Weight Loss Report #5 + Re-Thinking Blog Goals

Sorry for the late update. It’s been a busy week in my household — moving house and all. Fun times. We’ve almost settled in and now I have to get ready for the return of Uni. But this time I’m not that excited but instead glum resignation of my upcoming fate that involves stress, assignments and obligations. I admit… what I was studying, it’s somehow lost its charm for me. I still enjoy it, but I’m not as passionate about it as before and over the last year I’ve been slowly developing new interests which I get passionate and excited about, and love studying.

Anyway, measurements: 38.5″/31.5″/36.5″. Nothing to see, I have gained a little as I’ve veered off a little in my diet thanks to moving/cleaning/doing other new house things. Although perhaps all that box-carrying and running around town doing errands made sure I didn’t gain too much 🙂

I’ve also gotten digital scales. They are funny little things. I weighed myself 4 times in oneday and was anywhere between 59kg to 61kg. Way to go for accuracy. It also taught me not to take those things too seriously, except as novel curiosity every now and then. Like reading your horoscopes.

I’ve also been re-thinking my weight loss goals, especially after reading some women’s weight loss threads on Mark’s Daily Apple forum. The general idea I got from the threads is that eating primally is firstly for health and general wellbeing and secondly, weight loss can be a restrictive and narrow-minded way of seeing the big picture of health.

I’m sure I stated at the beginning of this blog that my reasons for losing weight were largely vanity-based and also for the experience of being a member of the flat belly club. Often I would eat and exercise and live life with the frequent thoughts of ‘If I don’t do X, Y or Z… I’ll be part of the fat belly club forevaaaaahhh!!111!’ — so my mentality felt narrow, flat, controlled and fear-based. I would also have thoughts of ‘Can’t eat sugar, sugar is BAAAAADD. Makes you look old and gives you arthritis!!’ or ‘Bread’s bad. Bread’s poison.’

So it was a mix of ‘Must do this to look and feel good or else’ and ‘Bad for health. Avoid avoid avoid.’ – there never was a clear or concise mentality or motivation but a muddy mixture inside my mind. To me, it seems that eating right and do things right is more than actually doing it and going through the motions, but having the actual spirit and mind behind your work. A clear, strong spirit… not something muddy and confused.

What do I want? Do I just want a flat belly? Or do I want lifelong good health? What are my driving reasons? My current actions? I feel like I do a lot of things in my life out of obligation and for shallow reasons like prestige, social respect/popularity, vanity, because ‘it’s the right thing’ (whatever that means)… and most of what I do consequently feels empty and pointless and I soon forget about it. I feel like having a re-boot, but I have to be careful. Too fast and enthusiastic and I’ll come crashing down like Icarus, but too slow and cautious and I’ll never get there and lose motivation.

Fell off the boat today…

Just a shortish entry. Had a bit of bread and some sugary chocolate today. I’m a bit annoyed by this, but I know I can do better tomorrow. Just one day at a time. I have such a sweet tooth 😛

PROFIT!! $$$
Or just happy tastebuds.

As for what lead me into dipping into some chocolate was because I was making chocolate mousse for a friend’s dinner tomorrow. Although the nomming on the chocolate mousse (hey had to make sure it was edible!) was enjoyable, what was more enjoyable was the actually process of making chocolate mousse from scratch. Yes, whipping the cream and eggs with my not-so good electric blender. I’m pretty sure it took me almost 20 minutes to get the egg whites to that point-of-rightness. But anyway, I digress.

Even just recently, I disliked and didn’t know how to cook. However, for a number of reasons, mainly to keep things cheap but also to have the ability to cook healthy meals for myself (and occasionally the bread-loving boyfriend lol)… I bucked up and taught myself how to cook. So far, I’ve been going surprisingly well and even enjoying myself. The mousse made me a bit nervous because it does need that light, fluffy quality about it and I hoped I could pick it when it happened.

But all went well and after setting a small sample in the fridge for a taste test, out it came and it was delicious! Relief. The boyfriend enjoyed it too. It was a bit rich but still a good success in my eyes. I’m feeling that bit more confident now about my little cooking skillset 🙂

I should probably apply this lesson on any future failures in changing my eating and exercise habits. Instead of worrying and getting down about my mistakes, I will look at the big picture and see if I’m really going all that wrong/is it really that bad? As long I don’t make a habit of making certain mistakes repetitively, it’s going to be okay.

The other thing I’ve learnt was actually watching the cream and eggs get whipped. Because they take so long, it’s frustrating and I start to panic I’ve failed and wasted a carton of cream, etc. I remember the first time I got whipped cream. It was taking foooorever. I started to panic. Blame myself. I know, pretty neurotic about a meal, but that’s me! I was about to give up, destined to make only watery, bubbly cream forever… and then it happened. The whipped cream happened and I was ecstatic. Haha. Dancing around like a fool. I remembered then, the saying that success often comes at your lowest point, the point of giving up and you just have to hold on that bit longer to reach whipped cream utopia.

One last lesson… time to buy a new electric blender. Cream shouldn’t take 15 minutes to whip, and my birthday is coming up soon. Hmmm…

Hi there – what this blog is about and more :)

Hi guys,

I’ve started this blog as a challenge to myself. I’ve decided to blog my efforts of weight loss and skincare over a period of 60 days and planning to post 4 to 5 times a week. The main goals/topics of this blog is recording my weight loss/shape up efforts, skincare (I’m an oily skinned girl who used have blackheads a-visitin’!), discussing the placebo effect/motivation/all that pop-pysch stuff, and finally maybe the odd product review too.

I wanted this blog as a public record to hopefully help others out with similar struggles, but also as a way of being publicly accountable for my actions (so there’s less chance for me to be nomming away on chocolate mousse and somehow thinking it’s okay). Finally, I’m doing this blog as a way of facing my weak spots as a person and growing from this experience.

So with that done, let me introduce myself; I’m a twenty something woman from Australia. I’m obviously into health, skincare and ‘inner mental game’ (confidence, motivation, etc) and believe the three are all related and reflect upon each other. I also enjoy reading, drawing, aikido, cooking (baking in particular) and hanging out with friends. I’m currently doing a degree in graphic design and am in my 3rd year.

I’d also like to talk about my plans to lose weight. Though generally slender for most of my life, I’ve always had a belly. It’s something about myself I’ve never liked and despite trying to mentally to reconcile with it (and that proved mostly fruitless), I realized the only way to deal with this discontent was to make a concerted effort to lose that belly weight through diet and exercise.

I’m currently reading through Mark Sisson’s book ‘The Primal Blueprint’ and taking a lot of notes. It’s a good read. Last year, I did have a brief experience with eating ‘primally’ and I did lose a fair bit of weight. This got me pretty excited, however, my belly even then was quite a stubborn little thing and though smaller was still hanging around. BUT, I didn’t take the exercise component too seriously as I was trying to get a handle on the eating part before bothering with the exercise part. Unfortunately, this weight loss came to an end when I went home; land of bread, carbs and endless sugary treats.

Anyway, not this time! Hopefully with this blog I’ll be at least motivated to cough up results (as base as that sounds), if not doing it for my long-term health and happiness annnd achieving that forever lusted for flat stomach.

Secondly, my skincare plans. As a teenager I had a perfect skin. Looking back I didn’t realize how lucky I was and how I took my great skin completely for granted. As I got older, this was not the case. My face became oily (mainly T-zone) and I got lots of blackheads, tons in my forehead and pimples. Occasionally I’d get pretty bad pimples too. My skin also became blotchy and just ‘messy’ looking. It was dull, greasy and always suffering from something.

Sure compared to others my skin condition wasn’t that bad, but again it was something that really bugged me and I wanted to change. After fiddling around with some store bought cleansers, etc. and even just washing my face with soap (eek!), I still had nothing to show for it until I had a bit of revelation when I went to the beach oneday. After splashing around for an hour or so I went home and noticed how my skin looked and felt. It looked good and felt soft.

My boyfriend had the idea of washing my face in warm water with lots of salt. I was a little hesitant about this. At the time I was a firm subscriber to man-made stuff and I kept thinking what could a little old bowl of salt water do for my skin but I went ahead with his suggestion anyway and well I can say my skin is looking pretty good these days. A lot less blackheads and pimples, skin looks clearer in general. I know some people say that salt dries out your face, but I’m going to say that perhaps my skin is so oily it could probably take the salt water.

After a while, I added apple vinegar cider as a toner. I just use it straight on a cotton ball and I’ve noticed my skins a little less oily in general. Finally and most recently, I use coconut oil as a moisturizer. This one works good too. My skin feels lovely and soft but not all dried out or too oily either.

I do feel my skincare is largely down pat, but I’m still working on how to get rid of the dark blemishes/spots left by my blackhead days plus I’m also working on ways of minimizing my dark circles. They’re probably genetic, but I’m not really a fan of walking around with these dark circles and why look/be okay, when you can be better?

Anyway, that’s all for now and will be posting on my weight loss plans in more detail tomorrow.