Two pairs fit me and saw me through last winter. Two were quite a bit too small and I kept meaning to sell them on eBay. I never got around to it, and today they fit me perfectly! So I now have two 'new' pairs of jeans - one pair are Levis! - and one old favourite for this winter.)

Today was a better run

I still didn't manage to get up and do it before work, instead I did it after work, and it felt ok. Not as good as running first thing, but much better than the late afternoon effort the other day.

Evie was at daycare for the morning, so I had to pick her up by 12.30pm, but I wanted to get her a little early. I finished work just before 11am, went home, got changed and had about half an hour to spare. Not enough for a long run, so I just went to the park across the road and did interval running (1min faster pace, 1min30sec slower pace). My heartrate stayed quite high and I burned nearly 400 calories in the 30 minutes, so I'm happy with that! It's a tactic I'm going to have to use more now that I'm more pushed for time, and also now that it is darker in the mornings.

Of course, when I got to daycare Evie was asleep, so I should probably have waited to pick her up!! But we went and had lunch together as a treat: my going back to work hasn't been easy for her, either.

I remember why I run in the mornings

Today I treated myself to a sleep-in and ran in the afternoon instead. I left it a good couple of hours after lunch, but I still felt awful, like my lunch was sitting right at the top of my stomach ready to come out at any minute. Ugh.

I gave up after 5km and walked the remaining 2km home. I suppose 5km is better than nothing. Note to self: next time, get up and run in the morning, and take a nanna nap in the afternoon!

This is what today looked like

0530: get up and go for a short run in the dark.
0600: get home, get ready for work, fill dishwasher 'cos it wasn't done last night.
0710: walk to work
0730-1045: work (my partner worked from home watching Miss 2.5 & took the older kids to school)
1100: get home, get changed, get on the bike with Evie up to swimming lessons
1130-1230: swimming & playground
1300: get home, make lunch, eat lunch, put swimming stuff in washing machine, make multiple phone calls, take swimming stuff out of machine & hang it up, put whites in washing machine.
1445: walk up to school
1515: get back from school pickup
1515-1700: empty washing machine again, hang up whites, feed children multiple times, drink COFFEE, answer email for other job.
1700: walk to soccer
1715-1830: soccer training for older kids, play with Miss 2.5 in the playground
1900: get home, having picked dinner up on the way
2030: finally time to put the kids to bed ... they are still wide awake though, and it's after 2130!!

I am tired, not used to this whole work-outside-the-home thing. BUT I did get my run in.

Life just got a bit more chaotic

I got a 'real' job (i.e not working from home - although I am still doing that one too). Add that to the kids starting soccer for the year: two afternoons of training each week plus games on Sunday, a 2.5 year old who is a little off-colour without being obviously sick, and a tired mama, and you have a LOT of chaos.

I'm on morning shifts for 3 weeks while I train, so I'm not too sure how I'm going to find time for the other kind of training. At least the office is 15 minutes walk from my house, so that's 30 minutes of walking each day, and I should be able to do some intervals or something while the older two are at soccer, if the littlest one will happily play in the playground. I will do my best!

A little bit of a good thing

When I was a child, we couldn't easily get Cadbury Creme Eggs here in Australia. Well, it was either that or we couldn't afford them. I'm not really sure which, but at any rate, they weren't absolutely everywhere like they are now. Every Easter, my grandparents would send us a six-pack over from England - let's not even get started on sending chocolate across the world via the postal service! They always got here in one piece. Six: one for each member of the family.

I treasured that Creme Egg. Some years I ate it before anything else, savouring every bite. Other years I carefully hoarded it and saved it until I'd eaten all my other chocolate; which, mind you, I ate very slowly.

At some point on my way to growing up - probably when I got my first job at 16 - I realised that they were all over the supermarket and convenience stores from the minute the Christmas stuff got cleared out. So I would buy one, not all the time, but enough so that they were no longer treasured and savoured.

I think this is one of my problems with food in general: I eat because it's there, and I don't think about it enough. I eat (or ate) chocolate far too frequently, and therefore didn't appreciate it.

This year, when the Creme Eggs started appearing in the shops, I thought, yum. Then I thought, "I don't really need one today. Maybe next week." I have been thinking that since January and it's now April and I haven't had one yet! I will treat myself to one on Easter, just one. I don't want to never eat chocolate or ice cream or fried food again. I just want to be able to say, this truly is a treat, something that I have occasionally and make allowances for.

I'm going to really enjoy that Creme Egg.

This week

I got a new MacBook Pro. It's very cool, but taking some getting used to! I've been using an HP Netbook that Evie broke half the keys off ages ago, heh, and the space bar finally gave up the ghost. The advantage of hubby working in high-level IT? Gadget allowance!

Tomorrow is a bit of a red flag day: a friend's wedding and reception. Plus the two-hour gap between the wedding and the reception when I would normally eat/or drink. I have a big group training session on Sunday morning - that'll be my 1000-calorie super session - but I am going to go for a run tomorrow morning too. Birthday party for the kids in the morning, so it needs to be a quick one. I might give intervals a go, squeeze as many calories as possible into 30 minutes.

I got up to the 10kg lost mark this week! My next mini-goal is to get under 70kg, and last Wednesday I was at 71kg.