Back on the wagon

As soon as I got away from the Hens weekend I was eating healthily. That night I had beef stew with veggies and mash potato. Yesterday the scales had me at 105.9. This is up 1.1 kilos because of the Hens Weekend. If I hadn't gone, I would have been down another 0.6. So I am actually 1.7 kilos worse off. When every gram is hard earned is is so damn frustrating to go the wrong way.

It was important to go, because it was good for Margi, Me, Jason and the boys. Really the only downside was the food. I focused on immediately getting back into the healthy mindset which was only possible as I had food cooked before I left.

I baked some Roast Pumpkin Mini Muffins:

Firstly roast pumpkin with a tiny baste of coconut oil.

Then mix:
1/2 cup of wholemeal self-raising flour, 78g 1158 kj
3/4 cup of self-raising flour, 107g, 1588kj
3/4 cup of dark brown sugar, 151g, 2476kj
Shake of cinamon and nutmeg
Grind of salt.
Puree about a cans worth of roast pumpkin, and add it in, 426g, 929 kj
2 Tablespoons coconut oil 40g, 1548 kj
2 large egg whites 68g, 134 kj
Vanilla essence
2/3 cup of sultanas, 90g 1191 kj
(997g total weight, 9029 total kj)
Made 16 small cupcakes, about 564kj each.
* 9.06kj per gram

The muffins tasted good, nice and sweet. Slightly rubbery though, so I might play with using one whole egg and one egg white next time.

Yesterday we went to Velocity Park. It is an indoor trampoline center. It was a really good work out for all involved. Regrettably I am too heavy for this at the moment, but the idea is that I should be able to do this next year.

Here is Jason giving himself a nice arm workout on the rock wall. He said his shoulders were sore the next day :)

Geordie and Jules love jumping into the foam pit. Apparently its another workout getting out of the foam pit. :)

That's Geordie jumping in -->

Jules loves to do a double front flip into the foam pit it is so cool to watch and he is so happy in his element.





I was 105.5 this morning, down 0.4 :) Such a long way to go, but nice to be plodding in the right direction :)

Hens Weekend

Down 0.3 from yesterday, 104.8. Which is awesome. Jason got up at 6am and went for a 26km bike ride. He then dropped me off at Nikki's who took me to Margi, my sister in law's hens weekend.

Nikki's on the right and she is lovely. We are both friends of Karen Jones and slowly becoming friends ourselves. Margi, Nikki, Karen and I all scrapbook together.

Despite Nikki suggesting we get a pie I was smart enough to insist that I get some subway for lunch. I knew that we both needed to contain the damage as best as we could.









Margi has had everything planned for months and had a two day celebration at her house. The Saturday was a Hens night and the Sunday was the a high tea Briday Shower.


Margi is the one in the pink. The food and drink was lovely, but fattening. And rightfully so.

Margis hens weekend was good fun. She had planned everything to a T. She had lots of games and details. Like this Candy Bar:





We made our own pizzas, and she had lots of topping for us to put on a wrap and bake in the oven. It was a delicious dinner, I just made sure to go carefully on the cheese. That night we got in our pajamas and watched Bridesmaids.



She has awesome friends and my favourite bit was chatting to them. Sue is my mother in law on the left and Renee is on the right. Renee is a vegetarian and it was enjoyable talking about food with her.

She hadn't heard of the movie Forks over Knives so it was awesome to give her that tidbit. She is clearly slim (years of practice she said) and I asked her what she eats. she said that most people would find it boring but she likes cut up vegetables for snacks and curries for dinner. She said she loves to mash up herbs, garlic and lime juice for a salad dressing.

She struggles with a late night cravings, but clearly she is a picture of health. She also has a gorgeous nature and is very loyal and kind.



The lovely lady in black was great for me to talk to. She is career driven at the moment .She doesn't cook and struggles to eat. She tries to eat very well as she has a depressed hunger.

She can go a day with just a coffee because she is so busy in her roast chicken takeaway restaurant. She is lucky to have her husband stay at home with her kids as he is very good in that role and he makes sure she eats well.

She says she finds it hard to eat when she is stressed. She smokes and drinks coffee which seems to replace eating for her. It was so interesting to meet new people and hear their new perspectives!


The next day was the high tea and look at the good job she did! So much attention to detail.









Each of the tea pots had what was in them written on the side. There was a lot of choices. I enjoyed the caramel tea. As caramel is my favourite treat.

Margi had Kyra, her brother-in-law to be wife as her bridesmaid. But it really wasn't working out. She only lived 15 mins down the road, but didn't attend at all and also refused to come the dress fitting. This was so bad, as it was the bridesmaids duty to throw the hens night, let alone show up! Margi is incredibly sweet and kept tolerating it.

Kyra also didn't attend the engagement party or Dan's (groom) 30th. Margi was in tears at one point and we all supported her and convinced  her to let Kyra go as she was too unreliable to risk her wedding. Margi has put her heart and soul into this wedding for the least two years and really deserved better. It was hard to do, but the lady in black is now the new bridesmaid :)

As expected I felll well and truly off the wagon. I was glad to return to my wonderful husband and hear what they had been up to.

You always appreciate your man so much more after a girls night out.

I had arranged for Oma to look after Geordie while Jules and Jason went for a mountain bike ride. Jules did really well. Here he is tramping through the bush.



After that Jason picked up Geordie, he took them to see a movie (Planes: Fire and Rescue) and then took them to the corner store to choose some treats.

They then had a guys movie night. Some good junk food choices there, not totally out of control but very fun for the kids.




Jason slept on the couch next to the boys on the Sofa bed. The boys had so much fun :) It looks like a healthy dad is a fun dad :)







Sunday was the biggest surprise of all! He took Geordie out for a family ride! Finally the ability for the four of us to go riding together! No babysitters required!

Geordie has been a very reluctant rider. I am so glad he got finally got there! Look at those smiles!

I need potatoes

Last week I ate a lot of beef stew with potato. This worked well because potato is a great weight loss carb. It is a vegetable which deeply satisfies and fills you up. I wasn't recording exact portions, because I didn't need to. Eating lots of vegetables was the ticket.

Yesterday I kind of forgot this and I had pasta for lunch and baked bean jaffles for dinner. When I calculated the calories they were bad and this is why:

100g of Potato is 60 calories or 251 kilojoules.

100g of Pasta is 140 calories or 584 kilojoules.

100g of Bread is 237 calories or 990 kilojoules.

I am used to a plain potato with a tiny bit of salt. If you have potatoes with lashings of fat you will get fat, but there is a big difference between chips and boiled potato. Give it time and slowly cut down the added fat, your tastebuds will change and you will reap the benefits.

Here is a 4 minute video which celebrates how awesome potatoes are. I also love how 5 kilos is $5, that is one cheap and healthy food!

Today I roasted some amazing pumpkin. I took half a pumpkin and cut it up small so it that  would roast in half an hour. Then I put it on a tray with some baking paper. I got a teaspoon of coconut oil and using a pastry brush I lightly coated the pumpkin pieces. The pumpkin had the most perfect texture and flavour. This was a good use of oil, but I needed very little :)

So this morning the scales were kind and they gave me a 100g loss. It would have been better if I hadn't had pasta and bread the same day. And better still if I had potatoes, but every now and then you have got to live a little eh? I just don't want to eat like that too often or I it will take forever to budge the scales.

The pumpkin and potato really filled me up. Later that night I just had some chicken. Today's eating has been great and I am looking forward to that showing up in the scales soon.

Today I installed a hair-drier holder and a hair straightening iron on the back of my bathroom cabinet door. Its nice for them to have have home. I have had them for about two months but they were just adding to the clutter as I hadn't installed them. Its nice to see the backlog slowly eroding :)

Quiet day

I had a nice quiet day at home with the kids :) I played pool and lots of other games with Geordie. I prepared strawberries and mandarins ready for the family to raid. Its amazing how much a difference it makes if the food is already cut up and placed front and centre of the fridge. And chilled bite sized fruit is so gorgeous, especially after your taste buds start to change :)

I put a beef stew with veggies on the slow cooker, and I have made Symply too good boscaiola sauce to go with pasta. This pasta sauce is a kid and party favourite and it is weight loss food :)  I calculated the calorie density of the meals as well. Its a pain to do but you weigh all the ingredients as it goes into the pot and then you weigh the entire food when it is finished.  You calculate the calories of the entire pot. I use Calorie King, then you divide the calories by the weight. Then next time you make that dish you have a pretty good idea of how many calories was in it. I save it as custom food in calorie king with the portion being a single gram then you just put in how many grams you ate.

I know that seems absurd and unnecessary and if it is for you that's brilliant, but for me I know I can get complacent and being accurate with calories means I can enjoy my food budget without worrying too much about going over.

Another thing I made today was some homemade veggie stock. Basically when I was chopping up the other two meals the veggie scraps were going into a large pot with water. I use the vegetable stock to flavour my meals and also to avoid using oil when I am frying onions etc. Oils is actually pretty nutrient poor so I try to avoid and minimise it. I hate buying vegetable stock as it is so cheap to make at home. When I make a batch I freeze off most of in a large ice cube tray. I then bag it. I also do this with coconut milk and tomato paste.

The obesity crisis is essentially driven by people not making enough food at home, so anything that helps us make food is critical to our health. I have an extra freezer which is essential. I can make extra food and then save it. This helps prevent a lot of takeaway and waste.

As I have been paying off the house debt I have been losing weight. I am down about 3 kilos from last Monday which is pretty cool given that I have just finished a 4 day holiday. I am getting ahead with the food reserve with some carrot cupcakes in the freezer, as well as ham and bean soup, spaghetti and beef stew ready to go when we need it.

Yesterday I farewelled James at the airport as he is on his way to see his parents for 2 weeks in Sydney. It is a bit harder not having a babysitter so that I can go for a ride with Jason in the morning. That said I do have a cross trainer and treadmill in the house and a trampoline out the back so its no excuse not to exercise.

I did some web work and I hung up some pictures up around the house. I have been really stuck on that for some time as I have been a perfectionist about where they should go and how much I still like them. So I didn't hang anything. I hung up two today and it took a bit out of me. (Yes I know how lame that sounds.) The good news is that I have got another little bit of the medium term backlog off my back, the bad news is that dinner suffered.

How could dinner (Boscaiola pasta) suffer when I cooked it early today? Well it suffered because I already ate it for lunch. What I felt like was baked beans and cheese toasted sandwiches. Yes I know that was diet suicide. And yes I did it anyway. And yes I am bummed about it now.

Some days we don't win eh? However at least I got a little bit ahead with the backlog and food prep.

Where I went wrong was not taking the time to find new things to cook, or maybe it was just not having enough emergency dinners in the freezer.

Tuesday

After having the majority of the packing done the night before we check smoothly out of the hotel. Margi, Jasons sister lives in the Gold coast so we had a cup of tea with her before we headed out to Tree Top Challenge. The last time I did the ropes course was while I was getting ready for my wedding so I weighed about 88 kilos and was doing personal training. The only reason why I felt remotely like I could do it today was because of the mountain biking I have been doing lately.

I needed to do it as I didn't want to leave Jason alone with two kids. Its much safer now as they have a magnetic click-it system where it is impossible to have two clips not clicked on while you are up on the trees, you can't physically unclick one if the other is already off. Its awesome as they kids would have unclicked themselves completely a few times if not for this safeguard. That said they can be a bit fiddly at times.

Doing the ropes course at 105 kilos really sucks. I felt so heavy in my harness that it hurt quite a bit. This is the weight where things start to get nasty. I hear my knees complain, there isn't a lot of room left in dreamworld harnesses and I don't put many pictures of myself on facebook. Luckily for me the house items and prepreparing food seems to be really helpful with combating the fat monster.

Geordie and I played games and ate food from the esky while we waited for Jules and Jason to finish the red and black courses. I had a supermarket salad and some jatz. Much better than the options the cafe was offering :)

So as much as the weight on the scale is going to be up tomorrow after the holiday, it won't be as bad as it would have been!

Monday

Today we had a leisurely morning. No one felt like doing anything particularly so Geordie and I played board games.

Then we watched season3 of ninja go and we had spaghetti I had brought frozen from home.  It's nice not having to rush everywhere on holiday.

We spend a good hour at the beach and then grabbed some Thai food on the way back to the hotel.

On day three of the holiday my food mojo has well and truely gone. I had some pearl tea,  chips and chocolate and ended up feeling ill. Jason headed out for a massage while the three of us chilled at a hotel. Everyone is feeling like its okay that our little holiday is ending.

Sunday

Today I forgot to turn the week day alarms off so we work up early.

We had a lesuirely morning and I read a book. We went for an explore in our hotel. The weather was windy and more like winter than summer so we had a swim in the indoor pool. I practised doing handstands in the water and swum a few laps sideways as the Jules insisted doing them with me and I felt that 25m was a bit much for the little bloke.

We had a nice lunch of beans, carrots, broccoli, potato and oven fish. Then I had a little nap, it is a holiday after all. I played heaps of games with Geordie. We went to the beach, but it was cold and it started to rain a little so we were only there for about 30mins.

We went to timezone and had a good time. I found a govindas there so I enjoyed that while the family had some food from breadtop.

Gold Coast Holiday

The kids were really good at circus. They have been doing it a year now and the teacher feels like they can move up to the next class. Unfortunately the intermediate class is divided into different age classes, which are 90 mins each. The good news is that the classes are back to back. So next term the circa commitment is from 11:30 until 2:30. Pillows, UNO cards, dvd players and ipads are going to be my best friends lol.

We set off straight from Circa which is in the valley to our holiday. We had Subway for lunch and swung by Dreamworld on the way. The weather was perfect and the lines were non existent. In a few hours we had been on 5 rides and saw two 3d mini movies.

We headed of to the hotel and checked in. It felt luxurious and was in the centre of surfers paradise in the gold coast. I had brought a small esky of food with us. It is a great way to save some money.

We unpacked the good and I prepped afternoon tea of Jatz, cucumber, avocado, cheese and tomato. I cut up strawberries and pears.  We set out for some milk, an explore and to find some dinner. We came across teppanyaki and it was more about the experience than the food which was very good.

We ate very well this day and my food mojo was still very high. I wish I had of brought more precooked dinners so there was less convenience foods. This would have kept my food mojo up for longer.

Jason slept on the couch to stop the kids just going on the balcony as we were 28 stories up.

Two rides today!

As we have James to babysit, today I got up at 6 am to go for a bike ride with Jason. As discussed we left a note for Jules, saying where we were and when we would get back, and our phone numbers. He freaked out though and rang me and I said to meet us at the park. We like having Jules along, but it was nice to have some just the two of us time first. I think he mostly woke up because I warned him I would be going, usually he sleeps in until 7:45.

Then I went off to help my friend form a club and I designed them a logo. It was nice to work for the day but the meal planning and house cleaning took a hit. I had enough prepared food to get through but I am really aware that that is central to my weight loss so I don't want to let anything get in the way of that again. I let them know that I was happy to help but not until after the school holidays.

I took Geordie to the doctor to get a referral to a Friends workshop which goes for an hour and works on social skills. I also got a care plan so that he can see a psychologist as his social skills ie reluctance to say hi, being stubborn in class etc are lacking and he can use some help there.

Jules went whizzing down the hill onto the road today without looking so I am trying to help him learn to stick to the left and stop at intersections better. Its a hard thing to teach, thank god we live in a quiet area.

He went out for two rides today. On the second one he didn't hear the phone and it was getting dark and he wasn't home so I had to go out looking for him on the bike. I was reluctant to do this as I had already rode that day. He got chores as he didn't ring me to let me know that he was going to a different part of he bike track, answer the phone or make it back by dark.

Eating wise has again been good. I had a nice porridge, chai latte at the meeting. A large quinoa salad with pear, sultanas, beans, spinach, cabbage, carrot with a satay dressing.

I am going on holiday tomorrow. And I have packed food to take with us.

Cooking ahead of time

Now that the house is not as overwhelming I have been starting to cook ahead of time. The idea is that I have energy before lunch but not so much after I have got the kids and are tending to them.

I have been eating the stew I cooked a few days ago with some mashed potato on the side. It is really lean and yummy and ready to go. I have fruit cut up for people to snack on ready for afternoon tea and the veggies are cut up ready for dinner.

I have a busy couple of days as we are about to head off to the gold coast for a four days. I have started to prepare some of the food in advance because otherwise we will spend too much money and time eating too many calories.

Yesterday I cooked spaghetti and froze off half the mince. I put a lot of cut up veges in the spaghetti mince so it is actually a lean meal. So one of the three nights I have dinner already made. I cooked some carrot muffins with sultanas and I put half and half wholemeal flour to white flour. So its healthier and a little less morish.

A few days ago I bought myself a new notebook for my recording my daily food. I have it sitting on the kitchen bench below the scales. Having it visible has improved my recording. I have lost two kilos in the last four days of recording and I haven't been hungry. I have two more days of being at home and then we will be on holiday and of course I will gain it all back lol. But if I hadn't started clearing the house clutter I never would have got to these harder tasks.

Yesterday I tackled something I have been wanting to do for months, I repaired the kids hammock. It had a strap lattice which had deteriorated in the sun. It was a big square frame nothing to sit on in the middle. I got a 30 meter long rope and weaved a new seat around the frame. It took about an hour, but that is one thing off my medium term to do list.

Never before have I realised how much I need to do the small stuff before I can do the bigger stuff. And losing weight is the biggest stuff!

Ups and Downs

There have been a few really nice plusses from my little items adventure. I love not having to clean up for guests. The house is far from perfect, but I have had a few guests now where I haven't had to do a little panic clean just because they are coming over :)

Jason has lost 6 kilos! He is looking sexy! A lot of that motivation came from training for the epic, but still I know that clearing the house clutter is making an impact. He woudl never admit that though lol!

When I came back from camping I was nicely surprised at how neat the house was and I didn't have to go to any special effort to clean the house up before we left. That is one of the biggest stresses of camping. Firstly buying the food, then prepping it, packing everything and then cleaning up, usually to a high standard as we have neighbours coming around to feed the pets. 

James is one of our best friends and has been boarding with us for the last 6 months. He pays $170 a week board and that goes a long way to smoothing out our finances. Its been great having a build in baby and pet sitter!

He keeps a low profile, he is either sleeping, working, on a computer or out at the hackerspace. His cruisey nature makes him easy to live with. Here we have Jason at his desk and James on his. James has a very small footprint as a lot of his stuff is in storage. His stuff is at his desk or in his room. He is a great friend and boarder.

Yesterday I saw a doctor about applying to see a nutritionist. I might not get approved as I am not diabetic. It motivated me. I had a great day eating wise yesterday. I precut up fruits and made a healthy dinner and tracked everything. I gave Geordie a biking lesson, and I felt great!.

Today I was productive as well. I went for a 6km bike ride in 40 mins and averaged 9km per hour. I walked much less of the track than just 3 weeks ago and was less stuffed. I put a stew on the slow cooker and then ran out of time to cut up the fruit. It was finally time to return the hire car and get my car back. 

After spending 3k on hire car fees and excess I was glad to have my baby back. James drove along with me to help return the hire car. After I dropped him back home I had only 20 mins before I had to go to get Jules from school. Here was the problem. The stew was still cooking, I had no instant food and I felt very hungry!

Unfortunately for me I saw two packets on instant noodles and I decided to make them. In hindsight I had much better options, I could have had some baked beans on toast in less time! This is the danger of having junk food visible in the house. After I had that lousy lunch I felt defeated and low.

I got the kids their haircuts after school and the were so good I got them some treats. The kids wanted some rainbow paddle pops. I could have left it there, but instead I also saw that an apple pie was on sale. Guess what I ate half of today... And I know it was incredibly calorie laden as I haven't had much of an appetite afterwards...

Gah, got to take the good with the bad. I have been feeling a little borderline depressed over the last two months. I don't know why. Maybe its because I have gotten so fat that I am starting to feel like my appearance is limiting me. Or maybe its because I am detoxing the house which is making me deal with issues rather than hiding in a shopping centre. Or maybe I am getting  a little bored as the kids need me less. I am not sure but I think its a little of all the above. 

Keeping an eye on the bigger picture I feel things will get much better over the next few months.

Mini Epic!

On Friday we packed the cars and took off to Grandchester for the Epic. This is the mountain bike event that Jason, Jules and I had been training for. Some more than others <looks around and whistles innocently>. Anyway we decided to take Kai with us as he was keen to go and is a great role model for our kids.

We got there early and got a nice spot to camp in. Its never quite easy when spots aren't defined, but we were able to chat to our neighbours to decide how much space they needed and fit comfortably around that. Then I realised that I hadn't packed the gas cooker which was going to make cooking dinner hard so I took Geordie and went to a nearby hardware store to pick up a canister cooker.

While I was gone Jason took Kai and Jules around the 4.2km mountain bike track. I wasn't sure if I could make the it as I am still so heavy and fairly unfit. It was a tricky track, but I was able to ride most of it. Some of the jumps were too much and I had to walk. Some of the hills I had to walk aswell.

I was puffed and red faced when I got back and I was scared I would get a headache if I went the next day. We cooked dinner, played spotlight and the kids got together and did cartwheels and had fun. Kai finds it hard to sleep at night so we went for a few walks whenever he got nervous.

After morning snuggles we got up and packed up the tent early. This saved having to do it in the heat of the day maybe with a nasty exercise headache.

I was nervous at the start of the family fun ride. I was concerned that Jules would get in to trouble too far ahead of me. I didn't want to come last. I don't mind being last, I just didn't want everyone to be waiting for me and put anyone out.

It was a lot easier to do the course after we had practised it. There was one point where I felt tortured and of course that was the time someone would be taking photos of contestants lol. I ended up coming in  about two thirds of the pack. It was really nice to have family at the finish line. Its amazing how having strangers say well done is so encouraging.



Kai had come 5th of the race and had done really well. We went back to our camp to recover and congratulate ourselves and enjoy the finishing feeling.







Soon it was time for Jason to do his race.

Last year he did the 20k in almost 3 hours, he came 3rd last. So this year I thought I would go to the finish line at 2pm, two hours after the race started.

He was so delighted in my surprise that he wasn't too disappointed I wasn't there at the finish line.









Here he is at the start of the race :) He needed to wave so I could spot him as everyone gets a free  jersey as part of entering in the race.

While he was gone the kids entertained themselves on a slide and climbing wall. We grabbed some lunch and then headed back to our gazebo.
















We were settling into some board games when Jason bounded back with a big grin! It wasn't even 2pm and he was back already! He had slashed over an hour off his time from last year!
.
 We were so happy for him :)

He rested and enjoyed his victory. We sent the kids off to the jumping castle while we packed up to go home. Karen J, Kai's Mum, cooked us a lovely dinner with vegetables at her house. It was great because we were both stuffed from all the driving, packing and racing.

We all loved it :)

A good loss

Yesterday I cleaned 755 items. That's a lot of movement. It muted my appetite, and the end of the day my thighs were actually sore.  I got limited acknowledgement from my flatmate and my husband. Which really sucks.

There is literally no one I can talk to this about but my blog. People are naturally skeptical so I am on my own. It would be so nice to get some encouragement. But by the time it comes I won't need it. I guess going this alone will make me stronger.

It sucks to be doing stuff for people and have limited gratitude.  Maybe its part of the cleansing process that I am clicking a little less with Jason these days. I just try and focus on this is my backlog, for my health and future. They have their own issues to deal with and these are mine.

Considering that most of clearing the house debt is getting through the interest I wondered what sort of pay off I would get for going above and beyond.

The current rate I was striving to pay it off was 1000 items a week. This works out to being about 405 items a day and would take me another 42 weeks, aiming for 22 Jun 2015.

Stepping it up to 550 items a day halves the time to 22 weeks, to the 20th of Feb which is just past my birthday.

What a huge difference that extra 145 items makes. Thats interest for ya.

If I ramped it up to 705, it would take 15 weeks which is the 15th of December and in time for Christmas!!

Isn't that incredible! I am not going to be a perfectionist about this. But I am definitely going to try and hit closer to 700 each day.

I am just glad to have a blog in moments like these. I feel like I am on to something big here, and when I talk to people about it they think I am nuts.

But waking up to an 800g loss, now that's a nice piece of encouragement from the universe!

So this is going well :)

For the last fortnight I have been focusing on getting through daily home maintainence plus a little exta to work through the backlog. Having a flexible, long term plan is working. Little day to day tasks are becoming more pleasant and effortlessly I am beginning to take on bigger tasks sooner.

Today I made an appointment to see the dietician. Not so much for weight loss as frankly I feel that I do know what I need to there. My problem is applying the knowledge, hence Operation: Organised Home is coming first.

I am seeing the dietician so that I can know the optimum pregnancy diet, particularly in regards to folate and iron. I am interested to hear how they would opitimally manage my obesity as well. I think its a good idea to start practicing now, particularly as we need so much extra sleep during pregnancy which means we are short on time.

Iron is a concern to me as I tend to run low, and I know needs for iron are high when pregnant. Infact a shortage of iron has likely prevented me from concieving. (Eeep, how much has not maintaining an organised home cost me?) I also want to increase the amount of fresh foods that the kids eat. Geordie excepted as that kid has more fibre than any of us, he is an absolute fruit bat!

I arranged for my father in law Robert to come and collect the pavers off my property as they have use for them and its time for them to have it if they are the ones with the long term plans.

I arranged for the kids to have haircuts this week. I like to do it just before the holidays as the kids need a haircut by the holidays and I never seem to want to drag them out of the house just for a haircut on a precious holiday day. Where as on the way home from school is a lot less trouble.

The most exciting thing is that my appetite of its own accord is naturally reducing. I have some preprepared cauliflower, potato, cabbage soup flavoured with light coconut milk, ground almonds and  kecap manis just sitting in the fridge waiting for me to get hungry. And get this... I am not hungry!!!! YAY!!

On the stove today is ham hock and four bean soup, I haven't made it before but I know its going to rock!

Jason is improving too, he has lost 4 kilos. Men. They find weight loss soo much easier don't they? He took Jules for a 17km bike ride on Saturday and then for his Fathers day treat he went for a long 36.2km ride by himself. He got up early though so we didn't lose too much time with him.

Fathers day with my Father in law was bowling and cake, and the with my Dad was dinner at a seafood restaurant. It was a fancy restaurant so it was actually a pretty lean meal.

So I am absolutely stoked that my instinct that house clutter is body clutter seems to have some merit!

Clearing the house debt

Do you ever feel like you want to do something simple. But everything gets in the way of doing that and then you get overwhelmed?

I have long since believed that the state of my body is simple a refection of my lifestyle but well beyond just diet and exercise. I have a lot of backlog of clutter in my house that affects my food motivation. So I thought what if I directly correlate the state of the house with my body? 

I am 43 kilos overweight and there are a thousand grams in a kilogram. So for fun, what if I endeavoured to put away 43000 items in the house. As I cleared the backlog in the house would that also affect my weight? 

The reason I think it will is that I already have a lot of knowledge about eating well, and I deeply desire to be slim, so what if it was the house getting in the way?

I am not a slob, but there is a backlog that most of us have and perhaps I have had a little bit more. I have held on to the kids babystuff as I always wanted a third and that means more clutter. 

So when I say items I mean anything that is put away or improved. Every fork that is washed, every pencil that is sharpened, every piece of lego, every weed that is pulled. So as you can see if you look at it that way having a goal of clearing 43000 items of debt is probably doable in a moderately cluttered home.

All debt has interest. My kids create some daily chaos, there is always a dishwasher to be packed and unpacked, plus whatever the day has brought. So I figured there is about 250 items of interest a day to pay.

I gave myself a goal of clearing 1000 items debt a week. I hoped it would be symbolic of losing a kilo.

Here is how I have gone:

The first day I put in a big effort of 745 items and I felt like I was getting somewhere. But I didn't consider how big the interest was, and I wasn't consistent enough. So that week was actually an eye opener as the back log didn't change much. 

The second week I started to realise how big the actual debt was. 250 items x 7= 1750. Plus 1000 to pay off the debt, means that to meet my quota I need to clean up about 2750 items a week or 400 items every day. 

This week I did much better. Its a bit early to tell if it is immediately effecting the scales but I know that eventually it will.

What has happened is that the kids lego is completely tidy,  I am less embarassed by surprise drop ins, the washing is up to date, (although I still have to do everyone's sheets). We are cooking more, Jason and Jules are riding their bikes more and the general mood in the home is happier. 

Our lego is totally organised. Its the perfect blend of order and chaos so the kids can play with it, and find the parts they need. I think lego is the hardest thing I have organised so I am particularly proud of it.

I am hoping that clearing the clutter will pave the way for having the strength to clear the body clutter.

I have just gone for a 7km ride with Jules. I am getting fitter as well :)

Out of routine!

The last two days have shaken me as I have been out of routine. Mum came down and I spent a few hours helping her shop for her business and we went out for lunch. We were good we had a salad. I let her know my theory about body clutter versus house clutter and she got it! Which was awesome.

That night I trialled a karate class for the kids. It wasn't the right one for us as the instructor didn't do any kicking of the pads which I feel is important. As the class was on from 6pm-7:30 I fed them early. They seemed to forget that as they wanted oven chips when they got home. That was fine except I had them too.

Yesterday I went to sports day with Jules and I spent some time filling in at the shops as it was a lunch time thing. I went to the shops starving and it was a disaster, I made some really bad choices. Then I was caught off guard for dinner. I thought I will have soup and the kids can have some oven pizza. I really must stop thinking that the kids and I can have separate dinners as I just end up having what they have and it completely sabotages me.

The last two days haven't been great items wise. I did 376 two days ago, and only 40 yesterday! When I woke up there was a nasty gain on the scale and it was hard not to let it get to me.

So today I have planned dinner early and afternoon snacks in the fridge so that we can make much better food decisions today!

Cleaning up is going well today. Trying to stay on the wagon after a bump in the road lol.