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.

WUT. Foiled by the body fat machine.

Well, today I got a chance to have myself expertly measured up by a body fat machine – well that’s what I think it is. You put your feet on two metal plates, press your thumbs on these metal grooves whilst holding these odd handles. Anyway, discovered my body fat was 27.3% WAH. I must be using those calipers wrong. I weigh 59.5kg — so not much change from two weeks ago either.

I admit I was quite disturbed to learn my body fat has hardly budged since I first measured it. Also I learnt that I (obviously) carry most of my weight in my trunk or belly. Well, of course. It seems to me as if I can never budge weight off that area either. I know I’m losing it everywhere else, except there. It seems to happily swing anywhere between 31-32″ in circumference. My thoughts have immediately turned to my IUD – 4 weeks and I’m still 27%. Am I not working hard enough? I feel like blaming myself, and sometimes the IUD.

I feel like my joy at what I thought were successes last week weren’t really real at all, and somehow I was seeing the wrong thing in both my head and the mirror.

Well I’ve still got another 4 weeks left to see if it is the IUD and to see if I can lose anymore weight. It’s also another 4 more weeks to plan my game better, but at the same time I have to make concessions for uni, especially now that I will be living further away from it. I will look at my diet first… I can’t really say I’m screwing up in the exercise column – I spend most of the days doing aikido, going for walks, running around on errands, sometimes house cleaning, and doing bodyweight exercises (I did one two days ago and my shoulders are still a bit sore!) — so no fault there. Of course, other factors could be stress (and Uni will be no help in that area!), lack of proper sleep; yes despite being on holidays, I find it hard to fall asleep — I get tired but as soon as my brain/body clicks on that I’m going to bed, it suddenly decides to wake up again like some errant 5 year old child. Or it’s the IUD *dun dun dun*.

When the next four weeks roll by and there’s been no measurable improvement, I’ll say I get down to 56kg/123lb or I lose another inch off the waist, or my body fat goes down by 1.5% — I will definitely start thinking about getting the IUD pulled. But of course this is determinant on me creating a tighter plan for eating and maybe exercising too and really sticking to it, and this will make sure my results can be more clearly attributed to something else besides lax attitudes.

 

Off-Topic: Rise Design Studio

Totally off-topic but I have to rave about some beautiful graphic design work I’ve been checking out recently:

Rise Design Studio

These guys produce incredibly beautiful work. They do amazing photography and their works have this almost spiritual vibe. How they piece work together in these eye-catching collages is amazing. Can’t stop looking at their work. It’s the sort of aesthetic that really appeals to me, especially on this page scroll down to the works 4 and 5. Crazy beautiful. It reminds me of this gorgeous Indian goddess living amongst so long ago in the Himalayas; spiritual, divine. I normally don’t so purply prose and emotional, but this is great stuff and it’s this sort of quality of work that is both inspiring and gives me aspirations to do better myself.

Other than that, today was a bit rough and grumpy beachbird inducing, but it looks like our house-hunting is starting to look up for us 🙂 hopefully I will be writing to you in my new place soon :))

Lost an inch or so off the belly – surprise, surprise!

Still house-hunting. We had two leads that looked good, but for whatever reason are ignoring texts/forgot about us. Sigh. Waiting to find out if two applications we put in the other day are successful. On the upside, getting paid tomorrow so I can refill my fridge and cupboard again 😀 and also working on a small project with a good friend. It’s very interesting and exciting, it keeps my mind off my shitty housing situation lol and hopefully if it’s a hit, it could lead to some really good things later on.

Another good thing that happened was that I checked my waist and oooohh it measures 31.5″. But must keep up diet. Exercise can be easily covered, it’s the discipline to stick to eating right which is really quite hard. Like I said, my main temptation comes when I’m with friends. It’s hard to eat out and you feel like a sore thumb sticking out when you’re not gulping down vast amounts of sugar, etc.

Lastly, the boyfriend and I have decided on a little deal to lose body fat both and get fit. He wants to get down to 12% by years end (though I suspect if he really pushes himself, probably a whole lot faster) and I want to get down to 20%. Lofty goals, but whoever gets to the finish line first gets the privilege of having their feet kissed by the loser, declared King/Queen of the Universe and the loser must buy the winner a treat of their choice under $40. Perhaps I should up the odds, make losing more painful. Maybe something under a $100, a $150? That’s more ouchy >:)

Anyway, it looks like I’ll have a busy few weeks with finding a house to live, eating right and uni starting up soon again! Eeek!

 

Tea Tree Oil vs Blackheads

I’ve been using a salt wash to clean my face for the last week, sure it’s kept my face seemingly clean. Well cleaner than it was before I bothered with any cleaning :O BUT I’ve discovered little blackheads popping up like daisies and discovered quite a few big ones too. No big pimples (except for one on my nose that won’t go away).  So in a moment of madness I decided to to go on a blackhead squeezing spree, the forehead got quite a battering and now I was left with big ugly swollen red spots.

However, thanks to some quick googling, I discovered a few methods to deal with the red spots after getting blackheads. So here’s what I did:

1. I cleaned the area with cold water and apple cider vinegar.

2. I put a cold compress on my forehead, and got my hands on the following lotions and potions: DermAid (a 0.5% hydrocortisone cream), 100% Thursday Plantation Tea Tree Oil and Invite E 100% Vitamin E Oil.

3. Cleaned the spots again with tea tree oil and put a dab of the cortisone cream on each red spot. This was for the rest of the day.

4. At night, I cleaned the area again with tea tree oil and put vitamin E oil on each spot. Went for my beauty sleep.

5. The next day woke up and checked the damage. Not bad. A little bit red still but not as bad as the other times when I would go on impulsive blackhead attacks. Cleaned whole face with tea tree oil this time and put vitamin E oil on spots. I figured they weren’t too inflamed at this point and were probably healing up. Since I didn’t want to be left with nasty dark spot, I dabbed on the oil. My previous experience with the Invite brand was with my own father, who in a workplace accident severely burnt his arm and face. A combination of quick thinking (dunking himself into a lot of water) and diligent upkeep with the Invite Vitamin E cream has ensured that today he has NO scars from that accident at all. So with this mind, I felt the oil could do a lot of good for my beat up skin.

6. Have just cleaned face again with straight tea tree oil (well two cotton balls soaked in cool water with 4-5 drops of the oil) and face feel fresh and tingly. I love the smell too! Will apply vit E oil and see how we are tomorrow.

I’m also hoping from cleaning my face with pretty much straight tea tree oil that it will keep most blackheads at bay, let alone pimples. I know my oily face must feel like some oasis to bacteria.

I’ve also cut out ACV toner, or just toner in general. I felt it was drying my face out and I think I was right. I just cleaned with salt wash and put on jojoba oil (I felt coconut oil was a bit too heavy for me) and my face always felt quite nice throughout the day.

Besides my blackhead bashing, the boyfie and me are house-hunting. The joys of competing with 50 other people for one place. Our lease runs out soon and cross my fingers we get a place. Aikido is going well and went for an hour session today. It was about learn the basics, which was good (and easy 😛 ) and it was good to review basics in the coming up for a grading (which I’m thinking about doing). Although exercise has been easy to upkeep (rain has finally cleared off!!), I keep making little errors with my diet. Most of the time I’m on track but it seems I always stray. One Macca mocha here, a macaroon there. The rest of the time: meat, vege and tons of fruit. Been having lots of lychees and enjoying how yummy and cheap they are from Aldi.

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.